#key difference is star girl is much less inclined towards violence

[kittydoesthings]

currently brainstorming how much of Sun Wukong I can sneak into Star Girl's character

[honmakurara]

What Kyuso is, and what it isn’t

A few thoughts about Kyuso wa cheese no yume o miru upcoming movie release

Warning 1: spoilers ahead!

Warning 2: I wrote this post quite long ago but the movie was delayed due to the spread of the pandemic, and so I chose to postpone my thoughts as well. So if you find that some thoughts might sound a bit "old", that is the reason why.

**

I can remember there was at first a lot of criticization towards Ohkura's upcoming Otomo role in the Kyuuso wa Cheese no yume o miru movie, which honestly I cannot fully understand.

While I can understand not everyone might be comfortable "enjoying" a story starting out of repeatedly cheats towards women and a blackmail, it sure does not just sit back on this alone (quite the contrary), and I think that both character and story-wise it can be an amazing opportunity for Ohkura's career.

Same for the Boys' Love theme: live action adaptations of BL stories have so far generally lacked too much and definitely failed to adequately portray the BL theme itself, due to poor budget, poor staff, poor attention and poor everything. A brilliant exception is the Double Mints movie: a very dark, violent and angsty story (beware if you're not incline to these themes) and yet a very touching and heart-wrenching movie, where the BL relationship is as much sad as realistic.

Back to the Kyuso movie.

Ohkura's Otomo character in the Kyuso no cheese BL movie isn't just a "bisex" one, and isn't just a "gay" one either. The original manga is actually no real BL because it was not published in a Boys' Love magazine, it had been written in a josei magazine whose target is the adult female audience. That is to say the story does not aim to be a queer manifesto, even though I think it deals amazingly great with such themes. What's (I reckon) great about Mizushiro sensei's story isn't the yaoi theme itself (alone), but rather the excellent way she portrays the human weaknesses and dark sides of her characters (male and female ones), which is not to say I "cheer" for the characters, because I don't, but introspection-development-wise, the story is gorgeous.

Even after the re-prints of the volumes, which have partially edited illustration (not a big thing, only the genital depiction has been censored), the illustrations, dialogues and themes keep being the original ones.

As I said above, the several twists this story carries are also why I reckon this role might be a huge and challenging opportunity for Ohkura's career as an actor, together with his "controversial" Kumon Onna and recent Montecristo ones, and why I won't go easy with 'judging' the movie as proper adaptation of the manga, should it turn out to be disappointing on screen.   - Spoilers ahead, you're warned -

While living is life as a "regular het" guy, Otomo is married and repeatedly cheats on his wife. Should he be praised for leading this life? I guess no, definitely not. So, we start out from a mean man doing despicable actions who suddenly gets "blackmailed" for his bad behaviour by a homosexual kohai of his.

Is Imagase the only bad guy here, for daring such blackmail? I guess not.

And yet, despite (or thanks to) these premises, the story evolves into something very, very different.

It takes a gay kohai of his to make Otomo realize that his marriage is just an empty shell, that he basically married out of any deep feelings for his wife and was 'happy' with just 'life going on'. It's the meeting with Imagase that forces him to think deeply about his life, to realize he's never cared for other people's feelings to start with. In short, Otomo is a womanizer, a selfish and rather empty guy. The sexual relationship with Imagase reveals him also as being jealous and passive, masochistic and dominant at the same time, very much incline to temptation, whatever its shape or time. He's not to be praised, not a little bit. He's not to be looked down at, at the same time. Because he's human, because that is how life takes his toll on everyone of us (nothing is black or white, rather being endless shades of gray), and because it's only when Otomo realizes who he is and what he wants -thanks to Imagase- that he finally manages to be more "himself". "I'll turn 30 soon. I might still have to know what true love is." -Kyoichi Otomo-

These 'simple' words are one of the keys of the whole story to me: I was aghast when I read it in the manga, I still remember them 10 years later, and I was so relieved to  notice it was kept in the trailer, at least. Which is to say I'm not the only one thinking they're valuable.

 Otomo has met and has been with a lot of women, but none of them is able to rip a hole inside his soul. And then, yes, it's Imagase who "makes the miracle", he's the only one who intercepts the black hole and bluntly tells him so. Because sometimes this can happen through the most unexpected of encounters. It's Imagase who makes Otomo finally realize how important it is to pursue a relationship where both parts openly discuss, argue and talk constantly about each other... in bed or not. It's Imagase, a cheeky, blunt, capricious, selfish, impetuous, fickle and mean guy. It's not a woman, nor a good boy. But it's him who is there for Otomo when the latter needs it (and even when he does not). This is what makes this story not just good but special, to me: a cynical analysis about love relationships and human growth/twists, but at the same time a very humble and realistic one.

 Personally speaking, I don't "like" Otomo nor Imagase nor their petty behaviours, and yet I cannot wait to see how Ohkura and Narita will portray them in every little bit of these flawed characters, because I have been hooked to the story as a whole since the very beginning (ten years ago) and I still am this bewitched, and probably forever will be (yes I know, Ohkura: there is no thing like forever anymore. But bear with my feels, please). I would lie if I were to say I don't care about the sex scenes because, hey, it's a very sexy story after all, but that is not where the real point is, to me. The point is that thanks to this movie adaptation, Ohkura has been given a great (maybe not the greatest itself, but greatest so far) opportunity and I'm cheering on him eternally for this.

I had honestly never thought that one day this story could actually become a movie, and even if I did, last thing I would imagine would be that Ohkura could be starring in it.

