K.M. Soehnlein

Seeing Results: Otto Sabotage and Army of Lovers

Today marks one month until publication date for my novel Army of Lovers. It also marks 10 days before the staged reading of a screenplay, Otto Sabotage, co-written with Aron Kantor, which we’re presenting for the first time to the public. These two events are coincidentally happening within a couple weeks of each other, but they took two winding, overlapping journeys to get here. Today I’m taking a little time to reflect on what it has meant to work away in private, alone or with a co-collaborator, without seeing any results for a long time.

I was remembering one of the most important things anyone ever said to me. I was a grad student in creative writing, having moved to San Francisco after a lifetime on the East Coast, doubting whether I had made the right choice. I’d always written, ever since I was a fifth grader with a diary, but taking myself seriously as a writer by embarking on a degree program was new, and it was daunting. I was working three jobs to put myself through grad school, in addition to taking out loans, and I didn’t know if I had made the right choice, if I was any good, if I had what it took to get where I hoped and dreamed I would wind up. What my friend Jack said to me that day was “persevere.“ That’s been my guidepost through the doubts and challenges that followed. No matter how it’s going, persevere.

Army of Lovers began with sketches I started writing about my time living in New York, when I was involved with ACT UP and was part of the group who created Queer Nation. I was documenting events that were personal and historic at once—events still quite close in the rearview mirror. I wrote so I wouldn’t forget. Other projects took over, and I turned to those instead, but I kept returning to these memories of activism in a time of crisis, even though I had yet to fully understand what they meant to me.

What started to take shape was a novel, not a memoir. Things, people, and places I’d known were transformed by imagination into a story through the tools of fiction—character, plot, language, structure. I worked on it steadily until it was ready to be shopped around to mainstream publishers by an established agent. The publishers all said no, the agent faded from my life, and I was left with a manuscript that I didn’t know how to repair and a dream I couldn’t quite let go off.

Enter Aron Kantor, a filmmaker and my friend, asking me to collaborate with him on a screenplay and kicking off a partnership of creativity that has birthed three feature-length scripts and a TV pilot. After a lot of alone time, working as a team was energizing. Aron is a wonderful partner: enthusiastic, open, visionary, and seriously funny. We each have strengths that bolster what the other one needs. We wrote through the isolation of the pandemic, and we’ve been working ever since, through lots of rejection, to find each of these projects a home. Right now Aron is working his tail off to produce Otto Sabotage—a comedic 24-hour odyssey set in San Francisco’s queer nightlife—as an independent feature that he will direct.

At some point, in the midst of all this screenwriting, along came Michael Nava, editor at Amble Press. Michael invited me to show him my ACT UP novel, which I had completely rewritten. I was elated to find that Michael understood the story I was telling and the way I was telling it, and he guided me through a round of revision that became a finished draft. Amble will publish Army of Lovers on October 11.

If you have read this far, thank you. I appreciate that you’re curious about where I’m at right now and what it took to get here. Please support the work! Here’s how:

Come to the staged reading of Otto Sabotage and learn more about what we need to turn it into a film. It’s free, but you can make a reservation. September 21, 7 PM, at SF Oasis in San Francisco.

Pre-order Army of Lovers, either directly at your favorite local bookstore; through the indie bookstore portal bookshop.org; or anywhere you order books online.

After years of hearing No, amid much self-doubt, and through periods of true despair, it seems surreal that suddenly there will be a book, and a presentation of the screenplay, to share with the world. I’m excited! And of course I’m a little scared, because every time you put yourself out to the world you open yourself up to all kinds of things. There’s a lot of vulnerability inside all this excitement. That’s part of persevering as well. Persevering through the vulnerability.

That’s it for now. I look forward to sharing that work with you really soon. Love, Karl.

Ten Years, Twenty Films: My Favorites of the Decade

I love talking about movies almost as much as I love watching them, so the chance to share my list of favorites of the past decade is really the hope for more conversation. The films on my list (below) are mostly those I’ve watched more than once, and will likely watch again. This was the decade that married movie-watching with instant gratification—DVD, DVR, Netflix. I probably saw more movies in the last ten years than I’d seen in the previous twenty, and I saw them when I wanted to see them. I recently came home from a screening of Nine, trying to remember 8 1/2, the Fellini film on which Nine was loosely based but which I hadn’t seen since college. I went to Netflix, clicked a link and was watching a streamed version of 8 1/2 within minutes. Seeing the source so quickly changed what I thought of the newer film; suddenly they were in conversation with each other (or in battle maybe, with a clear, classic victor).

