1. The climactic murder of Maddie in "Twin Peaks" episode 15. Even now, perhaps especially now, the most horrifying killing ever depicted on a network television show, certainly the one which elicited the most empathetic reaction from me.
I was 17 at the time and a huge Peaks fan from the beginning (April 8, 1990, 8 p.m.); I remember distinctly how I would watch the entire accumulated series I had taped till that point before the next week's episode.
When episode 15 rolled around and Lynch finally revealed the killer of Laura Palmer it was a deep, depressing experience, marked by waves of sadness and horror. Though some had "figured it out" prior to this moment, Lynch made all too clear in those final 10 excruciating minutes how utterly irrelevant the act of detection and determination were to the impact of his grand metaphysical reveal. This was a watershed moment for me because, despite my appreciation for what Lynch had been doing up until that point, I was forced, in those minutes, to confront my own illusions of consolation: I desperately wanted the police to "figure it out" as well and kick the door down and haul the guilty one away, I wanted something to happen to stop the gruesome, prolonged, almost real time murder playing out before me, and I guess I wanted the revelation of the killer to mean less, as it undoubtedly does most of the time on TV mystery shows and certainly as it does now on the godforsaken wasteland of CSI and Law Order.
Peaks was supposed to change television but it was truly too good to do that. At best we got the pale knock offs, quoting cute whimsy like Northern Exposure and Picket Fences. Nobody was willing to take it where Lynch did in those final minutes--a place merging the true mystery of incomprehensible rage, diseased affection and, eventually, the disquiet attending a rift in the universe.
Maddie's death is followed by the only appropriate thing--a kind of gentle consolation for our human impotence to stop rage and violence, to ever vanquish them for good, a communal observance of grief for one loss which represents universal loss. Peaks' level of profound empathy at the loss of one person has now been replaced by the fashionable indifference and prosaic procedurals of the CSI's--a world far removed from Lynch but more comfortable to the audience; a world of narcissism in which we can prove our mastery over clues and the victim is "evidence". The CSI detectives would certainly "figure it out" but it would ultimately wind up meaning far less.
2. Alan Parker's Angel Heart--particularly the last ten mintes of that one. I was still at an age where I was open to shock and that's certainly what Parker delivered here.
Above and beyond that, this was another deeply horrifying experience for a kid who always took metaphysical/religious subjects deadly seriously. Of course, The Exorcist had that effect too but somehow there was something even more shattering and bleak about Angel Heart. Perhaps Parker's hard cut to the elevator at the end sealed the deal.
Certainly Rourke's final line, spoken in a truly defeated tone was bone chilling. But I think it was similar to Peaks, really. Something very primal was at work in both of these.
The true nightmare was in the revelation that we cannot ever know enough to be secure and that in order to be human we must invest our feelings somewhere, with someone, no matter what the risk. Parker and Lynch remind us that the risk is always grave.
3.
Ridley Scott's Blade Runner: the whole experience. This was the big one for me. I had always loved films but when I first saw this, on the CBS Saturday night movie sometime in the fall of '86, "something crossed over in me" to quote one of Ridley's other heroes and my film love blossomed into something big and often unmanageable.
When I think on this now it's really amazing that it had the effect it did, watching it on a 19 inch screen, cropped and edited for TV. I think it suggests something about the power of Scott's accomplishment. As with all the other stuff on this list, there was something indelible about my experience with this movie, almost sacred even.
Nowadays we see so much and have access to so much it's hard to remember back to a time when I eagerly longed to catch the ad for the local independent TV station because it had a clip of BR on it and I knew that meant they would someday screen it again. Yet, there's also something wonderful about not having my desires immediately gratified, something that makes the gratification that much more special. I wonder if anybody can understand that now.
Obviously Scott's vision of the future had huge appeal to a kid growing up in the 80's but what really made that film for me was the fact that it was very, very serious and extremely adult in its content and themes. You can't fake that and, really, Sir Ridley never managed it again (at least not to this degree). Even the much maligned happy ending in the version I saw felt, and still does feel, wistful and pained--evidencing a genuine regret for the condition of humanity which somehow seems more fitting than the abrupt, bleak closure of the director's cut.
The violence was ugly and felt like a tragic inheritence passed on to the replicants (a history of violence?); the atmosphere, meanwhile, was totally convincing and transportive. Ford's greatest performance by far--a difficult, almost impossible balancing act refined to perfection.
4. Soderbergh's sex, lies and videotape. I fear I may be revealing too much of myself with these choices and these comments (I can imagine Odie now: "Take your therapy over to Dr.
Phil's page!") but I persist. Soderbergh's film was another big formative experience for me.
I did not grow up on a steady diet of rough and tumble fare; my home life was very suburban straight laced and therefore perhaps I could relate deeply, maybe way too deeply to this picture when I saw it for the fist time on Showtime in 1990. The ease and naturalness of the characters was something I knew, as was the milieu itself, the kind of community and the tenor of the discourse. This was another picture that struck me because it felt so truly adult and still does in a way most of the awkward indie rip offs in its wake never managed.
I fear that perhaps it and my #5 pick have had an unfortunate effect upon the way that I relate to people intimately, but if so it's only because they both seemed so dead on true. Confession time: I made it my business to dress like Spader's Graham for the next couple years (well, that and some of Val Kilmer's wardrobe form John Dahl's 1989 Kill Me Again); as a dear friend says to this day: "I've found my new look for spring (summer, fall, winter, what have you)".
5.
Herbert Ross's Pennies From Heaven: once again, the whole thing. Okay, let's see, where was I when I first saw this? Must have been in 1983 on WGN.
I remember seeing this on afternnon TV as a kid and was forever scarred, I kid you not. Since that time I've held this movie up as my example of why the MPAA and TV censorship is irrelevant. This movie was edited for content, removing the nudity and profanity but it wasn't and couldn't be edited for its themes which were startlingly adult.
This vision of the selfishness and hatred incipient in human sexuality was taken as gospel by me at the time and I have had, unfortunately, little reason to question its logic since. Admittedly Dennis Potter was a misanthrope but it was never an attitude or a pose; his anguish was deeply felt and sincere--that's why his work is so devastating. It's funny for me to read that the main point of this film was its comment on Depression era needs and how they were satisfied by studio musicals.
Certainly that's true but, as always with Potter, that's the surface skin. It was really about how far human discontent extended and how inadequate our attempts to anesthetize ourselves actually were when they simply did not go far enough. One example will suffice: after the Steve Martin character has met Bernadette Peters for the first time he tells his buddies at the bar all about it.
Everyone breaks into a lavishly choreographed vaudeville routine set to a romantic melody; Martin and his buddies lip synch the words, suggesting his elation. Ross breaks through this and brings us back down to earth when one of the buddies asks (in voice over from the outside reality) "Did you do it with her in the back of a car?"; then somebody else says, "Did she have big tits?
" (of course this was edited, but the idea was clear enough). After each question there is a cut to Martin, still struggling to remain in his fantasy, looking more and more crestfallen. The implication, of course, is that romantic love is a fallacy but a blissful ideal that will be punctured and degraded by the grubby instincts of base human nature (I wonder if Cronenberg likes Potter).
For what it's worth, the impact of the film upon me at least made me a Potter fan and I came to appreciate his stylistic devices as much as his human insights--that stuff in turn led me to Atom Egoyan.
Well I hope that voyage through my childhood/adolescent psyche wasn't too troubling. But, hey, Matt, you did ask for it.
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