Matt Walsh is a conservative provocateur who has taken up filmmaking as a way of getting his message across. As a filmmaker his goal seems to be to create something entertaining not just a polemic on his philosophy. Of course that doesn’t mean that his views will not be a part of the film, it simply means that the way he’s going to present those views will be in film terms rather than in pundit form. His previous film “What is a Woman?” was available only on the Daily Wire platform, with a brief exception for a YouTube presentation to expose the film more broadly. His new film, “Am I Racist?” is being presented is a theatrical release and is available on 1500 screens around the country. This feels like a major departure for the Media Group that he is working with, and part of an overall goal to expand cultural entertainment to include conservative perspectives.
The approach that he takes in this film is similar to the one taken by Sacha Baron Cohen in his Borat films. Walsh assumes an identity, in order to interact with unsuspecting advocates of the DEI movement. When, pretending to be a fellow Traveler, he manages to get them to reveal their true thoughts and feelings about anti-racism and a variety of other ills. These are the most entertaining part of the film, because he’s letting them hoist themselves on their own petard. In an early sequence he attends an anti-racism training session, ones filled with rituals and comments that are simply shown to be odd in the way the people in the seminar act and speak. He inserts himself by asking frequent questions and offering comments to provoke responses from the seminar leader. The results are contentious, cringe-worthy, and hysterical. After being recognized, he later tactics, by arranging interviews with a variety of so-called anti-racist speakers, academics, and theorists. He poses as a DEI advocate on a journey to understand how to “de-center” racism. The questions he asks, demonstrate some of the contradictions in the whole DEI premise. Those contradictions become points at which it is easy for the audience to laugh.
For me, the most uncomfortable, and the most revealing segment of the film comes when he infiltrates one of the “Race to Dinner” sessions held by two women of color who guide white women to confront their white guilt. Walsh himself is not supposed to be able to participate, since the dinners are only open to women. He manages to insert himself into one of these dinners as a server in the facility that the dinner is being held at. What he manages to get away with is audacious, and continuously uncomfortable, much like the humor you will find in one of those Borat films. My favorite moment, came when he comedically acts out as a incompetent waiter by dropping a set of dishes at a particular moment in the monologue being presented by one of the two women who host these events. There may be people who agree with what’s being said at that particular moment, I however I’m not one of those people, and I thought that the interruption was particularly called for, and amusing.
Not everyone is going to enjoy this film, especially those who espouse some of the Critical Race Theory that underpins the DEI movement. The average person however will probably find this movie to be very entertaining, as well as enlightening. Maybe those folks who go through DEI training in their workplace will see this as old news, but there are plenty of people out there who have not been exposed to some of the details of these theories, and they’re likely to be befuddled and offended by some of the things that are being said.
Matt Walsh is basically playing himself in this movie, with a tongue in cheek attitude as a Seeker of anti-racism excellence. Of course he is also a master troll when it comes to mocking those ideas that he sees as being contemptuous. One of the times where he steps out of character a little is a sequence where he reimagines that Jussie Smollett hoax of a few years ago. It’s a funny bit, but it does take us out of the diorama that he has created for the rest of the picture.
Two sequences in the last third of the picture probably highlight the places that will be most controversial about his comedy approach. In the segment with anti-racist author Robin D’Angelo, he engages her with a series of questions that illustrates some of the convoluted thought processes that are required in order for the anti-racist ideology to function. As amusing as those contradictions might be, they end up being overshadowed by the improvised conclusion of this segment, which mocks the idea of financial reparation for past racist actions, especially slavery. D’Angelo in her desire to remain true to her position demonstrates the absurdity of that position by her actions. It will probably be the most talked about part of the movie.
The last segment consists of Walsh trying to take what he has learned about DEI and apply it by creating his own seminar on anti-racism. His ability to act in a dead pan, serious demeanor, makes most of the things that he does in the film feel satirical. In his role as DEI seminar leader, he comes across as inept because the premises of the philosophy don’t hold up. The response of the trainees to his approach provide the most insightful element at this point. It demonstrates that the goal is not to bring us together but to further drive us apart.
I completely understand that this will not be everybody’s cup of tea. If you find Sacha Baron Cohen to be a little bit uncomfortable, or if you find the films of Morgan Spurlock and Michael Moore to be less than tolerable, you will be put off by this film. On the other hand, if you are who enjoys clever trolling, and taking down untrustworthy authority figures a peg or two, I think you’ll be entertained by this movie.
