Matthews’ new music has a harder edge, thanks to blues and R&B samples courtesy of the Fat Possum Records catalog that have been expertly reworked by producer C Major.
The video for Limelight Honey was created by Lawrence and his brother Martin Matthews. It expands on the austere style of his earlier videos, and promises a bold new direction for the artist. Take a look:
If you would like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.
Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya are star-crossed lovers in Dune: Part Two
When I recently rewatched David Lynch’s 1984 adaptation of Dune with filmmaker Mars McKay, we agreed that Lynch had omitted one of Frank Herbert’s most important themes. In Lynch’s version Paul Atreides, a nobleman from a decimated great house, is in hiding from his enemies on the desert planet of Aarakis. When he’s rescued by the nomadic Fremen, they discover that he is their prophesied messiah, and he leads them to victory over their Harkonnen oppressors, and in the process, they install him as emperor of the galaxy. It’s a standard Chosen One narrative, like King Arthur or Star Wars.
But in his 1965 novel, Frank Herbert makes it clear that the whole situation is a setup. Paul’s mother Lady Jessica is a Bene Gesserit, an all-female order of space witches who are the power behind the throne on hundreds of worlds. Over the course of centuries, the Bene Gesserit spread a belief in a coming messiah on many worlds, while they secretly manipulated dynasties in order to breed a psychic superbeing called the Kwisatz Haderach. When their demigod is finally born, he will have an army ready to serve him no matter where he goes.
Paul knows this, and wants no part of it. He has visions of billions of people killing and dying in his name, and tries desperately to avoid his fate. His victorious ascendence to the galactic throne is actually a defeat.
Denis Villeneuve understands that Paul’s interior conflict is central to the emotional impact of the story. The mounds of burning bodies from Paul’s visions are the most indelible image of Villeneuve’s 2021 Dune, and the creeping dread of jihad hangs over Dune: Part 2 like smoke from the funeral pyres.
Paul Maud’Dib rallies the Fremen in Dune: Part Two. (Courtesy Warner Brothers)
The first installment ended with Paul and Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) joining the Fremen tribe led by Stilgar (Javier Bardem). Part Two begins light years away in the palace of Emperor Shaddam IV (Christopher Walken), who is starting to think that helping House Harkonnen ambush House Atreides was a mistake. His daughter Princess Irulan (Florence Pugh) writes in her journal of rumors that Paul survived the massacre.
Meanwhile, on Arrakis, Stilgar’s band fights off Harkonnen attacks as they head for the relative safety of the deep desert. Paul’s guerrilla war in the desert — which Lynch’s version all but omits — provides some of the most thrilling sci-fi action in recent memory, even before Paul becomes Muad’Dib by riding a giant sandworm through the desert.
Bardem’s magnetic performance proves crucial. Stilgar steps in as a jovial father figure to the grieving Paul. But he’s also a Fremen fundamentalist who takes the prophecies seriously, and Lady Jessica makes sure he sees Paul as the “voice from outside” who will lead them to victory and make Dune green again. Chani (Zendaya), the beautiful warrior who takes a shine to Paul, sees the would-be Mahdi for what he is. “You want to control people? Tell them to wait for the messiah to come,” she spits.
Paul and Chani’s love story is heartrending. They cling to each other as the currents of history threaten to pull Paul away from his humanity. If they can kick the Harkonnen off the planet without calling millions of Fremen religious fundamentalists to jihad, maybe they could make a life together in the aftermath. But when Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgard) replaces Harkonnen commander “The Beast” Rabban (Dave Bautista) with his more competent cousin Feyd (Austin Butler), the Fremen are backed into a corner, and holy war becomes the only way out.
Sandworms attack in Dune: Part Two. (Courtesy Warner Brothers)
Dune is the product of Herbert’s very 1960s obsessions with religion, desert ecology, and psychedelic mushrooms. Nevertheless, it has only become more relevant over the 60 years since its first publication. One need not look far to find leaders cynically using religion for political gain, or sparking savage wars of extermination by appealing to ancient scripture. The clarity Villeneuve brings to this multilayered story is its own kind of miracle, and he’s able to do it without sacrificing the visceral action blockbuster cinema requires.
None of this heady stuff would mean much without the human element. From Dave Bautista’s petulant manchild Rabban to Josh Brolin’s crusty warrior Gurney, everyone in the sprawling cast delivers. Rebecca Ferguson is especially creepy as she whips believers into a frenzy while mumbling conversations with her unborn child.
But Zendaya and Chalamet are the beating heart of Dune: Part Two. It ain’t easy to draw real human emotions out of such fantastical material, but these two movie stars make it look like it is. Like Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca, they try to carve out a little solace in the midst of war, only to find out the problems of two little people ain’t worth a hill of beans in this crazy galaxy.
A prisoner of Auschwitz
walks through Commandant Rudolph Höss’ garden in
The Zone of Interest. (Photo: Courtesy A24)
While I was watching The Zone of Interest, my mind kept going back to “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.” Ursula Le Guin’s Hugo Award-winning 1974 short story describes a utopian city where all of the civic functions seem to run pretty smoothly, and all of the citizens are cared for and happy. But this town has a secret. Once citizens are old enough, they are shown a prison cell where a child in chains is slowly being starved to death. The citizen is told Omelas’ happiness and prosperity depends on this child’s suffering.
