Category Archives: biopics

The Girl, The Birds, and a plethora of meaning.

Posted on by under biopics, the horror!

HBO’s recent television film The Girl, which purports to portray the “true” story behind the relationship between Tippi Hedren and Alfred Hitchcock, is instead an abysmally twisted recreation of the dynamic between the actress and the legendary director. The movie is based largely on biographer Donald Spoto’s Spellbound by Beauty: Alfred Hitchcock and His Leading Ladies (2008), a book for which Hedren contributed–for the first time–tales of her troubles with Hitchcock during the production of her two films with him: 1963′s The Birds, and 1964′s Marnie. 

Not having read Spoto’s book, I cannot comment on how faithfully screenwriter Gwyneth Hughes adapted the original material into her teleplay, but if it’s at all close to the source material, I can firmly say I have no interest in reading Spoto’s treatise. The resulting film is shallow, biased, and wholly lacking in veracity and depth (the term “hatchet-job” might be an appropriate one here). From the very start, it is evident that the film has an agenda; the “dirty old man” vibe thrown off by The Girl is unmistakable, with Hitchcock coming off as the wily and dangerous predator to Hedren’s innocent and ultimately helpless victim.

But all of that might be excusable (and provide the same kind of campy fun as other ridiculously superficial biopics, such as 1989′s Great Balls of Fire!) were it the slightest bit entertaining as well. Sadly, an excellent cast is grossly misused here. Toby Jones’ Hitchcock is a doddering and somewhat pathetic shadow of the man himself (even the voice, despite its undeniable similarity to the director’s own, comes off as mere parody here). Sienna Miller, a woman whose limited acting abilities are actually on par with Hedren’s, if truth be told, is slightly more lively than the mechanical birds shown in a couple of scenes–whether she’s trying to ape Hedren’s legendary woodenness or just can’t quite pull off the character as written is anybody’s guess. And when Alma Hitchcock–played by the otherwise excellent Imelda Staunton–is not being shunted aside as a mere secondary character, she is depicted as a jealous, bitter, snide caricature–poor treatment of a woman who was Hitchcock’s most trusted adviser and helpmate throughout the course of his career and life, a woman whom Hedren herself acknowledged as being considerate and thoughtful in advising the upstart actress (at least Staunton gets the most biting comment of the film, telling her husband, “The day she drops her knickers, you’ll run a mile”).

Truly, it boggles the mind how such a film was ever produced. Not only that, it’s absolutely infuriating that viewers who have no background at all about either Hedren or Hitchcock will no doubt base their opinions of these two figures on their portrayal in this film. Neither of them comes off very well at all, and neither of them honestly deserves to be painted this way.

[For more regarding Hitch and Hedren, check out playwright Elisabeth Karlin's recent article "The Art of Accusing Hitchcock," posted on the Alfred Hitchcock Geek blog.]

The single positive thing to come out of watching The Girl this past weekend is that it led me back to The Birds, a movie I had not seen in a couple of years. I doubt many will ever mistake The Birds for being one of Hitchcock’s better works. But it is, perhaps, the most allegorical tale the director ever put to film, and that in itself makes it quite appealing.

One of the universal questions that most viewers of The Birds leave the film asking is: what do the bird attacks mean? Are they a symbol of something? A means of retribution of some kind? Do they have any meaning at all? Hitchcock never answers the question–the attacks are the grand “MacGuffin” of the film, the device that furthers the plot and allows the director to string together his intended narrative. Indeed, Hitchcock really never intended us to question the “why” of The Birds, just as we are not meant to inquire about the “government secrets” driving the plot of North by Northwest (1959), or the aircraft plans in The 39 Steps (1935), or the uranium in Notorious (1948), because those things ultimately have little to do with the story Hitchcock has crafted on the screen. But in regards to The Birds, speculation about the MacGuffin is rather unavoidable, in part because, unlike the previously-mentioned MacGuffin-driven plots, the story of The Birds does not hold together successfully as a tale on its own merits. The bird attacks range from benign to merely serviceable, never fully treading into “horror” territory the way Hitchcock’s previous film, Psycho, did so chillingly. Further, the central romance between Melanie (Hedren) and Mitch (Rod Taylor) is not an overly interesting one; aside from small bouts of could-be-wittier banter, the pair lacks a great deal of chemistry, and Mitch’s interest in Melanie is never fully clear (other than, you know, the fact that she looks like Tippi Hedren). And because we lack a better focus in the film, it’s easy to fixate on the birds themselves, to try to understand their behavior.

