Hollywood Forever is a newsletter where I — a CONSUMMATE insider — remind you all I almost went by @LilNickyFinkelberg. I’ve also written about why financiers are gun shy at festivals & how I really miss the Arclight, even though it was fucking ugly.
Edgelord Content Cravers,
I know, I know, I just emailed like yesterday, but I saw Dasha Nekrasova's movie The Scary of 61st Street & thought some of y'all would want to gawk.
If you don't know who "Dasha" is, you can skip this post, because the movie exists in a very specific context that I won't attempt to unpack. My sense is that this context -- & this scene -- is not yuge. When the Q&A host asked the audience who listened to Dasha's podcast, only a few people raised their hands. She's raking it in on Patreon, but this was at Beyond Fest, last night at the 3, and the horror geeks & bored cinephiles weren't (admitting to being???) Red Scare Redditors.
I'm Dasha-aware, not Dasha-expert. I was there because someone I know encouraged me to go & made it easy, and because I was curious. I wanted to people-watch // see what her fans looked like IRL, but oh well. I also wanted to see if her genius for shit talking translated at all to filmmaking...
So mid-way through the movie, it occurred to me that I could tell you about this movie & Event. But now I'm realizing I don't know how to write a "review," so instead, I'll just write some bullet points…
The Movie
--All in all, I thought it was pretty good. An ungenerous reading would be that it's just cut rate Safdies, which I thought in the beginning, but it's its own thing & it sorta won me over. I get why it won a prize at Berlin, but certainly not the prize.
--The movie is about Epstein. Two young women move into an apartment where he used to keep enslaved women. They connect with an Epstein obsessive, and they all go nuts.
--It's very much a micro-budget movie, made with amphetamine energy & all the anticipated limitations and quirks...but if you can get on board with that, it's also a satisfying horror flick. There's compellingly freaky shit & a huge score.
--Thematically, I feel like the movie is a no-holding-back attempt at expressing the psychic burden of knowing that we live in a world where Epstein is possible. It's a burden that "haunts" the characters' sexualities. Good possession movie logic, I thought.
--It wears its influences heavily, which I found grating at first. It's very, very reminiscent of 70s horror (Nic Roeg etc.) and the recent, little films that pay homage too. Even so, it’s fun to see an energetically subjective camera.
--So it doesn't have a style all its own, but it's definitely got a voice. It's funny. Her schtick mostly works, both in the banter and in cinematic touches too.
--There's a co-star & co-writer named Madeline Quinn, who doesn't seem to have done much so far. I thought she was extremely fucking funny.
--Speaking of writing, it's one of those movies where nothing makes sense... except in the world of the movie, it just doesn't matter much... except there's one twist at the end that I thought sucked.
The Juicy Stuff
--For an American movie, there's so much sex & nudity. Wide range of activities & tones going on. A couple moments felt ridiculous, but others were effectively bracing/funny/sexy/scary etc. Somebody masturbates demonically at Epstein's front door. They guerilla shot outside his real townhouse shortly after his death & stole his mail.
--I saw a few minutes of the Q&A. She was dressed super fancy & seemed genuinely proud. But of course kept it curt too, at least from what I saw.
--She said she wouldn't want to both direct and act again. The performance isn't always seamless, but I guess that's mostly in keeping with the limitations & vibe. Super curious how she fares on Succession.
--She kept talking about doing drugs: ketamine, amphetamines etc. And it’s for sure a drug movie, in a hothouse atmosphere that feels chemically itchy.
--A few minutes into the Q&A, I felt guilty and went home to my wife, who hates her, but also thinks she's hilarious, but also hates her & immediately asked me to describe her appearance in detail.
So uh... Dimes Square For 90 Minutes For Only Some Of Y'all, &
Hollywood Forever Y'all,
Max
P.S. If you’re new here, I put the many Pauls of Hollywood on a scatter plot.