Most people just shrug and move on with their otherwise fulfilling lives. There’s just one kid in the box, and so many who are doing great. It’s a fair trade-off, they think. But every now and then, someone who finds out about the child chained in the prison cell wanders into the wilderness and never comes back. Why anyone would do this is a mystery to those who stay behind.
In Jonathan Glazer’s new film, exactly one person walks away from a beautiful villa built next to a death camp. Because the moment comes so unexpectedly and is done so perfectly, I won’t spoil it in this review, except to say that the one who walks away is not Rudolph Höss (Christian Friedel), the owner of the home who, not coincidentally, is also the commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp.
It’s 1943, and Rudolph is riding high. The Nazi project of conquering all of Europe to the Urals, exterminating the Jews and subjugating the Slavs so that the Aryans can have lebensraum (“living space”) to build beautiful farms where they raise beautiful, white families, is working. Rudolph and his wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller) refer to themselves as “settlers.” As befitting an SS officer of his rank, the couple has a huge house with a sprawling garden and even a swimming pool with a slide. On one side, their property backs up to an idyllic country stream. The other side shares a wall with the Auschwitz death camp, whose foreboding stone buildings are just visible behind the razor wire. This is convenient for the commandant, who likes to work from home.
Rudolph Höss, not coincidentally, also starved random children to death. He did it as a method of collective punishment every time a prisoner escaped Auschwitz.
The real genius of The Zone of Interest is that Glazer never shows any of Rudolph’s work on screen, save for one moment when a line of prisoners is led into his fields by guards on horseback. But the signs of the atrocities happening just over the wall are inescapable. When the wind is right, ash from the crematoria floats over laundry drying on the clothesline. Hedwig gets periodic deliveries of fine clothes and household goods confiscated from prisoners as they were led to the gas chamber.
The family, which includes five children, carries on with an eerie normality, but the one thing they can’t filter out of their perfect little world is the noise. The Zone of Interest is up for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay, where it faces stiff competition. The one award it deserves to win outright is Best Sound. Tarn Willers and Johnnie Burn’s soundscapes faithfully recreate what it was like to live next to a murder factory. When Hedwig’s mother (Imogen Kogge) visits, their tour of the gardens is punctuated by screams and gunfire. One of the film’s most chilling moments comes when the couple’s toddler son overhears his father order the guards to drown a prisoner in the river where the family plays.
Glazer’s last film was the excellent 2014 sci-fi creeper Under the Skin, which starred Scarlett Johansson as an alien predator who develops empathy for her Earthling prey. Rudolph and Hedwig don’t act like monsters. Mostly, they just stick to their routine as busy executive and doting housewife, throwing kids’ birthday parties, tending the garden (or at least supervising the enslaved gardeners), and navigating office politics. Ninety percent of the time, Glazer stays in their perspective — this is a film about how monsters view themselves, after all. But even surrounded by all the creature comforts, the family can’t keep reality at bay forever. The question Glazer’s remarkable film raises in the viewer is, “What atrocities do our comfortable lives allow us to ignore?”
The Zone of Interest Now playing Malco Ridgeway Cinema Grill & Bar
“With modern times often full of heaviness and darkness, how do we find the strength to survive and grow? From the changing climate to wars and our personal stories of loss, it can be overwhelming to dream of a more harmonious life for the entire planet,” says June. “I recorded my cover of ‘Ordinary World’ because, despite the challenges we face every day, there is beauty to be found in the ordinary. Though we often think of change as an enormous process, it is the little things that make significant shifts when multiplied; one small and simple act of caring for the Earth or a stranger is a way to see the extraordinary hidden within the ordinary. The toolbox that helps us create a world of joy and peace must have simple, tiny actions.”
If you would like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.
Mars McKay is a Memphis-based, experimental horror filmmaker and the host of Black Lodge’s monthly LBGTv Queer Cinema Night. The avid cinephile had never seen David Lynch’s infamous 1984 adaptation of Dune. We attended a sold-out 40th anniversary screening of the film at Malco Paradiso, then retired to Houston’s bar for cocktails and debriefing. Coincidentally, while we were discussing Dune, we saw Memphis director Craig Brewer, who joined the conversation while he was waiting for his table.
Mars McKay: Hello, how you Dune?
Chris McCoy: What do you know about Dune, the David Lynch version from 1984?
MM: I have been trying to avoid everything at all costs! Well, I’m currently reading the book to prepare for Dune and Dune 2.
CM: How far along are you in the book?
MM: I am about halfway through, and according to my friends, I’m about where the first Villeneuve movie ends. The David Lynch, I hear, is very polarizing. When people start talking about it to me, I’m like, Uhuh, no. I want to go in with as unbiased and opinion as I can. So all I know is what I know from reading the book.
CM: What’s your attitude towards David Lynch?
MM: Oh, I love him. Love him. I’m not the biggest fan of Eraserhead, but Mulholland Drive! [makes chef’s kiss gesture] Which, I got my theories about … but I love his work.
