#david von erich one shot

[daysofyellowroses]

yellow rose

david von erich x afab!reader | 6.2k | 18+ minors dni | tw: language, smoking, mild smut | a reflection on your journey to the altar

so this is a complete and utter work of fiction, based on the very brilliant movie the iron claw. i knew as soon as i watched it i would have stories but i was a little surprised david came to me first. obviously harris dickinson is beautiful but i am down so bad for jaw. i got some kerry ideas too, and i always have a hundred different bear ideas on the go too so more to come | also just to note that because this is totally fictitious, i am choosing to ignore real life events for the most part and live in fanfic delusion. enjoy 🌼

-

It all seemed to happen in a flash.

In theory, you should have been used to it. Ready for it.

One minute you were heading to a local sports center on a work assignment, then in what felt like the blink of an eye, you were walking up the aisle to marry the subject of one of those photos.

But, to get to how exactly you ended up walking down that aisle, you need to go back to how it all started.

Which, like with most things when it came to you,started with a picture.

📷

From an early age, you loved photography. Capturing a moment in time, being able to look at it any time and relive the moment was always a thrill. Your childhood home was full of framed photos and photo albums, a collection of memories surrounding you.

When you turned 13, your parents gave you your own camera. It wasn't anything too technical or fancy, but it was immediately your most treasured possession. You took photos of everything, family occasions, your friends hanging out, nature, snapshots of Dallas.

As you grew older you threw yourself into studying everything about photography, worked an extremely tedious part time job to save up for a real camera, dedicated yourself to honing your skills. It wasn't difficult, your friends and family kept you busy with birthday parties, weddings, christenings, anything worth celebrating and you were there to capture the moments.

When you were in your senior year of high school, you discovered a fondness for a particular subject of your photos. You had been sitting in the bleachers after school one day with your friends, all you of chatting and laughing about something when you'd looked onto the football field and spotted two of the players talking about something animatedly, one of them slapping the other on the back as they laughed. 

You had grabbed your camera, snapping a photo and rolled your eyes playfully as your friends teased you. Sure, the players were cute, but that wasn't why you took their photo. When the shots had developed, you were thrilled that your instinct had been correct. The red of the players jerseys popped, the gold star on their helmets gleaming in the sun. They looked graceful, despite their large frames, natural and charming. 

From that photo, you began to base more of your photos on sport. It wasn't an area you had expected to become interested in, but it inspired your photography. Cheerleaders in perfectly formed pyramids, track stars crossing the line, football players clutching the ball to their chest as they threw themselves across the post.

After graduation, you applied for a journalism course, figuring it didn't hurt to have a backup plan and maybe it would get you a gig as a photographer for a newspaper or magazine. 

Leaving home was tough, especially when a big going away party was thrown for you, your friends and family coming together to celebrate your accomplishments. When the time came to leave you were sure you'd never cried so much, trying to hype yourself up for the adventure ahead.

It was a lot of fun, being at college, as it turned out. Making new friends, learning new things, having new experiences. By the time it was over it felt like you could back and do it all again in a heartbeat.

You decided to move back to Dallas after you graduated. A job opportunity at a big paper came up, and your friend Pam had found an apartment that came with a spare room so it seemed like the right move.

It was about two weeks later you were tasked with going down to the Sportatorium on a Saturday night to document the latest wrestling match. Every time you went to a sporting event for work, you were accompanied by the senior sports writer, Duke. He was older than your father, far too old for his cheap toupee to be even the slightest bit believable. He wore cheap polyester suits, too much cologne and had a fondness for calling you ‘missy’ and placing his hand a little too low on your back.

You had psyched yourself up to ask Pam to come along, preparing a whole speech in your head. If she was with you then you could avoid Duke like the plague, couldn't possibly leave your guest alone. 

Turned out Pam didn't take much convincing at all, in fact she practically jumped at the chance to come along. You tucked her excitement away in your mind, curious to see if the source would reveal itself at the match.

When the day came, you were excited to get some shots of a new sport. From what you'd seen on TV, the Sportatorium was bright and colorful, the wrestlers just as much so. You packed up your camera before getting changed into some jeans and a t-shirt. 

Pam had taken one look at you and marched you back into your room, your protests of “But I'm working!” falling on deaf ears.

A compromise was reached. Your t-shirt stayed but a denim mini skirt replaced your jeans and brown cowboy boots replaced your beat up sneakers. You felt a little ridiculous, your job had you in all kinds of angles and positions to get the best shots, the last thing you wanted was to be unable to get a good picture because you'd end up flashing tomorrow's laundry to thousands of strangers.

When you arrived at the Sportatorium, the sun was dipping below the horizon and what seemed like hundreds of cars and trucks were pulling up. People were grabbing beers out of coolers, blasting music from boomboxes, grilling up hotdogs on portable barbecues. You got a couple of shots before Pam was hustling you inside to get your seats. Well, her seat. You told her you'd meet her outside after the match, not that she seemed to be paying attention, her eyes focused on the empty ring. 

You made your way down to the ring, keeping an eye out for Duke and ready to sprint back to Pam if needed. To your relief, Duke wasn't in attendance. The junior sports reporter, Brian, had been sent in his place. The two of you weren't exactly close friends but he was much more professional. You got some shots of the crowd, feeling excited to see a match live. The atmosphere in the stadium was electric, like something incredible was about to happen. 

When the announcement came for the first tag team, you got some shots of them walking through the tunnel and into the ring, holding their arms in the air and greeting the crowd. Brian walked around the ring slowly, scribbling into a notepad, cigarette perched behind his ear.

Then they announced the next tag team, and you moved to the opposite tunnel to get shots of them. You took a breath as you snapped a shot of the taller one, his wavy blonde hair peeking out from under his back cowboy hat. He was wearing a leather jacket that he promptly tore off before he got into the ring, his back muscles rippling. 

You cleared your throat, taking more photos and trying to concentrate on what you were there for. 

The bell rang, and once the match started you had no shortage of great photo opportunities. The men in the ring moved with perfect proficiency and style, playing up to the crowd and putting on a spectacular show. You found yourself more and more drawn to the tall blonde, David Von Erich, you discovered. 

He was so graceful yet could have these huge men slammed onto their backs, his arms bulging and a cocky grin on his face. Once or twice you could have sworn he caught your eye and winked at you but you were sure it was your imagination. 

The Von Erichs won the match, you snapped a photo of the referee holding up the brother's hands as the crowd roared. Brian checked back in with you, telling you he was going to grab some quotes before heading off. You bid him farewell before going to find Pam, heading outside with the rest of the crowd.

“Hey, over here!”

You quickly spotted Pam, smiling as you waved back at her, weaving your way through the crowd to join her.

“Hey,” You smiled, laughing softly as Pam grabbed your arm, a wide grin on her face. “Are you al-”

“Come on,” Pam immediately started tugging you in the opposite direction. “let me show you something,”

You just about managed to maintain your balance and hold onto your camera as you dodged through the dispersing crowd, wondering what exactly Pam was doing.

Before long you had an answer, as you and Pam joined a large group of women hanging around the back door of the Sportatorium. Her keenness to come to the match made much more sense when Kevin Von Erich walked out the door, towel around his shoulders and bag slung over his shoulder. You had never known Pam to look at any man the way she was looking at Kevin.

“What are you waiting for?” You asked, giving Pam a gentle nudge. “Get on over there, girl.”

“I can't, there's too many girls round him,” Pam sighed. “I am not desperate. I'll wait for my time.”

“Saving the best for last huh?” You grinned, watching Pam roll her eyes playfully. “I don't think he's gonna be able to take his eyes off you.”

“You think?” Pam asked, glancing over to you. She looked genuinely concerned and you gave her a reassuring smile. 

“I know.”

A little while later, when the crowd had dispersed and Kevin was signing the last couple of autographs, you gave Pam a gentle nudge, smiling as she quickly fixed her hair.

“Good luck,” You grinned, gently squeezing her arm. “Not that you need it.”

You gave her some space, walking over to a trash can before fishing a pack of cigarettes from your purse. You lit one up, glancing over to Pam and smiling as you spotted Kevin heading in her direction. Closing your eyes as you looked away, you took a long drag on your cigarette and felt yourself relax.

“You know it's a bad habit to smoke those things.”

You opened your eyes, finding a familiar face standing close to you. He looked better in person than he did in the ring, if that was possible. 

“Well I'm sure you know that it is very rude to keep your hat on in the presence of a lady,” You raised a brow, flicking your ash into the trash can. “I could be deeply insulted.”

“I apologize,” David grinned, taking off his hat and giving you a slight bow as he did. He introduced himself properly, as did you, his hand moving over his heart as he tilted his head. “You know I was just joking, there's worse habits to have than smoking.”

You nodded, smiling a little. “Like creeping up on strangers?”

He laughed and you felt a flutter in your stomach. You willed it away, not wanting to be another simpering fan.

“You want one?” You asked, holding out the box of cigarettes. David looked like he was considering saying yes before he shook his head. 

“No, thank you. I shouldn't.”

“Fair enough,” You nodded, putting the box back in your purse. “It really is a bad habit. I'm trying to quit but I got some time to kill so..”

“Oh yeah?” David raised a brow, glancing around the quiet car park before looking back at you. “What you waiting for?”

“My friend,” You gestured in the direction of Pam, who was deep in conversation with Kevin. “she's a big fan.”

“So I see,” David grinned, looking over to his brother and Pam before focusing his attention back on you. “and uh..what about you? Are you a big fan?”

You thought about it/made him wait for a moment as you took a drag on your cigarette and raised a brow.

“I'm just here for work.”

“Really?” David looked a little surprised, lightly rubbing his jaw. “What kinda work do you do?”

You held up your camera with a smile before flicking your cigarette in the trash can. “I’m a photographer,” You explained. “for a newspaper.”

“Oh right,” David smiled, folding his arms. “I'll have to buy that, see if you got any good ones of me. Which paper is it?”

“It's the uh..huh,” You grinned as you glanced over to Pam, watching her laugh as Kevin said something to her. “Excuse me for one second.” 

You turned slightly, holding your camera up and focusing it on Pam and Kevin. You felt very aware of David's presence behind you, trying to hold your hands steady as you snapped a picture. 

“I have a feeling I may need that one day,” You smiled, settling your camera strap back over your shoulder and turning to David. “They're cute together, don't you think?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” David nodded, his gaze staying on you. “She ain't the cutest one here though.”

You rolled your eyes but couldn't fight the smile on your face and multiple flutters in your stomach. 

“Oh shut up, that's such a line.”

“I'm deadly serious,” David grinned, holding his hat over his heart. “I promise.”

You were about to say something when Pam appeared, linking her arm with yours and giggling as she went to drag you away. 

“Hang on one second,” David called, making you look over your shoulder with a smile.

“You never told me the name of your paper!”

“It's in Dallas,” You called back, walking forward with Pam, the two of you giggling. “If you find it, call me!”

📷

A couple of days later you were in the newspaper office, going over some photos for an upcoming article when one of the secretaries knocked on the door and asked for you.

“Call for you,” She explained, gesturing to the phone as you went to her desk. “They didn't give a name, just asked for you.”

“Okay, thanks Margaret,” You smiled, feeling a slight knot in your stomach. It was extremely rare someone called you at work, and you tried not to think the worst. 

Going to the phone, you picked it up and took a deep breath before holding it to your ear. 

“Hello?”

“Hello yourself.”

You let out a soft sigh of relief as you realized who was on the other end of the line, a small smile on your face.

“How many papers did you have to call before you found me?”

“That's not important.”

You rolled your eyes with a grin.

“More than two?”

“..five.”

“Oh wow,” You grinned, turning more towards the wall. “That's perseverance right there. I'm flattered.”

“Well so am I,” David replied. “I saw those pictures you took. They were great, I wanted to thank you for catching me at such a flattering angle.”

“You're welcome,” You smiled, glancing over your shoulder before looking back and lowering your voice slightly. “That the only reason you called six newspapers? Angles?”

“Not quite,” You could hear a cheeky tone in his voice, your fingers holding the phone cord. “I was hoping you'd come see me again. You don't have to take pictures this time, if you don't want.”

“As it happens I am coming,” You raised a brow with a smile. “Your brother beat you to the invite. He invited Pam, who invited me. So I'll be there.”

“Well damn,” David laughed softly. “I guess I'll just have to come right out with it then..ask you on a real date.”

“Oh?” You grinned, feeling like a teenager as your cheeks grew warm. “How about we make it interesting?”

“I'm all ears.”

You took a breath, trying to calm your heartbeat. You were aware of Margaret behind you, knowing she'd be listening to every word. 

“Alright, if you win..I accept. If you don't, no deal.”

