Reader Spotlight: K.M. Soehnlein

Are you still enjoying the reader spotlights? I hope you've found a few kindred spirits in the featured readers thus far. Today, I'm talking to K.M. Soehnlein in San Francisco who is a longtime reader and also a novelist. Discovering that novelists read you is a bit humbling. Anyway... let's talk!

Nathaniel: So... earlier this year you received the Warren Beatty book "STAR" from a Film Experience contest. What's your favorite nugget so far?
K.M. SOEHNLEIN: There’s a nugget on every page of “Star,” if by nugget you mean hot steamy chunk of gossip: “He made love to [Joan] Collins relentlessly, although every now and then he would accept calls while he was inside her.” In the Introduction to the book, Peter Biskind, the author, says he’s interested in Beatty as “one of the foremost filmmakers of his generation…at the intersection between politics and culture.” But he also talks about how difficult Beatty was to get interviews with, and you start to suspect, as the negative characterizations of Beatty pile up, that maybe Biskind is enacting some kind of revenge on his “star.”

But! There are absolutely page-turning stories about film production. I just finished reading the chapter on Bonnie and Clyde. I had no idea it was so difficult to get this film or that it was the vehicle that saved Beatty from a string of flops that would have sunk his career before he was 30.
 
You've written books yourselves and graciously sent me two. I'm really enjoying "The World of Normal Boys" and especially love the movie references, duh! How autobiographical are they?

Soehnlein's book references three huge musicals of its era

I’m glad you like the book! The scenes in my novel are mostly fictional – I never went to a drive-in to see Saturday Night Fever with the sexy older boy next door – but the music, the setting, the flavor of the times, that’s all from experience. Yeah, I’m a child of the 70s which meant we had one “stereo system” in the house. My parents had lots of soundtrack albums, so that was the first music I listened to as a kid: The King and I, Funny Girl, Godspell (we were Catholic), and the one I got completely obsessed about, West Side Story. I had every lyric memorized before I'd ever see these movies. I don’t think I could overstate the phenomenon of Grease when it came out in 1978. Kids were OBSESSED with it. I used to walk around with the girls in my neighborhood playing the soundtrack on portable cassette player, acting like the Pink Ladies.
 
Your three favorite actresses. Go.
Old school: Natalie Wood would be my first answer but that’s not because she was the best actress – in fact she’s often pretty terrible – but just because of my West Side Story obsession. When she cries those tears of injustice at the end of the film – “How many bullets left in this gun? Enough for you, and you, and you?” – I think some kind of tragic template lodged in my blood that has never quite left. Reigning queen: Julianne Moore. It might be a redhead identification thing, but I love her in everything. I especially like her in comedies, from The Big Lebowski to The Kids are All Right, though my favorite performance is in Far From Heaven. Rising star: Give me more Michelle Williams. (Meek’s Cutoff recently opened in San Francisco.)

Take an Oscar away. Give it to someone else.
Only one? Didn’t one of your recent readers get six? OK let’s take away Cate Blanchett’s Oscar for that hammy imitation of Katherine Hepburn in The Aviator and give it to any of the four women she was nominated against: Laura Linney in Kinsey, Virginia Madsen in Sideways, Sophie Okonedo in Hotel Rwanda, or Natalie Portman in Closer. (Maybe if Natalie had won that year we could have seen Michelle Williams win this year… Sorry, wishful thinking.) Just for the record I love me some Cate Blanchett but I’d have given her the statue all the way back for Elizabeth. Sorry, Gwyneth.

Supporting Actress 2004

Name your favorite in each of the following 4 genres: Drama, Horror, High School, Woody Allen.
Drama Something by Mike Leigh, probably Naked or Secrets and Lies. Horror Carrie. High School The Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls in Love, which was my good friend Maria Maggenti’s debut back in the mid-90s and which I have a huge sweet spot for. (Plus: Dale Dickey in an early role.) Woody Stardust Memories.

They put you in charge of the movies. How do you wield this awesome power?
Well if I can be completely self-interested the first thing I’d do is green-light the film adaptation of The World of Normal Boys which I’ve been trying to get made for ten years.

Then I’d wield my awesome power to dump money on all the filmmakers I love: Mike Leigh, Todd Haynes, John Cameron Mitchell, Kelly Reichardt, Spike Lee, John Waters, etc. etc. etc. I’d put limits on the amount of money any single film could cost. I’d set up some kind of incredibly well-funded National Film Agency, maybe run by a cabinet-level Secretary of the Arts, (how about Meryl Streep?). I’d make sure artists had health care. Socialism. Yes please.

previous spotlights

Reader of the Day: Murtada

Since yesterday's Reader o' the Day was someone I'd met, let's make it a double feature. But afterwards we go back to people I haven't met which is 99.99% of you. Today we're talking to Murtada who lives here in NYC. I've only been recognized in public (at least to my knowledge) like 6 times so I've never gotten used to it. It is... strange. Murtada was one of those (unlucky) sharp eyed people. We were at a gay bingo event of all things.

