ARTS
*-The Michigan Daily
Tuesday, April 9, 1991
Page 5
w:
They're goin' to the chapel...
Soviet filmmakers remain
parallel, but not equal
The Marrying Man
dir. Jerry Rees
I
.,
by Brent Edwards
Retro is in, as evinced by much of
the latest "hip" music and fashion.
The film industry seems to be look-
ing to the past for their innovative
cues as well, but while most of the
arts are rediscovering the wacky
} wildness of the '60s, Hollywood is
looking to the simpler '40s and '50s.
This trend is not just in setting, as in
Book of Love, but in style as well:
film noir's seediness and dark in-
trigue (see Double Indemnity and
Cape Fear for classic examples)
was most effectively displayed in
last year's The Hot Spot and more
recently in The Grifters, while high
camp and brash comedy (see His Girl
Friday for a classic example) was
found in He Said, She Said and now
The Marrying Man.
As if to emphasize its influences,
The Marrying Man is fashioned in
the classic manner of a character re-
counting the eight-year history of
Charlie Pearl (Alec Baldwin) and
Vicki Anderson (Kim Basinger),
who during the '40s and '50s are
married to each other more times
-than most people have kids. Charlie
is a multi-millionaire toothpaste
king who falls for torch singer
Vicki just six days before he's to be
married to a Hollywood mogul's
daughter. As Charlie puts it, there
are some women you love and others
you are hot for, and the hot ones are
.the most dangerous because you
can't control yourself - you'll do
anything for them.
True to what he says, Charlie
goes beyond all bounds of sanity and
self-control for the remainder of
the film, as Charlie and Vicki meet
again after breaking up through
increasingly improbable encounters
that hint at a destiny they are fated
to fulfill.
As already stated, The Marrying
Man is more like a '50s madcap
comedy (where people fall in love
with a glance) than today's more
sophisticated comic-dramas (where
characters slowly bond through
faked orgasms in delis), so a certain
mindset is required if one is going to
enjoy this film. Written by Neil
Simon, there are some very funny
lines, many of them centered around
the male-oriented antics of his
Alec Baldwin prepares to pack Kim Basinger like the luggage that she is
in Neil Simon's retro-screwball comedy, The Marrying Man.
Diner-style friends (including
Diner star Paul Reiser).
The film is essentially Bald-
win's and Basinger's, however, and
it lives or dies on enjoying their
raucous relationship. There is
something romantic about the
thought of people destined for each
other who keep getting together
after they've split up - who hasn't
fantasized about re-encountering an
old flame and realizing that you
can't live without him or her? It is
difficult to feel this way about the
Vicki and Charlie, though, because
we rarely see them beyond the antic
stage; even when he meets her after
their second divorce, their con-
frontation becomes a slaps!ick fight
with an enormous bouncer. Only at
the very end of the film does the au-
dience feel some urgency about their
getting back together for other than
comic reasons.
At times, Baldwin and Basinger
seem like little more than pretty
faces in their roles, with their cast-
ing appearing all the more frivolous
given their cutesy "Hollywood's
favorite couple" role. To her credit,
Basinger sings all of her songs in the
film, including classics like "Let's
Do It" and "Honeysuckle Rose."
There is a definite attempt to copy
the steamy scene from The Fabulous
Baker Boys where Michelle
Pfeiffer rolls seductively on top of
a piano while singing "Makin'
Whoopee," but Basinger's style
comes across more like the staged
and overt sexiness of Madonna's
Oscar performance.
Retro is refreshing in many ways
and has given a jump-start to many
forms that may have otherwise
stagnated. Unfortunately, The
Marrying Man seems more like a
safe step backward than an inventive
step forward, or even sideways.
TIE MARRYING MAN is being
shown at Showcase.
by Mike Kuniavsky
It is one of the ironies of today's
world that the concept of freedom
has been so beaten, twisted and re-
arranged that the things that once
symbolized bondage now symbolize
the opposite and the things that
once stood for freedom now stand
for oppression. So it is with film.
As the following interview reveals,
filmmakers in the Soviet Union,
long the ubiqu ssymbol of re-
pression and injustice, have a
much easier time and many fewer
concerns than the average film
student in this University's
Program in Film and Video Studies-
Though ostensibly invited to
Ann Arbor in order to show their
films by that selfsame Program -a
program much more concerned
with its image and its internal poli-
tis than any quality of education it
offers - the filmmakers (and their
entoura e of three administrative
types) had almost no contact with
the public. Yes, there was thei
(unpublicized) public forum and
some class appearances, but es-
sentially the filmmakers and their
entourage got afree planeitrip and
hotel stay only to see the Ann
Arbor Film Festival and maybe
shop at Urban Outfitters.
