#Louis Negin

[yourdailyqueer]

Louis Negin (deceased)

Gender: Male

Sexuality: Gay

DOB: 20 October 1929 

RIP: 2 December 2022

Ethnicity: White - British

Occupation: Actor, playwright

[dare-g]

Keyhole (2011)

[mariocki]

Man in a Suitcase: The Revolutionaries (1.26, ITC, 1968)

"Well... all your clients cause this much trouble?"

"No, do yours?"

"Yeah. Usually."

[onenakedfarmer]

Currently Watching

THE FORBIDDEN ROOM Guy Maddin and Evan Johnson Canada, 2015

[erstwhile-punk-guerito]

[graveyardfullofstars]

[kwebtv]

Hot Shots - CBS / CTV - September 23, 1986 - December 21, 1986

Drama (13 episodes)

Running Time: 60 minutes

Stars:

Dorothy Parke as Amanda Reed

Booth Savage as Jason West

Paul Burke as Nicholas Broderick

Clark Johnson as Al Pendleton

Heather Smith as Cleo

Louis Negin as Goldsmith

[onetwofeb]

Did Ashbery write the poem specifically for the short?

Reply

Guy Maddin Thanks, Michael. Yes, he did. I'm so lucky

John Ashbery monologue performed by Louis Negin for adaptation of Dwain Esper's 1937 sexploitation original by the same name, "How to Take a Bath." Directed by Guy Maddin.

[twittercomfrnklin2001-blog]

My Winnipeg (Revisited)

Re-watching Guy Maddin’s MY WINNIPEG (2008, on DVD, no streaming for free anywhere) with a friend made me even more aware of just how funny this docu-fantasia on the director’s home city is. As his stand-in (Darcy Fehr) tries to stay awake long enough to catch the right train out of the city, Maddin’s narration combines historical fact with outlandish fiction. At one point, he says “Winnipeg” three times, and at each iteration another person in the train car drops their head in sleep. The invented events — a beauty contest in which restaurant patrons gamble to see whom the mayor (Louis Negin) will choose as Golden Boy and hire to work in his administration, a disaster that fills the river with frozen horses that act as an aphrodisiac for romantic couples, a séance in which the medium dances messages from the spirit world — are all bizarrely funny and also sexually and theoretically queer. That’s what happens when you commission a filmmaker like Maddin to make a documentary about Winnipeg and tell him not to deliver the usual image of the city. To get to the heart of his life there, Maddin engages actors to play his siblings and live in his family’s old home with his mother (B-movie goddess Ann Savage) and a mound of dirt representing his dead father. The scenes in which they reenact family history are both hilarious and tinged with melancholy as he reflects on past tragedies and intimations of mortality. Maddin invents a local TV series called “Ledgeman” in which Savage talks her suicidal son off a building ledge each day, which achieves a special poignancy with the revelation that his brother had committed suicide at 16. Maddin dives deep into his subconscious to create his films, and this may be his deepest dive ever.

[peterlorres21stcentury]

I'm a big fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000, and this episode, "Overdrawn at the Memory Bank," has got to be one of my all-time favorites. The movie stars Raul Julia as a bored computer programmer in some future dystopia, who gets caught watching Casablanca during work hours (hey, who among us has not been caught watching Youtube at work, am I right?). When he gets trapped in a computer simulation of his own making, he starts to imagine living inside the movie, complete with himself in the role of Rick Blaine, his boss as a Sydney Greenstreet-esque Fat Man, and an obsequious Peter Lorre clone named... Pierre. 😆

This movie stinks to high heaven but I did read the story it was based on, and it's actually not that bad. The book didn't have any Casablanca references at all, so that was the pure invention of whoever wrote this goofy script. I did get a kick out of Louis Negin's performance as Peter--I mean, Pierre, because he actually does a decent impression. Very few impressionists get that soft, breathy quality just right, so good on him. I just had to go through and clip some of my favorite jokes for the Casablanca sequences here, but if you get a chance I highly recommend the whole riffing.

[gregor-samsung]

The Twentieth Century (Matthew Rankin - 2019)

[cristalconnors]

BEST FEATURED ACTOR

WINNER:

LOUIS NEGIN as “Mother” in THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

NOMINEES:

DAN ALGRANT as “Kelvin Kranz” in LET THEM ALL TALK

CARLO CECCHI as “Russ Brissenden” in MARTIN EDEN

HARRIS DICKINSON as “McAfee” in MATTHIAS ET MAXIME

MAYKOL HERNÁNDEZ as “Isa” in SONG WITHOUT A NAME

[dare-g]

Cowards Bend the Knee (2003)

[dakotadanger]

The Forbidden Room (2015) was one of my favorite films in the year it was released. In 2021, I’m still captivated by this surreal phantasmagoria of imaginary lost films.

This movie has a nesting doll-like structure. It begins with a man teaching you how to take a bath. The camera flows into the drain and we’re in a doomed submarine. A woodsman appears in the submarine, and remembers how he was searching for a kidnapped woman named Margot. Margot dreams that she’s a singer in a night club with no name, but she can’t remember who she is. The crooner takes the stage and sings a song about a man who repeatedly begs a doctor to lobotomize him in order to rid him of his lust for butts.

That song, “The Final Derriere” by Sparks, is one of the greatest original songs ever written for a film. By this point, you’ve completely forgotten how you’ve gotten here, so we go back to Margot at the club, back to kidnapped Margot, the woodsman, the submarine, the bathtub. And then we go back down again, into a volcano’s dream, a newspaper story, a mustache’s lament, etc.

There aren’t many truly great contemporary surrealists, with David Lynch being the most notable. The Forbidden Room is a celebration of film, dreams, and surrealism, all of which it sees as the same thing. It celebrates the history of cinema by imagining these fantastic titles, and while the connections between each nested story are brilliant, it’s easy to forget how you got somewhere. Because dreams don’t really begin or end, they just happen. The details fade and all you remember is the climax.

The Forbidden Room is pure imagination. It’s hilarious and inspiring. If you feel like getting lost in dream after dream, I highly recommend this singular film. If you just want a taste, watch the music video I linked above.

Women Skeletons!

[onenakedfarmer]

Currently Watching

KEYHOLE Guy Maddin Canada, 2011

[erstwhile-punk-guerito]