DISQUS

newcritics: Wednesday Night at the Movies: Desperately Seeking Susan

  • Campaspe · 1 year ago
    All righty then, je suis arrivée.
  • LanceManion · 1 year ago
    C., when Watson gets here are you and he going to argue all night over when the East Village was better, the early 80s or the mid 80s?
  • LanceManion · 1 year ago
    If Wolcott shows he can put the case for the late 70s.
  • Campaspe · 1 year ago
    One time when I met him in a deli on the way to a party we were reminiscing about the good old days on the Upper West Side, or Upper Upper as I was in (Harlem).
  • LanceManion · 1 year ago
    What was the upshot?
  • Campaspe · 1 year ago
    That it was a lot more fun, of course. Even when he was living in a basement apartment and I was living over the elevated.

    For one thing, the number of revival houses back then ... how it breaks the heart.
  • LanceManion · 1 year ago
    By the way, you'll have to bring pictures of yourself in full Susan mode to the next newcritics shindig before I'll believe you were setting the style for Madonna.
  • Campaspe · 1 year ago
    not me personally, silly, but her look was very common around the area at the time. And I did wear bustiers etc. but I was never an accessory junkie to the same degree.
  • LanceManion · 1 year ago
    Too much of a lady now for me to see you that way. But I can see you as one of the immigrants and I like that idea, of a less obvious ingredient to the melting pot.
  • Campaspe · 1 year ago
    okay, I'll dig 'em up. I have one of me in a transparent zebra dress over a black slip. I never did the garter belt over the briefs look, however.
  • LanceManion · 1 year ago
    I picked the wrong time to move to the Midwest. I missed that whole era there.
  • LanceManion · 1 year ago
    Next Stop Greenwich Village plays with that a bit, but because the main characters are all bohemians it's a side-issue.
  • flickhead · 1 year ago
    You dragged me out of bed for this?!?
  • Campaspe · 1 year ago
    We just started, give us a break. Back me up on the lingerie-as-outerwear issue, it's important damnit.
  • Campaspe · 1 year ago
    and Flickhead, did you drag out the soundtrack or no?
  • LanceManion · 1 year ago
    I can't help associating Desperately Seeking Susan with After Hours, and I don't think it's just because Rosanna Arquette was in both.
  • Campaspe · 1 year ago
    I haven't seen After Hours recently and don't remember it nearly as well, but yeah, they do bookend the decade in NY like no others.
  • LanceManion · 1 year ago
    There's no connection between the two and Scorcese's segment of New York Stories, even though that's the one that had me falling in love with Arquette. Scorcese's New York is in a whole nother universe.
  • LanceManion · 1 year ago
    In New York Stories, I mean. Susan and After Hours seem set in the universe I was living in and the New York I had just left for Iowa.
  • Campaspe · 1 year ago
    Scorsese's segment was the only one I recognized as my city in New York Stories, though I did enjoy the rest of the picture.

    I had a friend who worked on that movie and has a poster signed by all three directors ... can you imagine?
  • LanceManion · 1 year ago
    Lucky bastard. Did your friend get Nolte's autograph too?
  • Campaspe · 1 year ago
    No, I don't think he asked. Come on, he had the directors! who CARES about the actors?

    (threw that out in case we have hard-core auteurists lurking)
  • LanceManion · 1 year ago
    Darn those auteurists.
  • flickhead · 1 year ago
    No, no soundtrack...I'd really like the music that's played when they're riding around on the Moped.

    Mannion, both films came out around the same time and comparisons were made...mostly favoring Scorsese's picture. It's certainly the superior of the two (Desperately Seeking Susan occasionally carries the feel of television), but my attraction to Seidelman's film is mostly nostalgic. In her DVD audio commentary, she does credit Celine & Julie Go Boating for inspiring Leora Barish and her screenplay.
  • Campaspe · 1 year ago
    I thought about doing After Hours but in a lot of ways it's a more sour movie, and I have a lot of sour in this series. I wanted a little sweet.

    I think the scenes that play like TV are almost deliberately like that, meaning the scenes with Blum and Metcalf. It has a sitcom-y feel that is probably deliberate and meant to echo their very suburban lives. Although they're both funny, especially Metcalf.

