Volume 18 - Inside Llewyn Davis and the Fractured Folk Tale

It's been a long time since the ol' Double Feature Picture show had something new for y'all, and I'd love to tell you I have a super exciting and cool reason for that. The truth of the matter is, well, this time of year always makes me cranky and reminds me of death. And when I'm not thinking about my real world work - which, thankfully(?), takes up a lot of my time, that's what I've been thinking about lately. And no, it's not the cool kind of death, like we see in Friday the 13th movies or other films of their ilk. It's the kind of death and sadness that's inevitably coming for us all and ready to send our lives into turmoil at any given moment.

So, that's a cool story, right?  Sorry, I don't want to think about it either. It's just who I am.

The good thing about movies is that there's a movie for every feeling, and one day while I was angry at how cold and dreary and threatening the world around me was I started to think about a movie where the lead character feels the same way. It's one of my favorite movies of the last decade, and I was inspired to stop being stuck in my own head and to talk about it here.  It took me a while to make sense of everything, and I can't promise what follows will make sense or be fun to read, but I hope you'll take a trip into this film's world with me and see where this double feature ends up. It might not be a fun trip, but life isn't always a fun trip either.

Inside Llewyn Davis

2013, Directed by Joel & Ethan Coen

We meet Llewyn Davis, played by Oscar Isaac, on a night where he's playing folk music in a dark New York City club. The year is 1961, the song is "Hang Me, Oh Hang Me" - a pretty depressing tune that asks just what the title implies - and the singer's body language is enough to make us assume he's either half asleep or entirely defeated. The venue is dark enough that we can't see the faces of the small crowd gathered around him, and if you weren't looking closely you might assume he's playing to a bunch of mannequins. Llewyn is doing the best he can, he just doesn't seem to be connecting to his audience. The night ends on a worse note for Llewyn, with a man he doesn't know confronting him in the alley behind the bar and, for reasons we don't yet understand, handing the emotionally distraught singer a physical beating. 

It would be nice to think that this is just a bad night in the life of the man, who we can already tell is very good at what he does, but the rest of Joel & Ethan Coen's film confirms a simple truth - life is not going very well for Llewyn Davis. He's homeless, the woman he's closest to (Carey Mulligan) has moved on and become vicious toward him, and the winter that fills the world around him seems cruel and unyielding. We learn early in the week we spend with Llewyn that he was once part of a successful folk duo and that his partner has died, with Llewyn later revealing in a moment of frustration that this partner committed suicide by jumping off the George Washington Bridge. We don't meet his band mate, only hearing others talk about "Mikey" in the past tense to Llewyn, and as we watch Llewyn stumble through a series of failures at times we lose focus on this part of his story.

Another thing that is repeatedly lost throughout the story is a cat. Llewyn, after spending the night on a couch at his friends' apartment, accidentally releases their pet cat into the city as he closes the locked door apartment door behind them. The cat becomes Llewyn's off-and-on traveling companion throughout the film, even riding along with him as he hitches a ride to Chicago to meet a producer that might be able to give him a paying gig. The ride to Chicago - shared with a rude jazz musician (Coen favorite John Goodman) and his gruff valet (Garrett Hedlund) - tests Llewyn's patience greatly. Llewyn goes from being quiet and disinterested early in the trip to lashing out in anger when pushed too far, and at this point in the film we've grown accustomed to seeing him react to stressors and questions in an abrupt, angry manner. We build up sympathy for the performer and the man as he moves from place to place, but what follows at the end of his trip is the film's most heartbreaking scene.

Llewyn gets a chance to meet with club owner & potential manager Bud Grossman (F. Murray Abraham), and is dejected to find that the man he's interviewing with did not receive the copy of his album, which shares its title with the film, that his agent sent ahead of him. Grossman decides that he will still give Llewyn a chance to perform for him - finally, the film gives Llewyn a break! - directly instructing him to "play something from Inside Llewyn Davis."

We know where Llewyn is mentally at this point. He's been insulted, beaten, and defeated for several days, and we can tell by his relationships with others that this is not a new trend. We've seen him lash out, we've seen him assume other people aren't as good as him, and we've seen him make mistakes - like turning down the chance at royalties on a comedy tune ("Please Mr. Kennedy," on which Isaac teams with co-stars Justin Timberlake and Adam Driver for the film's most humorous scene) because he needed cash in the moment. It's clear that Llewyn is committed to what he's doing, and it's obvious that he's really good at what he does. The issue, again, is that he's not connecting with anyone right now. 

Llewyn pulls out his guitar in the quiet club, sits down in front of Mr. Grossman, and plays and sings his heart out. The song he chooses is "The Death of Queen Jane," a variation of an old English ballad, and - as you might have guessed from the title - it's not the most uplifting choice. The song tells a fictionalized account of a Queen who begs for help to save her child during a difficult labor and, after being rebuked by her nurses and her King, dies during childbirth. Llewyn performs beautifully; we can hear the pain he's been through in every note. He belts out the final notes with his guitar silent, letting all of the emotion that's been trapped inside him, and waits a long moment for the first impression that he's made on Grossman.

Finally, the listener speaks.

"I don't see a lot of money here."

Anyone who's had a job interview knows that macabre tales about death aren't usually the best first impression, and it might be easy for viewers to wonder why the heck Llewyn would make that choice. But for Llewyn, this song is personal. He feels like he can't get help, he feels like the world is closing in on him, and he knows that if something doesn't change soon he's going to be gone and the music is going to be all he leaves behind. He's too proud for any of that. Llewyn and Grossman have a brief conversation, in which Llewyn is given a series of suggestions about doing more to connect with people including "stay out of the sun" and, most crushingly, getting back together with his partner. Llewyn is too far gone to tell Mr. Grossman why that's not an option at this point, he simply thanks him for his time and moves on. He's just given a beautiful performance that he put all of his energy into, he doesn't have the strength to talk about it anymore.

Despite everything that has gone wrong in his life and career, Llewyn continues to walk toward his next opportunity. The viewer might wonder if Llewyn still believes life has any value after a series of misfortunes and that's where his costar - the cat - comes back into play. No matter what is going on and how distant he seems from everyone else in his world, he keeps looking out for the cat that continues to get away from him. This simple act - trying to get the cat home safely - tells us a lot about where Llewyn is at. He wants to make things right and to be accepted, he just keeps getting knocked down as he tries.

