my new plaid pants

There is a nice big piece on the forthcoming Rosemary's Baby prequel Apartment 7A over at Vanity Fair today with pictures and some words from director Natalie Erika James (see my previous post on the film here) -- James made a truly great horror film in 2020 with Relic so I am not as down on this as you might think, given Rosemary is my favorite film of all time. There's also the cast -- Julia Garner and m'f'ing Dianne Wiest. Wiest is indeed playing Minnie Castavet, the neighbor-from-hell role that rightly won Ruth Gordon an Oscar, while Garner is playing Terry Gionoffrio, the gal Mia Farrow met briefly in the 1968 film in the laundry room (and you can see that scene being reconstructed above, this time from Terry's perspective) before she "falls" out of a window. (How Putin-esque of her.) Anyway who knows? I will go into this with an open mind given the level of talent involved -- we only know a little bit about Terry's story so the film could have some surprises, although yes, we do know where all it's headed. Open minds, open hearts, and plenty of room for chocolate mouse. Apartment 7A hits Paramount+ September 27th; y'all hit the jump for a few more photos...

Well file this under "potentially intriguing slash possibly horrifying, we shall see" -- and yes, I've got an entire filing cabinet full of things that fall under that banner -- we might be getting a Rosemary's Baby prequel? Now that information alone is the "possibly horrifying" part, because nobody should try messing about with Rosemary's Baby. It's a perfect movie -- heck it's literally my favorite movie. People have basically remade Rosemary's Baby a thousand times now -- once officially, to terrible results, and a million other times with vague spins on the material. There's also a nutso TV movie sequel called Look What happened To Rosemary's Baby that is fun insomuch as it's terrible and Ruth Gordon reprises her role.

Anyway setting that aside the rumor gets interesting when you look beyond the initial shock of it because of who's attached to the thing right now -- it will star Julia Garner and Dianne Wiest and it will be directed by Natalie Erika James, the director of 2020's phenomenal horror flick Relic (that one starred Emily Mortimer and I reviewed it right here). Oh and the story will be about the character of "Terry d'Onofrio" (played by Victoria Vetri in Polanski's film), who's the young woman who lives with the Castavets and ends up "jumping" out their window toward the start of that film, after befriending newcomer Rosemary (Mia Farrow) in the laundry room.

Thing is nothing has been stated about any of this officially -- the movie on IMDb is called Apartment 7A and no plot has been released. Bloody Disgusting just says they "have it on good authority" ... and then some incredible sleuth went and noticed that a bunch of the character names on IMDb are characters from Rosemary's Baby, lol. Like how actor Kevin McNally from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies is listed as playing "Roman Castavet" and relative newcomers named Amy Leeson and Scott Hume are playing "Rosemary Woodhouse" and "Guy Woodhouse" for example. 

So point being if those character names are indeed authentic to the film then I can't imagine that BD is reaching here, saying this will be involved with Rosemary's Baby. And perhaps we should be open-minded! Natalie Erika James turned out one hell of a film with Relic, and Garner is one of the most exciting actresses coming up. And does this mean that national treasure Dianne Wiest is playing Minnie? Or maybe she's playing the old woman who owned the apartment before Rosemary & Guy move in, the one who grew all the "tannis" herbs? Either way I dare to say...

.

I'll take any excuse to talk about Ruth Gordon eating cake in Rosemary's Baby, and this time I've built an entire (ridiculous) series around it! In past years for Halloween I've devoted lists to Telephones and to Snakes, to Virgins and to Whores. So why not Cake? Let them eat it, you know. 

This (ridiculous) series' inspiration was actually another movie which we'll get to later on, but I had to start here with the single greatest eating performance ever given. Nobody but nobody can chew, cake and or scenery, quite like Ruth Gordon. I talked a little bit about how important on-screen eating can be in my tribute to Mia Goth at The Film Experience the other day -- Ruth here flouts the rules I set and goes way over the top, masticating like a maniac, but how would any other choice make sense for the woman we know love and fear called Minnie Castavet? It wouldn't, she knew it, and she chewed her way straight into my heart.

... you can learn from:

The Marrying Kind (1952)

Judge Carroll: You know, counselor, there's
an old saying, there are three sides to every story:
yours, his, and the truth.

Any fans of The Marrying Kind up in here? I'm a fan of any movie starring Aldo Ray, at least as long as it has an extended sequence of Aldo Ray rolling around in his boxer shorts, and so I'm a fan of The Marrying Kind. Bless you, George Cukor. But more specifically...

... bless you to one Miss Ruth Gordon, well-known actress extraordinaire and lesser-known co-writer of The Marrying Kind along with her hubby Garson Kanin. Perhaps it's not "lesser known" at this point that Ruth was also a writer? Besides writing some plays her marriage with Kanin was the foundation upon which the public persona of the "Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy" relationship was built, since she & Kanin wrote the 1949 film Adam's Rib and the 1952 film Pat & Mike for them based on their own thing, and the four of them were all good friends.