But it happened. Not to mention Ohkura himself seems to have become fairly fond of this story... thinking deeply about his character, the staff involved, the story and its themes, just like he did during Dr. DMAT, Hanachan no Mizoshiru and Montecristo filming time. Should the movie even fail to hit my (absurdly high) expectations, I won't love the manga less. So far, the theatrical trailer looks a bit different from the sophisticated 'air' I thought it would have, but still quite nice: way more tender and cute than I thought, but with a palpable longing atmosphere which I find very much on point. We'll see. Cannot wait. In the meantime, ganbatte Ohkura, I'm proud <3  

** Post Scriptum: Besides, I find it very nice that Kyuso movie will be distributed by Phantom Films, which so far handled a lot of quite interesting movies. Among these I definitely recommend: - Call Boy (with Tori Matsuzaka), story of a host/gigolò in Tokyo. Photography is amazing in this movie and so are all the actors. - Hoshigaoka Wonderland (Suda Masaki has a very small part in it, but he's amazing);

- HIS: latest release, story of a gay couple that split up during University and meets again several years later... when one of the guys has become father of a young girl. The movie is a sequel of a coming of age drama aired in 2019 in Japan. 

- (not by Phantom Films but anyway) Double Mints: the BEST "yaoi" movie I have ever seen, so fa. A dark story filled with angst, violence, abuse and still, the touching story of a bond&love that cannot be torn off. Definitely not an easy movie, but definitely recommended if you're interested watching how a movie should be done and how "gay feels" are definitely not in the way nor "like a shojo manga".

[aleatoryalarmalligator]

Life Story Part 57

The #2 Beatles cover band came into Lewiston. Opening for them, was the #1 Elvis Impersonator. My father decided we should go as a family. I'll admit it was entertaining, though I often forget to mention it when asked about the shows I've been to as it didn't mean that much to me. I think some of the more drunk members of the audience were able to momentarily convince themselves that it was the real Elvis opening for the real Beatles. They hollered and danced. It was never really hit me that hard, though, in full garb the Elvis impersonator had his moments. They were obviously practiced musicians – but I couldn't help but to think about the contest that must be held for Elvis impersonators and Beatles impersonators. It seemed kind of silly to dedicate your life to playing someone else's music. You would have to be so passionate about that person. I remember looking at Allison – who was not quite a preteen but not quite a little girl anymore either, and noticing her clapping her hands and singing ecstatically. I count her as one of those people who was able to convince herself that the Beatles were really playing. Allison was a mad fan of the Beatles.

David was having more and more anger issues, throwing more and more fits. Becoming more violent. Maria left again to live in Juliaetta with Earl, and for awhile by the end of my year up in Moscow, Allison and David were left to their own devices at the house while my father was at work and I was in school. If you discount the possibility of a serial killer noticing two unsupervised children alone (it was at this time that serial killer Joseph Duncan III had actually kidnapped a boy and a girl about a county up from us), things might have been fine – if David wasn't becoming the way he was. I sincerely wish David had been raised differently. Something in him had snapped. Given there was nobody to stop him, he became violent and frightening to Allison. He was pushing himself to do bad things. He was like me, but worse. I wish I had never had the influence on him that I had had. I think he was depressed, but there was more to it than this. He was pushing the very limits of what he could get away with – and it was going farther than anything I had ever done. He ended up chasing Allison with a knife, screaming that he was going to stab her to death. Allison ran barefoot for two miles to get away from him to save her life, as he screamed and yelled psychotically down the street with the knife in hand.

I hadn't heard about all this stuff going down. I had been completely submerged in my own psychology and studies. But when I heard about it, it upset me. It was rather shocking. He was only nine years old. David needed help. Allison didn't need to be around this or to live in fear everyday after school. Something was very wrong with this whole picture. I knew something drastic needed to happen. This was not normal kid stuff. I knew David to be sincere in this way. He wasn't the type of kid who was aloof or pulled pranks. He was an all in or all out type of person. And I knew him to be a very sympathetic, and abnormally gracious human being most of the time. So for him to be chasing Allison with a knife, he must have really been feeling it. He must have been losing his mind.

Looking for constructive advice, I talked to Jenni about it. There of course wasn't much anyone could do though. I didn't want to, but I decided to take my dad aside one evening and try to explain the situation to him. I knew this would be a challenge, since to question David's behavior, was, by extension, questioning my father's own behavior. David was in many ways mirroring my father's rage and violence towards me. Both Allison and David had grown up watching it. They internalized it. And David also felt inferior as the youngest – I in particular made him feel powerless. I had been a mean babysitter. Never did I feel compelled to stab anyone to death, but I had been psychologically damaging. It wasn't good for me to be forced to babysit them like I did, but it might have been worse for Allison and David. David was attempting to gain the control he felt he needed. My mom's coddling him made him weak and expect more. He was becoming a disaster.

At first, my dad kind of understood what I was saying, but then he brushed it off with 'boys will be boys'. I tried to explain to him that while boys might be a little rowdy or less inclined to brush their hair, it was absolutely not normal for a boy to chase his sister with a knife screaming psychotically to the end of town. David's fits to where he would cry and scream till he couldn't breath weren't normal – and he had been doing that for years. He felt horrible and he needed help. This was a stage of his development where his mind was wiring who he would be for the rest of his life. I was worried. I felt that my father's neglect in this area was incredibly unfair to David and selfish. Our father had always ignored anything that was going on that was unpleasant – and he had given David his name. David in his eyes was sort of his prodigy. So by saying anything negative about David, my father felt I was insulting him personally.

He sort of blew the whole thing off, and then told me that he knew Allison could be manipulative. My father was big on this 'manipulative female' thing – always has been. He felt that men were honest and simple, and women were knifing and complex. In his pseudosciency way, he reasoned that we women were too weak to fight with our fists, so we played mind games – it was programmed in our nature to torture men, be it our brothers or our significant others. He didn't think men were capable of those mind games in any way shape or form. He absolutely didn't believe men could wrap their minds around being manipulative or emotionally abusive as he felt men could only do what was natural to them, and he felt that half the time, when men do things wrong it was because a woman had manipulated him or pushed him psychologically to do it. Though my father was not religious, he definitely blamed Eve for man's mistakes like some weird culty Abrahamic religious leader. It was infuriating, but he essentially blamed Allison for David's behavior. He was close to blaming me simply for being the messenger and telling him something he didn't want to hear. Him and David were male and in some way infallible. Allison and I were women, and we had to take it. That was the low key message. And nothing further got said. I had this sick feeling in my chest, and it just seemed to sit there.