There’s no dearth of speculation out there about the “meaning” of The Birds. Here are a few of my favorite theories.

A Freudian/Feminist Spin on the Attacks

This viewpoint, which borrows heavily from feminist criticism of the film posited by Camille Paglia, recasts the “birds” of the title as the women in Mitch’s life (“bird” being slang for a female–usually intended to refer to a sexually-attractive girl, but given a generalized feminine definition here). There are three women whose relationships with Mitch are disrupted somewhat by Melanie’s arrival in Bodega Bay: his mother, Lydia (Jessica Tandy); his former lover, Annie (Suzanne Pleshette); and, to a much lesser degree, his sister, Cathy (Veronica Cartwright). All three of these women essentially spend their lives “flocking” around Mitch; he is, in a sense, their whole world, the singular male authority figure in all of their lives. When Melanie arrives, boasting a leashed, potent sexuality that threatens to displace their shared “roost” (so to speak), the physical bird attacks can be seen as emanating from the three displaced women’s collective anger and frustration.

Note that the first attack comes after Melanie has entered Lydia and Cathy’s “roost” to leave the lovebirds for Cathy; the seagull’s dive-bombing attack is a warning shot that Melanie ignores. She moves on to Annie’s territory by choosing to board with her for the night; another warning shot arrives as another gull slams itself into Annie’s front door. The first full-fledged attack comes at Cathy’s birthday party, which Melanie attends (note, however, that the link to Cathy is tenuous, at best. Cathy welcomes Melanie and is genuinely pleased with her gift, though a Freudian analysis would speculate that she nonetheless harbors a deep-seated, subconscious fear that Melanie will “replace” her in her brother’s affections). It is after the party that all hell breaks loose and the attacks begin to spread across town, culminating in Annie’s death and accusations from a hysterical woman who superstitiously points at Melanie as the “evil” source of the attacks. The attacks only end when Melanie essentially “sacrifices” herself to an onslaught of birds in the end of the film–her subsequent catatonia and helplessness lead Lydia to take on the role of “mother,” and it can be assumed that it is her implicit acceptance of Melanie (and the regaining of her position as the “head” female character) which precipitates the end of the chaos and the uneasy detente at the conclusion of the film.

Through the Lens of the Cold War

Released in the midst of years-long tensions with the USSR, and a mere five months after the resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis, The Birds seems at times to reverberate with a bone-deep fear of hostile, outside forces attacking the helpless populace. By extension, the film can be seen as a symbolic representation of the potentially deadly outcome of the Cold War, with the United States (as represented by Bodega Bay) demonstrating a decided inability to respond in kind to an outside threat.

The nuclear arms race during the Cold War was a game of uncertainty. Neither side was ever fully aware of what the other side was cooking up in its labs and military installations. Either side could, for all the other knew, be harboring a weapon of such destructive capabilities that its opponents would have no means of recourse. Looking at The Birds in light of 1960s geopolitics, it stands to reason that the attacks, for which the human victims have no true method of like response, can be viewed allegorically as such a weapon, promising to rain terror on the heads of innocents and promising annihilation.

Religious Connotations

Are the bird attacks the harbingers of an apocalyptic scenario that will see the end of the world–or, at least, the end of humanity as we know it? In the world of the film, there is no scientific explanation as to why the birds are attacking the human occupants of the town–even the ornithologist (Ethel Griffies) is stymied by what’s going on, even though she initially denies that it’s intentional of the animals’ part (“Birds are not aggressive creatures”). So is there a spiritual or metaphysical cause behind the attacks? An old drunk in the diner thinks so: “It’s the end of the world. Thus sayeth the Lord God unto the mountains and the hills, and the rivers and the valleys. Behold I, even I shall bring a sword upon ya. And I will devastate your high places. Ezekiel, chapter six.”