The other reason list-making appeals to me is that it provides me with a picture of what I value. Turns out that films that put sexuality in the forefront are a big deal to me, which probably isn't a surprise to anyone who's read my fiction. Also making a big showing are films about self-discovery—whether the full-on emo blast of Into the Wild, or the halting, semi-satirical Year of the Dog. At the same time, I’m clearly drawn to the collective story—interwoven plot strands with multiple protagonists—a genre that emerged strongly over the last ten years, abetted by increasingly sophisticated editing technology. In different ways, films in this genre—the documentary-ish quality of Shortbus, the internationalism of Babel or the sitcom-writ-large that is Happy Endings—seemed to say that no one story tells the whole story, in a world that keeps getting smaller.

I recognize that I haven’t seen everything, and that my taste has its limits. Certain genres I don’t seek out, like horror or action, and I definitely favor American indie dramas and comedies, with a good dose of documentary and foreign films in the mix. In my first version of this list, I had almost 100 entries, but that seemed like overkill on one hand and cowardice—failure to take a stand—on the other. Going out on a limb a little more boldly, I humbly offer my top 20 movies of the '00s.

1. Shortbus (2006). A film that was absolutely of its time, and also ahead of the curve for critics and some audiences, Shortbus documented the emotional life of the artistic and sexual underground (in NYC) during a decade when art and sex were under a constant dulling threat from mass culture. John Cameron Mitchell, whose Hedwig and the Angry Inch could have easily been on this list, too, was the director, guiding a cast of unknowns through sexually graphic, emotionally raw performances as potent as any of the star turns on this list.

2. Y Tu Mama Tambien (2001). A young man’s education, times two, in which the bounds of friendship were tested, enhanced and ultimately broken by physical intimacy. Alfonso Cuarón’s film helped put one of my favorite stars, Gael Garcia Bernal, on the map. (Gael features in three of my top 20, making him my #1 crush.) This was also my favorite of a really great crop of films from Mexico. Nearly 10 years later, it already seems like a classic.

3. Far From Heaven (2002). Todd Haynes was a cherished director in the previous decade, with films like Poison and Safe. In this one, he used a bigger budget to show his intimate understanding of the melodramas of the 1950s, ala Douglas Sirk, and managed to create from old conventions something that felt really new. His leading lady, Julianne Moore, was at her peak here; hers is probably my favorite female performance of the last ten years.

4. Lust, Caution (2007). Ang Lee might be the director of the decade, beginning with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and building up to the phenomenon of Brokeback Mountain. But it was this film about covert action in revolutionary China that really blew me away. The story of a female spy whose relationship to the man she is supposed to kill actually brings on her own demise, it is troubling and upsetting and a masterpiece of characterization and tension. And the sex scenes, I mean, wow.

5. Into the Wild (2007). What does it mean to be young and want to rebel when the world seems to offer so few outlets? Can you destroy expectations without destroying yourself? This film took all of that on with great visual style and emotional impact. Sean Penn directed a brilliant performance from Emile Hirsch as a real-life suburban kid who leaves it all behind to disappear into the Alaskan wilderness, as foolish as he is brave.

6. Babel (2006). The political is personal in this film that skips across borders and continents, depicting how the lives of strangers are inextricably linked in our “globalized” world. This film has more memorable scenes than I have room to name—the ecstasy trip in Tokyo through the eyes of a deaf girl; the Mexican nanny (the amazing Adriana Barraza) deported by Homeland Security; the American husband in Northern Africa (an awesome Brad Pitt) trying to save his wife after she’s hit by a stray bullet. Directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, who made two other really great films, Amores Perros (2000) and 21 Grams (2003).

7. Year of the Dog (2007). I wish everyone would see this bittersweet film, with Molly Shannon breaking from her SNL persona ("I'm fifty!") to deliver a surprising, tender and heartbreaking performance, about a loner trying to survive the death of a beagle named Pencil and transforming into an animal rights activist. Mike White, who wrote the twisted Chuck and Buck (2000), wrote and directed this one, keeping a tonal balance between sentiment and satire. Peter Sarsgaard is one of many great supporting actors here, playing a sexually ambiguous dog trainer.

