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 with further links 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?

Class violence in 4 films: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, The Irishman, Joker, Parasite (LEFT OF THE MOVIES podcast #2/LOST IN THE MOVIES podcast #10)

For the second time (I previously covered Medium Cool in August, in light of the Democratic convention), I am turning my public platform over to Left of the Movies, my nascent political cinema podcast. The episode offers five-to-ten minute capsules of some of the most hyped films of 2019: Quentin Tarantino's reimagining-Manson late sixties dream Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Martin Scorsese's possibly apocryphal Hoffa portrait The Irishman, Todd Phillips' controversial DC-meets-gritty-seventies-crime-film reboot of Joker, and Bong Joon-ho's Best Picture-winning architectural horror portrait of inequality Parasite. All four films climax with violence that can be viewed through a class-based lens - destruction as an almost ritualistic way to either destablize or reinforce the social order. My discussion focuses on how these climaxes express their respective films' political visions.

The bulk of this episode was originally recorded in January 2020 but in the wake of Donald Trump's contentious loss, the Black Lives Matters protests and left-right clashes in the street, the coronavirus pandemic and its unequal economic fallout, and the electoral defeat of Bernie Sanders' populist movement in the Democratic primaries, it seemed like a good idea to revisit these films again in the light of such a world-historic ten months. So I recorded an extra ten or so minutes extending the previous discussion, including Trump supporters' image of him (vis a vis Hoffa and the Mafia in The Irishman), the irony of "white male rage" Joker anticipating the BLM protests six months later, and especially the way that all of these films explore individual outbursts rather than collective action. There's still much to dig into, so I hope some of the listeners will offer feedback that I can further engage in upcoming episodes.

Subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts

You can also listen on Pinecast and Spotify

LINKS FOR EPISODE 10

Debunking Quentin Tarantino's 'Mockery' of Bruce Lee by Eugene S. Robinson (OZY)

'Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood' Review: We Lost It at the Movies by A.O. Scott (New York Times)

SEVEN AMERICAN GENERATIONS: iGen, millennials, X, boomers, silent, greatest and lost by Joel Bocko (Lost in the Movies)

Boomer Reunion: The Big Chill vs Return of the Secaucus Seven (video) by Joel Bocko (Lost in the Movies)

New on Patreon

(for $1/month)

Episode 73: Twin Peaks cinema - Belladonna of Sadness (+ Twin Peaks Reflections: Norma, Vivian, Ernie, Red Diamond Motel, Golf course, MT Wentz/The Final Dossier, The Devil's Bride & more) & Lost in Twin Peaks #16: S2E8 (Drive With a Dead Girl/"Episode 15")

(for $5/month)

Lost in Twin Peaks #17: S2E9 (Double Play/"Episode 21")

New on my site

(accidentally mentioned in previous episode too)

Post-election status update & explore the directory pages linked on my home page for new, sharp images on mobile

January 2020 Patreon podcasts: LOST IN TWIN PEAKS #12 - Season 2 Episode 4 and LOST IN THE MOVIES #63 - The Longest One Yet w/ Bernie 2020 endorsement, Class violence in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, The Irishman, Joker, Parasite & Twin Peaks Cinema: What Did Jack Do?, Wiseguy, Twin Peaks directors' films (Halloweentown, Zelly & Me, Now and Then, The Escape Artist, The Wizard, Frances, Pay the Ghost, Heaven, After Dark My Sweet, Code Name: Emerald, Losing Isaiah & Matthew Blackheart: Monster Smasher + Midsommar, Shin Godzilla, Ah Wilderness, My Brilliant Career, listener feedback, podcast recommendations, the 60s in the 80s, Twin Peaks Reflections: Bobby, Einar, the Log Lady, the Log Lady's and Jacques' cabins, The Ghostwood Deal/Part 1 & much, much, much, much more)

A year ago, I published my longest podcast episode, one so long I had to divide it into three parts. As 2020 kicks off, I've definitely topped myself. The bulk of Episode 63 not only needed to be divided into six episodes, it also spawned another six mini-episodes' worth of podcast recommendations. This is catch-up for the past nine months, as I gather feedback I've received, podcasts I've listened to, films I've watched, and political events I've observed. And that's not even getting to the main course: my most sprawling "Twin Peaks Cinema" study incorporating a last-minute Lynch short addition, an old show that turned out to be worth an entry of its own, and a dozen capsules to observe the work of each Twin Peaks episode director (save Tim Hunter, featured last month, as well as David Lynch and Mark Frost). Usually I try to dig a little deeper into each episode in this round-up, but there's so much here already I'll trust the titles to do the talking.

