3. INT. BEDROOM - NIGHT

Snores can be heard emanating from the bed in the center of the room, which is barely discernible due to the fact that the only light in the room is from a vintage E.T. nightlight, complete with GLOWING FINGER.  The PHONE RINGS.

MAN IN BED
(grumbles and mumbles and picks up the phone)
H-Hello?
EXOTIC FEMININE VOICE
(heard in phone, frantic)
You've got to get out of there!  There's no time to argue, just grab what you can
and go!  He's coming!

MAN IN BED, NOW ON PHONE

Who's coming?  Robby?  Am I needed for reshoots?  Aw, gee, that's swell!

EXOTIC FEMININE VOICE
(heard in phone, even more frantic than above)

No!  Not Robby!  Him!  Him!
A SHADOWY FIGURE crashes through the wall and window and wraps his cloak around him, obscuring the man's view as the dust settles.
MAN ON PHONE, NOW VERY CONFUSED
Robby, you know you can always just use the front door.

SHADOWY FIGURE
(in a booming voice)

By Kurosawa's sacred lens, Enough.

Last uploaded: November 13, 1998

Some Short Cuts

Well, hi everybody.  Dr. W is in the house (and the tool shed) with some more gourmet weirdness for your dancing and dining pleasure.  But first of all, I've got to take care of some business.

A while back, in a Director's Cut, I inquired about the location of the Superman Lives script.  It occurred to me the other day that I never made mention of the fact that I indeed ran across it, and I would thank all the people individually that sent in where to find it, but that would blow our bandwidth.  So--you know who you are--thanks bunches.  And if you don't know who you are, well, carry photo ID for just such an occasion.  It's what I do.

Also, I'd like to thank everyone who responded to my Shut the Hell Up column with their own tales of theater madness.  I enjoyed all of them, but the 3-year-old perpetually asking his mom if he could sing during the whole of Saving Private Ryan and the woman who took her 4-year-old to see Bloodsucking Freaks are my personal faves.  SDI's own counterontology specialist CCB related the time that he went to see The Lost World (yes, he saw it in the theater and served six months community service just like I did).  You remember the part where the two T-Rex's are playing tug of war with that guy?  Well there was a kid who started freaking out and saying, "Don't kill the man!  Don't kill the man!  Don't kill the--*RIP* Waaaaaah!"  That's right, we couldn't possibly make this stuff up--it's just that frigging odd.

Now, I had planned this week to do something about authors and their rights when it came to making film adaptations of their work, but something was brought to my attention that got me so riled I had to respond.  You guys know me: I'm a sensitive, caring, well-meaning individual who always withholds judgement until all the districts have reported in.  I'm never one to jump the gun and run off at the mouth.  It's just my nature.  So you'll forgive me when I say: it had to be done.  Which brings me to why I called you all here:

The Camel That Broke The Straw's Back

What got me all riled up is a recent review from our friend, Harry Knowles, over at Ain't It Cool.  I met Harry at DragonCon and he seems to be a pretty okay guy.  I may not always agree with how he goes about doing his thing, but he essentially, bottom line, wants what I want: better movies.  He refers to them as "cool," I refer to them as "kick ass," but hey--it's semantic spaces, right?  You say "tomato," I say "Quetzalcoatl."  Whatever.  But I got pointed to Harry's recent review of Beloved and I got so mad after reading it I had to drink decaf.  That's right--Harry drove me to drink decaf.  I had to do it, though, before my head popped off and sailed around the room.  Those of you who visit my digs over at the Sleep Deprivation Institute know that Beloved by Toni Morrison happens to be one of my favorite all-time novels, despite the fact that Toni herself dissed me personally trans-Atlantic.  (Sigh.  Long story.)  So I felt it my duty to step up and answer some of Harry's problems with the film, for the benefit of all of you, the moviegoing public.

If you have not already read Harry's review, please do so.  We'll wait for you.

First of all, in Harry's defense, it's not an easy film.  Hell, it's not an easy book.  I was sitting there trying to decide which would be more confusing, reading the book without seeing the movie or seeing the movie without reading the book--and I think they're about equal.  But that's part of the point.  The book is written like a literary onion.  You go around and around a certain event, the major plot point, until it's finally there and it can't be avoided any longer, not by the characters and not by you, the watcher/reader.  And as an aside: whoever it was who made the brilliant decision to reveal that plot point to the entire world as part of the film's synopsis, instead of letting the terror of the moment sneak up on you--I hope your souls rot--and you know who you are.  So I'm certainly not spoiling anything when I state the centerpiece of the work: a woman decides that there's actually something worse than murdering her own children, and decides to go with the latter option.  Then out of nowhere, the child that she actually succeeded in murdering returns to her in the flesh, and this apparition's intentions are at first nebulous at best.  So I'm not surprised that Harry didn't "get it," I'm sure those who did wish they hadn't because it's harsh.  Nevertheless, there's still some words that need to be written here before I can get my normal unleaded blend back in the percolator.

