National Gay Killers Day. What? Ewww!

Because we're having fun with this little feature we'll continue. On this day in history as it relates to the movies...

1881 Ahead of her time Clara Barton founds the American Red Cross. She doesn't get a biopic because Hollywood is only interested in "Great Man" biopics
1916 Happy Centennial to author Harold Robbins who penned 25 best-sellers some of which became famous movies like The Carpetbaggers (1964), the Elvis flick King Creole (1958), and the notorious Pia Zadora Razzie winner The Lonely Lady (1983)

Rope (1949) and Swoon (1992) - two great movies inspired by the Leopold & Loeb case

1924 Chicago college students Leopold & Loeb murder a teenage boy in a "thrill killing." Their crime inspires the story of the gay deviants in Alfred Hitchcock's Rope (1949), the Cannes Best Actor winning Compulsion (1958) and is recreated in the New Queer Cinema classic Swoon (1992)
1926 Kay Kendall of Les Girls (1957) fame is born
1952 Two time Oscar nominee John Garfield (best known for The Postman Always Rings Twice and Gentlemen's Agreement though those were not his nominated films) dies unexpectedly at the age of 39. The stress from the blacklist and Communist witch hunts (he'd refused to name names) were said to cause his heart attack.
1959 Gypsy opens on Broadway starring Ethel Merman. Mama Rose becomes the defining female role of musical theater, as Hamlet is to male drama thespians. Dozens of divas play her thereafter on stage, tv, and film. The best of them is Imelda Staunton, no joke. 

1960 Jeffrey Dahmer is born in Wisconsin. Becomes an infamous gay serial killer in the early 90s just in time for America's obsession with serial killers to go truly perverse and mainstream. Within a decade or two they're the heroes on television shows for f***'s sake (This has always bothered me about showbiz - assassins and serial killers are professions as popular as being a doctor or a waitress.) Jeremy Renner plays Dahmer in the eponymous movie which yours truly has never seen. Have you? the general critical consensus is that Renner was very very good in it. But nobody was annoyed by his total franchise sellout-ness back then because it hadn't happened yet.

1970 FINALLY some role-model gayness for May 22nd, redeeming the day from infamy. Harvey Milk picks up Scott Smith in a subway station as a 40th birthday present to himself, as lovingly reenacted by Sean Penn & James Franco in Milk (2008)
1974 Fairuza Balk is born. As soon as she can speak she calls the four corners to insure that no other actresses gets her signature role in The Craft years 22 years later. 
1979 "White Night Riots" in San Francisco because the gays are rightfully furious about the "manslaughter" conviction in the assassination of Harvey Milk
1980 Star War: The Empire Strikes Back (1980) released in theaters. It's still the best one.

1992 Johnny Carson welcomes his last guest on "The Tonight Show," Bette Midler, after 30 seasons on air. She wins the Outstanding Individual Performance Emmy for this performance. Two years later she is nominated for Gypsy and loses. 
1999 Susan Lucci spoils her fame-boosting status as the ultimate awards show loser by winning on her 19th consecutive Daytime Emmy nomination

Silence of the Lambs Pt 5: The Nightmare Finale

Team Experience tag-teams a revisit of 1991's Best Picture The Silence of the Lambs for its 25th anniversary. And now... the finale. 

Part 1 The case. The players. An FBI "errand" 
Part 2 Buffalo Bill's next "Special Lady"
Part 3 Clarice & Lecter's "Quid Pro Quo"
Part 4 Monstrous escape. Gruesome realizations.

pt. 5 by Timothy Brayton

Jose left us in the wake of a most repulsive discovery, and Agent Starling is beside herself with ragehorror.

01:31:55 "And he c- he can sew, this guy, he's very skilled-" Jodie Foster is so amazing in this brief little exchange. Pacing back and forth jabbing her hands in the air with anxious fury. It's such a perfect extension of the arc she's built all movie: she's horrified and disgusted, but funnels all of that into hyper-professionalism.

01:32:09 Starling's frenzy in the homey little suburban bedroom is sharply contrasted with the Tom Clancy-thriller interior of an FBI plane, a sleek masculine space that is one of the conspicuously "lit" spaces in the film. Here is where Jack Crawford informs her that all is well, and the boys are riding in to save the day. He is, of course, wrong.

01:33:11 Ah, the famed mountain valleys of Calumet City, just outside of Chicago.

01:33:26 In the pit of horrors, Catherine Martin has struck upon an idea: using food scraps to trap Buffalo Bill's – make that Jame Gumb's – precious pet dog. It's a great reminder that the film would rather give its primary victim strength to draw on than just make her a bundle of nerves. [More...]

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Silence of the Lambs Pt 4: Screaming and Coveting

Team Experience is revisiting 1991's Best Picture winner for its 25th Anniversary...

