324. Interlude

November 20th, 2019

It’s been getting kind of heavy around here, what with all the death and the crying and what have you. Fortunately Road House remains Road House at all times and in all ways. Everything that’s happening in Road House is happening simultaneously—the throat rip and the parking scenes and the Sharing Husband and the breakfast scene and the sex scene and the Giving of the Rules and, of course, the monster truck running over a Ford dealership. They’re all as close to you as your copy of the movie, and with the flick of a button you can be anywhere and everywhere within Road House at once. It exists in all states. So here, have a shot I stumbled upon completely at random today of the wheels of a monster truck absolutely demolishing a station wagon. Let it smoosh the sadness and the fear and the anxiety right out of you, let it send them flying out of your body in thousands of jagged shards. Be the truck. Be the wagon. Be Wagon Days now.

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“His Dark Materials” thoughts, Season One, Episode Three: “The Spies”

November 19th, 2019

The show is called His Dark Materials. But who are we kidding? It’s all about her.

HBO’s latest fantasy epic struck gold when it cast Ruth Wilson as its villain, Mrs. Coulter. In lesser hands, the sinister head of the General Oblation Board and leader of its “gobblers” would be a one-dimensional child-stealing monster, with the occasional glimmer of doubt or remorse. But thanks to The Affair actor, she emerges as a full-fledged human, overwhelmed by her own emotions even as she overpowers everyone in her path.

I reviewed this week’s episode of His Dark Materials for Rolling Stone.

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323. Sublime/Faces of Death Redux

November 19th, 2019

I sometimes think of Road House as a sublime movie, and that’s not an adjective I throw around for movies that often. For me it’s reserved for films that transport me into a place of tangible, physical awe—the equivalent of musical frisson, that chill you get up and down your spine and through your skull from art that stuns you. If you know me at all it won’t surprise you to learn that I get this feeling most often from horror films. I think Jaws is sublime. I think The Exorcist is sublime. I think The Shining is sublime. I think Aliens is sublime. I think Hereditary is sublime. I think Barton Fink is sublime. You get the idea. So you get that Road House does not transport me the way any of those movies do.

Why is Road House sublime? Because sandwiched in between two identical parking scenes and a scene in which two lovers confront one another over matters of life and death in front of a bunch of x-rays of people’s colons, Patrick Swayze looks at Sam Elliot like he does above and below. First: total love, respect, humility—he is admitting he was wrong after all—and above all gratitude that he gets to know this man. Then: total loss, grief, anger, denial, anything but acceptance that this man who meant so much to him is gone.

The word I use to describe Patrick Swayze as an actor is generous. He gave himself over to this absurd role in this absurd film, used every ounce of his training as an actor and a professional-grade stuntman and a professional-grade ballet dancer. Every interview I’ve ever seen with Kelly Lynch or Marshall Teague or Sam Elliott in which they’re asked about this film is full of superlatives of how dedicated he was, and how kind he was, and how the experience of working with him was…well, they don’t say it, but I will: sublime.

Parking, acting, colons, parking, more acting, acting like his life has fallen apart, like the person he loves most in the world has been stolen from him. His eyes squint with tears and she shakes his head wildly back and forth, moving his whole upper body at one point, his whole self one gigantic No. Some of the dumbest filmmaking I’ve ever seen, and then this. Sublime.

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322. “Yo! Wake the fuck up!”

November 18th, 2019

“Sit the fuck down, have a beer, I’ll be back,” Dalton said to Wade just before departing to find Elizabeth. “Wesley wins, man. We’re outta here.” It’s then that Wade shoots him the “Attaboy, mijo” he will no doubt return to in his mind for years, even decades, to come. They’re just two men being men, swearing when it isn’t necessary, patting each other on the back. It’s who they are, even when one of them has been beaten half to death.

