Centennial: Butterfly McQueen

Today is the Centennial of Butterfly McQueen, she of the famously squeaky voice, immortalized in her very first picture Gone With the Wind (1939). She died from an unfortunate kerosene heater accident 15 years ago but since it's the 100th anniversary of her birth today we send her a warm "Thank You" to the great beyond. Butterfly was a staunch Atheist but we think she'd approve of our church. In the church of cinema, everyone involved with classic films lives on for eternity (provided the negatives weren't destroyed).

"Gone With the Wind" (her first) and "Mosquito Coast" (her last feature film)

McQueen quit early, discouraged by endless servant roles. That's all black actresses could get in the Golden Age of Hollywood. In short: it wasn't golden for people of color.

"I don't know nuthin' bout birthin' babies!"

...which she shrieked hysterically in Gone With the Wind (1939) may have been her most famous cinematic moment, but you can also spot her in early classics like The Women (1939) and Mildred Pierce (1945). Her last feature film arrived when she was in her seventies. Peter Weir cast her in a key role opposite Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren in The Mosquito Coast (1986).

Broaden the Biopics!
Hollywood has such insatiable true story fever, that you wish filmmakers would broaden their scope a little about who to dramatize in non-fiction based films. Most biopics are about über famous entertainers or political leaders. Perhaps that's for box office reasons but maybe it's just a lack of imagination. Couldn't biopics about lesser known players involved with some hugely famous historical event or milieu, be both marketable and aesthetically riveting for the fresh light they would cast on our familiar mythologized histories?

Nobodies ever planned a Butterfly McQueen biopic so cross your fingers that last year's Supporting Actress winner Mo'Nique (Precious) actually gets to do that rumored biopic about another Supporting Actress winner, Butterfly's Gone With the Wind's co-star Hattie McDaniel. Think how fascinating that film could be. It's enough to give you shivers.

But who would you cast to star opposite Hattie/Mo'Nique as "Prissy"/Butterly and "Scarlett"/Vivien in that sure-to-be interesting film?

BAFTA Swans, Ohio Dreams, Audio Society Listens

With Oscar nominations just 17 days away, it's all over but the stragglers, the ceremonies (BFCA and Globes in a week's time. Whooo) and one biggie precursor the Director's Guild of America, which will announce on Monday. Awards season always starts feeling about deja vu at this point. But we're about to wake up to the NOW. Just 17 days...

But here's three more awards crumbs until we get there: But here's three more awards crumbs until we get there: The BAFTA long list (not their nominees. that happens later), Ohio Critics and the Cinema Audio Society. It's a lot to cover so it's all after the jump.

Click to read more ...

Cut You

"Is this detention?"
"Actually it's your mother's house and we're all having a party."
-Elias Koteas in Some Kind of Wonderful (1986)

Distant Relatives: Blazing Saddles and Hot Fuzz

Robert here, with my series Distant Relatives, where we look at two films, (one classic, one modern) related through a common theme and ask what their similarities and differences can tell us about the evolution of cinema.

Bad boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do

It shouldn't come as a shock that Blazing Saddles and Hot Fuzz have basically the same setup: outsider comes to small town where he has a hard time fitting but eventually becomes the only man who can save the village.  It's not that Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg and Mel Brooks and his co-writers all coincidentally had the same idea.  Truth is, the western and cop movie, the two genres being spoofed here, are the same genre only set 100 years apart or so.  In both cases, an outsider protagonist (not even literal outsiders, moral outsiders like High Noon's Gary Cooper or Serpico's Al Pacino work too!) creates drama by pitting the hero against insurmountable odds in an environment he doesn't know.  In both cases a lovable sidekick helps grund him and a conflict only he can solve elevates him to hero status (in terms of both his success and rare skill).

