Movies from Jim

Tribute for a friend

Howdy to any remaining subscribers. I took a break from this Substack. Part of that was COVID burnout, changing jobs, other film-related engagements, and also co-writing a film book. I come back with a heavy heart so I appreciate any engagement this gets.

Saturday, I was informed that Jim Gabriel (aka flipyourface on Twitter) had passed away in late April of this year.  He was a mentor and friend. This loss hurt. Like many cinephiles in my age group who took to Twitter in the early 2010s, it was as though Jim was the first major person from ‘Film Twitter’ who connected with us as a mutual follower and friend.  Jim was not a filmmaker or an official critic, just a passionate film lover who whenever he had a take be it in a tweet or long form written piece on his site, it was absolutely appointment reading.  He was kind, generous, incredibly funny, and extremely open about his struggles.  I never got the chance to meet him in person; shoot the shit, discuss movies or sports like others had the privilege to do but I found my friendship with him extremely meaningful.  When I first started my since defunct Twitter account juvie_cinephile, I was pseudonymous online, partially because I was a closeted trans man.  He respected my boundaries and did not ask about who I was/what I looked like until I ultimately disclosed. He was incredibly nice and supportive, he just happened to be the first cis man I disclosed this information. I have since found out that Jim was a reliable ally and friend of other trans people I knew on Film Twitter. I think people may not understand how important that was because how many people, particularly those who now see themselves on ‘our side’ of the ‘trans issue’, were pretty ignorant or had a huge learning curve in understanding trans issues in the 2010s.  Not Jim. He knew trans folks, respected them, and always was helpful. He never tooted his own horn about that, he just let his actions of kindness and attention speak for himself instead.  

Due to leaving Twitter for mental health reasons, I had lost touch with Jim.  I had known that he was struggling due to various things and how due to our broken American health care system, particularly in mental health, it often put him in a financial bind that as a result, had him seek out assistance through crowd-funding to literally keep the lights on.  I contributed whenever I came across it, even though I was no longer ‘online’. Still never felt like enough and I wished to reconnect with him.  I missed that chance.  I cannot say I knew very much about Jim’s personal history beyond what he said publicly and what he told me in confidence, so I am not going to speculate beyond that.  We each shared our struggles with each other and kept that communication in our Twitter DMs, one of which no longer exists and in the case of Jim’s account, still listed on Twitter despite his passing. It is surreal to think that his tweets, often his stream of consciousness, are still up but it has given me the opportunity to check out some of his more recent activity. He was still hilarious in his observations and movie references through the very end. 

The night of finding out Jim’s passing, I watched Arthur Hiller’s The In-Laws, a film Jim loved and highlighted because he was a huge fan of the film’s screenwriter, Andrew Bergman.   It cheered me up, but again, there are so many other films that I thought about the moment I always associated with him.  I will always miss Jim, his uncommon kindness, wisdom, warmth, sense of humor, and I send my condolences to his close friends and family, particularly his daughter, Tess. As a tribute, this is my incomplete list of films (that I had to stop myself from adding more) that I associated with Jim. Each appreciated or criticized film helped me as a twenty-something cinephile broaden my idea of what makes a movie great, memorable, and worth watching/remembering.  Here it goes:

• Nashville (Robert Altman)- Jim loved Nashville.  A canonical favorite but the fact was that Jim would just randomly tweet about Nashville with little anecdotes, observations, and reminisces every so often.  Many call this their favorite film, but Nashville makes me think of Jim. 

• Peeping Tom (Michael Powell)-  Anna Massey’s reflection on a camera lens in Michael Powell’s proto-Psycho Freudian slasher was Jim’s Twitter avatar.  He loved many films by Michael Powell, especially with his collaborator Emeric Pressburger, but I remember that avatar being part of the draw of Jim for me, as somebody who tried and failed in college to host a viewing party of the film. I never told Jim this fact, I think he’d get a kick out of it like my other random anecdotes of my film-related idiosyncrasies.  

• S.O.B. (Blake Edwards)- Blake Edwards’ madcap satire of Hollywood excess and sleaze also provides two of the funniest performances I have ever watched in Julie Andrews and Robert Preston. Jim was particularly fond of Andrews in this and was the reason I checked it out. Turned into a Blake Edwards apologist after that. 

•    Rambo: First Blood Part II (George P. Cosmatos)-  This list is largely made of films that Jim loved, but here is one where Jim went negative. Whenever he hated a film or filmmaker with such derision, it was noticed. Jim tweeted, “Watched ten minutes of First Blood II, not even the lipstick that is Jack Cardiff's cinematography can save this pig, it's Birth of a Nation with biceps”.  More perceptive and persuasive than any 1,500 word piece in The Baffler, The Nation, or Slate. Similarly with Top Gun, Jim lived through the theatrical release of these films and he always saw them as definitively right-wing works. He was ornery about the rehabilitation of these films and their filmmakers under the banner of ‘vulgar auteurism’ in Film Twitter circles, and his skepticism of this criticism buckling under its lack of political consideration as American fascism reared its head in the coming decade was more than fair, in retrospect. 

•    Zero Dark Thirty (Kathryn Bigelow)- In the same way the Rambo and Top Gun films were right-wing, Jim    also would get into the nuances of a film where there was a lot of messy politics and controversy that had a lot of bad faith thrown towards its filmmaker.  I remember Zero Dark Thirty being the first real Film Twitter fight and dividing line that felt like it lasted through the Oscars. I have to think that film would be even more radioactive now and I have to say as somebody who was firmly pro-ZDT at the time, I do not know what I would think of this film now as the central politics feel so removed from both the domestic and international politics of now. But Jim wrote a longform piece on it in the wake of the controversy that I still think was the best writing on it.

• Saint Jack (Peter Bogdanovich)- A still relatively anonymous Peter Bogdanovich joint that frankly delivers for me what A Killing of a Chinese Bookie does not in terms of Ben Gazzara as a morally vacant but charming pimp. I remember Jim being particularly vocal about this film and often doing so whenever it popped up on television.  

• The Landlord (Hal Ashby)- Probably one of the best films about race I have ever seen and yet this pretty significant Hal Ashby-Bill Gunn collaboration is not nearly as known or celebrated.  Jim was honestly the most vocal person of this film, long before it had an American BluRay release via Kino Lorber. I watched it when I found it on Turner Classic Movies one night and not only do I consider it among the best Ashby films, but I also think it is a work that represents a work of two authors: Ashby and Gunn. Jim loved writer-directors but he also loved pairs where it was the writer and director. He loved to denote a Paul Brickman’s contribution as much as giving flowers to Jonathan Demme, as one example. Given this was happening in that bizarre period where the definition of auteurism was getting muddled by culture critics, I always appreciated his choice to see film as always having a place for collaboration.

• The Eiger Sanction (Clint Eastwood)- It is fashionable in cinephile circles to flex their most outré choice of favorite Clint Eastwood film, particularly the later stuff, but Jim’s story about him seeing an R-rated actioner due to a very generous family member is just far more sincere. Jim was a Clint Eastwood fan, even liked American Sniper, but liking this mid-1970s actioner is a sign of pure cinephilic sickness.  Bless you, Jim.

• Handle with Care aka Citizens Band (Jonathan Demme)- A film that bizarrely, despite how easily you could transpose citizens band radio communication into contemporary social media platforms, has not gotten its due.  When Jim recommended it to me, I watched. It became one of my favorite Jonathan Demme films, a film that has his egalitarian essence and humanism in stride.  

• Patty Hearst (Paul Schrader)- Jim always thought this film never got its due for being one of Schrader’s best and I have to agree. Natasha Richardson as the kidnapped heiress who gets radicalized by the SLA gives a career best performance. The film itself in terms of look and design feels like the twin sister of Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters.

• Tough Guys Don’t Dance (Norman Mailer)- I do not think Jim ever put it in these exact terms (Note: He put it like this, “You want something bad that`s also genuinely unironically brilliant? See if you can track down Tough Guys Don’t Dance.”) but this film proves that straight male camp does exist. 

• Querelle (Rainer Werner Fassbinder)- Jim was bisexual and took to this film like a moth to light, largely because of Franco Nero’s hot, hot, hot Lieutenant Seblon who desires the eponymous Querelle. Can’t blame him (Jim or Franco Nero’s Lieutenant lusting over Brad Davis’ Querelle for that matter). 

• ‘Zemeckis and Gale Think Americans Are Insane’ Trilogy: 1941, Used Cars, & I Wanna Hold Your Hand (Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis)- Jim was obviously a child of ‘70s with these selections but he did not look at the peak of that decade’s cinema as being defined as a shadow-y Gordon Willis scenario but rather as a grotesque, hysterical, live in living color freakshow. He liked the mean-streak of collaborators Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis early on who saddled Steven Spielberg with his first financial disaster of a movie in 1941 that Jim, nonetheless, had a lot of love for. I saw the other two films as a double-feature at the New Beverly in 2017 and Jim was so happy for me to have had that opportunity. Seeing those movies with a crowd was a rowdy, unforgettable experience in a time in my life where I truly needed that communal serotonin.

• Prime Cut (Michael Ritchie)- Jim often said one of his favorite American director runs was Michael Ritchie from Downhill Racer to Semi-Tough. However, he liked Prime Cut for its ‘outlier’ status in Ritchie’s oeuvre. Ritchie’s best movies like The Candidate and The Bad News Bears had their stakes tied to competition in the ballot box and on the field whereas Prime Cut is a crime film in the backdrop of the American heartland with its fields of sunflowers and cattle slaughterhouses. It is such a great film that, much like Ritchie’s run during that time, was a mosaic of American myth and life clashing.

• Affliction (Paul Schrader)- Jim was the most vocal Nick Nolte champion I know.  He considered the 90s a ‘Nolte decade’ in his great run of playing broken men and taking on bold projects (multiple Vonnegut adaptations, none of which got widespread critical plaudits). However, he considered Paul Schrader’s Russell Banks adaptation the best of Nolte’s performances. 

• Who Killed Captain Alex? (Nabwana I.G.G.)- A Wakaliwood classic!  Years later, Jim gave his version of the story in how he convinced me to see Who Killed Captain Alex? at my local theater and I can confirm this is all true.  Rest easy, old pal. I’ll see you when I enter that next realm. 

Farewell, My Friend