Hope Springs Eternal that seeing “Phantom of the Paradise” on the big screen will be an annual event. It has been for me for at least the last 2 years, now let’s keep our fingers crossed and pray that the streak can continue. This particular screening was opening weekend at the 50th Anniversary of the Paramount Theater Classic Summer Film Series. Since I got to Austin in the middle of the pandemic, I’ve discovered that the Paramount Theater in downtown Austin is my true second home. The theater is busy most nights with comedy shows and concerts from a variety of artists. In the summer however, especially during the week, the theater is filled with film fans who get a chance to enjoy some old classics in the way they are meant to be seen, on a big screen in a beautiful Movie Palace.
I started coming to the Paramount Theater in 2020 at the end of the summer when the lockdowns and the theater closures were finally dissipating. As it happened, the first two films that I saw at the Paramount were two of my favorite films of all time, Jaws and Lawrence of Arabia. Ever since then I have looked at the schedule for the summer series with anticipation. Last year my daughter and I sprang for the annual Club membership that allowed us to attend almost all of the film screenings in the summer series, as well as the Halloween “Panic at the Paramount” and the Christmas season offerings. This year we had no problem in deciding to renew, because this is how we live, and it’s how I roll.
Last year’s screening of “Phantom of the Paradise” was at an Alamo Drafthouse with an edited edition of the film done according to the specifications of director Brian DePalma. This version is unofficial, and the studio probably doesn’t really approve of it being shared. The version we saw this week was the one that played in theaters in 1974. It includes some of the bad floating matte work that was required to cover the “San Songs” logo, which was a copyright issue with the band Led Zeppelin. Steven Janice, the programmer at the Paramount, pointed out that the movie only made about $20,000 in its first week of release back in 1974. I’m pretty sure the $3.50 of that came from me, because I saw this film at the UA Theater in Pasadena in the fall that it came out.
It is hard for me to contain my enthusiasm for this movie. Brian DePalma was one of the most reliable directors in my formative years as a movie fan. This was the first of his films that I saw, and I loved it then as I do now. In addition to the outrageous premise the wild costumes and the over the top performances of some of the supporting cast, we have a fantastic score and a dozen songs from The Genius Paul Williams, who also happens to star as Swan, the villain of the movie.
I can never get “Goodbye Eddie” out of my head after hearing it in this movie. It’s the opening song played under the titles, and if you look at the promo that I’ve posted here for the classic summer film series, you’ll hear that it is the soundtrack for this ad. Winslow Leach may not approve of the “Juicy Fruits” but I was perfectly happy with their upbeat parody of a a 50s style lament about a rockstar who takes his life in order to increase his fame. Later on, the same band bastardizes Winslow’s Faust score to present a Beach Boys Style parody song “Upholstery”. This is another one of those Paul Williams tunes that gets hooked in your head and won’t go away. This movie is full of earworms.
I was a little brought down by the opening weekend of the summer classic film series because our annual pass was only good for one of the three screenings. We could have bought tickets separately for Casablanca or for Star Wars, but we did have other films that we were seeing that weekend so we limited ourselves to the Phantom experience. It appeared that a lot of other film fans felt the same way we did because they were out in mass on Sunday for this movie. The reception to the film was enthusiastic, and frankly I was sad that it was over because I wanted to do it all again immediately.
I’ve written about the film in a couple other places here on this blog so I will give you the links for those posts, so if you are interested in knowing more about the movie and the things that make it so special you can visit those musings. For now let me just say at the summer season is off to a rousing start and I have the Paramount Theater, Brian DePalma, and Paul Williams to think for my elevated mood this week. I’ll be seeing you regularly down on Congress Boulevard, if you see me say hi I’ll be the guy with a big smile on his face wallowing in classic movies.
The TCM Film Festival is now in our rearview mirrors for a couple of weeks. I traveled back from Southern California to Texas by car, and then immediately got on a plane back to Vegas the day after I got home. When I left Vegas I went back to Southern California and spent 3 days packing the shed in my backyard into a storage pod in preparation for tearing down the shed and replacing it. I then flew back to Texas, and spent three days trying to catch up with the Lambcast episodes that needed to be edited, and posted, and then have a YouTube video made for them. Oh and then I had another Lamcast to record. I also saw three other films in this time. I still need to post about them as well. All of this is by way of an explanation for why this post is not more timely.
After missing the festival last year, because of a pet emergency, I was happy to be back in Hollywood among people that love movies the way I do. The Thursday night opening film for the TCM Film Festival was Pulp Fiction. This 30-year-old film may not be considered a classic by many of the attendees, because it doesn’t come from the Golden Age of Hollywood. I think however that the passage of time helps put into perspective what the definition of “classic” is. This was a game breaking film and the collection of guests there to talk about it was very impressive. We had had dinner at Musso and Frank before the movie and almost missed getting to walk on the red carpet. We did get in at the tail end and got to wave at the fans in the stands as if we were celebrities as well. We did manage to find seats, but they were much further back than we usually sit for these events. Still, just being in the room is enough to make you satisfied that you spent the extra money to get the pass that allows you to attend the opening night film.
