If I had a nickel for every cigarette your mom smoked, I'd be dead

[sovay]

Today has been very social, though not at all unpleasant. My brother's godparents are visiting from the Southwest, so we spent the afternoon with my family and then a sort of pre-Memorial Day dinner, which turned out surf-and-turf. There was way too much zucchini. There was not too much key lime pie. My three-year-old niece has discovered a pair of small stuffed animal rabbits which originally belonged to me and my brother—Bunnicula and Butterscotch—and is carrying them everywhere, even to dinner. She has decided that she wants a goat as a pet. (Suggestions that she ask for a pony instead were met with blank disdain.) I am no help to her parents in this argument. I think a goat in the family would be a great idea.

In the evening I met rushthatspeaks for a sold-out showing of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992) at the Brattle Theatre: I thought it was great. It's more overtly supernatural than the series overall—it's focused on the most overtly supernatural strand—but it's also decisively grounded by Sheryl Lee's performance, with Laura Palmer's very realistic anger, damage, and agency (it was not clear in the show that her final status was a choice rather than an inevitable consequence or a weird side effect of the manner of her death; the film offers her no good options, but she absolutely opts for the best of them, which makes it strangely difficult for me to classify the film as horror, even though content-wise I don't know what else it should be) interlocking across registers with the characters who live in the soapier layers of the plot. I was glad to see Harry Dean Stanton turn up in the supporting cast, because he feels existentially like someone who should inhabit a David Lynch universe. Now we just need to finish watching the remaining half of Season Two and figure out what to do about the third-season revival.

A later interlude of placidly watching candymaking videos by Public Displays of Confection with spatch was interrupted by Autolycus violently throwing up all over a box of hardcover Le Guin and Tanith Lee, but fortunately the box had a lid on it, the books have been transplanted to a high shelf, and a very shaken small cat was comforted after we emergency-mopped the floor. (There was much anxious purring. We reassured him that we know he does not throw up maliciously. He never looks like he enjoys it.)

Unless it gets a National Theatre-style broadcast, I don't have a hope of seeing the Crucible's Julius Caesar on account of it being in Sheffield and me being on the other side of an ocean, but it's being done with a diverse, gender-equal cast and I wish I could see it, because Zoë Waites has a hell of a lean and hungry look:



We are talking about seeing Jacques Tati's Playtime (1967) tomorrow. I haven't seen the movie since 2010, when it was also on film at the Brattle and I loved it. I should get to bed.

Comments

[cyphomandra]

I am rewatching Twin Peaks (the original) at the moment but I am only on episode two. It's like opening a time capsule - when I watched it the first time I'd just left home for university, living in another city with people I was just starting to know, and it's all tangled up in those memories now.

[sovay]

It's like opening a time capsule - when I watched it the first time I'd just left home for university, living in another city with people I was just starting to know, and it's all tangled up in those memories now.

I have books and movies and music that happens with. A lot of ghosts.

I'd never seen Twin Peaks before: it was one of the pieces of incredibly influential pop culture I'd totally missed, despite having seen multiple films by David Lynch and TV shows in direct descent like Gravity Falls. I started watching it a couple of years ago with rushthatspeaks and now we're catching up again.

[thawrecka]

I remember finding Playtime absolutely delightful.

[sovay]

I remember finding Playtime absolutely delightful.

I've liked everything I've seen by Tati, even his nearly last film Trafic (1971).

[osprey_archer]

Is....is that a genderswapped Julius Caesar? (I've gone over to the website and it looks like maybe partially.) THIS IS EVERYTHING I HAVE EVER WANTED IN MY LIFE. WHY MUST IT BE ACROSS AN OCEAN.

[sovay]

Is....is that a genderswapped Julius Caesar?

It is a partly genderswapped Julius Caesar! I wish I had a teleporter to lend you!

(There was a legendary all-female production at the Donmar Warehouse in 2012, starring Harriet Walter and Cush Jumbo. I minded being on the wrong side of the Atlantic from that one, too.)