Dalton attempts to return to this pattern of dialogue when he comes back to the Double Deuce after his failure with the Doc. “Yo! Wake the fuck up! We’re outta here!” he says from across the room, smiling. This has alway struck me as the one genuinely superfluous f-bomb in the whole profane film. “Wake the fuck up” right away, without even a normal “wake up” first? It feels forced.

And it probably is. After all, in the guise of going along with his mentor’s wishes, Dalton is admitting to two massive failures: first, his failure to free the town of Jasper from Brad Wesley’s clutches, and second, his failure to convince Elizabeth to retreat alongside him. A nice blustery “fuck” where no “fuck” need be will paper over all of that just fine—indeed, it’s probably necessary to offset the repetition of “we’re outta here” from their previous conversation. Getting “outta here” is an admission of defeat, and that needs amelioration. The little friendly punch to the back Dalton gives Wade afterwards is of a piece with the cussword. Just guys bein’ dudes.

It falls apart quickly, though. “I said ‘one beer,’ señor,” Dalton says, still grinning, as he puts his hand on Wade’s arm to shake him awake. But there will be no awakening Wade Garrett, not now, not ever again.

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“Watchmen” thoughts, Season One, Episode Five: “Little Fear of Lightning”

November 18th, 2019

What really matters here is how Looking Glass takes it, and that’s written all over his face. I’m sorry, I know that sounds like a bad joke given his faceless mask, but it’s really not Looking Glass who receives this revelation—it’s his secret identity, Wade Tillman. Without saying a word, actor Tim Blake Nelson makes the man’s relief so obvious and so strong it borders on awe. You almost expect him to start weeping tears of joy. In dramas, human responses beat shocking twists every time.

WATCHMEN 305 RELIEF

And why shouldn’t he be happy? He was a victim of one of the worst events in human history (the horror of which is very effectively conveyed by that flyover shot of the squid’s path of destruction, accompanied by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s horror-movie score). He’s spent the rest of his life terrified, wearing tinfoil hats to protect him from ever experiencing that sort of thing again. His entire life, in fact, revolves around a worst-case scenario that this videotape, in one fell swoop, erases from the realm of possibility. What would you do on behalf of someone who allayed your greatest fear?

I reviewed this week’s episode of Watchmen for Decider.

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“Mr. Robot” thoughts, Season Four, Episode Seven: “407 Proxy Authentication Required”

November 18th, 2019

Two rooms, six actors, one hour: This week, “Mr. Robot” served us a bottle episode. There was no way of knowing we would find something so truly dark at the bottom of it.

I reviewed this week’s episode of Mr. Robot for the New York Times.

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321. X-rays

November 17th, 2019

When Dalton bursts into the hospital room where the Doc is working in order to whisk her out of town with him, she’s looking at x-rays of people’s colons and whatnot. Why? She stitches up knife wounds for patients who come to the ER. Does she do that and gastrointestinal stuff? Maybe she’s just curious? Maybe—spitballing here—the props department just said “get me a bunch of x-ray stuff” and this is what they came up with. Broken legs, bullet wounds, anything would have worked better than what they wound up with. It makes for a uniquely mood-killing backdrop for Dalton and Elizabeth’s conversation, which is really more of a confrontation: He demands that she leave with him, bodily yanks her out of her seat in fact, and she tells him no because as best she can tell he’s just as crazy as Brad Wesley, so he gives up and leaves. If these colons could talk, man, if these colons could talk.

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320. Wounded Wade

November 16th, 2019

No sooner does Brad Wesley hang up on Dalton than Wade Garrett stumbles into the Double Deuce, wounded and winded. He’s not dead, not yet anyway, and it’s unclear whether the beating he says he sustained at the hands of three unnamed goons—none of which are members of the core team, who we will soon get a good look at and none of whom are injured in the slightest—is part of the coin-toss murder scheme Wesley just unveiled. Dalton certainly thinks it is, though: Since Wade isn’t dead, it stands to reason that Elizabeth is in grave danger, and indeed Wade says his assailants told him he was lucky. Dalton bounces out of there as quickly as he can, but not before telling Wade that Wesley wins, that they’re all going to skip town. “Attaboy, mijo,” Wade says, grinning. It’s the last thing Wade will ever say to him.

