Author: Cody Clarke

‘The Master’: A Tale of Two Addicts

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The Master (2012)
Written and Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
144 min.

Fairly light on spoilers, but see the movie first.

This is a review I’ve been meaning to write ever since Greg’s scathing take. He’s completely wrong about the film, but wrong in a Greg way, which is to say, entirely consistent with how he views films, so s’all good—I expect nothing less from him, and love him for it. But, the thought of his take being the only take on the film on this site just isn’t right, because it’s a great goddamn film. And in the wake of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s passing, it’s certainly been on my mind, given its central theme of addiction—a theme that has, for some reason, eluded many critics.

The infatuation between Freddie Quell (Phoenix) and Lancaster Dodd (Hoffman) is never outright, hammer-over-the-head explained in The Master, leaving many viewers—and even professional reviewers—to come to the most obvious and tittilating and childish of conclusions: that they are deeply closeted homosexuals in love. Undeniably, there’s a degree of homoeroticism to many of their interactions, but to chalk their bond off as mere ‘gayness’ is to ignore what these two men are truly struggling with, and what brought them together in the first place—alcohol.
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R.I.P. Philip Seymour Hoffman

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Today we lost one of the absolute best. An actor who put his all in to every role, always giving you your money’s worth, never wasting a moment of your time. A virtuoso, with all the adoration one could ever want or need from their peers and from audiences. Just goes to show, you can have it all, and still throw it away.

Addiction is something I’ve never personally experienced, so I’m by no means an expert. But I do know what it looks like. It looks like the trading of soul gratification for momentary gratification. It looks like an invited wave, grabbing hold of your beach and eroding every castle you’ve ever built, telling you it’s all just sand anyway, so why bother having them. It is evil, and it lies, and it is the ultimate internal resistance. I hope he is finally at peace.

I’d say I ‘miss’ him, but I never knew his mortal self. I only ever knew his timeless self, which will be here as long as cinema—which is to say, forever. Everything good about this man is immortal. Everything bad, I never encountered, and will never encounter. My heart goes out to his family, who I’m sure have been struggling with his two selves for some time. I hope they are able to find peace as well.
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Paulie: Charlie Kaufman, Eat Your Heart Out

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From left: Jay Mohr, Jay Mohr, and Jay Mohr.

Paulie (1998)
Directed by John Roberts
Written by Laurie Craig
91 min.

Spoiler-free.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again—when you’re a kid, it’s damn near impossible to know whether a movie is revered or not. You watch a thing, and if you enjoy it, it’s a part of your world. And your world is only as big as you and your parents, so if you and your parents like the thing, it’s a ‘classic’. Only when you grow up do you discover, by asking friends and scouring the internet, how many movies you thought were well-known that were really just well-known to you.

It still throws me for a loop that I’m the only person in the history of the world who has seen Little Big League. When I was a kid, it played on TV just as much Rookie of the Year, but apparently, I’m the only one who flipped to it. I must’ve watched it damn near 30 times, and I still know parts from it by heart: “Kids today are amazing—I played winter ball down in Venezuela, and they had kids half his age, every one of them speaking Spanish. That’s a hard language.” “They speak Spanish in Venezuela.” “I know! That’s my point!”

But I digress.

The point is, Paulie is one of these such movies—a movie that, for whatever reason, hasn’t had its due, despite being ubiquitous at one point in time. And like Little Big League, it still holds up today. It’s thoroughly enjoyable family fare.

But it’s also so much more.

Paulie is the most ‘meta’ family film of all time.
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An Interview with Molly Bernstein, Director of ‘Deceptive Practice: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay’

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Molly Bernstein, Alan Edelstein, Ricky Jay, and Scott Foundas at The New York Film Festival world premiere of Deceptive Practice. Photo by Joe Holmes.

I’ve been a fan of Ricky Jay’s since I was a kid, when I saw his TV special, Ricky Jay and his 52 Assistants. I remember being taken by how different he was from anyone I’d ever seen perform magic—stern, with no bombast. He made magic this manly, intimidating thing, like a cigar or something. I’ve been scared and mesmerized by him ever since.

As I grew older, he and his inimitable voice turned up in some of my favorite movies, such as Boogie Nights, Magnolia, Homicide, and Things Change—and of course, my favorite TV show of all time, Deadwood. And now he’s the subject of one of my favorite documentaries of last year—Deceptive Practice: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay.

Recently, I had the opportunity to sit down with Molly Bernstein, the director of this wonderful film:
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Our First Anniversary!

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Tomorrow, January 7th, marks the first anniversary of Smug Film! Thank you, everyone, who has visited our site in the last 365 days or so. I know I can speak for everyone here when I say that we are honored whenever anyone reads something on our site. In this Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, BuzzFeed world, sites like Smug Film—ones that produce actual, substantial content—seem to be disappearing. And so, when you choose to read one of our posts, you are voting, with your eyes and your brain and your free time, for the existence of full meals on the internet. Don’t get me wrong, bite-size sweets are fine in moderation, but man have they become rampant in the last couple years. It seems as though we’re stuck in this weird time period where the less attention a thing takes, the more popular it is, and the more time people spend with it. Basically, it’s like everyone’s playing Candy Crush non-stop, whether they’re even playing the actual game or not, ya feel me? But I digress.
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