Cutting God: Saying Goodbye to Sally Menke

Few things in life are fair, but some things are so unfair they make you stop and wonder what the fucking point of getting up in the morning and going through the daily grind is. That's the state that the news of the death of Sally Menke, Quentin Tarantino's career long editor, has left me in. As most of you have probably noticed, I tend to avoid obituaries on this blog, for several reasons, but the primary reasons are A) Whenever anyone dies many movie blogs all chime in with their remembrances, most of which are more eloquent than I am capable of and B) Obituaries of people who worked in the movie industry tend to favor the work over the person, which annoys me. I'm not sad that Sally Menke isn't ever going to edit another movie again - well, I am, but that seems almost beside the point now - I'm sad that she isn't walking amongst us anymore. I'm sad that a director I value very much has lost a collaborator and a friend. I'm sad that her dog, who was with her on her ill-fated hiking trip, has lost an owner and companion. I'm sad for her friends who spent all of Monday worrying about her only to find out in the early hours of Tuesday morning that she was dead. I'm sad for her husband, her two kids, for anyone who was lucky enough to meet her.

And, yes, I'm sad about all the footage that will be shot by Quentin Tarantino throughout the rest of his career that will be unedited by her. I recall in a documentary I saw, that I can't exactly place now, where he said he always felt that he needed a woman to edit his pictures (which I think illuminates part of why he puts women on pedestals in his films, but I digress), his reasoning being that while a man would try to imprint his own ideas for what the film should be in the editing process, a woman would be more nurturing towards his vision. The way I paraphrased it makes it come off a little sexist, but I think the sentiment illuminates a lot about Menke as an artist - that she would listen to Tarantino and do everything within her considerable power to help him make the film he wanted to make. It seems that the two of them were on the same wavelength, and his work to this point has relied on her considerable abilities (he has even flat out stated that he considers her work vital to his own). He also said in that same documentary that cinema is like music, and cutting at the right vs. wrong instant is the cinematic equivalent of a sweet note vs. a sour note; Sally Menke prevented him from playing sour notes. He had such fondness for her that he would always have his actors do a "Hi Sally" take where they would look directly into the camera and say hello to his dear editor. Watching these outtakes now, some of which are available as extra features on his DVDs and on YouTube, is literally heartbreaking.

The only Sally Menke I ever knew was the professional Sally Menke, which was admittedly a distinct pleasure in its own right. It's hard to pick a favorite moment, but there are many unforgettable moments in Tarantino's films that result from her spectacular sense of cinematic rhythm: the final sequence of Reservoir Dogs, as intense as any moment in any movie you can think of; the dance sequence in Pulp Fiction, masterfully cut in time to "You Never Can Tell"; the genius mall sequence at the end of Jackie Brown, which creates a flawless unity of time and place; the fight with the Crazy 88's in Kill Bill, which is lightning fast yet never disorienting; the car chase that serves as the climax of Death Proof, which is visceral yet never sacrifices spacial continuity for cheap thrills; the unforgettable opening of Inglorious Basterds, where the tension builds slowly, deliberately, and when the violence explodes you can almost feel the bullets penetrating your flesh. All these moments belong to Menke as much as they belong to Tarantino.

For all these unforgettable moments, and many others, I will forever be thankful to Sally Menke. I will miss her as much as you can possibly miss someone you've never met. Rest in peace.

The Business of Junk: Naked Lunch

Junk is the mold of monopoly and possession. The addict stands by while his junk legs carry him straight in on the junk beam to relapse. Junk is quantitative and accurately measurable. The more junk you use the less you have and the more you have the more you use. All the hallucinogen drugs are considered sacred by those who use them - there are Peyote Cults and Bannisteria Cults, Hashish Cults and Mushroom Cults -`the Scared Mushrooms of Mexico enable a man to see God'' - but no on ever suggested that junk is sacred. There are no opium cults. Opium is profane and quantitative like money. I have heard that there was once a beneficent non-habit-forming junk in India. It was called *soma* and is pictured as a beautiful blue tide. If *soma* ever existed the Pusher was there to bottle it and monopolize it and sell it and it turned into plain old time JUNK.

- William S. Burroughs,
"Deposition: Testimony Concerning a Sickness"

David Cronenberg's adaptation of William S. Burroughs' junkie manifesto Naked Lunch surely ranks as one of the great film adaptations of all time - as much a biography of the novel's troubled author as an adaptation of his most well known work, which Cronenberg has cited as his favorite book of all time. Since the novel only barely has a plot, Cronenberg was forced to improvise much of the content of the picture, and the result is an often hilarious, occasionally tragic, perpetually surreal film - one that dramatizes Burroughs' psychological state at the time he wrote the famed novel. In spite of the numerous alterations to the text, this is a surprisingly faithful adaptation, as Cronenberg's film is a scathing satire that attacks Capitalism, drug culture, Corporate America, even the creative process - ultimately, it's as true to Burroughs' novel as any adaptation could possibly be, while also a new dimension to the text: an extremely moving portrait of its author.

