A Good Friday of New York favorites

We're on day two of a four-day weekend for Easter, and for some reason, I view these long weekends as a way to take a deep dive back into my collection of personal favorites. I already started on Thursday night with Moon for my 2022 #1s series, then Friday night, it was the double feature of other American DVDs I can suddenly watch now that I've reclaimed my old laptop as a region 1 DVD player, as discussed in yesterday's post. 

I've always made a connection in my mind between Kissing Jessica Stein and The Guru. For most people, it seems, these were throwaway romantic comedies that they immediately forgot about the moment the credits rolled, if they saw them at all. For me, they were sneakily emotional, feel-good favorites that both landed in my top ten of their respective years, which happened to be consecutive years in 2002 and 2003. (Actually, now that I look at it, I can see The Guru was only #11, but I now like it better than all but three of the movies that were ahead of it.)

I'd had occasion to think of both movies in recent months. The Guru, of course, was one of my inspirations for watching Bollywood movies this year, and I name-checked it in my introduction post for Audient Bollywood. Then I mentioned Kissing Jessica Stein in my recent post about Everything Everywhere All at Once, when I talked about movie characters overcoming their prejudices, specifically related to embracing the LGBTQI+ people in their lives. This movie has just about the most moving example of that for me -- not because the gesture is so great or unexpected, but simply because of the performance given by Tovah Feldshuh in that moment.

Other than a new viewing of both being overdue -- I hadn't seen either in more than ten years, and in fact last saw both in a six-month period from September 2010 to March 2011 -- and other than them both being on a DVD format I could now access, I had additional reasons to program them both for a Good Friday double feature on my projector. Let's look at some other similarities between these films:

1) Both are set in New York. That's likely a key to why I loved them so much. I lived in New York from 1998 to 2001, getting out just six months before 9/11. Since these movies both came out less than two years after 9/11, I'm sure they helped me experience a romanticized notion of New York that particularly helped me at that time.

2) Both are sex positive. Heather Graham's porn star in The Guru is not the least bit stigmatized for her career choice, either by the other characters or the film itself, and everyone associated with the porn shoots we see is pretty much a sweetheart. She beats herself up, but nobody else does. Jessica celebrates sex of all kinds -- hetero, gay and lesbian (making a distinction between a gay male couple and a gay female couple in the film). Which leads to ...

3) Both are gay positive. It's right there in the text of Jessica, and as alluded to just now, Helen's also good friends with two men in a relationship. But The Guru has a gay subplot as well, as Graham's character's fiancee (Dash Mihok) doesn't actually want to marry her because he's in love with a fellow firefighter (Bobby Cannavale). Then there's the trans character, long before we were really dealing with that in the culture, who works as a fluffer on the porn shoot. Played by Dwight Ewell, not only is she wonderfully supportive to Graham's Sharona, but she's also got one of the best lines in the movie: "I'm more woman than you'll ever have, pencil dick."

4) Both have exactly one scene that takes place in an Indian restaurant. Seriously! Jimi Mistry's Ramu works at an Indian restaurant when he first arrives in New York, getting fired from the gig when he pours chicken tikka masala over the head of an abusive customer, who denies the authenticity of the dish while speaking to Ramu in an accent that would make The Simpsons' Apu blush. And Indian is where Jessica and Helen go for dinner after the couple drinks they have on their blind date, when Helen finally convinces Jessica not to bolt in the nearest taxi. 

5) Both are directed by people with really long names: Daisy von Scherler Mayer for The Guru and Charles Herman-Wurmfeld for Jessica. In fact, both names have exactly 21 letters. Given their evident abilities, both should have had busy careers but I'm sorry to say that didn't end up being the case.

6) And speaking of that, both films are fronted by an actor -- the title character, in fact -- whose charisma and acting chops suggested they should have had much longer careers. Alas, I can count on one hand the times I've seen Jennifer Westfeldt or Jimi Mistry turn up in another film. Mistry at least popped up in Blood Diamond, Ella Enchanted, 2012 and RockNRolla, but never in a big role. IMDB says he has 37 acting credits overall, but again, no starring roles. For Westfeldt the pickin's were slimmer: only 30 credits, with only one other film credit I've seen, 2011's Friends With Kids -- though she had to both direct and write it to get cast in the main role, and the attempt to reproduce Jessica Stein was not a success. She also had a recurring role in one season of 24, though I've forgotten that.

More informally, both films give me a sense of joy that few other romantic comedies can touch, resulting from a perfect combination of writing, tone, structure and cast. (I haven't even mentioned that The Guru also has personal favorite Marisa Tomei.) The best evidence of this is that even though it was almost 11:30 when I started watching Jessica, I didn't come close to falling asleep.