Numero Uno: Danny Glover as Shaft?  The first thing that, well, I won't say rubbed me the wrong way.  Let's just say it smacked me across the face and called me "Rutabaga."  Harry compares the film to a Blaxploitation flick he's got on 16mm where a black woman gets possessed and wants to perform the horizontal mambo dance of love quite a bit.  "It's sick, it's twisted, it's a lot like this film," he says.  Harry even goes so far as to mention a couple of Blaxploitation films that he thinks Demme was aiming for.  Now, I must admit: I am neither an expert on Blaxploitation nor have I met Jonathan Demme, as Harry so relevantly points out that he has, but I've got a feeling that the same genre that gave us Blacula was not on Demme's mind.  Nowhere have I read any of the people behind the project -- Demme, Oprah or even Toni Morrison herself -- touting the fact that they've brought a new face to the genre.  Somehow I think that might have come out somewhere.  Harry uses the ending of the film as an example of why he feels a) all Demme was missing was an Isaac Hayes song for the credits and 2) the entire film is worthless.  But we'll get to that in a moment.

Numero Dos: Either Laugh or Call Max Von Sydow.  Harry refers to laughter a lot with this film.  It's understandable, and it's understandable that Harry would read laughter the wrong way.  Yes, there's been lots of talk, both on Harry's site and elsewhere, about inappropriate laughter and what it means coming out of an audience.  Escape from stress?  Escape from the reality of the situation?  Maybe yes.  However, I laughed when Glover walked into Sethe's house and provided the perfect reaction to the situation.  Imagine yourself having traveled God knows how many miles on foot, looking for a woman that you weren't sure was really going to be there when you got there, finding her, and yes, she's just as beautiful as you remember her.  You're thinking, hey, this ain't so bad, I could set up shop here.  Everything's fine and dandy.  Then she invites you in and you're in Amityville, red glowing lights and all.  What is there to do but laugh?  But I can understand Harry's confusion.  Blaxploitation films were no doubt funny, but I'll have to watch some more and get back to him on that one.

Numero Tres: When You Gotta Go...  Harry refers to the initial finding of Beloved, who is slumped against the stump in front of 124 and quite out of it.  Once Oprah's character Sethe sees her, she suddenly has to excuse herself to urinate.  Harry chalks this up to the scatological nature of Demme's tribute to Blaxploitation and the need somehow to show someone to pee on-camera, but I think it's something else entirely.  Since he was busy watching the exit signs he probably missed the part of the film that related the parallel to that scene.  Namely, when Sethe is in the boat and giving suddenly birth to Denver.  What does she do?  Breaks water, of course.  It's one of those woman-giving-birth things that probably weren't in the Blaxploitation flicks Harry had in mind.  But Sethe's symbolically "breaking water" again is significant, because it heralds the rebirth of her lost daughter.  And yes, it was funny as well, because if your daughter you had killed came back from the dead, you'd probably be so scared you'd need to go yourself.  Especially if you didn't know whether or not she still held a grudge.

Numero Quatro: The Milk.  All cuteness aside, Harry and I agree on one thing.  Rape is not funny.  Rapists should be castrated at the very least.  So make no mistake about that.  However, after consulting several amigos who also saw the film and also looking in my copy of the novel--I don't believe that Sethe is actually raped during the incident in the barn.  Beaten, yes.  Brutalized, certainly.  But the emphasis is on the loss of her milk, which she was saving for her children.  She doesn't even care about the fact that the skin on her back is dead, she cares that they took from her something she had for her kids.  When she discovers that her husband Halle saw the whole ordeal, she wonders why he let them live--after all, they took her milk.  A premonition of her thick love, the single-mindedness of which made her attempt to kill those same kids.