Llewyn's first musical performance in the film makes him appear to be already worn out, and his performance for Bud Grossman pushes him closer to defeat. But when we get to his final performance of the film, an expanded version of the opening scene, we know more about the man.
After a full week of defeat and failure, we understand how little he has to show for his effort. The Coens frame the performance differently this time around and offer us a close up of the singer's face after the final note, so we see him wipe his nose and can see that his eyes are holding back tears. We've known for a while that the music is all he has, but here we can really see how much it means to him. He gets the same muted applause we saw in the opening scene as he jokes "You've probably heard that one before; 'cause it was never new and it never gets old and it's a folk song."

Then we see the part of his performance that was omitted from the opening scene. Llewyn turns back to the microphone and adds "Alright, one more before I go."

The song that follows, "Fare Thee Well," is one we partially heard earlier in the film; one that was abruptly cut short by another of his frustrated outbursts. His cat owning friends, the Gorfeins, ask him to play for them at dinner - Mrs. Gorfein even rebukes Llewyn's initial refusal by saying "I thought singing was a joyous expression of the soul?" - and the dejected singer does his best to belt out the tune before Mrs. Gorfein chimes in singing Mike's part, sending Llewyn over the edge. It's the angriest we see Llewyn throughout the film, and it's the moment we most understand how frustrated he is.

Now, safe from interruption on stage, Llewyn hurls himself into another performance of the song. While most of his performances in the film have been beautiful, this is the one that soars. What he's doing is far from being a joyous expression of the soul, what he's doing is a release of all the depression and loss that have been trapped inside. In this moment, Llewyn is done letting the troubles of the world, including the grief he feels after losing his partner, affect him. He is lost in the song, and his voice soars. I get goosebumps every time I watch Isaac perform this scene - which includes at least a dozen viewings of the scene in the last week - because it's a beautiful picture of a man who knows life is not going to take it easy on him; a man who is expressing himself and escaping the world in the only way he can.

Llewyn's moment might be short-lived - the performer that begins to sing after he leaves the stage appears to be a young Bob Dylan, singing a similarly themed song entitled "Fare The Well" - but it's impossible to miss how much being able to perform this song meant to Llewyn as a form of release. What follows is the second half of the opening scene, including the beating in the alley, but even in that moment we see Lllewyn differently than we did the first time around.

Llewyn isn't directly confronting his feelings about the world, but he's dealing with things the way he can. The people in Llewyn's life often think he's lost, and we can understand their reactions to seeing part of his life and part of his career. But we've spent the whole week with Llewyn Davis, and we can see things more clearly than we could during his first performance. We see that he's fighting to live through whatever the world throws at him, and that it's his music that's helping him deal with all the grief and loss in his life.

In short, we see that the heart of a survivor lives inside Llewyn Davis.

(One last note - I freakin' love this cat. Isaac gives one of my favorite performances ever here. And the cat, in true cat fashion, just looks at him like "Fuck you, I'm stealing all these scenes." And he does. You go, cat.)

I obviously wanted to say a lot about Inside Llewyn Davis (if you've read this far you must be sick of it by now), and when it became time to pick a double feature partner my mood changed quite a bit. Like Llewyn choosing "The Death of Queen Jane," the first impression I'm offering for this double feature might come off as a little morbid for some people.

• We'll start with the obvious here - music is the heart of this movie. 
• Considering the mood I've been in, the first instinct I had was to make this double feature about grief and loss. I thought about discussing a lot of my favorite dramatic films that make me feel the same emotions that Inside Llewyn Davis does.
• But then I stopped and thought about how I felt while writing about Inside Llewyn Davis. And that's when I started to realize that while I was already feeling down about life - I was also working myself into a deeper emotional frenzy by focusing entirely on the topic of grief and loss. And that's when I started to realize that I couldn't keep going in that direction and create a double feature that I - let alone anyone else - would really enjoy watching if I didn't shake things up a little.

Based on those simple factors, I did what the proverbs told me to do and checked myself before I wrecked myself. Well, Llewyn wrecked me a little - but it was a good wrecking. Still, it's a wrecking that needs to be medicated - and we all know what more traditional proverbs say is the best medicine.

A Mighty Wind

2003, Directed by Christopher Guest

A Mighty Wind is another film about folk music that's set in New York City in the wake of a death in the folk music world, and if that makes it sound like an ideal companion for Inside Llewyn Davis to you....you should know that that's where the similarities basically end.

The third mockumentary from star/writer/director/all-around genius Christopher Guest follows three folk music groups as they reunite for a concert to honor the promoter that brought them all to fame. If you were to consider this the same folk music universe that Llewyn lived in, it has been more than forty years since his attempts to make it big and, considering these three bands, you'd probably assume he didn't make it.  If you took the film seriously you might also probably think that's a good thing for Llewyn. But that's ok - because you really shouldn't take this film seriously.

So, I'm telling you not to think about A Mighty Wind the same way as Inside Llewyn Davis. Why, then, in the name of common sense, am I telling you to double feature this with that film? I'll allow two better men than me to describe my reasoning.

Frankenstein's monster once said:

"Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it."

I think Llewyn would agree with the big green monster on this point, though I doubt he would be willing to say it. (Again, he's too proud.) Llewyn is a man who is lost, but he doesn't give up. I've already made this point, but I need to repeat it, because it's the thing that keeps his film from being a total downer. That's good. But it might not be enough.

The second wise man I'd like to consult is Rod Kimble, the eponymous hero of the 2007 classic Hot Rod. He had a similar, but slightly different, take on life:

"Life is pain...and we've got to scrape the joy out of it every chance we get."

Like Llewyn, the characters in A Mighty Wind have been down and out. All three groups reached fame and lost it, and are now only back in the spotlight for a one-night only tribute concert. The Folksmen (Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer - reuniting in a band that's not quite Spinal Tap) were best known for one catchy song - "Eat at Joe's" - about a restaurant, and haven't made much of an impact on the folk scene since. They were replaced in the folk spotlight by The Main Street Singers, now reunited as The "New" Main Street Singers, whose aggressive cheerfulness makes them feel like a musical edition of The Brady Bunch. These two bands are informal rivals - they're not bitter against each other, they just don't exist on the same wavelength - and the difference between them is one of the film's most subtle jokes until it comes to a head during the concert.