Here are all the parts, illustrated and described...

Episode 63A
(Intro/Path to Journey Through Twin Peaks, Twin Peaks Reflections: Bobby, Einar, the Log Lady + her cabin, Jacques' cabin, the Ghostwood Deal/Part 1 & more)

Episode 63B
Twin Peaks cinema - What Did Jack Do?/Wiseguy's Lynchboro arc & Twin Peaks directors' films (Halloweentown, Zelly & Me, Now and Then, The Escape Artist, The Wizard, Frances, Pay the Ghost, Heaven, After Dark My Sweet, Code Name: Emerald, Losing Isaiah, Matthew Blackheart: Monster Smasher & more)

Episode 63C
Media Journal - Class violence in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, The Irishman, Joker & Parasite (+ more capsules on Midsommar, Shin Godzilla & the original Godzilla, Ah Wilderness, My Brilliant Career, Knock Down the House, Ad Astra, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, Won't You Be Me Neighbor?, The American Experience: Walt Disney, Glory, Space Men, Seven Days in May, Adopt a Highway, The Kominsky Method, Living With Yourself, Schitt's Creek & much more)

Episode 63D
Listener feedback, part 1 (Lost Highway, Lynch in Twin Peaks season 1, ordinary/mythological character connections, "primal scene" locations, Twin Peaks as Laura's Projection & more)

Episode 63E
Listener feedback, part 2 (Twin Peaks season 3 as Laura's psychodrama, Veronica Mars, Neon Genesis Evangelion & more)

Episode 63F
Endorsing Bernie 2020 (+ the 60s in 80s media, podcast recommendations, 2019 politics - campaigns, Bolivia, UK election, Iran & more)

Bonus #1: Podcast recommendations (1 of 5)

Bonus #2: Podcast recommendations (2 of 5)

Bonus #3: Podcast recommendations (3 of 5)

Bonus #4: Podcast recommendations (4 of 5)

Bonus #5: Podcast recommendations (5 of 5)

Guide to Episode 63

Lost in Twin Peaks #12 - S2E4 (Laura's Secret Diary/"Episode 11")

NOW AVAILABLE: Lost in Twin Peaks #6 ("Episode 5") open to all patrons

How should I release Episode 63 (POLL)

Podcast Line-ups for...

The Favorites - Taxi Driver (#14)

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. Taxi Driver (1976/USA/dir. Martin Scorsese) appeared at #14 on my original list.

What it is • It is the mid-seventies. That's important, although the film has never ceased to be relevant; if anything, it may be even more pertinent today as the protagonist's profile fits a number of young, lone wolf killers in recent years. Nonetheless, Taxi Driver arises from a specific era, in which New York was rough, dirty, and dangerous in the eyes of outsiders and residents alike. Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) is also a Vietnam veteran, a fact barely referenced in the film - he mentions serving in the Marines during a job interview, and later we see a NLF flag hanging on his wall - yet always hovering on the brink of its consciousness. Post-Watergate cynicism (perhaps also not so out-of-date in 2016) saturates the film's view of politicians and the society they run - it goes without saying that Travis' first target, a Presidential candidate, speaks only in superficial platitudes. The role of the women in the film is also informed by this particular moment, when feminism both rose out of and challenged the counterculture: both Betsy (Cybill Shepherd) and Iris (Jodie Foster) seem independent and sexually liberated on the surface, but they are constricted by the aggressive men around them, for whom liberation means entitlement. Iris in particular provides a sensitive portrait of how exploitation and abuse could hover under the guise of freedom: only thirteen, she is pimped by the long-haired, sweet-talking hustler Scout (Harvey Keitel), whom she met at a commune. The movie also exists at the uneasy intersection of sixties rebellion and eighties conformity: Travis is an outcast who, despising other outcasts, desperately wants to "cleanse" his city of its "filth." His phobias are explicitly racially coded, in one of the film's boldest, most pertinent moves - this is an expert portrait of a very particular form of alienation and anxiety, in which an outsider clings desperately to one of the few qualities that makes him an insider: his whiteness (not for nothing was this film modeled after The Searchers). And of course this is a film that could only really thrive in its specific era, a bleak, alienating movie funded by a major studio and turning quite a profit at the box office (albeit small potatoes when compared to the blockbusters that started rolling out a year later). It's funny - working through the qualities that make Taxi Driver such a seventies film, I'm only reminded why it still resonates. Just as Travis' violent purge calms things down until they - inevitably - will simmer to the surface once again, so the topical qualities of Taxi Driver "disappeared" under the glossy superficialities of the eighties, nineties, and zeroes but never really disappeared at all...and now they stare back at us from the mirror with the added charge of forty repressed years.

