C. A. Funderburg @CFunderburg Twitter profile

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C. A. Funderburg

10 days

"I'm crazy about you even though you're neither intelligent nor decent, even though you're a liar, an egoist, a bastard." SLOWNESS (Milan Kundera, 1995.)

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

3 years

For the last time, Blockbuster was one of the major drivers (if not *the* major driver) of censorship & suppression of cinema in the 90s. It was in league with rightwing fundamentalists, the company insisted on cuts being made to even "hard R" films in order to stock them.

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

9 months

This trick shot at the opening of PEGGY SUE GOT MARRIED drives me absolutely insane. In order to avoid filming the camera & crew in the mirror, there's no mirror. Kathleen Turner plays the role of her own reflection & a stand-in mimics her movements. But they're all wildly off!

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

1 year

THE HAUNTED HOUSE (dir. Buster Keaton/Edward F. Cline, 1921.)

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

19 days

I feel like it has been decades since I've seen a film that I felt like was morally/philosophically challenging. 21st century cinema is defined by its inability to be transgressive. Is there a film from the past 25 years that doesn't tell it's audience what it wants to hear?

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

1 year

What actor's expression in a movie will stay with you the rest of your life?

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

1 year

A delightful 45 seconds of screw-bustin' action. More COs getting hit with a sledgehammer than you could ever ask for. CONVICT 13 (dir. Buster Keaton/Edward F. Cline, 1920.)

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

3 years

Get this fucking "Maaaaan, I miss Blockbuster, the 90s were the golden age of access to cinema" bullshit out of my timeline. The 90s were the worst and Blockbuster was the second worst.

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

3 years

It's not nostalgia for "mom & pop" shops or "the cool college video store" that made Blockbuster awful, it's the way they wielded their power specifically towards censorious, anti-art ends combined with their Walmart-esque tactics for undercutting and flooding local markets.

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

4 years

Patricia Highsmith stopping to light a cigarette during an excruciating interview where she's about to be asked why she hasn't settled down, gotten married & started a family.

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

3 years

If you cared about movies, if you cared about cinema, Blockbuster was your sworn enemy. As a matter of conscious corporate policy, they destroyed or bought out the local chains that would stock these kind of movies & used their power *constantly* to put Hollywood over a barrel.

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

3 years

Nearly every amazing film that was "rediscovered" in the internet era had been "forgotten" by Blockbuster's corporate policies. They killed movies off: the classics, foreign language films, anything violent or sexual or gay enough to push an R rating, Blockbuster buried them.

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

3 years

Knowing that Blockbuster wouldn't stock films they deemed inappropriate for their "family" image obviously affected how the studios approached filmmaking & what they would fund. Combine this with the MPAA's well-documented history of racism, homophobia & general incoherency...

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

1 year

SABBAT (dir. Gisèle Ansorge & Ernest Nag Ansorge, 1991.)

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

3 years

This is fucking Blockbuster's fault! In the 90's, it was absurdly difficult to find films like the unedited version of Evil Dead II - forget about trying to find actually challenging & boundary-pushing films. Movies that featured men kissing couldn't even get stocked.

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

3 years

In 1991 they announced that they would refuse to stock NC-17 movies, meaning that films with an NC-17 rating as tame (and beautiful!) as HENRY & JUNE would need to produce an edited R-rated version in order to be seen at the dominant rental chain in the country.

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

3 years

John Cassavetes absolutely housing a hotdog in MACHINE GUN MCCAIN (dir. Giuliano Montaldo, 1969) and then immediately starting on another one.

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

3 years

Or to take another example, in 1994 they refused to carry the director's cut of NATURAL BORN KILLERS. If you were in one of the many many towns where Blockbuster was the only option, you couldn't see this film. Something as mainstream as that.

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

2 years

MacBeth by Pintér Ferenc.

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

3 years

It was a fight, a real fight, to get something as straight-forward as Showgirls into the largest rental chain in the country and then only in an edited version. Difficult, adult & hard-edged films simply disappeared from the popular cultural landscape. It became work to find them

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

3 years

And make no mistake, their perspective on censorship & suppression came from a Moral Majority bent: they refused to stock all but the least controversial of queer cinema, got into battles over films they considered insensitive to religion, & considered all pornography immoral.