[ethelmay]

Do my eyes deceive me, or does Zoë Waites somewhat resemble a younger Harriet Walter? Because I had already thought of that and then saw you mentioned HW.

Wait (no pun intended): I see someone else has had the same idea. From 1997, "Waites is much more able to involve us in the drama by grabbing our sympathies. She looks like a young Harriet Walter and in only her second Shakespearean role, her low voice and quiet self-confidence lend her an impressively relaxed quality which suggest a very bright future." https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/arts-review-likewise-variable-1292767.html

[sovay]

Do my eyes deceive me, or does Zoë Waites somewhat resemble a younger Harriet Walter?

Just for the data point: your eyes do not deceive you. I think the resemblance would be even stronger with shorter hair.

From 1997, "Waites is much more able to involve us in the drama by grabbing our sympathies. She looks like a young Harriet Walter and in only her second Shakespearean role, her low voice and quiet self-confidence lend her an impressively relaxed quality which suggest a very bright future.

Nice!

[ethelmay]

There was something else that looked familiar about her, and I finally figured out that her lower arms and hands look a whole lot like mine.

Also, re ZW with short hair: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRbcZQ-qIa2TAEKtDj_QeugW_pB-M8v0B7q4g6zY2phGC8X_4DviA

[sovay]

There was something else that looked familiar about her, and I finally figured out that her lower arms and hands look a whole lot like mine.

I will take your word for it. My mental image of you is a kylix with an owl on it.

Also, re ZW with short hair

Thanks!

[lauradi7dw]

I didn't know about their JC, but I saw the Henry IV in the same, um, prison (in a gimicky way, the ushers were all dressed to be guards, but that didn't add to the performance).
HW commenting
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2014/oct/15/harriet-walter-donmar-shakespeare-women-henry-iv-julius-caesar

[sovay]

I didn't know about their JC, but I saw the Henry IV in the same, um, prison

What did you think of it?

[lauradi7dw]

HW (and Henry, I guess) had a proportionally small part. It was the people I had never heard of that impressed me. I thought Falstaff was the best I've ever seen, in any context. Ashley McGuire played a Death Eater in one of the Potter movies and a midwife in Bridget Jones's Baby, but most of her non-theater roles are in things I am not familiar with. I can't say why I think she was the best - it's just my memory. Clare Dunne as Hal was good. Really, pretty much everybody was good, but as mentioned, I found the guards (who briefly stepped into the action, rather than just being ushers) a bit off.
I am glad I spent time searching around on youtube just now, because I found this (the cast, in a music video. The gray sweats etc were the costumes in the play) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5t1bzFY7cxI

[kore]

OH MY GOD I LOVE THAT MOVIE SO FUCKING MUCH. I am in the weird position of having loved Fire Walk but I really didn't like Twin Peaks much itself, so everyone being all nostalgic about the series and watching the reboot or whatever it is makes me feel out of step. But at least people are admitting Fire Walk is a GOOD movie now -- when it first came out it was just trashed, and I was really heartbroken. I think it sums up a lot of the themes in TP better than the whole series.

(where is my Laura Palmer icon)

[sovay]

I am in the weird position of having loved Fire Walk but I really didn't like Twin Peaks much itself, so everyone being all nostalgic about the series and watching the reboot or whatever it is makes me feel out of step.

I am really enjoying the original series, which I've been very slowly watching for the first time with rushthatspeaks.

But at least people are admitting Fire Walk is a GOOD movie now -- when it first came out it was just trashed, and I was really heartbroken.

I understand it being trashed by people unfamiliar with the series, because I don't see how it would make any sense without knowledge of the Laura Palmer arc of Twin Peaks; I don't understand it being trashed by fans of the series, because it really felt to me like a David Lynch movie that was also just a two-hour chunk of concentrated Twin Peaks. It doesn't have as much of the comedy of the show and by nature it's more narrowly focused, but it feels critical for understanding the story on more than the level of mere plot mechanics that we should get Laura's view of it. Otherwise she remains, despite flashbacks and persistence in the Red Room, a beautiful dead object. Fire Walk with Me is the moment in Laura—either Vera Caspary's 1943 novel or Otto Preminger's 1944 film of same—when the dead woman speaks for herself and returns (here only for the duration of the film) to life. Having said that, I now assume one was a huge influence on the other. It wouldn't have occurred to me during the series because Laura Palmer does so rarely speak and when she does it's generally things like "I feel like I know her, but sometimes my arms bend back." It seems pretty clear now.

