[wiseguy100]

Anyone just see the smug git Mark Kermode just get shot down by William Friedkin on beeb2?

Kermode, as usual, tried to apply his pseudo intellectual crap to Friedkin about his new flick called Killer Joe. Friedkin put him in his place something proper.

Nearly as funny as the time Kermode declared Alien was a film about the fear of male rape, to which the writer of Alien (Dan O Bannon) burst out laughing.

[Aneechik]

I'm sure one of the special effects designers said the alien was designed to look like a vagina, so if anything Alien must be about man-eating vaginas.

[spiney2]

yeah. dont know much about kermode - except hes in rocky horror film - but fear of female reproduction is a well known interpretation. how far ridley scott did this delierately ive no idea.

[spiney2]

hang on its somebody else in rocky horror .....

[Inkblot]

Originally Posted by wiseguy100

Anyone just see the smug git Mark Kermode just get shot down by William Friedkin on beeb2?

Kermode, as usual, tried to apply his pseudo intellectual crap to Friedkin about his new flick called Killer Joe. Friedkin put him in his place something proper.

They know each other well enough for Kermode to call Friedkin "Billy". It was a friendly riposte not a shooting-down.

[Straker]

Kermode’s such a Friedkin fan but I never hear him talking about “To Live and Die in LA”, Friedkin’s masterpiece IMO. I guess he finds it hard to see past The Exorcist.

[mike65]

I thought it an entertaining meeting of minds.

[PJ68]

alien CAN be read to be about that though. it isn't always what the film maker intends but you can't ignore what is going on in society or politics when a film is made.

in alien's case it was the rise of gay rights and women's lib, men were feeling threatened (bram stoker's dracula at the turn of the century was also an attack on 'new women'). alien has many references to rape - the alien's mouth, the dripping passages of the nostromo, the way the alien slides it's tentacle between harry dean stanton's legs, the way john hurt is 'impregnanted' then dies during childbirth...

[PJ68]

...the quick shot of lambert lying naked after she has been killed. it's a very sexual killer. the film is about man's fear of being violated.

[Inkblot]

Originally Posted by Straker

Kermode’s such a Friedkin fan but I never hear him talking about “To Live and Die in LA”, Friedkin’s masterpiece IMO. I guess he finds it hard to see past The Exorcist.

He specifically mentioned it, along with several other Friedkin films, in his 5 Live review of Killer Joe.