My own mentor, Tom Spurgeon, died this week. He was too young to go. The last thing he said to me was “Your writing is important to me!” So I can say, based on personal experience, that that “Attaboy, mijo” will lodge itself in Dalton’s heart. It’s there to stay.

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319. Coin toss

November 15th, 2019

What’s the most you ever lost on a coin toss? This is not an idle question pretty much any time it gets asked. It’s certainly not for Dalton. Upon arriving at the Double Deuce to tender his resignation, he is greeted by a phone call from Brad Wesley. “Top o’ the mornin’ to ya!” the deranged JC Penney franchisee says, before telling Dalton “what’s on for today”: “Wade, or Elizabeth…one of them dies.” Dalton has no response but to tell Wesley “you’re a sick man,” his voice echoing Morgan telling him “you’re a dead man” lo those many moons ago. So, in the absence of Dalton expressing a preference, Brad Wesley flips a coin. He looks at the result, gets back on the phone, and says “Dalton, I’d sure like to tell you how it turned out.”

This is how it turned out:

It’s hard to see what with the corpse of Wade Garrett obscuring it, but there’s a point I’m making here: At no time during or after their conversation does Brad Wesley say anything like “Heads for Elizabeth, tails for Wade.” He doesn’t even list them in that order! The information in the note above is a point of interest, I suppose, but since Dalton was given no frame of reference for the coin toss it might as well say “It was heads” or “It was Option C” or the text of the Gettysburg Address. The point of a supervillain coin toss is to tell you what the options are and then let the coin fall where it may, not to do all of this in secrecy and only reveal the results when they mean nothing to the person to whom you’re revealing them.

Unless you’re the supervillain in Road House, in which case all bets are off. Brad Wesley didn’t bring the Fotomat here by playing by your rules.

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318: And again: Parking

November 14th, 2019

Later in the morning after he murders a man by tearing out his throat with his bare hands, Dalton parks his car a second time. This, too, is the way of things. Our days are made of repetition; and even in Jasper, some deeds, once done, are done again. Dalton has been doing things on this bright sunny day, with the famous hills of Missouri visible in the distance, and having done some of them about three minutes of screentime earlier does not change that. So Dalton goes about his business, and to do his business he must needs park his car at his place of business, again. It’s as simple as that.

Less simple, more baffling, is the message communicated by this choice of shot. It’s true that Dalton has to park his car in the Double Deuce parking lot twice on this fateful morning, for reasons that will soon be made clear. It’s substantially—remarkably, even—less true that director Rowdy Herrington needs to show Dalton parking his car in the Double Deuce parking lot twice on this fateful morning. It’s not even clear he needs to show it once, the importance of his choice of car that morning notwithstanding. We know where and what the Double Deuce is, and we know Dalton goes there. Do we need to see him drive across that big dirt parking lot, park his car, get out, walk up to the front doors, walk through the front doors, and walk over to the bar two times in under five minutes?

No, we don’t. But there’s a lot about Road House we don’t need. Perhaps need is not the right rubric for anything about this movie. Perhaps that’s what the two parking scenes, standing like the Argonath, are meant to convey.

 

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Tom Spurgeon

November 14th, 2019

Tom Spurgeon has died. He was my mentor, my model, and my friend. This is a staggering loss for comics; for me, I just know I hate waking up in a world without Tom in it. He made me a better writer, his friendship made me a better person, and his work made comics a better art form—a better industry—a better community. I will miss his boundless curiosity and enthusiasm for the medium, I will miss his savagely funny offline self, and I will miss the chance to tell him how much he meant to me for the 18 years I was privileged enough to know him. I love you, Tom.

