The Real 1990s

I KNOW CATHERINE, THE LOG LADY is still raising funds: http://kck.st/2KwsLQC 

This documentary will not only cover Catherine E. Coulson’s time as the Log Lady on Twin Peaks, but it will also cover her work with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and more!

Remembering THE CROW (’94) by Susan Doll

As super hero films clean up at the multiplexes, I cringe at how such uninspired, colorless CGI-fests could do so well at the box office. But, don’t get me wrong. Despite this remark, and others I have made in the past, I don’t dislike the comic book genre. I dislike what it has become under the iron grips of Marvel and DC and their devotion to a single demographic.

I can single out favorites in the genre going all the way back to THE BAT (’26), a silent film directed by Roland West that was likely an influence on Batman creator Bill Kane. Speaking of Batman, I greatly admire Tim Burton’s interpretations of the brooding, cowled superhero in BATMAN (’89) and BATMAN RETURNS (’92). I also like Christopher Nolan’s reboot of the Batman character, though I prefer Burton’s. One of my all-time favorite comic book films, THE CROW (’94), is currently streaming on FilmStruck. What all these films share in common is an understanding of the artistic aesthetic of the original source material—a stripped-down, graphic quality that exploits angles, lighting and composition. These films are dependent on mise-en-scène, a traditional cinematic technique referring to the look and feel of a film controlled by the director, production designer and cinematographer. Further, the directors of these older comic book films knew and appreciated the visual language and symbolism of cinematic mise-en-scène, which is based in German Expressionism. On the other hand, the most recent examples are awash in computer-generated imagery (CGI), giving them a brassy, hollow look that makes many of them indistinguishable from each other.

THE CROW was based on James O’Barr’s graphic novel, a darkly romantic tale of violence, poetry and rock ‘n’ roll. Brandon Lee, son of martial arts legend Bruce Lee, stars as Eric Draven, lead singer in a rock band. Eric and his girlfriend, Shelly (Sofia Shinas), plan to marry on Halloween, but on the night before—called Devil’s Night in the Midwest—they are brutally murdered by a gang of thugs working for Top Dollar (Michael Wincott). A year later, a crow ferries Eric from the land of the dead to seek vengeance on the men who perpetrated the double homicide.

Director Alex Proyas amplified the novel’s melancholy tone with one of the darkest visual designs I have ever seen. Every scene is shot in high-contrast or low-key lighting; there isn’t one shot rendered in high-key lighting. The lack of gray scale recalls the graphic nature of comic books and graphic novels but also gives depth and richness to the images. The darks are not merely negative space but pools of shadows that seem to sculpt the buildings and alleyways that make up Proyas’s version of Detroit. THE CROW was cinematographer Dariusz Wolski’s second feature film after a decade of music videos and commercials. Born in Poland, he attended the renowned National Film School in Lodz, which specializes in acting, directing and cinematography. His talent for expressive lighting and striking imagery is evident in the films of directors who have consistently sought out his skills, including Gore Verbinski in his PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN (’03, ’06, ’07) trilogy and Ridley Scott.

Web commentators have compared the visual style to film noir, a valid comparison because THE CROW is a dystopic interpretation of the big city. The corruption associated with the urban world in noir is magnified tenfold in THE CROW: Nothing is left in the city but decay, decadence, and drugs. There is no art, no culture, no refinement. The large Gothic church that anchors the neighborhood is empty of both priests and parishioners. Only a hot-dog stand frequented by the last good cop in Detroit looks inviting, with its warm interior lighting and rich colors. THE CROW was produced and released in the early 1990s. By this time, the inner-city decay that had begun in the 1970s had turned into urban blight. The film reflects a widespread negative view of the big city just before a return to urban centers began to restore neighborhoods and focus attention on urban growth and renewal. No city was more affected by urban blight than Detroit; it’s very name was synonymous with a dystopic view of the inner city. Proyas and production designer Alex McDowell played on that reputation by offering a hellish interpretation of Detroit, where burning buildings constantly lit up the night sky.

