1) Favorite quote from a filmmaker
"Strive for art in reverse." John Waters

2) A good movie from a bad director
Duel--Spielberg

3) Favorite Laurence Olivier performance
when he fucked danny kaye in the security room at idylewilde. in the movies: Clash of the Titans, Boys From Brazil, or Marathon Man

4) Describe a famous location from a movie that you have visited (Bodega Bay, California, where the action in The Birds took place, for example). Was it anything like the way it was in the film? Why or why not?

walking about vancouver has this really post-geography quality, where most buildings or vistas remind one of endless bad television, movies of the week, hollywood cheapsters, commercials, etc. when ever i stumbled onto a production there, no one seemed excited (esp the scenes around the marine building when fantastic four was shot.) it was its exact opposite of a famous location or memorable location. same thing with toronto, except i saw romero shoot in the sky cloud garden near the bay building downtown, on adelaide, and his use of the blank cleanness of the downtown core subverted that instinct.

5) Carlo Ponti or Dino De Laurentiis (Producer)?
Dino.

6) Best movie about baseball
Bull Durham.

7) Favorite Barbara Stanwyck performance
Mexicali Rose, for its v. early performance, with abuse, sex, gambling, adultery, and a smoldering, horribly erotic performance, this seems sexier now, then almsot anything since, and it was done in 1929.

8) Fast Times at Ridgemont High or Dazed and Confused?
Dazed and Confused, which managed to get good to excellent performances from a variety of people who have proven they just cant act, including affleck, mcconaughey, and jason london.

9) What was the last movie you saw, and why? (We’ve used this one before, but your answer is presumably always going to be different, so…)
Ratatouille. Because I like pixar movies, and was interested in it formally.

10) Whether or not you have actually procreated or not, is there a movie you can think of that seriously affected the way you think about having kids of your own?
the omen, lolita, the bad seed, pretty poison, kids, gummo. it reasserted my assumption that children were dangerous, frightening creatures that could cause serious damage if allowed any autonomy. i didnt want any.

11) Favorite Katharine Hepburn performance
Pat and Mike

12) A bad movie from a good director
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.

13) Salo: The 120 Days of Sodom-- yes or no?
I changed my mind after seeing the photos from abu gharib. There were apparently 2000 photos of Abu Gharib, would the extra 1900 provide us with any insights—or would it have proven that Sade, and Passolini were right, that human beings descend to the level of degradation that the state allows (Watching the scenes of Matt Damon wrestling in mud, naked, while being pissed on, as an a initiation rite for the Skull of Bones, and by extension, the CIA, in Robert De Niro's Good Shepherd, an argument could be made, not allows, but is founded on.)


14) Ben Hecht or Billy Wilder (Screenwriter)?
Wilder.

15) Name the film festival you’d most want to attend, or your favorite festival that you actually have attended
The Mods and Rockers film fest in LA; the film festival put on by mentally ill people in Toronto every year.

16) Head or 200 Motels?
Head

17) Favorite cameo appearance
(Try visiting here and here for some good ideas! This question was inspired by Daniel Johnson at Film Babble)
Kathy Bates as Queen Vic, in the most recent around the world.

18) Favorite Rosalind Russell performance
Auntie Mame

19) What movie, either currently available on DVD or not, has never received the splashy collector’s edition treatment you think it deserves? What would such an edition include?
Top Gun. Like the Criterion's Armageddon, it would include discussions of how the pentagon was involved, making of docs, commentaries from the film makers, and essays from critics. I would also like to have commentary from the actors, esp. Tom Skerritt and Anthony Edwards. Ideally, it would also include both the scene from Talk to Me with QT and the Will Young video that parodies it.

20) Name a performance that everyone needs to be reminded of, for whatever reason
Elizabeth Taylor's 60s run, including Secret Ceremony, Cleopatra, and Butterfield 8, including Cleopatra. Movies that are dismissed as silly, are some of the most iconic, post verbal performances. I keep thinking about how she uses her body, and how she costumes her body, and how those skills have been subsumed to people who talk and make tiny gestures have become the example of execllent acting. It's the same situation with Angelina Jolie, who's sheer fuckability, parodic domesticity, and aggression in Mr and Mrs Smith was the best performance of the year.

21) Louis B. Mayer or Harry Cohn (Studio Head)?
Mayer

22) Favorite John Wayne performance
The Searchers

23) Naked Lunch or Barton Fink?
Barton Fink

24) Your Ray Harryhausen movie of choice
Clash of Titans

25) Is there a movie you can think of that you feel like the world would be better off without, one that should have never been made?
Olympia. (easy answer, and a great work, but its justification of eugenics using visual techniques, makes a disturbing precedent.)

24) Favorite Dub Taylor performance


25) If you had the choice of seeing three final movies, to go with your three last meals, before shuffling off this mortal coil, what would they be?
My first instincts was to go for the ones that that last forever, in order to lengthen my life, but i think the better answer would be movies that are pure pleasure:
1) pink narcissus
2) she devils on wheels
3) the opening of misty beethoven

26) And what movie theater would you choose to see them in?
the venus, in vancovuer.