    (haven't seen Celine and Julie but David ehrenstein already expressed his preference for that one!)
  • LanceManion · 1 year ago
    Sour! That's a good word.
  • LanceManion · 1 year ago
    Really, people liked After Hours better? I liked it a lot but it was all personal, plus John Heard. Of the two, Susan was really the more...naturally funny.
  • Campaspe · 1 year ago
    I agree, I also preferred Susan at the time but Flickhead's impression is the one I got from critics. I don't think Susan was much regarded at all at the time, it was the "madonna movie" and fluff.
  • LanceManion · 1 year ago
    So what is Desperately Seeking Susan showing me I missed, besides you in zebra stripes?
  • Campaspe · 1 year ago
    Definitely the camraderie that existed in that area at the time. It was possible to crash on the floor of someone you just met (not in a sexual sense). There was a big mix of people around and you could meet them all. The crazy ways people had of supporting themselves, the smaller and more eccentric clubs. Genuine fashion weirdness, not just "styled" stuff.
  • LanceManion · 1 year ago
    Music? Did the Village have a soundtrack?
  • Campaspe · 1 year ago
    Oh yeah, mostly synth-pop and post-punk but I still liked it better of course. I dated way too many musicians in those days. Is that still a big rite of passage?

    Now I should just sit over here in the corner and bang my cane...
  • flickhead · 1 year ago
    I didn't express myself properly above. Susan was a genuine box office hit, After Hours was more popular with the critics but not with the public.
  • LanceManion · 1 year ago
    Ah,, that makes sense. That was the first Scorcese can do no wrong period.
  • flickhead · 1 year ago
    Just after King of Comedy!
  • Campaspe · 1 year ago
    LOL, true. But Mannion is also right. The turnaround in critical opinion about Scorsese was really amazing in the 1980s, especially for Raging Bull.
  • Campaspe · 1 year ago
    So, Mannion and Flickhead and anyone else out there, we've mostly discussed the nostalgia aspect. Do either of you find it romantic at all?
  • LanceManion · 1 year ago
    Well, you know me, I'm not much for mush.
  • Campaspe · 1 year ago
    You do too like mush, you just want a nice crunchy coating on top, like with The Apartment.
  • LanceManion · 1 year ago
    I didn't know Susan was a full-fledged hit, but I remember it being very popular in certain circles. And here's the thing: it feautured three actors who were poised for stardom after that, Madonna, Arquette, and Quinn and after that there was hardly a peep out of the three of them.
  • Campaspe · 1 year ago
    Well, there was a great deal more than a peep out of Madonna and she did make a number of movies which were, of course, uniformly terrible. God, I even saw Who's that Girl? WHY? I am not a big fan. Arquette -- I still don't understand what happened there. The window of opportunity for a pretty young actress is so short. That is why I don't get too worked up over the ones who irritate me, so few of them get to stick around. She made 8 Million Ways to Die and After Hours and New York Stories and Crash and then it was off to supporting roles.

    Aidan Quinn I don't understand either. I guess The Handmaid's Tale was something of a disaster but he was in a number of good films in the decade. He had a good career but not the stardom I was envisioning for him when I walked out of DSS all those years ago.
  • LanceManion · 1 year ago
    I have a theory about what happened to Quinn, who certainly hasn't vanished, he's just not been the leading man he seemed poised to be.
  • LanceManion · 1 year ago
    Benny and Joon.
  • LanceManion · 1 year ago
    Johnny Depp reduced him to permanent second leading man status.
  • Campaspe · 1 year ago
    That is quite plausible. But I just checked his bio on IMDB and he doesn't seem to have done a lot of movies at a point when it was crucial for his career.

    Fine actor. He did a TV version of All My Sons in the 1980s that was stellar.
  • LanceManion · 1 year ago
    He came close to doing that to Orlando Bloom too. I think male movie stars should be very careful about working with Depp.
  • Campaspe · 1 year ago
    Benicio del Toro survived all right. But yeah, Depp is a true star who can really blow people off the screen, though I think he's too good an actor to try for that. I don't even remember Bloom in the Pirate movies. There's a reason the old studios didn't pile up stars in movies, they didn't want one outshining the others too much.
  • LanceManion · 1 year ago
    I doubt Depp tries, in fact I suspect that if he knows it's happening he reins himself in. But he's just that much better than just about any young male actor he'll ever work with.
  • Campaspe · 1 year ago
    Yep. And did ANYONE foresee that when watching 21 Jump Street? It was future flameout Richard Grieco who got the big heartthrob push. It was undoubtedly smart of Depp not to try for that.
  • flickhead · 1 year ago
    Seidelman's DVD commentary also mentions this was supposed to be Rosanna's break-out film, as Madonna wasn't a superstar when she signed on. Madonna's celebrity grew during filming and Rosanna kind of went...well, not nowhere, but close enough. A year later, in 1986, she got top billing in a failed star-maker, Nobody's Fool (no relation to the Paul Newman movie), a quirky romantic comedy that very few people went to see. I remember catching it on cable sometime in '87 or '88 and liking it, but I haven't seen it since.
  • LanceManion · 1 year ago
    Funny, I kept coming across references to it when I was doing google searches on Newman over the weekend, and I had no memory of it. Considering my feelings about Arquette at the time, I would have thought I'd have rushed out to see it. Instead it seems to me that she did Silvarado, in which she did a poor imitation of Kim Darby in True Grit, and the next time I heard of her she was posing for Playboy. And now it's her sister and brother who've had the real careers.
  • Campaspe · 1 year ago
    Something else I would never have predicted!
  • Campaspe · 1 year ago
    I am so lousy at picking the next big thing. If you'd asked me I would have said Cyndi Lauper was much better than Madonna. I'm right about that, actually, I still love Cyndi. But in terms of popular appeal I was as wrong as Rosanna's sweatshirt in the Battery Park scene.
  • LanceManion · 1 year ago
    You were right about Cyndi v. Madonna.
  • Campaspe · 1 year ago
    Cyndi had an excellent album in the early 90s that tanked in part, I feel positive, because they picked the wrong damn song to release as a single.