“Hm, sounds fair,” David replied. “I guess I'll have to try a little harder this week. I'll let you get back to work, alright?”

“Alright,” You nodded, trying not too smile too widely. “I'll see you Saturday. Bye.”

You hung up the phone, turning around to Margaret with a polite smile.

“Thank you, I'll be in the office.”

Once you closed the door and found yourself alone, you let out a laugh, shaking your head and wondering what you'd let yourself in for.

📷

Saturday came around quickly, and most of the day was given over to preparing. At first you were just helping Pam, heading into store after store to find the perfect outfit. Then you started looking for yourself, realizing that you wanted to put in just a little more effort since you were going to watch, not work. 

As the evening drew closer, the radio was on full blast in the apartment as you and Pam cracked open a bottle of wine and started the beauty process. You couldn't shake the slight nerves that were settled in your stomach, but they were joined by an excitement. 

“Oh,” Pam turned from the bathroom mirror to look at you. You were sitting on the edge of the bathtub, carefully painting your toenails. “Did he ever get in touch? David? I completely forgot to ask.”

“Yeah, he found me,” You grinned, laughing as Pam gasped. “Asked me to come along tonight. I told him I was already coming.”

“And?” Pam asked, waving her hand at you. “What else? Did he ask you out?”

“I told him he can take me out if he wins,” You smiled, holding the bottle of nail polish up in the air with a laugh as Pam rushed over to hug you.

“This is so exciting! We're gonna be like sisters!”

📷

When you arrived at the Sportatorium, it seemed to be even busier than it had been the previous week. You stepped out of your truck, smoothing out your outfit. It was only a black off the shoulder top and some denim jeans but you hoped it still looked good. 

You linked your arm with Pam's as the two of you headed inside the bustling arena, your heart beating faster as you took your seats. As it turned out, watching the match was totally different to photographing it. You couldn't move about, couldn't pick one thing to focus on. It was all happening, bright and loud and thrilling. You found yourself cheering and whistling with the crowd, you and Pam both jumping up and screaming when the Von Erichs emerged victorious.

When it was all over and you were enjoying the fresh air, you couldn't help but find it adorable when Kevin couldn't keep his eyes off Pam while he signed autographs. Once he was free you gave him and Pam some space, almost immediately bumping into David.

“Hey winner,” You smiled, resting your hands in your back pockets. “Nice angles in there.”

“I hope someone was there to capture them,” David grinned, taking his hat off. “Did you have a good time?”

“Yeah,” You nodded, watching David for a moment, smiling as you realized he almost seemed a little nervous. “I really enjoyed it..though I'm a little curious about something.”

“What might that be?” David asked, moving his hat from one hand to the other. 

“Well,” You smiled, stepping closer and looking up at him. “Are you going to honor our agreement?”

📷

It was only when you were putting on your coat to leave the apartment when it dawned on that you hadn't actually been on a first date for..a while. There were some relationships in high school, a couple in college along with some dates and flings but the last had been before you graduated. 

You tried not to think about it too much, you were just going for dinner and seeing a movie. Worst case scenario, you and David didn't end up hitting it off and the world would go on as it always did. But part of you was hopeful that something would come from the date, that it would develop into something really great.

Grabbing your purse, you left the apartment and went downstairs to hail a cab, excitement starting to outweigh the nerves.

📷

“No way,” You laughed, your eyes going wide as you placed your hand over your chest. “You did not do that.”

“Yes I did,” David nodded, a serious look on his face before he laughed. “I was so sick afterwards. Never got found out though. Mom just went and got Kerry and Mike a new egg each. I couldn't eat chocolate for like three months.”

“I'm not surprised,” You laughed, picking up your drink. “You can't say you didn't deserve it.”

David laughed, nodding as he picked up his own drink. 

“I certainly did deserve it. Moment of weakness I guess.” 

You took a sip of your drink before setting the glass down and glancing around the restaurant. It was a steakhouse, but it felt like a nice one. Elegant lighting, candles on the tables, classy music playing. No sawdust or butcher paper to be found. 

“So do you think your brothers ever found out?” You asked, sitting up a little and resting your hands in your lap. “Or did you tell them?”

“No to both I'm afraid,” David sighed softly, lightly tapping his glass as he set it down. “Though I think Kev knew it was me..” He smiled to himself as he looked down. “Never said anything if he did know, though.”

“Seems like you two are close,” You smiled, your heart picking up a beat as David looked back at you with a warm smile. 

“We are,” He nodded. “We all are. I can't imagine life without them, they're amazing.” 

You felt your heart swell, trying not to get too swept up in your emotions. 

“That's so wonderful,” You smiled. “It's amazing that you're all so close.”

“Yeah,” David grinned, sitting up a little. “I just feel so lucky every day, like..” He stopped himself, lightly rubbing his neck.

“You know what, I feel like all I've done is talk about myself, my brothers, I don't want you to think I'm self absorbed or nothing, I promise I ain't like that.”

You shook your head, reaching your hand across the table and grinning when David held it with his own.

“I know you're not,” You insisted. “You're wonderful. Now tell me more about your family, I want the good stories.”

You ended up missing the movie, but neither of you cared. You talked until the restaurant was closing, David's jacket around your shoulders as you walked out into the night air. He gave you a ride home and kissed your cheek by your door  like a gentleman. 

“I had a great time,” You smiled, carefully taking off David's jacket and giving it back to him. You could tell he wanted to tell you to keep it, and you knew why he couldn't. 

“Maybe you should win another match, take me out again.”

“It's a deal.”

📷

Going to matches became a weekly event. You and Pam would cheer and cling to each other, laughing at how silly you were being. You took pictures for yourself, wanting to remember every moment. Afterwards you would meet David and Kevin, go for burgers and debrief on the match. 

It wasn't always easy for David to visit you, so you called each other when you could, spending an hour or two talking about anything and everything. You drove down to Denton a couple of times, meeting him for something to eat or just for a drive. 

He was always a perfect gentleman, opening doors for you and holding your hand, never pressing for anything more even though you suspected he was just as keen as you were to take things further.

You decided to nudge things in the right direction one night when you had gone down to visit him. Pam had come with you, and David and Kevin had taken you to the lake with their brother Mike, who you instantly adored. 

The afternoon was perfect, gorgeous hot weather and ice cold beers, floating along in the water and feeling like nothing else could possibly matter but being in that moment. 

You were sitting on the edge of the dock while the others drifted along on the huge rubber float, snapping a couple of shots of them before setting the camera aside. David appeared next to you, sitting down and resting his hand on your back. You leaned into the touch, his arm moving around your shoulders. 

“I love this,” You smiled softly, closing your eyes and letting out a breath. “If every day was like this..what a world.”

“It's perfect,” David murmured softly. “I can't think of anything better.”

“Hm, I reckon I can,” You smiled, opening your eyes and looking up at him. His eyes were already on you and you grinned as he took a breath and leaned in, his lips feeling like heaven against yours. 

You could hear the cheers and whistles, smiling into the kiss and feeling satisfied beyond belief. 

📷

“You ready for this?”

“Absolutely not. You?”

“Absolutely not.”

You flicked on the indicator and headed up the long drive to the Von Erich home, glancing over to Pam in the passenger seat.

“At least we're in this together.”

It was incredibly daunting, the thought of meeting David's parents and his brother Kerry, who had recently come home. He had told you countless times that they would love you, but it didn't ease your nerves. 

You were relieved to have Pam with you, that she was in the same boat. Mike met you both at the door, giving you both a hug and chatting away as he led you outside. 

It was a flurry of introductions, handshakes and hugs and the most perfect kiss from David that had you instantly relaxing.

By the time everyone sat down for dinner, it felt as though you had known the Von Erichs forever. The food was delicious, the weather was beautiful, the company was amazing. You felt David reach for your hand under the table when his parents talked about how they met, your heart swelling. 

When Doris forbade Mike from going to a gig that night, you glanced across the table to Pam smiling as she gave you a slight nod.

📷

“Alright, drive, drive!”.

You put your foot down, laughing as you glanced in the mirror and watched your boyfriend and his brothers gradually haul themselves into your truck. You turned the radio up when you left the driveway, rolling down the windows and cheering as you hit the road.

It didn't matter whose house the party was in, it was big and roomy and most importantly, fun. You had a beer in your hand before you knew it, hitting the makeshift dance floor. The brothers spun you and Pam around, laughter filling the air as you moved to the music, not a care in the world.

When Mike took to the stage with his band, you stood with David behind you, his arms wrapped around you. You all cheered as the song started up, swaying along as you held your hands over David's. 

Later in the evening you gently took David's hand and pulled him into a quiet corner, whispering in his ear and enjoying the slightly tipsy smile that crossed his face, a flash of worry passing his eyes.

You led him upstairs, finding an empty bedroom and closing the door.

“We..we don't have to,” David insisted as you slipped off your shoes. “I don't want you to feel pressured.”

“I don't,” You smiled, walking to the end of the bed and unzipping your dress before turning back to David. “But I will think you don't want to if you don't get over here in the next thirty seconds.”

He didn't need to be asked twice.

You laughed as you were picked up bridal style and carried to the top of the bed, letting out a soft moan as David laid you down and gave you a tender kiss.

Despite your suspicions that David was possibly a virgin, you didn't ask when he didn't bring it up. He was a little apprehensive, but once you took the lead he seemed to tap into his ring persona and the confidence in his movements had you struggling not to scream as your nails dug into his back, the sheets, your body crying out for more. 

“Oh god,” You moaned, touching David's cheek and looking up to meet his eyes as your legs hooked around his waist. “Baby..’m so close, please..”

You closed your eyes as he pushed deeper into you, his forehead resting against yours.

“Me too,” He murmured, his hand reaching for yours. “Fuck..fuck..I love you.”

Your eyes went wide at the confession, a deep moan spilling from your lips as you felt a wave crash over you, feeling David fill you moments later. You moved your hands to his neck, meeting his eyes and taking a deep breath. 

“I'm sorry,” He sighed, looking down. “I shouldn't have-this isn't the time..”

“No,” You insisted, a smile spreading on your face. “It's the perfect time. I love you, too.”

📷

“Mind if I get one of those?”

You turned around, letting out a sigh of relief as you spotted Kerry walking towards you. 

“Of course,” You smiled, taking the box of cigarettes from your purse and handing it over. “Thought you were David for a second.”

Kerry laughed as he accepted the box, shaking his head.

“Nah, your secret is safe with me. Just needed one huh?”

“Yeah,” You nodded, flicking away the ash. “I'm so nervous. I don't know why, it's not like I have to walk down the aisle in front of hundreds of people wearing this,” You raised a brow, gesturing to your dress.

As much as you adored Pam, and as thrilled as you were that she was getting married and had asked you to be her maid of honor, you did not exactly love the dress she had chosen. For a start, it was a mix of dusky pink and peach, the skirt was so big you wondered if you fit down the aisle, and the sleeves were almost the size of your head.

“I feel you,” Kerry nodded, looking down at himself as he lit his cigarette. “I think we all feel a little ridiculous. But you know the worst part?”

“Go on,” You smiled, lifting up the puffball that had slipped down your shoulder. “shock me.”

“I gotta do this three more times,” Kerry sighed, lightly prodding the flower attached to his suit. “At least you get to choose your wedding dress. I'm stuck in velvet hell.”

You laughed, shaking your head and taking a drag on your cigarette. 

“Oh come on, it ain't so bad. I think I heard Mike say he would never have velvet.”

“Really?” Kerry raised a brow, looking over to you. 

“Promise,” You grinned, holding your hand over your heart. “He said he'd have velour.”

“Oh fuck off,” Kerry laughed, shaking his head and holding his hand out. “Gimme a mint and get out of here, I'll velour you.”

“I'd like to see you try,” You laughed, getting a mint from your purse and flicking your cigarette away before walking over to Kerry. “See you inside. Don't destroy that flower.”

📷

“Isn't she beautiful?” You smiled, watching Pam and Kevin sway on the dancefloor, smiles etched on their faces as they moved to the music. 

You felt the urge to take a photo, but a professional had been hired for the day. Pam had insisted she wanted you to be in the pictures, not the one behind the camera. You had been a little disappointed, but you gave her the photo you'd taken from when she and Kevin had first met, and her reaction made it all worth it.

“She really is,” Doris nodded, looking over to you and taking your hand with a smile. “And you will be too.”

“Thank you,” You smiled, giving her a kiss on the cheek. “Let me go get us another drink.”

You stood up, making your way over to the bar with a smile. While you and David weren't officially engaged, it was kind of an unspoken truth that when Pam and Kevin had gotten married, David would propose to you next. Kerry wasn’t seeing anyone, and while Mike was dating a girl, they had only been together a few weeks.

So, you knew you were next up.