The third group we meet is a duo, Mitch and Mickey (Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara), whose hit single "There's a Kiss at the End of the Rainbow" took over the music world as a symbol of true love. It's a sincerely great song (it even earned an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song that year), but unfortunately the performers had a severe falling out in the years that followed their success. Now, back together for one night, we get the treat of O'Hara's Mickey trying to pretend everything's fine while Levy presents Mitch as a man who's been through consistent emotional turmoil since the break up.  His performance is one of my favorite in comedy cinema, and the story arc that follows Mitch and Mickey is what pushes A Mighty Wind over the top as my favorite of Guest's comedies. (To be fair, it's a close race. Tomorrow I might say Waiting for Guffman is my favorite. The man is too good at what he does.)

Mickey is the closest comparison to Llewyn Davis that we find in this film, because he too is completely defeated by the world and seems to have lost connection with everyone around him. But again - that's where the comparisons stop. Because A Mighty Wind is not a film about the anguish of life, A Mighty Wind is a film that provides the joy we need to scrape out of life. It's a comedic tale about a lot of people that are down on their luck, presented primarily as a whimsical comedy with a few heartfelt moments where love and humanity triumph over pain. 

I was caught up in my own grief and sadness when I started writing this double feature, and that really helped me to appreciate Inside Llewyn Davis more. I watched it three times preparing this double feature and though it's always been a favorite it became almost medicinal this month. It means the world to me, and I love the reminders about life it provides. But it's also good to remember that life can make us laugh, that life can make us happy, and that life can provide us with love. And that's what A Mighty Wind, the second tale of defeated folk musicians we're talking about today, has to offer. 

I haven't said enough about A Mighty Wind, other than that I love it dearly for its heart and it's humor, but I also feel like saying how much heart and humor it has is enough to explain why it belongs in this double feature. It's important to understand loss and sadness, but it can't be the only thing we're focused on. That's no way to get through the day. We need people that make us smile and make us feel joy too. 

Maybe this double feature won't work for you, but it's the double feature I needed this month. Spending time with Llewyn Davis and Mitch & Mickey did a lot to remind me what I need to do to face the world. It got some good tunes stuck in my head, made me think about some great performances, and - like Frankenstein's monster and Rod Kimble - reminded me that life has some good in it. Sometimes that's exactly what we need.

Volume 17 - Say Anything...and The Indomitable Dreamer

You might not realize this when you read my rambling prose, but I consider myself to be something of a perfectionist. I'm not the kind of perfectionist that wants everything in my life to be perfect - I'm no dummy, I know what the real world can do to us all - but when I set my sights on something I want it to be perfect. That's why it takes two or three or four weeks for me to write one of these ridiculous double features, because I'm not willing to do less than my best when it comes to movies I love.

In this double feature, we're going to talk about a couple of my favorite moves, and a couple of my favorite young heroes. They also have a perfect idea of what they want to do with their life. They both approach life from different angles, but they're both pretty lovable and work hard to overcome their flaws.  They're the kind of people I want to be when I grow up, with a couple of reservations that we'll talk about as we go on.

This double feature starts with a timeless love story - something that's far from my expertise or my personal experience - and yet still it's a film that says something profound to me. Let's check it out.

Say Anything...

1989, Directed by Cameron Crowe

The tagline for this movie calls it "A Lloyd meets girl story," which sounds incredibly stupid until you meet Lloyd Dobler. I'm not sure there's ever been anyone on film quite like Lloyd Dobler, a one of a kind hopeless romantic. He doesn't seem one of a kind from a distance - we've all seen a white boy who thinks this girl is perfect and he must have her - but when you get to know him you can see why he's so special

Lloyd Dobler, as played by John Cusack, is a high school graduate/aspiring kickboxer who decides he wants to go out with Diane Court (Ione Skye). Diane Court is also a high school graduate, but is not a kickboxer. She's the class valedictorian, set for a bright future, and Lloyd decides that he's destined to be a part of it. The catch is that Diane Court barely knows who Lloyd Dobler is.

One of the common misconceptions when people talk about Say Anything is that Lloyd is a loser or a nobody when he starts to reach out to Diane. Watching the movie closely shows that's clearly not the case. Lloyd has friends, he's welcome to hang out with most anyone he knows, he's a caring brother and uncle, and he's trusted and kind of admired by almost everyone he meets. If you could walk into the beginning of this film and walk up to any character that knows Lloyd, I don't expect you would hear a single bad word about him. Even star-crossed lovers like his friends Corey (Lili Taylor) and Joe (Loren Dean) are both on good terms with Lloyd. I can't picture a scenario where Lloyd is bullied for anything he would do, because he always seems to be walking around with his head held high and his mind made up. He's someone who accepts others as they are, who dreams about what he wants to be, and who is willing to be straight-forward, honest, and respectful toward anyone he meets. In short, he's a real great guy.

So then, the question becomes this - why doesn't Lloyd accept that he's great and move on with his life and just be happy? That's when the perfectionist in Lloyd comes in to play. The thing about someone like Lloyd is that he's not really happy being liked by everyone - he wants to be loved by someone. And he doesn't want just any someone, he wants the someone he's decided is perfect to him. 

I once sat in on a presentation about stalking behavior where one of the first quips the presenter made was "We see stalking in the media all the time, like in John Cusack movies." While I understand that presenter's perspective, I still think they missed the mark entirely. Lloyd Dobler certainly is presented as being enamored with Diane Court, and you could argue he becomes obsessed as the film goes on. But to classify his actions as stalking is certainly a discredit to how much he cares about Diane's wishes, not to mention a slap in the face toward suspension of disbelief. Movies are a dramatic medium, and the behavior of this fictional character should not be looked at as suggestion of real world behaviors. If the argument that horror movies make people more violent is unfair (and I believe it is), then the argument that John Cusack could make people become stalkers is unfair too.

