1. Just in case Debbie and I go to Canada -- who knows? maybe this summer -- I need a renewed passport and I blasted out to Walmart today and got my picture taken. I'll pick it up on Friday, fill out my application, include my soon to be expired passport, and mail it all in.
2. More than once, when watching Criterion Channel's "Adventures in Filmmaking", I noted that interviewees talked about Blood Simple (1984) as a favorite movie, one that stayed with them over time.
Back when it came out, a grad school friend named Julie F. told me, if I remember correctly, that her parents had watched Blood Simple, loved it, so did she, and I remember renting it from the video store once it came out on tape.
Much like The Big Lebowski, when I watched Blood Simple for the first time, I didn't get it. I remember shrugging my shoulders, putting the tape back in its case, and returning it to Flicks and Pics.
That was about thirty-five years ago and I never watched Blood Simple again. Until today.
I can pinpoint when and why I gave The Big Lebowski another try back in 2005. I played the role of Snug the Joiner in LCC's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream and spent a ton of time with the other actors who played the other Rude Mechanicals. These guys loved movies, talked about them all the time, especially during our time in the dressing room when we were not in the play's action, and, because they quoted lines from The Big Lebowski and reenacted their favorite bits from the movie, I decided to give it another try and now it's one of my favorite movies of all time.
Today, I really got into Blood Simple. In a way that went right by me in 1985 when I rented it, tonight I got a kick out of all the movie's deceit, double crossing, misunderstandings, greed, lust, revenge, and ignorance. While I remember being struck by E. Emmet Walsh as the corrupt Private Investigator when I first saw the movie, tonight his performance astonished me with the precise ways he brought the rotten soul of Loren Visser into full view -- the menacing smile, his dark cackling laugh, his tacky yellow almost leisure suit and Stetson, the blank face of his heartlessness. Even his VW Bug seemed corrupt with its faded color and dilapidated condition.
Much like Body Heat, the movie's atmosphere was swampy, sticky, wet with sweat. But whereas Body Heat involves characters of some means and good looking clothes, the three principal characters in Blood Simple live their lives within the orbit of a third-rate Texas roadhouse with its garish neon signs advertising beer and telling us we are at the Neon Boots.
In fact, very much in the tradition of film noir, much of this movie takes place in dark, shadowy places. Its murky exteriors parallel the murky, corrupt interiors of its characters, with the possible exception of Abby played by Frances McDormand (in her first movie ever). Well, Abby isn't an innocent character. It's her affair with Ray, a bartender at her husband's joint, Neon Boots, that punches the whole story into gear.
But Abby almost never knows what's going on in her own story. In contrast to the dark and murderous jealousy of her husband, the panicked disorientation of her lover, and the sleazy greed of PI Visser, Abby is wide-eyed, lonely, and unaware. In the end, she gets pulled completely into the movie's bloody vortex, but right up until her last bit of action in the movie, she never really knows what is happening.
But, we, as viewers do know.
In Blood Simple, we viewers know everything. While the movie's points of view shift between characters and while they have limited knowledge of what's happening and happened around them, we know all, so that we watch the characters' blundering acts of violence with the shock that comes with possessing knowledge that those we are watching go after each other don't have.
It's compelling.
3. I finished watching Blood Simple and happily and smoothly transitioned into Blissful Thursday. It was 8:00 and time to spend an hour with Daniel Mckay on Hard Rain and Slow Trains: Bob Dylan and His Fellow Travelers and then to spend two hours, at 9:00, with Jeff Harrison's show, Deadish.
Tonight, Bob Dylan opened his current tour in Phoenix (were Dick and Renae at this show?) and Dan's show centered on the members of Bob Dylan's band. Because I'm not knowledgeable about Bob Dylan and because I don't take notes while listening to Rain/Trains, I can't name the members of Dylan's band. But, I do know that they've played with other bands and other musicians and, while I can't name the bands Dan played tonight, I thoroughly enjoyed hearing the tracks Dan played and the work these band members have done outside of playing with Bob Dylan.
To begin, in commemoration of Tuesday's Mardi Gras, Jeff played music by the Neville Brothers and then played selections from live shows when the Grateful Dead and the Neville Brothers played together. I was at one of those shows, the first Grateful Dead show I ever attended, back on 12-31-1987. The Neville Brothers played that night (so did The Looters and Mason Williams). I think the Neville Brothers opened the show and I know they returned and helped close the show by playing along with the Grateful Dead. Jeff played some of those Dead/Neville Brothers tunes from that New Year's Eve show along with the two bands playing together on other dates.
Jeff then turned the Grateful Dead clock back to March 3, 1968 and the Grateful Dead's incredible and legendary free performance on a flat bed truck for the Haight Street Fair. Jeff was not only marking the 54th anniversary of this performance, but he gave special attention to Pigpen's playing and singing that day. I was especially tuned into Pigpen's bluesy, long, and I'd say sexy vocals on "Turn on Your Love Light".
As a coda, I'll write one other beautiful thing about this full and invigorating day: nothing that happened in Blood Simple and nothing I heard on Dan's show or on Jeff's gave me as much pleasure as the chicken dumplings dinner Debbie made this afternoon and that we shared with Diane for dinner.
The chicken was moist and flavorful. The chicken stock I made some time ago worked perfectly. The dumplings were nicely browned, perfectly prepared, and divine. Only my sense of Lenten self-discipline and my efforts to do all things in moderation stopped me from eating every leftover dumpling and all the chicken and vegetables left over in the Dutch oven when I finished eating two helpings of this most comforting and delicious dinner.
I can hardly wait to dive into these leftovers on Friday!
No comments:
Post a Comment