Guy Maddin: C/D

Sorry. Remind me of some titles?

short films: The Heart of the World, The Dead Father

IMDB entry: http://us.imdb.com/Name?Maddin,+Guy

"Careful" is maybe a good place to start.

I fell asleep during "Archangel" but that's not a criticism.

I'm going to see his newest this weekend, a filmed ballet of the Dracula story (which promises to be much better than the description sounds).

So: classic.

Watched Heart of the World for about the millionth time last night - still utterly mindblowing. And finally watched Gimli Hospital with Maddin's commentary track, which is great - especially the part about immigrant Icelanders abandoning their children in favor of taking their books overseas, because they were that devoted to literacy. And it's interesting that Maddin has an obvious love for silent films, but he is also very critical of certain aspects; he wanted to express the "hate" of his love/hate relationship with early 1900s film by putting in that (very questionable) blackface minstrel. Maddin said that he was bracing for some harsh criticism, but it never came. And also, Maddin explains that he had to enlist 13/14 year old girls for the nurse roles; later on, there's a scene where one young woman removes her dress, and then Maddin says immediately, "SHE'S 18!!".

Interesting about the love/hate thing...where does the hate come from? Is it the gender politics (and politics in general) of many silent movies that bothers him?

This film like some of his others doesn't approximate a silent film so much as it is a evocation of the experience of watching silent films in the late 20th/early 21st century. Between the "missing frames," "degraded" footage and the hallucinatory montage that hovers on edge of incomprehensibility....

If you want to see a dracula movie that authentically and willfully hovers on the edge of incomprehensibility (and is stunning and beautiful to boot), see Dreyer's Vampyr. I actually had an entire dream the other night in which I tried to piece together its plot! And I hadn't actually seen it for several years!

In that particular example, he was making a jab at the sometimes blatant racism in early 1900s film - which of course could backfire on him if people would confuse "racism" with "a statement about racism". In any case, it's really not easy to watch that scene. I'm not really sure Maddin is too concerned with gender politics, but I'd like to hear your thoughts.

http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/pfa_programs/guy_maddin/index.html

All of his films (including a new one that Casuistry has seen, I think) and some obscure personal favorites. Please add comment!

- 7th heaven
- la ronde
- the road to glory

7:50 La Ronde
Introduced by Guy Maddin. An all-star French cast in Max Ophuls's elegant romantic roundelay, “a wistful tribute to syphilis.”—Guy Maddin

Tales from the Gimli Hospital is fun, too, and not only because I know one of the people who starred in it. (I also had an insane crush on her but that's another story.)

Brand Upon The Brain flew off the rails about 15 minutes in. I really wanted to like it and I dug the live orchestra and sound foley, but it fails as a movie. It would have been great as a half-hour long piece, but it was so obviously padded out with reused footage and gratuitous boobage and wangage that I went through several layers of "hurry up and get to the point where I know what's going to happen is going to happen."

Pluses: the foley people and Barbara Steele as the narrator.

Sorry, I find the boobage and assage essential to contemporary b&w "silents." It might be 15 mins too long, but Cowards Bend the Knee was slighter.

how "reused" footage?

how "reused" footage?

Just a lot a repeated shots. Guy strumming the reeds. Evil mom's eye. I was ready to shout "FUCK. WE GET IT ALREADY"

It's called "montage," you might wanna see it in some '20s films.

It's finally playing near Boston at the end of the month, so I am going to see this.

Barbara Steele as the narrator, colour me JEALOUS

It's called "montage," you might wanna see it in some '20s films.

I know what it is. I just don't like it when it's used to pad a half-hour movie out to 90 minutes.

OK, do I go see the live version narrated by Stephen Malkmus, Calvin Johnson, or Karen Black.

I'm leaning towards Calvin, since I think he would be funniest.

oooh toughie - Cal's probably a safe choice

Calvin seems most Maddinesque of the 3.

splain me??

is this brand?

Any word on this coming to the UK?

(And, out of that three, I'd go for Karen Black. I can't imagine who Maddin would get for a British show. Alan Bennet? Mark E. Smith? Fenella Fielding?)

Yes, Brand is finally coming in live format to Portland.

The Karen Black showing is explicitly part of the Gay Etc. Film Fest. Which makes it a bit less tempting.

As long as the foley artists are performing live, I don't think the Narrator matters all that much.

i would defly go to the karen black.

I am glad no one is pro-Malkmus.

I'll third Black.