I must confess that I did not care for Burroughs' novel, though I've had trouble deciding if I find it bad or simply disturbing, as Naked Lunch reflects a particularly tumultuous time in its authors life. Burroughs further wrote in "Deposition" that he had "no precise memory of writing the notes which have now been published under the title Naked Lunch", which certainly explains the novel's lack of grammatical and narrative structure, as well as the often repulsive imagery that Burroughs employs (it's the only book I've ever read to make me physically ill). Cronenberg's aesthetic is a good match for Burroughs', creating similarly revolting depictions of flesh on the screen. By merging biography with fiction, Cronenberg dramatizes Burroughs' subjective reality; in spite of the numerous artistic liberties he takes with the book and Burroughs' life, Cronenberg beautifully dramatizes the state of mind of the author at the time of writing Naked Lunch, creating an extraordinarily rich and moving allegory for the creative process.

Peter Weller plays William Lee, an exterminator working in 1950s New York, and the film evokes the period before it properly begins with stunning opening credits in the style of the great Saul Bass. The film opens with Lee performing an extermination job and running out of bug spray in the middle of it, and he realizes that his wife has been lifting his bug powder for her personal use - the film uses bug spray as a representation of heroin - and the very beginning of the picture details her descent from user to all out junkie. Burroughs later states in "Deposition" that " [he] could look at the end of my shoe for eight hours. I was only roused to action when the hourglass of junk ran out. If a friend came to visit - and they rarely did since who or what was left to visit - I sat there not caring that he had entered my field of vision - a grey screen always blanker and fainter - and not caring when he walked out of it. If he had died on the spot I would have sat there looking at my shoe waiting to go through his pockets. Wouldn't you? Because I never had enough junk - no one ever does.", and we gradually see Lee's wife, Joan (Judy Davis), slipping into this barely cognizant state. When Lee walks in on one of his friends casually fucking his wife on his living room couch, she urges him not to be jealous - she assures him that his friend can't come, because of the spray, and she doesn't need to. Though the film never deals with Burroughs' actual drug use (the film only shows him drunk, in one scene), it nevertheless portrays the drug culture that Burroughs' art was a result of.

Naked Lunch also details the paranoid mind of a drug addict -though Lee is never depicted using drugs recreationally, he nevertheless confesses that he experiences "severe hallucinations", presumably a side effect of being in constant contact with the spray. After being apprehended by police for misappropriation of his insecticide, he has a vision of a large bug that speaks out of its asshole telling him that he must kill his wife because she works for "Interzone Inc.", and, moreover, isn't even human. He winds up inadvertently completing his 'mission' when he suggests that he and his wife do their William Tell routine, misses, and shoots her in the head. This is a key moment, both in Burroughs' life and in Cronenberg's film, an event that fueled Burroughs' writing. "I am forced to the appalling conclusion that I would never have become a writer but for Joan's death", the author wrote, and the film examines the profound effect that him killing his wife had on his life and his work.

The inclusion of the death of Burroughs' wife is part of the genius of Cronenberg's film; Cronenberg sprinkles in details of Burroughs' personal life to at once make Naked Lunch a cohesive narrative and an expansion of the text upon which it is based. Rather than treating the man's work and his life like they are two separate entities, Cronenberg suggests that the two are intimately related - that understanding the man is key to understanding the art, and vice versa. After shooting his wife, Lee flees to Interzone to complete his mission, and it is here that that the picture details the writing of the novel, which it imagines as Lee's reports from Interzone.

Perhaps the most inspired detail in the picture is the way it transforms the character of Doctor Benway - a crazy, corrupt surgeon in the book - to a pharmaceutical doctor, a daring connection of illegal drugs to legal drugs. Lee visits him early in the film to receive a substance that will get his wife off the spray, called The Black Meat, though in fact it's a more dangerous drug than the drug spray; Benway is the most successful pusher of them all. Lee finds Benway's factory in Interzone at the end of the film and witnesses a few barely conscious human beings feasting on the insides of Centipedes, high out of their minds, highlighting that pharmaceuticals - abused as frequently, if not more frequently, than illegal substances - can produce the most strung out junkies of them all.

This discovery prompts Lee to leave Interzone for Annexia, accompanied by Joan Frost - also played by Judy Davis - and when he arrives at the border he is ordered to "prove" that he is the writer he claims be. He turns around to see his wife in the back of his car, and suggests that they do their William Tell routine. Once again, Lee shoots Joan dead, and this is the point when Cronenberg's approach towards translating the novel to the screen takes on truly tragic ramifications. As Burroughs wrote, he would not have become a writer were it not for the death of his wife, and the film pays homage to the fact that this event is part of Burroughs' artistic identity - there is no getting around it, he did a terrible thing, but it was an event that formulated his art (though it's worth noting that, while Burroughs expressed profound guilt over shooting his wife, he didn't feel bad enough to serve any kind of punishment for it). Cronenberg takes a senseless tragedy and ingrains in into the fabric of William Lee's very existence, and the implications of a never ending cycle of guilt and regret - yet Burroughs' necessity for it - are truly heartbreaking.

[This has been an entry in The Cronenberg Blogathon, hosted by Cinema Viewfinder, where this piece is cross-published. The blogathon runs from September 6-12]