137 minutes later …
CM: Okay, Mars. You are now a person who has seen David Lynch’s Dune. What did you think?
MM: I’m definitely smiling from air to ear right now.
CM: Yes, you are!
MM: My favorite character, the one I got the most hyped for, was Pug Atreides
CM: Yes! The Battle Pug!
MM: Battle Pug!
CM: We’re going to be out there shooting lasers at each other, so let’s take pugs into battle with us!
MM: Pugs can be ferocious!
CM: And it’s Patrick Stewart who carries the pug into battle!
MM: It was my favorite part of the movie — me and the guy sitting next to me with The Thing t-shirt. He and I were like, “Is that Captain Picard?”
CM: With hair!
MM: I, of course, was super on board with the presentation, the translation from the book to the movie, through the first half, up until the point where they start developing the relationship between Paul and Chani. After that, I was like, this feels rushed now. I loved it, though!
CM: It feels rushed because it is rushed. Here we are, about 90 minutes in, and we’re just now in the desert, meeting the Fremen, you know?
MM: In the book, that’s like 350 pages.
CM: Yeah. Because there’s all that world-building.
MM: Which I love.
CM: Me too. But I think the real problem with adapting Dune is all the world building. At some point, you’re going to have to explain the thousand-year selective breeding program the Bene Gesserit witches were running to develop the ultimate psychic super-being, the Kwisatz Haderach, to a theater full of over-caffinated 12-year-olds. It’s a super complex narrative that doesn’t adapt easily.
MM: The white savior narrative, Paul as the messiah, is intentional. The Bene Gesserit went from planet to planet planting those myths.
CM: They did it on purpose.
MM: That’s something that was not addressed in the film at all. But it’s so ingrained in Fremen culture, their priesthoods connect. They already have their own Reverend Mother, and when she dies, Lady Jessica just steps in there and takes over.
CM: It was all a setup by the Bene Gesserit to create their chosen one …
MM: … and then the first thing the Chosen One does is turn on them.
CM: Right.
MM: He doesn’t want to do it.
CM: The real message of Dune is, “‘Don’t have Chosen Ones, they’ll always turn on you.”
MM: You could say it’s predetermined.
MM: One thing I really didn’t like about the movie was Paul’s sister, Alia the little kid. I haven’t gotten to that part of the book yet, but every scene she was in just made me a little uncomfortable. Like, just something about the way she’s shown.
MM: But overall, I really liked it. The first thing I said to you when it was over was, “I don’t understand why this gets so much hate.” But the last half does feel rushed, kinda cramped.
CM: I’m reading A Masterpiece in Disarray, which is a book about the making of Dune. Dino De Laurentiis produced it. He got David Lynch on board, and then said, “My daughter, Raffaella, you will produce it!” And she kinda didn’t know what she was doing.
MM: So, it was the financials. Speaking of David Lynch’s cameo …
CM: That was amazing! I’d never noticed that before!
MM: I didn’t realize it at first until you were like, “That’s David Lynch!”
CM: He’s the poor guy in the Spice Harvester going, “Hey guys, can you come get us before the worm eats us?”
MM: He’s got that voice.
CM: So Lynch, obviously, was not the right guy for the job, but I don’t know that there was a right guy for the job. There’s no way that you remotely do that story justice in two hours. It’s a long movie!
MM: It was two and a half hours.
CM: At one point it’s like, “For the next two years, there’s this giant war …” Well, that’s usually what we see in movies — stuff that’s important to the plot!
MM: I liked having Lynch as the director. It’s wild to see him do a space fantasy. I loved the dreamy elements within it, when Paul’s seeing the visions after ingesting spice. The visions are just fantastic.
CM: That’s David Lynch’s wheelhouse, you know? And there’s a lot of it in the book.
MM: They probably looked at that stuff and said, “Let’s get Lynch!”
CM: George Lucas tried to get Lynch to direct Return of the Jedi. Can you imagine?
MM: I don’t think that would have worked at all.
CM: After he was nominated for Best Director with The Elephant Man, he was a hot commodity around Hollywood for a while. He turned down Jedi because he wanted to do something that wasn’t an established vision, and did this instead.
MM:The Elephant Man is one of my favorites of his. People go from Eraserhead to Blue Velvet, and I’m like, “Don’t skip Elephant Man!”
CM: The psychedelia is impeccable. But what this story needed was a good editor, and I’m not talking about a good film editor, I’m talking about a good story editor. And that just wasn’t happening.
MM: That was my only qualm with it. The pacing at the end where it just felt kind of like doing a visual, as opposed to the way stretched out first half. I was super happy to see that ’cause I’m really loving the book. But seeing that presented and then all of a sudden, the moment the whole stuff with Chani happens, it just felt like it’s trying to squeeze into pants that are too tight.
CM: She’s the one who draws him into Fremen society, and their whole relationship is nothing.
MM: Chani is a nothing character, and I hate that because in the book, she’s, immediately depicted as … not aggressive but …
CM: … Assertive.
MM: Assertive and a bit ferocious. But it was the Eighties, and I see a lot of, “We have two attractive leads here, let’s just throw them together.” I also felt like the way Lady Jessica’s presented is not nearly as freaking badass as she is in the book. If I met her in real life, I would be terrified. The Bene Gesserit, I envision them as very intense and intimidating.