I'm seeing My Winnipeg this weekend, followed hours later by the Kids in the Hall tour! Will I be Canadian by Monday morning?

Ann Savage, the femme fatale of Detour, plays 'Mother'!!

http://www.tribecafilmfestival.org/filmguide/16735781.html

my winnipeg is amazing.

favourite maddin for sure. one of the highlights of tiff 07 in a big way. i hope you like it.

Perhaps, when I am in Toronto, I will not have to wait forever to see new Maddin films.

my faves are still Heart of World & Saddest Music, but this is mostly super.

I ADORE My Winnipeg. Enjoy!

uh, you already saw it. never mind.

I've only seen Saddest Music in the World but love love loved it and am curious to see his next

this isn't actually his next, but you should see it if you get the chance. his best imo.

yeah, prob. my favorite, too...super funny and quirky, as usual, but from what i've seen, MW features his best and most vivid imagery. also really touching. I really liked how it played with truth and fiction. What was it like to see it w/ narration?

awesome but as far as i could tell, actually as far as he specifically said, the narration was the exact same script as the movie.

yeah, he's narrating it live tonight at the Tribeca fest. I'm determined not to research which of the MW events are fictional (aside from the obvious ones).

interview:

http://www.villagevoice.com/film/0817,talking-with-winnipeg-s-remarkably-well-adjusted-guy-maddin,422564,20.html

Just emerging from a no-movie funk and finally watched half of Cowards last night. I wish I had been paying attention and had gotten ticket for My Winnipeg. Speaking of Ann Savage, there is a chapter on her in the excellent but out-of-print Dark City Dames, although I haven't actually read that chapter, mostly read the one about Jane Greer and Rudy Vallee and Howard Hughes.

apparently Ann used to tour with her personal print of Detour.

My Winnipeg opens at IFC Center on 6/13.

Brand on Criterion next week... interview:

http://www.greencine.com/central/guymaddin/mywinnipeg

Once you drive out of Winnipeg, it's eight hours to Minneapolis or six hours to Regina which is just another Winnipeg. And so you're far from the places. Other artists from Winnipeg, more successful ones, often say the same thing. That unlike big cities, where there are lots of things to do and warmer weather, we don't talk our best ideas out into the cafe night air. You're stuck inside, and there's nothing to do but actually doing your stuff....

The 20s just looked cool. They still look cool to this day. It's one of the most durable decades in fashion terms and architectural design terms. There are some others that give it a good run for its money, but it's never gone completely away like some decades do now and then. So I always liked it but I never fell fully in love with 20s cinema until I started making movies myself, and I realized that when I'm putting together movies I tend to think of all books and movies as, more or less, fairy tales, the way all food tastes more or less like chicken. Everything is kinda like, relatively a fairy tale, or not so much. So my way into understanding something was to see something as a fairy tale. To be able to recognize allegories I would have to scrape away all the details, and see some archetypes briefly and see the way they related to each other. When I stripped away details and saw the way major characters were relating to each other, often I saw patterns that were repeated from Bible stories or fairy tales and things like that. When I'm constructing my own scripts I tend to do it that way. That enables you to get away with stylized performances. As a matter of fact, they're better when they're stylized. You don't want naturalism. Once you're stylizing you can level the playing field for a cast that may include really great actors and really not-so-great actors. I'm a bit of a product of natural selection. I've survived as a filmmaker because I kept adapting, using the features, the fins and feathers that stood me the best chance of surviving the environment in which I was working.

funny, i just wrote a thing about that!

I guess it's not up yet?

Glad you liked Baghead though!

as in, just wrote it 5 minutes ago!

the way all food tastes more or less like chicken

maybe this is why I couldn't get through saddest music. guy's got no taste!

Now My Winnipeg has come to Portland. Pfeh!

The Brand! Criterion DVD has six narrator tracks:

http://www.criterion.com/asp/release.asp?id=440

The forks.

The lap.

the cloven tofu.

Tempting.

'40s Femme Fatale Star Ann Savage Dies at 87
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Ann Savage, who earned a cult following as a femme fatale in such 1940s pulp-fiction movies as ''Detour,'' has died at 87.

The actress died in her sleep at a nursing home on Christmas Day from complications following a series of strokes, said her manager, Kent Adamson.

Her Hollywood career had largely been over since the mid-1950s, but she had a resurgence over the past year with a starring role in Canadian cult filmmaker Guy Maddin's ''My Winnipeg.''