As you waited for your drinks, you smiled as you felt a familiar presence by your side.

“Have I told you how beautiful you look today?”

“Yes,” You grin, turning to face David and giving him a kiss. “But I don't mind hearing it again.”

As the song ended and a new one started up, more guests took to the floor.

“Should we go for a twirl?” David asked, gently stroking your cheek. “or maybe not quite a twirl, that dress will take out anyone who comes close,” He teased.

“Oh shut up,” You laughed, lightly swatting him. “I'm getting your mom a drink, if I don't take you out first.”

“I'll take it to her,” David smiled, leaning down to give you a soft kiss. “Then you owe me a dance.”

📷

So, here it is. 

The big day. 

You thought at times it would never come, but it's here. 

A lot has happened, of course. Weddings need buildup, after all. The guests can only talk about how beautiful you look and wonder who did the food for so long. You gotta give them something. 

So what's new? It's been a minute, a luxuriously long engagement. 

The Von Erichs have gone from strength to strength, reaching the top of the wrestling game. You still go see matches, when you can. They're global now, you always feel a rush of pride when you watch them on TV at some crazy hour.

Pam is a world class veterinarian, an incredible mother to the most gorgeous baby, and still the best friend in the world. 

Kevin won the WHC belt, is the most devoted husband, father, brother, brother-in-law and son. He and Pam keep saying they're going to buy a ranch in Hawaii for everyone to live in, and you like to think maybe it could be true.

Kerry insists he's your favorite brother-in-law, and you insist that you couldn't possibly choose a favorite but deep down you think he's most likely right. He makes you laugh the most, teases you and makes stupid jokes to cheer you up when you need it. The two of you have sneaky cigarettes and know what the other is thinking when you look at each other. 

Mike has just signed a recording contract with his band, and you tell him all the time he better come to you first with concert tickets. He's going to be the next one engaged, he's so loved up and it's adorable. 

Then there's David. 

The yellow rose who called up six different newspapers just to ask you out, who let you into his life, who loves you unconditionally and makes you so unbelievably happy that you wonder what you ever did without him. You would never have pursued your dreams without him and his family, that's something you know. And let's not forget his proposal, which was the most beautiful moment of your life.

David had taken you on a surprise trip one night, insisting that you were just going for a drive after you'd been out for dinner, but you knew it wasn't true. You found yourself at the lake, David's hand in yours as you walked down to the dock, which..was decorated with candles in jars, rose petals, a bottle of champagne sitting in ice. 

Knowing that you were marrying your soulmate, joining a family you loved deeply, it made you feel so safe, so secure. You quit your job, deciding to pursue your real passion. You bought a gallery in Dallas, and displayed your own work along with other local artists, including your soon to be mother in law. It took time, but it's become a success, and you don't care what any of them say, you couldn't have done it without your family.

Plenty for the guests to talk about, right?

You take a deep breath as you step out of the car, Pam fixes your dress and you take a deep breath. Her dress is beautiful, and most importantly, simple. 

Before you know it you're walking down the aisle, your heart beating faster as hundreds of faces smile at you, but there's only one you need to see, and when you do it makes everything okay. 

You reach the top of the aisle, feeling overwhelmed with love, beaming as you turn to look at your soon to be husband.

“You know it's a bad habit to leave the bride with a veil over her face,” You grinned, watching David gently touch the hem of the silky veil and carefully move it back, a wide smile on his face.

“I do apologize,” He grinned. “Still gonna marry me?”

“Of course,” You smiled. “You look perfect from this angle.”

[petty-crush]

“Iron Claw” (2023)

-This film’s strengths lie in two areas irresistible to me; the ballad of macho tears let loose and invigorating ensemble acting

-the legendary wrestling family, the Von Erich’s, is spotlighted in this very new Hollywood type film

+it is somewhat sloppy, somewhat rambling, but contains great moments of emotional power that sneak up on you and makes you desperately interested in watching it again

-think “Shampoo” or “Last Detail”. Actually there is a very Hal Ashby type vibe to this film. Which is awesome

-actor Zac Efron is really moving(as Kevin von Erich), the entire film he so desperately wants to emotionally unload and escape, and when he reaches the end of this film it is utterly disarming

-before that, a moment of true joy happens when the brothers get together in the ring, and the grin on my face as (the band) Rush is needle dropped into this film was truly as big as the state of Texas

-there is a considerable dark undercurrent to Kerry Von Erich, and actor Jeremey Allen White uses his sad puppy dog eyes and longing pauses to dive deep

-for me, one of the best, most tender moments happens between Kevin and David Von Erich (Harris Dickinson) at the former’s wedding. They share a sweet bond, about the brutality of their father, the championship belt, and the strain of the wrestler’s life.

+it’s moments like this that unspool our emotions to let the following scenes really have their impact

-the intent with the wrestling scenes is to make them sweaty, up close, full of pain when you least expect it. No matter now predetermined the results, the body keeps the score

-“live that way forever” (made especially for this film) by Richard Reed & Little Scream is a solid entry in the film songs catalogue. It perfectly captures the music that will be unheard in a person’s heart

-said song is glued to Mike Von Erich (Stanley Simons) who seems to take the brunt of his father’s crushing disapproval (and he has quite a bit to go around)

-the iron claw in question is not just a finishing move but an apt description of the hold the dad has over the whole family and their nerves

-full credit to Holy McCallany, he never shrinks from showcasing father Fritz Von Erich’s ugly side while making it clearly possible to see how such a human being could become so self damaged and bitter

-possibly the best shot in the entire film is where all the boys and the dad are in the ring, and the camera very slowly zooms in from the rafters.

+The father is detailing all his plans for his kids, and since the camera is one shot, we see all the boys reaction in real time in same frame, the gravity weighing down on their souls as each gets their own verbal dead end contract

-in years to come this will definitely be a film people bond to, despite the heavy tragedy, because what each actor brings to the group, representing a different feeling

-there is poetry in the final scene, a delicate balance that erupts in full power, even if it only ripples to the surface

-what I love about it is how the kids factor in, with their own kid logic.

-a man sees his children playing together, he can’t help but cry. As his children check in, he apologies for shedding tears, echoing what his emotionally illiterate father taught him. The child chimes back “what are you talking about? We cry all the time!”

Somewhat startled, the man lets the children know how he misses his brothers. And then, perfectly delivered, “that’s ok, dad. We’ll be your brothers now”

What a moment. What a force of exhale, the body removes a piece of glass and then it starts to heal (metaphorically).

And then they play catch.

-I really loved this film. I want to watch it again. I accept its flaws, like I accept the characters, because they are not their mistakes. Not a dealbreaker. They live, and that’s more than enough. From now to Forever.

[silveragelovechild]

A few months ago I saw a photo of Zac Efron and I thought he looked awful. The normally good looking dude had a bloated face and his lips looked liked they were about to burst with too much filler.

Well, I’ve learned that photo must have been taken during the production of his new movie “The Iron Claw”. Efron must have been bulking up to play professional wrestler Kevin Von Erich.

The movie a “based on the true story” of the Von Erich brothers, wrestlers who are beset by one tragedy after another.

Efron plays Kevin Von Erich, the second born son. He’s good in this dramatic role and he’s a better actor than his Himbo resume suggests. But he hasn’t abandon fans of his Himbo persona - Efron often appears on screen shirtless, just wearing speedo style wrestling briefs.

But I didn’t think the movie was entirely successful. The movie recounts the various injuries, deaths, and suicides of Kevin Von Erich’s brothers. But they are often depicted off screen and in quick succession. As I watched, I thought it was sad, but I didn’t feel sad.

The film doesn’t delve too deeply into the cause of the tragedies. The most obvious culprit is what looks like the loveless environment the brothers were raised. Sure, the boys often talk about how much they love their parents and each other. But the parents come across as emotionless zombies.

Father Fritz (played by Holt McCallany from the series “Mindhunter”) ranks his sons by his “favorites”. He’s another one of those stage mothers who failed in achieving his own dream so he spends the rest of his life driving his sons to achieve it for him. His love comes with conditions that his sons can’t meet.

Mother Doris (played by Maura Tierney) is no better. Kevin asks his mom to intervene when he thinks the father is too hard on a younger brother Mike (played by Stanley Simons). Her answer is that the brothers need to work it out themselves (she’s too busy getting ready to go to church). Later she tells her sons that god loves them - but it’s substitute for real affection.

Another force behind the “curse” is depression that must run in the family. The brothers are told not to cry at a brother’s funeral. So they suppress their emotions, but the impact of the loss didn’t go away. Then when suicide is added to the mix, it plants the seed of possible escape for their unhappiness. (BTW, the movie doesn’t include the actual youngest brother Chris who also died by suicide).

As Kevin falls further down in order of his father’s “favorite” ranking, I kept wanting him to quit his career as a professional wrestler. I wanted him to take his wife and children as far away as possible from his emotionally stunted parents and away from professional wrestling. I think the artificiality of professional wrestling was a major contributor of the Von Erich curse, with its preordained outcomes, focus on brutality, and the condoning taking of steroids. But he didn’t. Three of Kevin’s children became professional wrestlers as well.

A couple additional notes:

Brother Kerry is played by Jeremy Allen White who stars in the TV series “The Bear”. I haven’t watched it (I don’t subscribe to Hulu) and I was curious what he was like as a performer. The jury is out…

Brother David is played by Harris Dickinson. I saw him in 2022’s “Triangle of Sadness” and did not recognize him. He was good but the curse got him too early in the film.

At some point an onscreen title mentions Kevin Von Erich is 6’2” tall. I had a silent chuckle because Efron is only 5’8”. Kerry Von Erich was also 6’2” but Jeremy Allen White is even shorter at 5’7”.

Harris Dickson and Stanley Simons, who play brothers David and Mike, are 6’2” and 6’1” respectively. This explains why Efron and White needed to sit on the fence for this publicity shot.

The real Von Erich brothers:

[hypeonmovies]

The Iron Claw

At first glance, The Iron Claw presents itself as a coming of age story about a wrestling family. Four brothers following in the footsteps of their former wrestler father and finding their own place within the industry. The first 30 minutes of the film exemplifies this plot and provides a sense of joy, but this only foreshadows the tragic events that would occur. Writer/director Sean Durkin excels in creating a story that shows both the brothers’ familial bond as well as the factors that lead to their downfall.

Firstly, one of the biggest takeaways from the film are the actors’ performances. Zac Efron takes the reins as the leading man and fulfills the responsibilities of his role. The audience follows him from his wrestling days with his brothers to his journey to becoming a family man and father. Not only is it clear that Efron buffed up for the role, but his performance from excited for the future to grief ridden is superb. The roles of all of the brothers- Harris Dickinson’s David, Jeremy Allen White’s Kerry, and Stanley Simons’ Mike- also greatly display the transition of ambitious performers to tortured souls. Holt McCallany’s performance as the patriarch, Fritz Von Erich, is a notable performance as well showing how the father’s own personal goals overshadowed the health and wellbeing of his sons.

Another takeaway from the film are the cinematography and sound. Both contribute most to the wrestling scenes. Every slam to the ring or the concrete is felt by the audience and every punch and kick dramatically overstated, so the audience feels as if they’re in the ring as well. The camera rotates in a way where every wrestler in the ring gets a good shot and every maneuver is clearly viewed. It’s as if you’re in the audience at the stadium watching them in real time. No move is lost especially the Von Erich’s signature move, the iron claw.

The film is not without its flaws. It glosses over some events quickly and doesn’t fully explain others. However, overall the story is clear. The story of a family torn apart by their ambition. An ambition that would lead to their downfall.

[themosleyreview]

The Mosley Review: The Iron Claw

A film based on a true story can be one of two sides of a coin. On one side, you can focus on the rise and success followed by the glitz and glamour and eventually the hard realities and eventual fall. One the other hand, you can focus on the personal life of the subject and lightly focus on the rise to fame, but push it aside to get more in depth with the subject's family. Well this film sits right on the spine of the coin. Yes it does primarily focuses on the real story of the Von Erich wrestling family, but also glosses over all of their achievements, accolades and stardom rather quickly. You almost don't really get a chance to see why they were considered to be one of the greatest families in the history of the sport. What you do get is the heartbreaking story of a family being led by someone that never left the past and pretty much forced their dream on their sons. What was fascinating is the depiction of the wrestling world almost being a co-antagonist to the life story of the Von Erich’s. The immersion into the psychologocial ramifications of the sport is explored in a sad way that we've seen in many other true stories and it leaves you in a more melancholy state throughout the film.

