WHY I (STILL) GO TO THE MOVIES, WITH LILLIAN

Birdman, directed by Alejandro G. Inarritu, winner of four Academy Awards including Best Picture of 2014.
(A review: originally published Thursday, Feb 26, 2015 on CineCero film blog, San Juan, PR)

Epigraph: (What We Talk About When We Talk About Art)
by Jan Galligan & Lillian Mulero, Santa Olaya, PR

 Lillian and I talk about art most of the time. I don't mean that this is the only subject of conversation, just that art inhabits our life; we look at everything from the point of view of the artist. This is probably true for doctors, lawyers, maybe accountants, certainly true for scientists, musicians, filmmakers, writers, poets, and theater people – the world is a stage, after all.


EMMA STONE

Alejandro G. Inarritu's latest film, Birdman or (the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), takes this literally, although the world here is confined to mid-town Manhattan and all the air above it. For the most part, it is further confined to the backstage and basement dressing rooms of the St. James Theater located on 44th at Broadway, in the Theater District near Times Square. Some of the action is restricted to the theater's stage, while the rest takes place inside the main character's head. Riggin Thompson, former Hollywood star of the blockbuster action-film series Birdman, has written a play based on What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (original title: Beginners), Raymond Carver's iconoclastic, breakout, short story. Carver had the reputation for writing very terse, short short stories. His writing has been labeled minimalist, and “dirty-realist,” although he rejected both characterizations. Recent literary scholarship has revealed that the version of his story published in an award-winning collection of the same name, had been pared down by Carver's editor, Gordon Lish, so that it represented less than half of the original manuscript. The original story, Beginners, has recently been published in its entirety, through the efforts of Carver's widow.

All seventeen of the stories in that collection were heavily edited by Lish, and most were retitled. On the eve of publication, Carver had a change of heart, a crisis of confidence, and wrote a seven page impassioned letter to Lish begging him to delay publication, or not publish at all, despite having signed a contract with Knopf based on Lish's version of Carver's stories. 

Carter wrote: Dearest Gordon, I've got to pull out of this one. Please hear me... I look at “What We Talk About...” (Beginners) and I see what you've done, what you've pulled out of it, and I'm awed and astonished, startled even, with your insights. Please help me with this, Gordon. I feel as if this is the most important decision I've ever been faced with, no shit... Please, Gordon, for God's sake help me in this and try to understand. Listen. I'll say it again, if I have any standing for reputation or credibility in the world, I owe it to you. I owe you this more-or-less pretty interesting life I have. But if I go ahead with this as it is, it will not be good for me...

Two days later Carver relented, the stories were published as Lish had edited them, the book garnered rave reviews, cemented Carver's reputation as a minimalist, and sold thousands of copies. Two years, and one more collection of stories later, also edited by Lish, but this time lightly, relations between Carver and Lish were strained to the breaking point. Lish wrote to Carter: … we've agreed that I will try to keep my editing of the stories as slight as I deem possible, that you do not want me to do the extensive work I did on the first two collections. So be it Ray. Two months later Carver wrote to Lish: What's the matter, don't you love me anymore? I never hear from you. Have you forgotten me already?

Writing about Birdman, critics have made much of the fact that Michael Keaton, former star of the blockbuster Batman series, plays Riggin Thompson, former star of the blockbuster Birdman series, who plays Nick, narrator of Carver's story What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, who is the main character in Thompson's play of the same name. They also point to the fact that Edward Norton played Bruce Banner in the Incredible Hulk, after playing the lead as the Narrator in David Fincher's breakout film Fight Club. In Birdman, Norton plays famous Broadway method actor, Mike Shiner.

On the eve of opening night, during the final preview performances, Thompson hires Shiner to replace an actor Thompson deposes, because he was not up to the part. Shiner is more than adequate. He has inhabited the play even before arriving for his tryout, primarily because he had been rehearsing the play for months with Lesley, his live-in girl-friend. He lives with her, or as she says in a puzzling aside, “we share a vagina.” Funny, because he is also purported to be impotent, at least off stage. On stage he is a demonic actor, impetuous, impervious, inspired and sexually charged. In his first run through with Thompson, Shiner knows all of his character, Mel, a 45-year old cardiologist's lines and Thompson's Nick character's, as well. Within minutes, Shiner has -- through a series of readings, coaching Thompson on how to deliver his lines, making continual suggestions that Thompson pare down his dialog, cutting it to the bone -- rewritten the action so that Thompson's Nick has Shiner's Mel completely mesmerized. It's at this moment it becomes clear that the film Birdman, is not about a theatrical, and by extension cinematic, adaptation of Carver's story What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, but is instead about the tortured relationship between author Raymond Carver and his editor Gordon Lish.

This explains the subsequent conflicts between Thompson, and Shiner who is constantly working to remake the play, find its essence, hone its presentation, and control the public's perception, and ultimate reception of the play. Shiner dramatically cuts short his first preview performance by stepping out of character, breaking down the wall, and talking directly to the audience, to tell them what shit the play is at that point. This nearly leads to fisticuffs between Shiner and Thompson. Next, Shiner manages to get a cover story in the Arts section of the New York Times, an interview with him and a preview of his participation in Thompson's production. He practically takes ownership of the play, and does take ownership of Thompson's origin story of having been inspired by Raymond Carver to become an actor. Thompson is so incensed, that he does end up in a fist-fight with Shiner, nearly giving him a shiner, and finally, they are wrestling on the ground, in a metaphoric sexual embrace. Thompson is embarrassed. Shiner remains impervious, as Thompson beats him over the head with the wadded up newspaper article.

