Watch and Learn – Meta movies

I was watching “Spartan” – David Mamet’s pretty damn good film with less swearing than usual but the the same staccato macho dialogue as usual – when I thought of State and Maine, one of my favourite films about making movies, and so, as often happens with people with a Linnaeus complex, I made up a list of five other movies about making movies which I have seen and liked.

8 1/2.

It’s mandatory. But it’s mandatory because it’s awesome. It’s a bit irksome at times, but there’s a shot of Marcello that goes from him to a pan into memory that is so unbelievably good (or so it seems in my memory) I watched it a few times at least. Marcello is a model of adult coolness—like Brando in The Wild One all grown up and all Euro sophist-i-cat in a suit, who would simply smile at the question, “What are you rebelling against?”, light another cigarette, and say “Ciao, bella” as he walked away.

The Stuntman

I remember my parents going to see this. I remember that because I still couldn’t go because I was too young—just like when they went to Apocalypse Now! Well, thank god it came out on VHS about a decade later. Peter O’Toole is great and whatever happened to Steve Railsback? He’s so good in it. There has to be a good DVD of this floating somewhere around the markets here in the Lair. Anyhow, I remember loving the games that the movie (can’t remember the director’s name at the moment, and I am not going to cheat with IMDB) plays with the “is it the movie or the movie movie?” that Fincher’s The Game (and Mamet’s House of Games and The Spanish Prisoner and Heist and…) does much later. Dig it up.

Beware the Holy Whore

Fassbender’s take on cinema which Metro Cinema showed a long time ago. Apparently he threw the cast together and put them in a slow pressure cooker to see what simmered up. Lots of gristle is what he got. Nasty and brutal, but great. Funny at times, too, but it’s a nasty humour—it is Fassbender, so what do you expect? Wonderfully shot in the hotel, with mirrors and doorways playing a major role.

Viva Erotica

Leslie Cheung is a director of softcore, Cat III films, in Hong Kong, and Shu Qi is an actress. She is in one of her first legit movies, I think, but still gets naked, which is, no doubt, one of the reasons I got this VCD a long time ago (found it in Chinatown in Edmonton). A lot of fun, and Shu Qi is quite good, as is the rest of the cast, and it’s much better than Tsai Ming Liang’s Wayward Cloud, which has one of the nastiest endings I have ever seen.

State and Maine

Not the best but my favourite on the list. The warmest Mamet film, too, I think, but still with dialogue that is unmistakeably his. It’s great to see (or hear) a talky film where the talk is the thing, not just filler to move a plot—a throwback to the lovely screwball comedies that tossed around bon mots like a superball thrown in an acquarium. Everything works perfectly and how can you go wrong with a cast with William H. Macy, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Rebecca Pidgin, and Alec Baldwin? Even Sarah Jessica Parker is great in it. I take quotes from this frequently; “You like kids? Never saw the point of ‘em. Me, either”; “And then that happened”; “It’s ludicrous. So’s our electoral system, but we still vote.” [yes, they may not be verbatim quotes, but it’s memory, the beauty of which is it’s inaccuracy].

Addendum ad infinitum

Altman’s The Player could be on here, but I haven’t seen it since it came out, but I remember the opening shot that was great and Richard E. Grant is fabulous. Tom DiCillo’s Lost in Oblivion could make it, too, I am sure, but the same thing goes in that I haven’t seen it in yonks. What happened to DiCillo? Guess it’s time to look at the old IMDB. Maybe it can give me a clue about Railsback, too. Oh, and Merhige’s Shadow of the Vampire. And I’m sure that, like all lists, several more things will suddenly pop into my head. Oh, couldn’t John Waters’s Cecil B. Demented be on here, too?