For Part 2 of our Acteur Spotlight on Jennifer Jason Leigh we watched Robert Altman's cinematic embodiment of the Raymond Carver universe, Short Cuts (1993), and one of Dave's all-time faves, Altman collaborator Alan Rudolph's portrait of Dorothy Parker, her loves, and her milieu, Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (1994). We grapple with exactly why Altman wants us to spend so much time with these "automaton" characters what kind of stakes are behind the dissociative, self-destructive behaviours, and compare Leigh's sex worker to Isabelle Huppert's in Chabrol's Une affaire de femmes, then turn to pondering why the darkest and most "saintly" comedic spirits of the Algonquin Round Table were drawn to each other, at least according to the lore of Rudolph's film.

Time Codes:

0h 00m 20s: SHORT CUTS (1993) [dir. Robert Altman]

0h 45m 49s: MRS. PARKER & THE VICIOUS CIRCLE (1994) [dir. Alan Rudolph]

1h 20m 05s: So This is Sarris (Andrew Sarris's The American Cinema) – John Brahm

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* Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: "Sunday" by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise's piece on Gangs of New York – "Making America Strange Again"

* Check out Dave's Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

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