It certainly feels cataclysmic, watching the destruction of a town from something as relatively benign as a flock of birds. It brings to mind the plagues of Egypt, with feathered fiends standing in for mounds of frogs and sheets of locusts. Hitchcock’s direction even feeds into the apocalyptic notion, with the intermittent camera shots of the burning town from a birds-eye view (in the wake of the gas station explosion): are the birds (representative of the forces of God?) looking down upon the misery they have wrought/the retribution they have meted out, and judging humanity? Or are they just flying above the fray? In any case, those of us watching it on the screen are, at the very least, reminded of our own mortality, of the fragility of human life and the forces of nature that can easily douse it.

Chaos Theory

Hitchcock was a fan of the chaotic. Just a glance at his filmography shows a distinct fondness for putting characters into barely-controllable situations and watching them navigate their way through utter bedlam. In The Birds, Hitchcock crafts his most anarchic set-up yet: nature itself has turned against humanity, and there is no escape. It’s a role reversal of the most deliciously diabolical kind, per Christopher D. Morris: at the start of the film, it is birds who are caged by humans; by the film’s conclusion, it is the birds who are, in essence, caging mankind (and as if to make absolutely certain that we don’t miss the metaphor, Hitchcock puts Hedren in a telephone booth).

To be sure, Hitchcock’s films seem to take an immense amount of pleasure in ripping away the veneers of civilization and exposing the frailties underneath. There is both a literal and a figurative breakdown of society in this film: the birds physically destroy the things (possessions) that separate animal from human, while at the same time decimating the established way of life and snapping the bonds of various relationships between people and, at large, the world around them. And this film succeeds more than perhaps any other Hitchcock production in demonstrating the ineffectiveness of “civilization” (as a concept) in the face of pandemonium. Homes, schools, businesses are invaded. There is no place any of these people can go to be completely safe from the attacking birds. Repeatedly, we see them infiltrating the inner sanctums of the characters, rendering them helpless. The characters may try to hide or ignore the chaos around them but, as Hitchcock gleefully reminds us time after time, they cannot. Thus the film becomes an allegory of humanity’s tenuous relationship with nature, postulating the theory that, should nature someday turn against us, mankind is (to put it bluntly) utterly fucked. Any illusion that we have any measure of control over nature is just that–an illusion.

Regardless of how you view the film, or how you personally analyze the MacGuffin at its heart, one thing is clear: The Birds is, in many ways, a much deeper film than it is sometimes given credit for. There are sophisticated themes buried beneath the horror and the spectacle; the film is a veritable goldmine of allegorical interpretation. Indeed, the very act of analyzing this film’s MacGuffin is an allegorical construct–we, the film’s audience, attempt to ascribe meaning to an element of the film that, as it is presented to us, has no meaning. We are “reading” the film in a particular way, based on whatever preconceived notions we bring to it, just as the characters in the film try to “read” the birds’ attacks and ascribe meaning to them.

Quite the vicious cycle, is it not?

 

Sources and further reading regarding allegory and The Birds:
Morris, Christopher D. “Reading the birds and The Birds.” Literature Film Quarterly 28.4 (2000): 253-4.
Dirks, Tim. “The Birds (1963).” Filmsite. American Movie Classics, n.d. 23 Oct. 2012.
Paglia, Camille. The Birds (BFI Film Classics). London: British Film Institute, 1998.

There were never such devoted sisters.

Posted on by under biopics, blogathon, guilty pleasures, historical accuracy is for pbs

Do I contradict myself?
Very well, then, I contradict myself;
(I am large—I contain multitudes.)  –Walt Whitman

As regular readers can no doubt tell (and first-time visitors can likely glean from the quote above), I’m a lit nerd. I *heart* literature–the good, the bad, the trashy (hello, Harlequin romance) … I love it all (well, with the exception of Robinson Crusoe. Nothing can make me love that book. Blech). And I particularly enjoy seeing some of my favorites make their way onto the big screen.

In most cases of book-to-film adaptation, I am, admittedly, a literary purist. Wide-ranging changes to an author’s work for cinematic purposes tend to raise my blood pressure. And in many cases, I feel this is justified. When you invest part of yourself in a work of literature–fully adopting the mantle of “fan” (or, in the case of the Harry Potter series and yours truly, “rabid fan”)–there is a certain expectation that filmmakers will respect the author’s original vision and only make those alterations that are deemed necessary in the face of some visual limitation, time constraint, or (God forbid) gigantic hole in the plot or characterization.