I used to proselytize for these movies whenever I could, with whoever would listen. But now it's been 20 years since they were made, and I'm not sure if I can easily find either of them beyond my own region 1 DVDs. In fact, it's been more than 20 years, as Jessica has the year 2001 in its closing credits, while The Guru has the year 2002, though they were both released theatrically the year after that.

Well, if you're reading this and you haven't seen either movie, I hope you can find them, because it might be too far for you to travel to come watch them in my garage in Australia. I mean, if you only like arthouse films and documentaries, maybe skip them. But if you think the romantic comedy can be cinema's greatest genre when done correctly, when tweaking familiar tropes to give them new freshness, when finding just the right actors to speak just the right words, then you owe it to yourself to seek these two movies out.

And if you feel a natural fondness for a New York that may no longer be, and maybe never was, then all the more reason. 

Putting my rupees where my mouth is in 2022

It seems strange to consider the influence a little 2003 comedy called The Guru had on me. 

Daisy von Scherler Meyer's film was forgotten immediately by most people who saw it, even those who liked it, which was not everybody. Me, I adored it, bought it for my own collection, and have watched it about four times in total.

Not to be confused with the Mike Myers bomb The Love Guru, The Guru is about a young Indian man (Jimi Mistry) who comes to New York with the hopes of becoming a star, having loved American movies like Grease from when he was a kid. He ends up falling for a porn actress (Heather Graham) and becoming a fraud guru to rich Upper West Siders.

Doesn't sound like a winner? Oh but this description doesn't begin to quantify this film's sweetness and heart. 

It also features a memorable Bollywood dance number, in which Graham is one of the dancers. It arrives and delivers right near the emotional highpoint of the film. 

This dance number was apparently enough for me to think of myself as a Bollywood fan.

Crazy, right? Maybe it just planted a seed. Because any time I saw a snippet of Bollywood in some other movie -- such as, for example, Gurdiner Chadha's Bride & Prejudice -- I was reminded of my love for Bollywood movies.

The thing is, I don't believe I have actually seen a single proper Bollywood movie from start to finish.

I should clarify that. I'm sure I have seen films that were produced in Bollywood, because all sorts of Indian films fit that description, just as all sorts of American films can be said to originate in Hollywood (even if most of the studio lots are in Burbank or Culver City or somewhere adjacent to Hollywood). 

But Bollywood films the way we think of them? With colorful costumes and singing and dancing and huge quantities of contagious joy?

Not a one, as far as I know.

Well, that's going to change in 2022.

Allow me to introduce you to Audient Bollywood, my 2022 monthly viewing series in which I acquaint myself with the Bollywood greats.

This is by far the least I've known about one of my monthly viewing series going into it. As I type this, I don't know a single title that I am going to watch this year.

My initial prep work will be to cross-reference a number of internet lists of Bollywood classics, to see which titles appear in more than one of them. I assume this will produce a good working list of titles on Letterboxd, from which I can draw depending on my mood or their availability. I have to assume some will be available on streaming services I already subscribe to, and others through rental. But really, at this point I just don't know. It's a wee bit scary but mostly exhilarating. 

I also hope to get a good representation of time periods, as is probably obvious when you're talking about working from a list of classics. Though I don't think I'll be organized enough to go in chronological order or anything like that.

Will all the movies have to involve song and dance and costumes? Not necessarily. In fact, I'm sure my appreciation of what constitutes a consummate Bollywood film will expand as I go along. That's another benefit of not having a working list of movies at the start. It allows me to make the series up as I go, not have a rigid plan from which I must deviate. 

The goal?

Not only just to see 12 Bollywood films, of course. The goal will be to see if I want to become a guy who seeks out Bollywood films for his own random viewing pleasure, even when they are not part of a viewing series.

And if not, well, at least I will have gotten a good taste of what Bollywood is all about.

Speaking of tastes ... this would be a great opportunity for a monthly Indian feast, maybe even one I play a role in cooking as the year goes on. In moving to this house, we've left behind a truly great Indian restaurant, and are doubtful we can find one to fill its shoes here. Maybe that's where our own cooking comes in. Hey, I've always said I want to expand outward from the seven dishes I make.

Anyway, I expect 2022 to be filled with spices and curries, both on screen and off. I hope you will join me as I queue up my first title, which is completely and totally TBD, later this month.

Regreso de vacaciones

At least I think that's correct.

Yep, I'm back from six days and five nights in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Thought I should give you something brief on the blog, to end my six-day drought and encapsulate the trip.

