Another Kind Of Distance: A Time Travel, Twin Peaks, Film, Doom Patrol And Nostalgia Podcast

Paramount, 1935: we have two very unusual and very different movies, which nevertheless share the theme of private worlds and the possibility of communication between them. First up is Gregory La Cava's Private Worlds, about the inner lives of psychiatrists and the permeable boundary between sanity and insanity. It stars Claudette Colbert as Dr. Jane Everest and Charles Boyer as her chauvinistic boss and secret crush. Next, Henry Hathaway's fantasy melodrama Peter Ibbetson, which treats love as a shared mental world in ways that anticipate Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, while the camera falls in love with Gary Cooper's sweaty, suffering face.  Time Codes: 0h 0m 00s:                              PRIVATE WORLDS (dir. Gregory LaCava)        0h 46m 40s:                            PETER IBBETSON (dir. Henry Hathaway)                 +++ * Check out our Complete Upcoming Schedule - now projected to the end of our Lilli Palmer series in 2024 * Find Elise’s latest film piece on Billy Wilder and 1930s Romanti

It’s our epic episode on the three Imitations of Life! Hear us discuss Fannie Hurst’s massively popular 1933 novel and its two popular film adaptations: John M. Stahl’s restrained 1934 version, the first Hollywood movie to look seriously, if cautiously, at the impact of white supremacy and racial inequality in America, and Douglas Sirk’s strategically lurid, early civil rights-era version, from 1959. We attempt to thoroughly debunk the “trash” reputation of Hurst’s eccentric, elaborately written, and harrowing novel, which not only addresses white supremacy but also harpoons the nuclear family and the American religion of success, while putting mother-daughter emotional ambivalence at its imaginative center. We then go on to discuss some of the reasons for the changes from page to screen, and a blatantly political addition to the story in the original Stahl script that didn’t make it past the censors. Warning for as much disturbing content as you can imagine this topic occasioning, and then some.  Time Codes:

A stunning episode of The Studios, Year by Year: a great year for Universal, 1934, gives us The Black Cat, the one big studio success of Edgar G. Ulmer, icon of marginal filmmaking; and James Whale’s under-discussed One More River, based on the novel by John Galsworthy. Elise concocts a reading to justify her early, confused understanding of The Black Cat as being about WWII rather than WWI. Then we continue to weave our auteur theory about Whale’s interest in women’s experience of oppression related to sexual shame. As the Year of the Code continues, two more movies that should never have gotten made: Satan worshipping, flaying old friends alive, virgin sacrifice, marital rape, striking wives with riding crops, and executing demonic cats with knives is what Universal is all about in 1934. And wait for next episode, when we tell you what the original script of Stahl’s Imitation of Life included to trigger Breen!    Time Codes: 0h 01m 00s:            The Back Cat [dir. Edgar G. Ulmer] 0h 44m 58s:            On

Our second Clara Bow episode pairs a couple of sharply contrasting films: a child star comedy, Helen's Babies (1924), directed by William A. Seiter, and a didactic melodrama, Capital Punishment (1925), directed by James P. Hogan, with a story by producer B. P. Schulberg. Bow has supporting roles in both; but has occasion to display her lack of inhibition as a comedian in both and her emotive skills as an actress in the second. The Schulberg film, whose premise may have influenced Fritz Lang's Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956), surprises with its pre-Depression concern for the plight of the urban poor, while the presentation of two impish tomboy girl-children in Helen's Babies, based on a popular Victorian novel about two little boys, chimes neatly with certain aspects of Bow's own persona, even if her place is taken in this one by Baby Peggy.   Time Codes: 0h 01m 00s:            Helen’s Babies (1924) [dir: William A. Seiter] 0h 22m 10s:            Capital Punishment (1925) [dir: James P. Hogan] +++ * Check out

For 2020, we're dreaming of a Noir Christmas! First up, a quick and dirty discussion of the 1988 remake of D.O.A., directed by Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel of Max Headroom fame and starring Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan. It's sort of like American Psycho with English professors. A comparison we didn't make in the episode, but wish we had. Next: the art noir no one talks about, Robert Montgomery's Lady in the Lake (1947), whose quirks and romantic sentiment have been overshadowed by its subjective camera experiment. This is the movie that made Dave a man... we mean cinephile. He wasn't a man yet, he was 11. Elise is reluctantly won over by one of these movies. Feel like doing a bit of reading over the holidays? Elise guested on her friend Mark Simpson's blog to discuss 80s British punk-turned-pop star Adam Ant. Here's Mark on Adam Ant's Pop Apotheosis: https://marksimpson.com/2020/12/16/prince-charming-adam-ants-pop-apotheosis/ And Elise on his spectacular self-objectification: https://marksimpson.com/2020/12

For RKO 1934, we take an appreciative look at two unloved Katharine Hepburn movies (now, although the public liked them well enough at the time): John Cromwell's Spitfire and Richard Wallace's The Little Minister, based on a novel by J. M. Barrie of Peter Pan fame. Dave suggests an alternate trajectory for Hepburn's 30s box office decline. Elise rambles on about Barrie's tragic and sinister life. We compare Spitfire to Dreyer's Day of Wrath and Henry King's Song of Bernadette; and agree that The Little Minister is one of the great romance movies (with intimations of her Bringing Up Baby performance in the bargain).  Time Codes: 0h 01m 00s:            Katharine Hepburn & Pandro Berman at the Box Office         0h 13m 09s:            Spitfire [dir: John Cromwell] 0h 40m 41s:            The Little Minister [dir: Richard Wallace] +++ * Check out our Complete Upcoming Episode Schedule (now projected into 2023) * Find Elise’s latest film piece on Billy Wilder and 1930s Romantic Comedy *And Read lots of Elise’s

In the inaugural episode of our Clara Bow Acteurist Oeuvre-view series, we discuss the general outline of Bow's life and career, consider her two first major film roles, and venture a few working hypotheses. She's easily the best thing in Down to the Sea in Ships (1922), the film that introduced her to the public, as a playful tomboy. Directed by D. W. Griffith alumnus Elmer Clifton, it starts the trend of contrasting Bow with a more antiquated form of womanhood as film, and culture in general, struggles to emerge from the Victorian era. Black Oxen (1923), directed by Frank Lloyd, takes a sci fi approach to this theme, and plants the “flapper” label on Bow—which, we decide, is incorrect.   Time Codes: 0h 01m 00s:             Brief Bow Intro 0h 18m 44s:            Down to the Sea in Ships (1922) [dir: Elmer Clifton] 0h 36m 03s:            Black Oxen (1923) [dir: Frank Lloyd]       +++ * Check out our Complete Upcoming Episode Schedule (now projected into 2023) * Find Elise’s latest film piece on Billy Wilder

This episode's Studios Year by Year: Fox, 1934. A Kern and Hammerstein musical with only one song and a Will Rogers comedy with many: Joe May's Music in the Air sees the beginning of Billie Wilder's Hollywood career and the end, for a while, of Gloria Swanson's (they will come together again). For Judge Priest, Dave goes long on Civil War history and Confederate imagery. We're not sure whether this John Ford/Rogers collaboration is Verhoeven/Sturgesque satire or Popular Front-style propaganda for progressive values in a Southern context, but we're pretty sure it's subversive. Trigger warning for those who aren't interested in watching a celebration of the Confederacy no matter what it's trying to smuggle in.  Time Codes: 0h 01m 00s:            Music in the Air (Dir: Joe May) 0h 15m 57s:            Judge Priest (Dir: John Ford) 1h 03m 43s:            Listener Letter from Adam      +++ * Check out our Complete Upcoming Episode Schedule (now projected into 2023) * Find Elise’s latest film piece on Billy Wilder