By this point, Thompson has lost face and most of his self respect. The only solution seems to be a dramatic gesture. On opening night, in the emotionally wrought closing scene, Thompson enacts the suicide shot to the head using a real gun, but he misses and shoots off his nose. The curtain falls.

The play is a critical success. Despite his Hollywood action-hero baggage, Thompson is hailed as a new voice in American theater, bringing fresh blood to the stage and, displaying the unexpected virtue of ignorance, inventing a new super-realistic form of dramatic presentation. He has literally “cut off his nose to spite his face,” and with that, he flies out the window.  

Looking at Inarritu and his co-writers' script suggests that despite a great deal of the dialog, especially in scenes of the play, coming directly from Carver's short story, the central conflict, and some of the off-stage dialog comes from Carver's tortured letter to Lish, trying to delay or halt the publication of his book of short stories. There seem to be three central themes to Inarritu's Birdman.

One: getting caught with your pants down, everyone's worst nightmare -- running around in public in just your underwear. For Thompson this is a major humiliation. For Shiner, it's just another day at the office. 

Two: floating – above the ground, or high in the sky. Everyone's favorite dream, and the essence of self esteem and well being. Here that domain belongs to Thompson alone, and it may be all in his head. This was true for Carver as well. In a letter to Lish, at one of his high points, six months before publication of his story collection, Carver writes: I'm happy, and I'm sober. It's aces right now, Gordon. I know better than anyone a fellow is never out of the woods, but right now it's aces, and I'm enjoying it.

Actor Michael Keaton as Riggin Thompson, cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, director Alejandro G. Inarritu, and co-writer Nicolás Giacobone, with Birdman 3 poster.

Three: mentioned before, Thompson's act of self-mutilation, self-retaliation. From the start of the film this is hinted at, foretold, in the masks which cover the Birdman movie character's face, the mask of The Phantom of the Opera, still playing across the street from the St. James Theater, at the Majestic Theater on Broadway, and the hospital bandages of an old man in a story Thompson's cardiologist Nick character tells during the play, and then Thompson's own bandages when he wakes up in the hospital after his gun “accident” and a rhinectomy and nose-replacement surgery. His face is not the same and his public image will never be the same. People will no longer recognize him for who he was, let alone who he has become. 

Exactly the fate that Carver feared so deeply when he wrote to Lish, wishing there was some way to rise above it all: As I say, I'm confused, tired, paranoid, and afraid, yes, of the consequences... So help me, please, yet again. Don't, please, make this too hard for me, for I'm just likely to start coming unraveled... God almighty, Gordon... Please do the necessary things... Please try to forgive me, this breach. Ray.

Epitaph: “A Thing Is Just a Thing, Not What People Say About That Thing.” [card, taped to the mirror in Riggin Thompson's dressing room]

(re-published here: Wednesday, June 7, 2023)



English version of En Rojo article on San Juan Film Festival 2019

Why I go to the movies with Lillian: HEAVEN AND HELL, ON EARTH
by Jan Galligan & Lillian Mulero

Driving into San Juan's Miramar neighborhood, we pass by the Fine Arts Cinema and the paid parking lot. We're early for the 2 PM showing of Styx, the first film on the list for the 30th annual edition of the San Juan International Film Festival. We drive around the corner and head up the hill, looking for street side parking. "Go slow," says Lillian, "we always find a spot along here." She's right, there's one just ahead. As I pull the Jeep over, a little car zips past, cutting us off. The Suburu driver leans out his window as he backs up. "That's my spot!" he yells. We drive on. Two, three, four blocks up the hill, we make a left turn onto a side street and see an opening, but the curb is painted yellow and it's at an  intersection. "We probably shouldn't park here, we could get towed," I tell Lillian. "Nobody gets towed," she says, as another car backs into the spot we just passed. Finally, two blocks further there's another opening. I quickly back the Jeep into place, and we walk down the hill to the movie theater.

When attending a film festival, Lillian and I make careful plans. We look through the list of films to be shown, we read the short synopses, we make our choices and write out a schedule. As a rule we don't watch film trailers or read reviews. We prefer the element of surprise when watching a new film. We save the research for after we've seen the movie and can compare our reactions and interpretations with others we find online. 

Lillian has one strict rule: we must be on time and cannot miss the opening moments. I try to abide, and I make certain that she is there when the credits roll, but sometimes I myself get waylaid heading into the screening. I stop for a last minute coffee, or check information on other events in the lobby. I often miss the first few minutes. 

That happened with Styx, a German film directed by Wolfgang Fisher who was nominated for the Audience Award in 2018 at the American Film Institute Festival. Lillian was in her seat, I was getting a coffee. I arrived five minutes into the movies. "You missed the opening again," Lillian whispers. "The protagonist, who seems to be a doctor, stopped in the middle of a city to help people injured in an automobile accident," she tells me. "All the while she was watched by a group of monkeys perched on the ledge of a nearby building, as we watched her from the monkeys' vantage point. There's something strange about those monkeys, but I don't know what it means." 

Right now, the doctor character is carefully loading a large quantity of supplies into a twenty meter sailing yacht. Clearly she's going on a long ocean voyage, apparently alone. We watch as she plots her course, starting in Gibraltar and aiming for Darwin's famous Ascension island off the coast of Africa, 2500 miles south over the open ocean. As she sets sail, we are right there with her, looking over her shoulder or staring into her eyes as she pilots the sailboat in relatively calm waters, a good wind at her back. She's more than capable, she's totally in control, confident with a commanding presence. 

What's immediately impressive about this film is the camera work. Steady and rock solid, despite the shifting environment and rocking of the sailboat. Clearly they've employed a Steadicam for this project. Invented and introduced to the cinema in the 1970s, the Steadicam apparatus, worn by the cinematographer, keeps the camera in an absolutely still position even as the cameraman moves around or up and down. Here, we see the horizon evenly dividing the screen across the middle, and as the boat shifts with the wind and waves, the horizon line does not move. This unwavering horizon provides a touchstone and portent for the rest of the story -- the future lies at or beyond that horizon.