Zac Efron delivers a stirring and hard hitting performance as Kevin Von Erich. The amount of weight he bares of the family name in the world of wrestling was huge and you see first hand of how he tries to please his father's ambitions. You see the amount of pain he endures from the doubts that are placed upon him. His wrestling matches were the most intense and sometimes brutal and Zac shows great dramatic and athletic prowess. Harris Dickinson was great as his younger brother David Von Erich and I loved that he was the most charismatic one of the family. Harris had the most chemistry with Zac and their conversation in the bathroom scene one was one of their best moments together and his mic skills were excellent. Jeremy Allen White was strong as Kerry Von Erich and loved his dedication. He accurately portrays that desperation to hang on to whatever athleticism he has left after a possible debilitating injury. The amount of sorrow in his eyes was heartbreaking as his story progressed. Stanley Simons was so heartfelt and innocent as Mike Von Erich. He nailed that boyish charm and joy of playing music instead of following the family business. He was truly the most lovable and hardest to watch as he should've never been in the ring. Lily James is always great and she was great as Kevin's love interest Pam Adkisson. The moment Pam and Lilly meet, you could see the sparks between them fly as her flirtation turned into pure love even with Kevin's awkwardness. Maura Tierney was absolutely wonderful as their mother Doris Von Erich. You see the love she has for her family in a fantastic dinner scene. She bears the heaviest amount of emotional weight as the family curse strikes and it was very hard to watch. The stairs scene really hit me. Holt McCallany was great and truly toxic as their father Fritz Von Erich. He was an excellent businessman and the amount of motivation he would give to his sons was great, but horrible at the same time. He never really let go of his dream and became more of a coach and less of a father. Holt nailed that horrific nature of a person past their prime and delivered a performance that is in the lexicon of great villains. Aaron Dean Eisenberg was outstanding as Ric Flair and he nailed his eccentric, larger than life, and villainous persona.

The score by Richard Reed Parry was good when present and added to the heartfelt moments and sadness to the more somber scenes. The wrestling sequences were shot very well and I liked the sort of Creed approach where you are in the ring with the characters. It was immersive and sometimes jarring since the main focus wasn't really about the showmanship. That's where I felt this film lacked. It was a great study on the family, but I think this held back by its runtime. I really wanted to connect a little more with each brother and truly delve into the reason why they were considered one of the greatest wrestling families in the industry. The performances were outstanding across the board and although this may not be the greatest wrestling film ever made, but it sure is up there. Perhaps this would’ve been a better miniseries than a film. Let me know what you thought of the film or my review of the film. Thanks for reading!

[reelreviewing]

Iron Claw (2023) - Review

Director: Sean Durkin | 2h 12mins | Drama, Biography, Sport

The true story of the Von Erich family who had a meteoric rise in the world of professional wrestling during the 1980’s. 

There have been very few films based on pro wrestling and even fewer true stories. Fighting With My Family is the most notable one to date in which we were given a lighter approach to the illusive and secretive world that has so many fans. It’s actually quite shocking considering the amount of tragedy and controversy the industry has produced throughout its history, but the story of the Von Erich brothers is one of the more heartbreaking stories there is, something that director Sean Durkin is eager to explore in The Iron Claw. 

The film takes place across a number of years and follows the meteoric rise of Kevin, Kerry, David and Mike as well as their fathers no-tears approach to success and eventually, loss. As a true story it’s overwhelming just how much pain one family can suffer, but the script by Durkin challenges toxic masculinity and the pressure of living up to parental expectations – making it far more than your average tear-jerker. Instead of showing us tragedy after tragedy there is a distinct exploration of old-fashioned attitudes and the emotional toll they can take even on the strongest family units.

The bond between the four brothers is instant, even through all the rough-housing and sibling squabbles there are heaps of compassion coming from each one of them. It’s down to the great casting, Zac Efron, Jeremy Allen White, Harris Dickinson and Stanley Simon all fit the physical and psychological mould of their characters. Despite such a rigorous upbringing by their ruthless Farther and somewhat ignorant Mother, they still find love and empathy towards each other – creating a bond that only heightens the real-life tragedy being portrayed.

Durkin’s previous film The Nest was similarly full of great performances, but while that film softly captured its tension and mood effortlessly, the one thing The Iron Claw lacks is a little subtlety. It has to be said that there are glimmers of brilliance that Durkin offers us, whether it be the simple spillage of blood or the slight shift in movement to reveal the true gravity of a situation, but in its overarching story of toxic masculinity it struggles to find a way to say “it’s ok to cry” without any words at all. Even in spite of this though, you have to commend Zac Efron for his valiant performance as the eldest brother Kevin Von Erich.

The physical criteria has never been an issue for Efron, who’s physique is just as impressive as most professional wrestlers, but his ability to wear his heart on his sleeve while never actually showing any signs of emotion is one of the films biggest triumphs. It’s certainly a career best for the star and if anyone needs any more proof of his acting ability you may look no further. 

As for the wrestling itself, in which the families life was constantly entwined, cinematographer Mátyás Erdély eloquently captures the heavy-lit ring with fantastic composure. It instantly reminds you of the great work done in Aronofsky’s The Wrestler, not just capturing a sport but the people who are truly sacrificing it all to be there. 

Fans of pro wrestling will be salivating at the idea of tearing this film apart for inconsistencies, but as a cinematic narrative it’s handled with great depth and delicacy. Even if its themes hit you over the head harder than a stiff chair shot, there is a hope we will get to see more fascinating stories of this industry told with The Iron Claw’s level of creativity.

4/5

[frontproofmedia]

Dolo Flicks: Initial Reaction - The Iron Claw: Sean Durkin Brings the Tragic Story of the Von Erich's to Life

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By Hector Franco

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Published: January 08, 2024

Sean Durkin Brings the Tragic Story of the Von Erich's to Life

Few activities in the world can tell a story like professional wrestling. Perhaps none puts tales of tragedy at its forefront quite like it. 

Director and writer Sean Durkin tells the story of the Von Erich wrestling family with The Iron Claw. The movie is just as much a Greek tragedy out of Texas as a movie about wrestling. The film stars Zac Efron, Jeremy Allen White, Harris Dickinson, Maura Tierney, Stanley Timons, Holt McCallany and Lily James. 

The film's narrative is told from the perspective of Kevin Von Erich (Zac Efron), following his journey through wrestling and each tragic passing of one of his brothers. From a technical standpoint, the film has few flaws, with outstanding performances from the entire ensemble. Efron, Allen White, and McCallany are the standouts and carry the majority of the film. McCallany, specifically, as the head of the family and father Fritz Von Erich, is a man who wants to see his family succeed, and his overbearing toughness leads his children to do almost anything to prove themselves to him to their detriment. 

The film is set primarily in the 1970s and 80s and does its best to convey the level of popularity the Von Erichs had in Texas in the era of the state territories. However, how wrestling is viewed today is vastly different than it was in the 70s and 80s. Thus, the magnitude of how significant or massive some events were to the wrestling world takes a back seat.

"When you're trying to get a film made, you have to separate it at some point and say, 'These are characters on a page, and this is a film,' Durkin told the LA Times. There's no way you're going to fully capture the life of a person in a film. You have to make difficult choices to try and get to something truthful, representative, or emotional that reflects the core of the journey you're choosing to tell within this family.

"Ultimately, the story, in order to make a movie about it, was about Kevin's survival. So it's about making difficult choices that service the movie about Kevin's survival, which is the core that I chose to tell."

The actual wrestling performed in the film is a highlight. Under the guidance of former professional wrestler Chavo Guerrero as the movie's stunt wrestling coordinator, who himself comes from a historic wrestling family, the wrestling shown looks and feels authentic. Guerrero has previously worked on other wrestling-related shows, such as Netflix's GLOW and NBC's Young Rock. Part of what gave the action in the film such authenticity is that Durkin chose to film the wrestling similar to an actual wrestling match. The matches were shot in front of a live audience in one-take sequences.

One scene, in particular, shows Kevin Von Erich (Zac Efron) backstage for an interview to promote an upcoming match. This scene conveys how impromptu these interviews truly are, with David Von Erich (Harris Dickinson) behind the camera mocking his brother. 

Surprisingly, when it comes to the portrayal of wrestlers, two stick out negatively: Harley Race (Kevin Anton) and Ric Flair (Aaron Dean Eisenberg). Getting actors that can not only physically pull off looking like the two wrestling icons but also sound like them while exhibiting their mannerisms would have been difficult. Regardless, what made the final cut comes off as a caricature and a lousy impression of both. 

There aren't many aspects of The Iron Claw that one can criticize. Yet, for a film that focuses entirely on one family and one man's relationship with his brothers, it's surprising that one brother was left completely out of the movie without mention. Also, some of the events are altered or combined for one character. It's a possibility that adding more tragedy to an already tragic-filled story could have ruined or slowed down the film's pacing. Choosing to bypass one of the deaths is bewildering, but it doesn't lessen the blow of the deaths shown throughout the film. 

Films have attempted to visualize the afterlife since the beginning of cinema. Durkin's approach in juxtaposing the devastation of suicide followed by a joyful reunion in the afterlife is stunning and will bring tears to the eyes of even a man like Fritz Von Erich. After Kerry Von Erich's passing, he is shown on a boat with his fallen brothers waiting on the dock to reunite with him. It's simple and all the more touching as it brings a moment of happiness to a film that has slowly seen the downfall of a family and a wrestling dynasty. 

One doesn't have to be a fan of professional wrestling to enjoy the story of the Von Erich family. For anyone who has brothers or has lost a family member, there is a level of catharsis in watching the film. Professional wrestling has so many stories ranging from tragic to extraordinary. Sean Durkin's telling of the Von Erichs could open the door for more to be told.

4/5****

(Featured Photo: Eric Chakeen and A24)

[byneddiedingo]

William Holden and Gloria Swanson in Sunset Blvd. (Billy Wilder, 1950)

Cast: William Holden, Gloria Swanson, Erich von Stroheim, Nancy Olson, Fred Clark, Lloyd Gough, Jack Webb, Franklyn Farnum, Larry J. Blake, Charles Dayton, Cecil B. DeMille, Hedda Hopper, Buster Keaton, Anna Q. Nilsson, H.B. Warner, Ray Evans, Jay Livingston. Screenplay: Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, D.M. Marshman Jr. Cinematography: John F. Seitz. Art direction: Hans Dreier, John Meehan. Film editing: Arthur P. Schmidt. Music: Franz Waxman.

Sunset Blvd., with the abbreviation, is the "official" title because it's the only way we see it in the credits of the film: as a shot of the street name stenciled on a curb. So from the beginning we are all in the gutter, and later we are looking at the stars -- or at least one fading star, Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson). Accepting the role of Norma was a truly courageous act by Swanson: She must have known that it was the part of a lifetime, but that posterity would remember her as the campy has-been silent star, and not as the actress who had a long and distinguished career, playing both comedy and drama with equal skill, or as the spunky title character of Sadie Thompson (Raoul Walsh, 1928), which earned her her first Oscar nomination. The role of Norma Desmond might have won her an Oscar if it hadn't been for another star whose career was beginning to fade: Bette Davis, who was nominated for All About Eve (Joseph L. Mankiewicz). The conventional wisdom has it that Swanson and Davis split the votes, allowing Judy Holliday to win for Born Yesterday (George Cukor). This was also a landmark film for William Holden, who had been a sturdy but unremarkable leading man until his performance as Joe Gillis established his type: the somewhat cynical, morally compromised protagonist. It would earn him an Oscar three years later for another Wilder film, Stalag 17 (1953), and would be his stock in trade through the rest of his career, in films like Picnic (Joshua Logan, 1955), The Bridge on the River Kwai (David Lean, 1957), The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah, 1969), and Network (Sidney Lumet, 1976). Holden almost didn't get to play Gillis; Montgomery Clift was offered the role but backed out. One story has it that Clift thought the role, of a man out to get the money of a woman he doesn't love, was too much like one he had just played, in The Heiress (William Wyler, 1949), while others have said that he turned it down because the story of a man's affair with an older woman would remind people of his own earlier affair with the singer Libby Holman, 16 years his senior. There is in fact an unfortunate whiff of sexism in Wilder's treatment of the age difference between Norma Desmond and Joe Gillis -- Norma is said to be 50, which was Swanson's age when the film was made, while Holden, who was 32, was made up to look even younger. Wilder, it must be observed, seemed to have no problems when the age difference was reversed, as in his 1954 film Sabrina, in which a 54-year-old Humphrey Bogart romances a 25-year-old Audrey Hepburn, or the 1957 Love in the Afternoon, with 28-year-old Hepburn and 56-year-old Gary Cooper. None of this, however, seriously detracts from the fact that Sunset Blvd. remains one of the great movies, with its its superb black-and-white cinematography by John F. Seitz. It won Oscars for the mordant screenplay by Wilder, Charles Brackett, and D.M. Marshman Jr., the art direction and set decoration of Hans Dreier, John Meehan, Sam Comer, and Ray Moyer, and the score by Franz Waxman. It's also one of the few films to receive nominations in all four acting categories: In addition to Swanson and Holden, Nancy Olson and Erich von Stroheim received supporting player nominations, but none of them won.

