On “Remind Me…”
(The Kids are Alright) This and the other still of Annette Bening are probably the most recent film I’ve played with. In this one, I wanted to enhance the gay Ozzie & Harriet feel of the shot and displace the commercial effect of the commentary. I like the foot propped, mid laugh, cynical moment layering of the still in that the danger of homoeroticism and intimacy attach to a secondary threat (heroin) literally made foreign by the spoken fantasy of arrest and discovery. There’s also an (I think) oblique reference here to MIDNIGHT EXPRESS, which is one of few films depicting a kind of sexual tenderness (rather than violence or humor) between same-sex companions, albeit a moment inside a (true-to-life) memory of time spent inside a Turkish prison (Billy Hayes, Midnight Express, 1977). You may recall the mens’ mantra:
