November Streaming
On Observing Noirvember in an Election Year
There’s a famous anecdote about John Ford—that preeminent American filmmaker—at an October 22, 1950 closed-door meeting of the Screen Director’s Guild (now the Director’s Guild of America) in the Crystal Room of the Beverly Hills Hotel, attended by hundreds of guild members. The Red Scare was ramping up, and red-baiting was on the menu: the right-wing Cecil B. DeMille, the legend goes, was trying to unseat then-president Joseph L. Mankiewicz over his refusal to impose an anti-communist “loyalty oath” for all of its members, with the assistance of the guild’s board. Towards the end of the heated meeting, in which DeMille ranted and raved about patriotism and the need for all its members to prove it, Ford stood up and declared, depending on the transcript you believe, “My name is John Ford. I make Westerns. I don't think there is anyone who knows more about what the American public wants than Cecil B. DeMille—and he certainly knows how to give it to them. In that respect I admire him…But I don't like you, C.B. I don't like what you stand for and I don't like what you've been saying here tonight.”
It’s a rousing sentiment, straight out of a John Ford film, and the quote, often abstracted from its context, feeds into the legend of Ford as a straight shootin’ man of principles—and America, by extension, as a place where such a man is possible. But functionally speaking, the story is essentially meaningless. Although DeMille was ousted at Ford’s recommendation, alongside the men he conspired with to recall Mankiewicz, the latter, a Republican, went on to encourage members to sign the loyalty oath anyway (just four days later). The squabble wasn’t a political one, really, but an internal battle over guild governance, and everyone lost in the end: the loyalty oath was instated for all members and remained on the books until 1966. Filmmakers accused of having communist sympathies or former ties were blacklisted, destroying countless careers (and lives) in the process, and the SDG/DGA would do nothing to help them. Then, people forgot.
I’ve been thinking a lot about that story in recent days, in wondering how best to broach the re-election of Donald Trump for this November newsletter. I’m not a political analyst, but I write about movies, which means that I write about history, and one thing history proves, time and again, is that fear is the most powerful motivating force in American culture and politics. Love, tolerance, acceptance…these are progressive American ideals, not enshrined American values. We forget this, routinely, because American essentialism ensures that we do. It can be somewhat depressing, historical context: how much better is that John Ford story, if you don’t look at everything that happened before it, or after it? We want that great American storyteller to have spoken up for what’s right, in defense of the little man, because it makes us feel better (and makes for a better anecdote). But it just isn’t true: what we want to believe, about our public figures and our institutions, hell, even our fellow Americans, isn’t reality. It’s a narrative; it’s propaganda. Someone conceived it in a board meeting at somewhere like the Beverly Hills Hotel to prevent us from tearing it all down. Ronald Reagan, that great failed actor-turned Republican icon, built his own political career off unrepentant red-baiting during his tenure as the President of the Screen Actors’ Guild from 1947-1952, exploiting anti-communist sentiment for direct personal gain; Roy Cohn, Donald Trump’s one-time lawyer and political guru,1 was chief counsel to Joseph McCarthy and spearheaded his anti-communist hearings. Cohn further advised Reagan, upon his election as president, which directly paved the way for Trump’s presidency. It’s a big, shitty club, built directly off the backs of those who fought for a better America, and we forgot.
You see, it’s really impossible to talk about film noir without talking about the Hollywood blacklist.
November, over the last few years, has come to be known amongst online cinephiles as “Noirvember,” as it’s the perfect month to dive into the wonderful world of film noir, with its trench coats and moody, chilly, atmospheric worlds of foggy uncertainty. But noir is also perfect for the month of November because it is a filmmaking mode that interrogates structures of power, entrenched inequality, and the fight of the Davids in the shadow of those big, bad Goliaths.
Welcome to November streaming.
My name is Madeline Ostdick. I write about movies. This month, we are showcasing “progressive noir,” or, movies that operate in the noir mode to critique corrupt and unjust systems, as well as hateful, harmful cultural forces. It joins our master film noir list this month, which has been updated with the latest streaming information for over 200 films falling on all ends of the political spectrum. Take solace in the moral relativity and ambiguity of the cinematic worlds captured in the genre, which force us to look just a bit more carefully at our own.
For this month’s actor showcase, we’re looking back at the eclectic film and television careers of two of the coolest cats to ever do it, and, for those feeling slightly on the verge, we’ve got a program on those Driven to Madness by Music.