Yet I contradict this attitude more often than I would perhaps be willing to admit. Sometimes, changing an author’s original intent can be a good thing. Pointing once again to the Harry Potter phenomenon, I feel the filmmakers did an excellent job, in general, of culling down the minutia of J.K. Rowling’s literary universe and presenting the spirit of the books on the big screen (I say “in general” here because I really disliked some of the changes made for the sixth film, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. But that’s another topic for another blog). Did the movies precisely follow the model of the books? No. But did they present Rowling’s work in a visually appealing, entertaining manner that demonstrated a great respect for said books? Most definitely.

The same theory can, in principle, be applied to films that play with historical events. Sometimes, it’s difficult for me to put aside what I know of history and watch a movie through the “alternate timeline” lens–for instance, I had a particular problem with this in watching 2009′s Inglorious Basterds (the grammarian in me also took issue with the misspelled title, despite Quentin Tarantino’s attempted justifications. Hey, spelling is important, y’all). I tried–I honestly tried–to remember that I was watching a film that is set in a completely different universe. But I could not lose myself in the movie, because history lessons of the past continued to pound at my brain as I watched Adolf Hitler bite it in a movie theater, a full year before his actual death in a German bunker.

Somehow, though, I don’t really have a problem with most of the extreme liberties taken by 1946′s Devotion, a fictionalized version of the life of the Brontë sisters. And when I say “fictionalized,” I mean that practically the only thing the characters in this film have in common with the literary sisters is their shared names. So why doesn’t this bother me as much as Tarantino’s film? Perhaps it’s because I’m used to biographies exaggerating the lives of their subjects. Veracity in the biopic genre is, at best, a pipe dream. Most of the movies that I’ve seen that purport to be the “true-life” story of So-and-So tend to heighten the drama in lieu of focusing on that boring, pesky interloper, realism.

Devotion is no exception to this rule. To me, it remains the guiltiest of guilty-pleasure flicks, a so-wrong-that-it’s-almost-right journey into a skewed early-Victorian universe. I find it to be endlessly entertaining, if only for its beautiful staging, gorgeous (if sometimes incongruous, given the Brontës’ general poverty) costumes, and the performances of its lead actresses, Ida Lupino and Olivia de Havilland, who trudge through the sometimes maudlin material with grace and aplomb … though both women are way too beautiful to play a pair of sisters who were, by most accounts, rather plain and unassuming.

"Devoted" sisters: de Havilland, Lupino, and Coleman.

Charlotte (de Havilland) and Emily (Lupino) Brontë, along with their sister, Anne (played by Nancy Coleman, whose presence in the film is negligible), are aspiring writers living with their father (Montagu Love, in his final performance), a vicar, and their brother, Branwell (Arthur Kennedy), an aspiring artist who would rather get drunk than paint. The new curate, Arthur Nicholls (Paul Henreid), initially forms a tentative relationship with the brooding Emily, but soon falls in love with Charlotte. Meanwhile, both sisters have fallen in love with Nicholls, and each uses him as the model for the hero of her respective novel–Rochester in Charlotte’s Jane Eyre, and Heathcliff in Emily’s Wuthering Heights. Charlotte’s novel, which becomes the more successful of the two, eventually leads to her friendship with the noted author William Makepeace Thackeray (Sydney Greenstreet), who nonetheless admits his preference for Emily’s work. Meanwhile, Nicholls, unwilling to break Emily’s heart by confessing his love for Charlotte, leaves the countryside to work in London, until a double dose of tragedy brings him back.

I have read both Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights numerous times over the years, and I agree with Greenstreet’s Thackeray–to me, Emily’s work is infinitely better. I don’t particularly care for Jane Eyre (I could go into the reasons why, but I doubt you came here looking for a dissertation on the subject). Wuthering Heights, on the other hand, has been a favorite of mine for years. It seems so much more authentically emotional to me than Charlotte’s book–which is all the more unusual because the real Emily Brontë was somewhat of a recluse, home-bound because of poor health, and by most accounts had no romantic life of which to speak. Damned if she didn’t have one hell of an imagination, though. To have created such a complex character as Heathcliff–a man by turns tortured, villainous, charming, sympathetic, and loathsome–with little basis in experience or actual acquaintance with a similar personality, is an impressive feat.