So, in order to somehow salvage
part of our tuition and expose the
public to something that they really
should have been extensively ex-
posed to during the full 10 days
which the filmmakers were in
town, I decided to do the following
interview with Piotr Pospelov and
Igor Alienikov, two of the founders
of the most recent wave of Soviet
underground cinema, the self-titled
"parallel cinema." It was taped
between 4:30 and 6 p.m. on
Saturday, March 23 at Drake's
(where Pospelov was surprised
and happy to learn that smoking is
permitted). This article is the first
of a two-part series.
MK: So why did you decide to
make films?
PP: I've always (been) inter-
ested in all kinds of art. I first be-
came interested in film during the
first semester at the conservatory.
It interested me so much that I
quickly became a kinoman (a film
buff). (You see) we have this
movie theater, the Eleision, which
shows all kinds of classic films:
silent, sound, all kinds. I started
watching a lot of old films there
and (I saw) the more modemn stuff
at the local first-run film theaters
and at the various film festivals.
At one point I decided to try
filmmaking, so I chose to train my-
self. I started putting together sto-
ryboards, timelines. When I would
go on expeditions to tape Russian
folksongs, I would shoot eight
millimeter films. Then I found
myself at one of the amateur film
studios where they had some prim-
itive sixteen millimeter equip-
ment, which I used to make a cou-
ple of films. It was after these two
that I made the film that you saw,
Masha Who Wants to Become a
Teacher, which is the first film I
made that I actually show. Today's
film (Report from the Lovelands,
1990) was the second. I also have a
third, an ethnographic documentary
about Russian folklore and folk-
songs, which I made with Grigory
Larin.
After these films I decided to
try to create a work which would
create a comprehensive picture of
the parallel cinema. I created a
four-film compilation which in-
cludes Lovelands, the Alienikovs'
Tractors, another film by the
Alienikovs and a film from the
Leningrad parallel cinema. It's cur-
rently playing the film club circuit
there. Currently, I'm putting to-
gether a catalog of parallel films
and I'm beginning work on my
next film.
MK: Where do you get the sup-
plies and money to make films
there?
PP: We don't have the same di-
rect connection between equip-
ment, film and money that you
have here. That is to say... it exists,
but it's significantly less of a
problem there than in the West.
It's much more important to be in
the right crowd and know the right
people.
For instance, in Moscow it's
enough to know someone who
knows someone. Now, there's even
a crowd that skims money off of
the commercial film business for
us. But we really need the money
only to make copies, as we can do
most everything else ourselves.
Film itself is actually pretty
cheap. It's getting it that's usually
the problem.
MK: And where do you process
the film once you do shoot it?
PP: There are a couple of labora-
tories. There's a nationalized one
where people send all of their
home movies, or we can also pro-
cess it ourselves. Most of the ones
that we showed here were pro-
cessed by either our own hands or
by the hands of colleagues.
At this point we were joined by
Alienikov, who was late because
he had been shopping at Urban
Outfitters.
MK: What about the last film
in last Saturday's showing
(Knights of the Sky)? That was
thirty-five millimeter and it was
obviously not processed by hand...
IA: This film especially fits the
parallel cinema definition. It was
made semi-unofficially, since the
director ran into troubles clearing
it for production and started work
on it before it was officially al-
lowed to be produced. He has his
own thirty-five millimeter cam-
era...
MK: Must be nice...
IA (laughs): Yeah, so he started
filming early. And because he
didn't need to have sound with it,
he could just invite his actors and
friends.
MK: Well, let me see if I've got
it right. The parallel cinema, as it
stands, was formed because you
wanted to express things that you
were not able to at the official stu-
dios, but now it doesn't seem that
the same barriers exist. What is the
status of the parallel cinema to-
day?
IA: It's not that there were
banned themes - sure, before pere-
stroika you couldn't make a film
about drug addiction or prostitu-
tion - but it was the more funda-
mental things which were prohib-
ited. The directors at the official
studios use cliches, just like in
Hollywood, and so produced really
boring films. (There) it was not
possible to take a different path, to
explore something different.
PP: A good way of putting it
was summarized by Andrei
Soniatsky, a Russian writer who
now lives in France, when he said
that the system didn't allow
things more often based on aes-
thetic concerns than on political
ones.
MK: What do you mean by
"aesthetic concerns"? Can you give
me an example?,
IA: We mean films like [Jean
Luc] Godard makes. These would be
impossible to produce in the offi-
cial system. If a director would go
and ask to make a film like a
Godard film, he would be immedi-
ately rejected.
It's not that they were looking
for Social Realism, just that some-
thing like that would be considered
an imperialistic aesthetic and, as
such, would be unacceptable.
