In your face is perhaps the least coherent bit of email you’ll receive from me. Lean into that fact and everything shall be be cool.
You are getting these sentences and whatnot because of a compulsion to cover an unrealistic, 44-year-old revenge film that came to me before and has lingered long after my interview with seriously empathetic true-crime producers Hannah Smith and Patia Eaton. Theirs is a super-engaging hour of talk, as paid WCS subscribers don’t need to be told.
(Ahem)
Crime's sufferers are the edge of this Knife
Today’s guests describe their podcast as a show about folks who have been dropped into a narrative that they didn't start, but are left with the obligation of finishing. The ensuing conversation with Hannah Smith and Patia Eaton never truly gets past the investigation of that idea.
It had occurred to me to write that perspective on Ms. 45, Abel Ferrera’s phenomenal exploitation flick, in the context of introducing The Knife. Which was a one hundred percent inappropriate notion. Yet, a set of insights into Ferrara’s first successful film came a lot closer to happening than you would care to know.
A fiasco that would have been, he said in a Yoda voice.
Ms. 45 wouldn’t let me be. So, my summary take on it follows, along with one WCS housekeeping measure, a video short takes that you may have consumed via social media, and this brief promotion of next week’s podcast guest, Marin editor and journalist Jack Boulware.
His Substack is perfectly named.
Pretty sure dude was on hand for one of the shittier nights in my life as a public storyteller, at a Boulware Litquake event, taking the mic just before Marc Maron. That anecdote will be in our Boulware ep introduction, unless the story grows too irritating between now and publication and I just delete the tape.
Ugh.
[Not how actual sex crime victims behave]
Zoe Tamerlis Lund was still only 17 when she starred as a mute rape victim who exacts massive revenge in Ms. 45. The actress, musician and model would go on to co-write the indelible Bad Lieutenant and die of a heroin overdose at 37, in 1999. In my personal pantheon of youth thespian performances, Lund’s tormented seamstress Thana belongs with Jennifer Lawrence in Winter’s Bone, Beast of the Southern Wild’s Quvenzhané Wallis, and so much early Jodie Foster. It’s among the best, most emotive work among acting parts that are 99 percent free of dialogue.
I think the film has become more of an obsession post viewing, as I’ve learned about Lund’s role in bringing Thana to life.
"In the beginning stages of the film,” she told DanteNet in a since-removed interview, “the only material that existed was vague descriptions of several scenes. Being that my face is on camera, without dialogue, for something like 98 percent of the time, I was involved very much.”
Of course it’s not only the actress that makes this low-budget legend kill so hard. Thana’s murderous takedown of misogynist Manhattan men is undeniably just Ferrara’s fantasy, but what a male fantasy it is. There’s genuine nuance to the hows and whys of Thana’s vengeful deeds, a real commitment to making phenomenal choices.
The film’s B-movie obligations are met more thoughtfully than necessity demanded in 1981. And the awesome, slow-motion conclusion of this extremely Catholic film brings an operatic aspect that even Scorsese and DePalma might have found value in. (Tarantino loves the flick, btw.)
Finally, if you’re a person who’s made squeamish by gore, know that the early-80s effects tech of Ms. 45 makes the blood and guts easily, um, digestible. And there’s a cute dog. Focus, if you can, on the cute dog.
Quick housekeeping note
On June 12 I’ll drop a pod ep to commorate the 1970 Dock Ellis no-hitter. Not sure what’s going to be in that one.
And there’s not going to be a new transit column. Sorry to have lied. Turns out that riding public transit in Portland is happily boring, barely a trial. Instead, I am working on a discussion format that will live behind a paywall. Details to come.
Lev told me a gang of anecdotes last week, while I was dressing like a helpless blind person. You caught his opening bit about the two NBA players in an obscure PDX bar, I’m assuming.
Most of these stories came from Anderson’s time working events at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Among the dead icons who pop up are Tom Wolfe and Steve Jobs. I like the one with Paul Mooney because it provided the opportunity to name-drop the late David Mills, one of the first name writers to take an interest in my alternative journalism. Davey D—who picked up my Bay Guardian column after I moved to LA Weekly—appears in the same brief narrative.
To bring things full circle, I’m pretty certain it was Jack Boulware’s magazine The Nose that singled me out for overwriting in my coverage of Yerba Buena’s opening, back in the day. Weird, huh?
Essentially, this enterprise is journalistic busking. Tipping is acceptable and even encouraged.
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