Which is why the casting of Henreid as the curate who supposedly influenced the creation of Heathcliff is so utterly curious to me. Henreid functions in the film as a steady, solid figure of masculine authority. Yet he lacks the fire and the energy that would indicate this man, Nicholls, could possibly influence the conception of a figure like Heathcliff, who is akin to the devil himself. There’s nothing solid about Heathcliff–he exists on the edge of madness, at times, unable to control his baser emotions and letting revenge and hatred guide his every move. On the other hand, Henreid, as an actor, tended to gravitate toward bland leading-man roles (Now, Voyager) or supporting characters (Casablanca) who were almost bloodless in their lack of passion and verve. Hard to believe, then, that Henreid’s Nicholls could indulge in, or even condone, flights of flaming fervor and intensity. Can you say “miscast?”

Lupino, on the other hand, was a great choice to play Emily, in my opinion. She captures the more repressed side of the writer without delving into depressive fits or hysterics, as some who tackled the role might have been tempted to do (ahem, Miriam Hopkins, I’m looking at you). There is a quiet dignity that Lupino brings to the part that contrasts nicely with de Havilland’s more lively presence in the film. Lupino’s performance demonstrates her innate skill at capturing the nuances of a character. But by the time Devotion was released, Lupino had already begun to express an interest in moving beyond acting to take up directing. To that end, when Lupino’s studio contract expired in 1947, she became a free agent, which allowed her the freedom to pursue interests outside of acting–writing, producing, and, ultimately, directing. In 1949, Lupino finally got her wish when she took over direction of Not Wanted, which was being developed through her own production company, The Filmmakers. Though she would continue to act through the late 1970s, Lupino ultimately directed half a dozen more films and untold hours of television programs including episodes of The Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and Bewitched, among numerous others. For a period of time from the late 1940s through the mid-1950s, Ida Lupino was the only female director working in Hollywood.

For her part, the notoriously difficult de Havilland does well with the more direct, controlling aspects of Charlotte’s character, and there’s little indication of any behind-the-scenes turmoil in her performance. But the movie came at a pivotal point in de Havilland’s career. Devotion actually finished filming in 1943, but was not released in theaters until three years later. This was due to de Havilland’s landmark lawsuit against the studio that controlled her contract, Warner Bros. When Olivia’s seven-year contract with the studio came to a close in 1943 after completion of Devotion, the studio tried to tack on an extra six months to make up for previous “suspensions.” She sued and won the following year, as the California courts agreed that contracts were only enforceable for a set number of calendar years, with no addendum allowed to make up for time when an actor was not working. The decision ultimately weakened the studio system–the movie studio giants had coasted along for years taking advantage of their contract players, forcing them into a kind of indentured servitude. The de Havilland law, as it came to be known, thereafter guaranteed performers much more freedom in their careers. And though de Havilland’s stand against the studio system could have spelled disaster for her career, it instead ushered in a period of great success for the actress, as she would go on to win two Academy Awards for Best Actress (1946′s To Each Their Own and 1949′s The Heiress).

If you’re looking for an accurate portrayal of the life of the Brontë sisters, you’d be better served to look elsewhere. But for sheer entertainment value, you can’t beat the combination of Ida and Olivia (with the ever delightfully droll Greenstreet thrown in for good measure). Just remember to take the “facts” of their lives with a couple hundred grains of salt …

This post is my contribution to the “Spread the Ida Love” blogathon hosted by Jen at the Ida Lupino blog. For more entries from other contributors, check out her site.

“The king is not ordinary man.”

Posted on by under biopics, brandie's faves, historical accuracy is for pbs

In 1862, a young British widow and teacher, Anna Leonowens, arrived in the small Asian nation of Siam (now Thailand) to accept a position as governess to the court of the country’s ruler, King Mongkut. Her pupils comprised the king’s expansive harem, made up of over one hundred wives, mistresses, and children, all of whom he wished to be educated in a “Western” manner. After more than five years in the service of Mongkut’s court, Leonowens returned to Great Britain and, several years later, produced two highly fictionalized memoirs of her time in Siam: The English Governess at the Siamese Court (1870) and Romance of the Harem (1873). In 1944, almost thirty years after Leonowens’ death, author Margaret Landon adapted these memoirs into the bestselling Anna and the King of Siam, which further exaggerated the English teacher’s experiences, highlighting Anna’s supposed influence on Mongkut’s political decisions and personal life.