Nathaniel: I'm still so embarrassed about our meeting. My friends were so mad at me... they were all "Why were you so rude to that nice guy?" I was just shocked/disoriented. I have no idea what I even said. Can you ever forgive me?
MURTADA: Of course I forgive you……as long as you promise to come back to gay bingo. I haven’t been back since that day, have you?

Haven't been back, no. LOL. Do you remember your first moviegoing experience?
I grew up in Sudan and there were not a lot of movie theatres there. I consumed movies on VHS. But there was an outdoor summer theatre that played mostly Bollywood movies. I remember seeing a Jaws revival on a very hot summer night sometime in the 80s and hiding under the seat for most of the movie because I was so scared.

Your 3 favorite actresses. Go!
The two C/Kates, Blanchett and Winslet. I can’t get enough of either. Blanchett was love at first sight when I saw her in Elizabeth but I love her most in The Talented Mr. Ripley, so casually snobbish.. delicious. And her big grand gestures in The Good German are even better than her Hepburn. Winslet was more of a love built over time and accumulated because  she just kept getting better and making better movies. My fave of hers is probably Revolutionary Road, she was combusting with emotion in that. And recently Michelle Williams took my breath away in Blue Valentine.

I know you're an Oscar obsessive. Take away one person's Oscar and give it to someone else.
I could play this game all day: Angelina Jolie’s (Girl, Interrupted) to Toni Colette (The Sixth Sense); Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s (Capote) to Heath Ledger (Brokeback Mountain); Rachel Weiz (Constant Gardener) to Maria Bello (A History of Violence); And don't even get me started on Hooper/Fincher, the wound is still raw.

But if I was given one chance I will have to take Kevin Costner best director Oscar (Dances With Wolves) and give it to Martin Scorsese. I know, obvious. But that doesn't make it wrong. In fact it will right maybe one of the biggest wrongs in Oscar history. GoodFellas is a fantastic movie that has endured and is now a big part of movie and pop culture history. In my opinion it's Scorcese's peak as a storyteller.

Who are you really rooting for over the next few years of cinema?
I am so glad that Darren Aronofsky is not doing Wolverine and whatever his next movie becomes I hope it's an original story of his. He is the most exciting American filmmaker out there.

Zoinks! Nicole + Cate, Holly + Anna

Aussie actresses Nicole and Cate are fans of each others. We shouldn't be surprised and perhaps we already knew but have forgotten. The March issue of In Style asked four Oscar winning actresses Nicole Kidman, Anna Paquin, Hilary Swank and Susan Sarandon to name their "Oscar Inspiration" and they chose Cate Blanchett, Holly Hunter, Jessica Lange, and Vanessa Redgrave respectively.

This photo has a certain imaginary Film Experience spark as it's an actress (Kidman) that readers tend to think I'm rather too scarily devoted to combined with an actress (Blanchett) that I tend to think readers are rather too scarily devoted to. ;) Not that they both aren't great actresses, mind you.

The article may well have been titled "Airbrushed Inspirations" because all of the photos are way way glossy. But it's a fun concept. Here's what Cate said about her Oscar win for The Aviator.

I was frankly relieved when I won -- relieved I wouldn't have to answer all the questions about what it feels like to lose, and relieved because, playing Katharine Hepburn, you can't but disappoint some people. You have to throw caution to the wind when you take on those real-people roles; you can't think of the outcome.

I don't see this info at In Style's official site but here is a photo-set. The Hilary Swank/Jessica Lange photos are fun but the one that just thrilled me, for the sheer nostalgia, was seeing The Piano's mother and daughter Holly Hunter and Anna Paquin reunited.

The Piano (1993) is among my all time favorite movies and who wouldn't want such a reminder. Anna is apparently now taller than Holly! Although one reason I object to the super processed/airbrushed photo shoots that are the norm these days is that in the age of Photoshop when a photo looks too plastic, I just assume no one was in the room together. Let me see an errant hair or a wrinkle or a weird pucker of cloth, or some PROOF that these are flesh and blood people in a room together.

The other thing I think of when I look at this photo is: DOES HOLLY HUNTER WATCH TRUE BLOOD? Heh. I do. I wonder.

Like, WHOA. The Queeniest of Queens

WHOA! a.k.a. Weekly History of Oscar / Awardage
New series? Maybe. Why do I need gimmicky acronyms? I know not.

Jan 9th the first flight of the Avro Lancaster (no relation to Burt) took place in World War II in 1941. This famous plane, the most successful of British bombers, later had a starring role in The Dam Busters (1955) with Richard Todd in the cockpit. The film was Oscar nominated for Best Visual Effects and supposedly inspired the Death Star climax of Star Wars (see video comparison below). Peter Jackson was prepping a remake in 2009 but obvs The Hobbit (2012) has taken over his life.

Jan 10th Youth sensation Sal Mineo, the youngest two-time Oscar nominated male actor (honored for Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and Exodus (1960) by the time he was 22), was born on this day in in 1939. You can see his Rebel screen test with James Dean and Natalie Wood above (such amazing trio chemistry). Love that movie.

After the jump, the first Oscars, Cate Blanchett and Pixar...

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