Reader Spotlight: K.M. Soehnlein

Are you still enjoying the reader spotlights? I hope you've found a few kindred spirits in the featured readers thus far. Today, I'm talking to K.M. Soehnlein in San Francisco who is a longtime reader and also a novelist. Discovering that novelists read you is a bit humbling. Anyway... let's talk!

Nathaniel: So... earlier this year you received the Warren Beatty book "STAR" from a Film Experience contest. What's your favorite nugget so far?
K.M. SOEHNLEIN: There’s a nugget on every page of “Star,” if by nugget you mean hot steamy chunk of gossip: “He made love to [Joan] Collins relentlessly, although every now and then he would accept calls while he was inside her.” In the Introduction to the book, Peter Biskind, the author, says he’s interested in Beatty as “one of the foremost filmmakers of his generation…at the intersection between politics and culture.” But he also talks about how difficult Beatty was to get interviews with, and you start to suspect, as the negative characterizations of Beatty pile up, that maybe Biskind is enacting some kind of revenge on his “star.”

But! There are absolutely page-turning stories about film production. I just finished reading the chapter on Bonnie and Clyde. I had no idea it was so difficult to get this film or that it was the vehicle that saved Beatty from a string of flops that would have sunk his career before he was 30.
 
You've written books yourselves and graciously sent me two. I'm really enjoying "The World of Normal Boys" and especially love the movie references, duh! How autobiographical are they?

Soehnlein's book references three huge musicals of its era

I’m glad you like the book! The scenes in my novel are mostly fictional – I never went to a drive-in to see Saturday Night Fever with the sexy older boy next door – but the music, the setting, the flavor of the times, that’s all from experience. Yeah, I’m a child of the 70s which meant we had one “stereo system” in the house. My parents had lots of soundtrack albums, so that was the first music I listened to as a kid: The King and I, Funny Girl, Godspell (we were Catholic), and the one I got completely obsessed about, West Side Story. I had every lyric memorized before I'd ever see these movies. I don’t think I could overstate the phenomenon of Grease when it came out in 1978. Kids were OBSESSED with it. I used to walk around with the girls in my neighborhood playing the soundtrack on portable cassette player, acting like the Pink Ladies.
 
Your three favorite actresses. Go.
Old school: Natalie Wood would be my first answer but that’s not because she was the best actress – in fact she’s often pretty terrible – but just because of my West Side Story obsession. When she cries those tears of injustice at the end of the film – “How many bullets left in this gun? Enough for you, and you, and you?” – I think some kind of tragic template lodged in my blood that has never quite left. Reigning queen: Julianne Moore. It might be a redhead identification thing, but I love her in everything. I especially like her in comedies, from The Big Lebowski to The Kids are All Right, though my favorite performance is in Far From Heaven. Rising star: Give me more Michelle Williams. (Meek’s Cutoff recently opened in San Francisco.)

Take an Oscar away. Give it to someone else.
Only one? Didn’t one of your recent readers get six? OK let’s take away Cate Blanchett’s Oscar for that hammy imitation of Katherine Hepburn in The Aviator and give it to any of the four women she was nominated against: Laura Linney in Kinsey, Virginia Madsen in Sideways, Sophie Okonedo in Hotel Rwanda, or Natalie Portman in Closer. (Maybe if Natalie had won that year we could have seen Michelle Williams win this year… Sorry, wishful thinking.) Just for the record I love me some Cate Blanchett but I’d have given her the statue all the way back for Elizabeth. Sorry, Gwyneth.

Supporting Actress 2004

Name your favorite in each of the following 4 genres: Drama, Horror, High School, Woody Allen.
Drama Something by Mike Leigh, probably Naked or Secrets and Lies. Horror Carrie. High School The Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls in Love, which was my good friend Maria Maggenti’s debut back in the mid-90s and which I have a huge sweet spot for. (Plus: Dale Dickey in an early role.) Woody Stardust Memories.

They put you in charge of the movies. How do you wield this awesome power?
Well if I can be completely self-interested the first thing I’d do is green-light the film adaptation of The World of Normal Boys which I’ve been trying to get made for ten years.

Then I’d wield my awesome power to dump money on all the filmmakers I love: Mike Leigh, Todd Haynes, John Cameron Mitchell, Kelly Reichardt, Spike Lee, John Waters, etc. etc. etc. I’d put limits on the amount of money any single film could cost. I’d set up some kind of incredibly well-funded National Film Agency, maybe run by a cabinet-level Secretary of the Arts, (how about Meryl Streep?). I’d make sure artists had health care. Socialism. Yes please.

previous spotlights

May Flowers: 'The Hours'

Kurt here from Your Movie Buddy. In an intro to cinema studies course, my peers and I were tasked to select and present a three- to five- minute segment from a film for a collegiate show and tell. The terms: choose something that features effective editing and/or noteworthy use of music. With the field so finely narrowed (sarcasm), my mind went...everywhere. Rather than drive myself nuts, I opted for the opening credits sequence of a movie I always feel like I've seen recently: The Hours.