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

3 years

...and it adds up to on the part of distributors and producers a conscious and deliberate suppression of voices, perspectives and ideas - especially towards outsider and minority filmmakers.

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

1 year

CALL ME (dir. Sollace Mitchell, 1988.)

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

3 years

It should also be mentioned that as a corporate policy, Blockbuster only stocked a handful of classic (pre-1970) & foreign films. I once counted the number of these movies my local Blockbuster had & it was around 40.

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

3 years

Just remembering how men kissing passionately was enough to push an NC-17 rating in the 90s and wanting to punch Blockbuster in the face. If you weren't there or were a little kid, you don't remember how much say homophobes like the American Family Association had in everything.

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

3 years

40 movies from the entire history of world cinema. They probably had that many copies of Turblence: It's a Killer Ride. They heavily overstocked the most popular current releases, seeing a wall of Jerry Maguire or The Matrix was commong. They'd carry a single copy of Dead Man.

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

3 years

What's especially absurd is that the MPAA had more or less established the NC-17 rating in 1990 to appease Blockbuster. They wanted to draw a clear line between pornography & "real movies" - they tried to cave into Blockbuster's demands and it still wasn't enough.*

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

3 years

*I should add the side note here that the consolidation of theater chains in the wake of Reagen's deregulation in the 80s also played a major role in the development of the NC-17 rating. Due to pressure from the Moral Majority, many newspapers wouldn't run ads for X-rated films.

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

3 years

Goddamn... just remembering all these assholes and these companies and "Christian" groups and former presidents and how much they fucking sucked. Blockbuster was on their side! They were one of them!

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

4 years

The most beautiful film in all of le cinema. WHAT'S OPERA, DOC? (dir. Chuck Jones, 1957.)

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

3 years

Are the people on here who are obsessed with understanding cinema as a collection of narrative information able to appreciate this shot? They must be, right?

The Pink Smoke

@thepinksmoke

3 years

PARIS, TEXAS (dir. Wim Wenders, 1984.)

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

4 years

Kurosawa, who is a better screenwriter than your favorite screenwriter, telling you it's a literal apostasy to follow every Twitter hack's screenwriting guidelines, saying he does the opposite of what you're told to do by the entire "lern 2 be uh screenwritter" industry.

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

3 years

(Also, I just realized I have been using Moral Majority, which was a specific advocacy group founded by Jerry Falwell in the late 70s, interchangeably with "any detestable pseudo-Christian censorship advocacy group." Forgive the carelessness.)

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

3 years

*The NC-17 rating was a way of getting around this. It was pretty transparently craven so you at least have to respect Blockbuster's integrity: the really did believe that there's no such thing as a mature movie featuring meaningful adult content that isn't pornography.

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

3 years

The entire anti-NC-17 campaign was pushed by the American Family Association and Reverend Donald Wildmon who really crowed in 1991 about how they had worked with Blockbuster on the company's ban on the rating. Blockbuster consistently capitulated to these moral majority types.

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

2 years

ASPARAGUS (dir. Suzan Pitt, 1979.)

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

3 years

The MPAA being in league with Hollywood was acting with their own agenda to try to box out indie distributors & outside voices - the NC-17 was part of a strategy that fizzled when Blockbuster wouldn't get on board.

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

3 years

And just to make one final thing clear: Blockbuster did not oversee any of the re-editing of movies themselves, they didn't even do the MPAA thing of offering "suggestions." This naturally meant producers would err on the side of *really* not pushing it if they cared about rental

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

1 year

THE INAUGURATION OF THE PLEASURE DOME (dir. Kenneth Anger, 1954.)

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

2 years

The extreme artificiality of the opening of HARVEY GIRLS (dir. George Sidney, 1946) gives it such an eerily beautiful & alluringly unsettling feeling. So many experimental filmmakers are chasing that exact feeling but they'll never get there. It's impossible.

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

11 months

INVOCATION OF MY DEMON BROTHER (dir. Kenneth Anger, 1969.)

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

1 year

OPENING NIGHT (dir. John Cassavetes, 1977.)

