September 2024 Patreon round-up: EXCLUSIVE - Films in Focus podcast #5: Safe + Advanced Script for Journey Through Twin Peaks narration

In July, my $5/month tier patrons chose a podcast subject which echoed the previous episode in May: two Jonathan Glazer films back-to-back. Now the bimonthly poll has chosen to bookend that directorial double feature with another auteurist pair. Following March's selection of Todd Haynes' latest film May December, the September episode rolls back three decades for Haynes' second film Safe (also starring Julianne Moore as a fragile housewife, albeit a more sympathetic character in this case). The portrait of Southern Californian woman collapsing under the weight of environmental illness, struggling to forge her own identity only to be sucked into a manipulative self-help cult, the movie was marketed inaccurately as some kind of sci-fi thriller, has been characterized unusually but not inaccurately as a horror movie, and resonates even more strongly in an age grappling with the aftermath of Covid-19 and the uneasy anticipation of a chemically induced apocalypse. From its first half delivered in Kubrickian wide shots of modernist interiors to its second half absorbed in loneliness- and desperation-inducing western exteriors, Safe provides a fascinating challenge to viewers. How much of this ailment is in Carol White's surroundings, and how much is in her own head? Along with this question, I explore the nineties film's relationship to the eighties it depicts, the influence of Douglas Sirk's fifties melodramas, the correspondences and differences with Jeanne Dielman, and several connections to Lynch works (although, surprisingly in retrospect, I don't mention Lost Highway which was shot the year Safe came out and also depicts a character's disintegration in two very distinct halves, one involving a modernist L.A. home while the other features a breakdown in the desert).

Meanwhile I shared with all patrons the script for my narration of an upcoming Journey Through Twin Peaks chapter. Tomorrow I'll discuss my shifting approach to this project (something I hinted at back in July, in this Patreon update I forgot to include in that month's cross-post, though I've gone back to add it now). For now, from the $1/month tier up, you can read a draft covering the post-Return period in all of its melancholically hopeful and disappointed flavor.

What are the September rewards?

What happened in Room 315? • group discussion on the opening of Twin Peaks season 2 premiere w/ the "Twin Peaks Grammar" Artists Love Twin Peaks podcast (+ guests John Bernardy, Andrew Cook, Alison Ivy, Tommy Jones, Patrick Mahan & afterwards Brian Liddicoat)

The slow waiter, the giant (or fireman?), the missing ring, the owls who aren't what they seem...the first scene of Twin Peaks' second season in 1990 is full of mysteries and in this group discussion led by Anthony of the "Twin Peaks Grammar" YouTube channel, we dig into many of them. My time was limited, but I was able to join for an hour of the sprawling two and a half hour episode. The previous conversation, on the end of Part 18, followed a rigorous structure; this one by contrast is more freewheeling, dipping into the media personae of the actors onscreen, the question of whether this scene is a dream (and if so, whose?), and what relationship this slice of mythology bears to others in the larger Twin Peaks saga. This was my first time speaking with Dreamer's Diary podcast host Tommy, while Alison and Talking Backwards podcast host Patrick had participated in previous group chats (another guest, Brian, joined after I left). In addition to these collective discussions, I spoke to John about his podcast Blue Rose Task Force several years ago, and I've had many exchanges with Andrew. Together we wander and wonder in this Lynchian/Frostian terrain; to paraphrase the guiding spirit of this scene: where have we gone?

In addition to that video, Anthony is also posting this episode in audio form on the Artists Love Twin Peaks feed.

August 2024 Patreon round-up: EXCLUSIVE - Conversation on Killers of the Flower Moon w/ Tyler MacDonald

Having already covered four of the big films of 2023 on Patreon, I'm finally catching up with the fifth and final title in that line-up. Barbie and Oppenheimer as well as The Boy and the Heron and Godzilla Minus One were discussed in pairs, but Killers of the Flower Moon receives undivided attention in August's reward for the $5/month tier (all patron tiers were also presented with an advance work-in-progress this month). In this quasi-western from Martin Scorsese, returning World War I veteran Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) marries Mollie Kyle (Lily Gladstone) while taking direction from William Hale (Robert DeNiro), an apparently benevolent but in fact deeply sinister Oklahoma rancher with murderous designs on the oil-driven fortunes of the local Osage tribe - including Ernest's own wife. As with the Japanese subjects discussed a couple months ago, I've conducted (and transcribed) a conversation, in this case with my cousin Tyler MacDonald (a first-time guest, though his brother Riley joined me to cover The Lighthouse last year). Together, we dig into the rich story, style, and history of Killers, including its origin as a nonfiction book (adapted for the screen to focus more on the romantic relationship of a murderer and his would-be victim), its place in Scorsese's gangland- and religion-focused filmography, parallels between the film's portrait of a vicious backwater social ecosystem and the political realities of the present, questions about the intricate and often elliptical conspiracy at the center of the plot, and the film's relationship to American mythologies (especially those that Scorsese grew up with, as someone born just a decade and a half after the film's events but making this movie nearly a century later). Having explored Scorsese's work extensively in the past (all Scorsese-labeled posts including this one are gathered here) further links are included on Patreon), I looked forward to catching up with the octogenarian auteur's latest output, and Killers of the Flower Moon did not disappoint.

What are the exclusive August rewards?