THE CROW makes effective use of German Expressionist symbolism, adding considerably to a film in which dialogue is minimal and characters speak in melancholy phrases of portent or despair. The first image of Eric Draven is a bird’s-eye view of his dead body splayed on the sidewalk, a hint that fate or God is looking down and has something else in store for him. Visual clues of Draven’s doppelganger status are in most of his scenes. A doppelganger means a character has two sides to him; in this case, Draven is both living and dead. His large shadow is cast on the alley wall as he stumbles through the streets after rising from the grave; it is a literal depiction of his “dark side.” Close-ups reveal his face half lit and half in shadow. Most telling is the shot when Eric looks into a mirror, seeing his dark side for the first time. He cracks the mirror with his fist, distorting his reflected image. Draven’s abandoned, dilapidated apartment, which he shared with Shelly, looks like a set straight out of THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI (’19). Bars and bar shadows tell us that Eric is trapped in his fate; collapsed beams and destroyed furniture created a set design filled with diagonals and sharp shapes, reflect the chaos and instability of Eric’s twisted mind. That kind of direct connection between set design and narrative is missing from many contemporary superhero films, in which producers are more concerned with the bells and whistles of CGI than effective visual storytelling.

Older readers will recall that THE CROW was notorious because of the accidental death of Brandon Lee on set. The exact account of what happened is available to read in detail online: The short version is that a prop gun with a partial live round was accidentally used in the scene in which Eric Draven is shot. In a horrible version of art imitating life, Brandon Lee was shot dead in the scene in which his fictional character was shot dead. The film was near completion, with only a few production days left on the schedule. The producers decided to complete and release the film, using an early version of CGI to meld Lee’s face onto a stunt double’s body for the one scene that could not be rewritten. Lee was just beginning his career in action-driven films, revealing the charm and charisma of a bona fide movie star. THE CROW would have likely propelled him into superstardom and elevated him out of the shadow of his famous father. If ever a film was haunted by the performance of its star, THE CROW is it.

THE GRIFTERS (’90) by Pablo Kjolseth

Anjelica Huston won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in PRIZZI’S HONOR (‘85), but in my book her performance in THE GRIFTERS (‘90) – for which she received a Best Actress nomination – is the one that should also have taken home the gold. She lost it to Kathy Bates for her role in Rob Reiner’s MISERY (’90), which was admittedly a tour de force. Let’s just say it should have been a tie and agree that it was a hell of a year for the femme fatale.

As recently as five years ago, Huston described her performance as Lilly Dillon in THE GRIFTERS as the most challenging role of her career. Given the bleak and harrowing narrative curve of the film it’s easy to see why. Any film based on a book by Jim Thompson, who is famous for chronicling the lives of losers and psychopaths with nihilistic aplomb, is bound to deliver on grim gut punches that spare no prisoners and provide cautionary tales that are not for the faint of heart.

In the case of THE GRIFTERS, the tragedy that Jim Thompson unravels combines obsession with money on par with something out of GREED (‘24) as he fuses them with family dynamics that carry that horrible unease you get from reading a play by Sophocles. Tossing a love triangle into the mix in no way ameliorates the feeling that disaster is inevitable.

The two other corners of the triangle are John Cusack, playing the part of Lilly’s son, Roy, and Annette Bening as Roy’s new girlfriend Myra Langtry. Threesomes always get sticky, but when all the players involved are con artists you can count on it getting overly complicated and maybe even a little bloody.

Cusack, still in his early twenties and still freshly known to most filmgoers as Lloyd Dobler in SAY ANYTHING (‘89) successfully brings real pathos to the table. It was a good career choice that announced his range could go far afield from a John Hughes comedy. It probably helped that Cusack was a huge Jim Thompson fan. As vulnerable as Cusack’s performance is, it’s Annette Bening who bares all in completely fearless fashion. BUGSY (‘91) would follow the year after and make a mark, but for me that mark starts here.