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317. And now: Parking

November 13th, 2019

The morning after he murders a man by tearing out his throat with his bare hands, Dalton parks his car. This is the way of things. Extraordinary events are rendered extraordinary by their singular, instantial nature; and even in Jasper, tomorrow is another day. Dalton has things to do on this bright sunny day, with the famous hills of Missouri visible in the distance, and having murdered a man by tearing out his throat with his bare hands the night before does not change that. So Dalton goes about his business, and to do his business he must needs park his car at his place of business. It’s as simple as that.

Less simple, more purposeful, is the message communicated by his choice of car. Note that Dalton is no longer driving the shit-brown beater he picked up from Big “T” (one of the Four Car Salesmen) earlier in the film—the kind of car he uses while working a gig because it’s cheap and more or less disposable. Rather, he’s back in the Mercedes-Benz with New York plates he used to drive from New York to Missouri in the first place—his real car, the car he keeps hidden in a parking garage or under a tarp, the car he spends his mid six-figure yearly salary on. His off-duty car.

You realize what this means, don’t you?

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316. “Wesley! Wesley! Wesley! Fuck you!”

November 12th, 2019

Dr. Elizabeth Clay runs away after she sees what Dalton has wrought. As well she might: Her concern even prior to his duel to the death with Jimmy was that Dalton is as much a danger to Jasper as the people he’s ostensibly protecting Jasper from. Now Dalton has exposed himself for what he is, or at least what he can be, and she wants no part of it.

This enrages Dalton, though not against the Doc. No, Dalton lays the blame squarely where it belongs: at the feet of Brad Wesley, who ordered his man Jimmy to visit Emmett’s ranch and destroy it that fateful night. It’s his fault Dalton had to rip a man’s throat out, again. It’s his fault the Doc has run away in horror. And he needs to be made aware of it.

“Wesley!” Dalton screams. “Wesley!” Dalton screams again. “Wesley!” Dalton screams a third time. A callout in triplicate.

And then the final blow:

“FUCK YOU!!!”

It’s a hilariously anticlimactic thing to say at this point. It’s of a piece with his earlier mid-fight banter, which consisted solely of non sequitur expletives. It’s funny to think of the Doc, running away, hearing her boyfriend flip the verbal bird to her ex-husband in the middle of their murder contest.

But it gets the job done. Wesley comes back to his balcony in time to see Dalton toss the corpse of his number one guy into the river, allowing it to float downstream, offscreen, and out of the film forever. There’s no twinkle of amusement in his eyes, no sardonic smile across his lips. There’s something cold there instead, something making calculations as to who will need to get hurt to make this right. And if I’m not mistaken, there’s something very much like grief. When Jimmy floats away, there’s no doubt he takes many of Brad Wesley’s fondest wishes with him.

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“His Dark Materials” thoughts, Season One, Episode Two: “The Idea of North”

November 11th, 2019

But — and maybe this is just Ruth Wilson’s rich performance bringing out these notes in the character — Coulter has moments of softness as well. After she gives Lyra a bath, we see her lingering by the tub with a sad look on her face, like she can see her regrets in the soapy water. When she uses her daemon to abuse Lyra and Pan, she cries afterwards, as if she’s sorry she did it. And when she returns from an outing to find Lyra studying diligently, or at least pretending to, you can see her affection for the girl take her by surprise. Her monkey, an indicator of her true feelings, actually reaches out to tenderly pet Lyra’s daemon.

In other words, if Coulter is a monster, she’s cut from the same cloth as Cersei Lannister: awful in general, but with a serious soft spot for any child she thinks of as her own.

I reviewed tonight’s episode of His Dark Materials, aka The Ruth Wilson Show, for Rolling Stone.

