ISSUE #89
BEAM FROM THE BOOTH | GRAND RAPIDS FILM SOCIETY
[EDITED BY: GRIFFIN SHERIDAN & SPENCER EVERHART]
Hello and welcome back to an all-new installment of BEAM FROM THE BOOTH brought to you by GRAND RAPIDS FILM SOCIETY!
To start, we wanted to remind everyone that OPEN PROJECTOR NIGHT, originally slated for last Wednesday, has been postponed to WEDNESDAY, MARCH 5th. While we were bummed to have to push the event back at short notice, we’re glad everyone was able to stay home safely without missing the event last week. Here’s to the forthcoming event and better weather!
THIS THURSDAY NIGHT (2/20), we’re thrilled to present the MICHIGAN PREMIERE of IT DOESN’T GET BETTER THAN THIS. Come support independent film and check out this new buzz-worthy horror!
And NEXT WEEK, we look forward to the final couple events of our February programming. On MONDAY (2/24), we’re hosting another very special TWIN PEAKS DAY screening of David Lynch’s MULHOLLAND DRIVE at which damn fine coffee will be provided and Lynchian costumes will be highly encouraged! Then, on WEDNESDAY (2/26), join us for another FILM SOCIETY ROUNDTABLE, a free social event made for meeting and chatting with like-minded film fans and filmmakers!
But for now, enjoy these columns by a couple special guest contributors!
WHY YOU SHOULD WATCH THE THING (FROM ANOTHER TIME)
[BY: RYAN COPPING]
Sometime in the 1970s, before I was born, my dad woke up screaming in the middle of the night. “The vegetable women are after me!” My mother later reported him exclaiming, or something to the effect. Hopefully, he was able to get back to sleep.
There are no vegetable women in The Thing From Another World, but there is a vegetable man-thing, and when my father saw it in 1951 at the age of 11, it terrified him. He wasn’t alone. THFAW holds a special place in the mind of many baby boomers as being a movie that was so scary and intense, it almost wasn’t fair. My dad told me the story of how frightened he was when he saw it, trapped in the theater and totally unprepared for its effect.
Sometime in my pre-teen years, I told him it was going to be on TV and I was going to watch it. “It’s a scary movie, Ryan” he said, in the same tone of voice you might tell a first year medical student when they enter the operating theater for the first time. He talked me out of it, but watched it again that night himself, maybe for the first time since the 50s. For my father, The Thing (the “From Another World” was added at the last minute by RKO who thought it might be confused with an annoying novelty song) was not only the scariest movie ever made, it was the scariest movie anyone could ever make.
When I finally watched the movie as an adult, I found it wasn’t really that scary at all, and actually kind of boring. For what seemed to be a monster movie, it took forever for the monster to show up. However, something about it stayed with me. I watched it a second time, and I liked it more. After each progressive viewing, I understood more and more how complex and subtle a movie it is, and I now consider it the best science fiction film of the 1950s, with its only real competitors being Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and Val Guest’s two Quatermass movies.
Much ink has been spilled as to who actually directed this film, something that this LA Times article goes into in great depth. The credited director is Christian Nyby, who did not have a strong career, while the producer is Howard Hawks, one of the great filmmakers of Classical Hollywood. To me, the question of who directed it may not be definitively solved, but there is no question as to its auteur — Hawks — and I am going to simply treat it as Hawks’ movie from this point forward.
It’s hard to explain why The Thing is a great movie if you haven’t seen it and, like other films by Hawks and Robert Altman, his successor in postmodern genre cinema, it may take a while to appreciate it after you have. The plot is not at all confusing: an American scientific research station at the North Pole observes an unusual explosion. A military expedition led by Captain Patrick Hendry (Kenneth Tobey) quickly discovers a crashed alien space ship, which they accidentally destroy. They rescue the pilot (in a bit of casting you probably didn’t see coming, James Arness, Gunsmoke’s Marshall Dillon), who is frozen in a block of ice, and take him take back to the station. Convinced they do not want to make any more mistakes, they radio for orders from the government and keep guard on the frozen extraterrestrial, covering it with a blanket...except — in what is either absurdly awful plotting or (more likely) intentional comedy — it’s an electric blanket that’s plugged in. You can take it from there.