Numero Cinco:  The Deed.  Like I said, I'm not giving anything away when I tell you that Sethe tries to kill her four children and succeeds with only one.  The  horsemen riding up to the house to take her back are indicative of one thing, and since they haven't to my knowledge made a film about a "black apocalypse" I'm sure Harry was confused.  The Deed, as I've called it, is supposed to be profoundly excessive.  Paul D accuses Sethe later not only of loving "too thick" but being no better than an animal.  "You've got two feet, Sethe, not four," he tells her before it's obvious he has to go.  The fact of the matter is that the ironically-titled Sweet Home was no place she wanted her children to be.  She says in the novel (and I quote it because I don't have access to the screenplay, but I'm fairly certain this was in there), "It ain't my job to know what's worse.  It's my job to know what is and to keep them away from what I know is terrible.  I did that."  It's supposedly to be profoundly excessive to show, among other things, that there was no good simple way out of slavery.

Numero Seis: The Scene in the Cold House.  Harry has a problem with the scene in which Beloved enters the cold house where Paul D has been relegated to and asks to have him touch her "deep inside."  He said it was "embarrassing," to which I must wonder how it felt for Paul D.  What Harry probably didn't understand is that this is a natural extension of a scene in which Beloved and Denver come across two turtles making love (although probably very, very slowly) in a creek.  Granted, he probably passed it off as an homage to Turtleploitation, but again, that's another genre I'm unfamiliar with, so I can't speak to that.  All I can tell you is this: Beloved is fascinated by this little reptilian tryst, and being an infant with a teenager's body (and hormonal and physical desires) she wants to try it too.  I admit, it's a scene that bothers me even after reading the book and understanding what's supposed to be happening, so it's easy to see how some people might have problems with it.

Numero Siete:  The Ending.  Harry does present the ending in its context.  A bunch of women from town have arrived at 124 in order to try and drive the bewitched child back to the grave where she belongs.  They're caterwauling and singing (damn fine voices, too) outside and it draws both Sethe and a naked seemingly-pregnant Beloved out to see what all the ruckus is about.  Now Jason Robards does have a cameo in the film, it's true, but he's not necessarily dressed like Colonel Sanders.  He's dressed similar to the character, The Schoolteacher, although it's understandable that Harry would mistake Robards for Sanders since he was busy looking at his wristwatch during the earlier appearance of the evil Schoolteacher.  Or maybe it's some backhanded reference to the role of fast food icons in Blaxploitation flicks.  Again, I can't speak to that.  But Harry is disturbed not only by this scene but by the fact that Beloved seemingly turns into butterflies and is gone.  Harry thinks that this serves no purpose, so I'd like to address that.

The reason the scene is the most important in the entire film is we've got what Sethe sees as a repeat of the earlier incident in which she made her terrible choice.  She sees someone who she thinks is Schoolteacher (not Sanders) riding up to take her and her children away again.  She makes the choice (the right choice? who knows?) this time that instead of taking out her agression/fear/insanity on her children, she's going to take it out on the true source of her torment, Schoolteacher.  Once she's externalized that hostility, once she's attacked outward instead of inward, then Beloved and the past/guilt/helplessness she represented have no place in Sethe's life.  Why butterflies?  Symbolic of the end of change?  I'm not certain, it's open to speculation.  But the important thing to note about this scene is that it's not the religion that drives away the demon, but a mother's love going in the right direction.  That's why when at the end Sethe proclaims that the demonized Beloved/guilt/past/helplessness was her best thing, Paul D has to tell her, "You your best thing."  And even then Sethe is not certain she believes.

Okay.  I've had my say and I feel better.  Maybe some of you agree with the Big H, maybe I'm so full of it my eyes are turning brown, but I didn't want some of you who haven't seen the film or read the book or both to be disenchanted with the prospects because of Harry.  Granted, I could be way off since I haven't sat through a print of Abby before, so I can only tell you what I know.

And one more thing I know, Harry.  If you're reading this.  If you're going to go to the trouble to reference Frederick Douglass and the word "grok" in a review...spell them right, would you?


Widgett is a figment of humanity's collective imagination given flesh, operating from a secret underwater fortress in an undisclosed location off the coast of Iowa .  He is the founder of The Sleep Deprivation Institute and an active member of the Secret Society of Guerilla Ontologists.  When he's not championing independent films or complaining, he spends his dwindling free time writing short fiction, poetry, novels, essays, screenplays and children's books under a pseudonym.  He also does weddings and bar mitzvahs.  His rates are quite reasonable, as he can normally be found wandering the halls of Corona HQ with a sign around his neck that says, "Will Write For Food."

Previous issues of Widgett's column are also available.