Reader Spotlight: Andy in Boston

It's Andy !It's "Reader Appreciation Month". So we're talking to a reader a day. Get to know The Film Experience community. Today we're talking to Andy Hoglund a '20something living that rock star life'. He writes for The Inclusive

What's your first movie memory?

ANDY: When I was 4 my dad took me to a screening of Pinocchio. I know I probably had watched movies before then (Mary Poppins on VHS), but this is my first legitimate memory of going to the movies. Sitting in a darkened theater, fully immersed -- there’s really nothing comparable to it, I’d say.

I was infatuated with the Universal Horror monster movies. Dracula, Frankenstein, The Wolf Man. I still remember – at 4 – watching AMC’s 2pm Monster movie every Saturday. It is rumored that I have seen Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man over 50 times.  I actually once sent Vincent Price a letter when I was in the first grade. He responded back with a signed autograph photo. I still have it hanging in my bedroom along with a picture I drew of him.  Can you imagine a kid who can’t even read knowing who Basil Rathbone and Lionel Atwill is? Or crying because his parents accidentally taped over The Alligator People (underrated Lon Chaney Jr. performance, by the way).

Talk about precocious….

You worked at a movie theater, read movie sites, studied film in college. What was the tipping point for you with movies? 

ANDY:  When I was in grade school, my friends and I formed our own production companies and made movies for the local cable access station. I made short films in high school that almost got me suspended from school – and made me a bona fide legend in the process. No hyperbole. 

So it’s always been a thread that’s followed me through adolescence until today. My college roommate once told me whatever you like to read about online is probably what you should be doing with your life. For me, it’s been about movies. I remember discovering sites like imdb and worldwideboxoffice, then boxofficereport (I see you Daniel Garris), boxofficeguru, and GoldDerby (I still remember Tom O’Neill’s great purge) back when I was 13. The Film Experience is  part of a great wave of Oscar coverage sites I stumbled upon shortly after finding Oscar Watch (now Awards Daily). They fill a real void, offering criticism and analysis of the sorts of things I – growing up – could only wait for EW’s annual Oscar issue to learn about. They are great gateway sites; accessible, but piquing the interest of novices to seek out more in depth material on what makes film great. 

I just love the richness of movies, how collaborative they are. Maybe, at the root of my interest, it’s the storytelling. Who knows?

Who are your three favorite actresses?

ANDY: Favorite? The GOAT? One answer needs saying here… Lori Loughlin. Dscovering "Full House" when I was 6. Life changing. Otherwise, let’s rattle off the usual suspects we all know about, shall we? Michelle Williams, Carey Mulligan and Jessica Chastain are the three greatest ‘Next Generation’ actresses working right now. Some all time favorite performances: Katharine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby, Joanne Woodward in The Fugitive Kind, Susan Sarandon in Bull Durham. 

Have you ever dressed up as a movie character for Halloween?

ANDY: If this counts, I have spent a good portion of the Halloweens dressing up as some member of the Batman universe, beginning in preschool when I went as the Caped Crusader himself.

Andy at 6 ! Awwww

In the 6th grade I went as Alex from A Clockwork Orange. My classmates and teachers all thought I was a generic gangster. The tipoff is in the white overalls and derby. One year I also went as Butch from Pulp Fiction by wearing an old tan motorcycle jacket of my Dad’s and putting a red ball in my mouth (wattt upp mah fckas).

LOL. So inappropriate. Thanks for chatting, Andy. 

Previous Spotlight

Burtonjuice: The Disney Misfit Years

BURTONJUICE. Our Tim Burton retrospective begins now...
Every Thursday night until we can't take it  no more! 

Last week I rented the Disney documentary "Waking Sleeping Beauty" which I was curious to see again after it's strangely quiet public reception. I really enjoyed the documentary and though it ended like one big long self-aggrandizing commercial for the Magic Kingdom and all they bring to the movies, it's first hour is surprisingly frank about the downward slide of Disney animation in the 70s and 80s and the political tug of wars among the big money executives.

But let's get to the subject. Don't you always forget that Tim Burton started at Disney? I know I do. He never gets a line in this documentary but we do see him briefly twice in the behind the scenes footage while the narrator talks about the generational divide at Disney during the animation studio's near-demise in the 1980s.

Ron Miller knew that Walt's guys were retiring fast. He had to raise a new crop of animators but he was cautious about it. It was this interesting cross generational thing where you still had a few of these legendary artists who were in their 60s and approaching retirement and then a bunch of young people in their 20s who were really really exited and sort of passionate about this medium.