Gustave Dore, Styx, illustration for Milton's Paradise Lost, 1886

The film remains an immersive and compelling story to the very end, which we will not spoil for you by recounting it here. Afterwards, we begin our research. What was it about those monkeys, which I missed at the beginning? It turns out they are the Barbary Macaques, well known semi-wild monkeys that dominate the streets of Gibraltar, where the story begins. The monkeys may be a harbinger for the doctor's encounter that comprises the final act of the film. Refugees from Africa, congregating in groups of 20 to 50, the macaques have adapted to their new environment, living on the edge, while often venturing right into the center of the city. Clearly they represent wild, untamed nature versus the civilization of the city.

Interviewed at the Cannes Film Festival, director Fisher says his film "represents existentialism in every way, which raises three questions: Who are we? Who do we want to be? and Who do we have to be in the world we are living in, right now?" The film title Styx references the deity of Greek mythology in that realm between earth and hell where souls of the newly dead are transported, and where the wrathful and sinful are drowned for eternity.

Further research informs us that Fisher deliberately chose, against all advice to the contrary, to film the entire story aboard the sailboat on the open sea. Filmed over a period of forty days, each day the crew and main actress Susanne Wolff sailed from their port in Malta until they were far enough out to sea that no land was visible on the horizon. By the second week of filming, Wolff who had no prior experience piloting a sailboat, had become an expert sailor.

Styx had a working budget of 3 million dollars, modest compared to a film like Almodovar's Pain and Glory with a production budget of  $20 million and earnings of $25 million. In comparison, Styx has so far earned less than $100,000 world-wide, but with festival successes and good marketing it should be positioned to earn back the investment, and more.

The second film on our list for this session was Yomeddine a first time effort by 34 year old Egyptian director Abu Bakr Shawky who got a huge boost when his film was selected for the Cannes Film Festival, after winning the Audience Award at the 2018 Wisconsin Film Festival presented at the university in Madison. Yomeddine translates from the Egyptian as Judgment Day. Coptics hold the Last Judgment to be one of the central tenets of their faith, the day when all people, alive and dead, are judged – not physically but by their attitudes and deeds and are rewarded with Heaven or cast into Hell.

Stefan Lochner, Last Judgment, 1435 

Yomeddine tells the story of a middle-aged man, cured of childhood leprosy, living a destitute life in the same leper colony where his parents abandoned him as a child. He makes his way by scavenging a trash mountain that looks like a hurricane's aftermath. Events lead him to decide to search out his family and this quest takes him hundreds of miles by donkey cart, and after the donkey dies, by railway boxcar and finally on foot. When it appears he can go no further, exhausted and slumped against the wall on a busy street corner, he is accosted by a man who charges up to him, propelled only by his arms as he has no legs, screaming at him, "That is MY spot!", demanding he leave immediately. Ultimately, this paraplegic pities the protagonist, saves his life and teaches him a lesson in humility. At one moment, when asked by another outcast how he is doing, the paraplegic responds, "Well, my legs are tired from standing on them all day." 

Yomeddine is characterized by what Lillian and I call the cinema of intimacy, which we define as films that rely on extreme close ups to tell the story. It's fundamentally a technical term, based on the development of light weight, inexpensive, high quality video cameras which have been available for the past ten years. We started thinking about this after seeing Los Tres Mundos de Mark directed by Flora Pérez Garay at the Festival here in 2016. For us the use of extreme close up facilitated by these cameras creates a relationship between the actor and audience that is too intimate, too intense. 

Intimacy can measured. Normally people interact at arm's length, 30 inches. When you move closer, to a forearm's distance of 15 inches, you begin to invade someone's personal space and that only really works if  you have an intimate relationship with the person. If you move to hand's length, 7 inches, then you are really up close and personal. A bit of geometry is useful. Movie theater screens are about 20 feet tall. If you sit in the front row of the theatre as Lillian and I like to do when we can find an open spot, the image overwhelms, and you are immersed in both image and story. When the director uses a close up, you enter the personal space of that character. Until the advent of these cameras, arm's length was as close as equipment would allow. Now cinematographers can move in to hand's length if they prefer, in which case you are inches away from the character's face, nose, or ear. That's intimate. And those kinds of viewpoints are increasingly popular in films made with these cameras. It's so close and so intimate that it becomes uncomfortable to sit in the first few rows. Imagine a 20 foot high nose. You could walk right into the nostril. 

Another aspect of the low cost equipment algorithm are facilities for digital film editing, which tend to be desktop or laptop computers along with the primary outlet for presenting the film which tends to be online. During production and in distribution the film is seen on computer screens, and often iPhone screens, which means all of that intimacy is substantially reduced to a manageable size. On an iPhone, you can't get too intimate. Our feeling is that these days, low budget directors do not factor in the big screen when thinking about their film's final format.

In the case of Yomeddine a majority of the scenes are filmed in extreme close up. After the first ten minutes, we had to change seats and move further away, it was just too uncomfortable being that intimate with this character and his situation. As well, it was difficult to read the subtitles spread across the screen. In general we've given up our favorite spot at the front of the theatre in favor of seats half way back from the screen. That tends to resolve the intimacy issue for us. 

As well as using low cost, high quality equipment, Shawky made Yomeddine on a very small budget, characterized by a Kickstarter campaign which raised $20,000 to complete the film. That suggests a budget of under $100,000 for the entire project. To date the film has reportedly earned about $12,000. However it's early and momentum is just starting to build. At the moment there are no authorized online outlets for his movie, but if Shawky is able to make a deal with Amazon, as has been done by Wolfgang Fisher for Styx, then Yomeddine could be a financial, as well as artistic success. 