[alexxkay]

As of episode 3.4, the new season is very much more like Fire Walk With Me than it is like the original show.

[sovay]

As of episode 3.4, the new season is very much more like Fire Walk With Me than it is like the original show.

Does this feel like a good thing?

[alexxkay]

Reply hazy?

The first season had an almost Aristotelian unity to it: every scene in some way revolved around the question "Who killed Laura Palmer?" Season two eventually resolved (in some senses) that question, then flailed about poorly for ~6 episodes, then regained focus around the conflict between Dale Cooper and Windom Earle (but too late to regain the viewership lost during the 'flail' period).

Season three may turn out to have a center, but it's not really apparent yet. Lynch is far more interested in symbols and moments than he is in exposition or clarity of plot. That said, many of the moments are great stuff. And there's enough cross-connection going on that I believe Lynch is going somewhere. Where is difficult to say, at this point.

I will say that Lynch is in no way interested in recaps; I would strongly disrecommend watching season three before finishing season two. (And FWwM, of course, but you've just seen that.)

[sovay]

then flailed about poorly for ~6 episodes, then regained focus around the conflict between Dale Cooper and Windom Earle (but too late to regain the viewership lost during the 'flail' period).

I have to say that I am quite enjoying the episodes betweeen arcs, since they contain among other things Denise Bryson, but I understand that other viewers may have tapped out in the absence of a continuing series mystery.

Season three may turn out to have a center, but it's not really apparent yet.

Interesting. Let me know how it progresses.

[alexxkay]

Denise did rock as a character. But I found that the "Cooper is accused of drug smuggling" plotline to actually have negative narrative tension. It so obviously would come to nothing that it felt (to me at least) like a complete waste of time.

(Also, I thought the "James goes to film noir land" plot was very poorly executed. In principle, it might have worked, but...)

[kore]

OMG, I hadn't thought of the Preminger movie!

[sovay]

OMG, I hadn't thought of the Preminger movie!

It came to me as I was typing! It feels right, though.

[alexxkay]

FWIW, back in the day, it was much discussed by usenet Peaks fans as being a possible source/allusion.

[sovay]

FWIW, back in the day, it was much discussed by usenet Peaks fans as being a possible source/allusion.

I'd be really shocked if there isn't a link. Is it the kind of thing David Lynch talks about, or does he just make surrealist non sequiturs if you try?

[alexxkay]

does he just make surrealist non sequiturs if you try?

Pretty much this. Like many of his works, the apparent non-sequiturs probably do have at least one intended meaning, but what that meaning is will be highly contested :-)

[dhampyresa]

BUT IS BRUTUS AN HONOURABLE MAN?

[sovay]

BUT IS BRUTUS AN HONOURABLE MAN?

SO ARE THEY ALL, ALL HONOURABLE MEN I mean, he looks pretty good to me:

[lauradi7dw]

From just this still, I'd say that it's the best Samuel West has every looked (personal opinion)

[dhampyresa]

But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is a handsome man man.

[heliopausa]

I so often read reviews of Shakespeare in distant places with sad longing. There's been a couple of recent Twelfth Nights in the UK I'd love to have seen - partly because Twelfth Night is such an excruciating play.

[sovay]

I so often read reviews of Shakespeare in distant places with sad longing.

Everyone I know needs a teleporter, is what I think this comes down to.

There's been a couple of recent Twelfth Nights in the UK I'd love to have seen - partly because Twelfth Night is such an excruciating play.

What's most important for you in a good production of Twelfth Night?