The protagonists of Blazing Saddles and Hot Fuzz couldn't be more different but they're similar in that they contradict expectations set up by their genres' more serious films.  Nick Angel (Simon Pegg) is a good cop who plays by all the rules.  He isn't exactly Detective Riggs.  Sheriff Bart (Cleavon Little) is vulgar, vain, charming, clever, and doesn't care to know the rules enough to break them.  He isn't exactly John Wayne.  The towns they inhabit, aren't so much contradictions of cultural portrayals as exaggerations.  The town of Sandford is comically peaceful, playing off the idea of the quaint and safe countryside of movies like Local Hero.  Rock Ridge has fun with the towns of the old west, with cows rummaging through churches, and citizens all named Johnson.

That's Entertainment

Each film skewers the genre it spoofs and eventually becomes.  How do they do this?  First by establishing a world where everyone knows the elements of that genre.  In Hot Fuzz it's easy.  Since the film is set in modern time, anyone can go down to the local store and rent a copy of Bad Boys.  In Blazing Saddles, while it seems like a good assumption that no one there has seen a western, they still know their roles, appreciating good old fashioned gibberish, getting annoyed at classic western cliche and genuflecting the very mention of Randolph Scott.  By giving everyone an understanding of how their world "should" work, they've made them extra-aware of when it's not actually working in that manner, like when a series of unusual crimes begin to unfold.




If comedy is inconsistency, then Brooks and Wright set up meta-levels of self awareness by which the characters can be inconsistent.  Each film culminates in the ultimate self-aware spectacle.  In Hot Fuzz this involves the plot actually turning into that of a generic action blockbuster.  For Blazing Saddles, the action literally spills off the lot and onto other films.

But did we learn anything?

The big difference between these two films, as anyone would note, is in social commentary.  Blazing Saddles, though often saddled itself with the qualifier "a film like this could never get made today" is an argument for tolerance, using the uber-racist town of Rock Ridge as a mirror for our reality.  While one could argue that the small town of Sandford in Hot Fuzz is a take on a "violence begets peace" mentality not uncommon in our world, it might be a bit of a stretch.  Hot Fuzz doesn't have a social message.  Is that a sign that as satire, message movies are dead?

What Hot Fuzz does suggest however is a reality in which we're so immersed in media and culture that we can no longer separate it from ourselves.  Culture is not a reflection of us, instead we are a reflection of it.  Blazing Saddles, with its self awareness and unending pop-cultural references often suggests the very same.  Both films get their laughs by creating worlds that couldn't exist without the totality of pop to be built upon.

The suggestion that the spoof film is dead is one made not without merit.  Such films still get made, just not often well.  What the evolution of Blazing Saddles to Hot Fuzz suggests is that while grand social statements aren't necessary, some statement, some observation about our reality is.  References to culture alone won't do it.  Some greater truth has to be revealed, whether it be the dark side of our society or the overbearing anti-originality tendencies of our culture.  There's truth there.  And truth is funny.


One Week Left of Voting. Best Actor Battles.

With only 18 days left until the big announcement, the fever is rising.

Over at my Tribeca Film Oscar column I'm sounding off on True Grit's hit status, the uncertain Supporting Actress race (it's the only race without a clear "winner" frontrunner), and which melodies are rising above the awards din. Read the article.

One thing I didn't cover in that article is these last minute endorsements of sorts we've been hearing about. Kathryn Bigelow and Martin Scorsese are pro Winter's Bone (and don't think they lack for pull in Tinseltown). Bigelow just hosted a screening. You've already heard that Javier Bardem's celebrity friends (including recent Eat Pray Love Vote co-star Julia Roberts) have been rallying for his Cannes-winning performance in Biutiful.

Meanwhile, Oscar winner Robert Duvall (Get Low) just put his hands in cement in front of Grauman's. You know what that means. Any reminder that you're still very much in it means that you're still working to win it. Not that Duvall isn't already a winner on every Oscar level. They've only ever loved 13 men enough to hand them six or more nominations and Duvall is one of that esteemed baker's dozen. If he gets this nod, he moves us to top ten Oscar beloved actor status (tied with Dustin Hoffman and Richard Burton in terms of nominations).

I've made some adjustments to the Best Actor chart to reflect the 7 man race nail-biter.