“I didn't know you were interested in politics,” a man says to coded-sex worker Joan Crawford in Flamingo Road (1949), part of this months’ program on progressive noir. “I wasn't—,” she snarks back, “—until politics became interested in me.”
Nobody Ever Really Escapes: Progressive Film Noir
If “film noir” was forged in the moral vacuum created by World War II, it follows that the genre—invented by the French to describe a tendance of postwar American filmmaking to interrogate the dark underbelly and contradictory social mores of our culture—is particularly preoccupied with structures of power. In I Walk Alone (1947), a former bootlegger (Burt Lancaster) returns home—not from serving overseas, but from a 14-year prison stint for his crimes—and tries to recoup his share of lost earnings from his partner (Kirk Douglas), only to discover that their criminal organization has been folded into a semi-legitimate business. Lancaster can’t take his share, because it’s been laundered into a nightclub, operated through a complex configuration of shell companies, a governing board, and enough red tape to shield, conceal, and obscure their illegal activity. The gangster is the ultimate capitalist; after the war, he’s simply folded into the fray, protected by the elaborate practices of a bureaucratic capitalism that blurs distinction between legitimate and illegitimate business, “crime” and “smart business practices.” Everyone knows, for example, that developer Donald Trump used costly ready-mix concrete—which is rarely used in the construction of skyscrapers—to build Trump Tower in 1979 because it was supplied by S & A Concrete, a mobbed-up firm owned by Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno and Paul Castellano of the Genovese Crime Family, introduced to Trump through his lawyer, Roy Cohn, in exchange for union “help.” Fat Tony died in federal prison while serving a 100-year sentence for racketeering; Paul Castellano was murdered outside Sparks Steak House in Midtown in 1985. Donald Trump is president-elect of the United States of America.
Experimental filmmaker and critic Thom Andersen introduced the term film gris to describe movies that incorporate leftist critiques through the lens of film noir, citing examples (included in this program) like Joseph Losey's The Prowler (1951); John Garfield movies Force of Evil (1948), Body and Soul (1947), He Ran All the Way (1951); Jules Dassin's Night and the City (1950); and John Huston's Asphalt Jungle (1950). Several of these movies were made by people who were (or would be) blacklisted, facing industry persecution for their left-wing politics. Organizations tagged as being “Communist Party fronts” included groups fighting racism, fascism, and economic inequality; basically, any group that dared to question the state of American politics and ask for something better. This confluence of offscreen political repression and onscreen storytelling makes progressive film noir from the postwar period feel so incredibly vital (and angry), even as mainstream Hollywood cinema generally took a more conservative turn (at least until the end of the blacklist).
Building on the notion of “film gris,” we’ve developed this program of “progressive noir,” or, films from the noir genre that offer particularly pointed looks at the inequalities of its era, including neo-noirs like James Mangold’s Cop Land (1997) and Carl Franklin’s Devil in a Blue Dress (1995). Films in this program tackle a full slate of issues like xenophobia (The Lawless); police brutality and overreach (Flamingo Road, L.A. Confidential); virulent racism (No Way Out, Odds Against Tomorrow); anti-semitism (Crossfire); sensationalist media (Ace in the Hole, Deadline – U.S.A.); opioid addiction (The Man with the Golden Arm); right-wing extremism (Violence); and extrajudicial violence (The Sound of Fury). Instead of lamenting the fact that these issues are still very much unsettled in 2024, perhaps we might gain some perspective in viewing them as part of a broader historical spectrum—understanding, and accepting, that these issues are part of our country’s very makeup, not temporary scourges. Better the devil you know, you know?
“You Go Where They Love You”: Ben Gazzara on Screen(s)
“Like I've been telling my wife for years: aside from sex, and she's very good at it, God damn it, I like you guys better, I really do,” Ben Gazzara tells his onscreen friends—played by future offscreen friends—John Cassavetes and Peter Falk, in Husbands (1970). “Now, who the hell else could put up with me, huh? I'm a jerk, I know it.” The Actor’s Studio graduate—the son of Sicilian immigrants, raised in the Kip’s Bay neighborhood of New York—specialized in playing angry young men: first on the stage, originating the role of closeted footballer Brick in the original Broadway production of Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), then on the screen, breaking out in Otto Preminger’s boundary-breaking court room drama, Anatomy of a Murder (1959), in which he plays an unlikable, distraught husband on trial for the murder of his wife’s rapist. Pugnacious; oddly handsome—in a pugilist way, like a prize-winning bulldog—and suave, Gazarra had an obvious, easy appeal that made him compulsively watchable, even if he never really graduated to true leading man status. Beginning with his film debut as closeted sadist “Jocko De Paris” in The Strange One (1957), a film with the distinction of having been made entirely by actors and technicians from the Actor’s Studio, Gazzara made a remarkable career study on the construction, maintenance, and collapse of 20th century masculinity.
He met John Cassavetes while both were working as contract players in L.A., slumming in film and television work to pay the bills, when the latter scrounged up enough money to fund his passion project, Husbands, a scathing look at destructive masculinity inspired by the untimely death of his brother. Developed out of improvisational sessions that allowed Gazzara to flex his Actor’s Studio background, the film proved artistically fulfilling for both men (though it was savaged on release), who became lifelong friends (and frequent collaborators). Under Cassavetes, Gazzara produced some of his best work, portraying tough guys with delicate centers, torn between hard-learned, streetwise sensibility and a desire to upend their lives, daring to dream in a world that would only ever view them as schmucks. In The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976), he’s a two-bit nightclub owner who longs to stage artistic productions out of his strip club; in Husbands, he’s a perennially unsatisfied married man who gleans more joy from fraternization than heterosexual romance and feels trapped by middle class respectability; in Opening Night (1977), he plays a director adept at manipulating his troubled leading lady, but ultimately, has nothing substantial to contribute creatively. In Peter Bogdonavich’s forgotten curio Saint Jack (1979), he plays a pimp living in Singapore who longs to open a brothel, and can’t repress the morality that makes him such an odd patron of the seedy world he walks. In Capone (1975), he embodies the titular gangster as a charming, unrepentant capitalist, an exemplification of the American Dream (“Instead of the government trying to put me away for running the business, they outta be puttin’ all that effort into gettin’ rid of the reds and Bolsheviks who are tryin’ to take over our wonderful country,” he sniffs to reporters). Part method actor, part late studio contract player, part New Hollywood leading man, part aging character actor, Gazzara’s career wasn’t ever one discernible thing, making him the perfect cinematic gadfly; whether he’s playing “good” or “bad”—or more likely, something in between—when he appears onscreen, it signals to the viewer that a real professional is on the scene, ready to entertain us.
“I really enjoy villains,” Gazzara confessed at a press conference to promote Road House (1989), the film in which he plays a crime lord terrorizing a small Missouri town, whose sadistic glee at wreaking havoc plays a pivotal role in justifying the film’s outrageous, climactic blood bath. “Actually, I came into movies as a villain…the New Yorker called me ‘the most huggable heavy since Bogart.’ I remember that review — the only review I’ve ever remembered.” No one is so lovably evil on screen as Ben Gazzara, and his post-leading man era, like so many greats, really allowed him the opportunity to shine as an odd, fearless actor. He gleefully embodied countless reprehensible villains and morally compromised men in arthouse classics like Todd Solodnz’s Happiness (1998), Vincent Gallo’s Buffalo ‘66 (1998), Lars von Trier’s Dogville (2003), and Spike Lee’s Summer of Sam (1999). Most significantly, at least in our household, he brought to life Jackie Treehorn—a pornographer who “treats objects like women”—in the Coen Bros.’ The Big Lebowski (1998). Gazzara is such a consummate screen performer, and so memorable in these roles, because he walks a tightrope between modern method acting and the theatricality of someone who clearly relishes in a chance to take it over-the-top. His career took him many places: to television, notably, in Rod Serling’s cult disarmament Christmas film, A Carol for Another Christmas (1964) and groundbreaking AIDS telefilm An Early Frost (1985)2; to Italy, to make several movies; even to Korean War propaganda funded by the Moonies. With his strong, stocky build; sweet, all-knowing smile; and eyes that crinkled just-so at the edges—as if sitting on some great, cosmic secret—few performers commanded attention like Gazarra, that great gentleman palooka of the silver screen.
“I'm Not Hip, I'm Not Cool, I'm Not Glib”: the Curious, Multi-faceted Career of Eric Bogosian
“Sometimes there's a man...I won't say a hero, 'cause, what's a hero?” Sam Elliott asks in The Big Lebowski (1998). “But sometimes, there's a man…sometimes, there's a man, well, he's the man for his time and place. He fits right in there.” If ever there were such a man for Generation X, surely it’s (boomer) playwright/actor Eric Bogosian, who—like Gazzara—built an odd cinematic (and televisual) legacy that’s difficult to pin down beyond the cult of his own personality. Sorting through his filmography feels like digging through a crate of old, half-labeled videotapes and trying to make sense of the disparate collection of material, which bridges underground comedy, off-off-Broadway theater, independent film, and premium cable television. The grandson of survivors of the Armenian genocide, raised in suburban Massachusetts, Bogosian first drew notice (and acclaim) as a downtown New York playwright, channeling his ennui and ferocious musings about the world into his Pulitzer Prize-nominated 1987 play Talk Radio. Inspired by the 1984 assassination of Denver-area “shock jock” Alan Berg, the play is a look at an increasingly polarized American political landscape—and the birth of a kind of savvy media savant, ready to exploit it. It bridges the dark, edgy humor the actor/writer was channeling into his early comedy work with the more serious, clear-eyed artist he would become. Bogosian subsequently starred in the terrific 1988 film version of Talk Radio, a haven for split diopter enthusiasts and one of the more audacious cultural texts of its era—which he adapted with director Oliver Stone. The film is a showcase for the signature Bogosian style that would make him such a fun, beloved actor over the years: brash and cocky, he’s a loud-mouthed, Jewish-American lothario for an era trying to cast off the shackles of conservatism to Make America Cool Again. He earned an OBIE Award for his 1994 play SubUrbia, based on his youthful discontent growing up in Woburn, also providing the screenplay for Richard Linklater’s 1996 film adaptation, a snapshot of Gen X malaise. Like all Gen X art, the film proved divisive, detailing an age in which young people were pissed off and checked out, but not for any single, edifying reason. Bogosian wrote, performed, and adapted several such plays and one-man shows through the following decade,3 including the film adaptations Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll (1991)—shot by Ernest Dickerson (!)—and Wake Up and Smell the Coffee (2001), which showcase his fiery stage presence and capacity for disparate moods and characters. Frenetic, funny, and overwhelming, he's the sort of the overeducated, too-intense guy you encounter doing pseudo-stand-up at a house party in your 20s. “If I died up here right now, I mean how cool would that be?” Eric Bogosian asks his audience in Wake Up and Smell the Coffee. “You could email your best friend tomorrow morning: 'went to a show in the Village, guy died onstage, it was really kinda awesome, really made me think.’”
Bogosian’s positioning as a stalwart of downtown New York cool and underground comedy means he showed up in the oddest places—like in the background of Lizzie Borden’s feminist masterpiece Born in Flames (1983) and Cindy Sherman’s one-and-done slasher classic The Office Killer (1997). He played a down-and-out former comedy partner on Garry Shandling’s cult HBO series The Larry Sanders Show and provided numerous voices for Beavis and Butt-Head Do America (1996), the feature film spin-off of Mike Judge’s beloved comedy series. He pops up in the Tony Gilroy-penned adaptation of Steven King’s Dolores Claiborne (1995) and had a recurring role on Crime Story (1986-1988), Michael Mann’s ill-fated follow-up to Miami Vice for NBC, which broke creative ground when it forewent the serialized television format popular for police procedurals of its day. He worked with filmmakers who’d only get their real due later in life, like Larry Cohen—in director-as-serial-killer thriller Special Effects (1984) and The Stuff (1985)—and Paul Schrader, for the Lovecraftian neo-noir Witch Hunt (1994), made for HBO. Years before they starred opposite each other on Succession, he bought drugs from baby Kieran Culkin in Burr Steers’ underrated indie coming-of-age classic, Igby Goes Down (2002). All of these roles feel incredibly random, but taken in whole paint a portrait of a forward-thinking artist with his finger on the pulse. Even when he was embraced by mainstream institutions—starring for several seasons on Law & Order: Criminal Intent opposite Vincent D’Onofrio; gleefully playing the big bad in Steven Seagal (!) movie Under Siege 2: Dark Territory (1995); or appearing in legitimate Hollywood blockbusters like Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (2003) or Blade: Trinity (2004)—Bogosian never really felt part of the mainstream. A true scribe, he never stopped churning out shows and specials, as well as books, including one about the plot to kill the perpetrators of the Armenian genocide.
As it stands, we’re in something of a Bogosian renaissance: the performer reinvigorated his acting career in the late 2010s with a series of lauded performances, playing an Armenian mafia enforcer in Uncut Gems (2019), in which he has a too-late crisis of conscience over his gambling addict brother-in-law; a Bernie Sanders stand-in on zeitgeist television program Succession; and a flashy CEO targeted by Paul Giamatti—and the intrepid Southern District of New York!—in Prestige Dad TV ringer Billions. In the wake of his (incredible) performance on the recent AMC adaptation of Interview with a Vampire, clips from his old stand-up and plays began to re-circulate on social media, a weird confluence of (fairly recent) past and present. Despite his slightly corny, ferocious late 20th-century energy, which should relegate him to the dusty VHS tapes of the recent past, somehow, he’s more popular than ever. Wake up and smell the damn coffee: it’s Bogosian’s time!
Music Makes Me (Lose Control)
“You want to dance the masque, you must service the composer,” problematic conducting icon Lydia Tár (Cate Blanchett), the patron saint of this program, tells us, in Todd Field’s Tár (2022). “You gotta sublimate yourself, your ego, and, yes, your identity. You must, in fact, stand in front of the public and God and obliterate yourself.” She’s a titan of her field: a cultural lioness, serving the musical arts before all other gods and monsters. It’s ironic, because there’s no one more unwilling to sublimate herself than Lydia Tár, a woman who uses her position of power to take advantage of—and retaliate against—her young female students, leading to her own ruin. Conservatory instructor Terence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons), in Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash (2014), is content to merely physically and emotionally abusing his students, telling an aspiring jazz drummer (Miles Teller), “You are a worthless, friendless, faggot-lipped little piece of shit whose mommy left daddy when she figured out he wasn't Eugene O'Neill, and who is now weeping and slobbering all over my drum set like a fucking nine-year old girl!” If such hateful vitriol from a teacher of the musical arts seems hyperbolic, you likely haven’t studied music, or witnessed firsthand the kinds of mania it engenders in otherwise sensible, learned people. Musicianship requires dedication, passion, consistency, and discipline, things that many people believe are only achievable through coercion, manipulation, and abuse; why else would there be so many movies about it? In movies like Ken Russell’s The Strange Affliction of Anton Bruckner (1990), Michael Haneke’s The Piano Teacher (2001), and Ina Weisse’s The Audition (2019), the pursuit of musical perfection masks unhealthy coping mechanisms and damaging behaviors that consume the individual, who is but a fallible, imperfect vessel for a higher calling. In Humoresque (1946), The Seventh Veil (1945), and Mahler (1974), musicianship consumes the individual’s life, leaving little space for anything but mind-numbing repetition and dedication, to the detriment of their well-being and interpersonal relationships. In darker examples, musicianship begets violent, anti-social impulses, such as Rex Harrison’s classical music-soundtracked uxoricidal fantasies in Preston Sturges’ Unfaithfully Yours (1948), or Alison Williams’ limb-claiming sabotage in lesbian slasher The Perfection (2018). And what’s more timeless than The Phantom of the Opera, represented here in several iterations, a parable about a man who exerts total physical and emotional control on a young opera performer as a conduit for his own deferred musical dreams?
These are stories, as Janet Jackson would say, about control. Performing a musical composition requires so much more than the execution of flawless, steady notes: it also means dutifully following the musical phrasing, controlling the gaps and stoppage of sound, and conveying the feeling of an orchestration, a live, evolving beast of constant creation. To the chosen few, it’s a noble calling; to the majority, it’s a nice little pastime, which does not warrant undue stress or unhappiness; to the megalomaniacal among us, it’s…well…
And fuck you forever, Mr. Weisberg, wherever you are!
That’s it for November! We’ll be back next month with fresh streaming programs. In the meantime, resist the efforts of those who’d see fit to divide us—love is all we have in the face of fear. Did you know that the moon belongs to everyone? The best things in life are free…
The Apprentice (2024), in theaters (and available to purchase on VOD) now!
This groundbreaking television film—about a closeted gay man living with HIV, who returns home to break the news to his parents, played by Gena Rowlands and Ben Gazzara—was a watershed moment for mainstream depiction of the AIDS epidemic, reaching 34 million households upon its initial airing on NBC on November 11, 1985. Acclaimed by critics, the film received 14 Emmy nominations, winning Best Original Teleplay, as well a Peabody Award. It was also incredibly successful for the network, beating all other programs in the Nielsen rating during its airing, including Monday Night Football.
Bogosian’s solo works are prohibitively difficult to locate, such as the filmed recording of his 1986 one-man show Funhouse, which was only ever released on VHS, making it, basically, lost media, beyond the circulation of bootleg recordings. It is included in this program.