[introvertguide]

Influential Directors of the Silent Film Era

Upon hearing that I am a fan of silent era film, people will ask if I have a favorite actor or movie from the time period. However, when I am asked about my favorites from other fans of silent film, it tends to involve my favorite director. This is because silent film actors had to over gesticulate and performed in an unrealistic way and could not use their tone or words to convey emotion. The directors also did not have a way to review as they shot and would have to use editing skills and strategic cover shots to make sure that everything was done properly and come out the way they imagined it. It was up to the director to be creative and they were forced to be innovative and create ways to convey their vision. Luckily for many average or poor directors of the time, audiences were easily impressed. However, today's more demanding and sophisticated audiences can look back at some of the genius behind the films of silent era Hollywood.

Alice Guy-Blache: Matrimony's Speed Limit (1913) and The Fairy of the Cabbages (1896)

Art director of the film studio The Solax Company, the largest pre-Hollywood movie studio, and camera operator for the France based Gaumont Studio headed up by Louis Lemiere, this woman was a director before any kind of gender expectations were even established. She was a pioneer of the use of audio recordings in conjunction with images and the first filmmaker to systematically develop narrative filming. Guy-Blanche didn't just record an image but used editing and juxtaposition to reveal a story behind the moving pictures. In 1914, when Hollywood studios hired almost exclusively upper class white men as directors, she famously said that there was nothing involved in the staging of a movie that a woman could not do just as easily as a man.

Charlie Chaplin: The Kid (1921), The Gold Rush (1923), City Lights (1931), Modern Times (1936), and The Great Dictator (1940)

It is unfortunate that many people today think of Chaplin as silly or for screwball comedy when, in fact, he was a great satirist of the time. He created his comedy through the eyes of the lower economic class that suffered indignities over which they had no control. He traversed the world as his "Tramp" character who found his fortune by being amiable and lucky. The idea that a good attitude and a turn of luck could result in happiness was all that many Americans had during the World Wars and the Great Depression. He played the part of the sad clown and he was eventually kicked out of the country for poking fun at American society. Today he is beloved for his work, but he was more infamous than famous during a large part of his life.

Buster Keaton: Sherlock Jr. (1924), The General (1926), and The Cameraman (1928).

That man that performed the most dangerous of stunts with a deadpan expression, Buster Keaton was a great actor, athlete, stuntman, writer, producer, and director. It is amazing that you could get so much emotion out of a silent actor who does not emote, but Keaton managed to do it. He was also never afraid to go big, often putting his own well being at risk to capture a good shot. Not as well known for his cinematography or editing as many of the other directors of the time, he instead captured performances that were amazing no matter how they were filmed. Famous stunts include the side of a house falling down around him, standing on the front of a moving train, sitting on the side rail of a moving train, and grabbing on to a speeding car with one hand to hitch a ride. If you like films by Jackie Chan, know that he models his films after the work of Buster Keaton: high action and high comedy.

Cecil B. Demille: The Cheat (1915), Male and Female (1919), and The Ten Commandments (1923)

Known as the father of the Hollywood motion picture industry, Demille was the first director to make a real box office hit. He is likely best known for making The Ten Commandments in 1923 and then remaking it again in 1956. If not that, he was also known for his scandalous dramas that depicted women in the nude. This was pre-Code silent film so the rules about what could be shown had not been established. Demille made 30 large production successful films in the silent era and was the most famous director of the time which gave him a lot of freedom. His trademarks were Roman orgies, battles with large wild animals, and large bath scenes. His films are not what most modern film watchers think of when they are considering silent films. That famous quote from the movie Sunset Boulevard in 1950 in which the fading silent actress says "All right, Mr. Demille. I'm ready for my close-up," is referring to this director.

D.W. Griffith: Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916)

Griffith started making films in 1908 and put out just about everything that he recorded. He made 482 films between 1908 and 1914, although most of these were shorts. His most famous film today is absolutely Birth of a Nation and it is one of the most outlandishly racist films of the time. The depiction of black Americans as evil and the Klu Klux Klan as heroes who are protecting the nation didn't even really go over well at that time. Some believe that his follow up the next year called Intolerance was an apology, but the film actually addresses religious and class intolerance and avoids the topic of racism. At the time, Griffith films were known for the massive sets and casts of thousands of extras, but today he is known for his racist social commentary.

Sergei Eisenstein: Battleship Potemkin (1925)

This eccentric Russian director was a pioneer of film theory and the use of montage to show the passage of time. His reputation at the time would probably be similar to Tim Burton or maybe David Lynch. He had a very specific strange style that made his films different from any others. The film Battleship Potemkin is considered to be one of the best movies of all time as rated by Sight and Sound, and generally considered as a great experimental film that found fame in Hollywood as well as Russia.

F.W. Murnau: Nosferatu (1922), Faust (1926), and Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927)

I think that most people would know the bald-headed long-nailed vampire Nosferatu that was a silent era phenomena. It was so iconic that the German film studio that produced the movie was sued by the estate of Bram Stoker and had to close. Faust was his last big budget German film and has an iconic shot of the demon Mephisto raining plague down on a town that was the inspiration for the Demon Mountain in Fantasia (1940). Also, Sunrise is considered one of the best movies of all time by the AFI and by Sight and Sound as well as my favorite silent film. Fun facts: 1) more of Murnau's films have been lost then are still watchable and 2) he died in a car wreck at only 40 when he hired a car to drive up the California coast and the driver was only 14.

Erich von Stroheim: Greed (1924)

Maker of very strange German Expressionist films, Stroheim films are often listed as Horror or Mystery even though he considered himself a dramatic film maker. His most famous movie Greed was supposed to be amazing with an 8 hour run time but it was cut drastically to the point that it makes no sense and was both critically and publicly panned when an extremely abridged version was released in the U.S. Over half the film was lost and a complete version no longer exists. Besides this film, Stroheim was even better known for being the butler in the film Sunset Boulevard as a former director who retired to be with an aging silent film star. He also made a movie called Between Two Women (1937) that told the story of a female burn victim that was inspired by the story of his wife being burned in an explosion in a shop on the actual Sunset Boulevard.

Victor Fleming: The Wizard of Oz (1939) and Gone With the Wind (1939)

Although not known for his silent films, Fleming did get his start during the silent era. He was a cinematographer for D.W. Griffith and then Fleming directed his first film in 1919. Most of his silent films were swashbuckling action movies with Douglas Fairbanks or formulaic westerns. He is the only director to have two films on the AFI top 10 and they happened to have come out the same year.

Hal Roach: Lonesome Luke films starring Harold Lloyd, Our Gang shorts, Laurel and Hardy shorts, and Of Mice and Men (1939)

It is not really fair to put Hal Roach in the silent era directors because he was influential at the time but he had a 75 year career. He was a producer and film studio head and even had a studio named after himself. His biggest contribution to the silent era was his production of Harold Lloyd short comedies and he continued to produce films in the early talkies including Laurel and Hardy shorts, Our Gang shorts, and Wil Rogers films. Roach was the inspiration for the film Sullivan's Travels, in which a famous director who only did frivolous comedies goes out into the world to find inspiration to find a serious drama. Roach did direct a single serious drama, Of Mice and Men, but it came out in 1939 and was buried underneath the works of Victor Fleming. The wealthy cigar smoking studio head that many people think of when they picture a film studio suit is based on this guy. The man would not quit and stayed in the business into his 90s and lived to the ripe old age of 100.

[wrestlingwithhistory]

A Gentleman Never Tells - Chris Adams

Gentleman Chris Adams is a name that many people miss when they talk about wrestlers from the UK who not only did good business in the US during the 80’s but helped to train some of the biggest names in professional wrestling during the 90’s and helped to bring to light one of the most popular finishers in the industry today.

Chris Adams was born in Rugby, Warwickshire on 10th February 1955 and from a young age was involved in competitive Judo, which he continued training in exclusively for around 14 years which he earned a Black Belt in the discipline. Both he and his brother Neil competed in national and world championships, with Neil actually winning a silver medal in the 1980 and 1984 Olympics. Chris was a member of the 1976 Olympic team but never competed for Great Britain.

Chris Adams began taking part in Professional Wrestling in 1978. He had no formal training in wrestling and used his expertise in Judo in his early years of wrestling. He worked with Joint Promotions and appeared on ITV’s World of Sport regularly taking on the likes on Mark ‘Rollerball’ Rocco, Dynamite Kid, Fit Finlay, Adrian Street and Davey Boy Smith. His finishing move, originally called ‘the Judo Kick’ was later renamed a ‘Superkick’ and is still used by many professional wrestlers today.

By 1983, Adams was approached by Fritz Von Erich to work for World Class Championship Wrestling and he officially joined on 15th April, 1983. During his time with WCCW, he feuded with many of the company’s big stars, from The Von Erichs to Ric Flair, and the Fabulous Freebirds. He was tag partners with Gino Hernandez and became the second iteration of The Dynamic Duo in 1985, where one of their most notable matches was a hair match against the Von Erichs which The Duo lost and were shaved in front of a rapturous crowd.

Chris was due to go into a feud with Gino going into 1986. They had worked an angle against The Cosmic Cowboys, who were actually Kevin and Kerry Von Erich in disguise. The finish to the match was Adams being blinded by hair cream that was thrown by Hernandez, resulting in a loss against the Cowboys. Chris used this time in the storyline to go back to the UK and visit him family, but during that time, on 2nd February 1986, Gino Hernandez died of a Cocaine Overdose. Adams was questioned by Scotland Yard about Gino’s death as authorities in Texas originally treated the incident as a homicide, but this was later changed to an Overdose by officials. There is still some scepticism over Hernandez death today.

Shortly after this, Adams started to become involved in a number of high-profile altercations, many of which would hamper his career despite his talent in the ring. In June of 1986 while travelling back from a show in Puerto Rico, Adams headbutted an Airline pilot and punched a male attendant. This resulted in a 90-day jail and a $500 fine. It is believed that Adams’ belligerence was a result of being denied alcohol by an FAA inspector and that he was restrained by Kevin Von Erich in the process. By September of 1986, Adams had left WCCW to join Bill Watts’ UWF but later returned to WCCW in 1987 as UWF was absorbed into the NWA.

In UWF, Adams became tag partners with Terry Taylor, known to many as The Red Rooster in WWF in later years. They later feuded and carried this back over into the newly acquired by NWA, WCCW. Over the next few years, Adams would find himself in the upper mid-card region of the company’s talent pool, competing against many of the companies’ big stars and also working with companies like Georgia Championship Wrestling and World Wrestling Alliance.

In 1988, Chris Adams opened his own training school based out of the world-famous Dallas Sportatorium. Two of his most popular students were Scott Hall/Razor Ramon and Stone-Cold Steve Austin. In 1989, Adams was arrested and sentenced to a year’s probation after his wife was found beaten after Adams had flown into a rage, again related to his Alcohol abuse. He was later involved in more legal troubles and again place don probation for 2 DUI arrests in 1991.

After the WCCW has ceased business in 1990, Adams returned to the independent circuit. He would visit numerous territories having matches for various championships during this time. He won the GWF Heavyweight Title on 2 occasions in 1994 and also a brief stint as the NWA Heavyweight champion in 1995 after Jim Crockett had taken control of the company.

He continued wrestling with various NWA affiliated territories and other independents up until joining WCW in 1997.

When joining WCW, Chris was placed into a British stable called The Blue Bloods alongside Lord Steven Regal (later William Regal) and Squire David Taylor. This stable was not together for very long due to some personal issues between Regal and Adams which hampered the stable from becoming credible in the eyes of the WCW officials. Adams wrestled against Randy Savage in the first match of WCW’s new midweek show, Thunder in 1998. Adams got a pinfall over Savage, but the decision was overturned by JJ Dillon after interference from Lex Luger swayed the match in Adams’ favour. He began to drop down the card, working as an enhancement for other talents to get victories over. He left the company in 1999 and returned to Texas where he began promoting shows and wrestling part time.

During his career, Adams unfortunately fell victim to a number of addictions, his first with Alcohol. David Manning said in the Documentary ‘Gentleman’s Choice’ that his Alcohol dependency was heightened after a flight cancellation due to unforeseen circumstances by the airline prompted them to offer a free bar to the wrestlers on the flight, not for a few drinks but for several hours until a flight was arranged for them.

Adams was also a heavy user of GHB, which at the time was being used by bodybuilders and wrestlers alike as an alternative to steroids but it did not have the same anabolic effects as steroids and left longer addictive tendencies with the users. Many of the people using them believed that the GHB worked while they slept.