In school, I just kind of got quiet. I felt powerless and uncertain of my own future. I tried to talk about the band Sarah and I were going to start that coming year with Sarah, but she didn't seem that into it. I threw myself more and more into books. I picked up a copy of 1984 by George Orwell. I read it in three parts. I remember reading the last one hundred pages or so on Sarah's couch. It was one in the morning, and Sarah was talking on the phone with Alex. I think it was a bit earlier in Georgia, or later. I don't know the time difference, but they talked to one another at times that were limited given the time aspect of it. She spent most nights talking to Alex on the phone these days. I remember reading all of 1984 and it blew my mind. I felt sick for days. I had never thought of a system as something that could never change. That was ultimately what made me the sickest. The book was extremely psychological. It wasn't some grand narrative of an evil king that gets overthrown. In the end, Winston lost and Big Brother won. I felt panicked, and I wondered if there were elements of modern society that were just like 1984 in their self perpetuating cycle of oppression. I could hear Sarah on the phone joking with Alex. I felt a million years away from it all.

At other times, I would just watch documentaries on baboons that were always playing on Public Television. Baboons seemed at times, more like little werewolves the way they tore down small gazelle like deer, the way they viciously ripped each other to shreds for dominance. Even though human beings seemed very civil, were we really? Were we as a species more or less just more complex violent apes? Between these baboon documentaries and reading 1984, my faith in humanity seemed to flow out of me, and I didn't have any way to explain it. In a way, it was humbling I guess. I no longer saw the world with myself as the center. I kind of understood that I was going to die someday, in some manner, regardless if I lived a full life of success, or if I died a nobody. People had been doing it for thousands of years, and really, who was I to proclaim my life so special? My goals stopped mattering to me as much as they had. I was not as excited about my own reflection. But I was still very ticked off. I could no longer be apathetic about the news. I was infuriated with the Bush administration. I saw human nature as primarily selfish, and yet there was something in me that said that it didn't have to be this way, that somehow there was something to be said about the human spirit, and maybe there was something greater – but I was still losing faith somehow. I was frustrated by my own inability to really communicate with people in person. I felt like I had gotten so angry, and held it in so long that did what stars do when they become black holes. So what I felt in me was this incredible void. It made my skin feel tingly, it made me feel sort of euphoric and afraid at the same time. It was like an energy I had no way to channel. And I have been this way ever since.

I also read A Handmaid's Tale, which, though it didn't make as much of an impact on me as 1984 had, was full of a million small ideas about gender, power, tradition, and mortality that were very interesting that built up to something that made me reevaluate the world around me. It was the kind of book I pondered about for many years. When they made a television show of it last year, I was all over it, and I was not disappointed.

I felt a little confused about conspiracy theories at this point. I guess when I had at first taken to believing in anything from the Lochness Monster to your everyday ring wearing freemason being some kind of overlord, I wanted to believe things, and so I had. It brought meaning in my life. Now, with this newly found sense that any belief I held had to be in some way justified and backed by evidence, I went back into looking for conspiracies with a lot of skepticism. But I wasn't really disappointed. Oligarchs exist. The world is rapidly changing behind the scenes. Excuses for wars are invented, corruption isn't a conspiracy theory when it comes to how our government operates with corporations. Our news media is controlled by very few. JFK's assassination was very fishy, so was Martin Luther King's. There are very eerie unexplainable crafts that do fly in impossible ways, that have been recorded and verified by government agencies and top level government people.

Not to mention that a lot of things the government or people of power don't want you to see isn't even exactly a secret. You could read all day and get very well documented well understood shadowy information about the backstory behind a lot of things that pertain to everyone that will make you feel very uneasy about the world we live in. You can listen to theoretical physicists or neuroscientists and get a very trippy reality check. It's out there. And in terms of evil conspiracies, a good portion of the time, things get leaked, or simply don't get reported, or get reported at the same time something more colorful is being reported on so that people don't look the opposite direction. If you care to, and you are aware enough, it's not that hard to find it, especially with the internet, if you are willing to put in the research and get the verification by sound sources. They just hope people don't go looking for it. I think more is done to keep people distracted, but even that sometimes backfires. I believe I was wrong in thinking, or hoping for some major plotline about who runs the world and it's money, mostly because it was meant to back my own ego, and it was based on zero evidence. But that isn't to say that there aren't all manner of shady situations going on.

I think this might have been why I got very intrigued by the MK Ultra program and such. This got me to reading about operation paperclip, and how the United States brought Nazi's into the United States. Telling my father about it one day, he confirmed it and explained to me that he had first hand met one of these Nazi scientists back in the 60's or 70's. Many of these Nazi's were secretly brought to north Idaho specifically because it was unpopulated, unseemly, and mostly white demographically. This one Nazi fellow was actually paid by the company that ended up being ATK – where my father worked, back in it's early beginnings to help with something engineering related. My father didn't know who this man with a German accent was at the time, but he saw my father working (this was after my father had stopped being a hippie), and he came up and praised him and told him something about him being an ideal example of a superior man with good work ethic. Later it was explained to my father that this guy was a true German Nazi who was secretly brought to the United States, so that statement of him being the ideal white man was actually pretty creepy.

I found that in nursing class, if I hurried up and got ahead, I could spend a good portion of my time just reading online about these weird facts about Nicola Tesla, Aleister Crowley, various experiments, and so forth. I was sitting there quietly reading intently one day. The room was full of kids writing their fiction stories, and the guy next to me got up to use the bathroom. Another guy came over and took his chair. I would have said something, even though I didn't know that guy – I still didn't want him to lose his chair, but I looked at the other fellow who had taken the chair, and I thought surely that kid knew what he was doing. I didn't want to get in a fight with this person over someone else's chair, so I didn't say anything. Sure enough, the guy came back to find his chair was missing. He looked over and saw that this other guy had taken the chair. And from the corner of my eyes, I watched him snap. He began shouting. Instantly, I felt like someone had punched me in the stomach. It physically rattled my entire perceptions for a moment. The other guy nervously gave him his chair back, but guy 1 wasn't happy with this. I was closing my eyes in shock. The next thing I knew, this guy had taken the chair and thrown it against the wall as hard as he could. It came crashing down on my computer and the computer next to mine.