Two years later, 20th Century Fox acquired the rights to the story and produced a film based on the material, also called Anna and the King of Siam. The movie version was one of Fox’s most successful productions of the year, eventually winning two Academy Awards (for cinematography and art direction) and critical praise. Still, the 1946 version of Leonowens’ life is not the most well-known today; a decade later, Fox’s musical adaptation of the story, called The King and I (based on the Tony Award-winning 1951 stage musical) would go on to even greater success, winning five Oscars and almost universal acclaim.

I enjoy the musical (particularly Yul Brynner’s charming, Oscar-winning performance as the King), but ultimately there seems to be something missing from the movie, particularly in comparison to its older counterpart. The addition of songs to the story makes for a lighter tale, with the drama created by the clashing Eastern and Western values being mined for laughs in lieu of making any profound statements about the intrinsic differences between cultures. In my mind, the 1946 version’s more serious take on the material simply makes for an overall better film.

This version of the tale stars Irene Dunne as Leonowens and Rex Harrison as the King. Dunne was initially thought by Fox chief Daryl F. Zanuck to be “too old” for the part of Anna (the actress was 48 at the time)—he envisioned Dorothy McGuire for the role, but could not work out an arrangement to borrow the actress from the notoriously difficult David O. Selznick. Zanuck also wanted William Powell or Charles Boyer for the part of the King before Harrison was finally awarded the part.

Dunne and Harrison ultimately work very well opposite one another, demonstrating an easy chemistry and on-screen camaraderie that adds great depth to their portrayals of these characters. Though Harrison is not one of my favorite actors, this is my favorite of his film performances. I’ve always perceived him as a somewhat stilted actor, and strangely enough, that quality works for him in this part (incidentally, this movie presented the British Harrison with his first American film role). Dunne, for her part, is a typically lovely presence—she adds a spunky nature to Anna that is somewhat dampened in Deborah Kerr’s portrayal in the musical version. And in case you were wondering, the gorgeous Dunne definitely doesn’t look “too old” in the role.

The supporting cast is equally capable, and is filled with some familiar faces including Lee J. Cobb as the King’s Prime Minister (Kralahome); Linda Darnell as the doomed young wife Tuptim; and Gale Sondergaard as Lady Thiang, the number-one wife. Sondergaard was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance. Other notable names associated with the production of the movie include composer Bernard Herrmann, who infused the score with the distinctive sound of gongs, and actor/director John Cromwell, who helmed the production.

Though I find the movie to be thoroughly enjoyable, the material is admittedly unrealistic, amounting to little more than a kind of fairy tale. That a woman—even a woman of foreign birth, not subject to the rules and social mores of the kingdom of Siam—could exercise so much influence on a decidedly patriarchal ruler is the stuff of pure fantasy. Leonowens herself admitted as much, as did her erstwhile biographer Landon, both of whom acknowledged that Leonowens’ tales had been significantly exaggerated to elevate Leonowens’ importance in the Siamese court. And the film embellishes the tales further still to heighten dramatic effect: for example, the movie version kills off Anna’s son, Louis, in a riding accident, but the real Louis lived well into adulthood and even returned to Siam in later years and served a term in the country’s military). The movie also depicts Anna as being present at the King’s death and her subsequently remaining in Siam to help his son, the new King, in his duties—in actuality, she left the country a year before Mongkut passed away and never returned. The factual inaccuracies and the film’s depiction of the King (particularly his behavior in the incident with Tuptim) led to the country of Thailand actually banning the movie (and the subsequent versions) for “unfavorable” and “offensive” views of the monarchy.

Leonowens’ story was adapted once more in 1999 in Anna and the King, starring Jodie Foster and Chow Yun-fat. For some reason, the filmmakers added a subplot of a military coup (because the innate culture clash at the heart of the story was not dramatic enough for them?), but even a halfhearted attempt to add elements of action to the plot is not enough to keep this version of the story from being utterly uninteresting. If you’re looking to take a trip into the fictionalized Siam of old, trust me—you’d be much better off going with the 1946 take on the material.

If you’ve seen the multiple versions of Anna Leonowens’ cinematic life, tell me: which film treatment is your favorite?