Professional Sweetheart: 9/15/23
Stokers, Baby Dolls, and How Much Caligula Can One Woman Take?
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Hey everyone! So, a little housekeeping to start. Next week’s letter is probably going to be a little different as I’ll be in Austin, TX for Fantastic Fest. The festival gets going on Thursday night so please forgive me if it’s not as meaty as others (I’ll probably end up posting a few pictures, at least, and a tiny update from the ground). And I’ll have to give you the Tuesday Bonus Hang a week late (likely Texas themed). But I definitely promise a full download, including everything I saw, for the 29th. Thanks for understanding!
On the topic of film festivals, and more specifically Fantastic Fest, this will be the 4th or 5th time I’ve attended. And I’ll actually be going with a buddy this time (TCM programmer extraordinaire / Mary’s party starter / 1970’s baseball coach Ben Cheaves) so that will be extra fun. Sidebar: I swear every year I go to Austin, I get a tiny bit more convinced that I could live there if I had the shot. It’s a cool town that loves movies, music, and food. I have a lot of friends there, which is always a big plus. Living in the state of Texas would probably be a drag, but hey, I already have experience with being in a progressive city in the middle of a conservative state. I’m just saying — if the winds of life take me there, I probably wouldn’t mind.
April snapped this when we were in Austin in 2015, because as you know, it’s required by law to take a photo of yourself staring blankly while standing on a Shining themed rug whenever you see one.
So anyway, the fest! The lineup for this year is looking pretty good so far. Without knowing what I’ll eventually get into, I’m curious about this Toxic Avenger remake. I haven’t seen the original since college but I also wonder if people will start talking about Troma again1. I’m also hoping to maybe catch the new Michel Gondry movie and the movie version of the Ottessa Moshfegh book Eileen (which stars perennial Millie favorite, Shea Whigham). I also would love to get into this Pet Sematary prequel (teenage Jud Crandall?!) if that’s not too much of a hot ticket. Really, though, I’m loving the repertory screenings and documentary lineup this year: Messiah of Evil (on my Halloween watchlist!), a restoration of Gregg Araki’s Nowhere (1997), Blood Diner (1987), a Severin documentary about the Bruce Lee rip off films, and apparently some monster runtime, reworked version of Caligula (1979) called The Ultimate Cut that just played at Cannes and there’s drama already (TBD if I can actually sit through that).
Horny decadence is my middle name.
I have to say, when it comes to film festivals I usually really enjoy going to them but also forget to plan to go to them, if that makes sense. There’s a lot of moving parts, usually! Travel, accomodations, badges, strategy of getting into films, eating meals around the screenings, etc. And you usually have start planning to go to the next one once the one you just went to ends, which always trips me up. As far as North American film festivals are concerned, my favorite is probably the Toronto International Film Festival, just because going to Canada is so nice, it’s easy to travel there, and it’s run really well. I have never been but have heard from multiple people in my life that the Telluride Film Festival is actually the best, but super expensive, and I think you have to take one of those Buddy Holly planes to get there (or drive eight hours from the Denver airport). But quite honestly, I’ve been loving the “at home” screenings that a lot of the film festivals do now since the pandemic. Typically anyone can access them (you don’t have to buy a badge); you just pay by screening to watch in the comfort of your own home. Unfortunately, they rarely have the big, studio premieres available online but it’s secretly a great place to see documentaries. Last year at Tribeca At Home, I saw the documentary about the history of the International Male catalog which is where I made the life-changing discovery that the garment that Vernon Wells’ character wears in Commando (1985) is called a stoker.
Apparently, a stoker was something that members of the British navy once wore, which later influenced some designers to put a version of it in the IM catalog. I tried but could not find one historic photo online of a sailor wearing one, which stinks. But, I found one of the villains in the Gary Busey action film Eye of the Tiger (1986) wore one too. Someone could really write a paper about this!
As part of the online portion of the Sundance Film Festival last year, I also saw a documentary about the story of the Cabbage Patch Kids, which of course caught my immediate interest being that everything took place about an hour and forty-five minutes north of where I currently live. As an owner of Cabbage Patch Kids as a child, I knew the name Xavier Roberts mostly because his signature was on the butt cheeks of all the dolls (slightly weird? in retrospect?) and from whenever they said it in the commercials. For some reason, whenever I imagined what he might look like I just assumed he’d be some kind of curly, dark haired wacky type. Maybe like Slim Goodbody without the unitard. However, the documentary showed me I had been dead ass wrong all these years and that Xavier Roberts was a just a good old fashion North Georgia maniac.
I have no words. I just really hope this photo was taken at the Sears Portrait Studio.
I’ll leave you with one more story about another doll-themed film festival documentary from last year, which I actually saw in person at Fantastic Fest 2022: Living With Chucky (2022), which was all about the Child’s Play movie franchise. It was made by the daughter of the head puppeteer and special effects makeup artist who worked on the films and it was this warm story about how everyone who made the Chucky movies over the years were essentially a tight-knit family, blood relation or otherwise. When the director introduced the film at the festival, she came out with the original Chucky doll, which gave everyone in the audience great joy, of course. Cut to: I’m in the Austin airport on the way home after the festival and I noticed that not only was the filmmaker in line behind me at TSA, she was with the Chucky doll, holding it like an actual toddler. It was in that moment that I realized people fucking love seeing Chucky. Everyone working in the airport, especially. All the cops and TSA staff were taking pictures and yelling out “HEY CHUCKY!” like he was an actual human being who could respond. The best part for me was that she actually had to put Chucky on the x-ray belt to be scanned. Obviously I wasn’t allowed to pull out my phone while I was also going through TSA but readers, just know I laughed very, very hard seeing that.
And if you are at all wondering: yes, Chucky ended up being on my flight AND he actually had his own seat. In First Class. I now have actual, personal knowledge that Chucky eats better than all of us and it’s rocked me to the core ever since.
See you next week, from deep in the heart of Texas!
Millie
Films Mentioned:
The Toxic Avenger (2023, Macon Blair)
The Book of Solutions (2023, Michel Gondry)
Eileen (2023, William Oldroyd)
Pet Sematary: Bloodlines (2023, Lindsey Anderson Beer)
Messiah of Evil (1974, Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz)
Blood Diner (1987, Jackie Kong)
Nowhere (1997, Gregg Araki)
Caligula (1979, Tinto Brass) and Caligula: The Ultimate Cut
Enter the Clones of Bruce (2023, David Gregory)
All Man: The International Male Story (2022, Bryan Darling and Jesse Finley Reed)
Commando (1985, Mark L. Lester)
Eye of the Tiger (1986, Richard C. Sarafian)
Billion Dollar Babies: The True Story of the Cabbage Patch Kids (2022, Andrew Jenks)
Living With Chucky (2022, Lyra Elise Gardner)
So, I remember thinking Troma was really funny and cool for about a year in college. Admittedly, this was during my big ramp up of becoming a “cult movie person” so I was kind of taking everything in and didn’t really have discriminating taste about anything yet. Eventually I started eyerolling those movies and I kind of don’t remember why. Did they increasingly get worse over the years? Or too on the nose? Did we just collectively tire of their entire catalog? Did we see Lloyd Kaufman at too many horror movie festivals? I can’t figure this out.
I have probably told you this before, but a law firm where I worked represented Xavier Roberts, so we had those creepy dolls all over the place at the office!
so do we think chucky has diamond medallion status or