Blog Archive

How to die in Oregon, Mayo Methot, Bogart, Scott Fitzgerald, Kirsten Dunst

Jake Gyllenhaal with Elmo - Sesame Street 40th season
Katy Perry and Elmo "Hot N Cold" in "Sesame Street"

U.S. DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION -- Sundance Film Festival

BEING ELMO: A Puppeteer's Journey (Director: Constance Marks) - The Muppet Elmo is one of the most beloved characters among children across the globe. Meet the unlikely man behind the puppet - the heart and soul of Elmo - Kevin Clash.
Buck (Director: Cindy Meehl) - In a story about the power of non-violence, master horse trainer Buck Brannaman uses principles of respect and trust to tame horses and inspire their human counterparts.Crime After Crime (Director: Yoav Potash) - Debbie Peagler is a survivor of brutal domestic violence incarcerated for her connection to the murder of her abuser. Two decades later a pair of rookie land-use attorneys cut their teeth on her case, attracting global attention to the troubled intersection of domestic violence and criminal justice.
Director of Photography Martina Radwan sets up to shoot "Hot Coffee"

Hot Coffee (Director: Susan Saladoff) - Following subjects whose lives have been devastated by an inability to access the courts, this film shows that many long-held beliefs about our civil justice system have been paid for by corporate America.
Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles (Director: Jon Foy) — An urban mystery unfurls as one man pieces together the surreal meaning of hundreds of cryptic tiled messages that have been appearing in city streets across the U.S. and South America.
How to Die in Oregon (Director: Peter D. Richardson)

In 1994 Oregon became the first state to legalize physician-assisted suicide. How to Die in Oregon gently enters the lives of terminally ill Oregonians to illuminate the power of death with dignity. Source: www.pronetworks.org

The Steel Bridge in Portland, Oregon


Bette Davis and Mayo Methot playing party-girls Mary Dwight Strauber and Estelle Porter in "Marked Woman" (1937)

Mayo Methot died alone in a motel room in Multnomah, Oregon, an outlying suburb of Portland, on June 9, 1951.
"In 1919 Mayo Methot graduates from Portland's prestigious private Catlin school and leaves Oregon for a small part in a Lionel Barrymore film ["Unseeing Eyes" (1923)] with William Randolph Hearst's Cosmopolitan Pictures. At the 1936 annual Screen Guild dinner in downtown L.A.'s Biltmore Hotel, Mayo reportedly meets an up and coming movie talent named Humphrey Bogart. Given his extraordinary stage presence and talent, Bogart finds fame in a wide variety of films. Humphrey Bogart and his wife Mayo Methot on the set of Michael Curtiz's film, 'Passage to Marseille' (1944)

Portland's Mayo Methot indeed makes the big time, performing before audiences in New York and the cameras of Hollywood. But by the time Bogart leaves Mayo for Lauren Bacall, Mayo's already troubled life worsens. For Mayo Methot, the staying power of celebrity wanes like applause at the end of a performance. Years after her death, a dozen roses reportedly arrive at her crypt each week. It's rumored Bogart sends them. In 1957, when Bogart passes away, Mayo's flowers are said to stop arriving at the Portland Memorial". -"Whispers From The Rae Room" by Roy Widing (2009)

Kristen Dunst in LULA MAGAZINE Issue # 11, "White Chalk" photoshoot by Autumn de Wilde
The color white has long been a symbol of innocence and virtue. But there is a sinister aspect as well. White is often used as an eerie juxtaposition against darker elements. "The virgin suicides" young Cecilia's innocence is illuminated all the more in her untimely death in her childlike white dress.
Kirsten Dunst in Lula Magazine Issue #5

"Daisy and Jordan lay upon an enormous couch, like silver idols weighing down their own white dresses against the singing breeze of the fans" -F. Scott Fitzgerald in "The Great Gatsby" (1925)

"I'm afraid I promised to dance the next one with Dorothy Parker, Fitzgerald said. We met at the Garden of Allah and went to the Clover Club, a gambling place with dining and dancing upstairs. Scott said little on the way out, there was a reticence about him that made me feel he belonged to an earlier, quieter world. His clothes, too, spoke of another time: he wore a pepper-and-salt suit and a bow tie, and though this was July, a wrinkled charcoal raincoat with a scarf about his neck and a battered hat. It was hard to believe that this was the glamour boy of the twenties. At the bar we were introduced to Humphrey Bogart and his wife, Mayo Methot. Won't you have a drink with us? Bogart asked Scott. He shook his head and said, pleasantly, no. Bogart seemed surprised. We sat with them for a few minutes and Scott made some light jokes about a picture he was writing for M-G-M. The Bogarts laughed and I caught respect and deference". -"Crazy Sundays: F. Scott Fitzgerald in Hollywood" by Aaron Latham