Starting with her 1943 debut in the crime story ''One Dangerous Night,'' Savage made more than 30 films through the 1950s, including Westerns (''Saddles and Sagebrush,'' ''Satan's Cradle''), musicals (''Dancing in Manhattan,'' ''Ever Since Venus'') and wartime tales (''Passport to Suez,'' ''Two-Man Submarine'').

Savage was best-known for director Edgar G. Ulmer's 1945 B-movie ''Detour,'' in which she played a woman ruthlessly blackmailing a stranger, played by Tom Neal.

''It's actually a showcase role,'' Adamson said. ''Neal and Savage really reversed the traditional male-female roles of the time. She's vicious and predatory. She's been called a harpy from hell, and in the film, too, she's very sexually aggressive, and he's very, very passive. It's very unusual for a '40s film to have a woman come on that strong.''

Decades later, ''Detour'' and Savage gained a cult audience on television and home video.

Adamson said Maddin had been a longtime fan of ''Detour.'' Maddin cast Savage to play his mother in ''My Winnipeg,'' a combination of documentary, drama and personal memoir about his native city in Manitoba.

Savage did some television in the 1950s, including ''Death Valley Days'' and ''The Ford Television Theatre,'' then left Hollywood for New York City, where she appeared in commercials and industrial films.

In 1986, Savage returned to acting with an appearance in ''Fire With Fire,'' a drama whose cast included Virginia Madsen and D.B. Sweeney.

http://edendale.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341bff3653ef010536a129d4970c-pi

"(H)e's like Mike Todd, Jean (Cocteau) and Jacques Tati all rolled into one!"

http://edendale.typepad.com/weblog/2008/12/ann-savage-guy-maddins-mother-in-my-winnipeg-dies.html

was gonna start a thread, r.i.p.

RIP

I'm thinking My Winnipeg might be one of my favourite films of the decade.

me too

Saddest Music & Heart of the World are two of mine.

So many people I love and respect like this guy's films and I cannot stand them. Watched My Winnipeg last night and it started ok but really started to grate after a while. Too wacky (or the wrong kind of wacky, I LIKE wacky). whyyyyy

if it was wacky i'd have hated it tbh

Quite like his writing though

(xp)

I went on a date to a Guy Maddin film once (Brand upon the Brain!) and it was quite nice, but then I watched Dracula on DVD a few months later and zzzzzzzzzzz. I can see how it could be construed as wacky. It kind of is; it's like a more "sophisticated" Tarantino or something.

'my winnipeg' and maybe 'heart of the world' aside i don't really care for him

it's like a more "sophisticated" Tarantino or something

I'm going to forget I read this!

sophisticated is completely not the right word, but I mean come on, it is highly-stylized IN YOU FACE pastiche of bygone eras.

Tarantino's shit the last 12 years is not elegant enough to be termed pastiche.

xpost: I think more than anything it's a dude making stuff he wants to, and in my opinion you may very well be mistaking a sort of DIY passion for a particular era/style with a self-conscious throwing it in your face (Tarrantino, of course, being a perfect example of that crossing that line to the point of "this fucking guy"ness). It may not be sophisticated, but highly stylized pastiche for pastiche's sake, I disagree.

I think a big part of it is also the really low budget/roughness aspect of it, which contributes so much to the style, also.

otm.

Also, especially in the case of My Winnipeg, it is used for a specific purpose (the air of legend, period evocation, as well as juxtaposition with the video of the somewhat drab, modern-day city). I like Tarantino, but I don't think he's ever used his genre call-backs in such an elegant and meaningful way.

tarantino's stuff is more interesting than pastiche.

but so is maddin's.

it's not JUST pastiche.

neither of them are.

the other guy is less than pastiche.

gay pr0n

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPGT0wV-WRY

Keyhole

http://mubi.com/notebook/posts/toronto-2011-guy-maddins-keyhole

"'This penis is dusty,' a character notes matter-of-factly"

There's been a blog-a-thon going on all week.

I had no idea he was straight.

US openings in April

http://www.keyholemovie.com/

I'm glad I have 10 days and a screener to figure this one out.

Did not know he was married to Kim Morgan.

yeah, saw her with him at post-screening reception tonight.

oh, so you saw it tonight? initial thoughts beyond "need to figure it out"?

definitely he tried to change the tone up -- more "serious" in a way, fewer "joy buzzers" as he calls them (tho I don't know what else you'd call a dildo coming outta the baseboard or a bike-powered electric chair). Cinematherapy still; his fastest montages ever.