This generic, paper-thin plot masks the true experience of the film. It’s not about the story, even though this concept was fairly new in the 50s, certainly in a science fiction setting. What the movie IS about is the difficulties involved with meeting a kind of life we don’t, and might never, understand. The actions of Hendry and his command are contrasted with the scientific team, led by Dr. Arthur Carrington (Robert Cornthwaite). Carrington is understandably pretty excited about making first contact with an alien creature and puts the best possible light on any action it takes, while Hendry, by nature of his job, has to see the worst. Both the military and scientists do and want to do things that are combinations of smart, sort of reasonable, and, really, really stupid. However, the movie is aware that they are stupid — disturbingly, the kind of things that, based on human history, someone might do in this situation. This makes the movie thought provoking and a work of surprising insight.
Although I doubt anyone reading this will get periodic nightmares for 20+ years after watching it, The Thing has many scenes and moments that are...unsettling. Hawks makes the wise choice (later emulated by Steven Spielberg in Jaws) to never let us see the monster clearly — if, indeed, it is a monster — until the very end. Hawks, assisted by Dimitri Tiomkin’s outstanding score, really drives home that being trapped in a small building in the Arctic while an immensely powerful force is on the loose is not a great situation to be in.
What a viewer may not be expecting is how warm the characters interactions are and how intentionally funny this film is. Hendry leads a team of friends who clearly enjoy each other’s company, and we enjoy watching them joke around with each other. This also has the effect of both making the audience emotionally involved in the characters (a big problem in John Carpenter’s 1982 remake) and tricking us into paying attention to something other than The Thing, meaning its unseen actions or sudden appearances are even more unnerving.
More than one viewer has commented that this is an exquisitely paced film. When you accept what the movie is trying to do and ignore the possible desire to see cheesy 50s aliens and bad acting, you’ll find a movie that leaves you wanting more in a good way. You will want more comradeship and witty banter between the characters, even though you are not entirely sure that their actions are right. Maybe the military got it all wrong; after all, they destroyed the alien ship and treated him with nothing but fear and mistrust. Yes, the alien also commits acts of violence, but he may have been scared, might not have known how troubling we would find them, or even how we understand what ‘life’ is. Then again, if something very intelligent and powerful is angry at you, and you are scared of it, it’s a lot easier to just see him — it — as a Thing.
BETTER MAN DESERVED BETTER, MAN
[BY: JACKSON CAMPO]
So...how many of you saw Better Man? Looking at the U.S. box office gross, I’d wager about five of the people reading this (if that). Well, I did. As the sole person in the theater at Celebration Studio Park on a Saturday, I was delighted by a biopic bursting at the seams with creativity — something that is far too often missing from this genre. I had no illusions that the film was going to clean up at the Oscars this year; its sole nomination is a nod in the Best Visual Effects category that it is doomed to lose to one of the other two nominees featuring CGI monkeys. I had, perhaps foolishly, hoped that director Michael Gracey might get some recognition but nope. Better Man deserves better than that!
Like many of you, my relationship to most films begins long before they are in theaters. I first heard of Better Man from Letterboxd reviews out of the Telluride Film Festival in September. From there, it was on my radar as the movie about Robbie (not Robin) Williams where he’s a CGI monkey the whole time that people swore was Actually Good. However, after marketing for the film started, Better Man garnered a much different reputation. Seemingly everyone (or maybe just us Americans) was caught off guard not just because this is a music biopic starring a CGI monkey but because its subject is Robbie WIlliams. The response was a resounding “who the hell is that?” followed closely by “what the hell is this?” I made an effort in the back half of last year to limit my time on social media, but the discourse did manage to find its way to me.
