Reflections on ... All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (2022)

/ Pictured: Self Portrait 1st Time on Oxy, Berlin, 2014 by Nan Goldin /

In Laura Poitras’ lacerating Oscar-nominated new documentary All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (2022), fierce 69-year-old photographer Nan Goldin - think of her as the Marianne Faithfull of modern art (or as Variety puts it, “the post-punk Diane Arbus”) - emerges as a captivatingly blunt tough cookie. The film deftly weaves together her art, activism and history of personal trauma and Poitras wisely mainly lets Goldin narrate it herself in her broken chain-smoker rasp. 

/ Nan Goldin in Boston, 1970 / 

The focus encompasses early family tragedy (the story of her doomed older sister Barbara is wrenching), Goldin’s artistic epiphany photographing her LGBTQ friends and her early years hustling in grungy 1980s New York (she go-go danced in New Jersey “titty bars”, bartended and did sex work at a brothel to buy rolls of film). Goldin eventually achieves international acclaim but also weathers the AIDS crisis, violent relationships and drug addiction. 

/ Trixie on the Cot, New York City 1979 by Nan Goldin /

While Goldin has openly battled substance abuse over the decades (she frequently depicts herself in rehab in her self-portraits), nothing prepared her for the hell of OxyContin, which she was prescribed following an injury. Once Goldin recovered, she was enraged to learn the very galleries that display her work benefited from the support of the Sacklers – the mega-rich family behind Purdue Pharma whose wealth is tainted by the OxyContin-fueled opioid crisis and who position themselves as art world philanthropists as a means of image-laundering. Forming the activist group PAIN (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now) in 2018, Goldin undertook powerful demonstrations to shame the world’s cultural institutions into cutting ties with the Sackler family. (Goldin witnessed Act Up protests in the 80s and clearly took notes). 

/ Portrait of Cookie Mueller by Nan Goldin / 

Bittersweet as All the Beauty and the Bloodshed is (and the Sacklers retreat into their wealth rather than face any real consequences), it’s gratifying to see galleries finally start refusing the family’s money. There are vivid glimpses of totemic avant-garde downtown NYC denizens like Cookie Mueller, David Wojnarowicz, Greer Lankton and Vivienne Dick. And as you would anticipate, the soundtrack is impeccably hip (Klaus Nomi. Bush Tetras. The Velvet Underground. Suicide). 

Next Lobotomy Room Film Club: Macao (1952) on 16 February 2023

  

There is no place like it on earth. Macao in the China Seas across the bay from British Hong Kong. Where gambling is the heavy industry and smuggling and dope peddling come as naturally as eating. To this island of commercial sin comes Nick, a young grifter wanted back in the States – and Nora, a girl who never got the breaks. Both hard as nails, cynical, strangers. And on the same boat, posing as a salesman, comes a hard-boiled New York cop, sent out to capture a fugitive-racketeer is now the Frankie Costello of Macao …

Into this hotbed of espionage, intrigue and murder, three people take refuge! 

Robert Mitchum - living on velvet … loving the same way! 

Jane Russell - whose song belies … the fear in her heart! 

William Bendix - whose stock in trade … is danger! 

Yes, this is Macao – port of peril. Where boy meets girl too late! The risks they run …  the chances they take … fighting to remain together in a dangerous paradise!

On 16 February the Lobotomy Room film club (motto: Bad Movies for Bad People) whisks you away to the steamy Portuguese colony of Macao for this sordid noir thriller! Sure, the Times’ critic reportedly dismissed Macao as “melodramatic junk”, but I side with deviant queer film scholar Boyd McDonald, who concluded “Macao is, arguably, perfect.” 

Macao’s major selling point is the sullen dream duo of Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell, who effortlessly match other for tough wry humour and torpid impudence. As McDonald notes in his volume of essays Cruising the Movies (2015), “out of habit rather than anything in the script, the stars of Macao – and under their spell, the supporting players and extras – loiter about leering and sneering at each other, giving attitude. The attitude is one of contempt mixed with lust – an insolent craving, a concupiscent scorn … the players look as though they can’t stand the sight of each other, yet want to suck each other off … Russell, gifted with articulate nostrils and some slight imperfection in the nerves or muscles about her lips, is especially good at competitive sneering.” Seriously – how can you resist? 

Adding to the intrigue: temperamental veteran filmmaker Josef von Sternberg (the visionary behind all those great 1930s Marlene Dietrich films) was exhumed from semi-retirement to direct Macao but when preview audiences grumbled the film was too art-y and weird, an uncredited Nicholas Ray (of Johnny Guitar (1954) and Rebel without a Cause (1955) fame) was assigned to shoot additional scenes! Watch as well for delectable bad girl Gloria Grahame in a supporting role! 

