Dean Martin in two Minnelli Movies

Dean Martin (Dino Paul Crocetti 7 June 1917 – 25 December 1995) as Jeffrey Moss with Judy Holliday, Bernard West & Frank Gorshin in Vincente Minnelli's Bells are Ringing:

Just in Time!

...and as Bama Dillert, with Frank Sinatra, Shirley MacLaine, Carmen Phillips & Marion Ross in Vincente Minnelli's Some Came Running

For his hundredth birthday I felt compelled to display some screen captures from my two favorite films with Dean Martin.  It isn’t mere coincidence that they both happen to have been made by Vincent Minnelli, another good Italian American show business professional of the highest order.

Ilya Repin's Unexpected Visitors

Ilya Yefimovich Repin 
(1844 - 1930)
Chuhuiv Ukraine 
& Kuokkala Saint Petersburg Russia

1&2.Unexpected Visitors

3&4.One of you betrays me

5,6,7&8.Follow me, Satan

9.Moscow 1812 Siege

10.Propagandist arrested

11.Ivan Grozny having killed his son Ivan

Many years ago I used the second version of Unexpected Visitors (or They did not expect him) as the basis for a series of backdrops for Tamar Schumann’s dance theater piece Alexander Nevsky, which employed Prokofiev’s score for the Eisenstein film of that name.  As I painted my over life size variations on Repin’s theme, I got to know this painting and its predecessor very well, and now hope to repay my debt to this masterwork in some small measure by presenting it here now.  The other paintings I’ve chosen to place after seem related to them (in my sometime questionably educated view.)   The Russian Government has been exiling political dissidents to Siberia for centuries (as a child I naively associated this practice solely with the Soviets) and continues doing so to this day.  Likewise the Russian mania for bureaucracy didn’t start with the Revolution (any more than the grotesque devotion to Orthodoxy ended there!) 

Butterfly Hunting in the Meadowlands

photographed by Jack Smith 
circa 1960 
East Rutherford NJ

I seem to remember that this series of pictures was shot in the New Jersey Meadowlands around the time suggested, unless I dreamed it or am fooling myself.  One of the ladies depicted looks a bit like a scarecrow, though her makeup suggests a cheery death’s head as well.  The second couple (or possibly the same models in different costume) traipse through a field of goldenrod where the earlier pair are surrounded by sunflowers.  They seem to evoke Jack’s vision of an earlier generation of city dwellers out for a jaunt in the countryside, an early 20th century idyll.  Death is always near and not just for the butterflies.

Twin Peaks: the Return part 4

Brings back some Memories
David Lynch & Mark Frost 
Snoqualmie WA 2017

There has been much comment on the scene in part 4 of the Return where Wally Brando pays his respects to Sheriff Frank Truman.  There has even been minor controversy regarding it, mostly on whether or not it was very or not at all amusing.  Some have noted that the name of the character played by Michael Cera combines the last name of the famous actor Marlon Brando with the first name of the great queer love of his life, Wally Cox.  (Their ashes are scattered together in Death Valley.)  However, I have yet to see anyone take note of the fact that the actor playing Sheriff Truman, Robert Forster, first appeared in films (and in a starring role) opposite Mr Brando, in John Huston’s adaptation of Carson McCullers’ novella Reflections in a Golden Eye, as the unrequited object of his desire.  Whether an intentional reference or not, on the part of Lynch or Frost, for me, this greatly affects the meanings this scene may bear, especially given the scene just prior, which gives this section of Lynch’s long long film its title, where Deputy Bobby Briggs weeps over seeing again after many years the photo of his long lost high school girlfriend and partner in crime, Laura Palmer.

Miguel Temon y Joey Rico

in Bareback Fucking
recorded by Ben Baird
for SXVideo
San Diego CA 2014

Yesterday was Miguel's birthday and as I daydreamed of him I focused on this particular scene he did with another favorite model, Joey Rico.  It took several years for me to fully appreciate the particular beauty of their coupling.  On first viewing they seemed to lack the ardor I'd hoped their meeting would bring, but gradually I came to enjoy the unexpected coolness of the encounter.  Both of them presents himself as a heterosexual who is performing in this arena solely for the sake of its quick monetary rewards.  Miguel is usually cast as the top and Joey as the bottom in these scenes and here they perform their expected roles.  Miguel has only worked for one company while Joey has performed under three or four aliases for innumerable studios.  There's no frantic grappling involved in their coming together.  It's all surprisingly gentle without insult or power plays.  It appears to be as they wanted it to be: for both of them are rigidly hard throughout and express their pleasure without the usual affectation, with which such performers are generally forced to emote.   The result is the rarest of porn videos: one that seems as honestly enjoyable for its performers as it is for its viewers.