The guy ended up having to go into the office, where I could hear him screaming hysterically. He was the same guy I think I mentioned me sitting next to on the first day when I accidentally didn't swallow my diet pills correctly and exhaled a bunch of dust. He ended up having schizophrenia, and everyday I go up to Moscow, I see him pacing back and forth in the Moscow mall with headphones on. It seems rather sad. He was actually a rather normal person for most of the time I knew him, and he seemed generally very nice. What I remember most about the situation though was just how badly I was affected by violent unpredictable situations like these. Because after that chair came crashing down on me, I was about ready to gag. I couldn't breath right. I couldn't even register what I was seeing. My hands were shaky for hours. I didn't feel right in the head. I was nauseated and jumpy. I guess I was getting to a point where I had had my fill of loud violent angry men. I didn't take it personally that the guy had thrown that chair. I know he didn't intend on upsetting me like that. He was caught in his own rage to the extent where he couldn't even be considered fully responsible, the way I saw it.

There was also an incident that got kind of heated, and rather than scare me, I felt rather inspired by it. So there was this dumb hick in our class. I think his name was Tony or something. He was cousins with a lot of people from Kendrick, and he was pretty excited to ask us if we knew such and such. He was outwardly friendly, but completely ignorant, and what we discovered, a racist. He was sitting in the class before the teacher had come in, and he was talking about something or other when he started calling someone he was talking about the N word. I can honestly confess, I was completely lost in a daydream, but Sarah had heard him say it, and I had heard people say it before when I had been in the Kendrick school. The word made me sick, but I had never had the courage to jump on anyone over it, and instead I generally buried my face in my arms with guilt. When he used that word, this girl named Emily stood up and asked him what he just said. He was shocked, I think everyone was. There was no doubt in her face. He tried to laugh her off, but the look in his eyes, you could tell he was scared.

I don't remember what went down exactly, other than it was awesome. I hadn't realized that sticking up to someone like that was something a person could do. Emily was already really cool to me, and I already admired her. I never spoke with her or about her, but she was actually in a band which I thought was amazing. She was a drummer in a band, she wore skinny jeans, she illustrated children's books. She was very confident, and didn't judge anyone. She was probably the coolest person in that school – possibly one of the cooler people I had ever met who was my own age. And apparently she had no qualms with getting up and taking care of racists in there tracks. She bitch slapped this guy with words until he was shaky and red in the face. She eventually forced him to apologize. It was perfect. I couldn't help but feel my own inadequacies watching this situation unfold. What did I ever do when this kind of thing happened, but duck my head? I kind of wished that I had been more like Emily. She did what everyone needed to do. She didn't care if she made a scene or what people thought about her. If more people were like Emily, the world would be a much better place.

During the end of school, we were taken on a few field trips. The first one was to this art exhibit. It wasn't the original artwork I don't think – or at least most of it wasn't, but there was a gallery exhibit of Lichtenstein's iconic artwork. If you don't know exactly who that is, you should look it up and most likely you would instantly recognize it as the classic comic book format. He basically came up with a way of creating small dots in comic books to create a sense of shading. I wasn't terribly interested in it personally as someone who inspired my art per say, but I still found it rather intriguing and influential.

I remember we also went on a field trip to the local city waste treatment system. It was smelly due to human waste. It was fascinating in this sick sort of way. In each tank, you could see the water being settled and changed – at first being raw sewage. You could see the brown stuff – being turds. Little did I know that I would be doing something sort of related to this for a job years later – though I never dealt with human sewage – rather industrial waste. At another time, we visited this exhibit in Pullman of fossils and bones. There was this spectacular thing where they had this horse's body separated perfectly between glass sheets, so you could see it all stretched out and separated. Anyone who has seen the television show Hannibal may know what I am referring to. It was incredibly interesting. Afterwards, everyone was taken to this creamery in Pullman where they made fresh ice cream. I don't think I ended up getting any ice cream though. I didn't have any money, and I was beginning to feel really uncertain of myself in public situations. I was afraid to go up and buy any ice cream. I felt halfheartedly frustrated at Sarah because she didn't do anything to help me – though in no way was she obligated. Afterwards, I remember being in some building that was several stories up. It was connected to the campus in some way, and I think it might have been related to entertaining a lot of people in some way. There were a lot of seats by these windows that overlooked a large portion of the town. Sarah and I sat up there quietly and looked out. The sky was gray, and it was rainy. There was something extremely pleasant about this little space. Sometimes I still dream about being up in that building looking out.

It was getting to be spring again, and Sarah and I were leaving to go home one day after school. It was still rather dark out, when out of the bushes came two people I in no way expected. It was Ava, and Melissa, Zack's girlfriend. They were both rather high, and they had a bunch of stuff in their hands. I noticed that the both of them were wearing Zack's clothes. I looked at Sarah, and wondered what the hell this was about. From what Sarah and I gathered, Melissa had broken up with Zack. I guess he had decided to go on a trip to Minnesota without her, and she was fed up with him. I didn't quite understand what the ordeal was about. But the key to this entire situation that hit my like a ton of bricks was that Zack and Melissa were no longer together. This meant that perhaps, just maybe if I connected with him again, we could maybe start again. And I guess Melissa was upset and was choosing to give Zack's stuff away as revenge – which I didn't think was right – but honestly I was so happy to hear it was over between them that I didn't care too much. It was mostly articles of clothing, and a few Pink Floyd cloth posters. Sarah got the one from The Wall, and I was given the image of the two men shaking hands, one of them being on fire.