Why I like it •

The Favorites - Goodfellas (#29)

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. Goodfellas (1990/USA/dir. Martin Scorsese) appeared at #29 on my original list.

What it is • This is the earliest film on this list that I actually remember being released in theaters. Don't get me wrong - I didn't go anywhere near the theaters showing it (spoilers follow, if that matters at this point). The tale of Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), a real life Queens hoodlum-turned FBI informant, and his pals Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci) and Jimmy Conway (Robert DeNiro), the film is loaded with foul-mouthed tirades and bloody executions, not to mention "adult themes." Seven in the fall of 1990, I was only allowed to see one Joe Pesci movie: Home Alone, in which the hot-tempered little guy's head is merely set on fire rather than shot full of holes. I was very aware of Goodfellas at the time; my father and adult relatives talked about it all the time (my dad explained the plot points, observing that Pesci plays an evil killer yet the film makes you feel sorry for him when he dies). I was old enough to glance through the newspapers and see all the four-star reviews, and to watch the Oscars (well, on videotape the next day, since they were past my bedtime) and see clips of Pesci growling, "You think I'm funny?" Goodfellas' stellar reputation has held for the following quarter-century (it marked that anniversary last year with a tempest-in-a-social-media-teapot about whether or not women liked Goodfellas too - they do). It has remained one of Scorsese's most celebrated films, providing a template, dialogue patter, and cinematic style followed by dozens, if not hundreds, of gangster/drug dealer/con artist films since, including many of Scorsese's own. While he's done a lot of interesting work since 1990, a strong case can be made that none of his subsequent films has been as influential or widely beloved. That's not to knock them; it's just to observe the cinematic juggernaut Goodfellas became in the decades following its debut.

Why I like it •

The Favorites - Mean Streets (#52)

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. Mean Streets (1973/USA/dir. Martin Scorsese) appeared at #52 on my original list.

What it is • Part crime genre, part art film; part Cassavetes, part Bertolucci; defined by both handheld grittiness and graceful camera dollies, Mean Streets announces Martin Scorsese as a filmmaker interested in all forms of cinema. His third film is deeply personal with universal aspirations, a Catholic film in more senses than one. Charlie (Harvey Keitel), a petty debt collector in early seventies Little Italy, is caught in the crossfire - at first just figuratively - between his responsibility to his gangster uncle (Cesare Danova), his loyalty to his dangerously irreverant cousin Johnny Boy (Robert De Niro), his love for the epileptic Teresa (Amy Robinson), and his guilt-ridden Catholic faith. The plot's certainly not irrelevant to the film's priorities - far from it - but the experience still registers less as a narrative machine than as a flowing succession of moments, defined by performance, musical accompaniment, camera movement, and in some of its boldest moments, the arresting cuts that would come to define Scorsese's touch (rendered this time by Sidney Levin, rather than usual collaborator Thelma Schoonmaker). Like many other films on the list, Mean Streets isn't present so much for its story as for the way that story is told.