Adams and his then girlfriend Linda Kaphengst overdosed on a combination of alcohol and GHB in April 2000. Adams survived, but Kaphengst was not so lucky. The overdose starved her brain of oxygen and her family were told that should she survive, she would likely have long term brain trauma. A few hours later, her situation worsened, and her family had to make the difficult to turn off her breathing apparatus.

Adams was not originally suspected in any foul play at the time of the incident and went on to marry again in August 2001, but an intoxicated and threatening voicemail left on answer machine to Pam Hernandez stating that if she did not stop meddling in his affairs then she would ‘end up like Linda’. This voicemail was brought to the Homicide team dealing with Linda’s death and Chris was indicted on a manslaughter charge.

He was due to be indicted but the day before his hearing, he was fatally shot in the chest during a drunken fight with a close friend Brent ‘Booray’ Parnell on October 7th, 2001. Booray claimed self-defence, stating that Adams snapped off a piece of bedframe and tried to attack him with it. Booray claims in the documentary ‘Gentleman’s Choice’ that he does not know the reason for Adams’ behaviour at the time, other than asking him to keep the noise down as his mother was sleeping in the next room. He said that his eyes were black and almost demonic at the time of the fight, which is a known side effect of the drug GHB.

Booray was cleared of all charges against him as acting in self-defence.

Adams, although a clean-cut Olympic prospect from the UK, fell victim to the harsh lifestyles of living on the road as a professional wrestler. Though many still speak of him based on the poor choices he made during his life, many still speak of the apt moniker ‘Gentleman’ given to the late Judoka-turned-Wrestler.

His legacy of wrestling some of the sport’s greatest names in the 80’s and 90’s, training future hall of fame wrestlers and one of the UK’s least discussed exports is somewhat tarnished by his final days.

I have posted the link from Youtube to the 2008 documentary ‘Gentleman’s Choice’ below uploaded in full by The Hannibal TV.

If you have liked this post, please leave a review and follow for future posts.

Thanks!

https://youtu.be/-sgxAH47TsA

[chiseler]

Mitchell Leisen: How’s About It?

Mitchell Leisen was a major American film director. He belongs in the first rank, not the second tier, where he has often been placed by those who value the scripts he was given by Preston Sturges and Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett more than what he actually did with those scripts. Leisen’s name was usually written in sloping cursive in his opening credits, and that set the mood for what he had to offer. His was a gentle style, a deliberately unobtrusive style, smooth and gliding, attentive to nuances, visual and emotional.

Leisen made a point of nearly always moving the camera only when it is following a character who is moving right along with it, and the edits in his movies are as invisible as possible. He made three films that are undisputed classics: Easy Living (1937), written by Sturges, Midnight (1939), written by Wilder and Brackett, and Remember the Night (1939), written by Sturges. All three of these classic Leisen movies are partly about pretending to be something you’re not in order to move up or over into another social atmosphere or class and take on a new identity, and this theme is something that always interested Leisen particularly.

He got his start making costumes and dressing sets for Cecil B. DeMille, and he also made costumes for Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks. That training shows through in his later work, that sense of fantasy and beauty for its own sake. Leisen had a fetish for absolute authenticity when he did period pictures, and he took this fetish to nearly Erich Von Stroheim lengths if he had the money to spend. Remember the peacock headdress that he designed for Gloria Swanson in DeMille’s Male and Female (1919), or the sexy harem pants he put on Fairbanks for The Thief of Bagdad (1924), or the barely-there garments he designed for Claudette Colbert in The Sign of the Cross (1932) and you can get a first sense of Leisen’s aesthetic: hopeful, fantastical, erotic. And he was a pretender himself on some of these early movies because he was very skillful at making sets and crowd scenes look more opulent than they actually were given some of the budgets he had to work with.

He took the reins from nominal director Stuart Walker for two films that proved his range: Tonight Is Ours (1933), a high comedy that begins with a sexy masked ball, and The Eagle and the Hawk (1933), as grim and concentrated an anti-war film as you will find from this era. Leisen next graduated to prestige pictures like Cradle Song (1933) and Death Takes a Holiday (1934), with its high-flown Maxwell Anderson script. Leisen was fond of Death Takes a Holiday all his life, and he even wanted to re-make it in the late 1940s, but it has not held up as well as some of his lesser-known pictures from the 1930s.

After Murder at the Vanities (1934), a backstage movie with some odd musical numbers, Leisen took flight with three pictures that demonstrated the full scope of his talent. What makes a really great director, a major director? The ability to take a poor script, like the one Leisen was given for Behold My Wife! (1934), and make it into something that moves like a dream and seems inevitable. While you watch Behold My Wife!, there is a double consciousness of how outlandish and slapdash the plot and dialogue are and how Leisen transcends this through pacing, framing, and staging, so that there is always something to delight the eye. Leisen movies generally have a difficult-to-describe kind of creamy look, as if every person and table and chair were covered in the same sort of protective satin sheen.

He used a similarly fast, super-controlled pace for Four Hours to Kill! (1935), another backstage movie where Leisen himself plays the orchestra leader but you never see the numbers on stage. A kind of musical proto-noir, this movie depends on Richard Barthelmess, who is playing a criminal waiting to be taken to jail, and Leisen is alert to Barthelmess’s needs and sensitive to his big scene, where his character talks about his unhappy past. And then Leisen was given a script (by Norman Krasna) and two stars, Carole Lombard and Fred MacMurray, that were particularly congenial to his style, and the result was his first classic, Hands Across the Table (1935), a rather anguished comedy about love and the urge for security. Leisen had mastered form, and now he mastered the content that interested him, good-bad people navigating their own wants and desires and what they will do for them. For Leisen, mixed emotions are really the only emotions possible.

In all of his most characteristic films, Leisen’s characters are at a crisis point and need to decide to take a chance and see what they can get away with to become another version of themselves. There is lots of comedy in a situation like this, of course, but Leisen always hints at the dark underside of pretending. There is an American urge in these pictures that says, “What I say I am is what I am,” and that urge is usually naïve (think of early Joan Crawford heroines). Leisen looks at this urge from a height of sophistication, almost always warmly and tenderly, but sometimes he lets a really grim insight slip through. Think of Carole Lombard’s anti-social asides in Hands Across the Table, or that harrowing scene where Barbara Stanwyck goes home to her grudge-holding and cruelly puritanical mother in Remember the Night and you will feel the hurt that animates Leisen’s search for a created world of his own.

In many ways, the 1930s were Leisen’s best creative period, where he turned out beautifully balanced and finished entertainments like 13 Hours by Air (1936). He was a romantic who had a special way of visually enfolding the lovers in his movies that is almost Frank Borzage-like, and he glorifies very different women in what must be the best close-ups of their careers: look at some of the close-ups of the melancholy Sylvia Sidney in Behold My Wife! and then look at the close-ups of the wised-up Joan Bennett in 13 Hours by Air and see how Leisen gives them the same glamorizing treatment without ever losing what makes them so individual. Even pure assignments like Artists and Models Abroad (1938) glow with a kind of dreamlike assurance, as if to say, “Why shouldn’t a comedy look beautiful?”

And when Leisen had a meatier script, like Swing High, Swing Low (1937), which also starred Lombard and MacMurray, he was capable of virtuoso work that blended comedy and drama so seamlessly that it’s difficult to tell where one leaves off and the other begins. He did some Sturges-like slapstick for Easy Living, including the famous automat scene where the windows fly open and everybody grabs at the food, which was his idea. But for Remember the Night, Leisen pared down the Sturges script, cutting unnecessary scenes and verbose dialogue until he had what he wanted, a portrait of a hard-boiled woman who starts to long for the warmth of a “why not?” idealized mid-West home. Remember the Night is probably Leisen’s finest film, and a peak in his career, a comedy-drama or a dramatic comedy all whipped together until the consistency is exquisite and just right.

After the very sensitive Hold Back the Dawn (1941), a Wilder-Brackett script about a hard-boiled male gigolo (Charles Boyer) pretending to love a sheltered, repressed girl (Olivia de Havilland) until his feelings actually become genuine, Leisen’s career settled in for a few years to minor comedies, as if wartime austerity had affected his budgets, his scripts, and his imagination. In 1944, he did two movies in color, Lady in the Dark and Frenchman’s Creek, one anti-feminist and one feminist, and both rather nightmarishly disconnected and self-indulgent.

Leisen was going through a crisis in his personal life by the mid-1940s, and it showed in his work. He was mainly gay, but he didn’t want to be, and so he had married a fledgling opera singer (“a horror” according to the sharp-tongued Ray Milland) and he was carrying on a tortured affair with costumer Natalie Visart while also pursuing men. Leisen’s loyal secretary Eleanor Broder told David Chierichetti, the author of the definitive Leisen book, Mitchell Leisen: Hollywood Director, that her boss tried taking hormone shots at one point because he thought they might eradicate his homosexuality, but of course that didn’t work. Leisen lived with the pilot Eddie Anderson in the late 1930s, and Anderson left him for Shirley Ross, the actress who talk-sings “Thanks for the Memory” with Bob Hope in The Big Broadcast of 1938, an unusually sentimental scene within his work that Leisen insisted on. When that picture finished, he had a heart attack, and his health was never quite the same afterwards.

In the 1940s, after Visart had gotten pregnant with his child and lost it, Leisen took up with the dancer Billy Daniels, and his unhappiness grew. Daniels dances in what has to be Leisen’s worst feature, Masquerade in Mexico (1945), a semi-remake of Midnight that is so distracted and poorly timed that it would seem to give credence to Billy Wilder’s many complaints about Leisen over the years in interviews; if you were to watch Masquerade in Mexico right after Midnight, it would seem like a mark against Leisen as an artist in his own right rather than a servant of superior scripts where he could get them. Daniels is actually the only thing this movie has going for it: he’s an exciting dancer, and an intriguing screen presence, sexy, petulant, a little dangerous. Many in Leisen’s inner circle disliked Daniels, but maybe Masquerade in Mexico might work if it could just be Daniels dancing as Leisen watches.

The blandness of the décor in something like Suddenly It’s Spring (1947) is a real comedown from his Art Deco 1930s pictures, but Leisen rallied in this period with some of his best and most personal films, starting with Kitty (1945), a sumptuous Gainsborough period piece with all the trimmings and a Pygmalion subject that activates all of Leisen’s interest in pretending and “passing” as something you are not. Best of all from this time is Song of Surrender (1949), an uncommonly severe movie about a New England girl named Abigail (Wanda Hendrix) who finds a way out of her repressive environment by listening to music. What Abigail feels in Song of Surrender is surely what Leisen himself must have often felt as a young man growing up in the mid-West at the turn of the last century, and so this picture, which he said he didn’t much like, is his secret movie, his confession movie. It’s a great film, daringly stark and stripped-down, and it is as unerringly paced and controlled as all of his best 1930s work; there are moments when it feels like a precursor to Jane Campion’s The Piano (1993) in its insistence on the will power needed for a woman to find aesthetic and sexual fulfillment.

Leisen did an intriguing noir with Stanwyck called No Man of Her Own (1950) and an overlooked, charming adaptation of J. M. Barrie called Darling, How Could You! (1951), which is filled with longing for family life that Leisen certainly knows is a fantasy like any of his others. (How poignant it is when Joan Fontaine says in that movie that if her children are going to love her they mustn’t “think me over first.”) He spent twenty years working at Paramount Studios, and he was a creature of the studio system; when the studio system went, so did he, but not before one more diverting small musical, The Girl Most Likely (1958), which was the last feature made at RKO. “When the studio decided we no longer needed a certain department, it was shut down and if we needed something after that, we had to make do ourselves,” Leisen said. “It was really eerie.”

Ill-health and an unwarranted reputation for spending too much money kept Leisen mainly working for TV in his last years, so that he was back to low budgets and bringing in his own furniture to dress his sets. He had been fired from Bedevilled (1955) for hitting on one of the straight actors he was working with (the actor complained to MGM), and this put another shadow over his reputation. He had made Fred MacMurray’s career, but when he tried to get work as a director on MacMurray’s hit TV show My Three Sons, it was no go. “He sent me a telegram asking for the job,” MacMurray said. “He was, well, you know, a homosexual and he had gotten into some trouble on a picture he was making in Europe. With the three young boys we had working on the show, I just didn’t think it was right. So I never answered the telegram.”