This remains one of my very favorite movies of the aughts, and it's a fine specimen for Nat's "May Flowers" series. The brisk and beautiful introduction culminates with a trio of bouquets, but more on those in a bit. Guided by Phillip Glass's score (by turns elegant, chipper and paranoid), we wake up with three women, all of them linked by Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway. We have Virginia (Nicole Kidman), the writer; Laura (Julianne Moore), the reader; and Clarissa (Meryl Streep), the character (in a matter of speaking). The sequence sets the stage for the three ladies' storylines, which seem to run parallel, but are decades – and miles – apart.

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Reader Spotlight: John from Boston

Continuing the Reader Appreciation Series, here's a conversation with John (pictured left) from Boston. He's been reading the site ever since it launched and hearing that warms the cockles of my heart. Loyalty is definite top ten top three material as character traits go, don't you think?

Nathaniel: Do you remember your first movie?
JOHN: I think my first movie was Cinderella.  I was so frightened of the evil stepmother that we had to leave early.  When I was young, every movie scared me.  I didn’t sleep for years after E.T.  (yet somehow/somewhere I became obsessed with this medium).

First movie obsession?
Probably Clue.  I remember renting it when I was home from school with chicken pox in fifth grade.  I probably watched it 10 times in one weekend.  It is so campy, but so utterly entertaining.  …and what a cast!!!  Eileen Brennan as Mrs. Peacock and Madeline Kahn as Mrs. White are classic!  I still bust that one out every once and a while.

I love that one, too. Mrs. White is the best in the movie but when I play the game though I am always Professor Plum or Miss Scarlet.

Mrs Peacock and Mrs. White

 Okay, you're suddenly in charge of the cinema for a year. How do you wield this awesome power?

• Todd Haynes and Julianne Moore have to make at least 2 movies together
• Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts and Sandra Bullock are put on one year hiatus (Meg Ryan would be too, but what the hell has she done lately)
• No sequels
• No Oscar campaigns
• I decide all Oscar nominees and winners

Heh. Okay. Who are your three favorite actresses?
JULIANNE MOORE is the God to whom I pray.  I saw her receive the Hasty Pudding award in February.  She cannot be more awesome.  There are too many awe-inspiring performances to name.  JUDI DENCH continues to amaze me.  I thought she could only be the strong, comic matriarch until she blew me away in Notes on a Scandal.  MERYL STREEP is a given.  She is so perfect every time out that I take her for granted.  If she doesn’t win a third Oscar sometime soon there is no justice.  Katharine Hepburn, Cate Blanchett, Julie Christie and Angela Bassett get special recognition.

Take one Oscar away from someone. Give it to someone else.
I can’t only do one here.  I have to take advantage of the moment.  I would go back to 1958 and give Susan Hayward’s Oscar for I Want to Live! to Rosalind Russell for Auntie Mame. Auntie Mame is my all time favorite and Russell is so spot-on.  One of the best comic performances ever!  Second, in 2005, I would take Reese Witherspoon’s Oscar for Walk the Line and give it to Joan Allen in The Upside of Anger.  It is a major travesty that this performance was not even nominated (Keira Knightley in Pride & Prejudice…what was the Academy thinking?). That was definitely Allen’s best--better than her three Oscar-nominated, which are all fantastic. 

2005's Film Bitch Gold Medalist Joan Allen has other fans. She shoulda won the Oscar.

Finally, I would take Kim Basinger’s 1997 Supporting Actress win for L.A. Confidential and give it to Julianne Moore in Boogie Nights.  This is my third choice because I still have faith that Juli will win one day.

Have you ever dressed up as a film character for Halloween? Has a film character ever dressed as you?
Like so many others in the past, I was tighty whitey clad Tom Cruise in Risky Business two years ago for Halloween.  I had the right hair at the moment .  He’s not a film character, but Matthew Morrison’s Will Schuester definitely raided my tie/cardigan collection.

Okay John. Let's wrap up. The movie of your life. Tell us about it.
Stephen Daldry would direct the movie of my life starring James Franco (I am not scarred enough by the Oscar gig to not cast him).  The movie is part Seasons 1-3 of Brothers and Sisters, part Mean Girls, part Into the Wild, part Latter Days, part The Devil Wears Prada, part…

So many parts!

Previous Spotlights

Stage Door: Marisa Tomei vs. Julianne Moore

Stage Door will now be a weekly Tuesday series featuring Nathaniel's (or other contributors') theatrical adventures and, as often as possible, how they do connect or could connect with the cinema. So pardon this Monday entry, and subsequent double dip, but 'tis the season; we'll do this again tomorrow for the Tony Award Nominations! But today... a few notes on Marie & Bruce, the current revival of the play with Marisa Tomei (it closes this coming weekend) and the movie version with Julianne Moore.

I mentioned the play briefly before. It opens with Marie and Bruce in bed. Marie is unable to sleep and proceeds to talk herself in circles, spewing bile towards her sleeping husband whom she apparently hates and plans to leave that very day. She tells us about his prized typewriter which she threw away and complains that it's a hot summer, they've both had the flu, and neither of them have jobs. After she wakes him, she emasculates him repeatedly while he tries to make coffee and dress for a lunch date. You get the sense that she's Martha but he's not George  --- a one sided Virginia Woolf (not that this play is a qualitative match but, then again, what is?). Instead of fighting back, he merely says "well darling" this and "well darling" that, smothering her with verbal affection which she returns with mocking bile.