8. I Heart Huckabees (2004). At some point in the middle of the decade, everyone I knew was in a Bush-induced depression. This film seemed to encapsulate that mood and mindset perfectly. Jason Schwartzman goes on a quest to solve his existential angst, wanting to overcome helplessness (he doesn’t) and understand if coincidence means synchronicity or randomness (hmm…). Mark Wahlberg steals the show hitting Jason Schwartzman in the face with a big red rubber ball. Sidebar: Director David O. Russell became notorious for his on-set screaming at Lily Tomlin, a hissyfit that we all got to watch online—a very emblematic 00’s moment.

9. The Cockettes (2002). The documentary that reinvigorated the idea of the counterculture in a decade that tried to destroy it. My friend, director David Weissman, unearthed the surviving members of the early '70s San Francisco hippie-drag-acidhead theater collective to tell a story of art, freedom and survival. The glittery effects of this film will be felt for years in the worlds of performance and fashion and communities where personal expression is paramount.

10. Pan’s Labyrinth (2006). How does the imagination survive under tyranny? Using the fantasies of a very young girl as a springboard, director Guillermo del Toro produced some of the most visually arresting images in any film, period, proving that special effects can be used for something more personal than exploding things in outer space or Middle Earth.

11. Before Night Falls (2000). Painter Julian Schnabel proved he was a great film director when he made stirring art out of the heroic life of gay writer Reinaldo Arenas, nobly brought to life by Javier Bardem. Arenas, who survived imprisonment and forced labor in Castro’s Cuba only to die of AIDS in NYC, was a prolific novelist, poet and memoir writer who still has much to teach us. His work will likely stay in print thanks to this film. (Bonus: Johnny Depp as a drag queen smuggling contraband inside her butt. Hey-ey!)

12. Mysterious Skin (2004). Joseph Gordon Leavitt rightfully became a star in this enthralling performance as a gay kid fucked up by, but also liberated by, surviving childhood abuse. Scott Heim’s beautifully written novel was masterfully handled by Gregg Araki, whose direction had never seemed so right as it did in this film.

13. Adaptation (2002). Charlie Kaufman’s hilarious script, directed by Spike Jonze, turned Susan Orleans’ book The Orchid Thief into an absurdist take on writer’s block, complete with a (rare) great performance by Nicolas Cage playing both Kaufman and a fictional twin brother. Meryl Streep was at her best in a decade where she seemed all but unstoppable. I loved Kaufman’s brilliant Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), too, but this comedic treatment of the horrors of the writing life hit close to home.

14. Bad Education (2004). How does Pedro Almodovar keep making so many excellent films? Does it have something to with the way financing flows to filmmakers in Spain, or is it simply his pure talent and tenacity? I also adored Volver (2006), and I liked a lot of Talk to Her (2002), but this one, with its queer mystery plot, is the one I hold most dear. Oh yeah, there’s also Gael Garcia Bernal showing lots of skin. Mucho gracias.

15. Milk (2008). The biopic trend has become overbearing, but this film was more than just the life-story of gay hero Harvey Milk. It put the struggle for LGBT equality into historical context at exactly the right moment. And—often overlooked—it was a really varied piece of filmmaking: the multiplying split-screen telephone conversations, the strobe-lit Coors boycott, the pressurized come-out-to-your-parents phone call (an homage to The Boys in the Band). Director Gus Van Sant made five other films in the last ten years (!), including the mesmerizing Gerry (2002), Elephant (2003), and Last Days (2005). Milk bonus: my very own handsome husband was an onscreen extra cruising Sean Penn in a coffee shop. That’s right, baby…

16. Me, You and Everyone We Know (2005). Director and star Miranda July’s take on the interwoven-cast-of-characters was like a series of linked short stories—no surprise, since she also wrote one of the best books of the decade, the short story collection No One Belongs Here More Than You. The tone here is so gentle it’s almost a whisper, but at times the comedy is outrageously funny. Extra points for best (mis)use of emoticons in any movie ever: ))<>((

17. Once (2006). An Irish guy playing music on the street; a Czech woman with a broken vacuum; a not-quite love story, with music. Really lovely music. This was one of those came-out-of-nowhere films, with unknown stars and an unknown director (John Carney, from Ireland), that just knocked out everyone who saw it with its quiet, honest, believable depiction of the lives of ordinary, nearly invisible people. It also had really great music. Remember the enthusiasm of the stars when they won the Best Song Oscar? I still get choked up thinking about it.