It was his women who stayed loyal to Leisen in his final years, both his secretary Broder (who was a lesbian), and his old lover Natalie Visart, who had never really gotten over her love for him and came to stay with him toward the end (Visart’s son Peter was killed in a gay-bashing in the 1970s). Leisen’s responses to David Chierichetti’s questions in their interview book are unfailingly candid, insightful, and juicy, but his standing has never ascended to the level of that of Preston Sturges or Billy Wilder, even though his visual style was far more developed than theirs, and his point of view arguably more sophisticated and certainly more kind-hearted. He was a romantic with an edge of disquiet, and this made for matchlessly rich pictures, pulsing with hope and with pain.

Leisen knew about all aspects of picture making, and he has the requisite number of classics for entrance to the pantheon, plus a whole slew of other pictures of interest. He made Remember the Night and Song of Surrender. He made Midnight and Kitty. And he made Easy Living and Darling, How Could You! Those are all heights, and from different periods, and they prove the consistency of his inventiveness and the distinctiveness of his talent. His creativity came out of personal unhappiness on the one hand and unprecedented creative license and support under the old Hollywood studio system on the other. We will not see that particular combination again.

by Dan Callahan

[corymachado11-blog]

The Von Erichs Wrestling Family

The Adkisson family, better known as the Von Erichs, are described as the hard-bodied, golden-haired, bare-chested hunks of Texas.

The Start

The Von Erich family starts with Fritz who held many important titles in his career. Fritz was very influential during his career not only as an National Wrestling Alliance president and president of WCCW (the company he created) but especially for his very important role in Japanese wrestling where he helped the industry revive again after the death of Rikidozan. Fritz died in 1997, aged 68, after a battle with lung cancer which spread to his brain.

Jack Von Erich

The Von Erich's family glory is blurred by a series of deaths starting from the first son who died whilst at his neighbor's house who had been remodeling and left some wiring exposed. Jackie brushed against the wiring knocking him unconscious and fell face down into a puddle of melted snow and drowned at the age of 7.

This death was not the last family tragedy as four of the other five children of Fritz died prematurely and tragically.

David Von Erich (1958 - 1984 aged 25)

David is attributed with many memorable feuds facing Harley Race, Ric Flair (several times for the NWA World Heavyweight Championship) and teaming with brothers Kevin and Kerry against the Fabulous Freebirds winning the Missouri Heavyweight Championship several times.

David was set to face Ric Flair once again for the NWA World Heavyweight Title in a match that would (according to rumors) see him emerge as winner but David did not make it; he died in 1984, a few days before the match.

The doctor's report states that he died of acute enteritis but Ric Flair states that "it was a drug overdose that really killed him and that Bruiser Brody (a fellow wrestler who found David) disposed of the narcotics by flushing them down a toilet before the police arrived."

Mick Foley states that the cause of death appears to be a drug overdose. The Von Erich's family never issued the death certificate or doctor's report.

Kerry Von Erich (1960-1993 aged 33)

Kerry spent the majority of his career wrestling in World Class Championship Wrestling and participated in well known feuds such as those against Gino Hernandez, Iceman Parsons, Chris Adams and The Fabulous Freebirds.

Kerry's popularity came mainly after taking the NWA World Heavyweight Title from Ric Flair at the David Von Erich Memorial Parade of Champions; a tribute show to honor David. Kerry also worked for the WWF and Global Wrestling Federation.See here cory Machado

But on the 4th of June 1986, Kerry had a motorcycle accident (reportedly riding barefoot striking a parked vehicle) and risked his life. Kerry ended up with a dislocated hip and a badly injured right leg. Doctors tried hard, but nothing could be done to save his foot which had to be amputated after (according to his brother Kevin) injuring it again following surgery by attempting to walk on it prematurely. Kerry was able to continue wrestling after the accident with prosthesis but kept the amputation secret to the majority of fans and fellow wrestlers; even showering with his boots on to hide this.

Kerry had drug problems after his accident left him with painkiller and cocaine addiction and this led to two arrests, the first of which resulted in probation. The second came after he was caught in possession of cocaine. This violated the probation and would leave him with an extensive jail time. This, and the fact that his marriage was broken and thus committed suicide that same day of arrest by a shot to the heart in 1993 on his father's ranch.

Mike Von Erich (1964-1987 aged 23)

After suffering a shoulder injury in 1985 on a wrestling tour, Mike was forced to have surgery. Even though he seemed to have recovered from it, he developed high fever four days later and was discovered to be suffering from Toxic shock syndrome. According to Ric Flair, Mike was forced back into the ring by Fritz much too early. Eventually, Mike had to retire after not being able to return to the ring at full strength anymore and had been losing body mass. Probably this was the cause of his decision to commit suicide in 1987 by and intentional overdose of a tranquilizer.

Chris Von Erich (1969-1991 aged 21)

Chris, the youngest in the family, wanted to become a wrestler and follow his brothers' success but his build did not help him much. Being the shortest (suffered from asthma which limited his growth to 5'6) and least athletic of the Von Erich family, he made many attempts to succeed in wrestling due to his love of wrestling that kept him trying despite numerous injuries. He managed one major feud with Percy Pringle in the USWA/World Class, but his career didn't take off like the rest of the family's.

Chris was very close to his brother Mike and his death had a hard impact on him. This along with the fact that he could not live up with his lack of success made him depressed and frustrated leading him to commit suicide in 1991 by a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

The Von Erichs Today

Kevin Von Erich is the only son of Ritz to still be alive. He is nowadays a retired wrestler residing in Hawaii whilst his son, Ross Von is attending college in Texas and an up and coming wrestling future.

Lacey Von Erich is the daughter of Kerry Von Erich and the only female from the family to make a career in the wrestling business. She also wrestles barefooted like her Uncle Kevin.

Blame - Wrestling or Drugs?

Many people, including Rowdy Roddy Piper, have said that the Von Erich family is an example of how wrestling promoters treat wrestlers like a disposable resource. Ric Flair disagrees and says that it was not wrestling that killed the Von Erichs but drugs. Flair partially blames Fritz, because if Fritz had not lived in denial, and made his sons accountable for their behavior, they might well be alive today.

[closetofanxiety]

The last hurrah

Super Clash III, which I hadn’t seen in years although I do occasionally watch the messy, blood-soaked, riveting title unification match between Jerry Lawler and Kerry Von Erich, is definitely worth a watch or a revisit. 

Knowing what we know today, the whole thing feels like a gloomy, sparsely attended funeral for the territorial system, the kind of funeral where the few people who do show up are drunk and bickering. A cavernous building that’s not even a quarter full; booking decisions that seem like they were made by a foil wrap filled with amphetamines; a crowd that mostly goes from sullen to disgusted and back again. 

It’s weirdly compelling. Some of the wrestling is honestly decent, but even the bad stuff is bad in the kind of way you need to sit and think about. When WWE is bad, as it’s been for months now, it just rolls off your back. It’s slick, well-produced, and never disastrous; “boring,” really, not bad. 

Super Clash III is bad, but it’s not boring. One match ends in less than 30 seconds. Another ends with a dirty pin that only makes sense when viewed in slow motion replay, which was obviously not an option for the puzzled, annoyed live crowd. A match between Sgt. Slaughter and Col. DeBeers has six (!) run-ins. Before it begins, Slaughter tells the crowd, “If you don’t like the sight of pain, go to the refrigerator and do what you gotta do.” Ronnie Garvin, looking magnificent and menacing and throwing chops that sound like rifle shots, loses his TV title to Greg Gagne on a count-out decision, which enrages the crowd. Gagne, the babyface, cuts a heel promo on the city of Chicago as they boo him. The Top Guns spank Madusa after their mixed-tag victory over her team, and the crowd sits in uncomfortable silence. David McLane, looking and sounding like a compulsive onanist in a peep show booth, presides over a “Lingerie Street Fight Battle Royal,” which manages to be both chaste (there is no actual lingerie, and no one gets stripped) and incredibly vile. It’s won by a wrestler called The Syrian Terrorist who, like most terrorists, is wearing a short, tight black dress and matching stockings. 

This is all before you get to the spectacle of the title match, which really is worth watching if you haven’t seen it, or if you haven’t seen it in a while. It’s one of my favorite matches of all time. Von Erich accidentally sliced his arm open in the dressing room before the show with the razor he was supposed to use during the match, and is basically bleeding from the opening bell. During the match he blades the right away, and is an absolute gory mess. It’s an insane overbooked fever dream of a match, with Von Erich no-selling Lawler’s piledriver, Lawler constantly pulling out foreign objects to further along the Texas Tornado’s crimson mask, and a total clusterfuck of a finish that leaves the crowd chanting “BULLSHIT.”

[god27dog]

BBC - Culture - The 100 greatest American films from Sinefesto on Vimeo.

This amazing video produced and made by BBC. (bbc.com/culture/story/20150720-greatest-us-films-an-a-z-analysis)

sinefesto.com/sinema-tarihinin-en-iyi-100-amerikan-filmi.html

The 100 greatest American films 100. Ace in the Hole (Billy Wilder, 1951) 99. 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013) 98. Heaven’s Gate (Michael Cimino, 1980) 97. Gone With the Wind (Victor Fleming, 1939) 96. The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, 2008) 95. Duck Soup (Leo McCarey, 1933) 94. 25th Hour (Spike Lee, 2002) 93. Mean Streets (Martin Scorsese, 1973) 92. The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955) 91. ET: The Extra-Terrestrial (Steven Spielberg, 1982) 90. Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979) 89. In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray, 1950) 88. West Side Story (Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins, 1961) 87. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, 2004) 86. The Lion King (Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff, 1994) 85. Night of the Living Dead (George A Romero, 1968) 84. Deliverance (John Boorman, 1972) 83. Bringing Up Baby (Howard Hawks, 1938) 82. Raiders of the Lost Ark (Steven Spielberg, 1981) 81. Thelma & Louise (Ridley Scott, 1991) 80. Meet Me in St Louis (Vincente Minnelli, 1944) 79. The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick, 2011) 78. Schindler’s List (Steven Spielberg, 1993) 77. Stagecoach (John Ford, 1939) 76. The Empire Strikes Back (Irvin Kershner, 1980) 75. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Steven Spielberg, 1977) 74. Forrest Gump (Robert Zemeckis, 1994) 73. Network (Sidney Lumet, 1976) 72. The Shanghai Gesture (Josef von Sternberg, 1941) 71. Groundhog Day (Harold Ramis, 1993) 70. The Band Wagon (Vincente Minnelli, 1953) 69. Koyaanisqatsi (Godfrey Reggio, 1982) 68. Notorious (Alfred Hitchcock, 1946) 67. Modern Times (Charlie Chaplin, 1936) 66. Red River (Howard Hawks, 1948) 65. The Right Stuff (Philip Kaufman, 1983) 64. Johnny Guitar (Nicholas Ray, 1954) 63. Love Streams (John Cassavetes, 1984) 62. The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980) 61. Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999) 60. Blue Velvet (David Lynch, 1986) 59. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Miloš Forman, 1975) 58. The Shop Around the Corner (Ernst Lubitsch, 1940) 57. Crimes and Misdemeanors (Woody Allen, 1989) 56. Back to the Future (Robert Zemeckis, 1985) 55. The Graduate (Mike Nichols, 1967) 54. Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder, 1950) 53. Grey Gardens (Albert and David Maysles, Ellen Hovde and Muffie Meyer, 1975) 52. The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah, 1969) 51. Touch of Evil (Orson Welles, 1958) 50. His Girl Friday (Howard Hawks, 1940) 49. Days of Heaven (Terrence Malick, 1978) 48. A Place in the Sun (George Stevens, 1951) 47. Marnie (Alfred Hitchcock, 1964) 46. It’s a Wonderful Life (Frank Capra, 1946) 45. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford, 1962) 44. Sherlock Jr (Buster Keaton, 1924) 43. Letter from an Unknown Woman (Max Ophüls, 1948) 42. Dr Strangelove (Stanley Kubrick, 1964) 41. Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks, 1959) 40. Meshes of the Afternoon (Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid, 1943) 39. The Birth of a Nation (DW Griffith, 1915) 38. Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975) 37. Imitation of Life (Douglas Sirk, 1959) 36. Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977) 35. Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944) 34. The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming, 1939) 33. The Conversation (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974) 32. The Lady Eve (Preston Sturges, 1941) 31. A Woman Under the Influence (John Cassavetes, 1974) 30. Some Like It Hot (Billy Wilder, 1959) 29. Raging Bull (Martin Scorsese, 1980) 28. Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994) 27. Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick, 1975) 26. Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett, 1978) 25. Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee, 1989) 24. The Apartment (Billy Wilder, 1960) 23. Annie Hall (Woody Allen, 1977) 22. Greed (Erich von Stroheim, 1924) 21. Mulholland Drive (David Lynch, 2001) 20. Goodfellas (Martin Scorsese, 1990) 19. Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976) 18. City Lights (Charlie Chaplin, 1931) 17. The Gold Rush (Charlie Chaplin, 1925) 16. McCabe & Mrs Miller (Robert Altman, 1971) 15. The Best Years of Our Lives (William Wyler, 1946) 14. Nashville (Robert Altman, 1975) 13. North by Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock, 1959) 12. Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974) 11. The Magnificent Ambersons (Orson Welles, 1942) 10. The Godfather Part II (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974) 9. Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942) 8. Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960) 7. Singin’ in the Rain (Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly, 1952) 6. Sunrise (FW Murnau, 1927) 5. The Searchers (John Ford, 1956) 4. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968) 3. Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958) 2. The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972) 1. Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)

[latenightcinephile]

#786: ‘Intolerance’, dir. D. W. Griffith, 1916.

