Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Holy cow, WilliamfuhBuckley died.

Suddenly obsessed with Coral Browne. Must every book on my Amazon wish list fall under fag-hagiography?

I watched Laura yesterday while laid up (you can see the connection) and I'm sorry, my mouth was agape, just agape, I tell you, at the ever-so not remotely latent homoeroticism/phobia in the opening bathtub scene...makes Spartacus look like Jackass. I've seen this movie many times before, I just couldn't really believe it this time for some reason. Any academic reading of that scene really belongs in Barebackin' Muscles n Twinks or something. I do love that goofy movie though. So many things to love, including (another thing I couldn't ignore this time) Judith Anderson's so soignee/chic outfit in her first scene. (I guess I'm answering the question in my second paragraph.)

It must have been done already, but somebody must curate a film series about newspaper columnists...evil/evil-ish ones. Addison DeWitt, Waldo Lydecker, J.J. Hunsecker, Sheridan Whiteside...

Which brings us back to WFB, I guess--not the evil part; those columnists were all about lying in their public face...Buckley/political columnists can't really do that, whatever you think of them. Maybe the kind of power he wielded or life he occupied falls into those old-fashioned cinematic paradigms at bit, though. Every day at the typewriter. I have found some of his comments about the Iraq war to have been spot-on.

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