18. The Squid and the Whale (2005). Seems like it’s rarer and rarer to get an American film made about a simple story—a marriage falling apart, rebound love, the kids discovering sex in the midst of adult turmoil, etc. But Noah Baumbach did it, and beautifully. Who can forget the dad (Jeff Daniels, in a perfect performance), playing the most inappropriately aggressive game of tennis; or the older brother (Jesse Eisenberg) pretending that Pink Floyd’s “Hey You” is a song he wrote; or the younger brother (Owen Kline) who, having learned to jerk off, starts wiping his semen everywhere he goes...?

19. Happy Endings (2005). Writer/director Don Roos gave us a great comic ensemble making the most out of interwoven romances and relationships in flux. I love everyone in this cast: Lisa Kudrow, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Steve Coogan, Jesse Bradford, Bobby Cannavale and—a great surprise—Tom Arnold. There’s also Josh Ritter, who’s adorable, as a kid trying to come out, and a subplot involving gay couples trying to procreate, a subject that was very much at the center of the world I lived in over the past ten years, though happily not as messed up as in this charming movie.

20. Man on Wire (2008). The film that seemed to speak most deeply to the losses felt by New Yorkers after 9/11 never mentioned 9/11 at all. This documentary, directed by James Marsh, about the adventurous spirit of prankster Philippe Petit, who tightrope-walked between the Twin Towers in 1974, was pure, joyous entertainment.

Honorable Mention: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. There was a moment in 2004 when I was laid up with the flu and my only relief was watching the first three films in this series. It was a slow build, but by the end of #3 (Prisoner of Azkaban), I was hooked. My favorite of the bunch is #4, the Mike Newell-directed Goblet of Fire, with its eye-popping Quidditch World Cup, its edge-of-the-seat underwater race, and the terrifying appearance of Voldemort in the final moments. Dismissed as kid stuff and ignored by the Oscars, these films have been one of my steadiest (least) guilty pleasures. Here’s to (big-budget) magic.

So there you go. What are you favorites? What on this list do you love, or hate? Which of my fixations do you share? Converse.

Get Out Your Oscar Ballot

 The Oscar ballot has become kind of moot, even -- especially -- if you're the kind of fan who gives lots of thought to who will take home the Academy gold. Almost every single winner feels predetermined -- this year, if you're not putting Slumdog Millionaire down for everything and betting the bank on Kate Winslet and Heath Ledger, then you're just not paying attention. The glut of so-called precursor awards -- the Globes, the SAG awards, the BAFTAs (that's in England, yo), and all the various guild prizes in the weeks leading up to the Academy shindig --  have come to cement the conventional wisdom into foregone conclusions. Best Animated Film? Why that would be WALL-E. Foreign film? You don't have to have seen Waltz With Bashir to know it's going to win. Despite a few seemingly too-close-to-call races -- Sean Penn's Harvey Milk vs. Mickey Rourke's Randy the Ram; Penelope Cruz's crazy-lady versus Marisa Tomei's hooker-with-a-heart-of gold -- most of what will happen on Sunday February 22 ... well, it is written. (If you didn't catch it, that's Slumdog-speak. You better get up to speed.)

Still, watching the Oscars, for all the rewarding-of-mediocrity, for all the Hollywood-patting-itself-on-its-corrupt-back, remains a pleasurable sport, and not only because actual jump-off-the-couch surprises can still happen. (Remember how great it was last year when Tilda Swinton won for Michael Clayton and wound up talking about George Clooney's nipples in her acceptance speech?) No, the best thing about watching the Oscars with a small group of dedicated moviegoing friends is the chance to shout your opinion at the the TV set for three hours.

