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?

March 2024 Patreon round-up: EXCLUSIVE - Films in Focus podcast #2: May December + ADVANCE - TWIN PEAKS Character Series advance

Although as you read this the ceremony is now several weeks in the past, at the time of writing I've just watched the Academy Awards last night. Though my awards season viewing got off to a strong start last summer with the "Barbenheimer" phenomenon, I didn't catch up with most of the other Oscar nominees - neither seeing nor (obviously therefore) covering the bulk of the list. Killers of the Flower Moon I've been anticipating, but awaiting a forthcoming conversation on Patreon before I dive into that. (Speaking of Patreon conversations, I did see and plan on soon discussing two of the delightful Japanese winners of the night - The Boy and the Heron for animated feature and Godzilla Minus One for visual effects, whose toy-wielding win genre icon John Carpenter himself celebrated on Twitter.) No Poor Things, no The Holdovers, no Anatomy of a Fall, no Zone of Interest (also a contender among March's patron requests, with my interest further piqued after last night's win for International Film and much-praised Sound - as well as Jonathan Glazer's undeservedly controversial acceptance speech). With all that said, I did manage to catch the film that Anatomy of a Fall beat for Best Original Screenplay. A couple months after first requesting it, patron Walker White's suggestion of May December made it to a runoff and then ran away with the follow-up poll to become my March selection.

That the film, directed by veteran Todd Haynes and written by newcomer Samy Burch, didn't garner as much nomination glory as expected (especially for the actors) is both surprising and maybe, some writers have suggested, revealing. Although set in Georgia, the story of Gracie Atherton-Yoo (Julianne Moore), a woman who spent years in prison for having sex with then-thirteen, now-grown (and married to her, with three kids) Joe Yoo (Charles Melton) is filtered through the lens of actress Elizabeth Berry (Natalie Portman), who has arrived in town to study and perhaps interfere with the family's life as she researches an upcoming role. I was struck by both the film's revelations and its unknowns - the long in-between years, the ambiguous truths and falsehoods characters tell themselves and one another - and I appreciated the opportunity to dig into these and other questions. Alongside this podcast, the second in my every-other-month Films in Focus series exclusive to the top tier, I also shared another advance Twin Peaks character study with all patrons...

What are the March rewards?

I'm Not There

I'm Not There, Todd Haynes' 2007 biopic (of sorts) is as inscrutable as Robert Zimmermann at his most enigmatic, but seldom as interesting. Whereas each phase in the singer's career came from somewhere (however hard it is to discern that "somewhere" from the outside) and resonanted one way or another, here they're just a series of poses. The choice of different actors to play each persona of Bob Dylan, accompanied by very different styles, only deepens the incoherence and the decision to intercut these segments dilutes whatever virtues these flawed and incomplete storylines hold.

Why is it a cardinal rule of multiple-storyline movies that said storylines must unfold concurrently? Sometimes it works, but here the mishmash of moods and styles and personalities creates a jagged work unable to build up and sustain its various moments. If the point is that any man, and Dylan especially, contains multitudes which cannot necessarily be reconciled why smush them all together? A more powerful picture would let us immerse ourselves in each stage one-by-one. It would trust our memories and outside knowledge to connect whatever dots there were to connect, to notice the contrasts and disparities while still allowing us to enjoy what each moment has to offer. Later in the film, the intercutting slows down and we are allowed to take a breath and look around. Of course, this also reveals how thin most of the storylines really are; perhaps this is why Haynes chose to interweave them all.