Which brings us to our conclusion: for us filmmakers are like artists. In general they are driven not by the need to make money but instead the goal is to tell a good story, while challenging the status quo and highlighting the human condition. The result is art, whether in an art gallery or on the silver screen.




Long Night's Journey into Day

Late yesterday afternoon (Tues) we set out from Santa Olaya for a day of film viewing. First on our list was a 5:45pm showing of Quentin Tarantino's latest, Once Upon a Time in ... Hollywood. Screening now at the old-school movie house CINE METRO in Santurce the film is presented on their 40 x 100 foot screen in an old-fashioned large auditorium with cushioned reclining seats.

This scene from early in Once Upon a Time in ... Hollywood shows actor Rick (Leonardo DiCaprio), Rick's stunt double Cliff (Brad Pitt) and film producer Marvin (Al Pacino) taking a meeting at the old Hollywood restaurant Musso & Frank. (photo: Andrew Cooper/Columbia Pictures)

Our one word review of Tarentino's Once Upon a Time in ... Hollywood (which clocks in at 2 hours and 40 minutes) : FLAWLESS.

The second film our our self-styled double bill was showing further down avenue Ponce de Leon at the Fine Arts Miramar cinema as part of the Festival de Cine Internacional de San Juan. Scheduled at 9:15pm, Long Day's Journey into Night by Chinese director Gan Bi, is not based on the Eugene ONeill's play, but as the Chinese title (Di qui zui hou de ye wan / translation: Last Evenings on Earth) suggests, it is based on the novel of the same name by Roberto Bolaño. 

We were attracted to this film by one line in the written preview blurb: "notable for the final 59 minutes of its 2 hour and 17 minutes running time, which consists of one unbroken long take shot in 3D". Unfortunately we were not provided with 3D glasses for this viewing, although they would not have helped us as we both lack natural 3D vision. 

In a word, critics have called this film: MESMERIZING.

 

Our take on this Long Day's Journey into Night : endlessly beautiful.

Total viewing time for the day (not including snack break): 4 hours 57 minutes. By the time we got back to Santa Olaya it was 1:23 am on Wednesday.


Lillian Mulero & Jan Galligan
Santa Olaya, PR

photo by: German Roque


FLASHBACK: Madrid 1998

La Cronica Aburrida (excerpt) Capitulo Dos:  Zap-a-teria y Rejuvenitunitidades

 2:34 am / November 8, 1997 / Madrid 

Exhausted for the moment from wandering through room after room of heroic and majestic paintings by Goya, Valesquez, Ribera, Piero della Francesca, Bosch (Bosco), El Greco, and innumerable other Dutch, Flemish, German, Italian and Spanish artists, Lillian and I are sitting in the cafeteria of El Museo de Prado, which is located three floors below the main gallery of the museum, in what appears to be formerly the catacombs. Dos cafes negro con azucar and a couple of small sandwiches of ham and soft cheese help us recuperate and give us energy for the next activities on today's list. The dead-center of Madrid is Puerta del Sol, and is exactly marked by an equestrian monument. The monument is surrounded by a circular plaza, which is surmounted by a traffic circle with 10 streets radiating from the center like spokes on a wheel. The traffic circle is bounded by wall of grand old buildings, topped with huge billboards and what look to be gigantic electric signs, which must light up the place like Times Square in the night-time. 

Looking around the circle we see lots of cafes, shoe stores, tiny specialty stores, a couple of elegant department stores, record shops, and many jewelry stores. We do a lot of window-shopping and then decide that we should see a movie. We head out from the center of the circle on one of the small winding spokes, walking towards the area of the cinemas, eight blocks away. Our route is indirect, but our meandering shortly brings us to our destination, and now we have to choose between a dozen theatres and twenty films. Some of the films are V.O. (version originales, i.e. english with spanish sub-titles) but most are either spanish language films or american films dubbed in spanish. 

Our choices include: Mirage, Basquiat, Oscar Wilde, The full monty (V.O.), Spawn (V.O.), Dos chicas de hoy, Las Ratas, Jerusalen, Afterglow (V.O.) with Julie Christie, L.A. Confidential, In&Out, el celuloide oculto (the celluloid closet), Yo despare Andy Warhol (I shot Andy Warhol), Todos dicen I love you (Everyone says I love you, V.O., Woody Allen) and El Impostor (Liar, with Tim Roth).

 After some moments of indecision, we pick Perdita Durango, which Lillian had read about in La Cultura, the monthly arts newpaper of Madrid. It's playing at MultiCines Ideal which is a gigantic recently refurbished old movie palace with 800 seats and a 50 x 100 foot screen. We are literally ushered to our seats by a red-jacketed attendant. Each ticket is marked with a specific seat number. We're among the first to be seated and our seats are in the dead-center of the house. We ask if we can sit closer to the screen and are told that later, if the house does not fill up, we can be moved. We decide to sit back and be comfortable, and soon are surrounded by loud-talking and excited madrileanos in their teens and twenties. 

Perdita Durango stars Rosie Perez and appears to be a multi-lingual multi-national production, directed by Alex de la Iglesia and produced by Pedro Almodovar. It also stars Screaming Jay Hawkins, whom I had forgotten about completely, having not heard his music or about him for over twenty years. Outside, the film was marked V.O., but as it begins, its obviously dubbed totally into spanish. It's going to be interesting for me to try to figure out exactly what's happening. Perdita Durango is played by Rosie Perez and in a series of intense jump-cut-flash-backs we discover that her brother-in-law has killed her sister in a fit of murderous rage in their trailer, somewhere in Mexico. Perdita (the little lost girl) is hanging out on the border of Mexico and Texas, carrying the ashes of her sister in a large aluminum can, and looking for a place to bury them. She is accosted in a bar by a fat gringo, and after some rapid fire dialog which Lillian transliterates for me, Perdita chases the guy away after offering to do him numerous sexual favors, which he likes the idea of, if he'll help her rob some locals and split the money, which he doesn't like the idea of, at all. 

