belated September 2022 Patreon round-up • LOST IN THE MOVIES patron podcast #95: The 90s in September (& beyond) + 70s bonus & Concluding the 80s ... Pulp Fiction, Klute, Red Dawn, Do the Right Thing & Hail Mary (capsules on Stranger Things, Top Gun: Maverick, The Goonies, Gremlins, Midnight Run, Scarface, Thelma & Louise, Scream, Gremlins II, Romeo + Juliet, Set It Off, The Firm, Exotica, Network, Superman, Magnolia, Saturday Night Fever, Thelma & Louise, Reality Bites, Boogie Nights, Nashville, The Pelican Brief, The Client, The Ice Storm, Dangerous Minds, archive readings of The Conversation & Enemy of the State + feedback/media/work updates including Encanto & more) + 3 TWIN PEAKS Character Series advances & Twin Peaks Conversations podcast

The Patreon episode intended for a couple months ago was released in two parts:

Listen to Episode 95, part 1: Concluding the 80s... Red Dawn, Do the Right Thing & Hail Mary (capsules on Stranger Things, Top Gun: Maverick, The Goonies, Gremlins, Midnight Run, Scarface + feedback/media/work updates including Encanto & more)

Listen to Episode 95, part 2: The 90s in September (& beyond) + 70s bonus... Pulp Fiction & Klute (capsules on Exotica, Network, Superman, Magnolia, Saturday Night Fever, Thelma & Louise, Reality Bites, Boogie Nights, Nashville, Scream, Gremlins II, Romeo + Juliet, Set It Off, The Firm, The Pelican Brief, The Client, The Ice Storm, Dangerous Minds, archive readings of The Conversation & Enemy of the State)

To represent the postmodern Gen X nineties, I easily chose Pulp Fiction - a film I'd surprisingly never really discussed on this site. Klute, on the other hand, was more a case of happenstance; I'd received the Criterion blu-ray as a gift a while ago but hadn't watched the film in a decade or more and remembered little about it. The film provides a fascinating snapshot of New York City right as the sixties/post-sixties cultural changes were taking hold alongside a phenomenal performance by Jane Fonda as a troubled, fairly independent, and deeply introspective call girl stalked by a mysterious figure. The other films I covered for the September podcast ended up being surprises - for me. I initially watched Red Dawn as something I'd mention briefly in capsule form but I ended up discussing it for much longer than that because there was so much to dig into with this Cold War relic (pairing its absurd premise with a tight, even thoughtful approach to the war film genre). Do the Right Thing and Hail Mary I did initially intend to be films in focus; after watching, I wondered if I'd have enough to say to justify that treatment but ended up elevating them from capsule status while pursuing various threads. My coverage of Hail Mary also serves as a tribute to the recently deceased Jean-Luc Godard - as will another film in focus in the November podcast.

In August, I began an approach that will take me through the end of the year: focusing on a different decade beginning with the eighties and moving in different directions. Each subsequent episode, including this one, would pair at least one full review and a bunch of capsules on films from a post-eighties decade with a review and handful of capsules on films from a pre-eighties decade (plus some more reviews/capsules finishing off the previous episode's decade). So for one of my more sprawling Patreon podcasts, I'm offering capsules on a couple dozen films from the seventies, eighties, nineties - plus the most films in focus I've ever provided in one episode. This one episode, however, is a two-parter separated by several weeks in which I waited to access some of the titles I wanted to discuss. As a result, this patron reward (intended for September) did not conclude until very late in October and I didn't get to sharing it on this site until now. (I was able to immediately catch up with a Halloween special podcast - you can listen to that one on Patreon; it will be cross-posted here soon.)

My advance character studies went up on time in September (I've already released October's round-up, which will be more officially cross-posted alongside the other reward intended for that month). For September, the trio of characters - ranked as always by screentime - included two familiar faces with new material in The Return and one entirely new entry on someone introduced in 2017. Patrons can now unlock each of these pieces...

EXCLUSIVE advance: TWIN PEAKS Character Series #74, 73 & 71 (#72 already published)

(become a patron to discover their identities)

Finally, though I already cross-posted this conversation on its own, September saw John Thorne return to the Twin Peaks Conversations podcast; the longer part of our discussion - on his new book Ominous Whoosh and his further thoughts about Twin Peaks and especially the third season - is reserved for the $5/month tier.

