SCÈNE 06. Stefan Marolachakis, Writer, Host & Producer of "STEFAN'S NIGHTTIME" and "IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHTTIME"
An '80s New York City loft, both sprawling and claustrophobic, is the tense simulacrum of its obsessive artist in residence.
You’ve landed smack-dab in our sixth edition of Mise-En-Scène. Welcome! This newsletter was meant to go out yesterday, but, alas, the electricity and WiFi in my home decided to dip for the day. It made me feel not unlike the artist protagonist in the film we’ll be exploring today. Mise-En-Scène has gone Method.
Speaking of dipping: A few editions ago, I taunted you all with releasing an emergency breakdown of Jennifer Lopez’s new film, This Is Me… Now: A Love Story. Well, the film dropped on streaming and I still haven’t worked up the courage to press play, but I have watched its companion “Making Of” documentary, The Greatest Love Story Never Told, twice now. I encourage everyone to check it out (plus, you get enough clips of This Is Me… Now to get the gist, to paraphrase Martin Scorsese answering whether he’s seen Todd Phillips’s Joker). I laughed and, more surprisingly, I cried. Aside from all the irresistible gossip-y bits in it, and Ben Affleck geeking over camera lenses much to his wife’s boredom, I found it genuinely moving how willful Lopez is about her creative expression no matter what it costs her—literally! There’s a lesson in there for all of us. If you want to make art, go out on a limb and make it, regardless of whether Taylor Swift and Khloé Kardashian pass on making it alongside you.
Today our attention focuses on a different kind of New York artist, one equally passionate and tortured. Selected by New York movie connoisseur Stefan Marolachakis (@stefanmymind)—the writer, host and producer behind STEFAN’S NIGHTTIME, a series of creative talks, and the compellingly offbeat double-feature movie podcast IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHTTIME—movies just don’t get more curious than Life Lessons.
Allow me to explain: Life Lessons is Martin Scorsese’s contribution to the three-headed anthology film, New York Stories (1989). (Rounding out the bill are fellow seminal New York filmmakers Woody Allen, with Oedipus Wrecks, and Francis Ford Coppola, with Life Without Zoe.) With a screenplay by quintessential Gotham scribe Richard Price—whose prolific pen is behind novels like Lush Life, movies like The Color of Money and Clockers, series like The Night Of, and even Michael Jackson’s music video for “Bad”—Life Lessons is atmospheric, unflinching, and richly drawn. This is a film you’ll want to sit down and watch with some classic Chinese takeout straight from the carton and your top-shelf bottle of wine.
The story centers on a celebrated abstract artist, Lionel Dobie (Nick Nolte), who is creatively, romantically, and sexually frustrated. The source of that frustration is largely his unboundaried dynamic with his apprentice, and former lover, Paulette (Rosanne Arquette), who happens to live in the same loft. They’re both using each other; he wants sex and passion to spark his creativity, she wants entrée into the pedigreed Downtown art scene he inhabits. A vicious cycle. It’s a very New York story, and the strongest of the three segments in the anthology. Newcomer actor Talia Ryder recently praised Life Lessons as one of the best new-to-her things she’s watched:
I love every part of the story and when it ends, I just want to start it over again. It feels like one of those movies that you can just watch in a circle, because it kind of ends in the same place that it begins.
For Stefan, who first came upon the film during his college years, Life Lessons grows more lived-in and meaningful over time.
I think about this movie all the time because of the specificity of the character choices, the details in the dialogue, the stunning camerawork, the mythical moment in New York history it captures.
He calls this one Scorsese’s “unsung masterpiece,” and while a large swath of cinephiles reserve that title for After Hours (1985)—the filmmaker’s spin on an Alice in Wonderland story, set in pre-gentrified SoHo—I’d have to agree with Stefan, if only for the stronger script and robust characters.
Without further ado, here’s Stefan Marolachakis1 with more on his Mise-En-Scène pick, Martin Scorsese’s Life Lessons.
“I'M YOUR ALLY AGAINST HORSE DUNG AND FRAUD. THAT’S AS FAR AS IT GOES FROM NOW ON”: WRITER, HOST & PRODUCER STEFAN MAROLACHAKIS ON MARTIN SCORSESE’S LIFE LESSONS, 1989
STEFAN ON THE SCORSESE SYLLABUS AND HIS INTRODUCTION TO LIFE LESSONS:
Life Lessons is Martin Scorsese’s unsung masterpiece. That’s how I’ve felt about it since I first encountered it back in college, when I would spend my afternoons watching as many free movies as the school library would allow me to borrow. Some were from the syllabus of my Film Studies classes, others just on the personal to-do list. This one was from the latter, when I was busy making sure to watch everything Scorsese had ever touched.
STEFAN ON THE FILM’S MOMENTUM AND PROTAGONIST LIONEL DOBIE’S ARTIST LOFT:
New York Stories, the movie in which this 44-minute gem lives, has three segments. The other two by Woody Allen and Francis Ford Coppola are, in my opinion, completely forgettable. Life Lessons, on the other hand, has been seared into my brain ever since the moment I first heard those opening notes of “Whiter Shade of Pale.” The movie hits the ground running and never stops. Every choice hits the mark. The soundtrack that booms in Lionel Dobie’s loft, the sweeping zooms, the silent-film era iris shots, the massive Neo-Expressionist paintings of Dobie. Cinematographer Néstor Almendros is the same man who shot Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven, one of the most beautiful-looking movies of all time. It’s astonishing the way his camera is able to showcase Dobie’s sprawling loft—pulling back to capture his massive artworks in their titanic magnitude before flying in for close-ups of Dobie’s hands frantically at work on them.
STEFAN ON THE FILM’S EXPLORATION OF THE AGONY AND ECSTASY OF ART-MAKING:
Between the production design by Kristi Zea and the costumes by John Dunn, this movie delivers everything you want out of the life of a big, brawling ’80s artist: the overcoats, the paint-stained shoes, the massive loft with the half-finished lofted bedroom and the basketball hoop. Nick Nolte and Rosanna Arquette are as good as they’ve ever been, in no small part due to the brilliant script by Richard Price. On one level, it’s a movie about a pair of masochists (sadists?) torturing each other. On another, it’s a movie about the nature of lust and longing, why we make art, and the ways we delude ourselves in order to survive or succeed.
STEFAN ON THE BYGONE NEW YORK CITY THE FILM CAPTURES:
As with all great works, the more you live, the more you mine from it the next time you encounter it. I watched it again just recently in anticipation of a conversation with the one and only Richard Price and, no surprise, I was destroyed by it once again. Maybe even more than when I first saw it at the age of 19 or 20. I think about this movie all the time because of the specificity of the character choices, the details in the dialogue, the stunning camerawork, the mythical moment in New York history it captures. It’s one of the only times Scorsese and Price teamed up and it exceeds expectations. It is 44 minutes of movie perfection. I think I’ll watch it again right now.
STEFAN MAROLACHAKIS RECOMMENDS
Get used to reading about Marty, for Stefan has another fave Scorsese movie to rave about. Plus, the notebook that gets him all the way together and how he creative directs his popcorn. Up ahead: More of Stefan’s excellent cultural picks. (No affiliate links used.)
The Color of Money (1986), directed by Martin Scorsese.
Stefan says: Another underrated Scorsese movie, and his other filmmaking team-up with Price. This one features one of my favorite opening scenes in movie history: Paul Newman as he enters his sixties, smooth-talking down at the end of the bar. This one got Newman his only [competitive] Oscar, and when you watch this again you see it wasn’t just some victory-lap offering. He deserved it. (Just to confirm, here’s who he was up against: Dexter Gordon in Round Midnight, Bob Hoskins in Mona Lisa, William Hurt in Children of a Lesser God, and James Woods in Salvador. You can’t really tell me any of those performances should’ve beaten Newman’s return to the role of “Fast Eddie” Felson.) (Nat’s note: Paul Newman’s Oscar win was announced by Bette Davis during the 1987 Academy Awards telecast and accepted on his behalf by his good friend, the iconic director Robert Wise, then the president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. Legends only!)Old School by Tobias Wolff.
Stefan says: I read this a few years ago and I think I’m about to take it for another spin. Instantly became one of my favorite books of all time. I didn’t go to boarding school, but I did go to an all-boys grade school in Manhattan, so a lot of the sensibilities on display here ring true to me. This is the book that really let me know Wolff is one of my favorite writers of all time—across novels, short stories, memoirs, you name it. (Nat’s note: Wolff is also responsible for This Boy’s Life, a harrowing memoir that served as the source material for one of the great early Leonardo DiCaprio movies.)LEUCHTTURM1917 notebooks.
Stefan says: These notebooks come with numbered pages and a table of contents. Priceless if your thoughts tend to bounce all over the place. This one little organizational decision helps me out so much with getting my shit together for writing, the podcast, everything. Long live this notebook.Out of the Furnace (2013), directed by Scott Cooper.
Stefan says: I just watched this for the first time because we did “Blow Out of the Furnace” on our double-feature movie podcast and it knocked me out. Talk about another underrated gem. The performances, the pacing, the cinematography—everything about this movie is so fantastic, I can’t believe the reviews were so middling. It’s a deeply moving and gripping film about oh, you know…finding love, losing it, brotherhood, war, and surviving in small-town America featuring some of our greatest working actors operating at the highest level. (Nat’s note: Directors, casting teams, and agents everywhere… Please invite Zoe Saldaña to do more of this kind of work. She has such a presence and deserves to be seen out of space alien makeup more often.)Whirley-Pop stovetop popcorn maker.
Stefan says: I’ve long sworn by cooking popcorn on the stove, and once my sister-in-law gave us this as a present it became our go-to for making popcorn at home. Also, I feel like people get scared of using olive oil for high-heat situations, but there’s no need to be afraid: use olive oil both to cook the kernels and to garnish it in the bowl with salt after and you’ll be the happiest movie-watcher around. I swear. (Nat’s note: Casey Becker from Scream would agree with Stefan regarding the stove-popping…)
If you’re interested in screening Life Lessons, New York Stories is easily available to rent or buy in the usual places (Amazon and Apple TV).
Also? Let’s bring anthology films crafted by huge directors back! I can’t be the only one who’s captivated by Twilight Zone: The Movie whenever it’s on the SyFy Channel. (The Joe Dante segment has always haunted me, and I’m not even touching the tragic-in-real-life John Landis segment… You’ll have to Google what happened there on your own.)
Thank you to this week’s brilliant and generous Mise-En-Scène guest curator, Stefan Marolachakis. Follow Stefan (@stefanmymind) and his NIGHTTIME delights (@nighttimenyc) if you want to see where else his appreciation for New York City lore leads. Subscribe to STEFAN’S NIGHTTIME YouTube here and listen to his movie podcast IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHTTIME here. (Stefan, free double-bill idea: “9 1/2 Weeks Notice.”)
And thank you, dear reader, for hanging out with us. Lastly: I’d love to get your feedback on what else—and especially who else—you’d like to see featured in the newsletter. You can hit reply to this email or DM me on Instagram at @yourmiseenscene.
See you on the next one!
Lightly edited for clarity.