Will Sloan's Wonder Emporium

Man of Steel (2013)

From my own personal video library

Georgia Mills Jessup

Rainy Night, Downtown, 1967

1. The 120 Days of Sodom (1785), by the Marquis de Sade: A great book to read aloud (although be careful about reading the prostitutes’ monologues in a high-pitched, hoity-toity voice, of the kind used by the actress in Pasolini’s film adaptation, Salo. You’ll get a sore throat)

2. I, Goldstein: My Screwed Life (2006) by Al Goldstein and Josh Alan Friedman: For decades, the grossly overweight, proudly misogynistic Al Goldstein ran a smut empire (including Screw Magazine and the cable access show Midnight Blue) that combined hardcore sex and angry political ranting for those who found Larry Flynt’s Hustler to be just a little too upscale. At the turn of the millennium, the rise of the internet, a harassment lawsuit, and Goldstein’s own hubris led to his downfall, and the man who once claimed an $11 million fortune spent a year homeless on the streets of Manhattan. Friedman, a former editor at Screw, turned Goldstein’s ramblings into this compulsively readable, intensely depressing book, and certainly a more knowing one than if Goldstein had written it himself.

3. Tales of Times Square (1986), by Josh Alan Friedman: Speaking of Screw Magazine, one of the peculiarities of New York pornography of the 1970s is how it captured the city’s pre-Giuliani sleaziness like a time capsule. This collection of Josh Alan Friedman’s writing for Screw makes vivid the sights and smells of long-gone Gommorahs as Show World and Plato’s Retreat, and humanizes the dancers, preachers, pornographers, and gangsters of the old Times Square. The best parts of this book deserve comparison with Tom Wolfe and Gay Talese.

4. Kinski Uncut (1988/1996), by Klaus Kinski: Quite possibly the most sexually explicit, confrontational, hateful, and generally deranged of celebrity autobiographies, Kinski’s incoherent, perpetually-present-tense screed is about 25% self-pitying bathos, 25% bile (mostly directed towards Werner Herzog), and 50% punishingly graphic descriptions of his conquests. I’d like to see Lars Von Trier turn this into a movie.

5. Portnoy’s Complaint (1969), by Philip Roth: Obviously.

6. The Other Hollywood (2005), by Legs McNeil and Jennifer Osborne: An exhausting oral history of the porn industry, from Russ Meyer to Deep Throat to Traci Lords to gonzo to the internet, featuring interviews with most of the key players. Exhausting.

7. Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood (1910), by Sigmund Freud. The great psychoanalyst uses an innocuous memory/dream that da Vinci had about a bird flying into his room as a toddler to prove that da Vinci was a repressed homosexual. I’m can’t say I buy all of Freud’s reasoning, but if you go along with his logic, it’s a pretty remarkable performance. The psychoanalytic equivalent of a virtuoso performance of “Flight of the Bumblebee.”

8. Ordeal (1980), by Linda Lovelace and Mike McGrady: The star of Deep Throat briefly became a Meese Commission-era feminist icon with this grueling autobiography. Lovelace claims her former husband/manager Chuck Traynor enslaved her into a life of pornography and prostitution, forcing her into particularly dehumanizing experiences by gunpoint. Rarely has a book been more accurately titled.

9. Consider the Lobster (2005), by David Foster Wallace: For the essay “Big Red Son,” Wallace’s novella-length account of the 1998 Adult Video News Awards - surely the definitive article on the topic.

10. Dracula (1879), by Bram Stoker: “The fair girl went on her knees, and bent over me, fairly gloating. There was a deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling and repulsive, and as she arched her neck she actually licked her lips like an animal, till I could see in the moonlight the moisture shining on the scarlet lips and on the red tongue as it lapped the white sharp teeth.”

OLD-TIMEY CARTOONS

Popeye in Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp (1939)

This was the third of three two-reel Popeye “specials” by the Max Fleischer Studios - twice as long and more elaborate than normal Popeye cartoons, in full blazing colour. The first two, the beloved Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor (1936) and Popeye Meets Ali Baba’s Forty Thieves (1937), were advertised as feature attractions by many theatre owners, setting something of a precedent that would be surpassed by Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1938).

WILL’S ART HOUSE

Werner Herzog’s “Texting While Driving” commercial (2013)

Werner Herzog, of all people, directed this 31-second spot for AT&T about the perils of texting while driving. This is not Herzog’s first foray into vehicular safety: perhaps you recall that strange time a few years ago when he pulled Joaquin Phoenix out of a car crash? (Dramatized in this delightful short film).

Unrelated, but fun nonetheless: Werner Herzog discovers John Waters is gay.

Ed  Wood’s last known piece of writing, describing the production of Plan 9 from Outer Space for a 1978 LP release of the soundtrack.

David Bowie, Buster Keaton

(Source: m-ysterytour, via getoutofmyhouse)

Pia Zadora and Andy Warhol

WILL’S CINEMATIC HALL OF FAME

Bruce Lee Unicorn Chan in Fist of Unicorn (aka The Unicorn Palm, aka Bruce Lee and I) (1973)

Puffy-faced martial artist/actor Unicorn Chan was a boyhood friend of Bruce Lee. They appeared together as child actors in a movie called The Birth of Mankind (1946). When Bruce Lee returned to Hong Kong after trying his luck in Hollywood in 1970, Unicorn apparently helped him get some some interviews with studio bigwigs. After Lee hit it big, he returned the favour by providing some martial arts choreography and promotion for Fist of Unicorn, Unicorn Chan’s bid at stardom. It was “the only film outside his own that Bruce Lee would action-direct and help promote,” claims the box for the really crappy Videoasia DVD I bought a few weeks ago. The cover has a huge picture of Bruce Lee snarling on the front, and the tagline “The Lost Classic.”

Fist of Unicorn casts Unicorn Chan as a wandering martial artist whose smooth moved impress a little bald kid. Unicorn soon runs afoul of the local gang (or maybe they’re not gangsters, maybe they’re palace guards, or rival martial artists, or something. The subtitles were really hard to read). Some fighting ensues, as well as some comedy, if memory serves. I’ve already forgotten most of this movie. What I can tell you is that Unicorn Chan is not the most charismatic fellow I have ever encountered in a movie. I mean, maybe he was a nice guy, and he clearly knew how to make the right friends, but meh. Also, what kind of a name is “Unicorn”?

Fist of Unicorn was released in the U.S. after Lee’s death as Bruce Lee and I (not to be confused with the other movie called Bruce Lee and I, starring Danny Lee). This version includes documentary footage of Lee and Unicorn choreography fights and laughing with each other. You can see some of that footage in the trailer above.  In either version, this movie is really dull and not very good, but it has a tangential relation to Bruce Lee, which automatically makes it good.

From left to right: Fist; Unicorn

Bruce Lee with his martial arts master Ip Man, the subject of Wong Kar-wai’s upcoming movie The Grandmaster.

spikeleeandwoodyallen:

with Bill Clinton

Lakers 115, Knicks 105

January 22, 2010