This situation gave me this new sense of hope. Perhaps this could be a new start for me. A part of me honestly wanted to make something really deep out of this. I mean, why had Melissa and Ava found Sarah and I to tell us of all people? Why did we need to know? We never had had much to do with Zack or Melissa's relationship. Something seemed almost too weird to be true about them just showing up and finding us that evening. Sarah and I were thinking about it a lot over the car ride home, but there didn't feel like much could be said. Somehow, I still had been able to keep it from Sarah that I had feelings for Zack. I swear she must have known. How could she not? I was still weary of talking about it though. I really didn't want anyone to know. I felt like something would be ruined if I said anything.

After Danny kicked my mom out of the his house, she went back to Jim and Connie's place. It felt like old times on the weekend again. I sat around all day and watched UFO shows that investigated the same old incidences. Allison went into her area and watched endless amounts of Steve Irwin wrestling down iguanas. David went into his room and played LOTR games. It was strange being back. Things didn't last that long however. Both Jim and Connie assured my mom that she could stay for as long as she needed to get her life on track, but I ended up overhearing them at two in the morning, Jim was getting angry and drunkenly saying he was going to bust down the door and tell my mom to get her and her fucking rat children to leave. Connie was trying to talk Jim down, saying that while she felt we needed to leave as well, she couldn't bare the thought of my mom struggling out in the street, which was somewhat of an over-exaggeration of what would become of any of us, since we primarily lived with our dad and she had other friends.

I told her, and she got very upset. We stayed one more night. That night, Allison woke up to use the bathroom in a state of drowsiness. I wasn't in the room so I didn't see it happen, rather I heard a lot of commotion and walked in to see what had happened. The lava lamp broke, and the weird stuff inside of the lava lamp got all over the floor. Allison was deeply cut and blood was oozing everywhere. My mom had woken up, and she was shrieking at Allison. I think David had joined in. It made me sick to my stomach, watching the both of them tear into Allison as if she had intentionally broke the lava lamp on the floor. Nobody seemed concerned with the laceration on her leg. I ended up shouting at my mother to leave Allison alone, and ended up calling her a bitch. This escalated into her screaming throughout the house. Jim and Connie weren't home. I hated her so much. She forced Allison to scrub the floor with the stuff all over the carpet while she shouted in Allison's face about how worthless Allison was, as Allison whimpered in pain. She had gotten the weird stuff stuck in her cut. I had to step away I realizing that me getting angry wasn't going to fix things. I had angered her too much and if I even tried to clean it up, she was going to intentionally provoke me and make it impossible for me to do that. She was pissed off at me for having stepped in to defend Allison, and she was intentionally mistreating Allison to piss me off – so as horrendously upset as I was, I knew I had to step away to make things mildly better for Allison. It was three in the fucking morning, and too early for this insanity. Who does this? Honestly, I knew she deserved to be socked in the face, but it would only make things worse for Allison. I had to bite my tongue the best I could.

My mother was still with Danny for whatever reason. It just seemed painful and insulting for her to go along like nothing had happened. We ended up moving back to the Nye's, the very same place we had started when Danny had invited us to live with him. I remember that Easter of that year, Maria showed up with her kids, Roxanne showed up with her kids. It was planned to be some kind of fun Easter egg hunt out by the river. It ended up sort of miserable. Danny was there, and he started insulting my mother over everything. Maria's son Ian, who was about four by this time, was misbehaving and got into some kind of trouble tossing rocks at moving vehicles. Maria ended up getting upset and jealous because she felt that Roxanne was getting more out of Easter than she was. Maria wanted presents for Easter as a full grown adult, and she began freaking out about it. Meanwhile, I just sat there eating the eggs awkwardly in the grass with Allison. David got upset at Allison and then later at Roxanne's first daughter Sagen, and then at the boys. It was just a mess, and clear to me early on that there could be no good outcome for everyone to get together. Nobody enjoyed it. It seemed rather pointless to even try.

I was feeling artistically dead. I had almost given up art entirely by this point. It just didn't seem to come naturally like it used to anymore. I loathed anything I created and I felt like I was doing the same thing over and over again and even though I didn't want to do what I was doing, I couldn't stop. I also didn't know how I felt manga styled art anymore. It didn't affect me as much as it used to. I remembered years before when Katie, Sarah, Ava and I would all sit around the table and draw anime for endless hours. I couldn't do it anymore. It was kind of a pain to realize five years into an artform that I cared very little for it. And even had I still been into anime, I mostly just didn't like my particular style. I didn't feel as though I was doing much with it. I envied Sarah. She just seemed to be able to draw these flowing illustrations – the folds of cloth looked perfect, the skin looked translucent, she could draw feathers. She knew how to somehow draw things on MS paint and make them look pretty decent. My stuff looked flat and phony. I felt stuck.

I was still very upset with Sarah, but I just didn't want to talk about it anymore. I wrote a few angry letters, but I was getting to this place where I was afraid we would stop being friends if I challenged her too much. I didn't want to lose her as a friend. And maybe it was a little selfish. Honestly, for all her problems, she was the sanest person I knew. And we were still close in some ways, but to a degree it just wasn't the same. For about a week around this time, she was starting to look at me nervously when I talked about the 'band we were going to be in, and answer or say things to me in a funny guilty sort of way. I thought about getting mad about it, but I held my tongue. I knew that if I started talking, I was afraid of what I might say and that I might not be able to stop. I didn't want to go through this anymore. Of course, Sarah had her own plans. I should have seen it coming, but somehow I didn't. We were leaving school one evening, and she told me in the car on the way home that she needed to talk to me about something. She seemed hesitant and very nervous – which made me nervous, She told me in this deliberate distant way that Alex was going to visit that summer – which I was completely fine with as of course people can't just date online forever – but she continued on in a hesitant fashion, that at the end of the summer, she was going to go with Alex to live with him and his parents who were moving to Texas. Alex could play piano and guitar, and they were going to start a band together. I was never a part of that. Meaning there would be no band between Sarah and I. Meaning she more or less knew there would be no band or us working together in any way for a few months, but she had been afraid to let me know. Meaning everything I had planned for my future was in pieces. Meaning I would have no friends, and nowhere to run when my father or mother came after me. Nobody to watch movies with or take walks with on Friday evenings. Who was I without Sarah Mae?