Stephen Frears was an interesting choice to direct. The studios originally wanted Martin Scorsese to do the job but Scorsese ended up being the producer of the film instead. Frears had proven himself with quality social dramas and arthouse hits, such as MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE (‘85) and SAMMY AND ROSIE GET LAID (‘87), but it was probably the box office success of DANGEROUS LIAISONS (‘88) that landed him the job. After all, DANGEROUS LIAISONS also had two women and one man caught in erotic webs of intrigue and duplicity.

As to the genesis of the project, I reached out to Bruce Kawin who gets special thanks in the end credits. I took classes from Kawin when I was a student at C.U. Boulder and remember him using THE GRIFTERS in his screenwriting class. Here’s what he had to say about how he got the ball rolling: 

When I was at Bob Harris’s Images Film Archive looking for stills to illustrate my textbook How Movies Work, Bob asked me if I knew any relatively unknown novelist whose books would make good movies. I told him about Jim Thompson and suggested three of his novels, including The Grifters. Bob and his partner, Jim Painten, decided on The Grifters and helped me as I wrote the first draft of the script. We took this script to Martin Scorsese, who made many suggestions for the rewrite. I took his advice when I rewrote the script, and that became the official first draft. Marty produced, working with Bob and Jim. Eventually Marty chose Stephen Frears to direct the picture, and Frears decided he needed an American noir novelist to write the shooting script; he chose Donald Westlake. Westlake got exclusive screen credit for the script, which was nominated for an Academy Award. Marty thanked me for bringing the novel to his attention and said he’d be glad to listen to any further suggestions I had about novels to adapt; I received a screen credit thanking me for my contributions to the project.

Nancy Downs in The Craft (1996)

The Movie

The Craft (1996) is widely thought of as a guilty pleasure for women who came of age in the 90s but in recent years its cult following has grown considerably and its reputation is being reconsidered. It’s a more complicated movie than most give it credit for despite its faults.

Sarah (Robin Tunney) moves to LA from San Francisco with her father and stepmother following a suicide attempt. As she gets the lay of the land at her new Catholic high school, a fledgling coven of witches at the school recognize her natural talent for witchcraft and set their sights on her. Sarah’s new sisters all have struggles of their own and use witchcraft as a coping mechanism and as a means of empowerment. Nancy (Fairuza Balk), the de-facto leader, is deeply depressed and poor. Rochelle (Rachel True) is the only black girl in school and her teammates’ overt racism is holding her back from pursuing her passion for diving. Bonnie (Neve Campbell) is disfigured with burn scars covering much of her body. With the addition of Sarah to their coven, their witchcraft begins to produce real results. At first, their problems seems to be solved. The boy who spread rumours about Sarah after she turned him down for sex is now hopelessly obsessed with her. Nancy’s abusive father is dead and she and her mother now have a better lifestyle living on insurance money. Rochelle’s most violent tormentor starts to go bald. The painful treatment for Bonnie’s scars is suddenly successful. It doesn’t take long for things to spiral out of control though. Intra-coven conflict and a misunderstanding of the nature of magic(k) have dangerous consequences for all four of them.

The Craft is one of the more interesting pieces of fiction to emerge from the ashes of the satanic panic of the 1980s. In the 1980s a moral panic was created around a number of later discredited stories about satan worship. While the initial panic focused mainly on child abuse and day care centers, once it settled into the cultural zeitgeist, satanism (and by extension witchcraft) became the scapegoat for all sorts of social issues. It’s a bit difficult to convey to anyone who didn’t live through it how pervasive this fear was in certain communities in the US. But honestly, if you go back and watch some episodes of the first seasons of Unsolved Mysteries, you’ll be a bit flabbergasted at how often parents and husbands tack satanism and witchcraft onto straight-forward crimes & missing-persons stories. The Craft was released in the aftermath of the panic just as it was receding. (As someone who was way into Marilyn Manson in the late 1990s, I can tell you for a fact that it didn’t die.) Quite cleverly, the film took the worst fears of gullible parents and realized them while simultaneously presenting a realistic depiction of the practice of witchcraft and Wiccan beliefs. Funnily enough, The Craft definitely encouraged a whole generation of kids to try out spells or witchy games at slumber parties across the country.