Pulp Fiction may have single-handedly created a market for independent films at a much broader level than had existed before. The nonlinear storytelling, the oddball conversational passages, and the stellar performances of everybody in the cast make the film worthy of the title classic. John Travolta, Samuel L Jackson, Uma Thurman, Harvey Keitel, and a half dozen others were present for the discussion of the movie. All of them told stories about the making of the film, many of which I had read before but enjoyed hearing first hand. It seemed especially fortuitous that the first time Travolta met with Quentin Tarantino was at Tarantino’s apartment, which Travolta was able to describe to him before he even entered, because it was the same apartment that Travolta lived in years before. The audience was appreciative of the stories and those who were in attendance seemed very happy to be seeing the movie on the big screen in the main house the first night of the festival.
Day Two at the festival for Amanda and I started off a bit awkwardly. We had meant to go to the Vitaphone presentation, but got shut out at the last minute. Damn L.A. traffic. Instead, we went over to the El Capitan and got in line for 101 Dalmatians which was introduced by Mario Cantone and he interviewed animator Floyd Norman. We’d seen Norman 2 years ago in the same venue, but that didn’t lessen the pleasure of getting to listen to him tell stories about the making of this film, and working with Walt Disney. Maybe the most pleasurable thing about the experience was the Wurlitzer organ
performance before the movie started, and then the lowering and raising of multiple curtains as if what we are seeing was something special that needed to be revealed and reveled in not just experienced
We only stayed for the first half of the movie because we were anxious to get into the presentation across the street for “Them!”, which was being hosted by Ben Burtt and Craig Barron. These two have been the most interesting, informative, and entertaining presenters at almost every Festival we have attended.
This presentation was no different. With a great deal of humor they introduced themselves, and proceeded to pull out a grab bag of visual Treasures to Thrill the audience with. It was an extra Delight to discover that the actress who plays the young girl at the beginning of the film, Sandy Descher, who has been traumatized by the ants killing her family, was there for this presentation and spoke about her experience. Even more exciting was the fact that she had brought home movies that her mother had made while she was on the set. We got to see clips of behind the scene moments, conversations with the directors and the co-stars, and just a short tour of the studio, all silent of course but all fascinating. There was an extensive discussion of how the giant ants were created and manipulated on screen, and as usual Burtt and Barron provided a ton of entertaining commentary about it all.
Scheduling at this Festival this year was tight, so we didn’t stay for the whole film of them, because we needed to get our queue tickets for the screening of the “Silence of the Lambs”. This presentation was also in the big house, and the main guest was star Jodie Foster, who, while we had been in seeing “Them!”, had got her hands and feet put into cement in a ceremony in front of the theater. Miss Foster was one of the most articulate and intelligent guests, and she answered the questions thoroughly and with great thought. As we watch the movie, several of the things that she had mentioned during her conversation or noticeable, and even more interesting as a result of her insights. Once again, this is a film from a more modern era, that some might not think of as a classic, but age and the fact that it won the five top Awards at the Academy Awards that year, I think qualify it again for the title.
Our final film of the second day of the festival was “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”, also presented in the big house. One of the reasons that we make the extra effort to see a film like this at the festival, despite the fact that it’s not from the earlier age of Hollywood, is the fact that the festival is able to get guests of the caliber they did for a screening of this nature. The guest for this presentation was none other than the writer and director of the film, and one of the greatest directors in Hollywood history, Steven Spielberg. It was interesting to hear Spielberg talk about the film because it was so personal to him. Having seen his movie The Fable men’s, which is almost an autobiography, it was fascinating to see the way in which he morphed into the character played by Richard Dreyfuss in the film. It’s hard to be anything other than Starstruck, when Steven Spielberg is talking. I’m sure he said many memorable things that others will hold on to, once again I was just happy to be in the room. In the movie is fantastic, as was the John Williams score.