Lloyd does make some dramatic gestures to get Diane's attention - the iconic boom box pose that you see on every single Say Anything poster represents the biggest of them - but it's worth remembering that the little gestures Lloyd makes throughout his relationship with Diane are the ones that stick out to her. He thinks she needs a man who makes grand proclamations and plays a love song (OK, it's the song from the first time they had sex and yeah, that is a little stalkery) outside her window, but the more we get to know Diane the more we see that she's interested in some of his smaller actions. When she has to explain what she likes about Lloyd to her father - played by John Mahoney, who does not get near enough credit for how good he is here - she mentions a moment where Lloyd points out some broken glass in a parking lot and gently guides her to a safe path around it. Other moments where we can tell she's totally enamored with him include his attempt to convince a group of senior citizens to watch Cocoon (Fox had to keep trying to sell their own movie, this was the VHS era after all) and when he checks up on her from across a crowded party. Diane sees how important she is to Lloyd as he does these things, and those are the moments that make her fall more in love with him as the film goes on

Lloyd thinks he needs big words and big actions to impress her, and when he gets too focused on trying to do this he does turn a little dramatic and even loses his cool at times. During the film's darkest scenes, when things aren't working out, he utters the now famous rain-drenched decree "I gave her my heart, she gave me a pen" and it's a moment where we could think Lloyd is being a dope. Yet we, like most everyone else he knows, can see that he's a great person. He just doesn't believe it unless the thing he is focused on is going well for him.

One of my favorite moments to observe Lloyd is when he's confronted by his school guidance counselor about his future plans and offers a fantastic reply about how he's looking for a "dare to be great situation" when he is pressed to make a decision about what he wants to do. 

"How many people really know what they want though?  I mean, a lot of them think that they have to know, right? But inside, they don't really know, so, I don't know.  But I know that I don't know."

Lloyd doesn't really know what he wants to do with his life, and that's fine. That's not Say Anything's concern. This movie's concerned with introducing us to Lloyd and Diane - who also deserves recognition as one of the strongest and smartest female characters in teen cinema - and how much Lloyd is willing to give himself to the idea of being with her. 

The film's title, Say Anything..., is kind of obscure as it applies to the story. The two characters who tell each other that they "can say anything" during the film are Diane and her father. That's one more part of what makes Lloyd such an endearing character, because once you get to know him you know he's the kind of person who never has to be reminded that he can say anything. He wears his heart on his sleeve and says what he needs to say and lives fearlessly as he attempts to win over Diane. He could have accepted the good life he had, but he saw someone he thought was perfect and he put his entire being into making it happen

If Lloyd Dobler is one of a kind - which I already said he is - then it seems like it would be pretty hard for me to find a double feature partner that meets the high standard he sets. But a lot of the things I love about Lloyd and how this film portrays him are present in a lot of other characters I love. Let's take a look at a few things about Lloyd and see if we can find those in another lead character.

• To simply sum up some of my thoughts on the character, I think Lloyd's biggest flaw at times is having a narrow focus. He's so interested in Diane that he lets other parts of his life - planning for his future and spending time with friends and family are two examples - slip to the wayside. This doesn't really effect Lloyd, because he's easy going and doesn't let it get to him. But you can see that others look at Lloyd a little differently because of his singular focus, and that makes his relationships with others and future prospects a little more difficult.
• That bigger picture is of little interest to Lloyd, and that's fine with him. To him, time spent with Diane is the enrichment he's looking for in his life right now. The flip side of the narrow focus problem is that Lloyd is happy with what he's doing. That's pretty admirable. His approach to life fits pretty well with the central philosophy shared by the lead character in the film we're about to discuss. 
• One thing that does have an effect Lloyd is his perception that Diane represents some kind of perfect or ideal being. Lloyd lets Diane define his world. If he's with her, he's happy. If he's not, he feels like he's failed.  This part of his character is what leads him to some internal conflict, because he won't accept anything less than what he believes she is. Lloyd's idea that anything less than perfection isn't good enough, makes it hard for him to understand the simple things that Diane already loves about him. This is a classic downfall of a dreamer, and one that shows up often for the lead character we're about to talk about

It's easy to find movies about high school dreamers who fall in love, but not easy to find ones with the same indomitable spirit that we see in Lloyd Dobler. The young man at the center of our next film is a little younger and a bit less stable than Lloyd - but he's got that spirit.

So let's talk about a young man named Max Fischer.

Rushmore

1998, Directed by Wes Anderson

"The secret, I don't know... I guess you've just gotta find something you love to do and then... do it for the rest of your life. For me, it's going to Rushmore."

When you're fifteen years old and in 10th grade, you don't necessarily have to be popular to be a big man on campus. That's the case for Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman), who has very few friends but is involved in almost every extracurricular activity offered at the Rushmore Academy, including a number of clubs he started himself when bored with the school's other options. Max is not one of the cool kids - he's bullied by some and ignored by most - but he's someone who walks like he knows where he's going. Max thinks he's found the thing he loves most in the world - a school that lets him chase any dream that comes to his overactive mind - and he's happy to be a part of that.

There are some obvious barriers that hold back a 15 year old from achieving all their dreams. Max got into Rushmore because he was a child prodigy who wrote one of the best essays that the school's head master (Brian Cox, giving a wonderfully grumpy performance) has ever seen, but now he's failing most of his classes and on probation with a stern warning that one more failed class will lead to him being expelled from the school he loves. One would think this would light a fire under Max - except he's currently enamored with a teacher (Olivia Williams) and more focused on ways to show her how impressive he can be and win her heart. 

That's creepy, of course, because she's a teacher and he's a 15 year old, but don't try telling that to Max. He's living in his own reality, where pursuits like saving Latin courses and building an aquarium on the school's baseball field are achievable goals. Max's determination helps him work toward making these lofty goals come true, despite the wishes of the teacher or the school he is a part of. Much like Lloyd Dobler, Max is someone who won't take no for an answer. Because his goals are so outlandish, this gets him into some trouble. 