So not 15 minutes after we'd gotten to our room in the all-inclusive resort did I start to panic about whether we'd brought enough DVDs. We had two rented from Netflix and had brought three from our own collection. However, only two of the three from our collection would play. My wife has an Australian DVD that's from an incompatible region, a movie we've been meaning to see that was given to her by her family, called Wake in Fright. We thought it was possible that the resort's DVD player was some different region, capable of playing both American DVDs and DVDs from other regions (as all DVD players should be, if there weren't some kind of pernicious DVD industry conspiracy controlling everything). But such was not the case.

So we had four movies for only five nights, one of which was our anniversary night. Somehow this did not seem enough to me. When I arrive places on vacation -- especially these all-inclusive places (this is the second one I've visited) -- I tend to spend the first hour or so completely out of sorts, overwhelmed by how to take it all in. During these times I fixate on ridiculous details, like whether we brought enough movies to carry us through our vacation, when we should be spending our time doing everything imaginable except watching movies. Having a small child along with us would restrict us somewhat, sure, and make movie-watching something we might do more than if my wife and I were alone. But we had babysitting lined up for over half the nights we were there, so my worries were irrational indeed.

And indeed, we watched Dirty Work (which I'd already seen) and the first half of The Switch. These were our two rented movies. Neither of the movies we owned (Lost in Translation or Almost Famous) made it anywhere close to the DVD player.

The reason we rented Dirty Work (which I've seen about three times and once owned on VHS) was because my wife showed me a clip of Norm MacDonald's standup on the internet the other week. I didn't realize she thought MacDonald was funny, and when I learned she hadn't seen the Bob Saget-directed masterpiece Dirty Work, I thought it would make great vacation viewing, when we'd stumble back to our room full of free alcohol. She agreed and it was a done deal.

Well, it didn't hold up as well as I'd hoped. I mean, I found it funny, but I recognized it was something that probably didn't translate that well to most women of above-average intelligence. I will say that she ended up loving the last 20 minutes, and I can't tell if that's just because we broke up our viewing between the end of the night of our arrival (when she was falling asleep) and the next afternoon (when she wasn't), or whether it contains genuinely stronger material. Anyway, I was glad that at least some of it clicked with her.

I was reminded of the fact that MacDonald is one of my favorite comedians in terms of delivering a punchline. It's the way he hits the punchline that kills me. He's not among my top ten favorite funnymen, but some of his individual jokes hit with a force that earns him that consideration. If you don't have MacDonald's particular speech intonations in your head when you read this, some of these lines won't be as funny, but here they are anyway:

"There's two kinds of people in this world: Those who get stomped on and those who do the stomping."
"Where'd you come up with that theory?"
"That famous guy said it. What's his name? Uh... Oh, yeah: Jesus."

It's that perfectly McDonald-ian emphasis he puts on the word "Jesus" that makes it so great.

Then there's this one:

"Note to self: Remember to get ass wart cream for giant wart on my ass."

Maybe by itself it's not a line that reeks of comedic brilliance, but when delivered by MacDonald ... c'est magnifique! This is how it comes out, with emphasis in bold: "Remember to get ass wart cream for giant wart -- on my ass."

They can be simple, too:

"Note to self: Learn to fight."

He enunciates each word clearly: "Learn to fight." That's all you need. (And it helps that he's just been thrown out a glass window, in a terrific looking stunt by the stuntman, which alone is worthy of a good burst of surprised laughter.)

And then the part I always loved when I was younger, when he returns from being anally raped in prison (although it affects him in a purely comic way, not in the traumatic way it would in real life). He looks back in the direction of the off-screen prisoners who supposedly just did the raping, and scolds them in a way as though he were disappointed more than traumatized:

"You fellas have a lot of growing up to do, I'll tell you that. Ridiculous. Completely ridiculous. Can you believe these characters? Way out of line. Way out of line. Have a good mind to go to the warden about this. You know what hurts the most is the ... the lack of respect. You know? That's what hurts the most. Except for the ... except for the other thing. That hurts the most. But the lack of respect hurts the second most. Ridiculous."

Okay, enough quoting Norm MacDonald for today.

What else about our trip? We had a really nice time, though it's certainly hard to juggle a baby and trying to relax in a resort. (Not literally juggling, that would be dangerous.) However, we pulled it off pretty well. I consumed no less than six alcoholic beverages per day, and I swam in no fewer than six pools. (Okay, maybe five.) I also went parasailing, which was a first, and which took my breath away. The food was a mixed bag, but more good than bad, and some of it great. The place failed on a lot of the comical little details (we had to ask several times for things, they were pathologically unwilling to replenish our supply of Splenda in our room) but succeeded on the big ones. And my wife did get some good relaxation in, a bunch of little temporary breaks from the full-time job of motherhood. That was the most important part.