Perdita Durango film poster (Brazil)

We see Perdita ridding herself of the ashes, and next, she is seduced by Romeo Dolorosa (Javier Bardem, who Lillian and I are both are certain we've seen before, but neither of us can be sure where). Soon, Perdita is riding shot-gun in Romeo's souped up Ford Bronco, while Romeo and one of his compadres rob a bank at gun-point. No one is murdered, but they make off with a bag of thousands of dollars, crossing the border near Nogales, hiding the loot under an indian blanket, topped with a necklace of amulats belonging to Romeo's mother, who, in another series of flash-back-jump-cuts, we learn, is a voodoo priestess. For kicks, Perdita wants to kidnap someone and, she taunts Romeo, kill and eat them. I don't get this part, but Lillian briefs me on what's transpiring. Romeo jumps out and grabs a street wino, but Perdita rejects him, and instead, herself grabs a teenage couple who are just coming out of a movie-palace, both of them pale-white and blonde-headed. They scream, she points a gun at them, and shoves them into the Bronco, which speeds off towards Tuscon, Arizona.

Perdita Durango, the novel (source for the film)


 Romeo, having pistol-whipped his robbery compadre and taken all the cash for himself, heads them next to his dead father's ranch, where he, as the leader of a Santeria group, performs ritual sacrifices and ceremonies for big piles of money from the locals, while spinning, screaming, and stirring a huge pot of steaming blood soup, accompanied by Screaming Jay Hawkins, in the background, who also appears to be a voodoo priest. 

The teens are prepared for sacrifice, by being covered in white makeup and white chicken feathers pasted all over their naked bodies. In the interregnum, Perdita seduces the boy and Romeo forcibly attempts to rape the girl, while Screaming Jay Hawkins stirs the pot. In the middle of the sacrificial ceremony, just as the girl is about to be tossed into the soup, the ex-comrade of Romeo, bursts onto the scene, shooting the place up, setting fire to the house and barn and immediately chasing everyone out into the night. Perdita grabs the girl, Romeo the boy, while Screaming Jay Hawkins holds of the attackers with a shotgun, but suffers a fatal shot to the head, collapsing to the ground as Perdita, Romeo and the white teens scream down the road in the Bronco, headed for Nogales, again.

 In Nogales, Romeo takes a meeting with the chief mexican mafioso and arranges to take delivery for him, of a semi-trailer-load of bottled fetuses which are to be sold to an american cosmetics manufacturer with facial- cream plants in Mexico. Perdita holds the teenagers hostage while dreaming again and again of the death of her sister. At one point in her dreams, we become her, and her late-brother-in-law again storms out of the trailer, having shot her sister and screams at her (us) that it is all her (our) fault, we (she) caused him to do this to her; and then he shoots himself in the mouth, collapsing to the ground and waking Perdita (us) up.

 For some reason having to do with close proximity, travelling together, stress and other more nebulous factors, the teens are becoming tolerant and affectionate towards the dark ones. They'd still like to escape their hand-cuffed predicament, but they begin to act nice toward their captors.

 One evening while they're all sitting around together, Romeo has a calmer flash-back, filled with fade-ins and fade-outs and chiaroscuro lighting. In this one, he sees himself as a small boy sitting on the ground behind a bedsheet-movie-screen that is showing the assembled townsfolk, Gary Cooper and Bert Lancaster, in Vera Cruz. Lancaster is a swarthy mexican bandito, and Cooper is a tall, white, loping law-and-order-man. The film ends with a showdown in the middle of the street where Cooper shoots and kills Lancaster, who dies with a smile on his face that is matched by the one on Romeo, the child, dreaming his way into the movie scene.

The watching the film Vera Cruz scene, from Perdita Durango

In the background of our film has been a short, fat, white, cigar- smoking law-and-order-man who has been shadowing Romeo and is about to arrest him for burglary, border-hopping, false-religion and other bad activities, but, for the moment he waits, wanting to catch Romeo in the act of delivering the truck-load of face-cream ingredients. Romeo is scheduled to do this in Las Vegas, turning the truck over to his cousin, who works directly for the mafioso, El Jefe, who at the moment, is hosting a birthday party at his sprawling desert rancho, for his niece and her friends. El Jefe wears a red-clown's-nose and he and all the adults at the party, as well as all the kids, are carrying or playing with plastic guns, knives and machettes, while listening to Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass on the stereo and watching re-runs of Mary Tyler Moore on the television.

 Prior to the rendezvous, Romeo has a few more rapid fire flashbacks of his days as a professional wrestler, wearing a white-head-mask, like El Diablo; whom I remember from my tv-infested youth. He also relives a few of his santeria happenings, and so, we have a fuller picture of Romeo, the man, and maybe can identify with some of his misdirected rage. 

Romeo's cousin, meanwhile, has been ordered by El Jefe to kill Romeo during the transfer of fetal-material and money. He is reluctant to do so, but a gun to his head is very convincing. Romeo and Perdita have been playing a lot of games with the Tarot cards and time after time, Romeo draws The Skull and or El Diablo. Death and damnation are stalking him now.

 We race to a conclusion. Semi-truck and Bronco head for the warehouse on the outskirts of Las Vegas to make the transfer. The law-man calls in his force using his pocket-mobile phone. Perdita stops the Bronco and sets the teenagers free. They run off into the night, trailing white feathers behind them. Romeo drives the semi into the warehouse. Perdita takes the Bronco around to the back entrance. Law-Man fills the parking lot with cop cars and troops in riot-gear. Romeo and his cousin have a mexican stand-off over the money. Romeo takes the money and walks away. His cousin aims his Israeli-mauser at the back of Romeo's head. Romeo walks without turning around or saying a word. Perdita burst through the back door, shotgun in hand. The cousin shoots Romeo, who collapses to the floor. Perdita shoots the cousin. Law-men blow open the warehouse door with an explosive charge. Law-Man saunters over to the supine body of Romeo, who looks up at him with a Bert Lancaster smile, and the frame literally does a slow dissolve into and then out of the final scene of Vera Cruz.

 Perdita has managed to sneak back out the back door in the mele and she walks away, unscathed and into the middle of Las Vegas' main drag. The camera does a long-low-down-to-the-ground-tracking-shot of her as she walks the street, the day-glo signs of Las Vegas filling the sky, flashing multi-colored dream images of wealth and fortune, behind her head, tears running down her cheeks as Screaming Jay Hawkins screams on the sound track, his rendition of "Down so long it looks like up to me". The credits roll and the crowd rises to its feet, en-mass, before we have a chance to see who worked on the film and when and where it was put together.

 We follow the crowd back onto the boulevard, and for the moment, Madrid looks and feels everything like Las Vegas, Las Cruses, Nogales, San Diego, San Bernadino, and every other flashing, hot, glimmering city with a spanish sur-name and Madrid for a mother.

 As we turn off the main boulevard and back onto one of the winding narrow streets of old Madrid, we see a sign above a cervesateria/ carneceria advertising 'treatmento medico con electrico-technilogico para pelo de cara y los pies'. We look at each other, and decide, what-the-hell. Since turning fifty, I've been bothered by random hairs growing out of my ears, and no amount of picking and plucking seems to keep them from coming back, and I do think they make me look older. Lillian has occassionaly been subject to a few hairs growing on her chin, so we decide to be bold, and pay a visit to 'el doctor' and see if they can rid us of these annoyances. We might return home, changed persons. We climb the stairs, and the doctor's assistant welcomes us into the office. Lillian handles the negotiations, while I make sure were have our tarjeta credito (i.e. Visa) with us. The price, per person, is 10.000 pesetas. A bargain I figure ($10.00 seems like a reasonable price to me). They will use a new laser-treatment, which takes only 10 minutes and according to Lillian's translation, 'lasts a lifetime'. 

O.K., let's do it. 

 Moments later, chin stinging and ears ringing, we are back on the street. We need only find the Metro stop, catch the first train to the Atocha station, where we can pick up the electric-train which will take us away from the city, back to Estacion Aravacas, where we have a short walk down the hill back into Urbanizacion Rosa Luxemburgo.

 

 

Copyright 1998

Jan Galligan & Lillian Mulero
All Rights Reserved

Betty Kaplan: Everything depends on your point of view

by Jan Galligan & Lillian Mulero
Santa Olaya, PR


Lillian and I watch movies from the perspective of artists. She's a multi-faceted constructivist and I'm a conceptual photographer. We agree that a good story, well told, is fundamental to a successful film. For Lillian, the story must be constructed the way you would build a well-crafted sculpture. For me, the pictures are critical. If the film's structure has not received the necessary attention, the movie becomes disjointed: the story difficult to discern, the plot hard to follow.

Betty Kaplan was born in New York City and raised in Caracas, Venezuela. She made her directorial debut in 1981 with an independent short film, Neurosis on Wheels, about traffic problems in the capital city. That film was quickly followed by an epic, made for Venezuelan television mini-series about the life of Simon Bolivar. In 1994 she co-wrote and directed Of Love and Shadows, based on Isabel Allende's novel, starring Jennifer Connelly and Antonio Banderas in his first English language role. In 1997 she wrote and directed Doña Bárbara, based on the Venezuelan novel by Rómulo Gallegos, and in 2004 won the Peasbody Award for Almost a Woman, the film version of Esmeralda Santiago's autobiography of life in Puerto Rico and New York City.

Recently Kaplan directed the Emmy award-winning One Hot Summer, a story set in the Cuban community of Miami, but filmed entirely in Puerto Rico. Three years ago Kaplan moved to San Juan from Hollywood with her partner, film producer Peter Rawley. Finding “an art, music and literary community bursting with creativity,” they quickly acquired the rights to Eduardo Lalo's novel Simone, which had been awarded the Rómulo Gallegos prize for international literature.

This year Kaplan was selected as juror for the Competencia Caribena of the 2016 San Juan International Film Festival. Twelve films, one each from Columbia, Nicaragua, Panama, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Venezuela, Mexico, and four from Puerto Rico competed for this annual award. The other members of the jury were the film critics Manuel Martinez Maldonado and Pedro Zervigón. Together, they had seven days in which to see the films in competition, while trying to view some of the other 33 films presented in the Muestra del Cine Mundial, a daunting task for even the most ardent cinephile. “One of the high points of film festivals,” explains Kaplan, “is there are always films you cannot see. It's exciting, if sometimes frustrating, but that makes you choose films and plan your days carefully, while still leaving room for a surprise or two.” This festival was no exception, presenting 48 films from 27 countries in six days, making it impossible to see them all. “The overall quality was consistently high,” Kaplan says, “and I found a couple of movies that captivated me with their bold originality and storytelling.”