It would be easy to present a character like Max Fischer, who clearly doesn't understand major parts of his life, as a joke to the audience. Lloyd Dobler's goal of dating Diane Court is a reasonable, albeit lofty, one in his reality. Max's goal of winning the affection of a grown woman while getting through school on extracurriculars alone is clearly not going to happen, which is fine because Rushmore wouldn't work as a movie if it allowed those goals to come true. Wes Anderson's film had two options - become a pure comedy by making fun of Max for his failure to understand life, or show us how he grows and uses the good parts of his personality to become a better young man than he was at the beginning of the film.

Thankfully for all of us, Anderson chose the second option. The choice to present Max as a mostly harmless dreamer - or, as a young man who's simply fighting through a life where he doesn't fit in with the big crowd - makes Max Fischer one of my favorite film characters and Rushmore one of my favorite films. Max struggles to make things right as he goes through his time at Rushmore and beyond, but he's a kid and even when he's wrong we know that his aim is true and his goals are noble. We can see how much he cares about doing what's right, and that matters a lot.

Neither Lloyd or Max really "gets it" when it comes to the big picture of life, but who among us - outside of fictional character's who've been edited and rewritten until they're perfect - really does get everything life throws at them? Neither film ends up with a clear picture of where life may take either of these young men, yet I've never really stopped to wonder about what happened to them down the road. I trust that they both are on the right path to working out their issues, and that their hearts will guide them in their pursuits as they move forward.

I identify so much with both of these young men, and I mentioned earlier that they're the kind of people I strive to be in my life. But I don't want to be the versions of Lloyd and Max we see in these films, I want to be the better people they grow up to be. I want to be the version of Lloyd Dobler who has learned that he can't just focus on Diane, but can give her love and attention while still succeeding in his dreams. I want to be the version of Max that has learned he has to focus on meeting the needs of others sometimes, and who is able to balance that with his own pursuits for enrichment and achievement. I want to be the best things about both of these men, and live with the same confidence and vigor that they possess.

Some might say it's unrealistic to try to be the perfect version of two fictional perfectionists, the same way people said it was unrealistic for both of these men to work toward the goals they have. I get that. But I think Lloyd Dobler and Max Fischer would be proud of me, or any person who views their films, for being willing to tackle life with the same confidence and spirit that they show.

There's a saying out there that suggest that "if you shoot for the moon, you'll land among the stars." Iconic football coach Vince Lombardi summed that up differently by saying "Perfection is unattainable, but if we strive for perfection we will catch excellence." Lloyd and Max might not have known that was what they were doing, and dreamers like me or any of you readers who have an adventurous heart might not know it either. As we head into a new year, as everyone is striving to better themselves and meet new goals and change their lives in a positive way, it's nice to have characters out there who show us what we can do if we don't allow ourselves to be defeated as we chase our dreams. 

Lloyd and Max might not be perfect, but they fight for what they want. Those of us who want something better out of our life could do much worse than following their lead. That's what this double feature represents to me, two people who won't put anything less than their best into the things they love and two people who won't stop fighting for what they want out of life. I truly love that about them, and I think you will too.

Volume 13 - Carrie and The Powerful Young Woman

We're running deeper into October with a very different double feature this week. In fact, when I came up with this double feature I decided it was "the best worst double feature" I could think of. It was pretty much a joke double feature; one that I thought would be a silly twist on some horror themes. But after I thought of this idea, life kept happening around me. As I read the news, and as I kept up with people in my personal and professional lives, I started to realize there might be a more important meaning to this double feature that I didn't catch when I first thought of it.

So, take this double feature as you will. Maybe you'll agree with my assessment of the themes of these films, maybe you'll just appreciate the different tones about people in the same kind of situation. Either way, I'm glad you're reading.

HOW THIS WORKS
Step 1) I pick a movie.
Step 2) I tell you about the movie.
Step 3) I tell you what we're looking for in a double feature movie.
Step 4) Another movie!
Step 5) Victory!

Carrie

1976, Directed by Brian De Palma

Does everyone in the room know how Carrie ends? I feel like everyone in the room knows how Carrie ends. It's one of the more iconic final acts in horror history, if you ask me. Well, JUST IN CASE YOU DON'T, THIS IS A WARNING THAT THERE WILL PROBABLY BE SOME SPOILERS IN THIS POST. Hence the all caps. I don't like to talk about spoilers, but I kinda think I have to this week.

If you haven't seen it - just go watch Carrie. Get the original. You'll be alright. I appreciate you reading this far.

"If only they knew she had the power."

Being a teenager is pretty rough, we all know that. But I also think it's rougher for young women. Some would say that's a generalization, but I think it's a fact. If you don't want to accept that, this post might not be for you.

If you know Carrie, you know it's the story of a seemingly ordinary young woman who has extraordinary powers. Carrie White is her name, and her power comes in the form of telekenesis, which allows her to move objects with her mind. Unfortunately for Carrie, the power seems to manifest the most when Carrie is upset. Like her first menstrual experience - which we see in the film's opening credit sequence, she's not prepared to deal with these powers when she recognizes them.

I emphasized the tagline from the film's poster above, because it gives us an important warning - no one knows that Carrie has this power. So she doesn't have a lot of support to deal with them when she realizes what she can do. The only person she seems to feel connected to is Tommy, a boy she's attracted to romantically (due to his gigantic curly hair and his poetic talent, obviously), and her feelings toward him are somewhat confusing to her. The reason for her confusion is obvious to the viewer - Tommy is partially being nice to Carrie because his girlfriend feels regret for bullying Carrie and wants Tommy to take her to the prom as a kind gesture - but Carrie only knows that one of the most popular boys in school is the only person who seems to be interested in being nice to her. Based on her past experiences, it's easy to see why she doesn't trust that.

If you're one of the people who knows how Carrie ends, you know what the biggest tragedy in the film is. But I'm of the mindset that this aspect of Carrie's existence - her inability to trust anything because she's so used to being treated poorly by the people around her - is a strong candidate to be the saddest thing about her story. It stems from the bullying she deals with, but more than that it comes from her overbearing mother, whose religious fanaticism blocks Carrie from her right to expect good, rational guidance from her mother. Her mother obviously cares about Carrie, but her care is based around what she wants Carrie to be, not who Carrie is. And that sets Carrie up to fail, despite her power.

