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Old 06.01.2012, 04:37 PM   #16094
demonrail666
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Originally Posted by !@#$%!
sorry i don't know what you mean here-- i do read most of your posts here so which one are you referring to?

I only meant that you're right, I did say that but that I wasn't being that serious. Without being totally un-serious, either.

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yeah there are people in porn who can act. not too many but there are some.

Exactly. That was me getting defensive about it. Some can, most can't but, either way, it has no real bearing on my enjoyment or interest in porn.

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i googled-- she's a fucking plastic monster!

See?!? Curiosity killed the cat. Haha.

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a sex symbol more than a "girl next door" actress? sure. but mang it takes more charisma than that silicone bundle.

I'm probably fair to say that I'm not a big fan of girl-next-door types, either in porn or regular cinema. (Joan Crawfords famous response to being asked to tone down her makeup, "if you want the girl next door, go next door"). I love the sheer constructedness of a lot of stars. So I see Taylor Wane as a kind of grotesque equivalent to the kind of things Hollywood stars like Crawford or Rita Hayworth had to endure to maintain their 'industry standard' beauty. In one sense then, I'm basically celebrating a quite prohibitive and narrow period of Hollywood history and I certainly wouldn't like to justify it on any moral grounds, bit a fascination is a fascination. Like Lemmy collecting nazi memorabilia. By charisma, I maybe should've said 'presence' instead. It's fair to say that someone like Taylor Wane may not be the most charismatic of people but I do think she possesses a definite 'aura'. But that's likely just me.

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you mean warhol's? i've never much watched his movies. they make me wanna pull my eyes out. but if you're thinking maybe of a kind of kenneth anger film where actors are more models than actual actors, then yeah it could work.

Yeah, Warhol is the obvious one, and Jack Smith. Warhol was disappointed at how bland Hollywood stars were becoming and cultivated his own stable of alternative stars that he felt far better embodied that early Hollywood thing he missed - while likely making some kind of critical point about stardom in general but, being Warhol, nobody's quite sure. But in essence, yeah, my fascination with Taylor Wane et al probably has some parallels with Warhol's fascination with say Candy Darling - although if anything, he was far more interested in charisma than I am.

Kenneth Anger's obsession with Hollywood overall has had a massive influence on how I look at cinema but I've never thought of him as being that interested in performers. He never cultivated 'stars' the way that Warhol or Smith did, being ultimately only really interested in directing.

An obvious factor in this is that Warhol, Smith and Anger were gay and that since then that kind of Hollywood re-appropriation thing has been pretty much marginalised as a kind of queer camp thing. As a straight guy, I find it interesting that I'm fascinated with something very similar but from a quite different perspective and set of motivations.

The big book on all this for me, and which remains my favourite book ever on Hollywood is Parker Tyler's Magic and Myth of the Movies. It was written in the 40s and is long out of print, but if you ever see it cheap, don't hesitate to get it. Besides anything else, Tyler was an amazing writer and the book's basically a very beautifully written fleshing out of some of the points I've tried to make here (as well as apparently being the inspiration behind Gore Vidal writing Myra Breckinbridge.) Although Tyler too was gay, his take on cinema seems motivated far more by an interest in surrealism than sexuality which makes it far more interesting from my point of view.

Any road, just watched this again ...

 


Duel

I've stopped giving marks out of ten but would otherwise give this a 9 or a 10. I just think it's a perfect film. In many ways a better example of many of Godard's ideas about low budget economy and efficiency than he ever managed before. No doubt Spielberg has his faults but I'm a huge fan and when he's able to make simple minimal frees movies like this, few can touch him, I think. Plus I love Dennis Weaver.
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