A word of explanation. The critical phrase has been coming up a lot in conversation at the house lately. Not for anything literal, mind you, but for the various vagaries life can throw your way. It's become a catch-all phrase for the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. And...from time to time...this vivid little scene springs to mind.
The Set-Up: "I didn't ask for the anal probe." Back when I worked for a recording studio, I heard a lot of stories. A lot of stories from actors, who were complaining about conditions they were working under—the usual reaction from people is "So what, you're an actor!" But my reply was always "I didn't ask for the anal probe," which usually got me quizzical looks. It was always said in sympathy and solidarity, but I usually had to explain that it came from John Sayles' little seen but lovely movie Passion Fish. A lot may be forgotten about this film, but this scene has never left me. It is a gold nugget in a fine film, that shows up, plants itself in your memory and leaves (as does the character) never to be seen again. The actress doing the monologue is Nancy Mette, who had worked with Sayles before, and she is given this little gem of a scene, all for herself, the camera by and large on her, her moment in the sun. This scene is immortal. And Mette's playing of it is brilliant, combining a full range of emotions, but ultimately melancholy and comic. I hope somewhere actors are using this scene for auditions (although it would be a real acting challenge to try to top Mette), if only as a little defiant education to directors and casting agents about the casual crushing that is done on a daily basis.
The Set-Up: Successful soap opera actress May-Alice Culhane (Mary McDonnell) is paralyzed in an automobile accident and becomes wheelchair-bound. No longer able to act, she moves back to her Louisiana family home to get away from her previous life and the reminders of what she has lost. After a series of failed caregivers, she is able to move past her grief with Chantelle (Alfre Woodard) and the two women develop a friendship beyond their roles as patient and nurse. One day, May-Alice is visited by some actress-colleagues from her soap days. Action (gimme a series of three).
KIM: One more year of daytime. Save my money. I am going to quit.
KIM: I'm going to go back to class, and I'm going to do theater.
RHONDA: Ah-hah! I think I've heard this one before. MAY-ALICE: I've said that one before.
NINA: "I didn't ask for the anal probe."
NINA: Hm.
NINA: Four years starving in New York, doing showcases I had to pay for myself.
NINA: That was my first big break.
(Nina shakes her head ruefully and laughs)
NINA: My first feature -- this, like, zero-budget movie about people who were taken up into alien spaceships and given physicals against their will --
NINA: I go in for the audition and the director is really intense and mysterious, and he has me sit with my eyes closed and free associate, right? We do these improv's about the aliens representing our most primal fears and...it's great!
NINA: Finally, some real acting! And they tell me before I leave that I've got the part!
NINA: Only I don't know what it is yet, but I'm so thrilled because it's this feature, you know? It's not a student film or anything. So the agent gives me my script and I go through it looking for Margaret, the part that they say I have, and I've got my yellow underliner marker in my hand, only it's drying out, and finally I find only one page with the corner folded over,
NINA: ...and I'm in this therapy group of these people who have had these alien physicals, and I've got only one line:
NINA: "I didn't ask for the anal probe."
MAY-ALICE: Not much to build a character on...
NINA: But I'm a professional, right?
NINA: I prepared! I had backstory on this woman! I knew that she had been to the hairdresser before she came to the therapy group.
NINA: I knew that she didn't trust that guy who sat next to the fuchsia. I knew that she turned the TV set on the minute she got back to her apartment, just for the sound of it.
NINA: And I even had my boyfriend, my boyfriend at the time...with a thermometer, you know, um, for the sense memory, right?
NINA: I was loaded for fucking bear!
NINA: So finally it comes time to shoot the scene. And they do one take of the wide shot and they stop before my line!
NINA: I was terrified that they were gonna cut it. They move in for reaction shots, close-ups, mostly things that mean that I have to go and sit outside because the camera is set up where my chair is. Well, by the time they get to me,...
NINA: ...the crew is grumpy because it's late...
NINA: ...and they're non-union and they don't get paid extra for overtime.
NINA: The lead actor is gone. He's got his shrink appointment and...
NINA: I'm alone!
NINA: And I'm staring at this piece of tape stuck to a stand next to the camera and...