PATREON EXCLUSIVE: Part 2 of Twin Peaks Conversations w/ John Thorne

Podcast Line-Ups for...

The Favorites - All the President's Men (#93)

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. All the President's Men (1976/USA/dir. Alan Pakula) appeared at #93 on my original list.

What it is • Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) and Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) - "Woodstein" as they're affectionately/condescendingly called by their Washington Post superiors - are onto something, and they know it even if no one else does. Then again, maybe they don't; they're hungry pros, keen for the kill, and it almost doesn't matter if the story they're chasing is a chimera or a genuine pot of gold. As it happens, it's the story of the century - a bungled break-in at Democratic headquarters in the foregone-conclusion '72 election which just happens to be a smoking gun with the President of the United States' finger on the trigger. Yet the true pleasures of their pursuit are to be found in the small details: the long wait in the secretary's office broken through by Bernstein's clever phone-in; the endless door-to-door rejections by intimidated witnesses, overcome when the duo finally asserts itself instead of letting frustration take over; the grudging, acerbic respect offered by their casually tuxedo-wearing socialite boss (Jason Robards) when the report they've broken their backs on just barely proves itself worthy of his attention. The film ends with the understated denouement of the decade - typed pronouncements of who was arraigned, arrested, sentenced, and imprisoned, climaxing with the resignation of Richard Nixon in August of 1974, several years after the enterprising reporters were first clued in to the Watergate burglary. Yet this cataclysmic climax is after-the-fact, and the real thrill is in the chase itself; the stakes and scale of the political scandal is just icing on the cake (albeit particularly tasty icing, especially as we draw closer to the conclusion and Hal Holbrook's enigmatic Deep Throat clarifies the risk they run). If ever a movie celebrated the pure thrill of hungry professionals on the hunt, it's All the President's Men.

Why I like it •

The Parallax View

Many years ago, when AMC was the province of actual movie classics I stumbled across an unexpected, disturbing surprise. Keep in mind this was well before the channel began playing Commando and Legend in endless, commercial-ridden loops; I was used to seeing movies like For Whom the Bell Tolls or old 40s serials when I flipped by. But on this night - and I remember that it was night and I was watching TV alone - the image on AMC had an eerie unknowability. A light dimmed, a voice instructed the viewer to sit back, and a montage began. Still images of a baby, of a warm family, of the flag, of trees with shafts of light flowing through - accompanied by simple one-word titles, white lettering on black background: "Me," "family," "country," "God." The music is happy but with a slightly ethereal edge, a suggestion of pain lingering in the restrained but lush orchestration and even the deep voice humming along. This tinge of sadness is highlighted as we see brief snatches of Hitler accompanied by the word, "Enemy." OK, evil is out there, but it's elsewhere. We're safe. Right? New images, black-and-white now, of wrinkled faces - an old man at the plow. Fallow ground. A beleaguered mother with wanton children gathering in a broken doorway. The music darkens - begins to acknowledge the pain that was lingering beneath. Now "me" is not a pink baby, basking in the shaft of light filtered through a protective window, but a naked body huddled on a broken-down bed in the fetal position, lonely, alone, broken. These are darker images, but they are not all dark in the same way - some suggest physical or economic hardship, some emotional or psychological weakness, others an outside evil - confusingly intercut with what was once good, until all distinctions become harder and harder to parse. Our security and comfort has been stripped, a raw nerve touched, chaos comes pouring into the void. Anger, sadness, fear, alienation, isolation, insanity vie for our attention. How do we make sense of this madness? Sexuality is introduced - blurred naked bodies, both erotic and cold, in another of those black-and-white photographs which seem to denote a harsher, more raw reality. A father chases his naked son down a hallway - a comic image? An abusive one? There's too much information, coming too fast, hitting our senses from all different angles, leaving us battered and defenseless. Comic-book heroes and villains jut in amongst the Klansmen and fallen leaders - King, Kennedy - Thor and a red demon, intercut with speeding bullets which thrust into the frame with phallic power. Power - a myth of self-empowerment, the only way out of this shiftless, directionless zone of consciousness, where good is evil is good and sick thoughts come marauding through good, clean, wholesome, upright values, leaving everything upturned. Power in the thrust of a gun, the bigness and simplicity of a comic book, the congealed chaos of the music, growing and swelling with discordant notes and a rising theme. Power! Me! The lights come up.

What the hell did I just see???