Lobotomy Room Goes to the Movies is the FREE monthly film club devoted to cinematic perversity! Third Thursday night of every month downstairs at Fontaine’s bar in Dalston! Two drink minimum (inquire about the special offer £6 cocktail menu!). Numbers are limited, so reserving in advance via Fontaine’s website is essential. Alternatively, phone 07718000546 or email bookings@fontaines.bar to avoid disappointment! The film starts at 8:30 pm. Doors to the basement Bamboo Lounge open at 8:00 pm. To ensure everyone is seated and cocktails are ordered in time, please arrive by 8:15 pm at the latest.

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Reflections on ... Dolly Parton's Southern Style Banana Cake Mix

 

In 2022 the sugary high cholesterol collab of our dreams dropped when the Duncan Hines corporation and beloved Country & Western diva and bouffant wig enthusiast Dolly Parton joined forces for a limited-edition “Southern Style” range of cake mixes and frostings. And the kitschy retro pastel Barbie-like packaging was pure pop art! 

So, imagine how crushed I was when I couldn’t find any of these cake mixes at my local grocery stores in London. And I quickly discovered they were also seemingly impossible to order online outside of America. I sent a message to Duncan Hines via their Twitter account querying this, and a representative explained the licensing agreement exclusively covers the US, meaning no one outside of the country can buy Parton’s cake mixes. It was seemingly never meant to be … 

... until my sassy Ohio-residing British ex-pat friend Louise (“Weezie) came to the rescue! She sent me two packages of Parton’s banana-flavoured cake mixes and two tubs of her buttercream frosting as a Christmas gift. (I don’t even want to think how much the postage must have cost her). I was going to hang onto them for special occasions (plus I’m trying to shift some post-Christmas – hell, post-Covid lockdown – blubber). And then there were the legal concerns. Am I breaking the law? It felt illicit! This cake mix is not licensed for use in the UK! But I cracked and - donning my frilly pinafore - whipped-up one of the mixes yesterday. 

My verdict? Even though the box screamed “DO NOT EAT RAW BATTER” in bold and upper case, I sampled some of the batter and it gave instant promising hits of banana milkshake. My layers came out a bit asymmetrical and wonky, but the finished cake is sublime. It’s ultra-sweet and packed with that synthetic banana flavour which is Proustian for those of us who came of age in the seventies before people worried about E-numbers in food. Goddess Dolly never steers you wrong! In conclusion, to paraphrase Homer Simpson: “Mmmm – fattening!” Now I’m determined to get my hands on the coconut-flavoured version!

Next Lobotomy Room Film Club: This Woman is Dangerous (1952) on 19 January 2023

 

“Every inch a lady – until you look at the record! Part of her was Ritz – part of her was “racket” – all of her was exciting! Beth Austin – stylish dame with a stylish name who lived by jungle law in a big city and clawed her way to where the money was …”  

From the trailer:

 

“It’s that Austin woman!” 

“She’s front-page dynamite!” 

“How does she get away with it?” 

“Yes, they talked about this woman whose name was in the social register – and the police blotter. This lady who graced a millionaire’s mansion one night and a mobster’s hideout the next. Living dangerously, loving dangerously, she used each new romance to claw her way from the rackets to the Ritz. Into the careers of many men – into the hearts of two. One who saved life. One who took life. And she made them both pay the price of her reckless ambition.”

“A rancid melodrama” is how Joan Crawford’s biographer Bob Thomas disparages this low-rent 1952 noir crime thriller. "I must have been awfully hungry,” La Crawford herself bemoaned. “The kids were in school, the house had a mortgage. And so, I did this awful picture that had a shoddy story, a cliché script and no direction to speak of. The thing just blundered along. I suppose I could have made it better, but it was one of those times when I was so disgusted with everything that I just shrugged and went along with it. It was the worst picture I ever made." And remember - she’s including Trog (1970) in that assessment! 

In Woman, Crawford is Beth Austin, ersatz high society matron and mastermind of a criminal hold-up gang. (I love the idea of Crawford as a decorous “lady mobster” wearing little gloves and fur stoles, whose brooch matches her earrings). Oh, and did I mention Beth is wracked by headaches, at risk of going blind and urgently requires vision-saving experimental surgery? Seriously, she has a LOT on her plate! 

Is This Woman is Dangerous the worst film Crawford ever made? And what if you (like me) like “rancid melodramas?” Judge for yourself when the Lobotomy Room film club (our motto: Bad Movies for Bad People) presents This Woman is Dangerous on Thursday 19 January in the glittering Art Deco environs of Fontaine’s cocktail lounge in Dalston! 

Lobotomy Room Goes to the Movies is the FREE monthly film club devoted to cinematic perversity! Third Thursday night of every month downstairs at Fontaine’s bar in Dalston! Two drink minimum (inquire about the special offer £5 cocktail menu!). Numbers are limited, so reserving in advance via Fontaine’s website is essential. Alternatively, phone 07718000546 or email bookings@fontaines.bar to avoid disappointment! The film starts at 8:30 pm. Doors to the basement Bamboo Lounge open at 8:00 pm. To ensure everyone is seated and cocktails are ordered in time, please arrive by 8:15 pm at the latest.

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