In a curious finale to our Setsuko Hara Acteurist Oeuvre-view, we briefly examine a couple of epics by Hiroshi Inagaki surrounding Hara cameos: The Three Treasures, a.k.a. The Birth of Japan (1959), based on the Yamato Takeru legend, in which Hara plays a Shinto goddess, and Chūshingura: Hana no Maki, Yuki no Maki (1962), based on the frequently dramatized historical incident of the forty-seven rōnin, in which she plays the long-suffering (although not long on screen) wife of a samurai. Between these films and Wikipedia, we get a crash course in Japanese culture that we deliver, in summary, to you, and also manage to come away with a few further thoughts about Setsuko Hara's dramatic gifts.    Time Codes: 0h 01m 00s:             The Three Treasures Aka The Birth of Japan (1959) [dir: Hiroshi Inagaki] 0h 26m 44s:            47 Ronin (1962) [dir: Hiroshi Inagaki]     +++ * Check out our Complete Upcoming Episode Schedule (now projected into 2023) * Find Elise’s latest film piece on Billy Wilder and 1930s Roman

A proleptic episode in which we anticipate our future Acteurist Oeuvre-view of the career of (retired) Greatest Living Actor, Sir Daniel Day-Lewis. The foretaste comes in the form of two films in which Day-Lewis plays men willing to do anything to preserve a vision that ultimately comes down to taste, and inspires homicidal impulses in the women who love him: Phantom Thread (2017), written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, and The Ballad of Jack and Rose (2005), written and directed by Lady Day-Lewis, otherwise known as Rebecca Miller. We conclude that these films offer good examples of some of the things only Day-Lewis can do; and speculate about the mother-shaped figure in Anderson's carpet.   Time Codes: 0h 01m 00s:  Flash Forward to Late 2021 – Acteurist Oeuvre-view - Season 5: Daniel Day-Lewis 0h 05n 48s:   Phantom Thread (2017; dir: Paul Thomas Anderson)   1h 02s 26s:  The Ballad of Jack and Rose (2005; dir: Rebecca Miller) +++ * Check out our Complete Upcoming Episode Schedule * Find Elise’s lates

For our Warner Bros. 1934 episode, two tragicomic movies in which Aline MacMahon plays a lovable small business owner with man problems: Side Streets, directed by Alfred E. Green, and Heat Lightning, directed by Mervyn LeRoy. The latter in particular, we conclude, could only have been made by Warner Bros., and gives us the best and the worst of that studio on gender.  Bonus: it's also an Ann Dvorak double-feature. Time Codes: 0h 01m 00s: Side Streets (dir: Alfred E. Green) 0h 41m 06s: Heat Lightning (dir: Mervyn Leroy) 1h 11m 10s: Letter from Adam        +++ * Check out our Complete Upcoming Episode Schedule * Find Elise’s latest film piece on Billy Wilder and 1930s Romantic Comedy *And Read lots of Elise’s Writing at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cléo, and Bright Lights.* Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com Theme Music: “What’s Yr Take on Cassavetes?” – Le Tigre  

Our penultimate Setsuko Hara Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode sees us examining Ozu's antepenultimate and penultimate films, Late Autumn (1960) and The End of Summer (1961), in both of which she plays a character named Akiko. We then launch into an extended consideration of the meaning of her Noriko/Akiko character in Ozu's films, including a discussion of the effect of Hara's absence on Ozu's final film, An Autumn Afternoon (1962), an “alternate universe” reprise of Late Spring. We revisit the most enigmatic Noriko, the Noriko of Tokyo Story, which leads us to consider the theme of loneliness and the difficulty of connecting in Ozu's postwar films.  Time Codes: 0h 01m 00s: Late Autumn (1960; dir: Yasujiro Ozu) 0h 45m 43s: The End of Summer (1961; dir: Yasujiro Ozu) +++ * Check out our Complete Upcoming Episode Schedule * Find Elise’s latest film piece on Billy Wilder and 1930s Romantic Comedy *And Read lots of Elise’s Writing at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cléo, and Bright Lights.* Follow us on Twitter at @therebu