Previously... We learned about the case and met Clarice as she went on "an errand," Buffalo Bill caught his next victim, and Starling & Lecter played a game of Quid Pro Quo. 

an FYC ad from the time

Pt. 4 by Jose Solis

When Nathaniel left us, Dr. Lecter was Scheherezade-ing the crap out of Clarice by telling her about Baltimore. Do you ever get a sense that just like the King from Arabian Nights, Agent Starling craves to return for more?

01:08:18 “Everything you need to find him is right there in those pages...” he says about the case files. As Clarice paces left to right, Dr. Lecter decides it’s time for another lesson by quoting Marcus Aurelius. He suggests Clarice decipher what is the nature of the killer. As she lists every reason why serial killers kill in lesser thrillers, the doctor loses his patience and gives her the answer.

01:08:57 “He covets”

01:09:45 Clarice begs him to help her out, as the philosophizing cannibal reminds her it’s her turn to share, after all “this is all the time we’ll ever have”.

01:10:28 Clarice recounts the tale which gives the book/film its name, as she shares a memory that haunts her from her days in the ranch in Montana with her relatives. Something woke her up early one day…

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Silence of the Lambs Pt 2: Head in Jar, Moth in Throat, Girl in Pit

Team Experience is revisiting 1991's Best Picture, Silence of the Lambs for its 25th anniversary.  In Pt 1 we met our protagonist FBI student Clarice Starling, given an errand by her boss to question serial killer Hannibal the Cannibal in hopes of gaining insight into a new case, a killer named "Buffalo Bill". We begin where Kieran left us with our intrepid heroine, Clarice Starling, sliding herself narrowly into an ominous storage facility thanks to a lead (of sorts) from Hannibal Lecter.

Let’s see what she finds inside, shall we?

Pt 2 by Angelica Jade Bastién

00:24:43 A bloody cut from some rotten wood will be the least of Clarice’s problems

00:25:35 Creepiest storage facility ever, right? Thus far we’ve seen disparate parts from pale mannequins, a taxidermy owl suspended mid flight, and other odd oddities covered in dust. 

00:26:05 The fear and curiosity on Clarice’s face is palpable. I think what makes her such a compelling lead are those qualities coupled with her bravery. I’ve been bothered recently by seeing many female characters who are either so strong they seem infallible or faux girl-power creations. Clarice is compelling because of her humanity and complications.

more after the jump...

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Scorsese + Leo: With Six You Get Body Counts...

We knew they would work together again and now we have confirmation:  Leonardo DiCaprio will headline Martin Scorsese's adaptation of Erik Larson's bestseller The Devil and the White City. That's a true crime novel about serial killer Dr. HH Holmes who murdered dozens or possibly hundreds in Chicago in the late 19th century. H.H. Holmes was born just a couple of years before the events in Gangs of New York so they're returning to roughly the same time frame of their first collaboration (hello Oscar nominations in craft categories) 

This will be Leo's first serial killer role (if not his first villain) though it's always amusing to remember that Hollywood intended him to be our Patrick Bateman in American Psycho before history course-corrected and gave us the one we needed: Christian Bale. But let's not get sidetracked.

The Devil in the White City will be the sixth collaboration between the director and star. DiCaprio is still well behind Robert De Niro as Scorsese's foremost muse both in number of films and quality of films, but maybe some day he'll catch up to him? Scorsese turns 73 in November. Though he's definitely not Clint (85) or Woody (79) with the indefatigable prolificness neither is he all that slow. He averages about 5 movies a decade and Silence, currently in post, will be his fourth this decade already. By the time they release this one (2018?), we'll have our five for the decade unless Marty squeezes one more in somehow. But don't hold your breath. We first heard about this project way back in 2011 when they hired a screenwriter so there's finally a little bit of movement on it (presumably the script is written now) 

In honor of Marty & Leo's partnership, their five movies together ranked in four ways just because...

THE MARTY & LEO FILMS

In Order of Release	Quality  (Best to Worst)	Global Box Office Success	According to Oscar (Most Loved to Least)
Gangs of New York (2002)	The Departed great	Wolf of Wall Street $392 million	The Aviator  (11 noms | 5 wins)
The Aviator (2004)	The Aviator underappreciated at this point	Shutter Island $294 million	The Departed (5 noms | 4 wins incl BP so really it's #1)
The Departed (2006)	Wolf of Wall Street divisive for a reason	The Departed $289 million	Gangs of New York (10 noms | 0 wins)
Shutter Island (2010)	Shutter Island meh	The Aviator $213 million	Wolf of Wall Street (5 noms | 0 wins)
Wolf of Wall Street (2013)	Gangs of New York ugh	Gangs of New York $193 million	Shutter Island (zero noms)

Have you read this novel? Do you look forward to a Marty/Leo reunion or do you wish they would move on?