Betty Kaplan and Manolo Cruz, winner of the Dr. Ricardo E. Alegría Prize in the Competencia Caribeña of the 2016 San Juan International Film Festival

Kaplan has considerable experience judging films, having served on juries for festivals in Los Angeles, Huelva, Malaga, Cancun, and recently here in San Juan for the European film festival of the Alianza Francesa. She says that festivals can serve as “launchpads” for new films and are excellent situations in which directors can test audience reaction. She says that festival juries have a deep respect for filmmakers, especially for having survived the ordeals and obstacles in getting a film completed. The standard method for judging films in competition is to create a tally-sheet and award each film points on a series of standards: direction, script, acting, cinematography, story-telling and originality. Kaplan asks these questions when watching and rating films: Is the story well told? Does the story grab and hold your attention? Do you have empathy with the characters and their story?

For Kaplan, “Point of view is everything. The point of view of the director, the point of view of the cinematographer, and the point of view of the script. We want to know who tells the story and who is the center of attention. Each film has a point of view and if not presented clearly, the film suffers from a serious flaw. The viewpoint can be explicit or implicit. But, if the public is uneasy, giving close attention to what is happening and they cannot empathize with a character, then the story and the film is not working. A common mistake is to try to describe the story from multiple viewpoints. We might start following the actions of one character and suddenly we are asked to follow another character. When the point of view changes suddenly, the public is unsettled. Not that I'm against disorder. But, it should be deliberate, carefully crafted and incorporated into the structure, while functioning as an essential element of the story.”

Asked what advice she would offer someone starting out in filmmaking, Kaplan says the first thing to do is to “practice the pitch. Develop the ability to tell your story to as many people as will listen, even before you begin writing the script. You should have a very clear idea of the story before you commit to paper or film. The script is everything. You cannot fix problems in the script during production or post-production. Future directors should study acting in order to know the process from the inside-out. Acting on the stage is a good exercise that all directors should try.”

Her final suggestion to new directors regards the completion of the movie. “Before considering your film finished, use your rough-cut and do a test screening. Show the film to an audience and observe their reactions. Do not be afraid of negative criticism. Learn from your mistakes and learn to heed the audience. They have a point of view that is different from yours and it's important to listen and learn whether you have reached the audience, or not.”

Kaplan and Rawley look forward to beginning production on their adaptation of Simone, set in Santurce and Rio Piedras, the heart of the city's vibrant art community – literary, musical, and intensely visual. The sights and sounds of the city will form the backdrop for their story of one writer's search as he walks the streets of San Juan, looking for a mysterious artist who secretly stalks him with pictures and anonymous messages. With some luck maybe we will witness the premiere of their movie at the next San Juan International Film Festival.

Note: The winning film for the 2016 Competencia Caribena, was La Cienaga: Between  sea and land. Filmed in Columbia, it is Manolo Cruz's first effort at full-length filmmaking. Cruz plays the lead role of Alberto, a 28-year old afflicted with debilitating muscular dystrophy which keeps him locked to his bed when all he wants is to swim in the sea. Besides winning the 2016 Dr. Ricardo E. Alegría Award, the film won awards for acting and directing this year at the Sundance Film Festival.



Epigraph: (What We Talk About When We Talk About Art)

WHY I GO TO THE MOVIES, WITH LILLIAN
by Jan Galligan & Lillian Mulero, Santa Olaya, PR
published Feb 26, 2015 : cinecero.blogspot.com


Birdman, directed by Alejandro G. Inarritu, winner of four Academy Awards including Best Picture of 2014.



 Lillian and I talk about art most of the time. I don't mean that this is the only subject of conversation, just that art inhabits our life; we look at everything from the point of view of the artist. This is probably true for doctors, lawyers, maybe accountants, certainly true for scientists, musicians, filmmakers, writers, poets, and theater people – the world is a stage, after all.


EMMA STONE


Alejandro G. Inarritu's latest film, Birdman or (the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), takes this literally, although the world here is confined to mid-town Manhattan and all the air above it. For the most part, it is further confined to the backstage and basement dressing rooms of the St. James Theater located on 44th at Broadway, in the Theater District near Times Square. Some of the action is restricted to the theater's stage, while the rest takes place inside the main character's head. Riggin Thompson, former Hollywood star of the blockbuster action-film seriesBirdman, has written a play based on What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (original title: Beginners), Raymond Carver's iconoclastic, breakout, short story. Carver had the reputation for writing very terse, short short stories. His writing has been labeled minimalist, and “dirty-realist,” although he rejected both characterizations. Recent literary scholarship has revealed that the version of his story published in an award-winning collection of the same name, had been pared down by Carver's editor, Gordon Lish, so that it represented less than half of the original manuscript. The original story, Beginners, has recently been published in its entirety, through the efforts of Carver's widow.

All seventeen of the stories in that collection were heavily edited by Lish, and most were retitled. On the eve of publication, Carver had a change of heart, a crisis of confidence, and wrote a seven page impassioned letter to Lish begging him to delay publication, or not publish at all, despite having signed a contract with Knopf based on Lish's version of Carver's stories. Carter wrote: Dearest Gordon, I've got to pull out of this one. Please hear me... I look at “What We Talk About...” (Beginners) and I see what you've done, what you've pulled out of it, and I'm awed and astonished, startled even, with your insights. Please help me with this, Gordon. I feel as if this is the most important decision I've ever been faced with, no shit... Please, Gordon, for God's sake help me in this and try to understand. Listen. I'll say it again, if I have any standing for reputation or credibility in the world, I owe it to you. I owe you this more-or-less pretty interesting life I have. But if I go ahead with this as it is, it will not be good for me...