We went long for our Hallowe’en Special Subject for 2020: Ominous Omnibi, featuring two eerie anthology films of the 1940s, Universal's star-studded Flesh and Fantasy, directed by Julien Duvivier during his WWII Hollywood sojourn, and Ealing Studios' Dead of Night, best remembered for its crowning tale, The Ventriloquist's Dummy, starring Michael Redgrave as a man in an agitated relationship with a prop. After warming up with some Robert Benchley and Oscar Wilde talk, we dig into Dead of Night and the uncanniness of male anxiety. Elise asks Dave to ponder the intrinsic horror of the double act. Prepare for many David Lynch comparisons and Twilight Zone episode recommendations. Happy Hallowe’en! Time Codes: 0h 01m 00s: Flesh and Fantasy (1943) [dir: Julien Duvivier] 0h 43m 14s: Dead of Night (1945) [dirs: Cavalcanti, Robert Hamer, Basil Dearden & Charles Crichton] 1h 55m 55s:  Listener email from Barry +++ * Check out our Complete Upcoming Episode Schedule * Find Elise’s latest film piece on Depression e

MGM, 1934, and our most mismatched pair of films yet: Sidney Franklin's tale of overheated Victorian repression, The Barretts of Wimpole Street, and Lubitsch's lavish, Hollywood-transposed Austro-Hungarian operetta, The Merry Widow. We discuss Laughton vs. Gielgud, Lubitsch vs. Mamoulian, innuendo in the Year of the Code, and more.   Time Codes: 0h 01m 00s: The Barretts of Wimpole Street (dir: Sidney Franklin) 0h 38m 00s:  The Merry Widow (dir: Ernst Lubitsch) +++ * Check out our Complete Upcoming Episode Schedule * Find Elise’s latest film piece on Depression era film romance *And Read lots of Elise’s Writing at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cléo, and Bright Lights.* Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com Theme Music: “What’s Yr Take on Cassavetes?” – Le Tigre

On this Acteurist Oeuvre-view Setsuko Hara episode: a tight, noirish family melodrama by Ozu, Tokyo Twilight (1957), paired with a loose, sprawling family melodrama by Naruse, Daughters, Wives and a Mother (1960). The first gives us the bitterest Hara we've seen since The Idiot, while the second challenges her persona in subtler ways. Vacuum cleaners have never been sexier, nor peeing dogs more tragic. Time Codes: 0h 01m 00s: Tokyo Twilight (dir: Yasujiro Ozu) 0h 48m 20s:  Daughters, Wives and a Mother (dir: Mikio Naruse) +++ * Check out our Complete Upcoming Episode Schedule * Find Elise’s latest film piece on Depression era film romance *And Read lots of Elise’s Writing at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cléo, and Bright Lights.* Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com Theme Music: “What’s Yr Take on Cassavetes?” – Le Tigre

A new year, 1934, and our first studio, Paramount, shows its ability with satire and sympathy for the underdog. It's the Year of the Code, but that doesn't seem to have much applicability to our two films, Cecil B. DeMille's feminist jungle adventure comedy Four Frightened People and Mitchell Leisen's occasionally noirish revenge drama, Behold My Wife! Warning : If you don't want to hear a couple of semi-informed white people talk with qualified admiration about a couple of racially problematic (but relatively sophisticated) mid-30s Hollywood movies, this may not be the podcast episode for you.     Time Codes: 0h 01m 00s: Four Frightened People (dir: Cecile B. DeMille) 0h 48m 52s: Behold My Wife! (dir: Mitchell Leisen) +++ * Check out our Complete Upcoming Episode Schedule * Find Elise’s latest film piece on Depression era film romance *And Read lots of Elise’s Writing at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cléo, and Bright Lights.* Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com Theme Music: “Wh

