June was the most important month of my year 2000. This was the month my mom and I went to Atlanta for a week, staying with my Aunt Jenny. And boy, did we keep busy!
This was the trip where I made my first appearance on television!
Mind, it was the closed-circuit Emory University station, as part of the sketch show created and produced by my cousin. It was a good show. Past episodes included a Blair Witch Project spoof (the movie was the sensation of 2000) and a prescient sketch called Homoerotic, Or...? wherein two men were presented with a video or photo - of three guys clad only in swim trunks being hosed down, for instance - and debated whether it was clearly homoerotic or just "good clean fun," which just demonstrates how old those debates are. Anyway, I was there when they filmed a "behind-the-scenes" sketch on the making of the show, and was of course cast as the Godfather of Comedy (see above), the ultimate decider of what was or wasn't funny enough to make it to air. The two jokes I remember: a Gladiator reference (see how popular it was?) wherein I gave my approval through the old emperor's thumb technique...
...and me flipping through a script until a tired Tom Green reference (see how popular he was?) made me hurl it across the room. That didn't make it the final cut. The entire episode is here, my bit is at 18:26, that's my cousin Clay hosting the segment.
This was also the trip where my fascination with Ancient Egypt (borne of my love for The Ten Commandments) came to its zenith with a look at the Fernbank Museum's Mysteries of Egypt exhibition. What I remember most is the IMAX film of the same name, where Omar Sharif tells his grandson ofthe native boy who really discovered the tomb of Tutankhamen, and who, despite the legend of a curse, lived to a ripe old age; and the journals of Napoleon's Egyptian exhibition, with richly detailed drawings of the French taking obelisks "home".
This was the trip where I saw the original Psycho at the Fox Theater. Sponsored by TCM, the entire program was a throwback to cinema days of yore. There was live organ accompaniment as we sang old tunes for the pre-show: "Yes, sir, that's my baby / No, sir, I don't mean maybe..." There was a short before the main feature - coincidentally, the Looney Tunes "What's Up, Doc?", a snippet of which I had watched just the previous night when my aunt introduced me to Peter Bogdanovich's What's Up, Doc?. And let us not forget: Janet Leigh herself was there, live, on stage, for an introduction and Q&A (oddly, what I remember most is not just her talking about how sweet and easy Alfred Hitchcock was to work with, but how her co-star and Hitch's daughter, Pat Hitchcock, would tell her how frightened classmates and teachers looked when he picked her up from school). Then, the film itself, a masterpiece. I had seen it a couple times before at home, but you truly have not lived until you've seen it on the big screen. Everything is more horrifying. Did I skip a shower that night? Of course I did. Did I hesitate before going up the stairs, sure that Martin Balsam's fate also awaited me? Baby, I had to turn on all the lights before mounting the first step. And this was before digital projection was a thing, so the silver screen was truly silver.
Naturally, there were other movies and television shows. No Time for Sergeants and the aforementioned What's Up, Doc?; Auntie Mame, which became a perennial for me, one I introduced many friends to, I've even seen some revival screenings in cinemas, it is one of my all-time favorite movies; a glimpse at a VHS cover at the video rental store turned me on to Freaks, which I found and rented and fell in love with when I got back to Florida.
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| Honestly, my auntie did |
And then there was Daria, which had its season premiere the same night as the Psycho screening. Aunt Jenny, helpfully, recorded the whole thing, including the two-hour marathon that played beforehand and half of the follow-up program: Making the Video for Janet Jackson's "Doesn't Matter" from The Nutty Professor II: The Klumps. I still have the VHS. Very gracious when one remembers this was Aunt Jenny's birthday weekend. To celebrate, we had tea at a traditional tea room - was it Mary Mac's, or am I misremembering? - friends of hers visited, and the day ended with a (homemade by one of the said friends?) coconut cake. I know she had fun doing the rest of it, too, but one can't overstate how much thought she put into making this trip meaningful and enjoyable for me and my mother.