I've always been curious about this from the point of view of the rumors that Hepburn & Tracy were in a so-called "lavender" relationship (aka they were both gay) -- I don't know if we'll ever know how much of their schtick was real and how much was an act they borrowed, with enthusiastic permission obviously, from Ruth & Garson. And that was then shaped into movie magic by that big queen Cukor, who directed all these films! It's a queer conspiracy!

.

When Rosemary's Baby turned 50 back in June I told all of you witches about the forthcoming book called This is No Dream: Making Rosemary's Baby -- well the book's out now, I am flipping through my copy right now, and oh my god it's lovely! It's stuffed to the satanic gills with the set photography of Bob Willoughby, much of it that I've never published before, and knowing what a spazz I am about this movie that should be very exciting indeed. A must own, methinks! Go pick up yours right over here or risk Saint Minnie's wrath...
.

The Queen

A post shared by Jason Adams (@jasonaadams) on Jul 31, 2018 at 6:19pm PDT

.

.

I want you to click on the above image and really take in the perfection of that shot from Rosemary's Baby - I was skipping around the film last night in order to grab some images of "Monumental Horror Images" to send my friend Sean who was doing a Twitter thread about that idea and when I started really basking in that shot for a minute I became obsessed. 

.

.

There are eleven people in that frame up top (not including the devil baby in that crib) and they're all looking in different directions and experiencing that moment in different ways and yet our eye is relaxed and curious as it drifts about that stage. And at the same time everything points straight towards that black bassinet. All the shadows, all the lines. Wham.

Anyway as we noted earlier this week the film, my favorite, just turned 50 and over at The Film Experience the celebration's gotten that precise - three of us have split the movie into thirds and are live-blogging the experience of watching it. Last night the first third went up (see that here) and tonight comes my third - click over here to read my take on the middle portion of the movie, from Devil Impregnation to Good Ol' Boy Hutch's Funeral. It's an interesting patch of the movie  I'm glad I got to tackle, with several key sequences that you might be tempted to glance past at first but which are vital to the film's still awesome power.

Rosemary's Baby was birthed on June 12th 1968,

 making our favorite antichrist 50 years old today.

Fifty! Fifty years old!

The film was an enormous success right out of the gate, tapping into an anxiety about modern womanhood and city living that I don't think they could even entirely see about themselves at the time - makes you wonder how people will look back on the shenanigans of Hereditary with its family curse in 50 years. (And yes people will be looking back on the shenanigans of Hereditary in 50 years.)

No matter how they looked at it at the time we look at it constantly now - Rosemary stands alongside Psycho and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Exorcist as one of the most influential horror films of all time, and while I'm loathe to say it's even "more than that" - because being horror is enough, dammit! - Rosemary's reach really does extend beyond just its "tentpole of the genre" status because of all the innovations Roman Polanski baked into the thing. The innovative camera-work and framing...

... rewrote the way movies are shot, period. It's a perfect film, it's my favorite film, i've watched it more times than any other and yet I still find things I've never noticed before - I re-watched it over this past weekend and I was stuck for the first time by the dream sequence that Rosemary has while she's asleep in Dr. Hill's office waiting to be taken to the hospital (or so she thinks) where she dreams of her family, her parents and sisters and brothers, all doting on her newborn, and it's the saddest freaking thing I have ever seen.

How have I always tuned out during this moment? It's brief and you're usually focused on what's about to happen - Dr. Hill's betrayal and the deep trauma that immediately follows. But the horror's made all the sharper by this sweet imaginary interlude. Poor Rosemary.

Another thing I didn't know - Time Magazine has a piece today on how the name of the infamous apartment building where all the horror unfolds was named after a famous figure in horror - click on over to read that. (thx Mac) My point is I still have so much to learn about this film even after all this time - I'm really looking forward to the forthcoming book called This Is No Dream: Making Rosemary's Baby that's out in July which will surely have even more wonders to share on this never not fascinating film. 

What are your favorite things about Rosemary?

.

.

"It's where the Trench Sisters conducted their little dietary 

experiments and Keith Kennedy held his parties. 

Adrian Marcato lived there. So did Pearl Ames.

... The Trench Sisters were two proper Victorian ladies. 

They cooked and ate several young children, including a niece.

... They called it The Black Bramford. In '59 a dead infant 

was found wrapped in newspaper in the basement."

Oh Hutch, how do I love thee. Poor Hutch, cursed Hutch - not allowed onto the Kennedy Yacht of Rosemary's Dreams ("TYPHOON!") and murdered off-screen by a glove. What a world. Hutch is introduced in this scene (he is Rosemary and Guy's former landlord and friend) surrounded by his books, and books follow him around the whole film long...

"Tannis... I must look it up in the Encyclopedia."

Oh Hutch! Your books are gonna get you killed, you dumb dumb. Sure enough Hutch looks it up and tries to warn Rosemary...

Note how Rosemary's surrounded, literally draped, in books as she fields the call from Hutch here - knowledge is knocking! Press your ear up to it, woman! Anyway as sure as he tries before he can deliver the terrifying news of Tannis Past he's as chewed up as that Trench Sisters niece was. Poor, dead Hutch. When Rosemary goes to his funeral she meets his friend Grace, who has a gift for her...

