mobile logo
Odd Nerdrum One Story Singer
June 17, 2014
CONTENT CREATION, KILLOUGH CHRONICLES

Content Creation: Talking to Yourself Is Healthy

I’m on Reddit about as much as I’m on Facebook. What amazes many other Redditors is we get far more comments and likes for our posts from strangers than we do from actual friends for our posts on Facebook. Your contributions also don’t appear directly on other Redditors’ feeds; you post by subject, or ‘subreddit’, and hope for the best. So why bother posting to Facebook at all? It lost whatever negligible cool it had long ago, after all.

Many of my friends and most of my small family have either never signed up for Facebook or have dropped away. “It’s a waste of time and distracting,” an award-winning writer-director friend, who cancelled his account well over a year ago, said to me the other day. This guy is so cool he can carry off a polo shirt and actually make me hesitate as to whether I might need one or two in my wardrobe as well. (I don’t.)

Continue reading
By James Killough
0
0
Angelina Jolie Girl Interrupted
July 30, 2013
KILLOUGH CHRONICLES

Creative Minds: Is Being Nuts the New Normal?

An article from Scientific American was bounced among the posts of creative types last week like a game of dodgeball in a group therapy session. Entitled “The Unleashed Mind: Why Creative People are Eccentric,” the essay explores the high occurrence of schizotypal personality — not the full disorder, just the personality part — in creatives who also behave eccentrically. This last distinction is important;

Continue reading
By James Killough
0
0
Tony Soprano
July 1, 2013
KILLOUGH CHRONICLES

Under the Influence: Why We Let Others Persuade Us

This all begins with The Sopranos. I keep saying that I’m currently ‘revisiting’ the series, but that’s because I’m too embarrassed to admit that I’d only seen maybe half an episode prior to this current marathon — I started with the pilot two weeks ago and am steadily working my way forward. By now I am so swayed by the brilliance of everything about this show, from the writing to the directing to the performances, that

Continue reading
By James Killough
1
0
Karl Lagerfeld
March 7, 2013
KILLOUGH CHRONICLES

Imagining Lagerfeld: Symposium in the Sex Shop

Whenever the Paris collections roll around, I’m reminded I haven’t touched base with my imaginary best friend, Karl Lagerfeld.  As some readers may recollect, he and I have had our discussions—none of which have ended well, sadly—first over a gourmet sandwich, then at rock-n-roll Ralphs in Hollywood (during which he tried to brain me with a canister of Ajax), and over a workout at Golds Gym. 

Continue reading
By James Killough
0
0
October 2, 2012
KILLOUGH CHRONICLES

Imagining Lagerfeld: “There Is No Excuse for Fat.”

“This is absolutely ridiculous!” huffed my imaginary best friend Karl Lagerfeld when I conjured him up to meet me for a workout at Golds Gym Hollywood this afternoon.  I immediately thought he was pissed because of the outfit I’d dressed him in: little black tennis shorts, knee-high white socks, black patent leather Nike high tops, a tight white tee shirt with CHANEL emblazoned across the chest in black, and of course his signature black aviator sunglasses.

“Sorry,” I said.  “I thought you would feel comfortable like that.  Much more showy than a tracksuit.  Or is it too showy?”

Continue reading
By James Killough
5
0
January 19, 2012
KILLOUGH CHRONICLES

Saint Margaret of Grantham

THE KILLOUGH CHRONICLES | REVIEW

by James Killough  @James_Killough

This might be a controversial headline for the PFC review of Iron Lady, but fear not, I haven’t gone over to the dark side and become an ultra-right-wing Thatcherite.  It’s just my usual skewed thinking in light of the subtheme of this film: dementia and insanity, which as readers of this blog well know are as fascinating to me as filmmaking itself.

Annie Leibowitz’s portrait of Streep for Rolling Stone is still the definitive image of her.

There are parallels to be drawn between Margaret Thatcher, the longest-serving British prime minister of the twentieth century, and Joan of Arc, a saint who is a particular favorite of mine when I am making the case that almost all saints, prophets, and demigods of religions across the globe are textbook schizophrenics.