I said at the start that we only watched one-and-a-half movies, but I actually watched pieces of others in an attempt to improve my Spanish. One of the first ways I felt out of sorts is that I'd spent exactly zero time boning up on my Spanish before I left, and though it was barely needed because everyone spoke very good English, speaking no Spanish at all would make me feel like a tourist. So when I was having trouble producing certain easy words, I felt no different from a red-faced chucklehead Republican who flew in from South Carolina for a week to go golfing and call everyone "Jose," regardless of his actual name. That's right, even though I was a tourist, I didn't want to be confused with one -- at least not with an American tourist. (Maybe they thought I was one of the number of different Canandians we ran into.)

So I spent a little time doing what I did before we went on our honeymoon three years ago, which was watching movies in English with Spanish subtitles. There are no end to the choices of American movies available on Mexican TV, and though a number of them were dubbed in Spanish (such as Rocky III, of which I saw about 40 scattered minutes), there were also a fair number in English with Spanish subtitles. These were slightly more helpful, because if you're just hearing the Spanish language spoken, the words can get lost in a steady flow of sounds. It helps to see where the words break from each other, and that's what you get in English with Spanish subtitles -- you hear the words you know, and you see them in the other language. That's the best approach if you ask me. (Rocky III also worked a bit, because I've seen that movie about ten times, and remember much of the dialogue.)

What interested me is the random selection of movies that were playing. Movies I watched at least short chunks of included Daisy von Scherler Mayer's The Guru, Raymond de Felitta's The Thing About My Folks and Bernard Rose's Immortal Beloved. (It's best if you do this with a movie you've already seen, so you don't miss out on the plot while you're concentrating on teaching yourself the words.)

Of course, as with everything on the trip, it was a project I could pursue only in short bursts. There was one valuable word I learned in Spanish, however, while watching The Guru: "pelicula." It's a word I should have known before now, or at least remembered that I already knew.

Yep, "pelicula" means "movie."

Adios y gracias, damas y caballeros. Hasta manana.

The all-too-brief feature directing career of Daisy von Scherler Mayer

Hollywood is a pretty tough place to work, if you can direct two really great comedies out of four movies, and you still have to spend the rest of your career settling for TV work.

Such is the case with Daisy von Scherler Mayer, a director who caught my attention as much for her lengthy name (second in length only to Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck?) as for the fact that she's the pride and joy of Wesleyan University, where a close friend attended college.

I've had the pleasure of revisiting Mayer's two really great comedies -- Party Girl (1995) and The Guru (2003) -- in the past year, The Guru as recently as Monday night. I'm glad to say they both hold up. Her other two movies -- Woo and Madeline, both released in 1998 -- are not so great. But nobody's perfect.

Still, you'd think her two successes would have earned her a fifth theatrical feature, especially since her best film, The Guru, was her most recent one. Unfortunately, when it comes to the world of movies, "best" is a decidedly subjective term. I love The Guru, but I'm the only source I really have for that love. I mean, I've showed it/recommended it to other people, and they've confirmed that it's good, but I've never spoken to anyone who has independently offered up their affection for The Guru. I'm still waiting for someone to mention The Guru to me, rather than the reverse. And even though I gave it a glowing review on my website, predating that review was the 2 1/2 star rating the staffers gave it, based on a general critical consensus. Despite my review, that rating still stands.

So since 2003 Mayer has been directing TV episodes -- just a handful here and there, shows such as Emily's Reasons Why Not, The Loop and Aliens in America. Remember those? I thought not. (Actually, Aliens in America was good -- I can't speak to the quality of the others.) Okay, so she's also directed Mad Men and Chuck -- maybe she's fine with this being the new focus of her career. But as a guy who prizes the value of the feature film over the value of the TV episode any day of the week, I tend to doubt it.

At this point I should probably tell you a little bit about why I think Party Girl and The Guru are so great.