MK: Does a director, if he or she
wanted to make an "official" film,
still have to go through some offi-
cial censure board?
IA: Well I wouldn't call it cen-
sure. Each studio now has an aes-
thetics board which decides what
films should be made at that stu-
dio. But there is not an official
standard by which the boards mea-
sure ideas. It's closer to the tradi-
tional "producer" model of film-
making. They decide on a mar-
ketable idea and hire a screenwriter
to develop it, then they hire an ap-
propriate director. So it's essen-
tially a commercial system now.
MK: So you fice the same pres-
sures that Western filmmakers
face? It's whether a film will make
money that determines what's pro-
duced, rather that what it's about....
IA: Right.
MK: So the parallel cinema is
essentially the noncommercial cin-
ema?
IA: Right...
MK: Which is what it's like in
the West...
PP: Yes, the current situation is
approaching the situation in the
West.
Now there aren't even the barri-
ers there were recently. Igor and
his brother Gleb just shot a thirty-
five millimeter film at Mosfilm.
Another formerly parallel film-
maker in Leningrad just made a
film at Lenfilm and many of the
other Leningrad parallel groups are
now making films at the official
documentary film studios. So now
it's essentially possible to do offi-
cially what we were doing unoffi-
cially.
CBN spotlights ethnoplurality
by Marigold Genevieve
VCBN will be offering a week of
programming that is radically
different from our expectations of
college radio this week - Listen to
the Color of Your Dreams, which
will proceed through Friday. This
second annual presentation will be
highlighting CBN's year-round cov-
erage of American culture, some-
thing which organizer Mark Rincy
describe as being "wrapped up in
racial issues."
"We are making a point of the
focus that we have three-hundred-
sixty-five days a year," Riney says.
Basically, the focus of The Color of
Your Dreams is based on non-Euro-
centric perspectives and music, hence
the provocative title, referring to
what CBN calls "programming in
pursuit of the real requirements for
world peace."
Besides a distinct focus of CBN's
often exuberant programming of
music that is outside of Euro-centric
perspectives, a number of interviews
will be spotlighted, among them
Shelby Steele, author of the
controversial The Content of Our
Character, which will be run
Friday. "We are involved with eth-
nicity and culture," chief announcer
Tony Plamondon explains, "but
also presenting the balance and op-
posing viewpoints to his conserva-
tive view (ref, rring to Steele). It's
extremely important for people to
discuss the topics of cultural and ra-
cial issues because it is so shunned in
the mass media. Like, T7he Cosby
Show provides a role model, but
still avoids touchy racial issues.
Some of the viewpoints we present
will be radical but some will be
conservative. We are not trying to
present any one viewpoint but all
viewpoints of culture and race."
Also scheduled to be inter-
viewed is Roger Gregoir6, a designer
of curricula in America who will be
speaking on the political indictment
of public schools, and EMW, the
self-dubbed "weekly negro" re-
sponsible for The Color
Commentary that is heard before
Grey Matters on Fridays at 6 p.m.
"His voice is a prominent one that is
counter to the perspectives we are
constantly hearing in the media,"
CBN General Manager Diane Cook
says. "He's not necessarily left or
right, either. I think that that's
what makes it so challenging."
Reflecting the station's own ambi-
guity in ideology, EMW and Listen
to the Color of Your Dreams do just
that - challenge your assumptions
and provoke thoughts.
LISTEN TO TIIE COLOR OF YOUR
DREAMS is on the air through
Friday on WCBN 88.3 on your FM
Dial.
To be continued...
I
EMF
"Unbelievable" (CD single)
I know close to nothing about
this band, but I can tell you that
these six white boys can crank out a
great house tune. Both songs here,
"Unbelievable" and "EMF," are a
mix of hip-hop beats, house piano,
vocals that border on rap but have a
more melodic delivery, and enough
real guitar and bass to keep everyone
happy. Sure, they may be ripping off
black music, but they, do a damn
anndinr of it A e n' na n.
successful, they don't let it go to
their heads.
-Mike Molitor
Various Artists
The Sounds of Murphy Brown
MCA
The use of pop-songs-as-sound-
track in the CBS-TV sitcom Mur-
phy Brown - basically, the
placement of a different Motown
classic over the show's opening
credits every week - has never
exactly been as integral as the music
to, say, ABC's ill-fated Cop Rock
^. th WATV i rtin n ;ntn
to the show's hero by the a cappella
group Take 6, the only novelty here
is Candice Bergen's version of "You
Keep Me Hangin On," taken from
the episode when Murphy's FYI
crew was taken hostage ("Set me
free" - get it?)
And that you could've gotten by
just figuring out the phono jacks on
back of your stereo VCR.
-Michael Paul Fischer
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