The Look

Nancy Downs is a very mid-90s Southern Californian goth. She rocks a whole mess of styles throughout the film, some of which are very inappropriate for the weather (desert goth life), all of which are very inappropriate for Catholic school attendance. So, there are a lot of styling options for a Nancy cosplay.

The Clothes

The base for many of Nancy’s outfits is her school uniform; white button up shirt and blue-and-green kilt. At school, she’s usually bare-legged and mixes up the uniform pieces with black undershirts or black mesh and a black leather jacket. More often later in the film, she goes full 90s goth witch with a long black jacket with flared sleeves and big flowy black and dark red skirts. Nancy’s ever-present accessories are rosaries worn as jewelry, a dog-collar choker, upside down cross earrings, a nose ring, and pointy lace-up ankle boots.

I went the simple route: a play on the school uniform. I don’t own anything resembling a uniform kilt because I went to Catholic school myself for 16 years and will never own a skirt like that again. I also don’t own any black mesh, but I do have a pair of fishnets that I put on as sleeves. If you want to add color to a Nancy look, I’d recommend blood red in your accessories.

The Makeup

Nancy’s makeup is harsh though the face makeup is rarely very heavily applied. Nancy’s eyebrows are sharp and thin and her eyes are smoky and smudgy, later in the film her eye makeup gets deeper and less shimmery.

It seems that is every scene, even if it’s directly contiguous with the scene prior, Nancy has reapplied her lipstick in a different shade. I love this because it subtly reinforces the notion that she exhibits compulsive behaviors and also suggests that perhaps her “five-finger discount” attitude extends beyond the magic shop to makeup counters and drug stores.

Start with a neutral base and set it lightly with powder a shade lighter than your skin tone to get a California-goth pallor I concentrated some extra light powder under the hollows of my cheekbones to make my cheeks look fuller, more like Balk’s and more like a teenager’s.

Deconstructing Nancy’s eye makeup was fun because I realized for the first time that it’s actually a pretty standard late-90s smoky eye with heavier liner. (1.) Start with a neutral gray shade as a blending base. (2.) Take a darker gray shade to build up the outer V of the eye concentrating the pigment at the crease and lashline. (3.) Take a black shadow (I went cool black with this, but you can go warm instead) and build up the deeper areas of shadow, take an angled brush and bring it along your lashline. Take what’s left on the brush and bring it under your eyes. (4.) Next take black liner and draw a thick line all around your eye with very little flaring at the outer edge. (5.) Go back in with your black shadow to set the liner and smudge the line a bit. Basically try to make it look like you didn’t wash off yesterday’s makeup and just reapplied more in the morning. (6.) For the highlighted parts of the eye, silver would be perfect. I don’t have any silver shadow, so I went in with white shadow and a pearl-colored highlighter to get the shimmer. Concentrate the silvery shade on the inner and middle part of the mobile lid and on the browbone. (7.) To finish off the eye, tightline your eyes with black liner and load up your eyelashes with black mascara.

For the brows, go in with black powder on a wet brush so it’ll be easier to correct mistakes. The head is a lot fuller than the tail, which tapers dramatically. It’s a more natural shape than the sperm brow that was starting to take over at the time.

For my Nancy look, I chose to go with a brownish lip because most Nancy cosplayers gravitate toward the bright red and black combo. The same method applies, just choose the colors you like best. Take a brown, black, or burgundy liner and fill out your bottom lip and line your upper lip to be just a touch smaller than your lower lip. Fill in the center of your lips with a nude brown or red lipstick and blend it into the liner. Don’t blend too much though because you want to keep the liner distinct.

With your liner brush at the ready, draw a small beauty mark on your right cheek an inch or two from your mouth. I already have a beauty mark here, so I just filled it in.