The new Nightmare Alley does in fact fix the problems of the original 1947 film. I had faith that Guillermo Del Toro would opt for a darker ending, and that he would make the character's decline make a great deal more sense. This new version of William Lindsay Gresham's novel is also much more violent (thankfully), and the production design, score, costuming, makeup, and hairstyling are all gorgeous.
But Del Toro has introduced some new problems into the mix, as well. [You should stop reading now if you haven't seen it yet.] In the first place – and I hate to say this because I absolutelyloveBradleyCooper – I don't think Cooper works in this movie. He could work, but he's playing the part weirdly, way too close to his chest, like he is hiding everything in the world. This part needs a clearer, honest portrayal that takes in absolutely everyone, a seducer's portrayal. This just isn't that: Cooper feels hidden and terrified for most of the film, wide-eyed and surprised rather than open-faced and genuine. It's hard to imagine him tricking anyone at all. He certainly never takes us in, and I feel like he probably should do this at times. Is he a nice guy? Cooper never lets us believe that he is.
Rooney Mara and Toni Colette also both seem to be playing their parts using the most shallow choices as possible. Both of their parts are slightly smaller because of the way the new screenplay works, but Mara opts for a totally guileless portrayal rather than someone with some teeth, and Colette's version of her character is barely a hustler at all – just a kind of sad horny lady.
Cate Blanchett comes out unscathed, though. Her part was the worst of the three in the original, and not only has it been beefed up here, her character is more interesting, dangerous, and sexy than anything we saw in 1947. Blanchett plays the part like a complete diva, and she wears gorgeous gowns, has gorgeous hair, and poses in front of walls inlaid with wood while endlessly smoking cigarettes and smiling with the reddest lips possible. She's a hustler, and we know it, and it's nothing but fun. Her final scene has been expanded here, and it's a delight – best thing in the movie.
Props, too, go to David Strathairn, who is consistent and wonderful. His character here is very different from anyone we've seen him play recently, and he's filled him with life and made distinct, intriguing choices.
All in all, I guess I didn't find this film so markedly different from the 1947 movie. It feels technically better, but it also has such a polished shine to it, and the acting is so stilted, that this 2021 version always just sort of feels soulless.
Patrick Imbert's The Summit of the Gods is one of the best animated films of the year. It has a gorgeous score by Amine Bouhafa, and it is wise and exciting and deeply philosophical. I really, really liked it.
1. What did you do in 2021 that you'd never done before?
Smiling at Jessica Del Vecchio
It doesn't feel like much of a year of firsts, honestly. In many ways this was a retread of 2020. I worked a lot. I made a lot of new types of food – especially Chinese and Mexican food – and didn't work out as much as I should have. But I did change my Instagram handle from aaroncthomas to chilicologne. I was at a vegan bar with my friends Steve and Joz in San Diego and Joz ordered popcorn that came dusted (spritzed?) with chili cologne, and Steve and I thought this would be a hilarious drag king name.
2. Did you keep your new year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year? My new year's resolution was to brunch more. And I did! Especially with Michael Fatica and Jason Tate when they were in town but also with many others. There's plenty of quality outdoor brunching in Florida.
3. Did anyone close to you give birth? My friends Caleb and Diana's daughter Cora was born in May, and my delightful co-worker and friend Kevin and his wife Katie had their son Finn in April.
4. Did anyone close to you die? We lost my friend and colleague Mark Brotherton earlier this year. Mark chaired the search committee that hired me at UCF, and he was an all-around great guy, a wonderful director, a good friend, and a loving mentor and teacher. He was one of my favorite people at UCF, and I miss him a lot.
5. What countries did you visit? My passport is actually expired. I will renew it in 2022.
6. What would you like to have in 2022 that you lacked in 2021? I have so much! I am not sure about this. I am very grateful. You know what I need? A more organized kitchen.
7. What dates from 2021 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? This October 14-17 I went on a very important societal retreat with my friends Yasser, Katie, and Jonathan. We stayed at the beach, ate seafood, and I had a drug-induced paranoid episode. It was life-affirming and very important – except for the paranoia.
8. What was your biggest achievement of the year? I'm now the co-director of the BA program at the FSU School of Theatre. My committee and I are working hard to give the BAs their own sense of identity and a kind of brand that really differs from the BFA programs at FSU. This is not easy, but we made a big step this Fall by hosting a Fall Fringe Fair for BA students. It was a big success, and I think we're on our way. (P.S. The correct response to learning someone is directing a program or is now a department chair is not
Congratulations!; it's Oh that sounds like a lot of work. How can I help?)
My article "Infelicities" was published in JDTC this summer, and some very cool people areliking it a lot. I'm so happy that people are finding it helpful, and I'm very proud of it.
9. What was your biggest failure? My poor book manuscript on male/male sexual violence (which is actually quite good!) is still in limbo. It will come out eventually, I am sure, but academic publishing is now on pandemic time, and I don't know how to help things move along. This would be very disheartening if I weren't working on my next book. As it is, it is very frustrating, but I'm focusing on the next thing I need to do.
10. Did you suffer illness or injury? Just some mild neck injuries. I've got a good chiropractor, though, and he is putting me back together.
11. What was the best thing you bought?
A curry leaf tree! I am now growing Genovese basil, curry leaf, and kaffir lime in my backyard. It's very exciting.
12. Whose behavior merited celebration? My colleague Lilian Garcia-Roig got a Guggenheim. She's awesome and very talented, and so this is very deserved.
I continue to be very proud of my students, especially the ones who keep in touch. I love hearing from them, and I am deeply invested in them. It is not very common for students to keep in touch, actually, so it is great when they do.
13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed? Republicans in Congress and at the Supreme Court, and in governors' offices around the country. I'm not exactly happy with Democrats either, so I don't mean this as partisan politics; it's really not. But these Republicans are actually fighting actively against democracy. They know that a majority of the country doesn't agree with them about many, many things – especially personal freedoms – and yet they arrange it so that they control the country's laws instead of a majority of the people controlling the country. I am a person who is consistently in the minority (politically and personally) in this nation, and I feel like it's our job to work to convince people of our positions, but the Republican leadership in this country, who also represent a minority, have seized power in order to tell the rest of us what to do. It's cynical and disheartening and truly terrible. Our government isn't working. It's not working the way it should be working to help the most people, and it's not even working the way that it was designed to work. Honestly, I don't know how these people sleep at night.
15. What did you get really, really, really excited about? Attending the ASTR 2021 conference in San Diego. It was the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic that I had been to a conference and I was so happy to see everyone, even though it didn't always feel super safe. It was also nice to be somewhere other than Tallahassee. I had done no air travel at all since March 2020
16. What song will always remind you of 2021?
Doja Cat and SZA's "Kiss Me More". I even wrote a little essay about it.
17. Compared to this time last year, are you: a) happier or sadder? Happier. b) thinner or fatter? Fatter. c) richer or poorer? Richer.
18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Working out.
19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Departmental service.
20. How will you be spending Christmas?
I was East of Los Angeles visiting my sisters Deborah and Sheila and their families. We had Christmas Eve at Sheila's and Christmas Day at Debs'. The theme this year – we always have a theme – was less complicated than usual: hugs. We went for comfort food. I made a pumpkin-peanut soup, a potato-leek gratin, roasted sea bass in tomatoes and shallots, and we also had collards, macaroni and cheese, and a quinoa-grapefruit salad. With Christmas cookies for a simple dessert.
21. Did you fall in love in 2021?
I didn't. But there's this boy I flirt with a lot at my favorite bar. It's not love (yet...?), but he's a charmer.
22. How many one-night stands?
Ok, I'm not exactly sure, and I think that's a very good thing, but there were definitely a couple of memorable ones! I'm in a new, very exciting phase of my life in terms of one-night stands.
23. What was your favorite TV program?
I didn't watch TV in 2021, as much as everyone tried to convince me how great TV is. I did, of course, watch RuPaul's Drag Race season 13 and Drag Race All Stars season 6.
24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year? No.
25. What was the best book you read? I keep track of this on GoodReads. Come join me over there! I read a lot of books related to ancient and medieval theatre this year. I was really inspired by Particle and Wave, a book-length conversation between Daniel Alexander Jones and Alexis Pauline Gumbs. I finally read Rinne Groff's play The Ruby Sunrise and absolutely loved it!
I did not read a lot of fiction this year – and I mostly disliked everything fictional I read, so no recommendations there, but I just finished Danny Licht's little book about being in the kitchen, Cooking as Though You Might Cook Again, and completely loved it.
26. What was your greatest musical discovery? I don't know about you all, but I'm listening to Joey Herr's Only for the Night.
27. What was the best piece of theatre you saw? The Metropolitan Opera's production of Fire Shut Up in My Bones. It was so incredible. The music is great, and the production itself was deeply moving. I saw it by myself and had no one to discuss it with, but it was really amazing.
28. What did you want and get?
A new kitchen faucet! A curry leaf tree. Lots of hugs.
29. What did you want and not get?
A larger pool of eligible bachelors from which I might choose. Tallahassee is small, y'all. I'm reminded of this every time I am in Orlando or Los Angeles or San Diego and can swipe right on exponentially more options.
30. What was your favorite film of this year? Dune. Actually, I can't believe I've only seen it once.
31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I turned 40. It was low key. Jason and Meredith hosted with cocktails and a simple dinner. Greg came over. It was great. These are my very good friends in Tallahassee, and I'm grateful to have them.
32. What new recipes did you make this year?
Birria de res. I'm excited to move into more Mexican cuisine next year, actually. Other fun things I made: carmelized scallion sauce, XO sauce. I spent most of the year alone, so not too many giant complicated dishes.
33. What were your cocktail obsessions?
I started drinking a lot of sidecars. At Bar 1903, my usual hangout, they serve one for happy hour, and I love them. Earlier in the year I was obsessed with Aperol. The two Aperol standards at my house are both easy: a Paper Plane (equal parts Aperol, bourbon, amaro nonino, and lemon juice) and a Naked and Famous (equal parts Aperol, lime juice, mezcal, and yellow Chartreuse).
34. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
A puppy. Haha. I'm kidding. I'm very satisfied with my life, so I'm not sure how to answer this question too well. More beach time would be better, of course. I'll just say that: more beach time. Nights at the beach are my favorite thing. I can just sit by the water and listen to the waves and feel the wind. It's the best.
Oh wait I thought of something: some retirements in my department. A few of those (six?) would improve my life exponentially.
35. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2021?
I discovered tee-shirts that are cut well and started wearing them. I use two brands: Fresh Clean Tees and True Classic Tees. But I am no longer a medium, or at least I can no longer wear one and still look presentable.
36. What kept you sane?
Mostly the same as last year: Meredith and Jason.
My friend Greg hosts a movie club where we watch a movie every week that none of us has seen before. More of my friends joined this year, and their tastes are all over the place. I watch stuff I never would watch on my own. It's delightful.
Texts from friends checking in on me.
The Criterion Channel. 37. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Richard Madden. I love him so much.
38. What political issue stirred you the most?
The fucking budget. I actually get enraged when I think of the extraordinarily wasteful amount of money spent on the military industrial complex every fucking year – supported by both democrats and republicans – that could be spent on actually helping people instead of on imperialism and making technology executives richer. Obviously I am also angry about Texas (and other states') outrageous attempts to control poor women, and obviously I am aghast that we continue to incarcerate people in ICE facilities, military prisons, and state and federal "correctional facilities" for indefinite amounts of time. Our priorities in this country are fucked. We spend so much money on murder.
39. Whom did you miss?
More than anyone: Dayne.
But also Jason Tate, Matt Silva, Aaron Farr, Michael Stablein, Katie Cassidy, Chris Martin, Julia Listengarten, my best friends in California, and my best friends in the Upper Valley.
40. Who was the best new person you met?
Donovan Sherman
Katie Merrill
41. Tell us a valuable life-lesson you learned in 2021: Lying flat is justice. In many ways, my "technologies of the self" approach to turning myself into someone of whom I am proud and someone I like has already been captured by the system of the academy. The academy tells us that to be valued we need to turn ourselves into a kind of person: productive, always on top of the newest ideas, innovative. I have definitely internalized these values, and I work hard at all times to improve myself. But am I really working for myself and those around me? Or am I simply becoming a better little laborer for my employer? These are questions I began asking myself in 2021. I am not sure what the answers are yet, so this isn't quite a life-lesson, but it's what I'm pondering.
42. Share an important quotation from 2021: This is from Particle and Wave. Daniel tells a story about his grandmother's pound cake:
"She made legendary… it was this tall, it had the perfect crust, like you would go (slicing sound) put the knife in, it’s perfect, you know, dense, whatever. And as she got older, you know, not to be morbid, but all my uncles, everybody was like, we got to get that recipe! Because she would always make it and all of the kids would come and get a piece and you know, you visit, and you take your piece home and everybody, all the families would eat the cake. At one point I asked her, and she was like: ‘No you can’t have that recipe.’ And then, you know, we kept asking and asking and finally she conceded to my father to give me the recipe. I was 24 years old when this happened. She said, “I want you to call me when you made it.” So I went in, I got all the ingredients and I, you know, I did it step by step. And I put it in the oven, it kind of like exploded in the oven and burned. And I called her, and I was like, Grandma Daisy?! And she was already laughing, she was already—I said, “This happened, this happened…” And she said, Well I guess I got to be the one makes it. Right? She was like, Y’all will never get my recipe, you’ll never get it! Each of us has a miraculous series of utterances… what a wonder that you would seek out to be present to experience. It’s like … rather than doing this extractive model where it’s like, you’re doing that thing—I want it! I’ma go get it—which even we were guilty of with our own grandmother, you know like: who’s gonna have the recipe after she dies? I mean come on! We gonna miss you, but we still want the cake! Versus actually saying, you know what a miracle to be present. It’s a miracle to be present."
This is diverting and fun – almost all of the actors are comedians – and I enjoyed myself. Scott Glenn is so great. He is truly an underrated performer. And I love see Kevin Costner in movies in the early 1980s. He's so cute and fun; in Silverado he's downright playful. He's absolutely delightful to watch.
Kevin Kline is, quite oddly enough, not playing for laughs, even though this is obviously a comedy, and I'm not sure what that's about. But his seriousness doesn't get in the way of the pleasures of Silverado, which are really all about friendship and shooting the bad guys off of horses when they aren't expecting it.
A classic that's actually in need of a remake, Edmund Goulding's Nightmare Alley (1947) stars the charismatic Tyrone Power (against type!) and the excellent Joan Blondell, but the rest of the cast can't manage the power of its stars. Worse yet, Goulding's film accelerates its antihero's downfall so that it makes almost no sense that he manages to fail so badly so quickly. All of a sudden, the man's helpless and out of his mind.
And then... it actually pulls its final punches.
In any case, I was with this for a long while. It's great to see Power in something other than a swashbuckling movie (although I love him in those too), and this is very different territory from the usual noir. It's too bad that the movie's last 40 minutes or so didn't hold up to its first 70.
I admit to being skeptical of the new Guillermo Del Toro film. It just looks so glossy – but I feel pretty certain that Del Toro will give us a better ending than the one for which Goulding opted.
George MacKay is great in Wolf. There are these moments when he stalks down the hallway and he completely looks like he should be a wolf. But Nathalie Biancheri's film never manages to give us the real weirdness of the Yorgos Lanthimos films on which Wolf has obviously modeled itself. This is a movie that wants to be about what it means to be human – a good human, a good man, etc. – but it's a film that instead opts for what appears to be an allegory for transgender. And I'm just not sure what Wolf has to say about transgender – or that it should be taking up space making up allegories for how people experience gender.
This just didn't work. It's opening sequences feel like Lanthimos territory, and in their way these early moments in the movie prompt laughter just as the scenes in The Lobster do. But then the film refuses to go off the deep end the way a Lanthimos movie would. It settles instead for the world we already know. Wolf leaves us with liberal platitudes with which we are comfortable and familiar instead of any real unsettling questions.
Railway Sleepers (หมอนรถไฟ) is an observational documentary, in which the camera watches overnight railway cars in Thailand. It's a film without narrative, but it's filled with intriguing characters, of whom we only get a glimpse. The whole things is done in rather tight shots, so we see only part of the train car at any given time. There are no big train shots or shots of full cars. Where is everyone going? The film is pieced together from footage taken over eight years on, apparently, every train line in Thailand.
Sompot Chidgasornpongse's film has the kind of mysterious, haunting quality of a film by Apichatpong Weerasethakul (who produced), and although it was about two hours of apparently nothing, really, I found the whole thing eminently watchable and could probably have watched another hour.
Jesus Christ what a long, meandering mess. Adam Driver and Al Pacino are doing their best, I think, but the script is ridiculous, and Jared Leto is... honestly I have no idea what he's doing. It's clear that the character he's playing (Paolo Gucci) is a very silly nut of a man, but the whole thing feels like a weird bit, and the lines he says are so out of place – he's the only character who speaks like this – that he feels like he's just in another movie altogether. The worst part is that this movie just doesn't care about the Guccis themselves. It doesn't even really care about Maurizio (Driver's character); the film just likes him more than the others, which isn't much at all. House of Gucci doesn't really make fun of the Guccis, but it thinks this insane story of betrayal and murder is more interesting than them as people.
And then there's Lady Gaga, who is much much worse than she was in A Star Is Born. I've always thought that in that movie Cooper and his team edited around her in very smart ways, but here she's front and center, and although the movie thankfully sort of forgets about her for a stretch of act three, she's clearly the centerpiece of the film, the reason for it to exist, even. And she just can't really act. Sure, she can move around and say lines and wear clothes fabulously, but there's really nothing there that she's doing or giving away. She is, like Jared Leto, just doing a kind of long bit. It's crazy because the part is honestly perfect for her. But she just doesn't give the character any kind of life. Patrizia doesn't quite feel like a cartoon – although she is very silly and I laughed out loud several times – but she also never feels like she's a human at all. Just a kind of image of a person. It's a very bad performance in a movie that never works.
(Tom Ford makes an appearance in this movie, as a character, and he has the role of saving the Gucci brand. Ford has apparently said in interviews that he didn't like this movie either.)