NINA: ...the director says, "Okay. Uh. Let's try it a few times without cutting and, uh, show me a few different colors."
(Nina pauses dramatically)
NINA: "I didn't ask for the anal probe." (pauses again)
NINA: "I didn't ask for the anal probe!"
NINA: (Pauses again, makes an angry face)
"I didn't ask for the anal probe!"
(Pauses, looks sad)
NINA: "I didn't ask for the anal probe."
(She breaks character.)
NINA: That was it.
(smiles) Passion Fish
Words by John Sayles
Pictures by Roger Deakins and John Sayles
Passion Fish is available on DVD from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.
East of Wallis a difficult film to classify. It defies pigeon-holing and slotting. Classification. It's not a documentary, because it's scripted. It has real people playing themselves (with two actorly exceptions), so it's not exactly fiction, even though it fits the bill of being "based on a true story." Even if it isn't. But, it could happen. That it doesn't goes a long way in explaining the nature of the real people involved. So, that's fiction "becoming" fact. In an interview with NPR, director Kate Beecroft, describes her film as "docufiction" filmed on location, sometimes documentary style "on the fly" with the actual people who live the daily lives depicted in the film. To paraphrase "Dragnet": "The names you are about to see are true. The story has been changed to project the innocent."
Tabatha Zimiga has lived on her husband's family horse farm for years after his death. She's raising three kids, a lot of horses—training them in a style similar to "Buck" Brannaman—and taking in strays...animals and kids, teens who through issues with their parents (addiction, incarceration, incompetence or indifference or just plain delinquency) live on the Zimiga farm working the land and the animals, and working on themselves.
I first heard of Zimiga and her South Dakota ranch on the news...probably PBS Newshour because I've lost interest in network news...and her unconventional approach to caring for all her charges. Tatted and head-shaved, she defies the conventions of ranch-owner, her property a collection of paddocks and mobile homes--horses and people house similarly--and she scrapes by a living training horses and selling them at auction, while also keeping her revolving door of kids fed, clothed and sheltered...and schooled. She's had sufficient life lived to understand...but not necessarily sanction...teen drama, keeping a wary eye on behavior, both human and equestrian. She has enough drama of her own.
Unlike most cowboys, she has an internet presence, posting on TikTok, showing off the kids' riding skills as well as the dexterity of her horses, all good marketing tools for showing off the animals before the weekend auction day.
Director Beecroft uses those videos to show the day-to-day, connecting and interlacing bits of story-fabric, providing background on the various interactions, all revolving around the hub of Tabatha, going to court seeking conservancy for new members of her makeshift brood, keeping truancy to a minimum, dealing with the slights and jolts of everyday ranch life...and not talking about the death of her husband, who committed suicide years before. This is one of the threads running through East of Wall because it affects her daughter Porshia (a really impressive performance) who aches to remember him as he was her mentor and taught her how to ride.
One keeps looking for artifice and the film is remarkably free of it—there are only two actors, Scoot McNairy (he played Woodie Guthrie in A Complete Unknown) and Jennifer Ehle who plays Tabatha's mother Tracey (her resume is so impressive and I've seen her in so many things that the way she insinuates into the role is, frankly, startling) but you can "sense" the actors from everybody else—even the makeshift stuff feels completely natural in this day and age of corporate takeover. But, when the real people playing their real selves (though fictionalized a bit) are on-screen, it's a truly eerie feeling. You feel like you're watching a documentary, despite the occasional beautiful landscape shot. Movies do a really good job of faking real. East of Wall isn't faking.
That becomes readily apparent during Tabatha's drunk monologue about finding her dead husband, which is one of the most riveting one shots I've ever seen. Raw, profane, and bitter, all expressed through a haze of repressed regret, it's a jaw-dropping sequence, repeatedly challenging the sense of reality and drama in an audience's mind. Sort of like real life.
Some have gone so far as to say the film is a modern "take" on the Western (if we're still pining for categorization). I'm not so sure one could call this a traditional Western per se, but if John Ford's entries are, in the end, about the struggles of making a community in a wasteland, then East of Wall certainly fills that bill.