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

3 years

... to not stock any unrated films that *would've* gotten an NC-17 if they had been rated. Well, who the hell knows what Blockbuster felt "would've" gotten an NC-17? Better to err of the side of editing your film down so as not even to push that boundary.

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

1 year

RABBIT'S MOON (dir. Kenneth Anger, 1950.)

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

4 years

PUNCH AND JUDY (dir. Jan Švankmajer, 1966.)

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

1 year

Hard Luck is definitely one of my top 5 favorite suicide comedies. HARD LUCK (dir. Buster Keaton/Edward F. Cline, 1921.)

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

3 years

And just to explain the "hard R" assertion - Blockbuster would in some instances stock unrated movies. This was tricky because a lot of unrated films had content that clearly violated their no porno/no NC-17 films mandate. So the strategy they devised was to...

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

1 year

THE HAUNTED HOUSE (dir. Buster Keaton/Edward F. Cline, 1921.) #sidebyside THE SIMPSONS "Bart Gets Hit by a Car" (dir. Mark Kirland, 1991.)

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

4 years

LES MISTONS (dir. François Truffaut, 1957.)

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

4 years

@MonsieurMarlowe The most insane one is that comedies express joy. Humor, as often as not, expresses a diabolical impulse that sees human endeavor as fundamentally absurd & worthy of ridicule - this is the opposite of joy. Laughter is not necessarily the sound of happiness (let alone joy).

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

2 years

The fake French signs in Pepé Le Pew cartoons are always delightful. The silent film references in this one are amazing. PAST PERFUMANCE (dir. Charles M. Jones, 1955.)

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

3 years

PAPRIKA (dir. Satoshi Kon, 2006.)

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

2 years

L'ATALANTE is the only romantic movie I believe in.

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

1 year

ROAD GAMES (dir. Richard Franklin, 1981.)

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

1 year

LUCIFER RISING (dir. Kenneth Anger, 1980.)

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

2 years

Something about Anna Karina always breaks my heart.

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

4 years

I love every poster I've ever seen for THE BRIDE WORE BLACK (dir. François Truffaut, 1968.)

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

2 years

There's all this talk about how reading Harry Potter or YA fiction is good because at least youngsters are reading... but the real ones know that it's reading age-inappropriate Stephen King stories or the suicidal poets in 7th grade that fosters a life-long love of literature.

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

3 years

CHUNGKING EXPRESS (dir. Wong Kar-wai, 1994.)

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

1 year

THE GARDEN (dir. Derek Jarman, 1990.)

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

10 months

"Getting fucked with by the cops" might be Buster Keaton's most consistent theme. I love this increasingly manic tracking shot where the cops are fucking with him because he's wearing pteruges & they think its a skirt. DAY DREAMS (dir. Buster Keaton/Edward F. Cline, 1922.)

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

10 months

Every single close-up of a woman in a silent movie is the most beautiful image I've ever seen. THE HAYSEED (dir. Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, 1919.)

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

5 years

The brilliant @studiotstella made these posters for a feature film I did a couple years ago & I can't get over how beautiful they are.

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

4 years

Decasia (dir. Bill Morrison, 2002.)

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

6 years

Just trying to do some reading up on Cinecolor, an intentionally inexpensive & versatile 2-color film process used in the 30's-50's. The Cinecolor process gets crushed by aficionados for not being as rich as Technicolor, but I honestly love the look of 1951's FLIGHT TO MARS.

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

6 years

My son got this rubber duck & in my mind there's no question that it's paying homage to the bear suit guy in The Shining. #sidebyside

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

10 months

THE MACHINE THAT KILLS BAD PEOPLE (dir. Roberto Rossellini, 1952.)

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

11 months

THE TIMEKEEPERS OF ETERNITY (dir. Aristotelis Maragkos, 2021.) made from the original material of THE LANGOLIERS (dir. Tom Holland, 1995.)

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

2 years

THE KNACK... AND HOW TO GET IT (dir. Richard Lester, 1965.)

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

4 years

It's interesting - I feel like a lot of cinephiles are unaware of what's happening in tech, so they're oblivious to how companies like Microsoft, Sony & Apple are laying the groundwork for physical media to literally have no devices to accomodate them in the near future.

