The Screen For Your Personal Doubts

This is, of course, from one of the great quotes of the late 'Kaiser' - Karl Lagerfeld.

He said: 'Don't use luxury as a screen for your personal doubts.'

And if you think he was just all about people who live in this vain and decadent 'upper echelon,' well, another quote from him is this one: 'Be proud of yourself but not because you wear expensive designer clothes. Expensive clothes are great, but lots of people are happy without them.'

Interesting.

Rubinacci linen suit.
The iron railing... We are fixed to planet Earth.

It's really also, the over-confidence of those who occupy positions of power as 'social leaders.' And in context of the kinds of things we write about here, I particularly mean those big studios and media institutions that produce Hollywood movies, and who try and drive the glamour fashion trends.

The Bond franchise is dying now, and will be delivered the death blow this coming summer movie 'premiere season.' 

I mean when you realize that there are University degrees, based on studies of popular culture and entertainment, and 'drama' too - and that so many 'successful' students nowadays end up in powerful jobs in large commercial studios, making moves and certainly too, making commercial advertisements for branded products... ...it's a wonder they really have so little clue.

Actually, I must point out here though, that it is not so easy as critics (even like myself) would have you think, to come up with new and innovative ideas for 'the next Bond flick,' for example.

Bond, the movie story, is not just about 'James Bond;' in fact the villains are the story. James Bond is the glossy wrapping.

...Where is this taking us?

There is something intensely important about the really great story producers of the past, that is, to put it more accurately, any producer of a truly successful entertainment - but we only have our own past experiences to go on. So we must take from the examples of Schwarzenegger (he made 'Predator,' produced and wrote it from various vague story ideas), or Hitchcock, or Vadim, or Kubrick.

What do they know that others do not know?

I think it isn't quite right to include Schwarzenegger among those who really know, but he does have some clue, having been intrinsically part of the original 'Conan the Barbarian' obviously. And this too though, is not to say that even Oliver Stone or John Milius really knew...

Milius though, had some clues, fundamentally because he was such a scholar of the great writers - but yet, he too, was no 'adept.'

Vadim was an adept. Kubrick was.

Final Vadim protege.

What did these guys know that you don't know?

I'll tell you how significant it was what they really do know - not even their actors and actresses over many years of working with them, really came away being able to enunciate what it was they were doing.

Vadim, I suppose you could say, was wicked, in a sense, in that he was so far ahead in years and in knowledge, that he was toying with the virginal Brigitte Bardot -, and this is not to deny that Bardot already possessed the underlying, the innate sexuality. Bardot later on in her life, was able to mix it with anyone in that league (of the super-humanly erotic), after having, certainly survived many times, more than one 'Harvey Weinstein.' And I categorically do not place Vadim in the role! 

Vadim was long out of Bardot's life when things got a bit ugly, you could say, with her relationships with other directors - who thought that movies were just some place to exploit women.

Bardot is possibly, the only person still alive who, from this vantage point of a good deal of experience, might be able explain Vadim and what he knew and what he did.

...Understand, I am just picking 'Vadim' as the exemplar here. There are a few others, but not many.

When you watch a Vadim film, or a Kubrick film, it is not crystal clear that there is a villain. One emerges - or 'something' emerges later on, out of the digesting of the story's narrative arc - that passes for the villain, yes. 

And with early Bond, it's the same. You think 'Auric Goldfinger' and everyone says 'the villain;' but is he though, in the flow of things? He's the competitive stylistic identity in every sense!

So why is he even a 'villain?' What really made him 'morally bad?' He is the 'villain,' but there is a good deal of subtlety as to why he is, really...

He's the loser, yes. But is he a villain?

Was also a Vadim creation, to some extent.

The mistake that all recent Bond movies have been making, is identifying 'a villain' far too soon, and then bludgeoning the audience over the head with his 'villain-ness.' And weakening the 'Bond' tower, as it were, so that it simply must fall and so we descend into this typical American 'bathos' mentality of 'drama.'

Things will be dark and 'bad,' and from there they will get ludicrously worse, and magic will pull the chestnuts out of the fire... WWF 'Superstars of Wrestling.'

The whole thing is a systematic fake, designed for children's minds. And it's basically the same 'formula' story made over and over.

Industrial, assembly-line... ...meaningless.

NASA pioneered this technology, which they got off the 'sample' ET Alien spacecraft, down at Groom Lake - which puts your brain into a torpor. It's called a 'rhinochill' unit and there are small portable units carried on most modern ambulances nowadays.

NASA was thinking about maybe, that it was a way of placing space travelers into cryogenic hibernation on long journeys.

It is not used for that, however, in the Alien craft. And NASA knows it now. They worked it out, eventually.

LOL

But Roger Vadim... He's taking angry, hot-blooded women, and what, making them hotter? Or cold? Or what, exactly?

I'm not telling you.