Why I like it •

The Favorites - Raging Bull (#84)

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. Raging Bull (1980/USA/dir. Martin Scorsese) appeared at #84 on my original list.

What it is • Jake La Motta (Robert De Niro) slowly punches his way to the top in the 1940s, and quickly falls to the bottom in the 1950s. Most of the film chronicles his boxing career and troubled marriage as a young man, with the infamously overweight De Niro only clocking in for the final half-hour - but all the seeds for his downfall are planted during that long period of hunger, aggression, and paranoia. During the eight long years between the opening fight and his championship bout in 1949, the Bronx Bull's life is frequently a mess. He is abusive to his first and second wife (whom he seduces when she is still a minor), frequently frustrated by missed opportunities and his own missteps, and resistant to the criminal milieu around him, which demands he must take a fall before he's allowed to get his shot. But there's a prize to keep his eyes on and somehow that holds everything in place and gives him a purpose. Only after he is crowned middleweight champion of the world does everything begin to crumble. Raging Bull is often described as a tale of redemption, but that's a stretch given what we actually see onscreen and how it's structured. Jake's attempts at reconciliation are pathetic at best (the same old "let's be pals now" routine he gave his first wife at the beginning of the movie), his self-awareness still seems incredibly dim, and the world around him is pretty unblinkingly unforgiving - at least in the two or three post-downfall scenes we get. Better to call this a tale of survival ("You never got me down, Ray"), of a man who is still standing after fifteen grueling rounds with his most brutal opponent: himself.

Why I like it •

The Wolf of Wall Street

It's hard to place Martin Scorsese's mercurial The Wolf of Wall Street, a (mostly?) true tale of the corrupt, greedy, and eventually imprisoned financier Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio). Hard to place in several ways - most obviously, the film's tone embraces straightforward rise-and-fall dramatics, social satire, and broad comedy, while the slipperiness of its moral outlook, both conventionally disapproving and hedonistically exuberant, has been elsewhere duly noted. More intriguingly, the film seems to float above history: while it begins identifiably in the late eighties (Jordan Belfort's first day as a licensed broker is even alleged to be Black Monday) and occasionally touches down on specific cultural phenomena (like Steve Madden's bobble-headed girl ad campaign) at no point does the film really riff on a zeitgeist. Technological and fashion changes are often present as details but aren't foregrounded as in Goodfellas; also unlike that film the soundtrack is an alternating mashup of hip-hop, rumba, and whatever Scorsese feels like playing in a particular moment, rather than a reflection of character and/or cultural development. Most of all, I can't really place the purpose of the movie. That's not necessarily a terrible thing: spry, termitic filmmaking is often more successful than the heavy-handed elephantine approach. Yet here this makes for an enjoyable but occasionally alienating and mystifying viewing experience. I liked The Wolf of Wall Street, particularly certain sequences worthy of Scorsese's legendary oeuvre, but I didn't love it. On first viewing, it seemed a film of many accomplishments but little depth.

Taxi Driver

This is an entry in "The Big Ones," a series covering 32 classic films for the first time on The Dancing Image. There are spoilers.

The following was written in the fall of 1999, when I was 15 years old, just for the hell of it (not a school assignment). I'm including it because a) this title wasn't even originally scheduled in the series, but was added at the last minute, b) this series is in part about my personal relationship to these movies, and c) this film has a certain adolescent intensity (and I mean that in a good way), so it seemed appropriate to publish a review by the teenage me.

Directed by Martin Scorsese. Starring Robert DeNiro. Released in 1976. Also with Cybill Shepherd, Jodie Foster, Harvey Keitel, Peter Boyle, Albert Brooks, and Martin Scorsese. Written by Paul Schrader. Photographed by Michael Chapman. Produced by Michael and Julia Phillips. Themes - Alienation; Violence; Lust/reviewed on 9/11/99.

When I saw my first two Scorsese films, Mean Streets (1973) and Raging Bull (1980), I enjoyed them and was very impressed by Scorsese's directorial skills. But neither was satisfying. I don't mean satisfying in a way that makes [you] leave the theater or shut off the VCR with a smile on your face or even tears rolling down your face after a sentimental tearjerker ending. Sure, those experiences may mean you were satisfied. But for me, satisfaction means your emotions (deep emotions) have been triggered by the movie and this kind of satisfaction means you can finish the movie in an upset or depressed mood.