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

1 year

THE MAGIC HORSE (dir. Lotte Reiniger, 1953.)

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

1 year

What's an opening 5 seconds to a movie that has you going "I'm 100% with it - I'm don't care what happens now, they got me, they would have to do so much to lose me"? Marilyn Monroe, Jane Russell, the outfits, the little look, throwing the coats, the curtains, I'm 100% in.

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

5 months

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

3 years

Jean-Pierre Melville on adapting novels & why he doesn't collaborate with authors on screenplays. (With Belmondo hanging around, just sorta enduring the interview.)

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

4 years

I mean this in the most gentle & sympathetic way, but I wish cinephiles on here would take a moment to consider how obsessive collecting (of physical media, memorabilia, advertising artwork) can turn a love of art into an empty materialism & consumerism at odds with itself.

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

4 years

In dreams. LOS OLVIDADOS (dir. Luis Buñuel, 1950.)

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

3 years

PORTRAIT OF A FEMALE DRUNKARD (dir. Ulrike Ottinger, 1979.)

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

4 years

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

1 year

In *Amateur* (1994), Hartley does a few of these slightly elevated close-ups where the camera is titled down at the character & they all look so gorgeous. Makes me feel like Truffaut watching *Bigger Than Life* (1956): the close-up as an entire film unto itself.

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

4 years

KAGERO-ZA (dir. Seijun Suzuki, 1981.)

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

11 months

Goddamn, movie magic. MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE (dir. Robert Florey, 1932.)

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

3 years

BELLE DE JOUR (dir. Luis Buñuel, 1967.)

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

3 months

In all my many many many years of watching thousands & thousands of movies, all I have learned, my only insight, is that every movie (or Tales from the Crypt episode) with Vanity in it is worth watching. That's the only thing I know for certain.

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

3 years

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

10 months

SCORPIO RISING (dir. Kenneth Anger, 1963.)

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

11 months

TETSUO II: BODY HAMMER (dir. Shinya Tsukamoto, 1992.)

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

3 years

People get weirded out when I explain that CONAN THE BARBARIAN is one of the most spiritually-philosophically important films to me.

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

11 months

This sequence from GET OUT & GET UNDER (dir. Hal Roach, 1920) is really fucking something.

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

8 years

Happy Birthday, Godard. I once showed WEEK-END to a girlfriend & she broke up with me. "What a rotten film. All we meet are crazy people."

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

2 years

In RHUBARB (Arthur Lubin,1951), Orangey the cat gives what might be the most naturalistic performance ever given by a cat in a film. (The movie is about a cat that inherents a baseball team from an eccentric millionaire.) Rhubarb is the Antoine Doinel of cat performances.

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

1 year

FIREWORKS (dir. Kenneth Anger, 1947.)

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

4 years

"Every day, after work, we'd spend an hour by ourselves. Then we'd meet in the bar at 7 for a drink, with an obligation to tell the other one a story we'd just invented. The only point was to train our imaginations." ~ Carrière on his evening routine when working with Buñuel.

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

1 year

It's a bit of a shame that Buster Keaton decided to go all-in on his "Great Stone Face" persona because he's exceptionally good at making goofy faces. MOONSHINE (dir. Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, 1918.)

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

4 years

KAGERO-ZA (dir. Seijun Suzuki, 1981.)

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

6 years

Cinecolor was most famously used in the 30's for cartoons - its stylized qualities look amazing here in POOR CINDERELLA (1934.) (The Fleischer bros. were forced to seek out an alternative stock because at the time Disney had exclusive rights to the 3-strip Technicolor process.)

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

3 years

John Woo's HARD BOILED was one of my favorite films in high school but I hadn't seen it in about 20 years. I watched it for the new episode of @thepinksmoke podcast & it's even more awesome than I remember it being. @TheLastMachine & I talk some Woo:

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

1 year

MOVIE CRAZY (dir. Clyde Bruckman, 1932.)

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C. A. Funderburg

@CFunderburg

2 years

I love how the opening credits of François Truffaut's TWO ENGLISH GIRLS are shown over copies of the Henri-Pierre Roché book he's adapting. (The handwritten notes on the excerpts are a cool touch.)