    She showed up on a morning show recently looking absolutely great, I am happy to say. Much better than Madonna who has exercised to a point that is ... frightening to me. For me the dividing line with Madonna was that stupid Sex book. Before it I find her tremendous fun, after it was just dullsville.
  • LanceManion · 1 year ago
    The sex book practically put an end to the sexual revolution all by itself.
  • Campaspe · 1 year ago
    Lord it was boring and sex should NEVER be boring.
  • flickhead · 1 year ago
    Siren, Rosanna's character is living in a romantic dream...which is probably why I identify with the film. I appreciate her quest for excitement and passion, which leads to her amnesia...and her initial romantic hesitation with Quinn -- who, if it'll make you feel all gushy, my wife claims I resemble. She also said I looked like Tom Berenger, but that was before she got her eyeglass prescription updated.
  • Campaspe · 1 year ago
    Yes, I think we are latching onto similar things. There's a sympathy for the romantic dreams of women that is missing from a lot of modern male-directed movies (but not the old ones).

    If you resemble Aidan Quinn you should definitely have a photo section on your blog. :D
  • flickhead · 1 year ago
    No, I won't do that. You'd never be able to control yourself. It would lead to total pandemonium.
  • Campaspe · 1 year ago
    But think of the stat counter!
  • LanceManion · 1 year ago
    I resemble Mark Blum.
  • Campaspe · 1 year ago
    as they say on the fashion blogs, WWP (worthless without pictures)
  • tomwatson · 1 year ago
    Ah the East Village of the late 70s and very early 80s - that was the real time. (Lance was right, I can't help it).

    But I do remember Danceteria quite well, all three floors. It was about dancing and scene-making, not my core deal in those days, but I did spend some time there. What a time. The names come tumbling back (many were gone or not the same by '85) - Max's and CBGB of course, but also the Mudd Club, Hurrah, the Ritz, Tramps, the Bottom Line, Heat, the Peppermint Lounge, the Lone Star. What am I forgetting?

    I liked "Susan" a lot, haven't seen it in a long time. but I'd like to, for the nostalgia. The movie was about the end of an era, the tail end in a changing New York - not about the beginning of one.
  • Campaspe · 1 year ago
    I spent a lot of time in almost all those clubs. Usually trying to help plug in amps. And trying to find checker cabs, which still existed and were the only ones you could fit a lot of equipment into. And the Cat Club ... am I the only fart here who remembers the Cat Club? I had permanent free admission there because of where I worked and on a good night, comped drinks too.
  • LanceManion · 1 year ago
    C, I think you should write a memoir of New York back then. It could be a companion volume to the book Wolcott's working on.
  • Campaspe · 1 year ago
    Mine are like most reminiscences, only interesting in small doses. Wolcott, on the other hand, had a front-row seat. We really need him here!
  • tomwatson · 1 year ago
    I remember the Cat Club - David Johansen tried out his Buster Poindexter persona there before taking it to bigger venues.
  • Campaspe · 1 year ago
    I heard about that after the fact but wasn't there, alas.
  • LanceManion · 1 year ago
    C wrote above: "There's a sympathy for the romantic dreams of women that is missing from a lot of modern male-directed movies (but not the old ones)."