I took it as well as I could. At first, I just shrugged it off, and slouched into myself in the passenger seat. Sarah went on sort of defensively – knowing perhaps what this meant for me, stating that at least for once she was being honest with me, and showing some sense of responsibility. It had been tempting for her to simply never let me know, but it wouldn't have been right. I had to agree there I guess. I had to give her credit where small credit was due. She hadn't known for certain the real plans between her and Alex, and she had let me know a week after the plans had been set. I took it calmly at first. I felt sort of numb and was quiet the whole ride home. I think in a strange way, Sarah had wanted me to get upset. I think it would have made her feel less guilty had I instantly lashed out at her. But at this point, what was the use in fighting her? She had made her plans. She had taken initiative, and she had made her own decisions. It was a bitter pill to swallow for me, but in a way it made me feel a little better. The last six months made a whole lot more sense to me then. At least now I knew something. At least she had for once been up front with me. I wasn't shooting at the moon anymore. I had some perspective.

It felt wrong though. It gave me strong message. I really couldn't expect so much from Sarah. Nobody really wanted to be around me. She didn't want to be in a band with me, or fight with me anymore. I was extremely envious that she was going to be in a band that would probably sound better than whatever it was we were going to theoretically create. I didn't even know how to think about it anymore though. The very thought of it made me feel tired and sick inside. I didn't even know if I wanted to quit school anymore. I went home, I curled up in a ball, and I just sort of felt myself sinking. I didn't feel angry. I felt weak, and scared. I remember trying to cry, but not being able to. Instead, it just felt like this large lump in my throat. I was having troubles breathing. This had been my future built up in my head, and having it stripped away from me left me feeling rather empty. I didn't even have enough substance to me to get properly angry.

I think at some point I must have gotten up out of my bed, and walked barefoot outside. Somehow, I ended up sort of waking up walking myself down into the back alleys near the end of town. My feet felt that itchy burn of not being accustomed to being barefoot. My head felt like clay. My eyes were moist and shrunken. I was incredibly confused. Somehow I had blacked out and ended up on the street and I had no idea how. I pushed back the fright and went home. I knew there was no use telling anyone. I didn't think anyone would believe me, and besides,  it was kind of personal.

It was around April or May, and a few weeks since Sarah had told me the news. We only had a few more weeks of school. I no longer knew what I wanted to do, if I wanted to drop out or stay. Mike and Jenni, upon hearing the news took some pity on me. Mike seemed more set on making Sarah doubt her decision than he was going after my choices. Sarah would not be swayed though and both Jenni and Mike knew it. I just didn't know. I felt like I had all kind of crow I had to eat if I told anyone I wanted to stay in school. I had put up such a fight, but now it seemed pointless. I wasn't even sure I was going to be able to stay in school. Who would shuffle me up for class each day?

I wasn't going to fight with Sarah anymore. I suppose I had tried to explain to her what her leaving meant to me. It upset her, but I was now noticing that Sarah had a way of turning off what people said to her when it conflicted with what she wanted. And being abusively angry at her for doing this only made it worse. It also seemed like it would be rather selfish of me to push things or expect her to stay at my expense. I had to swallow something very big – something that was killing a part of me to swallow, and try to be happy for her and put my own feelings aside. I was entitled to nothing. Still, I think she was translating this to something she was more accustomed to, which was me being furious. Instead, I either acted robotic, or seemed pitiful and it was confusing. In the midst of our silent mulling of her leaving, we were headed towards home from class school one day. It was a windy day, a bit overcast but not bad. We hadn't driven too far from the school, and we were stopped at an intersection. Absentmindedly, I looked into the clouds in front of us, and I saw this very enormous looming black triangle in the sky. It was mesmerizing and strange in a way that I can't really explain. It moved in a way I had never seen anything in the sky move before. I first noticed it because clouds had cleared around it due to the wind which had exposed it.

I watched it intently for about forty seconds or so. It moved in a line, then took a sudden 90 degree turn back into the clouds. I could see parts of it through the clouds though, and then it seemed to suddenly disappear. The light turned green and we took our turn. I looked at Sarah, and tried to tell her what I had just seen. She looked at me and told me she had seen it too. We went over it and agreed we had seen the same exact thing. And the mechanical perfection of it was hard to explain. The whole time I watched it, I hadn't been scared. I hadn't even registered that I might be seeing a UFO. I had mostly been baffled. It had seemed almost mundane. It was broad daylight. UFO's hadn't exactly been on my thoughts. Also, I didn't even know that UFO's were ever reported as triangles. Normally, I had the impression that they were all either saucers or simply strange lights. It wasn't till I went home and looked it up. Honestly, I would even have been skeptical of my own account, knowing that the human brain can play tricks on itself, but Sarah had seen it too.

I am not going to go out and saw that there were aliens in the cockpit or anything. I have no idea what it was that I saw. I knew that it was enormous. My father, who has flown planes before told me that based on the clouds I was seeing, even at the lowest altitude, the triangle was probably at least 40 feet. The thing was very big – big enough to where I could see that it was made of very dark metal, even above the clouds. Had it been night time, I don't know if I would have trusted what I was seeing, but since I had a second witness, and since it moved very mathematically, deliberately and hastily. It seemed to be able to slow down and speed up in a single second, I had to say that it sounded like many other UFO sightings that I ended up finding online. I guess there is nothing like a UFO popping in your life in the center of a midlife crisis to pull you out of your own life for a second or two and reevaluate everything.

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[secondsightcinema]

Raw Deal (1948): Crashing Out of Corkscrew Alley

“I believe in the nobility of the human spirit. It is that for which I look in a subject I am to direct. I do not believe that everybody is bad, that the whole world is wrong. The greatness of Shakespeare’s plays is the nobility of the human spirit, even though he may destroy the character.”  —Anthony Mann, 1964, cite source, p.8 (Introduction)

First and most important, if you don’t know this movie and you love noir, see it.