CM: You know who was great, though? Stilgar. Javier Bardem plays him in Villeneuve Dune, and he’s fine, but Lynch’s guy [Everett McGill], he is the bomb. His voice is just perfect when he says “Usul” and “Maud’Dib.”
MM: Yeah, but when he’s first introduced, he goes, “I’m Stilgar,” and then he does that weird coughing thing. I was trying hard not to laugh.
MM: The moment I saw Kyle MacLachlan as Paul, especially with the early, young, 15-year-old Paul, I was like, yeah, this is him. He’s so boyish, I even wondered, how long did it take to film this? Because he looks older by the end of it. He looks more distinguished.
CM: It was such hell to film, I think, that everybody like looked older by the time it was over.
Around this time, Craig and Jodi Brewer showed up in Houston’s bar. They joined the conversation with us as they waited for their table.
Craig Brewer: Have you ever seen the David Lynch Dune? 1984?
Jodi Brewer: I don’t think I have. I’ve probably seen clips.
CB: Sting’s in it.
MM: I’m not gonna lie. Sting’s hot. He’s got tiny nipples, but he’s hot.
CM: It’s like prime, Police-era, yoga-body Sting. He’s nearly-naked, and has a knife fight with Kyle MacLachlan.
JB: That’s hot.
CB: So hot.
CM: Mars, would you recommend people watch David Lynch’s Dune?
MM: Absolutely. But I think you should temper your expectations. I think a lot of people are very excited about the Villenueve version coming up. But my recommendation would be doing what I’m doing, and reading the book first
CM: Honestly, it made more sense to you because you’re reading it. If you didn’t have that background, some of it would just be noise to you.
MM: That’s why I say read the book. I do think that, the only frustrating element was, if I had not read the book, I would be lost. I feel like I’m just pushing the book now, but …
CB: It’s great! The book is amazing! It was one of my father’s favorites.
MM: The book made me appreciate the movie so much more. And so I am very excited about the Villenueve version.
CM: He really sticks closer to the book, and he can stretch out and tell the story.
CB: I hope he sticks the landing.
CM: The Lynch Dune is like a beautiful mess. When Lynch is on, he’s on.
MM: This is going in the collection of movies that I love by him now.
CM: If you want to see David Lynch with an enormous budget just going nuts, it works great. But if you’re looking for a coherent movie that makes sense the same way Star Wars makes sense — which is basically what Lynch was signed up to do — no.
GloRilla‘a got another hit on her hands with “Yeah Glo!” The song’s only been out for 10 days, but it’s already got more than four million views on YouTube. Like most tracks from the 901’s favorite diva, it’s incredibly catchy. Glo looks back on where she’s been, and can hardly believe how far she’s come.
UK-based director Troy Roscoe knows that Glo can act, and he gives her opportunities to show off her chops as different versions of herself. But my favorite shot can simply be called “POV MONEY.” You’ll know it when you see it.
If you would like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.
Before embarking on a musical biopic project, all filmmakers should be required to watch two films: First, Walk The Line, the made-in-Memphis story of Johnny Cash’s romance with June Carter, which is probably the best musical biopic ever made; then Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, which skewers musical biopics so expertly it almost killed the entire genre.
Director Reinaldo Marcus Green has clearly studied Walk The Line for Bob Marley: One Love. It takes roughly the same approach to its subject, isolating one specific story line out of an artist’s rich and complex life story to illuminate the character behind the music. In this case, it’s the story of the recording of Exodus, Marley’s 1977 album which Time called the greatest musical achievement of the twentieth century. After a brief opening sequence where young Nesta Robert Marley (Nolan Collingnon) and his mother Cedilla (Nadine Marshall) move from the plantation to Kingston, we meet adult Bob Marley (Kingsley Ben-Adir) as the already rich and famous king of reggae. Jamaica in the mid-’70s was riven by what amounted to a low-intensity civil war between supporters of democratic socialist Prime Minister Michael Manley and his reactionary rival Edward Seaga. As the violence intensified, Marley was asked to play the Smile Jamaica concert, which was intended to, if not unify the country, at least convince people to stop killing one other by bringing them together in a shared love of reggae. During the promotional press conference, Marley refused to take sides, instead declaring that all Earthly rulers are “Babylon”, and that true peace could only be achieved through Rastafarianism, the cannabis-infused Pan-Africanist cult descended from Judaism which reveres Ethiopian ruler Haile Selassie as a liberationist messiah.
His message does not go over well with the Powers That Be, and someone (probably Seaga, but maybe the CIA) ordered a hit on Marley. Two days before Smile Jamaica, as the band was rehearsing, gunmen infiltrated Marley’s family compound and shot Marley, his manager Don Taylor (Anthony Welsh), and wife Rita (Lashana Lynch). As his band fled the country, the wounded Marley promised to keep his commitment to his people and perform one song. When Marley took the stage in front of 80,000 people at Smile Jamaica, he showed the crowd his still-bloody gunshot wounds, and launched into “War,” whose lyrics Marley adapted from Haile Selassie’s 1963 speech to the United Nations. “Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned; that until there are no longer first-class and second-class citizens of any nation; that until the color of a man’s skin is of no more importance than the color of his eyes, and until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race; that until that day, the dream of lasting peace and world citizenship and the rule of international morality will remain but a fleeting illusion to be pursued, but never attained.”