Yes, it's true that the movies in question are too often forgettable prestige pics like Frost/Nixon or over-praised blockbusters like The Dark Knight. (Let's face it, with the average Academy voter being age 60, it's not exactly a body that has its finger on the pulse.) But still, for that span of time -- which in my opinion, never "drags on" too long -- everyone is talking about movies. And for that, I'll keep coming back.

This year I'm only really rooting for one film: Milk. It's the only film of the nominated bunch that I've seen twice (and am contemplating seeing again during its return engagement at the Castro Theatre). When I think of all the ways the film could have gone wrong -- cliché bio-pic...too-campy marginalization...somber & sex-free -- and then think about how right it turned out -- not only full of great acting from Sean Penn, James Franco, Josh Brolin and Emile Hirsch, but also humorous and humanizing (thanks to Dustin Lance Black's script) and visually eclectic and engaging, thanks to the the underrated and vastly imaginative cinematography by Harris Savides -- I get warm all over, in a proud, hometown sort of way. I'd love to see Gus Van Sant take home the best director award. It might be possible (but then there's Danny Boyle, Slumdog's half-helmer, so...forget it).

The other film that I like a lot is one that everyone seems to be hating on, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Yes, it's too long, and perhaps it's too pretty for its own good, but it's one of those films that makes me happy Hollywood exists at all. The thing is fucking magical to behold, not only for the waaaay convincing aging makeup (and how exactly did they get Brad Pitt's face on that midget-old-man's body anyway? it's absolutely seamless) but for the gloriousness of the art direction, cinematography and costuming. If you haven't seen it, see it on the big screen and ENJOY the gift of cinema. Director David Fincher, whose entire career has been devoted to the dark side of humanity (Se7en, The Game, Panic Room, Fight Club, Zodiac) proves with Button that he can apply his mad skills to a love story for grown ups. And yeah, I do think Brad Pitt deserves his best actor nomination -- his Benjamin is more than a pretty face, he's a man trapped in a legacy he can't control but refuses to feel victimized by. Pitt's scenes with Tilda Swinton are some of the best of the year. (That's two Tilda references so far! Yes!)

I haven't seen The Reader yet but based on the its-her-year logic, I'm imagining that Kate Winselt is going to get -- and deserve -- the best actress trophy for her role as a former concentration camp guard who falls into a relationship with a teenage boy. I say deserve because what haven't you loved Kate in -- Heavenly Creatures, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Little Children (sorry, I won't utter the T-word)? If you saw Revolutionary Road you know how brave an actress she is, way more than she has to be with her flawless Anglo face and comely bod. (And speaking of Revolutionary Road, when is Leonardo DiCaprio going to get his Oscar? The dude delivers again and again. Give him the statue before he runs out of steam.)

OK, that brings me to the front runner and likely Best Picture winner, Slumdog Millionaire. Big sigh. What can I say, I just think it was weak. Yes, I liked the first third. The child actors were perfection, the scenarios were unforgettable (diving in the toilet, escaping the eye-burning orphan-exploiters), and the depiction of slum life was  both upsetting/sobering and envigorating/life-affirming -- not an easy mix to pull off. But the film was one long downhill trip. The mid-film adolescent storyline brought us into familiar gangsterism, and the adult storyline brought us into money worship and an I've-loved-you-forever formula that nearly made me leave the theater. I groaned through the cell-phone life-line climax, and even the musical number that capped the film off left me underwhelmed (I mean, the lead actors didn't exactly move around during their dance-moment, right?) If this film were set in the slums of Detroit or Miami, would we be applauding its sugar-coated happily ever after vibe? No, we'd probably see it as offensive. Slumdog in the end depressed me. It's a colonial exercise that will embarrass all of us in ten year's time. 

So what's left? I guess I'll leave my final shout-out to The Wrestler, which aside from its fantastic acting also featured one of the most revealing and remarkable scripts of the year (setting aside its one indulgent flaw, the corny father-daughter reunion sequence, and even that had the fantastic pea-coat-gift moment). The portrayal of life on the wrestling circuit was one of the most humanistic portraits in any film this year -- you loved these guys you've never taken seriously before. The Wrestler's cinematography, by Todd Haynes' alum Maryse Alberti (who's also shot a number of great documentaries, like Crumb) was like nothing else all year long -- handheld, subtle, constantly surprising without being unnecessarily flashy. The film winds up seared on your eyes -- a series of images that won't go away. Alberti and director Darren Aronofsky created a true visual wonder, something hard to watch and impossible to turn away from. I wish it had been nominated for at least five more awards.

