baby night

i know this is gonna sound a little odd coming from someone as literate as myself. but i don't read actual books as often as i should. its not because i don't like books... i love them, but as an artist and writer, i just can't seem to find the time. i mean, anytime i have 'free time,' i seem to write my own stuff. but recently, i had to go to a big bad boring doctor's appointment, and i knew i had over an hour of time in the waiting room. so luckily for me, i had a paperback copy of ira levin's horror masterpiece 'rosemary's baby.' it's been one of my favorite movies for a long, long time. but i had never read the book. man, it was great. it really reminded me how transporting reading can be. like, there i was, damp and wilted from the northern spring rain, in the bright and clinical doctor's office waiting room, and once i cracked that book and fell into it, the time just flew by. i really had a ball. i had almost forgotten how much fun reading can be. (mmm, sounds like a corny psa to get kids to like, get off the video games and read.... mmm, like kids would listen to crazy ol' me.) so yeah, as a tribute to one of my favorite movies, and now one of my favorite books, i found this groovy shot of mia farrow and john cassavetes as rosemary and guy woodhouse. they're raising their glasses in celebration, because this night is 'baby night,' ... in other words, the night they've set aside for the conception of their first child. but, little does rosemary know, it won't be guy she'll be bompin' with tonight. it'll be the devil! hey, so dig the shot. i tricked it to look right-for-your-eyes! (click to enlarge)

mia cuddles

so, it seems it's 'ladies night' here on the 'planetcool.' and as i mention in the post directly below this one, i love shots that can be classified by me as 'never-before-seen.' yes, here we have one of my total favorite girlstars, the lovely and complex miss mysterious mia farrow. i'm sure you'll agree its difficult to find older pictures of her with long hippy hair like this. it kind of reminds of me of some photographs of my wonderful mother. (love you, mommy.) but yeah, here we have the dreamy miss mia posing with a snow white innocent kit-bag. (new slang term for a cute-styled feline.) mia's eyebrows could use a bit of a tweeze, but other than that, i think she looks totally lovely. and hey, she was not so innocent. like, she hung with sinatra and the psychedelic-maharishi beatles! it just doesn't get much cooler than that. so um, dig on mia and the kit, and i'll see you all tomorrow night!

mia and dustin make up

yes, yet another shot of young mia and dustin. i really should like, 'break down,' find out what movie this was that they were both in, and like, get my hands on it, viewing-wise. i mean, i think this might be the third picture i've posted of them in these same costumes, on the set of whatever it was. i dig this one... like, not only do they both look real cute, (i love that lacy peter pan collar mia has on) but its obviously a shot gotten between takes. its funny, how the diva, miss dustin, lies back whilst some stagehand dusts his young visage with dainty powder; whilst mia takes the almighty puff into her own hands, and takes care of the shine herself. i think they both look great. for some reason, my weirdo-mental-long-distance-time-traveling-telepathy is telling me those two never really had a 'behind-the-scenes' physical thing going on. i just don't get the feeling they played around. i mean, mia was dating-and-or-married- to 'the chairman of the board' at that point, so i don't think she had the inclination to dip her toes in other waters. but hey, i could be wrong. i mean, she was married, not dead. (mmm, what in the hell am i talking about?) in any case, dig it. (click to enlarge)

freckles and eyelet lace

mmm, anyone who's visited the planet knows how much i dig miss mia farrow. here's a great shot i found of her, in costume for a picture i can't name. but i love the shot. i think the freckles are largely part of the make-up. they were even more obvious before i tricked the contrast. she made a lot of movies around this time period that i've never seen. but she looks lovely, no? i love the comely little lace collar and the plush youthful darkness of her lips. i'm afraid i don't have a date on this shot... i think it was taken for 'life' magazine, and if i had to guess, i'd say like, 1965...? she looks great. and even to this day, she seems only very mildly crazy. i remember a year... like, 1985, for christmas, i bought jean-lucien a book of illustrations of celebrities entitled 'fame II,' and there was a great blue airbrushed shot of mia in this exact outfit in that book. if i remember correctly, jean-lucien and i had both picked out the same book to give to one another, so my mother had to artfully convince one of us to select something else, knowing that one of us was already planning to get it. give it, whatever... we always shared everything we ever got anyway, so we both ended up 'giving it,' and 'getting it,' right?

mia at frank's place

i love this shot. i remember i was in my early 20's when i heard-and-realized mia farrow was once married to the classic crooner, mr. frank sinatra. and, to this day, i wonder what in the hell those two talked about? i mean, to me, this strikes me as every bit an unusual pairing as john lennon and yoko ono. i think it made me realize that even a man like frank sinatra can become smitten with unconventional looks and a small 'bazoom.' and a wispy, almost-hippy chick like mia could be snatched up by someone as 'establishment' as ol' blue-eyed frank. this shot was apparently taken inside the house they shared during their marriage. she looks so cute and stylish and 'ready to go out on the town.' anyway, i love mia, and i dig this picture. sweet. (click to enlarge.)

i am curious, mia

mmm, hey... its a vintage MAD magazine joke, ladies and gentlemen. but hey, its 'no joke' how groovy miss mia farrow looks in this rare shot. (or, she may have been mrs. frank sinatra at this point, i can't be sure.) still, i dig her on so many levels. she's living proof that you can be glamorously pretty, yet still retain a keen intellect and savage acting skills. i suppose everyone that knows me knows how crazy i am about her performance in 'rosemary's baby.' hey, i 'movie geek' -know it by heart! and believe it or not, its surprisingly difficult to get a good picture of her from that era. so i lucked out the other night and found more than one. but this one i decided to post on the grounds that she looks both lovely, glamourous, yet still girlish and curious. hey, i think she's 'proven historically' that absolutely no-one wears that haircut like she does. did. (click to groovily enlarge)

miss mia smokes

so i just came in off the back deck to inhale a camel filter. the new england moon was so full and silver bright it was casting sharp shadows of all the leaves on the trees. the air is cool and dry. i love it up here. but i am not alone in blazing a deathstick. here is a great shot of a hippy miss mia farrow in her groovy late 60's pad, enjoying a 'straight' in her own free and short-haired independent way. i love the room she's in. it reminds me of the infamous 'shakespeare house' on centennial street. there was a lot of smoking going on in that house, i promise you. i like her hair darker like that. it looks like she's killed almost a full glass of red wine, too. when i see photos like this, i really wish i had a time machine. i wonder who she was hanging out with? i wonder who was taking the picture? it looks like a pretty groovy scene. rock on, miss mia.

m is for mia

i love mia farrow. i don't know much about what she's doing with 'the children of the world' these days. i admit, i'm far more enthusiastic about her film career. i loved her in all her woody allen stuff, but the film i have rolling most often is the roman polanski masterpiece 'rosemary's baby.' i learned recently that this picture was in fact the very first cover of People magazine. as you can probably tell from her costume, it is celebrating her role as the vapid Daisy in the disappointing film version of f. scott fitzgerald's overrated story 'the great gatsby.' well, perhaps 'overrated' is too strong a word. 'outdated,' maybe? all i know is that i remember feeling less that moved after reading the book. and i remember being even less impressed by the movie version. (we watched it in class.) personally, apart from 'rosemary's baby,' i think she was best in woody allen's 'husbands and wives' and 'hannah and her sisters.' and i even liked her in 'alice.' and she was good in 'radio days,' too. (that's a highly underrated woody allen film, if you want my opinion.)

d is for dustin and mia

man, i'm tired. i had the tremendous good fortune to re-connect with an old friend tonight. we talked for like, and hour, and hey, she digs my 'planetcool!' so with our conversation fresh in my mind, i really wanted to post something real special, but i'm pretty tired. i know i've got to get started somehow. so, in keeping with my alphabet, i dug out this lovely TIME magazine cover starring a young dustin hoffman and a young and beautiful mia farrow. i've had 'rosemary's baby' in heavy rotation lately, as well as the 'know-it-by-heart' classic 'tootsie.' this cover makes it seem like they were an item. hey, maybe they were. i can only imagine what an insecure dating pair those two would've made. i love the cover, too... especially after i got my 'tricking skill' hands on it. so dig it, while i try to go dig up something else. (i tried to find some more cig ads, lucynell, but they're rare pearls... very hard to come by.)

baby night

yes, lately i've been watching the classic and creepy, practically flawless film

'rosemary's baby,'

directed by roman polanski. here's a great screen capture of the naiive-but-not-so-dumb rosemary woodhouse, woozy from the wild effects of minnie's homemade chocolate mouse. i love her 'now' red velour pajama suit, and i love the psychedelic spooky sequence of her unwitting consumation with the devil himself. i was first aware of this movie thanks to Mort Drucker's excellent movie parody in MAD magazine. i can't watch the movie without thinking about frames from the satire. hey, don't get me wrong; its an excellent movie no matter what background information you have. i could go on and on about how good it is, but hey, you know i'd rather just roll it, sit back, and dig...! dig on the diabolical goings-on! if you've never seen it, i give it my wholehearted reccommendation.

you've come a long way, rosemary

...baby! yes, its been a long time since i had a 'featured smoker,' and tonight its the complicated and highly cool miss mia farrow. if you've never seen 'rosemary's baby,' then you're missing one of the finest movies of that era... or indeed, of any other. i'm not sure where i snagged this shot; i've had it for a long time. she's so cute. so, everyone dig on miss mia... hey, she was once mrs. frank sinatra! (which i've always thought was a little bit odd, i mean... she doesn't seem like his 'type,' ...but i guess that goes to show, when it comes to attraction, anything goes. i mean, hey... two words: woody allen.) hey, don't get me wrong, i love woody. oh well, i'm getting a little verbose here. so dig on miss mia... so cool. but i must admit, i do think she was highly mis-cast in 'the great gatsby.' actually, i think redford was miscast, too. i always thought it would've had more impact had it been cast entirely with unknowns... but that's just my haughty cinematic opinion.

good witch bad witch

...all of them witches. i wasn't really thinking about witches when i assmebled this piece over ten years ago. i wasn't really thinking about it meaning anything. back then, i had to work with the scraps i had. i couldn't alter color or size or sharpness or anything. but still, i think i got a nice result. i suppose the lilian gish and julie andrews above could be like good witches of the north, opposed to the unscrupulous guy woodhouse at the bottom, with a pair of hungry bisexual wenches somewhere in between. i'm not sure why i included jfk up there, unless he was supposed to represent conscience or whatever. but i totally don't think i was thinking of that in any kind of concrete way. i think i just needed or wanted a splash of purple. click to enlarge.

witches

here is a still from one of my favorite films, roman polanski's

'rosemary's baby.'

i can't remember a time when i didn't know about this film. and i think its safe to say that my first exposure to it was from the MAD magazine parody by the insanely talented Mort Drucker. i didn't see the film until years later, but Mort and whoever wrote it with him were very astute and dead-on, not only in the artistic rendering, but in a biting take on the subject matter... which i imagine must've caused quite a cultural stir at the time. here are rosemary and guy woodhouse, (john cassavetes and mia farrow) enjoying their first night alone in their new apartment. man, it makes me want to like, roll it, you know?