Continue reading
By Pure Film Creative
0
0
August 7, 2011
Uncategorized

A Bruce Campbell Story

It has become de rigueur here at PFC to lead off every other article with an image of a hunky, often shirtless, model or actor. Since blogmaster and militant gay activist James Killough decided to go with a Terry Gilliam-meets-Tetsuo look for his Devil’s Double review the other day, it falls upon me to continue the manflesh motif. Besides, my story from last week featured the movie poster for the 80s horror flick, C.H.U.D. (a clever political analogy on my part), so I guess I’m due to post some beefcake.

One of these men is not rumored to have slept with Bryan Singer to land the role of Superman, and it’s not the guy on the left.

Before I explain the pictures, I must put to rest the controversy surrounding C.H.U.D. that is tearing our nation apart. Contrary to popular belief, which was propagated by the movie poster itself, C.H.U.D. does not stand for Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers. If you watch the film all the way through – and I may be the only person who has – you’ll discover the acronym actually means “Contaminated Hazardous Urban Disposal.” Now can we stop all this fighting?

Continue reading
By Eric J Baker
7
0
May 31, 2011
KILLOUGH CHRONICLES

Why I’m Voting For Sarah Palin

THE KILLOUGH CHRONICLES

by James Killough

I’m kidding.  Sheesh.  Relax.  I don’t vote, for two reasons: 1) the American political process bores me because it’s usually much the same of the same old shit, although the Obama/Hillary run-off did get my attention; 2) as long as the Electoral College is in place and disasters like the 2000 election can happen as a result, I don’t believe we live in a true democracy.

She's not just the ringmaster, not just the clown show, not just the big cat act. She's the whole frickin' circus.

“But what about your civic duty, James?” you ask, wrapping your toga tightly around you in a snit.  To which I reply, “My civic duty is my non-vote of protest.”  And I feel I have more effect writing these words than ruining a perfectly crisp morning in November by standing in line for hours waiting to cast my drop in the bucket.  As long as I live, I will never let America rest on its self-satisfied, jingoistic laurels, never let it get away with unjustified warmongering, or large-scale financial corruption.  To do so would be un-American.

Continue reading
By Pure Film Creative
4
0
April 25, 2011
KILLOUGH CHRONICLES

Let Them Eat Starbucks

THE KILLOUGH CHRONICLES

by James Killough

Global warming has left my former city of residence, London, sweltering in spring, and Los Angeles gloomy and chilly.  While Tuttle and I were driving back from the gym yesterday, he looked at the sky and sighed, “I feel so sorry for the homeless people.  They come out here for the good weather, and they get this.”

It was a Marie Antoinette moment that reminded me of the time my mother and I were walking back from a cinema in the dead of a New York winter, black slush seeping across the sidewalks.  Mum was clad crown to ankles in mink, so we walked over an area that was free of frozen guck whenever we could, which meant the subway grates.  A train passed beneath us, and a gust of warm air surged from the grates.  “Oh, how lovely!” she exclaimed.  “No wonder people like to sleep on these things!”  There’s an upside to everything when you’re in fur.

Those gusty subway grates really know how to fluff a girl. Kirsten Dunst flutters through Sofia Coppola's "Marie Antoinette."

Today’s weather is markedly more like it should be in LA right now, with highs in the low paradise.  I was pondering the Marie Antoinettes in my life when a Hollywood schizo outside the CVS pharmacy on Cahuenga stopped me and said, “Excuse me, sir.  Do you know if it’s going to be May 21st?”

“It’s bound to be at some point,” I replied.

“So it’s the end of the world on May 21st?”

“Wouldn’t that be nice?”

“Praise the Lord!” he said.

“Praise Him!” I shot back.  No use disappointing my beloved schizos by getting into a theological debate when cigarettes awaited purchase.  Best just to agree.

Continue reading
By Pure Film Creative
3
0
Load More