But that's always the case with the Oscars. The films you really love are rarely nominated and almost never win. So take all that annoyance and anger and aim it at the TV screen on Sunday evening. Enjoy the catharsis. Reinvest yourself in the movies.

PS: If you've gotten this far, then maybe you want more. So check out The Film Experience's annual Oscar Symposium, featuring a quintet of smarty-pants film lovers arguing what they loved/hated, led by Nathaniel Rogers, the best film blogger of them all.

Curiosity is love. Ignorance is nemesis.

My favorite moment from the Golden Globes was Colin Farrell's acceptance speech. He won best actor is a comedy for In Bruges [haven't seen it], and seemed truly surprised and ad hoc when it was time to speak -- a bit jittery [cute] but also self-possessed and, dare I say it, inspirational. [As of this post, there's only one video of the speech on You Tube, which includes annoying interruptive commentary by whoever taped it.] Here's the text, more or less, from my transcription:

Cheers, thank you, thanks a million, thanks. They must of done the counting in Florida. Em. Eh. I’m actually shocked, truly, to even get the nomination to be here, eh, and to part of such a piece… I have to of course got to thank my father … Catholic guilt, the Irish Catholic thing. My mother, father, brother, two beautiful sisters. Yeah. Eh.

Martin, thank you for not listening to me when I asked you to cast someone else. I’ve never been so at peace with being ignored in my life.

It’s seldom that you get a script that’s simultaneously profound and beautifully comic and wonderfully painful, filled with delightful remorse and more than anything else the sweetest, sweetest redemptive qualities. And that was In Bruges for me. And to work with Martin was a dream and I love you.

You know I’ll ride Sally’s coattails and start talking about love a bit because I think at the end of the day what we all do in some shape or form is about love. I hate to wax lyrical, but curiosity is love, ignorance is nemesis. *

Brendan this is at least half of yours…. [shout out to co-star Brendan Gleeson]

There’s some people that I’ve worked with in the last eight years since I’ve been doing this. They kind of transcend the functions that they serve creatively and professionally in my life. I have an agent, two agents and a lawyer, and a publicist that I actually love, also, dearly…. [names] who have more than anything, ehm, guided me with decency and compassion and have allowed me over the years to believe that what we do is nothing to do business, but is a dream that is born of that curiosity I spoke of earlier, and is  a playground for imagination and for the exploration of thought and feeling. And that’s why they’re so cool and that’s why I’m the luckiest actor around.

It’s a bit late for brown nosing now...[followed by brown-nosing the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, but funny]

We should all be so lucky to have a playground for our imaginations. He's Irish, he's eloquent, and he's got a statue in his hand a couple years after his sex tape was all over the Internet. Eat that for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

--

In addition to having a typo in the title of my original post, it seems I got the best part of his quotation wrong: "Curiosity is love. It's ignorance's nemesis." Makes more sense, though I liked my mis-hearing, too. That'll teach me to post at 2 a.m.... perhaps.

Revolutionary Road, an adaptation

Books aren't “made” into movies as much as gutted and restuffed. Having turned my own novel into a screenplay, I'm aware of what needs to happen to make the leap: a lot of cutting away of the source material, and then a lot of putting-in of scenes that weren't there to begin with, to make the story work in this new medium. Seeing the film adaptation of a book you’ve enjoyed is often disappointing -- your favorites scenes are missing, the actors don't resemble the way you've pictured the characters in your mind -- which is why I usually recommend doing it the other way around. See the movie, then go back to the source. The flow seems more expansive this way.

Revolutionary Road began as a novel by Richard Yates, one that has apparently had a long troubled history trying to get to the screen. When the new film directed by Sam Mendes and written by Justin Haythe was first announced in 2007, Yates biographer Blake Bailey chronicled the novel's 40-year stalled history of not making it to the screen. Offering (unsolicited) advice to the production team, Bailey wrote:

...Yates meant for the Wheelers to seem a little better than mediocre… the Wheelers are everyday people -- you and me -- who pretend to be something they're not because life is lonely and dull and disappointing. Were Yates alive to advise Mendes, I daresay he'd insist that the movie begin, as the novel does, with April's mortifyingly awful performance in an amateur production of The Petrified Forest. In other words, the Wheelers' doom should never be in doubt because they can't help being themselves.