I will start off by saying I did not know a thing about Robbie Williams before I saw this movie. I didn’t know who the pop group Take That were, let alone that Williams was in Take That, but (to paraphrase Don Draper) that’s what the movie’s for. The first thing you hear in Better Man is Robbie Williams describing himself as others do (the exact words being “narcissistic, punchable, shit-eating twat”) before he tells us he wants us to see him as he sees himself. Enter the monkey. Yes, it’s nakedly obvious. The tagline of the film is “Fame makes monkeys of us all” — I don’t think subtlety was the goal here.
James Mangold, director of this year’s A Complete Unknown Bob Dylan biopic, spoke at Sundance recently on the need for earnestness to return to the cinema: “In this time of irony and snark and internet nightmares, we need sincerity and earnestness more than ever. That doesn’t mean every film needs to be a history lesson or depressing or weepy. It just means we shouldn’t be embarrassed to feel shit and show it.” Better Man is certainly not embarrassed. What Michael Gracey and his stellar crew set out to do, in the words of Robbie Williams, is “give you a right fucking entertaining.” The musical sequences in the film are some of the highest level filmmaking of 2024. I mean that wholeheartedly. The Regent street sequence set to Williams’ “Rock DJ” is the most publicized sequence in the movie (and available on YouTube right now, I dare you to watch without cracking a smile). It is a breathtaking showcase of Gracey’s vision for the film, a oner that exponentially increases in energy until there are 500 dancers flooding the street — and don’t forget, the film’s lead is a CGI character. Oh, by the way, this sequence almost didn’t make the film.
This staggering level of work is on display in every musical sequence in Better Man. Williams on a boat flirting with his future fiancée transforms into a ballet intercut with the dissolution of their relationship. A concert at Knebworth becomes a massive battle scene between Robbie Williams (who is, again, a CGI monkey) and hundreds of other Robbies (who are also CGI monkeys), a literalization of his battle with self-doubt. To all the people asking why the hell a studio would give someone $100 million to make a Robbie Williams biopic, this is why. If you can’t see the vision, I don’t know what to tell you.
Since seeing Better Man, I have listened to the first few Robbie Williams records. They are fine. Most of the first album feels like B or C-Tier Oasis save for the best track, “Let Me Entertain You,” which scores the stellar Knebworth battle sequence. Williams is never going to be one of my favorite musicians, his catalog is by no means untouchable (maybe that’s why he was so willing to go along with Gracey’s vision on Better Man), but the Robbie Williams movie is one of my favorites of 2024. Why didn’t it connect more with audiences? Why didn’t it make more money? I don’t really care. I’m just going to keep watching that Regent street sequence. Maybe it could have made a couple more dollars if they titled it Life Thru a Lens, though.
UPCOMING EVENTS
IT DOESN’T GET ANY BETTER THAN THIS (Kempf & Toti, 2025)
WHAT: MICHIGAN PREMIERE! Two horror fans buy a creepy duplex to shoot a film. They find cult members gathering outside in a trance. The friends investigate the phenomenon, their obsession escalating as they pursue real-life horror thrills.
WHEN: Thursday, February 20th, 8:00pm
WHERE: The Wealthy Theatre
MULHOLLAND DRIVE (Lynch, 2001)
WHAT: Join us for a special one night screening of Mulholland Drive to celebrate Twin Peaks Day and the life of the late David Lynch. A woman named Rita is left amnesiac after a car crash. She wanders the streets of Los Angeles in a daze before taking refuge in an apartment. There she is discovered a wholesome Midwestern blonde. Together, the two attempt to solve the mystery of Rita's true identity.
WHEN: Monday, February 24th, 7:00pm
WHERE: The Wealthy Theatre
WHAT: FREE SOCIAL EVENT! Join like-minded Grand Rapids film fans and filmmakers for an evening of discussion and mingling.
WHEN: Wednesday, February 26th, 7:00pm
WHERE: The Front Studio Annex — right next to The Wealthy Theatre
And so we’ve arrived at the end of another BEAM FROM THE BOOTH! We appreciate you taking the time to read it and truly hope you’ll continue to do so. Be sure to SUBSCRIBE to get each issue in your inbox every week, and stay up-to-date on all things GRFS.
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Look for ISSUE #90 in your inbox NEXT WEEK!
Until then, friends...