As you can see, Green and his three screenwriters have a much more complex job than, say, the makers of Bohemian Rhapsody. The Smile Jamaica sequence is more compelling than Queen at Live Aid, but you can be forgiven if you come out of One Love not knowing who was fighting whom, or why they wanted to kill a popular musician. The film’s fundamental flaw is that Bob Marley doesn’t deserve the Walk The Line treatment—he deserves Malcom X, a sweeping historical biography which connects all the dots. The filmmakers sense this, and try to cover some ground with flashbacks. Unfortunately, these flashbacks often come in exactly the way Walk Hard parodies, with the artist remembering his trauma as he walks onstage.
But my job as is not to review the film that “should be,” but rather the one that exists. Yes, Bob Marley: One Love is a stodgy, conventional biopic, but at least it’s done well. Ben-Adir, one of the most talented actors of his generation, disappears into the role. He struggles mightily to rise above mere mimicry of Marley’s distinctive patois and reveal the legend’s inner life. When Ben-Adir and Lynch are together as Bob and Rita, the film crackles with life—only to lose the momentum with meandering scenes in London recording studios and swanky Paris parties. Green and Ben-Adir take pains to emphasizes their hero’s spirituality. A smoky Rastafarian ceremony makes clear that reggae is, like American soul, thinly secularized religious music. One Love sees Marley as a Rasta Apostle Paul, an evangelist who refined the message of a revolutionary cult into a universalist religion.
For a glimpse into the fuller story, I recommend the 2012 documentary Marley. While Bob Marley:One Love is far from perfect, at least its heart is in the right place.
Ahh, Valentine’s Day, that Hallmark holiday which celebrates love by rubbing it in singles’ faces. Midtown gloom-meister Harry Koniditsiotis understands your pain, and wants to help you. His new single with gothsemble Switchblade Kid is “more of an acceptance of a relationship’s end and moving on to better things.”
“Love Has Gone Away” boasts a subtly bumping beat to help you cry it out on the dance floor. “The video was filmed way back during lockdown as the album was being recorded,” says Koniditsiotis. “Surrounded by piles of dead leaves and flashing lights, the band looks like they are having a backyard Lynchian seance calling Laura Palmer in the Black Lodge”
If you’re over your heartbreak by April, Koniditsiotis invites you to Midtown Con, the annual comic/toy/record convention he throws, happening this year on April 27th at Black Lodge. “The Memphis one, not the one in Twin Peaks, sadly.”
If you would like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.
Eric Roberts and Clare Grant in THE PRIVATE EYE (photo courtesy Illusion Islands)
Film noir, as the crime pictures of the 1940s and 1950s came to be called, left a deep imprint on popular culture. Even if you haven’t seen The Maltese Falcon, Double Indemnity, or Out of the Past, you are probably a fan of something those films inspired, like True Detective. Classic film noir often revolved around a femme fatale, a sexy, duplicitous woman with an agenda of her own, often seen secretly pulling the strings of a twisted criminal conspiracy. Actresses like Jane Greer, Barbra Stanwyck, and Faye Dunaway have done their best work as femme fatales. That’s why Clare Grant was excited to play Michelle, the female lead in the new neo-noir film, The Private Eye.
Any good femme fatale has secrets, but Michelle’s duality goes deeper than most — and, as we eventually learn, isn’t entirely her fault. “I love film noir. It’s a huge reason why I was drawn to this role,” says Grant. “I love mysteries, and I really loved the dual reality that this character gets to live in this movie. It was a fun challenge for me as an actor to figure out which scene is which reality and how I would interact with my co-stars depending on which reality I’m in.”
Grant is a native Memphian who was an early protege of director Craig Brewer, who cast her as the lead of his pioneering 2009 web series set in the Memphis music scene, $5 Cover. Since then, Grant moved to Los Angeles and married Seth Green, the Buffy The Vampire Slayer actor who went on the create the Adult Swim stop-motion series Robot Chicken. She created her own Team Unicorn troupe which created a series of pop culture spoofing videos, and she has appeared in numerous films, including the Memphis-made vampire epic Daylight Fades, Iron Man 2, Godzilla: King of the Monsters, and what she calls a “blink and you’ll miss it” bit part in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. She also voiced bounty hunter Latt Razzi in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, which fulfilled a lifelong goal for this self-professed geek girl. “I love those movies, and it’s so fun to be on sets of that size and just be able to be a part of that world. But my Star Wars credit is one of my favorite jobs I’ve ever had. I can’t believe I got to do that!”
The Private Eye is an indie project directed by Jack Cook and starring comedian Matt Rife. “I’ve been friends with Matt Rife for about 10 years,” Grant says, “and once he got on board with the project, he basically just went out of his way to cast people that he was friends with, and knew would be right for the part.