Remember when Parker Posey was not yet "Parker Posey"? In other words, was not yet essentially a caricature of herself (even though she still manages to be plenty lovable on occasion)? Party Girl provides a wonderful example of that. In this light indie comedy that also features fellow up-and-comers Liev Schrieber and (to a lesser extent) Guillermo Diaz, Posey plays Mary, the party girl of the title, who doesn't realize that she yearns to do more than attend parties in Manhattan lofts and shop at thrift stores. Under the influence of her aunt Judy, a librarian -- who, I've just learned, is the director's mother, actress Sasha von Scherler (R.I.P.) -- Mary decides to pursue library sciences, while also courting the salesman at the falafel stand where she orders her baba ganoush. There ain't a lot more than that in terms of plot -- but it's what Mayer does with these characters (especially Posey, but several darling secondary characters as well) that makes this such a joyous little slice of deliciousness. It's one of the standouts of the indie comedy movement that emerged in the mid-1990s, which also featured some prominent directors who are still going strong -- Nicole Holofcener with Walking and Talking and Noah Baumbach with Kicking and Screaming, just to name the first two that come to mind. (Quite possibly, because their titles are very similar). For the record, Party Girl falls in between those two, with Baumbach's movie coming out on top.

Then there's The Guru, which is probably Mayer's "biggest" movie in terms of its cast. Although the lead, Jimi Mistry, is essentially unknown (and what a shame it is that he can't get more work, because he's charming as hell), he's flanked by two pretty big names: Marisa Tomei and Heather Graham. (Not to mention a hilarious cast of side characters, including Michael McKean, Dash Mihok, Bobby Cannavale and Christine Baranski.) The film is about an Indian dance instructor (Mistry) who comes to New York to pursue the American dream of becoming a famous actor -- spurred on by a childhood love of American movies, which was awakened the moment he snuck out of the Bollywood movie his parents were watching and into the screening of Grease in the neighboring theater. While living with three other Indian nationals who have more "typical" immigrant jobs -- cab driver, waiter in an Indian restaurant -- the naive Ramu applies for a part in a movie, not realizing it's a porn shoot. On the shoot he meets Sharonna (Graham), who is trying to fool her firefighter fiance (Mihok) that she's actually an innocent school teacher -- though she's only doing porn to help them afford their dream home in nearby Throg's Neck. Meanwhile, Ramu also gets accidentally hired to serve as a guru at a party of Manhattan socialites (Tomei and her family), which accidentally becomes a full career as a sex guru. He needs Sharonna's wisdom on the art of sexual gratification to peddle his new trade.

Whether the previous synopsis sounds kind of off-the-wall or counterintutively delightful, you'll just have to trust me it's the latter. The movie has several dance numbers that infuse the spirit of Bollywood with the spirit of Hollywood, and they are absolutely wonderful. The whole movie is light and sweet. Crucially, the movie loves its three crazy dreamers -- the dance instructor with Hollywood hopes, the porn star who wants to live out her suburban fantasy, and the loopy socialite seeking her purpose in Eastern religion. A mean-spirited satire would have made a laughingstock of them all, but this gentle satire loves them, and the love is contagious. The movie has some really funny moments, as well as some touching ones -- and the dance numbers, oh, the dance numbers! See it.

In between Party Girl and The Guru, Mayer made an urban romantic comedy (Woo) and an adaptation of a beloved children's book (Madeline). Both have their positive bits -- Jada Pinkett Smith is pretty delightful as Woo, a little firecracker who was probably modeled on Posey's Mary, and Madeline is harmless if forgettable fun, featuring a very game Frances McDormand, playing a nun. But neither of these films is worth a second look.

I've now seen Party Girl either twice or three times, and The Guru four times. I own the latter and I wouldn't mind owning the former.

And this has made me a big Daisy von Scherler Mayer fan. It's made me root for Daisy von Scherler Mayer, and made me heave a sigh of disappointment to see that she can't get feature directing work anymore.

But who knows what it is. Maybe Mayer found directing films too stressful. Maybe she preferred the short-term commitment of TV. Maybe she's independently wealthy and doesn't need to work, and maybe she just dabbles in TV because it keeps her professionally sharp and feeds her remaining creative impulses.

I should just be glad for what she's given me so far, and not worry about whether she has the long and illustrious career I think she should/could have. You never know with directors. Sometimes they just disappear, and you may never get a satisfactory explanation of what happened. For example, I am still trying to figure out when we're going to get another movie from the great Alexander Payne, whose last film was Sideways, way back in 2004. Oops, scratch that -- I just checked wikipedia, and his film The Descendants is due out this year. But the point is, when I looked about a year ago, there was nothing on the horizon for this indisputably talented and successful filmmaker, who had given us the excellent quartet of Citizen Ruth, Election, About Schmidt and Sideways. Neither could I find anything when I googled the words "What happened to Alexander Payne?" I'm just thankful that the existence of another movie finally came along to give me my answer.

As for Mayer, or Scherler Mayer, or von Scherler Mayer, maybe she's got a third great comedy in her, maybe she doesn't. Or maybe she now finds the Madison Avenue board rooms of the 1960s to be her thing.

Either way, I wish her well.