All My Stars (2)

By: Joanne McNeil
January 14, 2016

One in a weekly series in which Joanne McNeil recommends books, films, exhibitions, and more. You can also subscribe to the All My Stars newsletter here.

The Internet vs. Rupert Pupkin

The success of Creed and the other glittery sequel last year adds some complexity to the subject of film “reboots” and remakes. At best, every interaction of something like The Star is Born corresponds to the trends and sounds and anxieties of its time, but typically we expected big studio productions to hollow out and drain the lifeblood of the source material. Maybe it’s different because Rocky and Han Solo are characters people grew up playacting. “Before I knew what a movie was I knew Rocky” is how Ryan Coogler put it.

Did you read that interview with Ryan Coogler? He’s such an interesting thinker. He begins with a moving story demonstrating the way people pin life experiences and emotions to movies (in this case his father’s feelings about Rocky films.) He also talks about working with cinematographers Maryse Alberti and Rachel Morrison. That’s two women in a role where women are the least represented in the film industry. He’s so young and has momentum that we haven’t really seen since Paul Thomas Anderson. People want him to direct Hamilton. I hope Ryan Coogler gets the chance to branch out, even falter, in a fascinating way like Punch Drunk Love or New York, New York.

I tried to watch it a few weeks ago and couldn’t get through it, but there is a good movie somewhere inside there (the last movie Martin Scorsese made before working with editor Thelma Schoonmaker.) It’s not quite a parody of an MGM musical but an approximation of one complete with fake snow and trees painted on screens. Liza Minnelli and Robert DeNiro have no chemistry, but part of that was the point: pairing showbiz royalty with someone known — this was Scorsese’s followup to Taxi Driver — for dark method acting. Hollywood vs the street. Early in the film his character tries to pick her up in a painful-to-watch scene that plays like a joke that drags too long until the laughs return. It feels more profane than the entitled way Travis Bickle fixates on Cybill Shepherd’s Betsy. Not just because DeNiro so convincingly won’t take no for an answer but because Minnelli genuinely looks uncomfortable… while the audience knows that eventually she will say yes.

The reason Martin Scorsese is thought of by many as the best American filmmaker could be because he has made so many kinds of movies there’s got to be one for you. That wasn’t the case before New York, New York, intentionally a departure from the grittiness of his previous work and one that confused audiences and failed at the box-office. The two films of his that I love the most — After Hours and the King of Comedy — seem to apply lessons he learned from it — striking a balance between the dreamlike and the real. It’s not cinema about New York City itself but about the dream of New York that people carry with them even when they live here. (Movies that cleared a path for how David Lynch would depict Los Angeles in Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire.)

I have been thinking about the King of Comedy a lot lately because much of its commentary on people in and outside celebrity culture remains intact. The internet might blur these distinctions but the end result is even more people have experiences like Rupert Pupkin sneaking inside Jerry Langford’s/Jerry Lewis’s own damn car. As more and more people qualify as “public figures,” due to social media and decentralized publishing and broadcasting opportunities, the experience of “fan” entitlement is relatable rather than cautionary.

Part of the reason I have been thinking of the film is watching Mark Hamill take to Twitter to verify whether his autographs are real or not. Rupert Pupkin collects celebrity handwriting, a pursuit that sounds so present and so physical today. He’s not @-replying “DAD” and begging for a retweet. He has to be right in someone’s face to get them to sign a piece of paper.

“Never take no for an answer” might be good advice or a frighteningly entitled worldview in other circumstances. I imagine when the film came out in 1982 much of the audience could identify with the struggle of trying to make it in whatever-biz while doors keep closing. That is real and it hurts. But now the experience of encountering an unhinged fan is familiar too. So many people who have worked as producers, agents, or other insider roles have stories of stalkers and strange hateful letters from the people trying to get in. While I bristle when I hear people dismiss slush piles — even comment sections — like rubbish rather than a goldmine yet to be mined, that entitlement from the few — the kind who will get in your car — is scary. It is why cars have doors in the first place.

The entire film plays with the startling energy in that scene at the beginning of New York, New York but the power differentials are more muddled. The film’s sympathies lie in the grey area between star and fan, inside the system versus out, between Hollywood and the street. The internet stretches that grey area while it makes it even harder to shut the car door.

I wish I were recommending The First Time I Heard David Bowie, a collection edited by Scott Heim, for other circumstances. So many songs to choose from. Here’s one I hadn’t even heard before— “Strangers When We Meet” — until it came on in the cafe playing David Bowie all day in memory. He had a million of them, didn’t he? Here’s Tilda Swinton on how he “provided the sideways like us with such rare and out-there company.”

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All My Stars (2)

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