“He pitched the movie to me, and at first I laughed at him because I was like, ‘Man, I can’t be your love interest in the movie! I’m too old for you. And then he pointed out that that’s kind of the point is that my character is … well, without giving too much away, it’s supposed to be a part for someone who can play both young and old.”
Rife, whose standup comedy tour will be coming to the Orpheum on February 16th, plays a down-on-his-luck private eye living a marginal existence in contemporary Los Angeles. He affects a fedora-wearing tough guy persona, complete with grizzled, cynical internal monologue, courtesy of veteran character actor Eric Roberts. Michelle comes into his life as a mysterious client who clearly knows more than she’s letting on, just as in any good film noir.
Grant says Cook was the driving force behind the film. “This was his baby. This is his official directorial debut, and he was a lovely human. He had a really enthusiastic and passionate persona throughout the entire thing, and he was so open to collaboration — which I absolutely appreciate — while maintaining his point of view. I love it when directors have strong points of view, because I feel like directors with strong point of views make good movies. But he wasn’t so strong in his parameters that he alienated other opinions, and he was looking for collaboration. And as an artist, that’s such a wonderful thing to experience … I just focused on the material and tried not to let anything influence me as far as the performance went, but I definitely voiced my opinion on how I thought my character should be dressing and how her hair and makeup should be. I was very particular about wanting that to remain very noir, even in the moments in the film where it felt a little more current.”
As you might expect from a film with Rife in the lead, The Private Eye does have some self-aware comedy elements. At the Los Angeles premiere, Grant says, “The crowd was rowdy and excited and laughed in all the right places — and laughed in places I didn’t expect anyone to laugh in! … It’s nice to have movies that don’t rely too much on CG and big set pieces and big explosions to get people to just sit in a seat and watch a good story. And this is just a good story with a lot of twists and some fun mystery. It’s an homage to classic movies, and it’s an opportunity to get back to the theater in a time where we’ve all spent so much time away.”
Walter Huston, Tim Holt, and Humphrey Bogart in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
It’s been a while, but “Never Seen It” is back, baby! In this highly irregular feature, I sit down with an interesting person and show them a well-known film that they have never seen before. Then we talk about it.
Chris McCoy: What do you know about TheTreasure of the Sierra Madre?
Billups Allen: You know, it’s funny you asked, because I’ve had this movie on my list to watch, but I don’t really know much about it. I know that Bogart is in it, and I know the “stinking badges” line, and I know it’s kind of a heist movie.
126 minutes later …
CM: Billups Allen, you’re now a person who’s seen The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. What’d you think?
BA: Of course it was terrific. It’s a classic. Look at that, a hundred percent on Rotten Tomatoes! Not that that matters, but still, very few movies have that. I loved it.
CM: I love it, too. This is a desert island movie for me. It’s funny, this came out in 1948, and one of my other top five desert island movies, Out of the Past, came out the same year. I guess it was a great year for movies.
BA: When I was watching this, I was wondering what Westerns came out this year. Do you think of this as a Western in any capacity at all?
CM: Well, what do you think?
BA: It has a lot of the tropes of a Western. It has the bravado, but it’s not quite a Western.
CM: Tim Holt was a big Western star at the time. He was a star of B-movies, and this was the highlight of his career. So if you saw him in a movie in 1948, you would say, yeah, it’s a Western. But the late ’40s were the height of the noir movement. So it’s really structured more like a noir than it is like a Western.
BA: That’s true. I’m thinking of the shooting and stuff too, like, the way the shadows work.
CM: The look is definitely influenced by noir. I think this one of John Huston’s best looking pictures.
BA: Yeah, really. It looks great.
CM: I love The Maltese Falcon, but it’s very much staged like a play, and this is a lot more cinematic.
BA: It’s very cinematic in the desert scenes, when they’re all riding. I loved it when they see the bandits coming down the valley.
CM: Huston stays in their point of view. It’s not like, here’s a long shot, and then we’re gonna get a closeup of like Gold Hat the bandito on his horse, like you would do today.
BA: And you can feel that. It makes you feel sort of trapped. It is a theme through all this. You feel trapped yourself because even though you can see ’em coming, there’s nothing you can do. You just have to wait and see what they’re gonna bring. And in a situation like that, watching it, even with everything I know about movies, I didn’t fully know what was coming. I didn’t know if that was gonna be a fight, I didn’t know what it was gonna be. It’s like watching a snake come up the hill.
CM: Maybe one of the things that’s not Western about it is that the Indians are the good guys.
BA: Yeah, that’s what I mean. It’s a very early time in movies for that to be the case, you know?
CM: Like, 30 years ahead of its time!
BA: I think they play with that in the scene where they approach the fire and the first thing you see is the blade drop, like they’re preparing to swing those blades! But in the end, they were just holding them.
CM: That’s Huston directing your emotion by controlling what information you have. You see that it’s a blade, but you don’t see that the guy who is holding it.
CM: Here’s the big question: Is Fred C. Dobbs the hero of this film?
BA: Dobbs? Hmm … I don’t know if this is too out-there, but a lot of the time I was watching it, I was thinking about the three characters, they’re all doing things that I could have done. It’s like one person in three people, you know what I mean?
CM: Yeah, it’s like, sometimes you get paranoid, and sometimes you’re kind of like Walter Huston, like Howard.
BA: I saw Howard as the all-seer, you know what I mean? Then we have the middle, who is Curtin, and then we have Bogart’s character, Dobbs, who sort of dubious, you know what I mean? I wouldn’t think of him as the hero, but he’s like the protagonist of the film, though. I think they’re like the see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. They go together. You could see yourself reacting in any of these ways, depending on how you felt about it. And it’s all because of the how close they were to the treasure. So when the treasure got farther away, Howard was less attached to it. He had lived it, and was old enough or wise enough to know if it goes away, he’s gonna be okay. He kind of taught that down, but he only taught it to one of ’em. The other one died because of his greed and his inability to see the big picture. He was focused on the prize. How do you feel about him?
CM: I think Dobbs is the villain of the piece, but because he gets the most close-ups, and he’s Bogie, you assume he is gonna be the hero. Huston leads you along for the first half of the movie. It’s like, maybe he is a good guy, but then there’s always little flashes.
BA: Like when he throws the water in the kid’s face in the beginning.
CM: At one point near the end, you said, “He’s so mean!”
BA: I did say that. He was tough character.
CM: This is one of the most paranoid films ever made. The Parallax View has nothing on his film.
BA: The closer he got to being able to steal everybody’s gold, the more miserable he was, and the more he plotted with himself to try to get away with something. At one point, he crossed the line he couldn’t cross back from, when he shot Curtin.
CM: Tim Holt has one of my favorite scenes of all time. There’s a scene where Dobbs is in the goldmine, and there’s a collapse. Curtin walks up to the door of the mine, and he almost doesn’t help him. He almost walks away. Then he’s like, nah, I can’t be that guy. I feel like the same thing has probably happened to Howard like two or three times, you know? He’s been through it. He knows who he is. But there’s this moment when Curtin has to decide what kind of a guy he is, and he decides that, no, I’m not the kind of guy that kills people for money. I’m the kind of guy that works for the common good. And then Dobbs has that same moment, where he has to make the decision, and well, every time he has to make a decision like that, Dobbs chooses Dobbs.
BA: Absolutely. That’s why I think it’s interesting to watch it from a point of view of, ‘I could’ve gone either way myself,’ you know what I mean? I would like to think I’m the kind of person that would help Dobbs, but after some of the things he had done up to that point, you’re thinking the practicality of it would’ve have just been to leave him there. It is interesting in how it pulls you in so many directions.
CM: And then when Cody, the other guy, finds them … I think this is why I love film noir and I love John Huston. Everybody’s smart, and they’re all plotting against each other. Because in real life, people are stupid. Nobody really sits around and dissects the situation. It’s a very screenwriter thing to do, to sit around and dissect everybody’s motives. Cody is like, ‘Okay, here’s your choices: One, you can kill me. Two, you can cut me in. Or three, I can go to town and file a claim and throw you guys off your gold mine. I would choose two, but you guys gotta choose what you choose.’ And that’s exactly the moment you’re talking about. ‘Cause it’s like, I could see killing him, and I can see not killing him. It’s just a question of what kind of guy you are.
BA: Or how desperate you are to make what you’re doing work at that point. You know, if you’re early days in it, you might be more willing to share it, but the longer Dobbs is in it, the more he’s gonna work to keep what he has.
CM: He says, ‘I’m not gonna do that.’ He says at the beginning, we’re gonna make our goal, and then we’re going to get out. He has a chance in the beginning to make that choice, when they beat up the the deadbeat boss.
BA: He has a chance to take all the money there and he doesn’t do it. Corruption is a big theme.
CM: This film was based on a book by a a guy named B. Traven.
BA: I noticed that. Have you read the book?
CM: No. But nobody knows who B. Traven really was. It’s a pen name. All we know is that he lived in Mexico, and he was probably a Communist. There’s all these socialist themes that run throughout this film. For example, the first time you meet Howard, he is explaining his theory of value. Why is gold worth a lot of money? Because a lot of labor went into finding it. You know, the capitalist answer to “Why is gold worth money?” is that everything is worth whatever the market will bear. If people are stupid enough to want gold that bad, then we will sell it to you.
BA: I didn’t think about that. Walter thinks a hundred percent in terms of labor.
CM: The theme that that runs throughout it is, are you going to choose to work with the collective, or are you gonna choose your own selfish motives?
BA: When you put it that way, there really is a message there, isn’t there? Dobbs is the greedy capitalist.
CM: When we were watching it, you said something about symbolism. I was like, yeah, man, everything in this picture is symbolic.
CM: The one thing you knew going in was that line, “We don’t need no stinking badges!” It just kind of sneaks up on you, doesn’t it?
BA: You think you’re gonna see it coming, but you don’t. It just pops in there in a way, like a lot of those famous lines do, I guess.
CM: Because it’s so earned. That dude who was Gold Hat [Alfonso Bedoya], he was always the Mexican guy in Westerns and stuff. This was the role where he got to really have depth, and look: You got Walter Huston, who won Best Supporting Actor. You have freakin’ Bogart at the top of his game. But who does everybody remember? They remember the character actor.
BA: That’s the moment. I think Bugs Bunny referenced it, and it was in The Three Amigos. Down through the ages, it’s a classic.
CM: Walter Huston, absolute classic performance.
BA: He very much deserved to be nominated for that performance.
CM: He does the archetypal “crazy prospector dance.” I don’t know if it was the first one, but it’s the best one.
BA: Now that I’ve thought about the socialist aspects of it, one thing that came up twice was the virtues of fruit picking. It’s a simple life of hard labor that you’re supposed to strive for. Like, it was gonna be [Curtin’s] reward for doing this. And the other guy, the letter guy [Cody] could have had that already. But he walked away from it, and he got killed.
CM: All of these people are pursuing happiness — or at least that’s what they think they’re doing. Cody had what the film ultimately comes to define as happiness. He had that already, but he followed greed.
CM: One of the reasons I’m a big Huston fan is ’cause he’s so literary. This movie has like twice as much dialogue as a contemporary movie. It’s dense as hell.
BA: I feel like it had less soundtrack too, fewer music cues. It left you to figure things out. When the Gila Monster thing happened, there was a sharp music cue, and I thought, this is the first one I can remember.
CM: You’re absolutely right. A modern director would be trying to lead your emotions more. John Huston is not here to hold your hand through this. And if people speak Spanish in this movie, you better know Spanish, because he ain’t telling you what they’re saying.
BA: You could get the gist. I like that when movies do that a little bit, at least.
CM: Scorsese did that in Killers of the Flower Moon. It’s super effective in this movie, because you don’t feel like you miss anything, you understand what’s going on here. There’s an extended scene in Spanish at the end where the bandits get back to town. I don’t speak Spanish, but I know exactly what went on.
BA: I think it’s interesting that when they started, they were all expatriates. They never really say how they ended up in that situation, but I kind of like that. It makes the story kind of take place in limbo. The beginning reminded me a lot of the French movie where they moved the dynamite, they remade it with Roy Schneider.
CM: Sorcerer?
BA: That was the remake … [It’s The Wages of Fear, 1953] Both movies follow that structure. They start with these guys, and they’re just hanging around this company town with no jobs and no money. They get mixed up in this plot to move a bunch of dynamite that has melted to a point where it’s dangerous to be around. The rub is they could blow up anywhere along the line.
CM: So, it’s important that these are people out of their regular context.
BA: Right, they’re out of their element, without much hope of doing anything.
CM: It is structured like an experiment. All the major characters are guys. There are some women in the film, but they don’t really do much. This is not Bechdel Test compliant at all. But in a way, if one of our three heroes was a woman, it changes the dynamic. The whole thing is designed to remove all the variables until you get down to just greed. That’s what ultimately is motivating them — how they relate to their own avarice. One way or the other, it determines their actions. It’s really an exploration of greed. But if one of ’em was a woman, it would be different. If one of them was Mexican, it would be different. It would complicate things.
BA: I never even thought about it in the extreme, but it’s important that they’re all out of their element to begin with. They’re kind of put in this position where they have to figure something to do, but it’s gotta be unorthodox. They’re kind of trying to get out of where they are. They cannot just blend in.
CM: They try to blend in! Talk about another socialist theme, they tried to do regular hard work, and it’s all like ‘Oh, come on! Get with the team! We’re all family here! We’re working 18-hour-days building this family oil derrick!” You know, the first bad guy in the movie — and the only clear-cut villain in the whole thing is an oil man, right? He just flat out rips ’em off.
BA: Bogart is playing against his normal type. I know he’d played bad guys before, but he was particularly …
CM: Just nasty.
BA: Yeah, not only nasty. Devious to an almost modern point, beyond how things were written at that time
CM: He might as well be Dexter.
BA: It’s funny you just said that. ‘Cause I was thinking of Anthony Hopkins; paranoid and scheming almost to a Hannibal Lecter level. It’s compelling to watch him, because he’s unpredictable and it makes the film unpredictable. Has he been this way the whole time, and we just don’t see it until the situation brought it out? Or is the situation making him act like a maniac? Bogart’s maniacal performance was definitely special, I think.
CM: He does so much with his body. When Cody first shows up, Curtin and Howard are sitting around the fire, and their body language is very relaxed. “Let’s see who this guy is. We don’t have to jump to any conclusions.” But Bogie’s hovering over him, bowed up on him. Then later, when he and Curtin are by themselves, he’s like “Hey, we should steal Howard’s cut.” He is balled up, wrapped around himself in an absolute manic state. It’s a brutal performance.
BA: Especially because the image of him is so cool and collected in other movies.
CM: Nothing phases Rick Blaine.
BA Nothing gets to Phillip Marlow.
CM: Finally, when the banditos catch up with him, that scene really stood out to me this time, because it all plays out on his face. You can see him scheme, you can see the wheels turning, and you can see when he realizes it’s over.
BA: Then they figure out who killed him by who was wearing his boots later. I love that. That was great.
CM: Oh, the boots! Yes! That scene, right after Gold Hat and the two surviving banditos kill Dobbs, the whole movie plays out again in fast motion.There’s three of them, and they immediately turn on each other over the treasure. They’re sitting on $105,000, and they don’t even know it! They turn on each other over boots and a shitty hat.