If you don’t know much about noir but appreciate exciting, beautifully made movies, see it.

If you are moved by great storytelling, acting, and extraordinary cinematography, see it.

If you have 78 minutes and feel like something thrilling, creepy, romantic and tragic?

Well, you get the idea.

Watch Raw Deal, and don’t do it on the fly—sit down, turn off your phone, and give it your full attention. You will be rewarded.

There, my job is done. Now we can talk about the movie. Here’s a link to a synopsis if you are so inclined: here you go.

Corkscrew Alley is a crushing habitat for nobility of the human spirit. It’s great shorthand for the corrupt world so many noir characters desperately try to escape. It’s just that most of its denizens have had the aspiration knocked out of them by brutality and poverty, and their spirits are in moth-eaten tatters. Even when they act on an impulse toward decency, they get it in the neck and are knocked back into crime, shabbiness: Corkscrew Alley.

  In Raw Deal, Mann focuses primarily on four characters, three in a romantic triangle. The fourth is an impressively disgusting villain, a sadistic pyromaniac criminal whose efforts to kill the protagonist before he comes to claim the $50,000 owed him create the simple, on-the-lam plot.

But it’s the romantic triangle, particularly the two women, who Mann develops beyond the usual scope of noir. As Jeanine Basinger notes in Anthony Mann (2007), it is in Raw Deal that Mann for the first time creates two characters who are deeply fused, almost mirror images, a dynamic he would develop further in his westerns. In this case it’s two great actresses and noir goddesses, Claire Trevor and Marsha Hunt, who form this dyad.

I always wonder when in the thrall of a work of collaborative art, if those who made it had a sense of its quality or importance while caught up in the process of making it. Was the power of (forgive me, I date myself) Blonde on Blonde, or Sgt. Pepper, or Astral Weeks apparent to the musicians and producers as they worked?

Maybe the lower the budget, the less likely those involved are to be aware of having a  part in making something extraordinary, something that could live on for many decades and in some cases become celebrated in ways unthinkable in the movie’s own time. It’s great the Edgar Ulmer lived to see Detour celebrated, and the same of Joseph H. Lewis and Gun Crazy. But in an interview with Claire Trevor, decades after making Raw Deal, she hardly remembers it. And you can see why. She was a busy actress, going from one movie to another. Noir didn’t exist yet, not as an artistic designation, and so Trevor’s noirs when she was making them were just low-budget crime movies. Raw Deal was for Trevor just another gig.

Marsha Hunt’s memories of working on Raw Deal mostly centered on her perception that Mann didn’t direct the actors, focusing instead on lighting and camera placement, leaving his cast to work out their own characterizations and bits of business. The director, who had himself been an actor on Broadway before moving into film, knew he could trust this fine cast. The versatile Dennis O’Keefe, equally at home in comedy and drama and was also a published writer who aspired to direct, holds his own with his leading ladies, two of the very best.

To Anthony Mann, still in the first phase of his Hollywood career, Raw Deal was just a follow-up to his previous year’s success with T-Men, also starring homme fatale Dennis O’Keefe, also shot by John Alton. Like Trevor’s experience going from one film to another, Mann’s was as a busy journeyman director, air-dropped from one project to the next, so that he couldn’t afford to invest much emotionally in any of them.

//////***MOVE THE NEXT FEW ‘GRAPHS UP TOWARD THE TOP*** “There has been so much yapping over the years about the film director, the film *auteur*…that it has been very difficult for the general public and even for the informed public, to realize that making a film is an industrial process and it is perfectly possible to edit, alter, present and have a resounding success without the director having anything more to do with the film from the moment he stops shouting at the actors.” —Michael Powell

Right! Great thing to bear in mind when we love a film and imagine that the director had overall control of the project, that directing was for most an artistic endeavor rather than the reality that they were hired guns who came in, shot a movie, then moved on to the next one. Yes, there are exceptions among directors (and even stars). But in the main, Hollywood filmmaking was, as Powell says, “an industrial process,” not a personal artistic one.

That makes the greatness of so many movies made in this industrial process even more miraculous. Sometimes the stars and cinematic elements aligned—the right producer, script, director, cinematographer, and cast, and the result is a thing of beauty that continues to delight, disturb, and enrich us many decades later.

Raw Deal is one of those.

So what is it that sets it apart from a couple hundred other noirs?

First thing is what Mann said in the quote at the top of this piece, in 1964. There is a yearning for redemption, to express “the nobility of the human spirit,” that curls around the characters like cigarette smoke, like that San Francisco fog that Alton evoked so convincingly. Joe (O’Keefe) is a gangster, but when he was a kid he risked his life to rescue some other kids from a fire—Ann (Hunt) tells Joe that’s what first got her  interested in him. She wants something better for him, and though he resists her pressing him away from the dirty life he’s trapped in, toward “a little common decency,” as she says, she gets under his skin. And even Joe longs for “a breath of fresh air,” not a feature of his gangster life, prison, Corkscrew Alley.

Joe wants to crash out, like weary gangster Roy Earle (Bogart in a break-out role) in High Sierra (1941). He dreams of living like normal people, not under constant threat from the law or your own crime boss.

Joe’s moll, Pat (Trevor), is so broken, so beaten down from Corkscrew Alley life that she takes insults and abuse without flinching. But still, even Pat has a pilot light of yearning for something better. It’s just that she’s so damaged she can’t imagine anything better than a life with career criminal Joe. Unlike some other noir dames Trevor played (thinking particularly of *Murder, My Sweet* and *Born to Kill*), who are the sociopathic equals of any onscreen, Pat has the vulnerability of Trevor’s most famous role as TK in Stagecoach*(1939), as a prostitute, and in Key Largo (1949), as Edgar G. Robinson’s battered, alcoholic moll.