Now don't get me wrong. I consider Raging Bull to be one of the top films of the eighties, and Mean Streets thrills me because it propelled Scorsese to success and it's raw and often exciting. But this film, Taxi Driver, is one that grabs you and pulls you into the screen, as do few movies. The Godfathers (especially Part II) does this, as do Vertigo, Saving Private Ryan in some scenes, and the Star Wars films on a good day. What are the qualities that can do this? I've found that color film usually helps me to get pulled in. Truthful acting, not just line reading - in fact the less talking the better, helps too. Music can really get me involved. Finally, the direction must give me the key to unlock the movie's world.

Raging Bull, the Last of the Consensus Classics

This is an entry in "The Big Ones," a series covering 32 classic films for the first time on The Dancing Image. There are spoilers.

There is some irony in Raging Bull being called “the best American film of the 1980s.” Its placement in that decade is a mere accident of chronology – and critics calling it the best of those years are essentially saying what (little) they think of them. Peter Biskind, by naming his book on 70s American cinema Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, acknowledged an important fact: when Raging Bull came out in 1980, it was closing out, rather than ushering in, an era. To this day, it remains a kind of fault line in cinema history – before it come the acknowledged classics, after it a number of films up for grabs, many possible masterpieces or potential classics, with their adherents and detractors, but few with the kind of immediately obvious weight Raging Bull carries. It is the last of the "consensus classics," a generalization (even Citizen Kane has its critics) but a helpful one in determining the shape of critical and popular opinion, and thus a kind of cinematic historiography.

Among popular Hollywood touchstones there’s E.T., maybe Raiders of the Lost Ark. Lynch’s unique voice has been recognized in the cautious canonization of Blue Velvet and (to a lesser extent) Mulholland Drive - though the "Lynchian" seems to transcend a single film. Do the Right Thing has its advocates, while Goodfellas and (more controversially) Pulp Fiction were huge gamechangers as far as style goes, informing everything that came afterward. Schindler’s List is probably the only post-Raging Bull film to seem just as “unavoidable,” as unquestionably important to the conversation – although it has many major detractors in a way Raging Bull does not. In recent years, only the one-two punch of 2007 (No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood) seem to contend that same throne.

What happened? It would require many more posts to explain in detail why consensus becomes less clear after Raging Bull. But the phenomenon is real, not imagined, and it is not a matter of time passing before the dust settles on reputations – consider that from 1962 to 1982, recent films did not have trouble making the international Sight & Sound lists: indeed, Raging Bull cracked the top three “all-time greats” within a dozen years of its release (back in 1962, L'Avventura made an even quicker jump, #2 after two years). I think there have been plenty of great films since then, but my list differs substantially from everyone else’s, as do everyone else's from one another. A certain common ground has been lost (the advent of DVD and the internet will either reverse or hasten this stasis in canonization, perhaps both; the 2012 Sight & Sound list should be interesting). What interests me here is why Raging Bull does make the cut, and what that means.

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.

Remembering the Movies: Sep. 17 - 23

Due to the enthusiastic response last week, "Remembering the Movies" will become a permanent fixture at The Dancing Image. Each Friday, I will briefly revisit ten films released 10 - 100 years ago this week. I'll offer pictures, describe the movie, quote a critic, and link up to a video clip (either a trailer, a scene, or sometimes the whole movie). Then it's all yours - what did you think of the films in question? Do you remember seeing any of them when they first came out? Any anecdotes you have about them or their making, which I didn't mention and you'd like to share? Respond below with any of the above.

Today, we've got gangsters, gorillas, and revolutionary rabbits whizzing past the window on our ride back through time...

The posters of Martin Scorsese

Inspired by my recent post on The Dancing Image, I'm going to initiate a feature here which looks over a director's career by combing over the posters for his films. I think this will be fun because it not only gives us a sense of the filmmaker's development but of the transformation of pop cultural aesthetics over time. We'll start with Martin Scorsese: