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William Friedkin (1935-2023)

19 Aug

Remembering the maverick filmmaker who rewrote genres with old-school craft, filming perfection in “The French Connection”

Director William Friedkin on the set. (Photo: William Friedkin via Facebook)

Cinema lost a defining voice when William Friedkin died Aug. 7 from heart failure. Friedkin, 87, was vital to what is considered the greatest era of American cinema, the American New Wave (loosely the late 1960s to early 1980s and also called “New Hollywood”), in which directors shot on location and were able to craft their visions without studio interference. The movement produced instant classics including Coppola’s “Godfather ” films, Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver ” (1976), Polanski’s “Chinatown ” (1974) and Friedkin’s hardboiled crime drama, “The French Connection” (1971).

Born in Chicago, Friedkin, like other era directors Sidney Lumet (“Dog Day Afternoon, ” “Serpico”) and John Frankenheimer (“The Manchurian Candidate, ” “Ronin”) cut his teeth in TV (“The Alfred Hitchcock Hour”). His first feature-length work was “The Thin Blue Line (1966), a documentary that chronicled the difficulties confronting police at a time crime and violent public protests were on the rise; it proved to be prep work for “Connection,” an on-the-street magnum opus based on the true account of a cat-and-mouse heroin sting by Boston-born Robin Moore, who also wrote “The Green Berets.” In between, Friedkin made the poorly received Sonny and Cher hodgepodge “Good Times” (1967), adapted Harold Pinter’s play “The Birthday Party” (1968) starring Robert Shaw, and helmed the light comedy “The Night They Raided Minsky’s” (1960) about a naive young Amish woman (Britt Ekland) who arrives in New York City to perform in a religious production that turns out to be a burlesque show. Friedkin next pushed boundaries with the 1970 adaptation of Mart Crowley’s play “The Boys in the Band, ” a claustrophobic house party where gay and bisexual young males divulge travails largely caused or triggered by unaccepting families and society. The film (recently remade by Netflix for the play’s 50th anniversary) was semi-controversial in part because of the material, but also because Friedkin had claimed he had been “cruised ” while researching the film. His controversies with the gay community and mainstream would rise to another level in 1980 with “Cruising,” the sexually graphic S&M thriller based on Gerald Walker’s novel about a serial killer stalking New York City’s underground gay clubs.

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There’s little question that Friedkin’s career will be defined by “The French Connection” and “The Exorcist” (1973), which not only captivated filmgoers but redefined the boundaries of what was possible with onscreen car chases and the horror genre. When on his game, Friedkin was a master of mood, vision and pacing. He also possessed deep admiration and love for his characters, especially the flawed and those living on the edge or under life-smothering pressure. The prime example is Gene Hackman’s Popeye Doyle in “Connection,” a cocksure cop seeking redemption for failures but who is imbued with an avuncular twinkle in his eye, a hair-trigger temper and a barroom manner that screams old-school Boston. (Speaking of which, Friedkin did make a movie here – “The Brink’s Job, ” another true-crime drama about an infamous 1950 North End heist; it’d make the perfect double bill with Ben Affleck’s “The Town.”) Even more emotionally visceral was Ellen Burstyn’s imperiled mother in “The Exorcist,” desperate and unnerved by not knowing of what is wrong with her demon-possessed daughter (Linda Blair, forever locked into genre due to the role) and hapless in her efforts to help. Her harrowing performance took a battle ax to nurturing parental nerve. Burstyn was nominated for her struggling single mom; Hackman won Best Actor for his gruff, gritty portrayal of Doyle.

In the cinematic universe of multiverses, CGI and green screens, it’s refreshing to see how well “The Exorcist ” and “Connection” have held up. Their timelessness is notched in part because they’re both deeply character-driven films, but also because of Friedkin’s shrewd, put-you-in-the-scene filmmaking. With “The Exorcist,” the paralyzing chill was psychological, achieved by grafting a gravelly, sinister male baritone onto a 12-year-old girl, some ingenious (and grotesque) makeup, a few cinematic sleights of hand (levitation, 180-degree neck rotation) and that devilish spewing of split pea soup. There was essentially no bloodletting to make you wince, yet you did, and the deft sound editing and use of Michael Oldfield’s soul-rattling “Tubular Bells ” only served to deepen the film’s immersive eeriness.

With “Connection,” Friedkin not only made one of the greatest car chase sequences ever put on screen, but perhaps the perfect film. It was nominated for eight Academy Awards and won five, including Best Picture and Director (Friedkin beat out Kubrick, who was up for “A Clockwork Orange”) – feats that seem even more monumental when you consider the city-sprawling film was made for less than $2 million, or $15.4 million in today’s dollars, and featured a cast of relative unknowns. It also won Best Editing and should have won for sound editing, as those elements are so essential to that jaw-dropping chase scene in which Doyle, in a commandeered Pontiac LeMans, races after an aboveground subway train taken over at gunpoint by a ruthless French hitman (Marcel Bozzuffi). It’s a gorgeously choreographed sequence that begins at Doyle’s apartment complex (where the hitman tries to take out Doyle with a sniper rifle) and becomes something of a bravura brutalist ballet of action as it rifles through the twisted steel girders of an erected subway structure and litter-strewn streets of Brooklyn. When in that careening Pontiac, the sound and film editing are so tight that everything feels like it’s happening in the moment and at 80 mph as Doyle plows through fruit carts and smash-bang ricochets off other vehicles making their rightful way through an intersection. The chase took more than five weeks to shoot and covers more than 26 New York City blocks. The rewards of the effort are self-evident and cemented in cinematic legacy.

That riveting result, however, should be no surprise, as producer Philip D’Antoni had also worked on the too-cool-for-political-subplots Steve McQueen cop vehicle “Bullitt ” (1968) and would later direct his only feature, “The Seven-Ups” (1973), starring “Connection” co-stars Roy Scheider and Tony Lo Bianco, notching three of the greatest car chase sequences committed to celluloid (including “Connection”). It was filmmaking at its very best, with the filmmakers earning every nerve-rattling inch or mile, not some post-production AI spitting out “Fast and Furious” crash-bang video game pablum.

And as much as D’Antoni’s fingerprints are on “Connection,” it was Friedkin’s full visionary control – especially in postproduction – that delivered the symphonic, neo-noirish masterpiece. Friedkin would later prove that his accomplishment was not a one-off with a harrowing, wrong-way chase down a freeway in “To Live and Die in L.A. ” (1985). That deft day-glo crime thriller introduced us to Willem Dafoe and was what made me fall in love with film after Akira Kurosawa’s “Yojimbo” (1961). The week it opened, I went to see “To Live and Die in L.A.” on a whim because my roommate at the time, wounded from a breakup, needed solace and friendship and was a huge Wang Chung fan, and the techno dance band scored the film; so on a hungover Saturday we did “To Live and Die in L.A. ” That chaotic freeway scene – the perfect antithesis to the impressive long-take opener of “La La Land ” – ignited a Friedkin deep dive for me and my roomie. Back then you’d pay $100 to rent a VCR for a weekend and $6 per video, and for my birthday that year we ate gloriously greasy Chinese food, drank far too many sugary mai tais at some long-gone place by the Berklee College of Music and watched all we could, even taking in a second helping of Friedkin’s movie at the old Cinema 57 in the bottom of what is now the Revere Hotel Boston Common on Stuart Street. Sadly, “To Live and Die in L.A.” and “The Brink’s Job” are not available for streaming (so if you see either on a repertory slate, run to the box office). Director Michael Mann (“Thief, ” “Heat”) sued Friedkin over “To Live and Die in L.A.,” claiming it ripped off his “Miami Vice” TV series that ran 1984-1989. Mann lost.

Friedkin, who died in the Bel Air home he shared with wife Sherry Lansing, former head of Paramount, has a Cambridge connection. In 2014, he gifted some of his memoirs to the Harvard Film Archive; earlier, as part of the “Uncanny Cinema of William Friedkin” program there, the director took on a brief residency and appeared at screenings of his films to provide anecdotes about their making – most intriguingly, the scores. (Quick pause here to acknowledge Don Ellis’ foreboding “Connection” score, which echoes Doyle’s inner turmoil and captures the drab, coarse ambiance of the street). I had the opportunity to catch “Sorcerer” (1977), Friedkin’s bold remake of the Henri-Georges Clouzot classic “The Wages of Fear” (1953), about four men transporting nitroglycerin across a treacherous Latin American jungle to cap an exploded oil well 200 miles away. After the screening, Friedkin discussed how Steve McQueen was supposed to play the lead role taken by Scheider, but McQueen wanted a part for his girlfriend Ali MacGraw (“Love Story”). “I told him, it’s a movie about four guys in a jungle, ” Friedkin said. The lack of MacGraw in the project proved a deal breaker. Friedkin then recounted how he got the German techno band Tangerine Dream to score the film, a total happenstance resulting from Friedkin, in Germany to oversee the dubbing of “The Exorcist, ” being taken to a party at an abandoned church in the Black Forest. The band was Tangerine Dream. Friedkin remarked that the score was particularly impressive in that they didn’t see any dailies or postproduction material, just the script. The same was true with Wang Chung and “To Live and Die in L.A.” – the director and musicians met at an L.A. radio station. When Friedkin gave the band the script, he said he didn’t want a tune with the title in it. Natch, the song “To Live and Die in L.A.” plays during the closing credits.

“To Live and Die in L.A.” would prove to be Friedkin’s swan song of sorts. He tried to create lightning in a bottle again with the erotic crime thriller “Jade” (1995) with Linda Fiorentino, hot off her sizzling femme fatal turn in “The Last Seduction” (1994), but the script proved a flat “Basic Instinct”-esque pretender and the car chase sequence that included San Francisco’s winding Lombard Street was a painful-to-watch rehash of that epic L.A. freeway misdirection. Friedkin even tried going back to the demonic with a possessed tree in “The Guardian” (1990). He found some middle ground with A-list actors in the psychological thrillers “Bug” (2006) with Ashley Judd and “The Hunted ” (2003) with Tommy Lee Jones and Benicio Del Toro. He rounded out his career on a high note (we won’t mention 2017’s “The Devil and Father Amorth,” and he does have a play adaptation of Herman Wouk’s “Caine Mutiny ” in the can) with “Killer Joe” (2011), an adaptation of a Tracy Letts play (“Bug” was also a Letts play) about a contract killer (Matthew McConaughey) out to score a life insurance payout for a thwarted son (Emile Hirsch). Two Friedkin films I’d say are unique curios meant for discerning eyes are “Blue Chips” (1994) with Nick Nolte as a Bobby Knight-like college basketball coach trying to get though one more season (Celtics Bob Cousy and Shaquille O’Neal have small roles) and the long-shelved “Rampage ” (1987) about a demonic mass murderer (Alex MacArthur) and the DA trying to put him away (Michael Biehn). Friedkin did do a nice job with his 1997 television version of “12 Angry Men” featuring a knockout cast that included Jack Lemmon, George C. Scott, Ossie Davis, Edward James Olmos, Hume Cronyn, James Gandolfini and William Peterson of “To Live and Die in L.A.”

Friedkin was both a traditionalist and an iconoclast when it came to his trade and wears the “maverick” tag well in an era that preceded the blockbuster. His work heightened the filmgoing experience with old-school craftsmanship, control and tight collaborative efforts from cast and crew. He broke ground in genre and how narrative is paced and told (he’s right there with Kurosawa, Tarantino and Fellini), and most of all, he was able to put the audience in the action without bit-and-byte trickery. “The French Connection” will live on as one of the few films to achieve perfection from frame one to the end credits. It is Friedkin’s well-earned legacy.

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Increasingly as recognizable as Ben and Matt, Matthew Maher of ‘Air’ is the other CRLS star

20 Apr

By Tom Meek Tuesday, April 18, 2023

Matthew Maher as Nike shoe designer Peter Moore in “Air.” (Photo: Amazon Studios)

The latest directorial effort from Ben Affleck, “Air,” an underdog story of sorts about Nike’s pursuit of Michael Jordan as the face of its basketball shoe line, has a lot of Cambridge baked into it. There’s Ben and star and Cambridge Rindge and Latin School buddy Matt Damon, who also attended Harvard; some mention of budding NBA star and CRLS baller Patrick Ewing as well as his coach, Mike Jarvis; and something that might pass under your radar – the involvement of character actor Matthew Maher, who in recent years has inched more and more toward the spotlight.

In “Air,” Maher plays Peter Moore, the shoe designer who came up with the Air Jordan concept and that neat hanging-in-the-sky-about-to-slam-it-home logo. It’s a pivotal role, as one of the keys to getting Jordan to sign with Nike was a presentation by the recruitment team played by Damon and Jason Bateman of a shoe that embodied his Royal Airness-to-be.

Maher, a prolific actor with some 60 screen credits, talked Friday by phone and Zoom.

Like Affleck and Damon, Maher grew up in Cambridge and graduated from CRLS. The parents of the three knew each other from Harvard, and bonded over politics in the 1960s, he said.

It was at CRLS – where he was also friends with city councillor Marc McGovern – that Maher first tried acting.

Matthew Maher, left, with fellow CRLS alum Matt Damon in “Air.” (Photo: Amazon Studios)

The theater scene at CRLS was cool, “a place I wanted to be,” Maher said. “It wasn’t nerdy, it’s where many of popular kids were.” But he was keenly aware that a cleft palate and slight speech impediment made him different from the Afflecks and Damons of the school’s drama scene, and would face different challenges. “I wanted to be an actor in high school,” Maher said, “but to me being an actor was to try to be like them. And they were gorgeous, really charming guys. Even back then, they were stars, and I had no idea how to do or be that. I had no idea to how to harness that kind of charm and self-confidence, because I didn’t have it.”

Maher went to the University of California, Santa Cruz, studying English but participating in theater productions. His teacher there was matter-of-fact: “You just have deal with the fact that you have a speech impediment, you have a cleft palate and you are different,” Maher recalled. That teacher was encouraging, and a major influence – though Maher did say that there were productions he felt he didn’t get cast in because he wasn’t in the “the bright circle of successful beautiful people.”

After college he landed in New York working off-Broadway productions, as well as taking small parts in several Kevin Smith projects – the first being “Dogma,” starring Damon and Affleck. His first meaty film role was in the lo-fi production “Vulgar” (2000), about a man who performs as a birthday party clown to deal with the trauma of being gang-raped earlier in his life. The film was directed by and starred Smith regular Bryan Johnson as well as other Smithies such as “Clerks” (1994) star Brian O’Halloran and Ethan Suplee.

Maher’s ubiquity as an actor has come later in life, due in part to the pandemic and the increased prevalence of streaming series. He had a leading part in “Funny Pages,” a small, very funny, indie coming-of-age satire that he feared was never going to see the light of day; filming began in 2017, when there were issues with funding, and then Covid happened. “I had invested so much in it,” Maher said of the film by Owen Kline, son of Kevin and Phoebe Cates. Then the pandemic lifted and the crew was able to get its final reshoots. Maher received strong reviews when it screened in 2022 alongside his roles in two series: “Outer Range” with Josh Brolin (creator Brian Watkins wrote the part of Deputy Matt specifically for Maher), and the gay pirate comedy “Our Flag Means Death.” This year, the Apple TV+ prestige dramedy, “Hello Tomorrow!” on which Maher is a series regular arrived alongside “Air.”

Affleck offered the part of Nike’s Moore directly to Maher, which came as a surprise. It was an esteemed crew, with Oscar winners beyond Damon and Affleck: cinematographer Robert Richardson and actor Viola Davis, playing Jordan’s mother by demand of Jordan himself. Stil, the set was “very comfortable and relaxed,” Maher said.

In researching the part of Moore, who died a year ago at 78, Maher discovered “a true artist, who had to make art that everybody loved” – but a man he looked nothing like. Moore didn’t have a beard, Maher said, “but Affleck decided to let me be as I was.”

Maher has two young children: one pre-pandemic 3½-year-old, and another who’s just notching 8 months. He’s spent time in Los Angeles, but now calls Brooklyn, New York, home and keeps Cambridge ties – his mother, who taught at Wheaton College, and stepmother still live in Cambridge.

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Rally promotes safer bike lanes, other solutions that protect riders across city lines and statewide

20 Sep

By Tom Meek Tuesday, September 20, 2022

Lily Linke speaks Saturday at a Safe Streets rally she co-organized in Somerville’s Davis Square. (Photo: Tom Meek)

More aggressive pushes for bike lanes and other safety measures were promoted at a weekend rally in Somerville inspired by the August death of Stephen Conley, 72, in a “dooring” incident with a car.

The Saturday rally for Safe Streets at Seven Hills Park in Davis Square drew speakers that included state Reps. Mike Connolly and Erika Uyterhoeven, Somerville city councilor Willie Burnley Jr., former Cambridge vice mayor Jan Devereux, Cambridge city councilor Burhan Azeem and several residents.

Burnley, a first-term member and “proud member of the carless,” announced that he was calling for a safe streets ordinance similar to Cambridge’s Cycling Safety Ordinance, which requires miles of protected bike lanes to be installed on an aggressive timeline. The frequent need to remove parking to make room has created a divide with some residents and businesses; many speakers acknowledged the controversy but said it steeled their resolve.

“We know there’s a backlash,” Connolly said. “Unfortunately there are lawsuits and a degree of Nimby-ism. Certainly everyone’s entitled to their opinion. But I can tell you, as an elected official, we’re not going backward. We’re going to achieve Vision Zero.” The term refers to street engineered to be safe enough to cause zero deaths.

A crowd gathers to listen to speakers at Saturday’s rally in Davis Square. (Photo: Tom Meek)

Azeem spoke more directly to challenges in Cambridge. “It’s hard when you’re sitting across the table from a small-business owner who says, ‘You know, if you take away my parking, it will shut down my business,’ but this [bike law] is literally life or death,” Azeem said.

Uyterhoeven shared her own story of long recovery after being hit by a cab in Boston while bicycling, and she encouraged activists to keep pushing until bike lanes were statewide – raising the issue of complications across city lines. Somerville’s portion of Webster Avenue has a protected bike lane, for example, but it ends at the back of a parked car at the Cambridge line to morph into what cyclists and transportation experts call a “door zone” bike lane of just a painted line next to parked cars. “Municipal structures don’t make those cross-city collaborations very easy. But they’re still critical to do,” Devereux said, cited Webster’s disjointed solution.

Another idea Burnley said he was working on with Somerville Mayor Katjana Ballantyne was the prospect of using 311 tickets as a means of ticketing cars parked illegally in bike lanes. Like when failing to pay a toll, a ticket for the infraction would be mailed to the violator. A petition to decriminalize jaywalking circulated before speakers took the stage.

Among the residents speaking were Nadav Tanners, widower of doctor and social activist Leah Zallman. who was walking in Davis square when she was killed by a pickup truck in November 2020; and Cambridge Bicycle Group member Janie Katz-Christy, who talked about the perils and challenges of cycling with children.

The event was organized and hosted by husband and wife Seth Hurwitz and Lily Linke and drew around 100 people, including several cargo bikes laden with children.

Linke and Burnley wore bright red jumpsuits. The outfits were “not coordinated,” Linke said, “but the idea was the same: ‘Stop’ traffic violence.”

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Latest fatality of a bicyclist because of ‘dooring’ brings reminders of the lifesaving Dutch Reach

23 Aug

Bike Safety Measures Needed

By Tom Meek, Tuesday, August 23, 2022

A mobile traffic sign in Somerville promotes the “Dutch Reach” technique for bicyclist safety. (Photo: The Dutch Reach Project via Twitter)

Bicyclists are calling urgently for Somerville to install more protected bike lanes since the Aug. 12 death of Stephen Conley, 72, from a dooring on Broadway near Teele Square.

“Protected bike lanes prevent this kind of crash,” said George Schneeloch, a member of the Somerville Bike Safety group. “The city must work urgently to prevent future fatal crashes like this one by installing protected bike lanes in both directions on Broadway, so that bicyclists are kept clear of car doors.”

Somerville Mayor Katjana Ballantyne has committed to immediate safety changes, but not to a timeline for bike lanes, Schneeloch said. The commitment was reported Aug. 16 by StreetsblogMass.

There’s another solution that could have prevented the Conley crash, though, and doesn’t rely on potentially expensive infrastructure changes: the Dutch Reach, a method of opening a car door using the farthest hand from it.

The Dutch Reach prevents swinging a car door open fully and forces drivers’ heads to turn and see more of the surrounding conditions, said Michael Charney on Monday.

Michael Charney in a screen capture from “All Things Bike with Fred Thomas” in October 2019.

Charney, 76 and still getting around mostly by bike, is a retired physician and bicycling safety advocate who lives in Cambridge just outside Somerville’s Union Square – and credited as the originator of the term “Dutch Reach” and vital in getting adopted worldwide.

A dooring is when a driver opens a car door without looking and a cyclist crashes into it, often getting thrown into traffic. Massachusetts law says, “No person shall open a door on a motor vehicle unless it is reasonably safe to do so without interfering with the movement of other traffic, including bicyclists and pedestrians.” The fine for such a violation is up to $100.

Doorings account for 20 percent of bike crashes in Cambridge, according to city development officials. Jeremy Warnick, director of communications and media relations for Cambridge police, noted in a Tuesday email that July saw three doorings in Cambridge, and a severe dooring in Kendall Square in April that led to riders on a tandem bike being taken to a hospital after first aid was applied by officers on site.

The number of Cambridge bicycle crashes involving a “dooring” in 2020 was six, or 9 percent of the 66 total bicycle crashes reported to Cambridge police, but the number of citations issued for opening a door when unsafe that year was 58, Warnick said. In 2021, those figures were nine (or 12 percent of the 76 total bicycle crashes reported to police) and 50, respectively. Police see the pandemic as a cause for the drop from the typical 20 percent, Warnick said.

But data collection is complicated for doorings, said Charney and Galen Mock, executive director of the Massachusetts Bicycle Coalition. There are arguably accidents where near-doorings result in a fatality when the rider swerves into a traffic lane and is hit by a passing motor vehicle, but a dooring would likely not be recorded as a factor in the crash. A pending state Act to Reduce Traffic Fatalities would standardize how bike crash data is captured and categorized, Mock said in a Monday email.

Coining a term, starting a movement

The Dutch Reach, while an invention of the Netherlands, was introduced in this country by Charney after he was shaken by the dooring death of cyclist Amanda Phillips in Inman Square in June 2016. Charney launched the Dutch Reach Project by sending a series of “Dutch Reach haikus” to the Cambridge and Somerville police departments – and it was Somerville that took the haikus to heart and placed mobile traffic signs with Charney’s poems flashing on them. Charney’s work helped convince Massachusetts to include the Dutch Reach in its driver’s ed programs starting in 2017. Charney said he has gone on to speak via Zoom with cycling safety organizations as far away as Malaysia and India.

“I practically fell off the chair realizing that this is such a simple solution,” Charney said on the Maine-based “All Things Bike with Fred Thomas” in October 2019. “Dutch reach was my coinage, and it worked out very well for various reasons – one is ‘teach the reach,’ ‘preach the reach.’ What wasn’t appreciated by me at the time that I coined it was that there’s a whole string of [other phrases such as] ‘Dutch treat,’ ‘Dutch uncle,’ also there’s a thing ‘Dutch ding-dong’ that have outré connotations and create a buzz among millennials … Though there’s nothing dirty about the Dutch Reach. It just saves lives.”

Other paths to safety

Charney also endorsed the concept of a “road hierarchy” that places less legal onus on the most vulnerable on the road, starting with pedestrians, then cyclists, motorcycles and scooters, cars, SUVs and vans and, as the most dangerous, trucks and buses.

Another safety measure Charney suggested where there are “door zone bike lanes,” meaning those separated from parked cars only by paint on the road: Cyclists can “take the lane.” Riding in front of cars can be intimidating for cyclists, as motorists tend to get frustrated with slower-moving traffic and might honk or harass them, especially if there’s a bike lane available. But in Massachusetts a cyclist has the right to assume a full traffic lane on nearly all municipally maintained streets, Charney said.

Charney calls his solutions no-cost but partial, as he feels there’s no single cure-all for road safety, but many baby steps to safer roads – including that  “motor vehicle technology, sensors, cameras and computers, keep getting smarter and will be another partial solution to greater road safety.” But always check your mirrors, use the Dutch Reach and slowly, and look for fellow road users, he said.

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Porter Square Neighbors Association cleans, sweating the details with bags and brooms

23 Aug

Pitching in together

By Tom Meek, Sunday, August 21, 2022

Lesley University soccer players participate in a Saturday cleanup around Porter Square. (Photo: Audrey Calhoun/Lesley University)

It was near 90 degrees and blistering Saturday when a hodgepodge volunteer crew of nearly 50 set to work cleaning up the Porter Square T Station plaza as well as the stretch of Massachusetts Avenue north and south of it. “I think this is our tenth year,” said organizer Ruth Ryals, head of the Porter Square Neighbors Association.

Over the course of four midday hours the rotating team picked up trash, weeded sidewalks and did other basic beautification at the Porter Square Shopping Center, the storefronts opposite it and the Lesley building and sidewalks down toward the intersection with Linnaean Street. Given the heat, Ryals said, “I’m super impressed.” Half the volunteers were the returning Lesley women’s soccer team. “Normally Harvard joins us too, but they’re not back yet.”

Fresh fruit, cases of water, brown landfill compost bags, brooms and weeding tools were supplied to volunteers, many of who wore safety vests as they toiled.

Ryals, who ran the check-in and handout station on the MBTA plaza, thanked the Department of Public Works for trash removal and power washing; Star Market in the Porter Square Shopping Center for the water; Lesley, or “the young people anxious to give back,” as Ryals referred to them; Junior’s Automotive & Gas and volunteer Jim Cornie, who not only delivered tools to the plaza but continued to weed and mulch after the event ended; and the office of state Rep. Marjorie Decker.

Cleanup volunteer Jean Krulic and Porter Square Neighbors Association leader Ruth Ryals on Saturday in Porter Square. (Photo: Tom Meek)

While Lesley has several community service initiatives, the effort was a direct coordination between Ryals and Lesley soccer coach Paul Vasconcelos. “Our Lesley University women’s soccer team has been participating in the Porter Square/Mass Ave cleanup for the last few years. It’s something our student athletes look forward to every year and a great way for them to get acclimated, as they are from all over the country,” Vasconcelos said in an email.

Several volunteers expressed satisfaction in the before and after of claiming a tree basin or stretch of sidewalk, taking trowel to root and ridding the area of unsightly crabgrass. Many also thought it would be great if the MBTA, Lesley and area storefront owners followed by watering and beautification measures such as planters.

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Mumblecore ‘godfather’ Andrew Bujalski is back, and still finding his cinematic role ‘Funny Ha Ha’

28 Apr

By Tom Meek

Wednesday, April 27, 2022

Director Andrew Bujalski, right, with actor Kevin Corrigan on the set of his 2015 film “Results.” (Photo: Ryan Green/ Magnolia Pictures)

Funny, it feels like “mumblecore” is a genre from the distant 1980s or ’90s, but it’s much more recent: The term was coined in 2005 by sound editor Eric Masunaga at the South by Southwest Film Festival, when he used it to encompass the lo-fi independent films “The Puffy Chair” by Mark Duplass and Jay Duplass, “Kissing on the Mouth” by Joe Swanberg and “Mutual Appreciation” by Andrew Bujalski. Bujalski – for whom Masunaga has been a longtime collaborator – is often referred to as “the godfather of mumblecore,” and his first film, “Funny Ha Ha” (2002), about a wayward young woman (Kate Dollenmayer), is widely considered a cornerstone of the canon.

Bujalski, who grew up in Boston, studied filmmaking at Harvard and shot that debut feature in and around the area, is back in town for a 20th anniversary screening of the film Thursday at the Coolidge Corner Theatre with a Q&A moderated by Cantabrigian filmmaker and critic Gerald Peary. (Look for some insider play with Peary, who had a small role in Bujalski’s fourth feature, “Computer Chess.”) I spoke with Bujalski about labels and the challenges of making low-budget films and supporting a family.

“I think the only thing that was different, quote unquote, or new or seemed to capture a moment was a generational divide. We just happened to be the young people at that moment,” Bujalski said of the “mumblecore” term. “Lord knows I was not setting out to define any kind of aesthetic or anything.” Mumblecore films by definition are low-budget, dialogue-driven and feature young stars, with a generational vernacular often punctuated with “uhms” “likes” and “you knows.” “Chatty movies about young, middle-class white people,” is how Bujalski sums it up. 

The making of “Funny Ha Ha” had a lot of happenstance to it. Bujalski had Dollenmayer in mind when he wrote the lead role of Marnie, a recent college grad who tempers her malaise with alcohol and sets her sights on a college friend already in a relationship. The two were roommates in Boston, but after college Bujalski was living in Austin, Texas, and Dollenmayer was looking to go to grad school in L.A. Fate, family and friendly resources landed them back in Boston to do the shoot – they had thought about L.A., but Bujalski said that would have been a “disaster.” The film wrapped in late August 2001, just two weeks before 9/11.

Bujalski’s presence in Austin isn’t an accident. One of the key cited influences for mumblecore (which has a horror subgenre called “mumblegore”) is Richard Linklater’s 1990 debut “Slacker,” which kicked off a new ripple of independent filmmaking. “Talk about godfather,” Bujalski says of Linklater (“Boyhood” and “Waking Life” – the latter being one of the few other films Dollenmayer worked on), a fellow Texan who runs the Austin Film Society and has made the city something of an indie filmmakers’ haven. 

Of his own, mumblecore “godfather” tag, Bujalski laughs, both embracing it and shrugging it off. “At the time it kind of irked me, because it felt like a slight,” he said.

Now no longer the 20-something he makes films about, Bujalski is married with 7- and 11-year-old children. With his 2015 get in shape flick “Results,” his work went upscale with some A-minus-list actors (Guy Pearce, Coby Smulders, Kevin Corrigan and Giovanni Ribisi) and a bigger budget – but he remains coy about that, saying only that all of his seven films could be made for what a first-time Sundance smash might cost. (The Internet says $30,000 for “Funny Ha Ha”). His films generally gross north of $100,000 and garner critical raves.

Of money, Bujalski says, “I have two modes: not care, and panic. I’m getting close to panic now.” For “side hustles” Bujalski says he does whatever comes his way in the industry, including working on the dubbed version of the critically acclaimed, Oscar-nominated French film “I Lost My Body” (2019), a Best Animated Film pick by the Boston Society of Film Critics. 

Bujalski is working on his seventh film, “There There,” which includes Lili Taylor, Jason Schwartzman and Lennie James of “The Walking Dead” among its cast. The director was reticent to describe it beyond not being the film Bujalski set out to make; Covid thwarted those plans, and he pivoted to “There There.” (Bujalski also did not say what that eighth feature might be about.)

“We’re not sure how to describe it,” Bujalski said of “There There.” “We’re just gonna put it on the screen and let everybody else tell us what we did.”

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“Everything Everywhere” interview

2 Apr

With ‘Everything Everywhere,’ Daniels escape genre trap to make the multiverse meaningful

By Tom Meek Thursday, March 31, 2022

Daniels – Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, directors of “Everything Everywhere All at Once” – at The Liberty hotel in Boston. (Photo: Tom Meek)

Around the same time as Sunday night’s slap felt round the world – that of Will Smith hitting Chris Rock at the Oscars – something equally thought-provoking but far less violent was taking place at MIT: Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, the filmmaking team known as Daniels, were showing their latest, “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” to a lecture series audience. If their gonzo, Gondry-esque flatulence flick “Swiss Army Man” (2016) was rooted in scatological surreality, “Everything Everywhere” is an absurdist multiverse overload propelled by family values, film references within film references and butt plugs. The plot has something to do with an immigrant laundry operator (Michelle Yeoh, “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” “Crazy Rich Asians”) battling a jacked-up IRS auditor (Jamie Lee Curtis, in a devilishly funny turn) in a wildly generic office suite (think the office wars in “Time Bandits”) with segues into other planes of reality. In one, Yeoh’s imperiled heroine is a famous martial-arts action star (art imitating life); in another, she’s in a relationship with Curtis’ auditor in a universe where everyone’s fingers are floppy hot dogs. If you thought “Swiss Army Man” really went to some far-out places, be ready to go to infinity and beyond, literally. There’s a lot that comes at you, and a bit of cranium calisthenics required of the view, but a multitasking Yeoh holds the universe, her family and the film together.

The multiverse concept became a mainstream staple last year with “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” when Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) tore the fabric of the universe and Spider-Men (Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield, alongside Tom Holland as the current Spidey) and their affiliated villains (Goblin, Sandman, Doctor Octopus and more) all pour into the present. Kwan said in our interview that they had started writing “Everything Everywhere” in 2016, “before any of that other stuff came out,” but laments that because of Spider-Ham in the 2018 animated change-up, “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” “we had to cut the talking pig.”

The Daniels looked at scientific theories around the principles driving a multiverse, Kwan said – namely the cosmological, “which is more about inflation and infinite space, versus quantum physics, which is more about superposition.” Scheinert clarified: “We’re not smart enough to read science papers, but we do pop science.”

It’s easy to tell by their seamless interaction that the filmmakers have a rare dynamic, like with the Safdie and Coen brothers, in which egos and personas aren’t a barrier, but a point of collaborative confluence. The pair met at Emerson, graduating in ’09, and kicked around Cambridge and Somerville too – Kwan in Central Square and Scheinert in Davis – before moving to Los Angeles, where they did varying TV and music video work before “Swiss Army Man.”

“Everything Everywhere” has been universally tagged as a sci-fi action comedy, but that’s reductive compared with what it really digs into. “I’m bummed when science fiction doesn’t explore how these big ideas make me feel but just use it as a plot point,” Scheinert said. “Swiss Army Man” explored loneliness and personal delusion as a means of coping, and “Everything Everywhere,” while on the surface being about saving the universe, is about making a connection in the chaos of the world. “How do you find each other in the noise of modern life?” Kwan says. “How do you find each other and truly see each other, when there’s so many things trying to pull us away from each other?”

At the core of that is Yeoh’s matron trying to rebuild strained relations with her husband (Ke Huy Quan, “Indiana Jones,” “The Goonies”), daughter (Stephanie Hsu, “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”) and father (James Hong, most famous as the baddie in “Big Trouble in Little China,” but whose credits go back to the 1960s TV show “Dragnet” and as a voice in the 1956 “Godzilla: King of the Monsters”) that manifest themselves in various ways in the varying multiverses. Scheinert calls it a “maximalist family drama.”

What’s next for The Daniels is up in the air; Kwan, who has a young child, has some illustrated children’s books coming out through the publishing arm of A24 Films, which distributed “Swiss Army Man” and “Everything Everywhere.”

When asked about that slap and the Oscars in general, Scheinert and Kwan suggested it was a phenomenon weirder than what a Daniels films deal with: “I watched a little bit of it in the hotel bar. The couple next to me had seen none of the movies and they kept asking me questions that I knew the answers to, but I got tired and went to bed.” Scheinert said it was great to see Curtis there and enjoys the pageantry, but added, “I don’t think art needs prizes.” Perhaps if Daniels had directed the Oscars ceremony, they could have ripped open the multiverse and scripted a different course. For now Hollywood is stained with the ignominy of that moment, while their film opens Friday at the Landmark Kendall Square Cinema.

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Of Lanes and Games

7 Mar

City will miss cycling safety law’s May 1 deadline on changes to traffic through Porter Square area

By Tom Meek and Marc Levy Saturday, March 5, 2022

A bicyclist rides south through Porter Square on Jan. 25. (Photo: Marc Levy)

The city will miss its May 1 deadline to install quick-build separated bicycle lanes on Massachusetts Avenue through Porter Square, the city manager will tell the City Council on Monday.

Community engagement requirements, the need for more time to develop and install infrastructure to make up for the loss of current parking spaces and complications in scheduling contractors combine to make it impossible to meet the demands set by the city’s Cycling Safety Ordinance, City Manager Louis A. DePasquale said. The letter was included Thursday in the agenda packet for the next council meeting.

The bike lanes between Beech Street and Roseland Street are to be done in quick-build fashion using road paint and plastic flex-posts, with parking meters and loading zones moved to side streets to make up for some loss of spaces on Massachusetts Avenue. But a quick-build bus-and-bike project in November that cost parking spaces, angering businesses west of Porter Square, forced a reconsideration of how the Traffic, Parking & Transportation Department moved ahead with community engagement and mitigation efforts.

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Proposals for taking down trolley wire system then ‘partial-build’ bike lanes nudge forward

23 Feb

Bike Lane Games

By Tom Meek Friday, February 18, 2022

A sign taped to a municipal meeting notice warns that the city plans to “give away” Porter Square with quick-build bike lanes. Unlike with many websites, the URL on the flyer works only when https:// precedes it. (Photo: Marc Levy)

Transportation officials are moving toward removing overhead trolley wires that will allow an approach to building bike lanes that keeps more parking along Massachusetts Avenue in the northern parts of the city, representatives for the city and state said in two community meetings this week.

The MBTA held an information session virtually Tuesday on bus electrification and the North Cambridge depot redesign, drawing more than 150 attendees. Scott Hamwey, the MBTA’s director of bus modernization, said the state planned to de-electrify overhead catenary wires and switch to battery electric buses beginning in mid-March, removing the wires sometime in late 2023 or 2024. The North Cambridge depot would shut down for two years as it was turned into a bus-charging station; construction would start within the next year, Hamwey said. While just 3 percent of the fleet is electric now, the agency plans to make it fully electric by 2040.

Many in the audience argued that the current, wired buses were cleaner than the BEBs, which would be equipped with a small diesel engine cycling on and off to add warmth for riders on days cold enough that the buses’ electric heat is inadequate. The rebuilt depot would include a 5,000-gallon diesel tank on the north side of the site.

Only a small amount of the bus fleet use the overhead wires, which are deployed in only a small part of MBTA territory, and the system and buses that use it are aging and will require significant cost to upgrade and maintain, said Hamwey and senior director of vehicle engineering Bill Wolfgang.

Planning for Porter

The city showed “partial” bike-lane constructions options as part of a Wednesday presentation.

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House of Gucci

27 Nov

‘House of Gucci’: The styles clash in family drama

By Tom Meek Friday, November 26, 202

Ridley Scott’s “House of Gucci” unfurls like an epic crime saga – think “The Godfather” (1972) by way of the hit streaming series “Succession.” It’s got devious parlor games, backroom corporate jockeying, bloody agendas and plenty of unintentional camp, which is both good and bad. 

We’re talking the Italian fashion industry in the 1970s, when old-school Gucci lions Rodolfo (Jeremy Irons) and Aldo (Pacino) prided themselves on the lineage of special cows used to make super soft, artisanal loafers and handbags that cost most people’s annual salary. Aldo wants to kick the business into the more modern world with innovations such as malls in Japan; Rodolfo resists. But the real focus of “Gucci” is the fatal relationship between Lady Gaga’s uncompromising Patrizia and Rodolfo’s bookish son, Maurizio (Adam Driver). By now, you’ve probably read about the steamy sex scene between Gaga and Driver, and while it is steamy, it’s more a physical, crash-bang-boom event than an erotic interlude, befitting Patrizia’s driven woman: She works in her family’s trucking business until she’s successfully stalking Maurizio in a bookstore and getting that big ring, then pushing Maurizio into the family business with a pinch of Lady Macbeth mania.

The narrative of “Gucci” may be driven by the above- and below-board dealings of the fashion empire, but what Scott’s assembled here is a potpourri of characters that pop off the screen with a capital P. As Aldo, Pacino serves up a Thanksgiving ham with a big, viscous side of pineapple sauce, somewhere between his over-the-top take on Jimmy Hoffa in Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman” (2019) and his “Hoo-ah!” hokum in “Scent of a Woman’’ (1992). Besides Gaga – more on that in a bit – the real scene-stealer is Jared Leto, unrecognizable under bad hair, potbelly and a prosthetic nose like Tom Cruise in “Tropic Thunder” as Aldo’s attention-seeking son Paolo, the Guccis’ own Fredo Corleone sad sack, full of ambition and always biting his tail. Iron’s ailing Rodolfo is gaunt and wan in the extreme, looking like the undernourished version of Gary Oldman’s Count Dracula in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 spin on Bram Stoker’s novel. (Irons is one of the only actors in the impressive ensemble who doesn’t attempt an Italian accent, which is both disconcerting and a blessing.) Driver’s his fine, likable self as Maurizio in a film in which not many of the characters are.

The film clearly belongs to Gaga, giving a big, bold performance that proves what we knew when she was Oscar-nominated in 2018 for her pop-star-in-the-making turn in “A Star is Born”: The woman can act and is a force onscreen. She carries the film through silly and serious, and even though it’s a big performance, it never spins into spectacle like some of her castmates’ do.

Scott, who recently lambasted superhero films, has had a long line of critical success – I’ll cite “Alien” (1979), “Blade Runner” (1982) and “Black Hawk Down” (2000) among the many– but takes a bit of a stumble here. It’s a whirlwind of concepts, stylization, allegories and an incredible cast all getting their big solos (did I mention that Salma Hayek plays Patrizia’s brassy tarot card reader?) without gelling at the core. At more than two and a half hours, “House of Gucci” is highly entertaining and the use of pop tunes from Donna Summer, Blondie and George Michael, to name a few, anchors the era with perfect aural nostalgia. But for all its build, bluster and pomp, in the end “Gucci” gets sewn up and sold like a cheap knockoff pump in the secondary market.

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