Two days later Carver relented, the stories were published as Lish had edited them, the book garnered rave reviews, cemented Carver's reputation as a minimalist, and sold thousands of copies. Two years, and one more collection of stories later, also edited by Lish, but this time lightly, relations between Carver and Lish were strained to the breaking point. Lish wrote to Carter: … we've agreed that I will try to keep my editing of the stories as slight as I deem possible, that you do not want me to do the extensive work I did on the first two collections. So be it Ray. Two months later Carver wrote to Lish: What's the matter, don't you love me anymore? I never hear from you. Have you forgotten me already?

Writing about Birdman, critics have made much of the fact that Michael Keaton, former star of the blockbuster Batman series, plays Riggin Thompson, former star of the blockbuster Birdman series, who plays Nick, narrator of Carver's story What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, who is the main character in Thompson's play of the same name. They also point to the fact that Edward Norton played Bruce Banner in the Incredible Hulk, after playing the lead as the Narrator in David Fincher's breakout film Fight Club. In Birdman, Norton plays famous Broadway method actor, Mike Shiner.

On the eve of opening night, during the final preview performances, Thompson hires Shiner to replace an actor Thompson deposes, because he was not up to the part. Shiner is more than adequate. He has inhabited the play even before arriving for his tryout, primarily because he had been rehearsing the play for months with Lesley, his live-in girl-friend. He lives with her, or as she says in a puzzling aside, “we share a vagina.” Funny, because he is also purported to be impotent, at least off stage. On stage he is a demonic actor, impetuous, impervious, inspired and sexually charged. In his first run through with Thompson, Shiner knows all of his character, Mel, a 45-year old cardiologist's lines and Thompson's Nick character's, as well. Within minutes, Shiner has -- through a series of readings, coaching Thompson on how to deliver his lines, making continual suggestions that Thompson pare down his dialog, cutting it to the bone -- rewritten the action so that Thompson's Nick has Shiner's Mel completely mesmerized. It's at this moment it becomes clear that the filmBirdman, is not about a theatrical, and by extension cinematic, adaptation of Carver's story What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, but is instead about the tortured relationship between author Raymond Carver and his editor Gordon Lish.



This explains the subsequent conflicts between Thompson, and Shiner who is constantly working to remake the play, find its essence, hone its presentation, and control the public's perception, and ultimate reception of the play. Shiner dramatically cuts short his first preview performance by stepping out of character, breaking down the wall, and talking directly to the audience, to tell them what shit the play is at that point. This nearly leads to fisticuffs between Shiner and Thompson. Next, Shiner manages to get a cover story in the Arts section of the New York Times, an interview with him and a preview of his participation in Thompson's production. He practically takes ownership of the play, and does take ownership of Thompson's origin story of having been inspired by Raymond Carver to become an actor. Thompson is so incensed, that he does end up in a fist-fight with Shiner, nearly giving him a shiner, and finally, they are wrestling on the ground, in a metaphoric sexual embrace. Thompson is embarrassed. Shiner remains impervious, as Thompson beats him over the head with the wadded up newspaper article.

By this point, Thompson has lost face and most of his self respect. The only solution seems to be a dramatic gesture. On opening night, in the emotionally wrought closing scene, Thompson enacts the suicide shot to the head using a real gun, but he misses and shoots off his nose. The curtain falls.

The play is a critical success. Despite his Hollywood action-hero baggage, Thompson is hailed as a new voice in American theater, bringing fresh blood to the stage and, displaying the unexpected virtue of ignorance, inventing a new super-realistic form of dramatic presentation. He has literally “cut off his nose to spite his face,” and with that, he flies out the window.  

Looking at Inarritu and his co-writers' script suggests that despite a great deal of the dialog, especially in scenes of the play, coming directly from Carver's short story, the central conflict, and some of the off-stage dialog comes from Carver's tortured letter to Lish, trying to delay or halt the publication of his book of short stories. There seem to be three central themes to Inarritu's Birdman.

One: getting caught with your pants down, everyone's worst nightmare -- running around in public in just your underwear. For Thompson this is a major humiliation. For Shiner, it's just another day at the office. 



Two: floating – above the ground, or high in the sky. Everyone's favorite dream, and the essence of self esteem and well being. Here that domain belongs to Thompson alone, and it may be all in his head. This was true for Carver as well. In a letter to Lish, at one of his high points, six months before publication of his story collection, Carver writes: I'm happy, and I'm sober. It's aces right now, Gordon. I know better than anyone a fellow is never out of the woods, but right now it's aces, and I'm enjoying it.

Actor Michael Keaton as Riggin Thompson, cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, 
director Alejandro G. Inarritu, and co-writer Nicolás Giacobone, with Birdman 3 poster.

Three: mentioned before, Thompson's act of self-mutilation, self-retaliation. From the start of the film this is hinted at, foretold, in the masks which cover the Birdmanmovie character's face, the mask of The Phantom of the Opera, still playing across the street from the St. James Theater, at the Majestic Theater on Broadway, and the hospital bandages of an old man in a story Thompson's cardiologist Nick character tells during the play, and then Thompson's own bandages when he wakes up in the hospital after his gun “accident” and a rhinectomy and nose-replacement surgery. His face is not the same and his public image will never be the same. People will no longer recognize him for who he was, let alone who he has become. Exactly the fate that Carver feared so deeply when he wrote to Lish, wishing there was some way to rise above it all: As I say, I'm confused, tired, paranoid, and afraid, yes, of the consequences... So help me, please, yet again. Don't, please, make this too hard for me, for I'm just likely to start coming unraveled... God almighty, Gordon... Please do the necessary things... Please try to forgive me, this breach. Ray.



Epitaph: “A Thing Is Just a Thing, Not What People Say About That Thing.” Card, taped to the mirror in Riggin Thompson's dressing room.

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 Yesterday, at a screening during the 2015 edition of the San Juan International Film Festival, a new reader of this film blog suggested that it would be more engaging, lively, and interactive with feedback from other readers. 

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