Course part of that is just sex, not spiritual yearning. Joe knows he’s hot for social worker Ann, but Ann isn’t quite as honest with herself about her feelings for him. She tells herself it’s just professional concern for a client, but Joe knows better. (One thing about Corkscrew Alley: it attunes you to the basic, baser motivations.)

Ann (Hunt) is the only one of the four principals who wasn’t formed by Corkscrew Alley. She grew up in slightly more genteel poverty, her father a schoolteacher who imbued her with ambition for a better life—”He died in the war of the Depression, only we didn’t get any medals,” she says bitterly to Joe when he accuses her of having had  it easy. She hits back, hard, telling him she’s had to fight, just not “that stupid way,” with a gun. She’s managed to get an education, a decent apartment and car, a solid job. Her interest in Joe is a threat to everything she’s accomplished, but she’s blind to that until it’s too late. But when she tells Joe all she wants is “just a little decency, that’s all,” he looks like she’s broken through his defenses.

The third member of the triangle is Pat (Trevor), a hard-time girl who loves Joe desperately. She reminds me a little bit of Marie, Ida Lupino’s character in High Sierra, so emotionally damaged that she doesn’t know if she’s good enough for aging gangster Roy Earle. Marie and Pat are so battered by life that they have no experience of tenderness, kindness, love. The crooks they fall for look good to them because anything better is beyond the scope of their dreams.

Jeanine Basinger writes about how Pat and Ann are almost twinned, two characters who reflect each other, I would say in their differences as well as their similarities. In the first scene, at the prison, we first see each woman hatted and veiled, so their faces, which give away their feelings, are fenced off from the world and the unstable feelings it evokes. Pat wants nothing but Joe, her slender hope for any kind of happiness is all condensed into her desire to be with him, while Ann, who has relied on self-discipline to make her way in the world, is less connected to her own feelings about Joe, and if she were aware of them, she’d see instantly how hopeless they are. Toward the end, Pat finds that as much as she wants to hate Ann, she can’t—she recognizes her as another woman who loves Joe. This approaches compassion, an astonishing spiritual attainment for someone as emotionally beat-up as Pat, and a kind of metaphorical fresh air that lifts her above her own suffering.

But it’s the feelings we don’t recognize that control us, and while Ann didn’t ask to be taken hostage on Joe’s and Pat’s cross-country odyssey, and her revulsion at their casual criminality and violence are authentic, this good girl finds herself drawn closer to Joe’s way of life than she could ever comfortably acknowledge.

One of Raw Deal’s novelties is its use of the almost ubiquitous noir voiceover, usually a male voice relating past-tense events, often in flashback. Here the first difference is that the film’s voice is present-tense, and it belongs to Pat, her feelings are about the only things she owns. The second difference is that it is a female voice, not the norm in noir. It’s fitting that Pat should speak directly to us, or rather that we are allowed to eavesdrop on her internal storytelling of the narrative in which she finds herself. One of my only quibbles with Raw Deal is the theramin that underscores all of Pat’s voiceover. It feels like one of those club-us-like-baby-seals things where someone—perhaps Mann, perhaps not—decides we need something to tell us we’re hearing a voiceover. Like we need a frickin’ neon sign. The theramin is intrusive and stylistically at odds with the very good score. I’m guessing it was a producer who insisted on it: PRODUCER, flicking cigar ash: What’s—what’s she saying? Why isn’t her mouth moving? ASSISTANT: Right, sir. It’s a voiceover. PRODUCER: Voiceover…but it’s a dame! ASSISTANT: Yes, sir. It’s a little bit different, but we thought— PRODUCER: Never mind what you thought! Put some kind of sound with it, so the audience knows why her mouth isn’t moving! ASSISTANT: Well…we have an hour’s credit at the recording studio. I’ll talk to the composer, we just need one cue, we can repeat it every time the voiceover comes in… PRODUCER: Yeh, whatever, just make sure when we hear the dame’s voice and she ain’t talking, we know it’s on purpose. ASSISTANT: Sure thing, L.Q….

Most oft-discussed of Raw Deal are its visuals: the glorious cinematography, how Mann and Alton trap Joe and his girls in tight, closed spaces. Joe is suffocating for lack of fresh air, that’s how he expresses his drive to escape the dirty dead end of Corkscrew Alley. From the film’s opening, through its series of action sequences, we and the characters are repeatedly crammed into tight shots in cars, closets, freighter cabins, and framed in windows, behind bars or mesh.

Mann makes use of his female stars’ extraordinary acting in long closeups. Their faces pass through what would take paragraphs or pages to express, and we feel an intimate connection to their interior lives.

The film’s final bravura sequence, with a thrilling gun ambush in the street followed by a knock-down, drag-out fight in the middle of a raging fire, brings us back to, where else?—Corkscrew Alley. Pat does the right thing, partly because she knows she will never really have Joe and partly because she’s not quite bad enough to let her rival face grievous harm. Joe does the right thing, too, and finally gets that breath of fresh air he’s spent his life searching for. Both of them have found a little bit of grace they didn’t know they had, but it doesn’t change their fate.

Rick meets his fate, too, and Mann and Alton make sure it’s as baroque and horrific as anything Rick could dream of doing to an enemy (or a girlfriend, but you’ll have to see the movie to understand that ref).

And Ann? Her boundaries broken, her understanding of the world and her own psyche shattered, she has to go back to the life she worked so hard to attain, but neither she or that carefully crafted life will ever be the same. At the beginning of the story, she is a kind person, but it takes the events of Raw Deal to force her to confront her own unruly desire and even potential for violence.

Everyone loses what they prize most. And three of the four find that they are able to sacrifice their own fondest desires to serve something larger than themselves. Apparently there’s room for a spark of nobility, even in Corkscrew Alley.

This post was written for the Classic Movie Bloggers’ Association 2019 Spring blogathon. Do yourself a favor and head on over to read more noiry goodness.

from Second Sight Cinema | http://bit.ly/2IK0sAv via http://bit.ly/2GuQYYm