Well, dear readers, I am sitting here like so much fish, listening to some lovely English pastoral music by Butterworth and Holst. These are all well-known war horses of the classical repertoire, done many times by many conductors and orchestras. This is a new recording by conductor Andrew Manze and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. I became a fan of Mr. Manze for his fine traversal of the Vaughan Williams symphonies, which received mostly stellar reviews. This pastoral album, which also included a John Rutter piece, is beautifully played and recorded and the music has the glow it should have. There is, for me, nothing like English pastoral music, which I find very pastoral, not to beat a dead horse. It’s soothing music, you can smell the clean air, the grassy hills, the fragrance of fresh flowers – what am I, Thomas Hardy all of a sudden? Anyway, I’m now feeling soothed and pastoral, not necessarily in that order. I could put on the music of Alban Berg and feel all tense and jittery but who needs that during these already tense and edgy times? Not I. I did watch a motion picture last night, one I’ve never heard of before and with good reason. Of course, it’s been “rediscovered” and raved about by scads of hipster film directors like Sean Baker and Ti West and others of that ilk. It’s suddenly some kind of gem of a movie, a brilliant artifact of its time, and a portrait of Los Angeles like no other. It is to laugh. One hipster has the gall to compare it to The Swimmer. No. The movie is entitled Hollywood 90028 but has also been known as The Hollywood Hillside Strangler, Twisted Throats, and Insanity. Shot in 1973 but not released until 1976 in Los Angeles – and when I say released, I mean one grindhouse theater downtown called the Cameo (the theater would close soon thereafter) on a triple bill for ninety-nine cents. How it even got that booking is anyone’s guess. Apparently, re-released in a 70-minute version in 1978 but certainly not in L.A., under the Hollywood Hillside Strangler title – bottom half of a sleaze double bill all around the country. It never showed on TV, never had home video releases under its original form, until Grindhouse Releasing put it out on Blu-ray, a 4K transfer of the original negative. Who had the negative and how the release happened is, I suppose, discussed somewhere in the two-disc special edition. Yes, it’s sold as sleaze and an exploitation film – it is neither. What it is is an art film made by a female director at a time when that was still a rarity – her name is Christina Hornisher, a New York transplant who studied cinema at UCLA. So, what is it that we have here exactly?
If you watch the first ten minutes, you’d not be incorrect in thinking no one on this film had a single clew how to shoot a film. It’s amateurish in the extreme and includes a way too long semi-sex scene that culminates with the female being strangled. But after that, the film is actually visually interesting. The director loves photographing signs and adult marquees and strip club neon and signals and text – very arty – the photography is pretty good for a no-budget film and yes, it’s all shot in Los Angeles. And everyone raves about how amazing all that location footage is. Were it only true. I doubt if one of the ravers was even alive at the time this film was shot. I was, in fact, most likely doing Forget-Me-Not Lane at the Mark Taper Forum when this was filmed. Now, to be fair, we do get a couple of nice downtown street shots with some marquees. We also get a nice look at what were the last vestiges of Bunker Hill being torn down and obliterated as if it had never existed. You get one tiny glimpse of Century City, we’re told we’re in West LA but it’s a house somewhere and who knows where that actually was. We have a beach scene with zero identifiers as to which beach where, and, most frustratingly for a film entitled Hollywood 90028, we have two sequences at the then unrestored Hollywood Sign, which happened in 1978, and one count them one shot on the boulevard looking east towards Vine that lasts about twelve seconds. If there’s anything else shot in Hollywood, you’d never know it. No establishing shots, no wide shots, and that is just too damn frustrating for us LA lovers of that era.
The actors are amateurish as is the awful dialogue. The visuals are, at least, interesting. It’s certainly not about a hillside strangler but is about a young cameraman living with huge guilt (I won’t give away why) who for some reason takes out that guilt on women. I can’t remember if there are only two or three killings – none are graphic. The sleaze factor comes from the photographer’s gigs shooting nudie movies (or porn – hard to tell), so lots of female only nudity and full frontal. Ninety minutes is a little long for this kind of artsy-fartsy movie, and I imagine the cut down version removes all the extraneous shots of signs and signals and other arty stuff like that. The most interesting thing about it is the score, a very early effort by Basil Poledouris. Not uninteresting, but a major disappointment in its LA footage.
Prior to that, I got six hours of sleep, got up, answered e-mails, didn’t hear from my gal at the publisher – she promised she’d be back in the office yesterday, but looks like she wasn’t. Hopefully, I’ll hear from her from her today as I want to get the files in and get this off my plate as quickly as possible. For food, I made some low-fat hot dogs on low-calorie buns – pretty good. It was the heavy pill day, and all pills were taken, I did doze off for a couple of hours, then watched the movie. I had a snack – Popeye’s boneless wings – a fine snack – and then began listening to pastoral music presented pastorally.
Today, I’ll be up by eleven at the latest, I believe the helper is coming to get some dough and to pick up a couple of CDs, at noon o’clock I’ll be on the telephonic device with the author’s hubby and will talk him through putting the eBook up on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. That shouldn’t take too long, at least that’s the hope. Then I’ll go see what’s up at the mail place, I’ll come home, I’ll eat something really light and not of my own making, then at some point I’ll watch, listen, and relax.
Tomorrow is our first day of auditions for the play I’ll be directing. Hoping for a good turnout but no one’s said boo about it to me. I haven’t heard about a second day for auditions, even though they know we have to have one. Communication skills are important. I’ll be preparing for it and will mosey on over to the theater at six-thirty for a seven o’clock start. We’ll have a pianist there to play for those folks I haven’t worked with before. Thursday is bloodwork at twelve-fifteen and only five minutes from here. Then I’ll wait to hear when our second day of casting is and when our callbacks are.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, be up by eleven at the latest, have a helper visit, get an eBook up, go to the mail place, eat something light, and then watch, listen, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: Given that the news media has basically lost any semblance of courage and is mostly agenda-laden or two scared to say anything and that especially goes for the dimwits of the Washington Press Corps and people like Jake Tapper, who are the newscasters you really like and think act with courage to tell it like it is. Not talking about sites like Meidas Touch or those like it, that are in it for the money, but those mainstream media who tough it out. My favorite is Laurence O’Donnell. Interestingly, I used to enjoy Rachel Maddow, but I’ve heard nothing from her recently – she no longer comes across my YouTube feed. Your turn. Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, where I shall dream pastoral dreams in shades of pink.