D. W. Griffith’s biggest claim to fame these days is as the director of the epic racist screed The Birth of a Nation, which is a bit of a shame, as Intolerance is equally important to the development of early narrative cinema. Most of the things we associate with cinema today, such as continuity editing and parallel narratives, were forged in Griffith’s work. That said, it’s important to recognise that the director was a pretty terrible person morally, perhaps even more so than the characters he portrayed. Intolerance is a film about how intolerance threatens civilisation, and Griffith shows us this by intertwining four different narratives - the fall of Babylon, the Crucifixion of Christ, the St. Bartholemew Day Massacre, and a contemporary story of a couple whose life is nearly destroyed by Reform activists and a trumped-up charge for murder. If anyone were to think that Intolerance was intended as a personal atonement for the virulent racism of The Birth of a Nation, however, it’s not quite that simple... and I suspect Griffith might have known that.

On a technical level, Intolerance is spectacular. With eight assistant directors, including Tod Browning (Freaks, 1927) and Erich von Stroheim (Foolish Wives, 1922), Griffith brought new meaning to the phrase ‘spare no expense’, as he had already made the most expensive film ever, and then proceeded to multiply that expenditure by twenty when making this. Of note in Intolerance are the tracking shots, featuring some of the largest camera rigs ever developed. At several points in this film, the camera tracks in from a wide shot of the Babylonian cityscape to the action on the steps, a shot that lasts more than a minute just in order to travel that distance. The narrative structure is interesting, as well: Griffith cuts between his four narratives, slowly at first, but then with increasing rapidity. At first, these cuts are demarcated with shots of Lillian Gish rocking a cradle, as the archetypal Mother of Civilisation, but by the time we’re in the film’s final act, these shots are often dispensed with (or, sometimes, are shown so briefly as to be faintly humourous, like Gish is just popping in to scream ‘Hello!’ before we jump to the Crucifixion). Audiences rejected this narrative structure at the time - Griffith’s original cut of the film was eight hours long, before he cut it down to a little over three, but this shorter runtime may have made it harder for early audiences to keep track of the film’s narratives. While this structure is tame by contemporary standards, the filmgoing public in 1916 expected something closer to unity of space and action.

What is clear, though, is that audiences weren’t driven away by the extreme monomythic tendencies of The Birth of a Nation. Griffith’s earlier film was part and parcel with a general understanding of the Reconstitution at the time. Rather, they were anticipating something equally compelling in Intolerance; something as pulse-pounding and stirring. They didn’t get it. There was certainly very little sense in 1916 that Griffith was constructing a mea culpa for his earlier work, probably because that’s not what Griffith was doing.

As David A. Cook mentions in his History of Narrative Film, Griffith entered production on Intolerance “still stinging from charges of racism” about The Birth of a Nation, and he even wrote a tract called The Rise and Fall of Free Speech in America, complaining that people sought to censor his work. Intolerance was meant as a callout for anyone that would attempt to silence him. The film, instead, was about how “hate and intolerance, through the ages, have battled against love and charity.” Precisely how Griffith saw The Birth of a Nation on the side of ‘love and charity’ isn’t clear. It’s telling that, for a film about intolerance, Griffith makes no reference to race when it comes to the evils of intolerance. That sort of promotion simply wasn’t on the agenda. Weirdly, though, of these four stories, only three actually seem to have much of a connection to intolerance at all, and in only one of them is the intolerance in direct response to displays of ‘love and charity’. It gets to the point where I was genuinely wondering if the word ‘intolerance’ meant something different 100 years ago.

Let’s break down our four stories, for clarity’s sake. The story of the Crucifixion is clearly about intolerance in response to love, but it’s also the least developed of the four narratives, perhaps because it was the most familiar to audiences already. The French narrative of Catholics and Huguenots is about religious intolerance, but the romance is tangential and not a ‘star-crossed lovers’ affair by any means. The Babylonian narrative is similar. In all three of these narratives, despite their diverse stories, the forces of love and charity are literally slain. It’s not clear what message Griffith is trying to send, or how he thinks love and charity can possibly act differently in order to triumph. The contemporary story is the most confusing in this regard, and the fact that Griffith had already completed it before conceiving of mixing it with the others is obvious from the finished product. In this narrative, a boy (named ‘the Boy’) and a girl (named ‘the Dear One’) travel to the big city when a mill cuts its workers’ wages. The Boy turns to crime, before reforming his ways when he and the Dear One have a child. However, the Boy is framed for theft and, while he is in prison, the Reformers who were responsible for the wage cut take the Dear One’s child away. Upon release, the Boy almost immediately takes the fall for his gang leader’s murder (really committed by the gang leader’s wife, who is lurking outside). The Boy is about to be executed when the Dear One and a kindly policeman find the real culprit, and the day ends happily with the child returned to them by some unknown machinations.

From this, it’s unclear what the hell Griffith thinks intolerance is, a puzzle best expressed by the intertitle, seen halfway through the film, reading ‘The Boy is intolerated away for a year’. Here, intolerance is apparently taken to mean ‘being put in prison’. The rejoinder to this is, obviously, that if punishing criminals is intolerance, then maybe intolerance isn’t all bad. Sure, the Boy isn’t actually guilty of this particular crime, but the principle behind his imprisonment is sound. Moreover, Griffith doesn’t seem to care about this inconsistency. It’s the result of trying to graft a theme onto his story to make it fit better with the rest of the film, but not doing a particularly effective job of it.

However, I suspect that Griffith had some awareness of how careless this element was, seeing as the film displays some vague gestures towards it (as we’d say these days, lampshading this failure). By making the Boy a criminal, and never actually showing any punishment for the pickpocketing crimes he commits, it’s tempting to read Griffith’s guilt into the character. The Boy is saved from the gallows by the fortunate fact that he’s actually not guilty of this one particular crime. That he loves the Dear One, and that he intends to reform himself, is offered as enough reason for his previous crimes to be forgotten by the viewer. Griffith no doubt saw himself as a force for good in cinema, and he clearly viewed himself as a martyr at this point, to the extent of putting the life of Christ in a film about how people were mean to him. But if he’s advocating for tolerance, then in the story of the Boy he’s implicitly acknowledging that there’s merit to the accusations leveled against him.

With all that said, this film isn’t very interesting unless you want to get into a discussion about the development of narrative cinema. The performances feature some of the worst excesses of early cinema acting I’ve ever seen, especially with Mae Marsh as the Dear One, who never overacts a single emotion when it’s possible to overact five emotions within a single shot. Her performance alone resulted in me responding to her like an episode of Mystery Science Theatre 3000. It’s also fair to say that people who urgently desire a Griffith film should just go back and watch Broken Blossoms (1919) again. A few spectacular tracking shots are not worth the thematic bewilderment that will ensue if you manage to lay your hands on a good copy of Intolerance.

[get-that-face]

Day 55: A Corner In Wheat

(filmed 3-13 November in NYC studio & Jamaica, NY; released 13 December, 1909)

This is it. This is the big one. I've introduced some prior films on this blog as being particularly famous or noteworthy amongst D.W. Griffith's output for Biograph, but this film is probably the single most discussed, screened, and analyzed. It's probably even in the top 5 most discussed Griffith films ever, despite its brevity. Is it really worthy of all the attention and acclaim it gets? Yes and no, in my opinion.

I think much of the attention it gets derives from the fact that it is a social issue film, of a sort. It identifies a problem, and exposes it through the grammar of film. You don't need to write a pamphlet on a social evil if you can just show it, and by contrasting the partying of the wealthy with the families starving and waiting in line for scarce & overpriced bread, the implications of the images are clear-cut and unavoidable. At this stage, film as propaganda hadn't been particularly exploited, but Griffith was already showing himself ahead of the curve. But how much of this is Griffith's doing and his intent, and how much is him just working off of the terms of the story? This was a pretty big era for muckrakers, and it wouldn't be controversial to tackle one of the many issues that was already energizing and enraging various sections of the public. Critics seeking to paint D.W. Griffith as either a bigoted reactionary or a daring crusader against various social ills are naturally stymied by the fact that he didn't seem particularly interested in or active in politics; his own positions both in and out of the film world tended to be rather vague and populist, and imbued with a certain civil libertarianism. He condemns the abuse of alcohol, for example, but views prohibition as a far greater evil. Biographers and critics tout his opposition to "reformers", but it is largely an opposition to those who think they can fix other people's problems from without by interfering in their lives and regulating their activities without their consent.  His only really consistent political point is an opposition to war, which pops up repeatedly throughout many of his full-length films, but which is complicated by the fact that many of those films were about war; he was even willing to make propaganda films for the war effort at David Lloyd George's urging, despite having supported Woodrow Wilson primarily due to Wilson's vow to keep the U.S. out of WWI! Griffith was allegedly approached by some of Lenin's people at some point to make films for the Soviets on the basis of the pro-labor position espoused in Intolerance, but whether this is real or another grand fabrication like Fritz Lang's meeting with Goebbels, we'll never know. (Speaking of directors and dictatorships, I think at one point in the low ebb of his career, Erich von Stroheim was simultaneously pursing leads in filmmaking with Benito Mussolini and Sergei Eisenstein for the Soviets. Talk about directors not being interested in the specifics of politics!)

Back to the topic at hand, though...what is the political point espoused in "A Corner In Wheat"? That the wheat barons are bad is obvious enough, and that many people suffer for their greed is obvious enough as well, but the film doesn't seem to know what sort of solution would be rational. It's a problem that is just as relevant today--it's easy to see where abuses are taking place, but hard to know how to correct them. Corrupt businessmen are always an easy target because they are always around, but nothing really seems to change. The Big Short dealt with corrupt bankers more than a century after this film was made, but all it ultimately did was hold up its hands and admit that nobody was doing much of anything about the situation. The Wheat Baron in this film meets an appropriately karmic death, but what about all those other people who still remain? The other rich manipulators of the market? The other poor people? I'm not saying that the film has to provide a solution or an answer, as any such response would be bound to be naiive at best and asinine at worst, but it does make one wonder what exactly is supposed to be done. The villain here is almost a caricature in the way that he so easily takes over the GLOBAL MARKET for a commodity--and how casually it is announced within the film! But the era of trust-busting was still at hand, and in the 21st century, we may have yet to await its resurgence.

As to the film's artistic merits, visually, they are quite numerous. I've mentioned Griffith's fondness for parallelism and bookending sequences before, but the scene of the farmers sowing in the fields towards the beginning and at the end of the film give it a true sense of framing. The length of those early shots of the farmers is really something--by this point in time, Griffith's pace of editing has become a lot quicker when the scenes demand it, so for a single shot to be left to run for over a minute when nothing important to the narrative is happening is a clear artistic decision. It's a stunning shot, and many other writers have pointed out the debt it owes to Jean Francois Millet's painting, "The Sower". Many early directors have directly paid homage to paintings or photographs in the staging of their shots, and D.W. was no exception. I mentioned at the end of my last review the unlikely place where these rural scenes were shot, and it is none other than Jamaica, NY. Queen is not exactly a place where people expect to see farms, but a lot has changed in 108 years. If the outdoor scenes and the later scenes in the breadlines have a picturesque or tableau-like quality to them, the scenes of the Wheat King building his empire from his desk, and the subsequent muddle in the market fall a bit flat. The bustle of activity on the exchange conveys the hectic nature of the place, but it is hard for the eye to tell which characters it should be focusing on. The overall plot for this film is a sort of Frankensteinian affair cobbled out of portions of three different Frank Norris stories ("The Octopus", "The Pit", and "A Deal In Wheat") which perhaps explains the joining of the disparate ends of the wheat chain of production within the film. The intertitles do a good deal of explaining, but the film does make use of awkward painted signs within the bread store that are clearly angled so as to be more for the audience's benefit than the prospective customers within the film world. If it seems as though I am nitpicking, it's merely because the film is so famous. There is little I can write about it that hasn't been written by some other reviewer at some point in time. Any cursory dip into the world of "film studies" will likely include this picture, but it's only proper that it should be included. For all its quirks and ambiguities, it still has a staying power after all these years.