The play is staged superbly in its current revival with a gorgeously flexible set which, with only minor adjustments, acts as the couple's bedroom, the dining room of a friend's party, and a romantic cafe. (It's basically a mini three-act play performed without intermission.  Both Marie and Bruce are hard to get to know but you still feel for them since they seem so ill at ease in all three environments. Or at least Marie does. The constant fourth-wall breaking monologues, which generally feel natural in theater settings and too affected in movies (and Marie and Bruce is no exception), help win you over to the harsh characters.

Throughout the entire second act, the party, you become privy to snippets of conversations from each partygoer. It's the best part of the play, staged ingeniously with a rotating set as if you're circling the party and drifting from conversation to conversation as people actually do at parties. Strangely, or perhaps ingeniously, the key to Marie's character seems to be one of these offhand conversations.

In the movie version, Marie (Julianne Moore) seems entirely stoned during the party sequence -- not just confused about her own feelings -- but she leans in to this particular party profundity (monday monologue alert!), bewildered but cognizant that she should understand it. And feels immediately sick thereafter.

Woman at Party: I understand what you're saying but isn't it possible for sometimes people to not feel what they actually do feel? Do you know what i mean?

I mean they may actually feel a certain thing but they don't really know that they do because
in their own conscience minds they're so incredibly involved in what they think that they feel that they don't really feel the thing at all. Do you see what i'm saying?

I mean like, for example, a very common example is when you're supposed to feel pleased by something thing like when somebody gives you a present and you're supposed to feel pleased but actually you don't because the thing is something that  actually you hate or you actually already have the thing. But you're not supposed to say 'Well, I really hate this.' You're supposed to say 'oh boy that's great I really like it.'

Julianne Moore has always had a gift with neurosis and her best characterizations tends to involve women who are lost to themselves through self delusion, mental illness, or societal mores (See: Amber Waves, Cathy Whitaker, Carol White, Laura Brown, etcetera). In theory Marie -- who seems very decisive only to gradually reveal herself to be confused and paralyzed -- is a perfect match for her gifts but it's actually Marisa Tomei who wins this round. It helps a lot that her vehicle is better all around and has more precise ideas about how Marie will interact with the audience; the movie can't seem to make up its mind about how much of a storyteller Marie should be or whether or not she should stare directly at the camera and break the fourth wall. But there is something in Tomei's gabby everywoman sensuality, and instant relatability that trumps the character's offputting nature. Marie is still an incredibly unhappy woman spreading her misery around -- Tomei doesn't sugarcoat it -- but she's somehow more sympathetic. Moore, with her inarguable star allure is maybe too much of a presence -- unwittingly closing the already impenetrable character off even further.

The play: B; The movie: C-; The current revival: B+/A-

Stage Door
Drama Desk Nominees announced. Color me very surprised that all three principles from Women on the Verge... got nominated: Sherie Rene Scott, Patti Lupone and Laura Benanti (pictured left). Only Benanti as the ditzy chatterbox who sleeps with a terrorist thrilled the audience the night I attended; the musical was no match for the Almodóvar source material.
Gold Derby has the Drama League nominees. I served one year on the nominating committee several years ago and it was a ton of fun (they have a rotating civilian section of the nominating committee)
Back Stage Blog Stage Seems that Sutton Foster (one of our favorites) and Bobby Canavale (The Station Agent, Will & Grace) are now an item.
Kritzerland Camelot's original London cast recording from 1964 is getting released this summer. Laurence Harvey instead of Richard Burton as King Arthur! [gasp]
La Daily Musto lists a very odd assortment of his fav "11th hour" Broadway Musical numbers. He seems to have a very loose definition... but there's absolutely no beating "LOT'S WIFE" from Caroline or Change. I saw that show twice and both times I thought I was going to explode inside it was so moving.

Julianne Moore, You Betcha!

Look, it's Julianne Moore as Sarah Palin ☛

I fear my immense warm love for Julianne colliding with my enormous cool hatred of Palin will cause inner tornadoes! Isn't that how it works? Or perhaps these two poles of feeling will just cancel each other out until I feel absolutely nothing while watching Game Change.

Sarah Palin has so many catch phrases and behavioral quirks that it's difficult to imagine someone portraying her without resorting to caricature mimicry but good luck, Julianne.

The cast for Game Change, which we had some fun casting ourselves, is coming together. Julianne's partner in endless Oscar losses Ed Harris, will lose the presidency with her as John McCain. But what about her kids? Relatively unknown Kevin Bigley will play Track and Melissa Farman (Temple Grandin) will play Bristol. No word on the Obamas, Clintons or Edwards yet but production starts next week. This is from Recount's writer (Buffy alum Danny Strong) and director (Jay Roach)so if you liked that one...

Are you more or less excited for this project now gazing upon this photo? Do Emmy Awards await?