Mendes and Haythe did indeed find a way to begin the film with April’s disastrous play, or at least its aftereffects. As for the doubt or certainty of the Wheelers’ doom, not knowing where the story was going (not having read the novel), I did find myself wondering how the de-evolution of the Wheelers' marriage might be redeemed. Maybe I'm just a sucker for hope, but I kept thinking it would get a little better after it got so much worse.

The film covers the same turf as the highly pleasurable Mad Men -- the conformist pressures of the post-WWII boom years -- but unlike that show the film puts every emotion and out there on the surface. Mad Men is all subtext with a mischievous wink of the eye. Rev Road is all blame and brutality. Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet as Frank and April Wheeler explode at each other in the third scene of the film -- so intensely that when the title suddenly comes up on screen, you want to laugh out loud, from the cold realization that if the film is starting with this much intensity, where will it possibly go from here? It's gonna be a bumpy ride on those freshly paved suburban streets.

Does that mean the adaptation has failed its source? BlorkBlog, admiring the novel, notes that "subtext is one of the beauties of Revolutionary Road," and perhaps some of that went by the wayside once the novel became a vehicle for A-list stars. But I think that the urge to laugh at the largeness of emotions on display is a sign of nervous recognition. It's my guess that much of the truth Yates wanted to convey -- the brutality, the "depressing" quality of lives not fully lived, the way love festers when lovers are constrained -- has surely been preserved. When April pleaded with Frank through red-rimmed eyes, asking, "Who made these rules?", more than a shiver of recognition went through the theater. Apparently many of us are still asking that question, decades later.

Yates himself was exemplary of the doomed, broken down, mid-20th century novelist -- booze, misery, institutionalizaton, his books praised but not selling, his hopes raised then crushed by Hollywood. He was a manic-depressive accused by reviewers and readers of writing depressing books.

The film will, I suppose, both redeem Yates and confirm his reputation as being not for everyone. It's a high-end production, strongly acted, artfully composed, memorably scored. Acclaim will follow, and maybe some awards. And yet the "hopelessness and emptiness" that its characters can't surpass will surely stand in the way of turning it a crowd-pleaser, and might scare potential readers. Will audience members keep their distance from Yates’s Eleven Kinds of Loneliness (the title of his 1962 short story collection, the only of his works I've read)? Or will they want to know more, drawn into its explosive fires like moths to flame?

Giving in (just a little) to the Oscar Watch.

The Golden Globes, the splashiest and most dubious of the movie awards (because who are the Hollywood Foreign Press Association anyway?), broadcasts Sunday.* Last year, the writers strike jettisoned the whole thing except for a handful of "entertainment journalists" reading the winners in front of a garish backdrop, so I'm guessing this year it'll be a full on rebound party. The best thing about the Globes, as opposed to the takes-itself-too-seriously Oscars, is that the guests are all at banquet tables downing alcohol so the whole affair feels a little bit looser. But just a little. The cameras are rolling, after all, so you won't see anyone getting out of hand. Then again, Mickey Rourke is nominated this year.

I'm usually a dedicated "Oscar Watcher," keeping tallies of the critics awards, "predicting" nominations before they're announced, and doing my best to view every possible contender before the Academy Awards (this year, Feb. 22), the better to score highest in the Oscar pool.

But this year there have been other things on my mind. The whole economic meltdown isn't exactly leaving me in a frivolous mood. There was that rather important election we just had. And then there's the general joylessness of going to the movies, where fifteen minutes of ads assault you in a theater full of talkers and texters. Eleven bucks a ticket? That's almost an entire month of Netflix. Grumble, grumble.

