We continue our Camp Cinema season in our fourth episode covering To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (1995) and Magnolia (1999)

Special Guest: Returning Guest, Rotten Tomato approved film critic, Natasha Alvar from Cultured Vultures

When watching To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar, there is an overriding sense of what could have been. Coming out in the mid 1990s, a surprisingly much more open time in American culture, Wong Foo went to number one at the box office. It was a modest hit, but clearly well received by the general public. If this movie was made today, everyone involved would get more death threats than residuals checks. Culture doesn't always move forward, sometimes it backslides.

Magnolia is a controversial pick for Camp Cinema. To me, it is the paradigm of what Susan Sontag called Naive Camp in her 1964 essays Notes on Camp. Magnolia is a manically ambition film with a passionate and serious tone. Paul Thomas Anderson, like Cameron Crowe in Vanilla Sky, strived to reach the artistic heavens, but all he did was take on a tour of the sad and lonely people of the San Fernando Valley. Chris and Natasha offer some good counterpoints to my stance.

We continue our Camp Cinema season in our third episode covering Sugar and Spice (2001) and Vanilla Sky (2002)

Special Guest: Good friend and frequent guest, Molly

The early Aughts was a bizarre time in American culture. The heady surge of the late 90s into Y2K was quicky benzo'd by 9/11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Our two selections for the 2000s were written and produced before the big comedown, and they both definitely have a "we can do anything" vibe. Sugar and Spice deftly somersaulted through the byzantine development process at New Line Cinema, who were likely distracted by their massive production of Lord of the Rings trilogy at the time. What could have easily been a teen movie cash-in is a rather spunky, satirical, and fun mess. Does it work? No, but it is sassy enough to not care.

Vanilla Sky is not fun. Here Cameron Crowe's grandiose vision was blinded by his fiery ambition. Coming off his best film, Almost Famous, Crowe decided to tackle a remake of Alejandro Amenábar's 1997 Spanish film Abre Los Ojos. Vanilla Sky does not align with the traditional definition of camp, but it certainly seems to be the bullseye of what Susan Sontag called Naive Camp. It is a film so devoutly serious about something so frivolously stupid.

We continue our Camp Cinema season in our second episode covering The Love Witch (2016) and Black Swan (2010)

Special Guest: Filmmakers Emily Gallagher and Austin Elston of Fishtown FIlms

As the dust begins to settle on the 2010s, the topsy turvy decade begins to come into focus. At the start of the decade, Darren Aronofsky released Black Swan (2010) to critical acclaim. I saw it in a packed NYC theater opening weekend. The buzz was palpable. Looking back now, especially post mother! and the rise of peak tv, the trashy and overwrought elements of Black Swan overshadow the great performances and wonderful cinematography, which is why we have selected as our Naive Camp film for this episode.

The Love Witch had a much quieter release in 2016, but it clicked with a small group of film lovers. While filmmaking is mostly a communal art, Anna Biller was so involved with every aspect of The Love Witch that it could only exist because of her. Biller's retro and kitsch style can not obscure the riotous passion for filmmaking and gender theory at the heart of the film. It is so campy that one could argue it is post-camp in that it is both obsessed with artifice and serious at the same time. At the very least, The Love Witch exists mostly in deviance of the ideas presented in Sontag's Notes on Camp.