Charles Burnett on his lost ‘Fish,’ plus the week’s best films in L.A.
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Hello! I’m Mark Olsen. Welcome to another edition of your regular field guide to a world of Only Good Movies.
The Slamdance Film Festival is currently underway, taking place for the first time in Los Angeles. Originally started in 1995 by a group of filmmakers rejected by the Sundance Film Festival, Slamdance established its own identity as a community of artists pulling together for themselves.
The in-person event will run though Feb. 26, and a virtual program will be accessible to streaming viewers from Feb. 24 through March 7 at slamdancechannel.com.
“On one hand, it’s business as usual with the discovery of new filmmakers, launching careers and new ideas in filmmaking,” said Peter Baxter, Slamdance president and co-founder, of the festival’s move to Los Angeles. “But then on the other hand, it’s a chance for our organization to grow in other ways, to fulfill on that potential, the idea here of a rising tide can float all boats in the world of independent filmmaking.”
Charles Burnett on ‘The Annihilation of Fish’
Following its premiere at the 1999 Toronto International Film Festival, “The Annihilation of Fish” was never picked up for distribution, in part due to a particularly disastrous review in Variety. Directed by Charles Burnett from a screenplay by Anthony C. Winkler, the film follows two damaged, eccentric adults, Obediah “Fish” Johnson and Flower “Poinsettia” Cummings, as they meet at a Los Angeles boarding house and begin an unlikely romance. Starring James Earl Jones and Lynn Redgrave as Fish and Poinsettia, the cast also includes Margot Kidder as Mrs. Muldroone, who runs the boarding house.
A delicately touching story of people abandoned by society finding a way to care for each other, the film is enjoying audiences at last, as a new 4K restoration of the film playing around the country is currently having a limited run at the Los Feliz 3 and could add more L.A. dates. A new 4K restoration of Burnett’s landmark debut feature, 1977’s “Killer of Sheep” will also be released later this year.
Burnett, whose other films include “To Sleep With Anger” and “The Glass Shield,” received an honorary Academy Award in 2017. Now 80, the filmmaker got on the phone earlier this week from his home in L.A.’s Baldwin Hills to talk about the rediscovery of “The Annihilation of Fish.”
Has it always bothered you that the movie was lost, that it hadn’t been released?
Charles Burnett: I didn’t feel like it was a lost film, for some reason. A lot of good people were involved in trying to get it out and I had confidence in them, so I really wasn’t too worried. Maybe I should have been, but I wasn’t. But anyway, those things happen. I’m just lucky to get it out now. I can’t complain. A lot of worse things can happen.
What attracted you to the project in the first place?
Burnett: I think it was the writing of Anthony Winkler. It was a challenge. It was sort of a comedy and it wasn’t quite a comedy as such, but it was about human beings trying to find a sense of belonging. They didn’t want to miss the opportunity to have a relationship, to experience life in its fullness. And everyone had their own particular problems that they had to overcome. These people coming together made it happen for each other. They were marginalized because of their conditions, their mental condition, but they were basically just like everybody else. Looking to complete their dreams and to find romance and find companionship in this lonely world.
Even with ‘The Annihilation of Fish,” as whimsical as it can be, you still feel for these characters and become invested in their lives. Has it always been important to you that your films remain connected to the real world?
Burnett: It costs so much to make a film, you have to ask, “What is the best place to put this money? How can I do the most good with this money?” It’s not enough just to have people be amused. When I came up, you felt that the civil rights movement and everything, you were part of making a change. And so I sort of kept that. And that’s the only way I can justify spending whatever it costs to make a film, to make it relevant. Because it has to. It’s not that people say, “I like your film,” but when they come back and say, “I saw your film and it changed my life,” you can’t ask for anything better than that. That’s what I live for.
What has it meant to you to have ‘The Annihilation of Fish” come out at last and be received so well?
Burnett: When the film came out, we had Margot Kidder, James Earl Jones and Lynn Redgrave and they have all passed on now. James Earl Jones particularly, he passed just recently, so he got a chance to maybe hear some of the reviews or something. But I’m glad that at least their families — I mean, James Earl Jones’ son came up and said he was very happy and had seen the film three or four times. And he really loved it. And that was really important to me. And it makes it all worthwhile that the length that it took to get it out and people got the good reviews. And I just wish that people like Lynn Redgrave would’ve been here to enjoy the response. And that makes it worthwhile.
Paul Schrader’s ‘Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters’
To mark the film’s 40th anniversary, the American Cinematheque will screen Paul Schrader’s 1985 “Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters” on Saturday at the Egyptian Theatre. A deeply stylized portrait of the Japanese author Yukio Mishima (played by Ken Ogata), the film features sets and costumes designed by Eiko Ishioka.
