The Philter

The nose looks familiar.

The great Richard Griffiths passed away yesterday, leaving quite a large void in the world of comedy. He was best known to the world as Harry Potter’s uncle, but to those of us who have spent more time in the arena of the unwell, he will always be Uncle Monty.

I can think of no better tribute, at the moment, than to point you to this previously posted podcast, which leads off with Griffiths’ legendary soliloquy from Withnail and I concerning “breakfasts that set in,” “the last island of beauty in the world,” and of course “some vulgar little tumor.” In fact it was the heart, I think, that got him in the end — now, indeed, he shall never play the Dane. Good night, sweet prince.

Herbert was a dashing young man, it seems

I just now read that Herbert Lom has died. This comes as something of a surprise, as I had no idea he was still alive. Herbert was 95 for Chrissakes!

Most of us remember him as (Chief) Inspector Dreyfus from the Pink Panther movies — in which role he was magnificent — but he had a long and busy career. Not only did he appear in many movies and TV shows, but, according to The Wikipedia,

Lom wrote two historical novels, one on the playwright Christopher Marlowe (Enter a Spy: The Double Life of Christopher Marlowe, 1971) and another on the French Revolution (Dr. Guillotin: The Eccentric Exploits of an Early Scientist, 1992).

Quite the accomplished fellow. Thanks to The Jazz Butcher, I have long been vaguely aware that Lom was in something called The Human Jungle, but I had never seen a second of it. Internets to the rescue!

I just watched a great Colbert Report segment on Shepard Smith, who is Brian Williams’ only legitimate competition for world’s most entertaining “legitimate” newsman. In the course of it they had a clip of him saying the following – and I don’t know the context of this, I don’t want to know, I just want to sit back and enjoy it as the pure freaky word jazz it is:

Kitty cat meow
Thousand dollars
Snooki’s pregnant

I just wanted to post this so I would be sure to never ever, lose it. The key line comes 1:13 in: “He’s been consistent since he changed his mind.”

Priceless.

Little Drew

• The screenplay of Altered States is credited to Sidney Aaron, a pseudonym for Paddy Chayefsky, who wrote the script based on his own novel but asked that his name be removed from the final product. Janet Maslin had an interesting theory about this: “It’s easy to guess why (Chayefsky) and Mr. Russell didn’t see eye to eye. The direction, without being mocking or campy, treats outlandish material so matter-of-factly that it often has a facetious ring. The screenplay, on the other hand, cries out to be taken seriously, as it addresses, with no particular sagacity, the death of God and the origins of man.”

• This was the first movie for both William Hurt and Drew Barrymore, who was 5 at the time and appears very briefly as one of the Jessup kids. A young John Larroquette has one scene as an X-ray technician. And Hurt’s right-hand man is played by the great Bob Balaban, veteran of everything from Midnight Cowboy to Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but perhaps best known as the NBC executive on Seinfeld whose love for Elaine causes him to lose his mind and eventually his life.

• An isolation tank also appears in the tragically underrated Simon, where Alan Arkin plays a philosophy professor who’s tricked into believing he’s from another planet. IMDB calls Simon‘s tank scene a “parody” of Altered States, but seeing as both movies were released in 1980 and Altered States came out on Christmas, I don’t think that’s the case. Perhaps you’d like to judge for yourself? Unfortunately, Simon remains out of print. To the YouTube!

One of the strangest things about Altered States is that — spoiler alert — in the end it reveals itself to be fundamentally a love story.

A romantic comedy it’s not. The first time William Hurt’s character, Eddie Jessup, does it with his lady love, played by the delectable Blair Brown, he talks about Jesus and the crucifixion then recounts the story of his father’s “painful and protracted death of cancer.” Despite or because of this she falls for him anyway, and their courtship/marriage/ separation/etc. runs as a counterpoint to the many bizarre events that transpire.

As Emily Jessup, Brown is utterly crucial to this movie’s credibility, such as it is. Not only do you believe that she is an anthropology professor who just happens to look like a movie star, you believe that she loves Eddie despite his being a singularly difficult person to love. She does as good a job as humanly possible of delivering lines like this:
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I’m probably one of the few people on the planet who has sentimental feelings about this movie, a truly oddball piece of work from legendary oddball director Ken Russell. Altered States announces itself as a transmission from Planet Weird in its very first moments, where wires float in what appears to be a copper hot water heater with a porthole. Then up into the frame floats William Hurt wearing dark goggles with his head ensconced in some kind of clear, round space helmet. And we’re off.

This is really Hurt’s film; its story is the story of his character, Edward Jessup, a Harvard professor with a mystical streak who likes to float for hours in an isolation tank. He also develops a certain fondness for the psychedelic mushroom amanita muscaria, and when he decides to mix the two, trouble ensues.

I don’t want to say too much, on the very slim chance that you haven’t seen Altered States and would like to. I recommend it, but not without qualifications: It walks a very delicate line between deep and campy, scary and silly, and sometimes stumbles and treads all over that line. But not unlike Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, it is loaded with such energy that it jumps right over the normal categories to become an animal completely its own. And speaking of animals…well, no, that would be a spoiler.

There will be more to say on this topic, but for now I just want to get something up there, quiet the nagging voices. Happy Monday, everybody.

Alien was one of those perfect-storm movies where every decision just plain worked out right. Think about the cast for a minute: There are seven people (and one cat) in this movie, and every single one of them is absolutely perfect for the role they play. To wit:

Sigourney Weaver: Siggy invented the modern female action hero in this movie; Angelina Jolie should be cutting her in for at least 10% right off the top. As Ripley, Our Heroine, Sigourney (real name: Susan Alexandra Weaver) projects an amazing combination of strength, vulnerability, and unconventional/too-tall-and-skinny/just-slightly-butch sex appeal. Alien made Sigourney a star, but no other role ever allowed her to shine like this one (see also: Aliens and, on and off, the two other movies in the series); Ripleys don’t just come along every day.
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What with today being Halloween and all, this seems like a fitting time to get into Alien, a legitimate contender for Scariest Movie Ever Made. (The other contenders, in my book: The Thing and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and possibly one or more Cronenberg movies — although those are almost in a whole different category — Le Grande Mindfuque, something like that.)

Back in the late 90s, my girlfriend’s daughter — who was maybe 10 at the time — had seen Aliens (the second movie) and thought she was all big and bad and tough. So at her request we arranged a viewing of the original, and she barely made it past the opening credits before we had to turn it off. Alien is just that pure and perfect a horror movie: Even before anything happens, it is scary as hell.
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Patricia Neal and Walter Matthau in 'A Face in the Crowd.'

Maybe my favorite sequence in A Face in the Crowd is one I couldn’t find on The YouTube, and since I am not yet a smart enough monkey to capture my own video off a DVD, I’ll have to just tell you about it.

It begins about 26 minutes in, just as Lonesome Rhodes is making the leap from small-town radio in Arkansas to a TV show in Memphis. There’s a great shot of Lonesome (Andy Griffith) as his train pulls away from the station in Pickett, AK where hundreds of fans are seeing him off. He waves goodbye with his hat, looking back at the admiring throng, but then turns to face forward, into the camera. In that moment he gives a look that has something really profound in it. It’s hard to say what exactly. It’s more than just hope, or expectation, or confidence; it’s a look that says this guy is going to fucking eat the world. He is America circa 1957: a hungry predator, an unstoppable force. That was a long time ago.
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