The Third day of the festival, we actually got to see all of the movies in their totality. Instead of having to leave halfway through a film in order to get to another screening, we largely stayed in the Hollywood Chinese Multiplex complex. I was a little disappointed that we couldn’t make it over to the nitrate screening of Annie Get Your Gun at the Egyptian Theater, but trade-offs always have to be made at a festival like this
I had looked forward to seeing the first movie of the day, Dirty Harry, since it was announced as part of the film programs. What I didn’t know was that the guests they were going to have, was Andy Robinson, who played the villain in the movie, in an iconic performance that is truly Unforgettable. It was not just his performance though that we appreciated in this screening, but it was his Vivid recall of moments during filming, and his history of being included in the film that made the discussion so fascinating. He genuinely seemed excited to be talking to all of us, and excited about the film itself. I have been a fan of Dirty Harry since it came out in 1971. It was the first R-rated film I ever saw, and it has been an annual staple ever since the Home Video Market began. The story of a cop who is more interested in Justice than following the rules, became a template for 100 films that followed. Eastwood’s iconic role led to force equals, one of which he directed himself. The film we’re almost certainly draw criticism from viewers who are not born before 1990. Harry’s attitude and the whole Law and Order vibe, will probably be at odds with the perception that many in younger Generations have of the police. Has someone who lived through the seventies, I know how frustrated many average citizens were with the amount of crime that existed and the frustrations that newly enforced civil rights laws sometimes created in fighting those crimes, it occasionally felt as if the law was not on the side of the citizens, and Harry became a stand-in for our frustrations. The movie contains some of the most familiar moments in movie history, especially the scene where Harry confronts a bank robber and quizzes him about the number of shots that he has fired during the confrontation. Seeing it in a theater and hearing the audience react to it once again was a complete pleasure for me. The presentation by Andy Robinson was maybe my favorite thing about the festival, his enthusiasm was contagious and I was happy that he made the effort to be there for the early morning screening.
No less delightful was the next film in our schedule, A Little Romance, starring Lawrence Olivier and Diane Lane. Olivier of course is passed on, but Diane Lane was only 13 when the movie came out in 1979 and she was there to talk about the movie and her experiences working with the legendary actor. A Little Romance is a sweet Love Story about a couple of adolescents who are struggling to find their place in the world and find each other in Paris but are determined to go to Venice to fulfill a fantasy that they share. The movie is full of sweet moments, including embarrassment at the kind of film they managed to sneak into, the geeky friends who established their own connection, but most especially the revelations about their older friend played by Lord Olivier. Lane was very generous in sharing thoughts about the film and about her career. She seemed to be particularly laudatory to director George Roy Hill, a man who despite having one an Academy Award and having directed three of the great films of the era, is frequently forgotten.
After this incredibly enjoyable interlude, we got in line to get back into the big theater to see my favorite Hitchcock film “North by Northwest”. To me this is the prototypical wrong man scenario that Hitchcock did so well in many of his films. Cary Grant is it the height of his charm, and some of the lines that he delivers will only work because he is the person who is delivering them. Eva Marie Saint was simply Delicious in the role of a bad girl turns spy, who really simply longs for true love. There are impressive scenes every few minutes in North by Northwest. The moment that Cary Grant ends up with the knife in his hands at the UN, or the ridiculous bidding war at the auction in Chicago, and of course maybe most iconic of all, is the attack by the crop duster on Grant in the middle of nowhere. There are many more events that are special in the climax of the film In fact there are so many scenes I love, I may be seeing this again at the end of the month in a Fathom presentation, just because I can. The guest for this presentation was writer/director Nancy Myers.
She had no direct connection to the film, and talked about it mostly from the point of view of a fan. There was however one highly significant element to her experience that made her one of the perfect people to have as a guest at this screening. She told the story of going with a friend of hers to meet Cary Grant at an interview that her friend was doing. Mr Grant, not quite understanding her relationship with her friend or what she was doing at the interview, included her in an invitation to fly to Palm Springs for the weekend. With no luggage or additional clothes, she put it this way, “who is going to turn down the chance to spend the weekend with Cary Grant?” The most memorable thing that she mentioned, was how Grant said that she was the first girl he knew who didn’t spend an hour putting on her makeup when she first started the day. Of course she didn’t have any, and it is at that point that the two of them laughed about the whole experience, and she had a memory of spending time with maybe the greatest star that Hollywood ever produced. And she shared the story with us.
We capped off the third day of the festival with a screening in the big house of the “Shawshank Redemption”. The guests were the two stars of the film Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins. What a pleasure to see and hear these two gentlemen talk about a film that both of them think was pivotal to their careers. Each of them had slight variations of the story the other one was telling, but never in a manner that suggested the other person was wrong, just trying to fill in some gaps or reorganize a moment or two.