He also taked about this project:

http://sunsetgun.typepad.com/sunsetgun/2012/02/over-eighty-percent-of-silent-films-are-lost-ive-always-considered-a-lost-film-as-a-narrative-with-no-known-resting-fi.html

thats rad

so happy he exists

switched off 'keyhole' a half hour in.

i appreciate what GM's doing on some level but i don't actually like watching his films that much

watched keyhole on netflix last night. understand the reservations, cuz much of it is very bad (or "bad" perhaps, hard to tell), but i wound up rather enjoying it. the wacky tone and bad jokes that loom so large at the outset eventually give way to something creepier and more interesting. i'd made the decision in advance to watch it all the way through without checking the passage of time, and that definitely helped get me through the rough spots.

went and hung out on the set of this today. it was really great. will be coming to nyc next year, morbs, you have to go check it out.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/366364/Screenshots/8u93.png

well sure

cool!

another interview, eh

http://ca.blouinartinfo.com/node/929217/home/performing-arts/Guy-Maddin-Channels-the-Spirit-of-the-Silent-Film-Era

Really like his essay for I Married a Witch: http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/2924-i-married-a-witch-it-s-such-an-ancient-pitch

new one looks amazing! title change from Seances, per s1ocki above?

https://www.fandor.com/keyframe/daily-sundance-berlin-2015-guy-maddins-the-forbidden-room

sounds great

wow! cool!

no wait, Seances is a diff film, missed that in first graf

there are vampire bananas in this

http://grantland.com/hollywood-prospectus/dreaming-bigger-cracking-the-forbidden-room-guy-maddins-inception-like-genre-explosion/

Kino Lorber to release in the fall

Sparks! excited

fuck fall! want it now >:[

Interview with GM and co-director Evan Johnson:

Fragoso: Have you both seen The Grand Budapest Hotel?

Johnson: Yep.

Maddin: When I first heard of ‘The Grand Budapest,’ I was worried.

Johnson: When we first saw it we were worried and a little horrified, because it begins nested. Right off the bat.

Maddin: (Laughs.) And I thought holy shit, ‘That fucker! That fucker Wes Anderson!’ We had been working on this for years and this fucker who already has a fan-base of hundreds of millions of people—and a coffee table book that’s through the roof….

But I only said ‘fuck Wes Anderson’ because I was scared he made the movie that we just finished ruining our lives making. When I went to see it, obviously, we were sloppy and all over the god damn place and he’s so formally pure.

Fragoso: Your lives are ruined?

Johnson: No, no. Not at all. We’re fine.

Maddin: No, not at all. I’m just used to taking regular rests, and I had to work hard to make this movie. So my routine was destroyed.

Johnson: It was financially difficult.

Maddin: Yeah and we went into overtime making this thing, so the money ran out a long time ago. So we’re struggling financially, but we’ll be okay.

Fragoso: It’s good to know you two won’t be homeless.

Maddin: It’s a grand tradition of filmmakers to go broke. Douglas Sirk was a bean farmer halfway through his career for awhile.

Fragoso: So that’s your next move.

Johnson: We’re doing it.

Maddin: We are farming beans.

https://www.fandor.com/keyframe/maddin-johnson

John Ashbery & GM, coming to a NYC gallery this month

http://www.tibordenagy.com/exhibitions/john-ashbery-and-guy-maddin/

it's got movie stars

<iframe src='http://www.kinolorber.com/trailer_embed.php?id=2056' height='276' width='455' frameborder='0'></iframe>

http://www.kinolorber.com/film.php?id=2056

that is

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwKvz-wA3I0

and it's 130 minutes long! Slant rave:

http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/the-forbidden-room

It definitely feels very very long. Didn't much care for it, but it has some good scenes.

he also has this whatzit short (playing on a loop at NYFF, free, the next 2 days)

http://www.filmlinc.org/nyff2015/films/bring-me-the-head-of-tim-horton/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lu45sAc6Jtc

not in my top 5 GM either, but very astonishingly busy.

this guy is so boring :(

Udo!

Maddin's one of those guys where I watch his stuff and am baffled at how it's done

i guess i just find a lot of his stuff so strenuously "wacky" and totally lacking in actual fun. "heart of the world" is cool, though.

also Jacques Nolot and Geraldine Chaplin (manically cracking a whip) show up

i laughed aloud at least 6-8x, incl at half a joke about a woman in a bathtub.

did you guys see it in 3d/should I? I've hated most 3d films I've seen

i laughed aloud at least 6-8x, incl at half a joke about a woman in a bathtub.

