There has been plenty written up about BUtterfield 8 since it first hit theatres in 1960. Daring for its time due to its unabashed allusions to sex and vulgarity, it roused interest and reactions of all sorts from the moment of its inception. It was a precursor to what would dominate the theatres by the […]
Read more "The Unspoken Scandal: Queerness & Women In BUTTERFIELD 8"Swanky apartments that boast sweeping panoramas of the Manhattan skyline swell with sound and emotion. Arenas in which the players capitulate to their most intense desires and inhibitions, much like they do for a living– yet without an audience to influence their behaviors. In a way, it’s a space in which the truth of the […]
Read more "Melody and Malady: Humoresque, Deception, & the Musical Melodrama"When compared objectively, Bette Davis and Joan Crawford boast impressive careers — Joan’s just shy of half a century, and Bette’s bordering on nearly sixty years. Both women quite literally grew up in front of a camera — in Joan’s case, having gotten her start as a teenager — and Bette’s, being the daughter of […]
Read more "Curtain Call: Trog, Wicked Stepmother, and the Inevitability of Conclusion"The year is 1982. The film, a made for TV vehicle filmed for CBS, is titled A Piano for Mrs. Cimino. The title is simple, yet piquant: what importance could a piano hold to the story that would warrant it top billing? It’s a film that wouldn’t even normally cross one’s radar — just another […]
Read more "Confronting Senility on the Screen & in the Self"Poetry lies in the most ordinary happenstances of coincidence. A common thread unexpectedly found — and traced — between two entirely separate phenomena births an unparalleled sense of awe that is difficult to adequately capture in words alone. It opens a canvas for further reflection, for digging beneath the surface in order to unearth any […]
Read more "Boxing & Bette Davis: Bite-sized Food for Thought"When one is something of a legend, age takes on a paradoxical quality. Another trip around the sun only serves to reinforce the idea that such immortality is at play, just further reassurance that they will continue to live on despite the confines of age and the human body. There is no sensible explanation for […]
Read more "Remembering Dame Olivia de Havilland"Torch Song, at face value, is easily overlooked as a run of the mill, low budget MGM musical production. Metro was in their golden era of making musicals — portentous, as it would be their last stand and thus, final avenue of success before the studio system collapsed entirely only several years later. Torch Song […]
Read more "Caricatures of Contempt: Revisiting Torch Song and The Star"For years, they remained two ships in the night, sailing silently by one another in trajectories that practically mirrored the other’s. One, a dancer turned actress by way of Texas, and the other a Broadway refugee who enjoyed a liberal upbringing in New England. The two women couldn’t be any more different — or more […]
Read more "Opposing reflections: musings on Joan Crawford and Bette Davis"Hello, readers! I thank you for your continued patience as I slowly (but surely) cultivate new pieces. I’m in the midst of trying to move across the country (!) and have been allotting my energy to that moreso than anything else. Still, I am dutifully contributing to the works-in-progress that I have drafted. Hoping to […]
Read more "From the Archives: Replication: The Evolution of Blade Runner and its Meta-Text"This was a piece I wrote my final year of undergrad which aimed to further explore and analyze one of the most meticulously maintained — and fascinating — celebrity personas to have ever graced the public eye. While it is still at best only a very thin dissection, I hope you take pleasure and gain […]
Read more "Cultivated Celebrity: How Joan Crawford Crafted A Desirable Public Image"