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“Watchmen” thoughts, Season One, Episode Four: “If You Don’t Like My Story Write Your Own”

November 11th, 2019

What I think is inarguable is how writerly Lady Trieu is, how removed from our everyday experience of language, of interaction and reaction, for which cleverness has been substituted. The easy irony (following up a fatuous threat to “destroy” the baby with a smiley “Guys, I’m joking”); the ability to cap off her conversation with a bon mot (“What was that?!?” “That…is mine”); and most especially the penchant for treating the most remarkable and outlandish things—her unimaginable wealth, her ability to manufacture babies, a meteor (or is it a rocket containing Superman?!?!?!) falling out of the sky just seconds after she purchased the land into which it crashes—like they’re just part of an ordinary day…this is extremely Smart Comic Book Writer shit. Or as Lady Trieu herself puts it, when talking to Angela’s missing grandpa Will Reeves about his plan to deliver vital information to her by leaving behind a bottle of pills in her car for her to investigate, “It’s still too cute by half.”

I reviewed this week’s episode of Watchmen for Decider.

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“Mr. Robot” thoughts, Season Four, Episode Six: “406 Not Acceptable”

November 11th, 2019

Dread, Mr. Robot explains, is that feeling of crossing a line you don’t realize exists until you’ve already crossed it. It’s that “My God, what have I done” sensation, when you find yourself in over your head and realize you’re the one who got yourself there.

And if there’s one thing the director Sam Esmail does well, it’s dread. His long takes, his slow zooms, his beautiful close-ups of big-eyed people staring in disbelief: They make him television’s poet laureate of waiting for the other shoe to drop, and knowing that when it falls, it will hit hard.

This week’s episode of “Mr. Robot” was all about that ugly feeling. It divides its time between three situations in which characters are held against their will, desperate to find a way out, waiting to see what their captor will do next. Throw in the composer Mac Quayle’s increasingly ominous score and the cinematographer Tod Campbell’s confidently stark camera work and you have a recipe for a very black Christmas indeed.

I reviewed this week’s episode of Mr. Robot for the New York Times.

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315. Red-handed

November 11th, 2019

She sees it all. Dr. Elizabeth Clay catches up to Dalton in time to see him deliver the coup de grace to an unarmed, helpless man. She watches the man she loves raise his hand, slam it down onto another man’s throat, and tear that throat clean out. She sees him kick the man’s corpse into the water. She runs into the water, drags the body back on shore, examines his wound. She is desperate not to have seen what she has seen—to believe that somehow this man (with whom she must have some acquaintance given her one-time closeness to his master, Brad Wesley) survived what her man did to him. But it is not to be.

And standing there, watching her, seeing her see him, is that man, Dalton. When the camera first shows him after tracing Doc’s triage for some time, he is hunched over, staring at the red wet mess of his right hand. He looks wretched, like a wretch, shocked and shame-faced and horrified to have been seen like this.His posture is that of a Gollum, but written all over his face is the “Don’t look at me” plea of Frank Cotton from Hellraiser or Frank Booth from Blue Velvet. He has the mien of a masturbator who’s been caught at the end of the act by his devoutly Catholic mother and is preparing himself for punishment. There’s something very palpably rooted in sexual shame and compulsion in the way Swayze plays this moment. This is not a side of himself he has ever wanted any women to see, but when the time came, he simply could not help himself.

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314. Doubting Doc

November 10th, 2019

24 But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came.

25 The other disciples therefore said unto him, We have seen the Lord. But he said unto them, Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe.

26 And after eight days again his disciples were within, and Thomas with them: then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, Peace be unto you.

27 Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing.

28 And Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God.

29 Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.

John 20:24-29 (KJV)

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313. Splashdown

November 9th, 2019

Right after Dalton tears Jimmy’s throat out, killing him, he spin-kicks the man’s still-standing corpse into the water. It feels like an instinctive maneuver in a way: Dalton is used to barfights in which it behooves one to keep fighting until one is the last man standing, ergo if Jimmy is still standing, one more kick is warranted.

But perhaps another instinct is at work: the instinct to distance himself from the carnage he has wrought, the instinct to hide Jimmy’s grisly visage from his sight, the instinct to seek a means to wash away his sins. Dalton has killed tonight, breaking a taboo learned the hard way during the devastating events of his Memphis sojourn. Best to get the body out of here, get it away, dump it where its deadness can do Dalton no further harm.

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