Still, with the Globes upon us and the Oscar nominations only two weeks away, I've caught a bit of the buzz again. And so, some recommendations to keep up with the Oscar Watch:

My favorite site for everything Oscar is The Film Experience, where actress-obsessed New Yorker Nathaniel blogs all day long, all year long about films, their stars, movie trivia in general and awards awards awards. He has an eerie ability to predict who will be nominated, too (a great resource for your in-home ballot, btw), and he's got a sense of humor. Another site for the Oscar-obsessed is the up-to-the-minute Awards Daily, though after spending a lot of time last year commenting on their every post, I came away aware of a somewhat self-righteous streak that runs through their boards. This stuff is supposed to be fun, folks. For sheer goofy personality, David Carr's Carpetbagger blog at the Times is a pleasure. And for an overall compendium of just about every movie everywhere, check out Movie City News. They don't miss a thing.

*If anyone can tell me whether the Globes are broadcasting on the West Coast at 5pm -- live -- or at 8pm, taped, please let me know. I can't find this info anywhere. (Why does Bay Area's Ch. 11's site not give easy access to a schedule?) /End grumbling

 

The Kitt that roared

She was Catwoman. She was seventy-something feline vamping for Isaac Mizrahi. She was a cougar before there was a word for it, prowling for younger men. She was Eartha Kitt -- one of the most remarkable popular entertainers ever. Once you saw her -- cat eyes, purring voice, exaggerated slinky persona -- you never forgot her.

And she might have been an even bigger star, had she not, 40 years ago, been a voice of political dissent.

As John Nichols chronicles in The Nation, Kitt's defining moment was one in which she didn't purr but roared, standing up to Lady Bird Johnson at a White House luncheon during the Vietnam War.

"You send the best of this country off to be shot and maimed," the singer told the First Lady and the 50 other women at the luncheon. "They rebel in the street. They don't want to go to school because they're going to be snatched off from their mothers to be shot in Vietnam."

The First Lady reportedly burst into tears.

The president was furious.

Kitt was blacklisted. She was investigated by the FBI and CIA, and ended up on the "Enemies List" of Johnson's successor, Richard Nixon. 

Kitt spent the next decade performing mostly in Europe...

It's the combination of this political steel beneath the veneer of pop frivolity that branded Kitt a certifiable diva in my mind.

The passing of a celebrity rarely leaves much of a mark on me. Compared to the loss of a friend, or the news of a tragedy affecting everyday people, the death of a famous person is often little more than a curiosity. But Eartha Kitt's death on Christmas Day has been a reminder to me of how many beloved entertainers died over the past year: George Carlin, Paul Newman, Estelle Getty, Isaac Hayes, Bettie Page, Suzanne Pleshette. Maybe it's just the end of the calendar year, with its inevitable retropsective tone, but I'm aware, right now, that the 20th century is really receding into the past, as a generation of presences who shaped my childhood in different ways -- images on screens large and small, regulars on talk shows, unforgettable music on the radio -- fades from the landscape.

Last day to see Milk at the Castro Theatre

It'll undoubtedly still play elsewhere, but if you're in San Francisco there's no better place to watch Milk than at the Castro Theatre. You not only get the neighborhood crowd, and the organist that everyone still eagerly claps along to, you also get to see the damn theatre on the screen while you're sitting inside it.

And if you're lucky you might even get handed one of those impossible to understand conspiracy-theory leaflets that are all over the Castro right now, proclaiming, in tiny print, "This psy-ops type, phony, historical revisionist film is a subversion of historical facts, a continuing cover-up of key evidence and a psy-ops (Brainwashing) distraction from the then geo-political circumstances..." It goes on from there to link Dianne Feinstein, the CIA's MK-Ultra program and Jim Jones, and to point to a website that I won't even link to because they seem to have something to do with reactionary kook Lyndon LaRouche.

Milk ends its Castro run on Tuesday 12/23. Conspiracy theories are ongoing.

 

The Times of Harvey Milk on iTunes

Before there was Milk there was The Times of Harvey Milk -- the best documentary of 1984 according to the Oscars. You can get it now on iTunes for under 10 bucks.

I love this documentary, though it's true, I have a vested interest in you spending money on this. The director, Rob Epstein, along with his producing partner, Jeffrey Friedman, are the guys who've optioned The World of Normal Boys. And one day, when they get the financing together, they're going to make a helluva film out of my book.

Meanwhile, Rob and Jeffrey are working on a movie about Howl, you know, the most notorious poem of all time. They've even signed James Franco to play Allen Ginsberg.