In reviewing the film, Sheila Benson wrote, “The greatest problem is that for all its correctness and all the beauty of its production (Philip Glass’ shimmering music, John Bailey’s exquisite camerawork), ‘Mishima’ remains as tantalizing as that Golden Pavilion and as impossible to enter (almost impossible, too, to discuss in limited space). You may not be able to take your eyes from the screen, yet I suspect that comes as much from the filmmakers’ passionate conviction that Mishima is a fascinating man than from anything they have told us about him.”
In a 1985 interview with The Times’ Jack Matthews, Schrader said, “I’ve always been interested in people who sort of feel uncomfortable in their own skins, who feel limited by physical existence itself and try to get out. Mishima was certainly one of those people.”
Points of interest
Michelle Parkerson at UCLA
The UCLA Film and Television Archive will host a two-day series, “Documenting Michelle Parkerson,” in tribute to the filmmaker whose career spans five decades. As Beandrea July’s program notes put it, “When one immerses themself in Parkerson’s work, there is a sense of freedom and an unapologetic pursuit of ideas by a careful hand. … Filmmaker Yvonne Welbon captures the weight of Parkerson’s considerable influence: ‘For many Black lesbian media makers, Parkerson was our Spike Lee. She was the first Black lesbian filmmaker, and sometimes also the first Black woman filmmaker that we knew. She was an out Black lesbian making movies and she had been doing so for a long time. Because of her, so many of us believed that we too could become filmmakers.’”
Saturday’s program includes 1993’s “Odds and Ends,” a narrative short made while Parkerson was studying at the AFI’s Directing Workshop for Women, along with 1987’s “Stormé: The Lady of the Jewel Box,” about America’s first integrated female impersonation show and its first male impersonator, and 1995’s “A Litany for Survival: The Life and Work of Audre Lorde,” a portrait of the poet and activist. Parkerson is scheduled to attend, along with “A Litany for Survival” co-director-producer Ada Gay Griffin and “Odds and Ends” associate producer Felecia Howell.
Sunday’s program will feature 1980’s “… But Then, She’s Betty Carter,” a portrait of the jazz singer, along with 1983’s “Gotta Make This Journey: Sweet Honey in the Rock,” about the a cappella group. The evening will also include Parkerson’s most recent documentary, 2021’s “Fierceness Served! The ENIKAlley Coffeehouse,” about a Black LGBTQ+ performing arts space in mid-1980s Washington, D.C. Parkerson is again scheduled to be in attendance.
‘Swept Away’ in 4K
A new 4K restoration of Italian filmmaker Lina Wertmüller’s 1974 film “Swept Away” will begin a run at the Laemmle Glendale. The film stars Mariangela Melato and Giancarlo Giannini as a wealthy woman and a deckhand, respectively, on her yacht who find themselves unexpectedly thrown together when they become stranded on a remote island. Aside from taking in the beauty of the locations and her actors, Wertmüller wrings the story for political nuances of class and gender.
Reviewing the film in 1975, Kevin Thomas said that the film combines elements of “The Taming of the Shrew” and “Robinson Crusoe” before adding, “Miss Wertmuller in her wisdom looks beyond her beautifully orchestrated interplay between the eternal battle of the sexes and equally chronic class warfare to express a philosophical sense of life’s absurdities and to attack specifically society’s unrelenting tendency to alienate people rather than to bring them together.”
‘Looking for Mr. Goodbar’ in 35mm
Playing in 35mm as part of the Cinematic Void series at the Los Feliz 3, 1977’s “Looking for Mr. Goodbar” stars Diane Keaton as a single woman who teaches deaf children by day and cruises singles bars for hook-ups by night, with her encounters becoming increasingly risky. Directed by Richard Brooks, the film is rife with internal conflicts, as if it wants to revel in a younger generation’s freedoms while also feeling a moralistic reluctance to fully give over to something new.
The film inspired Times critic Charles Champlin to write about it twice, one a review in October 1977 and the other a reappraisal based on audiences’ reactions to the film just a month later.
In his initial review, in which he lauded Keaton’s performance as among the best of the year, he noted, “ ‘Mr. Goodbar’ is powerful, sincere and overlong, and if it raises questions about itself it is also thought-provoking. It is a new-fashioned world seen in a rather traditional handling, and its realism is still of the soundstage rather than the documentary. And finally one admires the dedication and integrity with which difficult material was handled, without that satisfaction of feeling (as I think one did after [Brooks’] ‘In Cold Blood’) that the unthinkable has been made comprehensible.”
In other news
Big changes for James Bond
Ryan Faughnder reported on the news that Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, the half-siblings who have long presided over the James Bond franchise, have ceded creative control to Amazon MGM Studios. Though Broccoli and Wilson will remain co-owners, this ends some 60 years of one of the world’s best-known film series being overseen by a single family.
The most recent Bond film, 2021’s “No Time to Die,” brought to an end Daniel Craig’s tenure in the role and the future of the series has been a source of speculation ever since.
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