It was thrilling to learn from the masters but there was a feeling that somehow we could be making better films."

Burton doesn't look too happy sitting slack jawed in that tiny cubicle, but that's just his face. Surely the budding filmmaker was excited to be chasing his dreams. Even if his now ultra familiar dreams are far more Gorey lite Gothic than Disney cheerful.

Before his star ascended in the early 80s when two shorts Vincent (1982) and Frankenweenie (1984) gained him a reputation within the industry as a truly distinctive and entertaining filmmaker, he made a handful of very rarely screened shorts. I wish I'd attended the Burton exhibit recently which featured them. Have any of you seen these five?

 

The Island of Doctor Agor (1971) was his first effort at the age of 13. He played Dr Agor. Stalk of the Celery (1979) is a one punchline animated short but you can see Burtonisms especially his love for the mad scientist... though it should be said that Burton's ouevre also includes subversions of this trope, the benevolent (if still mad) scientist. Doctor of Doom (1979) has Burton crashing a party and creating a monster that he sends out to "destroy all beauty." Luau (1982) is a lengthy short that is unfortunately kind of unwatchable on YouTube but it telegraphs a bit about Burton's oddball sense of humor though it also seems a little hornier than his subsequent work. He plays a disembodied head that's the "most powerful force in the universe" and though he tries to turn people into zombies, he doesn't have much luck. At least at first... I gave up 12 minutes in but not before I understood his affinity for Ed Wood. Burton also made a version of the oft- filmed fairy tale Hansel & Gretel (1982) -- which is hard to find -- with the great production designer Rick Heinrichs as his producer. They met at Disney and kept working together.

 

Oscar winner Rick Heinrichs and Tim Burton at work on Vincent (1982)

It only took their collaboration 17 years later to win an Oscar (Heinrichs for Sleepy Hollow) though Tim Burton has famously never been nominated as Best Director. His sole personal nomination was for the animated feature Corpse Bride.

Where were we? Oscar trivia is so distracting. Oh yes, Vincent (1982). We love it. Disney, rather famously, did not. Too dark!

My favorite favorite favorite part...

He likes to experiment on his dog Abercrombie
in the hopes of creating a terrible zombie.

Vincent is just wonderful isn't it? A.

Vincent's Tim Burton's perfect woman?
Before we move on to Frankenweenie (The Original) next Thursday tell me if I'm crazy but little Vincent's hallucinated dead wife...

He knew he'd been banished to the tower of doom
where he was sentenced to spend the rest of his life.
alone with the portrait of his beautiful wife."

She looks SO familiar. A pinch of Lisa Marie? Two cups of Corpse Bride... a scoop of Helena Bonham-Carter in Alice in Wonderland? What Burton woman does this most remind you of?

What's your favorite part of Vincent? And do you think it's too easy to retroactively project meaning on to the early work of famous filmmakers?

 

100 Years of Vincent

Andreas here. Today marks the centenary of horror icon Vincent Price, whose prolific seven-decade career also included forays into comedy, film noir, and historical drama. Price holds a special place in many a film fan's heart, whether for his spine-chilling voice— put to excellent legendary use by Quincy Jones for Michael Jackson's Thriller— or the aristocratic aura he brought to countless cheap William Castle and Roger Corman horror movies. Price could even elevate a project as inherently undignified as Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine with his camp greatness.

He could capably play science-minded everymen, as he did in The Tingler and The Last Man on Earth (taking on the mantle later carried by Will Smith in I Am Legend), but the really fun Price parts are his hammy madmen. He sought gruesome vengeance in the 3-D House of Wax, twice in the '70s as the scarred Dr. Phibes, and most delightfully as a pissed-off thespian in Theatre of Blood.

There, he systematically murders all the theater critics in London by reenacting Shakespeare, and occasionally altering the texts to suit his own whims. (In his version of Titus Andronicus, for example, Queen Tamora is Robert Morley, getting fed his own poodles.) While filming Theatre of Blood, Price also met his second wife, Coral Browne. In the film itself, he electrocutes her while pretending to be a hairstylist wearing a giant afro wig.

Price never really slowed down: he was in his seventies when he voiced one of the greatest Disney villains of all time, The Great Mouse Detective's Ratigan. In 1982, he was the subject of Tim Burton's Vincent, a stop-motion animated tribute to his cinematic legacy. "For a boy his age, he's considerate and nice," says the short film's voiceover, read by Price himself, "but he wants to be just like Vincent Price." Truth be told, who doesn't?

What's your favorite Vincent Price memory?