    You are really onto something with that one. Forgetting Sarah Marshall just came out on DVD. Does Judd Apatow ever consider *why* any of his leading ladies might fall in love with his leading men?
  • Campaspe · 1 year ago
    Oh sure, lately it's usually the dreams of boys. Not men (which I would enjoy more), just boys.
  • LanceManion · 1 year ago
    Did you happen to read Sheila O'Malley's post on Paul Newman at the House Next Door?
  • Campaspe · 1 year ago
    I did and it was awesome as Sheila's stuff always is. That Patricia O'Neal story was the single shittiest thing I have ever heard about Newman. It may be the ONLY shitty thing I have ever heard about Newman, in fact.
  • LanceManion · 1 year ago
    Yeah! It was almost as if Newman thought they were rehearsing and he had let himself be taken over by Hud.
  • Campaspe · 1 year ago
    Meh. Weak as an explanation and nonexistent as an excuse. I mean, she was talking about her dead daughter for pete's sake. Don't tell me you can't break character, that's BS. I think he didn't want to deal.

    but I mean, it's one lousy moment in a lifetime of being a nice guy by most accounts.
  • LanceManion · 1 year ago
    Not either an explanation or an excuse. Merely a description of how rotten it was. But we all have rotten moments.
  • LanceManion · 1 year ago
    Reason I brought it up though, was Sheila's description of the scene on the bed between Newman and Geraldine Page in Sweet Bird of Youth.
  • LanceManion · 1 year ago
    I wonder if part of the problem with making a romantic movie is that it's hard to find male actors who are willing to let their guards down like that and allow themselves to be the object of desire.
  • LanceManion · 1 year ago
    Darn, C's gone. I wanted to get her take on this one. Seems to me that male stars of the Golden Era were a lot more comfortable being the love interest. That had changed drastically by the 60s. Newman himself didn't do very many romantic movies.
  • LanceManion · 1 year ago
    It came back a little in the 80s. Susan, Working Girl...
  • LanceManion · 1 year ago
  • tomwatson · 1 year ago
    There was this place up by Lincoln Center by the American bible Society whose name escapes me - a big dance club that didn't last and had incredibly surly bouncers. But I remember Madonna herself hanging out there - oh, probably '80 or so. She was a DJ/personality type. Probably not event listed in the Villages Voice cafes, clubs and discos section....the one must-read of the week.
  • Campaspe · 1 year ago
    oh wait, I remember that one ... trying to recall the name. In the 80s you could still conceivably have a dance club in an area like that.
  • tomwatson · 1 year ago
    It had rows and rows of white couches you weren't allowed to sit on, as i recall...but then again, by recall of those days isn't very specific. But I do remember Madonna - she didn't have quite the flashy wardrobe then. More black t-shirts etc.
  • tomwatson · 1 year ago
    Was it Trax, per chance?
  • Campaspe · 1 year ago
    Alas gentlemen, I am afraid I am sick. Just took my temperature and I need to go to bed. Carry on and I will check in tomorrow. Have fun!
  • LanceManion · 1 year ago
    Night, C. Sorry you're not feeling well.
  • Vanwall · 1 year ago
    All this N'yakking is fascinating - the dark underbaelly of The Big City Bustier Babes Club comes to the fore, and is there going to be a fave deli fight? With creamcheese? I liked "...Susan", but Madonna never has done a thing for me. An amber rock kicked up by a toe, I actually like the fact that this was the high point for a lot of the players - good memories. Now get offa my lawn, kid.
  • LanceManion · 1 year ago
    Evening, Van. Don't worry, this is hardly a meeting of a cyber chapter of the Madonna fan club.
  • Vanwall · 1 year ago
    Sorry Mrs. C had to go, hope she feels better.

    I like film this over After Hours, mostly because it has a loopy energy. After Hours was more disquieting. The music is either too after or too before for me, but I knew soooo many gals watched this film and suddenly they all looked like bit players in it. i went to county fair in the hinterlands of WA state a few years ago, and a lotta those little farm girls still dressed like this - unfortunately, so did a lotta their Moms.....generationally creepalicious.
  • larry aydlette · 1 year ago
    Siren, am I crazy? You need to go on Google images, put in Joan Crawford in the search field and eventually you will come to a pic of Crawford dressed EXACTLY, and I mean EXACTLY, as Arquette and Madonna are in this movie. It's either a Photoshop fake or it is clearly what they used "for inspiration", if you get what I mean.

    I've always been fond of this movie, because one night in the late '80s, I happened to run across Madonna on St. Mark's Place. I'm not embarrassed to admit that I followed her around for a minute or two. She was with friends. They went into a corner drug store. They bought a bunch of bubble gum, Madonna said something about a tabloid claiming she was having an affair with "Marky Mark" (long before he became the esteemed Oscar nominee) and she refused to look at one magazine a friend proffered because it was "too dirty" for her. Which, considering her public image at the time, is quite remarkable. Interesting night.

    Anyway, "Into The Groove" is her greatest song, in my opinion. Great dance number.
  • tomwatson · 1 year ago
    I'd have to go with Material Girl - perhaps the song of its era.
  • David Ehrenstein · 1 year ago
    The film makes no sense because Rosanna Arquette has always been cooler than Madonna and always will be. They shoudl have switched roles.

    Outside of that I overhwelmingly prefer the original: "Celine et julie von en bateau/ Phantom Ladies Over Paris."