Also involved in Carrie's misfortune are the educators responsible for preparing her for life, most notably Miss Collins, the physical education teacher at her school. Miss Collins is probably the most heroic character in the film; she does try hard to support Carrie. But she never really stops to ask what's going on with Carrie, she just tries to build Carrie up her own way and then focuses on punishing the bullies that are making Carrie's life difficult. That's not a bad thing - again, Miss Collins is certainly trying - but you have to wonder if things would have turned out differently if she had tried to understand Carrie more personally and find out what is actually going on in her life.

If you listen to discussions about the making of the film, you'll hear a few rumors about why Miss Collins, played by Betty Buckley, faced the fate she did in the film. Most of these are based on behind the scenes issues between cast and crew, so I might be reaching when I assign meaning to her fate in the film. It's a departure from Stephen King's novel, which gives some credence to the idea that director Brian De Palma had his own reasons for offing the character. Still, I think the choice to show her as one of the adults who breaks into laughter when Carrie is at her weakest - and most dangerous - point, does at least partially justify her fate to this viewer. Someone with trust issues with deep roots, like Carrie, only needs the smallest provocation to lose their faith in someone, no matter how helpful that person has been to them. This is another one of the film's great tragedies, regardless of the director's intent.

Carrie works as a horror film due to King's marvelous story and Brian De Palma's iconic style, and Carrie works as a character because young Sissy Spacek is able to make her so vulnerable and meek in the face of everything she has to deal with. The horror film aspect is more than enough to make this one of the all-time horror classics, but it's the character and her tortured journey through the film that really makes this a movie worth thinking about today.

Which takes me back to that ominous tagline: what if they knew she had the power? What if someone - anyone - was willing to help Carrie White along the way? What if her mother wasn't a nut job, or what if her teacher really talked to her and listened to her and helped her learn more about herself? What if her classmates who were upset by how their peers treated Carrie - and there are a few we see in the film - stood up for her and backed her up? Maybe Carrie could have controlled her power and used it differently. Maybe she'd have joined the X-Men (not sure if they're in this time line, but it's worth a shot) or maybe she at least would have been able to lead a relatively ordinary life, while maintaining the ability to get a beverage from the fridge while staying on the couch. (Let's be real, that's an ordinary life any of us could get behind.)

None of that happened, and that's what makes Carrie such a tragic story. Which, despite how great the film is, sucks. Carrie deserved better in the hands of the people in her life. She had power. We don't know whether she was chosen for this power, if she inherited it from someone, or any other explanation for how her life became what it was. But she never got the chance to harness it, because she didn't have support and she wasn't given the tools to be strong enough to deal with it. Again, that's a bummer.

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Now is the point where we diverge from the normal format of The Mike's Double Feature Picture Show. Because I don't want to have another movie that's a bummer. I want a young woman to succeed. I want her to have the confidence and support to use her power in a positive way.

So let's talk about a movie where that happens. It's a horror movie too - one with a comedic tone, but still a horror tale - and one that's been overshadowed (possibly rightfully, but I still defend it with all my might) by a remake. That remake - one of the most beloved horror shows in television history - probably builds a case for a sort of Anti-Carrie better than the film does. Alas, my heart still beats for this one.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer

1992, Directed by Fran Rubel Kuzui

If you know this movie, you can probably understand why I initially thought pairing it with Carrie was a bit of a joke. It's a flawed horror comedy in a lot of ways, especially if you ask its writer, Joss Whedon, who hated the final product (but still had the opportunity to turn his idea into the iconic series five years later).

If you weren't there when Buffy The Vampire Slayer hit the big screen - and especially if you were there when she hit the small screen - odds are you agree with Whedon and might not have much affection for the first adaptation of Buffy's story. I get that. But I was there, in the theater, back in 1992 - and I fell in love with Buffy that day. Sure, that's partially because Kristy Swanson was a gorgeous sight to 11 year old Mike. (In fairness, I fell in love with Sarah Michelle Gellar as a 16 year old too - I have a type, apparently, and that type is VAMPIRE KILLER.) But I also fell for her because the character was unlike a lot of the women I was used to from the few horror movies I had seen before that point in my life. She was strong, she kicked butt, and she was definitely a slayer.

We can't forget, however, that Buffy wasn't always a slayer. She wasn't as clueless as Carrie White was before she learned of her powers - yes, in this universe slaying is basically a super power - but she wasn't empowered. She was just a cheerleader, a shopper, and a young woman who was adapting to her world. Those are three things it's perfectly OK for any young woman to be, but Buffy was chosen for a greater calling. Unlike Carrie White, Buffy was able to harness her powers.

One of the many differences between Buffy and Carrie is that Buffy has a lot of support and is given a lot of knowledge about her gift. Like Carrie, she doesn't get that support from her mother, who seems to be completely uninterested in her life. She also doesn't get much support in school, the only scenes we see with her teachers there only makes us wonder why anyone would ever consider going to her school at all.

Things for Buffy get a boost when we learn that the gift of being the slayer comes with a built in support system, in the form of a mysterious "watcher" (it's less creepy than it sounds) named Merrick, played by Donald (Freakin') Sutherland. Buffy isn't ready to embrace her powers when she first meets Merrick, but he's patient with her while being persistent in trying to help her realize her skills. Sutherland's Merrick isn't the most inspirational character you'll find in a horror film, but he's kind and consistent and does the best he can to convince Buffy that her skills matter and can be used to help people.

Also supporting Buffy is her love interest, Oliver (Luke Perry). We know that Carrie also had the support of the young man in her life, it's just that Carrie didn't have enough confidence to trust that support, and when she did it was too late for her. Buffy has had her confidence built up through the successes in her teen years and her popularity, but she still has to open herself up to different experiences to harness her powers as a slayer and meeting and being understood by someone outside of her comfort zone is one of the keys that motivates her to face the (actual) demons she must stand up to.

(I do find it a little bit problematic that Buffy's main supports in the film are both male characters, and do feel like Whedon improved greatly upon this in the television series. The last thing I want this post to say is that women need male support and male protection only, because that's incredibly far from what I believe. We'll talk more about this later, but it felt like a good time to point this out.)