The final day of the festival began with an event that was both sweet and bitter. The sweet part was returning to the Egyptian Theater, which had been closed for the final two years that I had been in Southern California, and was not used in the last few TCM film festivals because it was undergoing renovation. Netflix has done a beautiful job restoring the theater improving the size of the screen, replacing the seats, and reconfiguring the theater so that it feels more intimate while still accommodating a large number in the audience. The lobby includes a much more functional concession stand now, and a much easier access and egress from the theater. Which leads to the bitter, we were seeing Lawrence of Arabia, has anybody who has read this site knows one of my favorite films, but like day two of the festival, the schedule is such that we had to leave early in order to make it to another screening. This meant that we only got to see 2 hours of Lawrence of Arabia instead of the full four,:-( .
The other screening that we were rushing off to was for the “Bingo Long Traveling All Stars and Motor Kings”, where the guests would be Billy Dee Williams, who had been honored earlier in a ceremony at a different presentation and venue of the festival. Those of you not familiar with the movie, need to arrange to see it because it is one of the Forgotten gems of the seventies. The story of negro league baseball players, trying to get a leg up on a monopolistic set of owners, who in spite of being black, are just as greedy and exploitive as the white owners of the Major Leagues. The cast included James Earl Jones, and Richard Pryor. I also saw in the cast actor Tony Burton, who had been a customer of my late wife’s boss when she worked for the insurance company in our neighborhood in Alhambra. The story is largely lighthearted although there are some dark moments in the telling, but the baseball shenanigans are a lot of fun. Billy Dee Williams talked a lot about his career and he had maybe the sunniest attitude about being in movies of anybody that I saw at the festival. His memories of being cast in films or missing out on rolls, are not clouded with negative attitudes about the racial inequities of the times, but rather the opportunities he had to work with people he admired and do things that he enjoyed. He is older now but he still has the charisma that he had back in the 1970s, there was a beautiful little tribute film they ran before the movie extolling his career and reminding us of his place in Hollywood history.
I still think that the era between 1967 and 1977 was the second golden age of Hollywood. Whether or not you would classify films made in that time as classics, it is undeniable that they are some of the most accomplished, thoughtful, and representative of the individuals who made them. This is the era that gave us two Godfathers, The Conversation, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Jaws, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and a dozen other films that anybody who loves movies will recognize as film classics. Maybe Chief among them is a film with what many consider to be the greatest screenplay ever written, Chinatown.
Before I left for the festival I read a book entitled the big goodbye and the last years of Hollywood. It is primarily about the making of Chinatown. I knew I would be seeing the film and I wanted to have as much context as possible to be able to enjoy the experience again on the premier movie screen in the world. This film was at the big house on the boulevard and deserved to be a part of the festival. Writer and director Carl Franklin was the guest invited to talk about Chinatown, and as a knowledgeable fan he gave us some good insights and told some stories of what he knew about making a film like this. Well he was not directly involved in the making of the film as a future filmmaker drawn to Noir, Chinatown is a little bit like a film School for a director. I read the book and so I knew the story the Franklin told about the score of the film. Polansky and producer Robert Evans were both surprised at how the film played in previews, despite what they considered to be a well-produced story. One of the things that they decided was that the score that they had enlisted a composer for and given specific directions to, just did not seem to work. At the last minute my favorite composer Jerry Goldsmith was asked to redo the entire score, and make it sound as if it was from the time period but the movie is set. Anyone who listens to the score knows how Goldsmith hit it out of the park with one of the most interesting of his compositions. The fact that he was not awarded the Academy Award for this accomplishment is one of the great Mysteries of that sometimes questionable Institution. The score as it is is perfection when integrated with the movie. The fact that we see everything that takes place from the perspective of Jake Kitty’s makes the movie feel more energetic and mysterious then it might otherwise have seemed. And seeing the fabulous photography, and the Glorious costumes, and the long lost Los Angeles spots, makes me nostalgic for this film every time I see it. I’m not sure how it escaped being on my list 10 favorite films but I’m willing to say right now that if it’s not number 11, it’s actually higher on the list and something will have to be displaced.
Our final film of the festival was the Buster Keaton classic Sherlock Jr. A silent comedy, it is a little bit of a meta presentation of a film lovers dream. Keaton appears as a wannabe Detective, who’s Daydreams about the movies, put him into a fantasy role as the great Detective Sherlock Jr. The film was presented with a appropriate silent film score from the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra. A group of five musicians, and a composer conductor, who played live during the film. The short comedy the goat, played before Sherlock Jr, and it was equally delightful. Silent films are often not an easy reach for moviegoers, but if you have chaplain, Lloyd, or Keaton, you are probably going to have a pretty good time and you shouldn’t worry about the fact that it’s a silent film. In the end it will work for you. This one certainly did for me.
Kirkham A Movie A Day 