― skateboards are the new combover (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, October 21, 2015 3:04 PM (6 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I LOLd hard at the woman in a bathtub joke, not gonna lie.

I liked the movie quite a bit, though it has less resonance than My Winnipeg. I feel like complaining about the lack of resolution to the plot is miles away from the point, but damned if I didn't start to care about what was gonna happen to those guys in the sub.

In “The Green Fog — A San Francisco Fantasia,” commissioned by San Francisco Film Society and set to close the San Francisco International Film Festival’s 60th edition on April 16, Maddin and co-directors Evan and Galen Johnson explore what Maddin has called “a rhapsody” on the Hitchcock movie. Set to an original score by composer Jacob Garchik that will be performed live by the San Francisco-based Kronos Quartet, the 63-minute “The Green Fog” reimagines the movie through an assemblage of old studio movies and TV shows.

http://www.indiewire.com/2017/04/vertigo-remake-guy-madden-the-green-fog-interview-1201805968/

https://www.fandor.com/keyframe/guy-maddins-green-fog

interview w/ Maddin and his 2 collaborators on Green Fog, which has opened in NYC

https://thefilmstage.com/features/guy-maddin-on-reinventing-vertigo-with-the-green-fog-male-gaze-and-the-bressonian-qualities-of-chuck-norris/

http://www.ifccenter.com/films/the-green-fog/

This was fine, but had way more Chuck Norris and "McMillan and Wife" than I anticipated.

how did I miss this last year? ... oh yeah, I'm always working 70+ hour weeks when the SF Film Festival is going on

I'll leave you for the night on an upbeat note! Here's the best scene of 2018: the sequence in Guy Maddin's The Green Fog in which a 'stache-less Chuck Norris sits in for the stretch of Vertigo where Scottie deals with the "death" of "Madeleine" https://t.co/ZkwlpF1tm7

— Matt Prigge (@mattprigge) January 28, 2019

Just saw The Green Fog at Glasgow Short Film Festival and absolutely loved it. It's bewildering and completely hilarious - I cried with laughter at a few points. I've never actually seen Vertigo, but that turned out not to hamper my enjoyment at all.

Mark McKinney as Chester Kent in The Saddest Music in the World looks totally like Preston Sturges.

And Isabella Rossellini's performance seems to be channelling both her mom and Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca.

Although "Cast of" video says her character is tribute to Lon Chaney.

And Mark McKinney made own decision to grow a mustache and "sew a merkin on his forehead."

Every one of these instrumentalists was thrilled to be a part of Maddin's delightful jape.

In just the nick of time Maria's scenes are completed, and she is duly whisked away to the aeroporto.

But young Maddin is convinced the colder the actors are, the more piquant their histrionics.

Obviously the Vaseline is a big element, we've used barrels of it on this film.

I don't use standard Vaseline, I use Lip Therapy Vaseline.

Like a rail-riding hobo, another film shoot has come and gone.

Watching this carefully keep seeing things I want to assume are references to other films:
when Roderick/Ross McMillan shows Fyodor/David Fox the photo of his wife reminds me a scene in The Shop Around the Corner, when Felix Bressart recognizes Margaret Sullavan and avoids telling Henry Fonda, or when Fyodor makes his speech before his contest performance he says "raging ocean" just like Jack Benny saying "outrageous fortune" in To Be or Not to Be.

Or Isabella's wig slip being reminiscent of Blue Velvet.

DO U SEE?

new:

Stump the Guesser

(19 minutes)

https://www.instagram.com/p/B7WGvBEAhSt/

Most of these streaming on the Criterion Channel right now.

But not all. Don't see The Heart of the World for one.

So The Green Fog rolled in last night and totally hit the spot.

How can I see some of Maddin’s most recent shorts? I live in the US.

Thought this would be an RIP Louis Negin revive.

Saw Rumours yesterday, enjoyed it. As political satire goes it’s hardly subtle but it sustains its one-joke premise and builds it into something that I thought was pretty effective.

Cool. Hopefully will see in a few days

I endorse Rumours, the feel good movie about masturbating Iron Age bog men of the fall.

The masturbating bog men are great but honestly my favorite moment was all of them reciting the 1973 provisional statement from heart.

Laughed out loud a few times

Once at ”break into down into smaller parts”

And then at Ever wilder speculation about what “exotic language” Celestine was speaking

lol yes

I gotta say, I hated this. A couple of laffs but not funny enough; the point was clear but not vicious enough. Draggy.

I like it fine but often kept forgetting who directed it.