In this Setsuko Hara Acteurist Oeuvre-view, two films by Mikio Naruse, The Sound of the Mountain (1954) and Sudden Rain (1956). We discuss the ways that the casting of Setsuko Hara in the first film seems to respond to Ozu's "Noriko trilogy" (especially Tokyo Story, although it was released only two months later), and the overt feminism of the subtle, comic, and ambiguous Sudden Rain. Hara, as usual, gives two very different performances as two very different unhappy wives. Time Codes: 0h 01m 00s: Sudden Rain (1956; dir. Mikio Naruse) 0h 30m 33s: The Sound of the Mountain (1954; dir. Mikio Naruse) 0h 59m 50s:     There’s Sometimes a Letter (from Adam) +++ * Check out our Complete Upcoming Episode Schedule * Find Elise’s latest film piece on Depression era film romance *And Read lots of Elise’s Writing at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cléo, and Bright Lights.* Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com Theme Music: “What’s Yr Take on Cassavetes?” – Le Tigre

Universal, 1933: Two little-known James Whale Pre-Codes that adopt divergent attitudes toward adulterous wives. First, treated as farce, in By Candlelight: Paul Lukas plays a butler who gets himself in trouble by masquerading as his playboy boss in order to have more refined erotic adventures. Then, treated as tragedy, in The Kiss Before the Mirror: Frank Morgan and Nancy Carroll get themselves in trouble by becoming fixated on their deceptive mirror images. Also discussed: Code censorship of ass-grabbing, Nils Asther's persona, David Lynch's Lost Highway, and how the Book of Job is a comedy.   Time Codes: 0h 01m 00s:       By Candlelight  (dir: James Whale) 0h 31m 53s:       The Kiss Before the Mirror (dir: James Whale) +++ * Check out our Complete Upcoming Episode Schedule * Find Elise’s latest film piece on Depression era film romance *And Read lots of Elise’s Writing at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cléo, and Bright Lights.* Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com Theme Music: “

This week we've got a big one for you: the five films that Frank Capra and Barbara Stanwyck made together. Starting with LADIES OF LEISURE (1930), we interpret the Stanwyck character as the Capra stand-in, which leads to some interesting results. MEET JOHN DOE (1941) becomes LADIES OF LEISURE inverted (Stanwyck as artist, Cooper as model—but Stanwyck as stand-in either way); while MIRACLE WOMAN (1931) also foreshadows MEET JOHN DOE, this time with Stanwyck as Jane Doe. FORBIDDEN (1932) and BITTER TEA OF GENERAL YEN (1933) lie outside of this set of obsessions. The first is Capra doing a weepie with screwball lovers, not a very comfortable fit, while the newspaper setting and political intrigue point to future developments. The second is an interracial romance in which Stanwyck is, for once, the secondary figure, and General Yen is the near-obligatory Capra suicide. While expressing our astonishment at GENERAL YEN's sophisticated critique of white supremacy, which is beyond the capacity of most Hollywood movie

RKO 1933: We look at a movie starring one of the hottest female stars of the day, Constance Bennett, George Cukor's Our Betters, and a movie starring an up-and-coming (and down, and up, and down again) RKO star, Katharine Hepburn, Lowell Sherman's Morning Glory. Elise deems both Hepburn's frantically vulnerable performance and Cukor's unsentimental sex comedy “punk rock.” We decide that Our Betters is The Women without Norma Shearer's plotline, and all the better for it. Spotted: Gilbert Roland as an hilariously laconic gigolo and Mary Duncan (Murnau's City Girl, in a very different role) as a spoiled but skilled stage star.   Time Codes: 0h 01m 00s:       Morning Glory [dir: Lowell Sherman] 0h 47m 12s:       Our Betters [dir: George Cukor] +++ * Check out our Complete Upcoming Episode Schedule * Find Elise’s latest film piece on Depression era film romance *And Read lots of Elise’s Writing at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cléo, and Bright Lights.* Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmai