November 2021 Patreon podcasts: LOST IN THE MOVIES #85 - Twin Peaks Cinema: Drugstore Cowboy (+ Twin Peaks Reflections: Windom, Maj. Briggs, Airfields in Twin Peaks & Oregon, Audrey and John Justice Wheeler romance /Season 3 Part 12, Elephant archive reading & more) plus TWIN PEAKS CONVERSATIONS

Another listener suggestion fueled another Twin Peaks comparison to another 1989 film this November...but in most ways, the world of Drugstore Cowboy is pretty far from Field of Dreams (my "October" review, which didn't make it up till Thanksgiving). Or is it? Both films' protagonists, along with Cooper in Twin Peaks (and David Lynch in his own personal and professional life), are attuned to voices and impressions from beyond, which direct their behavior while appearing to seal their fate. The Gus Van Sant film's textual and even thematic connections to Peaks are oblique, but there are notable overlaps right on the surface: the Pacific Northwest atmosphere feels particularly acute when the Drugstore gang drives deep into the tall, misty woods to bury the wrapped-up body of a young woman. There are also connections to be found in character names - Diane, Bob, Nadine - and casting. Look for Sarah Palmer playing another wayward addict's mother, Annie Blackburn featuring prominently as another possibly doomed naif who is out of her league...and even Hank (no, not that Hank - I'm talking about the elusive South Dakota custodian who appears for a minute or two early in The Return, setting up a plot thread that never continues) as another sketchy dude on the margins of the story, enmeshed in a complex web of relationships. Hell, even legendary old beatnik William S. Burroughs, who (figuratively) towers over the latter half of Drugstore Cowboy, was at one point slated to play Dougie Milford in one of the more ridiculous season two subplots!

Speaking of season two, earlier in the podcast I explore some of the bigger opposing forces of good and evil in late Twin Peaks, along with some perhaps more trivial elements connected to that point in the series. And I wind the episode down with, again as in the last podcast, a reading from an essay I wrote in 2010, in this case reviewing another Van Sant film, Elephant. Obviously inspired by the directorial connection, this choice is also related to November's public podcast covering Alan Clarke's similarly shot and identically titled 1989 TV film about the Troubles. Sadly, however, this Elephant's subject - loosely based on the Columbine school shooting which shocked the nation well over a generation ago - proved relevant as ever within days of pulling it from the archive.

Remembering the Movies, Dec. 17 - 23

Every Friday, we look back at films released 10-100 years ago this week.
Visit Remembering the Movies to further peruse the past

We've got quite a few classics this week (camp or otherwise). As we get within a few days of the big holiday, surprisingly there is only one Christmas selection - and it's the oldest of the bunch. Again, as with last week, I'm unable to offer a capsule review but I do have some recollections surrounding the 10- and 20-year-old films, both of which I saw in theaters.

Elephant

#51 in Best of the 21st Century?, a series counting down the most acclaimed films of the previous decade.

Of the two most cited interpretations, the most frequent reading of Gus Van Sant’s enigmatic title holds that it refers to “the elephant in the room,” which nobody wants to talk about. Yet this is facile – was it really true that nobody wanted to talk about Columbine in the wake of the 1999 high school massacre? Was this true even beforehand, given that Columbine was actually the climax to a spate of school shootings, all of which received ample press coverage, rather than the kickoff? Furthermore, what exactly is it that’s not being discussed? Social isolation? The influence of the media? Video games? Gun control? Violence in America? Not only were all of these issues seized upon after the killings, but Van Sant makes a point out of eschewing all these explanations in his film (giving each of them a bit of airtime before moving on to other matters). So no, there’s no elephant in the room here, and if there is, no one’s ignoring it. The second reading, the one that it seems Van Sant actually intended, references the allegory of the blind men and the elephant, each touching a different part of the body and varying wildly in how they describe the animal. Likewise, Van Sant’s meditative, almost cruelly cool film is, at 81 minutes, too vast to take in from one perspective – which is not to say it’s particularly deep.

Milk

A thoroughly enjoyable and entertaining biopic, Milk is a minor success - not a great film, but a very good one. When it opened with Sean Penn, as the trailblazing gay San Francisco politician Harvey Milk, at a cluttered kitchen table, theatrically clearing his throat and speaking with mannered precision into a small tape recorder, I winced. Penn is obviously an extremely skilled actor, but one who often slips out of the director's grasp. He's prone to grandstanding, mannerisms, and overinflated intensity, so that even when his performance is superficially nuanced and subtle, he's still overbearing. Perhaps this scene was shot first, or perhaps Penn overburdened it with pathos because it's a framing device; either way, it's not at all indicative of the rest of his performance, in which the requisite emotions and style and intelligence of the portrayal belong to the character, not the actor.