Buffy isn't a perfect person, and you could argue easily that Carrie White is a more virtuous character at the start of each of their journeys. The sad reality of these films, and of life, is that it really doesn't matter what someone's intentions are unless they are given the tools to use their own gifts in a positive manner. Buffy shines in her role as a slayer, fights off a bunch of intimidating vampires (I'd hate myself if I didn't at least shout out to Paul Reubens and Rutger Hauer for their turns in this film, which are as entertaining as you'd expect turns from Paul Reubens and Rutger Hauer to be), and finds love. At the end of it all, we get the sense that she's ready to take on whatever happens next.

I wish so badly that these things would have happened for Carrie.

I also wish that these things would happen for all the young women in the world, even if they aren't telekenetic masterminds or super-powered vampire killers. This double feature was originally intended to be a comical look at two films with similar set ups - young woman with surprising power, struggle to understand and harness said power, high school dance - that tackle the issues in radically different ways.

But inspiration comes in the strangest packages sometimes. The more I thought about this ridiculous double feature, the more I thought about the women in my life. I'm blessed to know a lot of strong women, and I'm blessed to know a lot of young women who need help finding their strength.  When I stopped to process my thoughts on these characters and these movies in relation to the women in my life, I couldn't stop myself from thinking of these women.

At the heart of both films, despite their supernatural themes, is a simple message: these young women need support. They are powerful. They are warriors. They are everything we need to keep society running, and they can preserve the good in the world someday. It is possible that they can do this on their own. But the odds are they're going to need someone to be there for them at some point.

From the moment we realize that, the challenge goes out to all of us. To the fathers and the mothers, to family members of all kinds. To Teachers, and to mentors. To friends, and to strangers. Will you be there for them? Will you support them? Will you accept them, no matter what their gift is, and be there to help them find their way?

If your answer to the above questions is yes, you're on the right path. It's probably not going to be easy, but you never know how much it might mean to them if you are there with your support and acceptance. It might help them avoid the fate of Carrie White and it might even help them fulfill their destiny, just like Buffy. It might save their life.

The poster for Carrie pondered what it would be like if "they knew she had the power."

I'm wondering why we can't just treat all women like they have the power.

I'm thinking the time to start treating them that way is now.

Volume 8 - After Hours and the Sleepless Nightmare

The last three double features we've talked about have covered three of the best topics humanity has to offer - faith, love, and honor. But life doesn't always go that well for people, especially us ordinary folks. In fact, I'd be willing to theorize that life is best summed up by an ancient Chinese proverb I once heard. It goes something like this:

"So no one told you life was gonna be this way. Your life's a joke, you're broke, your love life's D.O.A. It's like you're always stuck in second gear. When it hasn't been your day, your week, your month, or even your year."

The thing the movies don't always tell you about life is....wait.....just a minute....

OK, you're right. That was the theme song from Friends. I got mixed up for a minute there. To be fair...it sounds like Confucius.

I don't see another author here; I'm running with it.

The thing the movies don't always tell you about life is that it might not work out the way you expect it to. Sometimes you go looking for adventure and you think you're gonna get to the chorus of the Friends theme song and you think someone's gonna start screaming how they'll be there for you (when the rain starts to pour). But if that doesn't happen, you might end up stuck in a situation where you've got to improvise. Especially if it's late at night, when you might start to think you're living in a nightmare.

This week we're going on a couple of late night adventures with a couple of ordinary guys. They won't be adventures that go the way their characters expect them to, and that's part of what makes them so entertaining for us viewers.

HOW THIS WORKS
Step 1) I pick a movie.
Step 2) I tell you about the movie.
Step 3) I tell you what we're looking for in a double feature movie.
Step 4) Another movie!
Step 5) Victory!

After Hours

1985, Directed by Martin Scorsese

Paul Hackett (Griffin Dunne) is a word processor. Which means, I think, that he types things for a living. And we don't even meet Paul when he's typing things, we meet him when he's teaching a co-worker, who just happens to be Bronson Pinchot, aka Cousin Balki from Perfect Strangers, how to type things. Does that sound like an exciting job to you? I mean, I like typing things (obviously) but that's because I'm writing them. Typing other people's things? And teaching people how to type? That just doesn't seem too fun to me.

Paul doesn't seem enthusiastic about his job either. That night, while eating at a diner near his apartment, Paul finds himself striking up a conversation with a beautiful woman named Marcy (Rosanna Arquette). She's much more interesting than word processing, and we can quickly see that he's intrigued by her presence in his life. She gives him the phone number to the apartment she's staying in, and he doesn't wait for a better opportunity -he calls her up the same night.

Marcy started this conversation with Paul because she loves the book he's reading, and that book tells us something about Paul's outlook on life right now. The book is Henry Miller's once banned Tropic of Cancer, which details the author's struggles with feeling alone and feeling irrelevant in a big city (in his case, Paris) while also chronicling his sexual encounters. Marcy likes the book because it's "a kick in the pants to truth, beauty, and God." Paul doesn't get the chance to explain why he likes the book, because Marcy cuts him off to start a conversation about a weird cashier before he can finish his sentence. He doesn't need to say it, because Paul's tone and appearance in these opening scenes show us plenty about why he relates to someone who feels alone and longs for more exciting and romantic nights in his city.

Paul's not scared to meet up with Marcy as he ventures into the New York night, yet the film makes it clear early on that he doesn't have as much control over his night as he thinks he does. During his cab ride to Marcy's Soho apartment - when the only $20 he was carrying blows out the cab's window - we start to get the feeling that this night probably won't go quite the way he thought it would. 

It would be a disservice to explain the plot of After Hours from this point forward, because what comes next is a string of unlikely coincidences that Paul definitely wasn't prepared for. A cast of fantastic actors and actresses - Linda Fiorentino, Will Patton, Teri Garr, John Heard, Catharine O'Hara, and Cheech & Chong, to name a few - each bring something different into Paul's evening as he bounces from one strange encounter to the next. Marcy is the siren that leads him toward a romantic evening - it's easy to see why he's smitten with her when she blows a kiss to a friendly diner cashier played by the great Dick Miller(!) - so when things don't go the way he expected with her Paul's night intensifies quickly.