[heliopausa]

Malvolio. The ending is so unresolved, with his exiting hurt, damaged and planning revenge, and the cruelty just laughed at by the rest of people on stage. Yes, he disparaged Feste, but the savagery is way disproportionate to that. :(

[sovay]

Malvolio. The ending is so unresolved, with his exiting hurt, damaged and planning revenge, and the cruelty just laughed at by the rest of people on stage.

I agree that any production that doesn't acknowledge his hurt is going to lose me. I like how the character is handled in the 1996 film adaptation by Trevor Nunn: the clowns in that version are not the best due to miscasting or misdirection, but Nigel Hawthorne as Malvolio is nearly definitive for me. (I have written a little about him, though mostly in context of disagreeing with another retelling.) I can also recommend Stephen Fry in the Globe Theatre's all-male production from 2012; while managing a very different interpretaton of the character, he also delivered the balance I want from Twelfth Night, where Malvolio is enough of a jackass that at first the gulling is funny and enough of a person that very soon it really hurts. I can talk more about either of these if you would like—I'm trying to think of versions that don't require a teleporter to share. Onstage I seen two very different Twelfth Nights, one that really played up the sea and the music and therefore generally worked for me (their Malvolio was all right), another that had great clowns but kind of failed everywhere else (their Malvolio was a problem).

[heliopausa]

Thanks for this - it sent me off to check out what the internet had available on both productions, and also to your 2013 post, and set me wrestling (one more time) with the play, or the ideas in the play.
Yes, certainly the gulling of Malvolio hurts - horribly. Part of what I hate is that Feste cannot forgive words, but that Malvolio seems called on to forgive really malicious, damaging actions.
But then Feste is one who said that his enemies tell him the truth about himself, and it is true, as Malvolio said, that if no-one laughs at a clown, he's gagged, and truly - who's laughing at the end of the play? No-one.

[sovay]

But then Feste is one who said that his enemies tell him the truth about himself, and it is true, as Malvolio said, that if no-one laughs at a clown, he's gagged, and truly - who's laughing at the end of the play? No-one.

That's very well observed.

I think Malvolio is the hardest part of the play to reconcile in a modern performance. The genderbending has become less theatrical and more natural; laughing at even an antagonist for being in love—for being vulnerable, for being human—has become more troubling. If he's anything other than two-dimensional, it's cruel, and if he's two-dimensional, the play is much less interesting. (I just flashed on the BBC's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2015): "Do not laugh at me, please. It is cruel to laugh." Eddie Marsan would make a good Malvolio.) It's almost enough to shift it from a straight comedy to a problem play. Most of the productions I've seen tend to take the gulling in two stages, which I think works: the false letter can be part of the general madcap comedy, but the madhouse is a bridge too far.

[brigdh]

There was not too much key lime pie.
I think there is no such thing as too much key lime pie.

I saw the Donmar's gender-swapped Julius Caesar! They didn't actually do much with the gender-swapping, or the prison setting, except for one scene: Caesar's death. Translating that into a stabbing with shanks in the midst of a prison riot was fantastic.

Despite the lack of explicit gender theory or gender play or anything really, all of the actors were excellent, and I'm very happy they got a chance to perform roles that would otherwise not have been open to them.

[sovay]

I think there is no such thing as too much key lime pie.

I do not really think I can disagree with you.

I saw the Donmar's gender-swapped Julius Caesar!

Lucky! (I imprinted on Harriet Walter as Harriet Vane, as I suspect did most of the internet, and have been watching her wherever I can get her since.)

Caesar's death. Translating that into a stabbing with shanks in the midst of a prison riot was fantastic.

That sounds fantastic. I wonder if the rest of the production grew around it.

Despite the lack of explicit gender theory or gender play or anything really, all of the actors were excellent, and I'm very happy they got a chance to perform roles that would otherwise not have been open to them.

Agreed. I'm in favor of a lot of cross-casting for this reason: it doesn't need to be doing anything intellectually fancier than giving everyone the chance to play the parts.