Our last night, the moms went to bed while my cousin Carl and I stayed up late in the basement and read out loud Paddy Chayefsky's The Hospital. We stopped when 11-year-old me came upon the phrase, "It is nipple-clear that she is braless." Did we move on to Marty, or did we just chat about the Beatles, or both? I think both. We then listened to a Jesus Christ Superstar highlights CD featuring Claire Moore. Then dawn broke and it was time to leave...
Elsewhere at the movies...
Love's Labour's Lost
release: June 9
dir: Kenneth Branagh
pr: David Barron / Kenneth Branagh
scr: Kenneth Branagh, from the play by William Shakespeare
cin: Alex Thomson
Four boys swear off romance just as four well-matched women visit their estate; a Shakespeare adaptation set in the 1930s with much of the dialogue replaced with songs of the era.
This one I saw for the first time on DVD in 200...4 or -5? The only facts I am sure of are these: Michelle Fraioli recommended it, and I purchased the DVD at the Shakespeare Company table during the State Thespian Festival in high school. I also purchased a DVD of the 1923 Othello with Emil Jannings, though the saleswoman, bless her, tried to talk me into buying O instead, since it was a fresh interpretation and included the 1923 Othello with Emil Jannings as a bonus feature, but since the actual Othello DVD came with other Shakespeare silents as special features and I was very into the opening credits of Theatre of Blood at the time, I bought the Othello. But never mind that. We're talking about Love's Labour's Lost.
I know it was after 2004 because by the time I saw the film, I was already a fan of Geraldine McEwan from the Marple series on PBS/ITV. Here, she gets only one scene, the genderbent role of tutor Holofernia, who intercepts a love letter and, rather than deplore the break in vows, extemporizes over the quality of the poetry within, which, in this film, means she performs "The Way You Look Tonight." This number is the best in the film, though McEwan, like the rest of the cast, is no trained singer. Branagh has taken the approach of Woody Allen's Everyone Says I Love You or Peter Bogdanovich's At Long Last Love and decided that actual singing ability comes second to sincerity in delivery of the song, emphasizing how we all have our mixtapes that express our feelings better than our own words can. It works much better than some of the book scenes - anything involving Nathan Lane provides particular whiplash for how exhausting the direction is and how funny and perfect Lane is. I don't think this genre comes naturally to Branagh, but the attempt is pure, oddly watchable...even more oddly, re-watchable. The finale hits. Roger Ebert said juxtaposing Shakespeare with the songwriters of the 1920s and 1930s showed how the latter paled in comparison, but I disagree - I love that Branagh draws a throughline from the wordplay of the Bard to that of the modern masters, he says that the latter are true poets and that the former is not to be put on a pedestal but to be appreciated for his comic gifts. I believe this is the film where Emily Mortimer and Alessandro Nivola met, so I'm sure Mike White loves it.
Chicken Run
release: June 21
dir: Peter Lord / Nick Park
pr: Peter Lord / Nick Park / David Sproxton
scr: Karey Kirkpatrick, additional dialogue by Mark Burton & John O'Farrell, story by Peter Lord & Nick Park
cin: Tristan Oliver / Frank Passingham / David Alex Riddett
A group of chickens in post-War England plot an escape with the help of an American rooster while the farmer's wife plots a chicken pot pie empire.
I saw this, I think, either in Atlanta or when we came home, I know it was with Mom. She got all the references to The Great Escape and other World War II POW films while I took everything at face value. The one line that stuck with me all these years: the farmer mid-fight shouting, "The chickens are revolting!" to which his unseeing wife scoffs, "Finally, we agree on something."
"A spectre is haunting MacGregor's Farm," intoned my roommate's boyfriend on this rewatch, a reference which did, indeed, reduce me to silent guffaws. Yes, here's Chicken Run, a claymation slapstick featuring Mel Gibson as an American daredevil rooster which has the workers recognize and seize their means of production, advocating for a free and just society over one in which they are merely producers for a middle class of consumers. That middle-class also seeks to better itself by franchising its name and exploiting the labor (chickens), not just in eggs but in the full destruction of the feathered body itself. Riveting, galvanizing stuff, a kids' movie that makes everyone rethink what they're eating and how it's come to land on their table. It's also quite funny.
Tomorrow, my first-time viewings of June 2000, including Big Momma's House and one of the best films I've ever seen.
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