Walking away from this evening becomes increasingly difficult for Paul, who finds himself broke and alone as he tries to find safe transportation back to his apartment. Dunne does a fantastic job of showing us the character's frustration as the night goes on, and it starts to feel like a waking nightmare where every action he takes is met by the most unfathomably random reaction. Near the end of the film, when it almost feels like a lynch mob is following him through the streets, he finally breaks down to the point where his only response to a question about what's going on is "I just want to live."  At the beginning of the night he might have said the exact same sentence with a hopeful and optimistic tone. Now it feels more like a plea to the heavens.

My favorite singer/songwriter, Warren Zevon, at least once described Martin (Marty, as he calls him) Scorsese as "the man who makes the best movies in the world." (It was when he dedicated Accidentally Like a Martyr to Marty on September 29, 1982; you're damn right I have references.) My favorite thing about After Hours might be that it feels like the kind of cynical tale that Warren would have written a song about. The whole ordeal leads to a hilarious gut punch of an ending, making it clear that Scorsese just spent an entire film lacing a comedic premise with a playfully macabre tone. The ending leaves the viewer grinning thanks to its absurdity - it's as if Paul shouldn't have even tried to change his life, but it's not a total tragedy - yet there's certainly a warning that reads like something out of a folk tale packaged with it. 

What is that warning? "Be careful what you wish for?" "Expect the unexpected?" "Don't go chasing waterfalls?" Maybe it's all three. I'll leave that decision up to you.

So, what do we want from a double feature partner?

• Paul is a great lead because he's basically a sponge that's soaking up everything around him. He doesn't really know what he's looking for as he heads out for the night, he just wants something. We need another lead like that, though I'm thinking it might be interesting to meet a man who approaches his night a little differently
• This has become something of a recurring theme in my posts: the big city setting really makes things feel more ominous as the night goes on. We have spent a lot of time in New York City so far in our double features, so maybe this time we should shake it up and take a trip to another city. Perhaps we should head to the city that Warren Zevon called home. 
• If this was Family Feud and the category was "What would make a man go on a late night adventure?" - the number one answer would most likely be "A woman." So we might as well pick another movie where we end up following a mysterious woman into a tricky situation.
• The nightmarish aspects of After Hours are what really make it so fun, because you never quite know where it's going to go next. Guys like Paul don't have a script for nights where everything seems so random and everything that could go wrong does. We need another movie that uses that uncertainty to create a frantic environment.
• After Hours gets a lot of mileage out of the constant parade of recognizable faces that show up as it moves through the plot. Scorsese was obviously a well respected director and that made it easy for him to line up so much talent, we could use a film by another director with a lot of friends who are willing to show up and chip in.

When it came time to pick a partner for After Hours, there were a lot of films running through my mind. Unlike some of the other double features I've planned, I ended up going with a film that follows a similar predicament but offers up some tonal differences. Still, I think it's a great fit.

Into the Night

1985, Directed by John Landis

After Hours and Into the Night aren't quite polar opposites - they're both films about dudes who end up lost in a city late at night thanks to a beautiful woman and their desire to do something/anything - they are coastal opposites. Unlike Paul, Ed Okin (Jeff Goldblum) lives in sunny Los Angeles. Unfortunately it's not so sunny for Ed, because he's an insomniac. Paul seems to be looking for something new and exciting; Ed just wants to get away from his sleepless existence.

Ed can't get over a lot of the little things that are boring about his life, like the fact that his wife doesn't say anything more than "Have a nice day." to him before he heads to work. He can't keep up at work, much to the chagrin of his supervisor played by David Cronenberg(!), because he forgot to switch from one arbitrary form to the next a few weeks back. So he goes home, finds his wife having an affair - and doesn't even react to it. He's too tired to even care. (In this regard, there are days when I relate to Ed so much.)

Following the advice of a coworker (Dan Aykroyd), Ed takes off on a late night drive to the airport. He doesn't really have a plan of what he's doing, so when he parks his car and stumbles upon a young woman named Diana (Michelle Pfeiffer) who's being attacked by a quartet of Iranian henchmen (one of whom is played by director John Landis), he probably surprises himself when he springs into action and helps her escape. Ed is surprised by Diana's arrival in his life, and he quickly becomes interested in helping her. He doesn't really say why, he's just content having something to do.

Paul had several women directing him through his night in After Hours, and one of the major differences between the two films is that Diana and Ed are locked together for most of the rest of this film. It's clear to see why Diana is interesting to Ed - she's a jewel thief who dresses like the lead character in another late-night-in-L.A. classic, Rebel Without a Cause - and another major shift from Paul's descent into gloom in After Hours is that Ed seems emboldened by her presence. 

As their situation becomes more perilous - crossing paths with an international rogue's gallery that includes those Iranian henchmen, a kidnapping Frenchman (Barbarella director Roger Vadim), a Greek crime boss (Irene Papas), and a British hitman (David Bowie!) - Ed's demeanor shifts from a dejected "My life isn't working out somehow." to an optimistic "Somebody had to help her, I just happened to be in the wrong place at the right time." Unlike After Hours this isn't a constant onslaught against him and there are moments of levity during the couple of days he spends with Diana. Ed knows things could go wrong at any moment, but as he moves through his sleepless existence he continues to become less afraid of anything he sees.

There are plenty of things Ed should be afraid of, and that's where the random surprises of Into the Night match up so well with After Hours. Perhaps the best sequence in the film has Ed following Diana into an upscale apartment with a bunch of televisions, all of which are simultaneously playing Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein. Everything is still as Ed moves through the rooms, and the loudest thing we hear is the audio from the film which - even to the trained horror fan who can tell it's the classic spoof - starts to feel like a sinister soundtrack. The payoff to this nightmarish setting doesn't disappoint, yet it's one more moment where Ed reacts more calmly than he probably thought he would when he faces danger alongside Diana.

Into the Night doesn't end with cynicism like After Hours does (Clu Gulager shows up to help wrap things up, there's nothing cynical about that!), which makes it a good second half for this double bill. Both films take us into a sleepless existence where things get far more serious than Paul or Ed ever imagined, yet the directors' wildly different skill sets provide us with two very different nightmares. After Hours and Into the Night play like the yin and yang of 1985 late night walkabouts, and maybe after they're done, you'll want to head out on your own late night adventure.

If you do, don't say that the Friends theme song and I didn't warn you that things could go wrong.