"What is it?"

"A book."

"The name is an anagram."

Even in death Hutch keeps trying to save the day through literature. This leads to one of my favorite visual jokes in the film - when Guy comes home to find Rosemary freaking out about the witchy theories that Hutch has planted in her head from his grave, Guy takes the book away from her and puts it out of her reach...

... but did you ever notice what books he puts it on top of?

It's the two Kinsey books! Sexual Behavior in the Human Male and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female! That deserves a great big (you might even say pregnant) LOL -- wouldn't you agree, Hutch?

.

They call the 1970s the "Golden Age of Hollywood" and I guess Siri has been feeling like a Golden Girl lately because this is the third out of the past four editions of our Siri Game that the voice inside my telephone has given me a digit in the 70s when I've asked her for a digit between 1 & 100. Today she gave me "71" and so today we'll be hitting up The Movies of 1971. And speaking of the "Golden Age of Hollywood" there really truly were some astonishing movies that came out in 1971. (Including a certain movie that's got a remake coming out this very weekend!) My personal picks are a little off-center because I am a little off-center, but the runners-up really do represent a pretty astonishing bunch of movies themselves.

My 5 Favorite Movies of 1971

The Devils

(dir. Ken Russell)

-- released on July 16th 1971 --

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

(dir. Mel Stuart)

-- released on June 30th 1971 --

A Clockwork Orange

(dir. Stanley Kubrick)

-- released on December 19th 1971 --

The Abominable Dr. Phibes

(dir. Robert Feust)

-- released on May 18th 1971 --

Harold & Maude

(dir. Hal Ashby)

-- released on December 20th 1971 --

--------------------------------------------- 

Runners-up: The French Connection (dir. William Friedkin), McCabe and Mrs. Miller (dir. Robert Altman), The Last Picture Show (dir. Peter Bogdanovich), The Beguiled (dir. Donald Siegel), Play Misty For Me (dir. Clint Eastwood), Duel (dir. Steven Spielberg), Straw Dogs (dir. Sam Peckinpah), Bananas (dir. Woody Allen)...

... The Omega Man (dir. Boris Sagal), THX 1138 (dir. George Lucas), Let's Scare Jessica to Death (dir. John Hancock), A Bay of Blood (dir. Bava), The Andromeda Strain (dir. Wise), Beware of a Holy Whore (dir. Fassbinder), Whity (dir. Fassbinder), Wake in Fright (dir. Ted Kotcheff), The Boy Friend (dir. Ken Russell)

Never seen: Carnal Knowledge (dir. Mike Nichols), Vanishing Point (dir. Richard C. Sarafian), Sunday Bloody Sunday (dir. John Schlesinger), Death in Venice (dir. Luchino Visconti), What's the Matter With Helen? (dir. Curtis Harrington), Trafic (dir. Jacques Tati), Willard (dir. Daniel Mann)

---------------------------------------------

What are your favorite movies of 1971?

.

.

--- That is Ruth Gordon saying that, and since my birthday is in a couple of weeks I now expect one of you fine people to cross-stitch this quote onto a pillow or something similar for me, thank you very much. I can't remember who forwarded me this link but it's via the writer James Grissom, who interviewed Ruth in 1984 - you can see lots of great quotes that he's gotten from celebrities in similar chats right here. Ruth in particular is always worth listening to, though - if you've never read any of her books... do.

.

... you can learn from:

Psycho (1960)
.

Norman: Well, a son is a poor substitute for a lover.

Marion: Why don't you go away? 

Norman: What, to a private island like you? 

Marion: No, not like me. 

Norman: I couldn't do that. Who would look after her? 

The fire in her fireplace would go out. It would be cold 

and damp up there like a grave. If you love somebody, 

you wouldn't leave them even if they treat your badly. 

Do you understand? I don't hate my mother. 

I hate at what she's become. I hate her illness. 

It would have been the great Anthony Perkins' 85th birthday today. The actor was born in New York City; his father Osgood was a big star on Broadway and did lots of character work in Hollywood, but Tony barely knew him - he died of a heart attack when Tony was just five. Tony went to a bunch of fancy private schools before turning to acting in 1953 in George Cukor's film The Actress...

... which was based on an autobiographical play written by no less than Ruth Gordon! Jean Simmons (weird that I've brought her up twice this week already - she's not an actress I'm super familiar with) plays Ruth, Spencer Tracy plays her father, and Tony plays the boy who wants to marry her. I haven't seen the film (should I?) but this seems like an awfully big role for a debut - I wonder how he got it (cough George Cukor cough).

I'm just gonna put that picture of Tony and his good friend Paul Newman there, just because. Anyway I'm glad I got the opportunity to bring up Psycho today because Bates Motel is currently airing, as you might be aware of, and the new season has made it from prequel to present, aka they're dealing with the timeline of Hitch's actual film this year, and I really wanted to share a behind-the-scenes picture from last week's "Shower Scene" as it was... only it's tremendously spoilery and I was worried about how to do it. So I'll take us after the jump for that -- if you care about spoilers for this season of Bates Motel, do not click through!