{"id":38918,"date":"2018-02-05T20:16:28","date_gmt":"2018-02-06T02:16:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/?p=38918"},"modified":"2018-02-05T20:16:28","modified_gmt":"2018-02-06T02:16:28","slug":"who-got-played-a-guest-post-by-jeff-smith-on-the-player","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/2018\/02\/05\/who-got-played-a-guest-post-by-jeff-smith-on-the-player\/","title":{"rendered":"Who got played? A guest post by Jeff Smith on THE PLAYER"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Player<\/strong> (1992).<\/em><\/p>\n

Jeff Smith, our collaborator on Film Art: An Introduction<\/strong>\u00a0just recorded an installment of our Observations on Film Art<\/strong><\/a> series for the Criterion Channel<\/a> on FilmStruck<\/a>. Here’s a supplement to that. –DB<\/em><\/p>\n

In my installment, focusing on genre play in The Player,\u00a0<\/em>I discuss Robert Altman’s film\u00a0<\/em>in relation to two important traditions in Hollywood cinema: crime thrillers and films about filmmaking. As anyone who knows Altman\u2019s other films would expect, The Player<\/em>\u00a0toys with the conventions of both genres in a number of different ways.<\/p>\n

As I note in the video, The Player<\/em> was received as something of a comeback film for Altman. It augured a resurgence in the director\u2019s career that ultimately produced such late masterpieces as Short Cuts<\/em> and Gosford Park<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Today, I sketch out some additional ideas about The Player<\/em>\u2019s use of genre conventions. I hope to shed light on some other connections to the crime thriller that I didn\u2019t discuss in the video. I also hope to show just how unusual the film is in this context. Spoilers<\/strong> ahead, not only for The Player<\/em> but for the novel and film of The Ax<\/em>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Will the real Griffin Mill please stand up?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In Reinventing Hollywood<\/em>, David notes that there are usually four sorts of characters involved in a crime thriller plot: victims, lawbreakers, forces of justice, and more or less innocent bystanders. Filmmakers customarily organize the film\u2019s narration around one or more of these character roles. Typically, a cascade of further choices flows from this initial decision about whose perspective forms the focal point of the story.<\/p>\n

In The Player<\/em>, much of the narration is restricted to the knowledge of the protagonist, Griffin Mill. The film includes a few scenes where Griffin is not present, like the one where the studio\u2019s management awaits his arrival at a meeting. That, in itself, is not unusual. Many thrillers, like Chinatown<\/em> or The Ghost Writer<\/em>, employ similar tactics. What is slightly unusual is the fact Griffin takes on two of the typical character roles in the crime thriller as both victim and lawbreaker.<\/p>\n

Griffin is a suit, and as a studio functionary he doesn’t immediately engender audience sympathy. Our first glimpse of Griffin shows him listening to pitch sessions. His questions to the people proposing new film projects are glib and capricious, representing the worst aspects of Hollywood commercialism.<\/p>\n

Yet The Player <\/em>does marshall some sympathy for Griffin as the victim of a stalker. Every time Griffin finds a postcard in his mail or on his car, it reminds us that he might be in mortal danger. After the stalker plants a venomous rattlesnake in Griffin’s passenger seat, we can’t believe the threats are empty.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Any sympathy that Griffin garners as a result of this psychological warfare is mollified, though, when the victim becomes victimizer. As Griffin later explains to June, his job is to tell people \u201cno\u201d more than a thousand times each year. Griffin believes that one of these rejections is the reason for the threatening postcards he receives. But he tragically miscalculates in targeting aspiring screenwriter David Kahane as the likely suspect.<\/p>\n

Griffin contrives a meeting with Kahane at a Pasadena movie theater, and having bumped into him, tries to make amends. Yet Kahane recognizes that he is being pimped. This leads to a shouting match in a parking lot with Kahane threatening to ruin Griffin\u2019s reputation. And when Kahane accidentally knocks Griffin over with his car door, Griffin reacts with rage, grabbing the screenwriter\u2019s head and banging it repeatedly against the lot\u2019s concrete surface. Although it seems clear that Griffin was acting on impulse, he\u2019s nonetheless crossed a line that separates victims from perpetrators.<\/p>\n

More importantly, Griffin\u2019s violent action complicates the viewer\u2019s allegiance to him. Altman establishes a dramatic context in which the motivations for Griffin\u2019s crime seem completely understandable. Yet whatever sympathies viewers might have for Griffin are muddled by his creepy romantic interest in Kahane\u2019s girlfriend; his cruel treatment of Bonnie, his current partner; and the general smarminess he exudes as a successful but shallow executive. Crime thrillers often ask audiences to sympathize with heels. There\u2019s nothing that Griffin does that is inherently evil, but there’s nothing to really like. It’s less about his crime and more about his slime.<\/p>\n

Griffin\u2019s passage from victim to lawbreaker also alters the typical thriller plot. At the start of the film, Griffin himself functions as the investigative agent, trying desperately to figure out who is threatening him. Once Griffin becomes a suspect himself, though, that line of action halts, and the Pasadena police\u2019s investigation of Kahane\u2019s death springs up in its place.<\/p>\n

This shift in the direction of the plot doesn\u2019t really change the film\u2019s pattern of narration. We remain as ignorant of the police\u2019s activities as Griffin is. What does change are the stakes of the narrative. Instead of eliciting curiosity and suspense about Griffin\u2019s stalker, we now wonder whether he’ll ever be brought to justice for Kahane\u2019s death. Despite its strong connections and frequent allusions to crime fiction, The Player<\/em> is not so much a whodunit as it is a will-he-get-away-with-it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

They smile in your face, all the time they want to take your place\u2026.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Besides blurring the boundaries between Griffin\u2019s role as both victim and lawbreaker, The Player<\/em> falls into a specific subgenre of crime fiction: the corporate thriller. Since, the corporate thriller is mostly defined by its setting, it blends pretty easily with the typical thriller plots and characters.<\/p>\n

Like the spy thriller, the corporate thriller can focus on protagonists engaged in industrial espionage, as we see in Duplicity<\/em>, Demon Lover<\/em>, or Paycheck<\/em>. Christopher Nolan\u2019s Inception<\/em> blends the plot mechanics of these corporate espionage thrillers with science fiction tropes to provide a narrative frame, but then embeds elements of the heist film within it.<\/p>\n

Like the political thriller, the corporate thriller might also focus on the backroom deals and machinations that enable the protagonist to move up the company ladder. A film like Disclosure <\/em>is a paradigm case. But even romantic comedies or prestige dramas can borrow elements from it. (Think Working Girl<\/em> and Glengarry Glen Ross<\/em>.)<\/p>\n

More commonly, though, corporate thrillers feature elements drawn from the crime thriller. The roots of this approach to the genre stretch back a long way and can be found in both literary and cinematic antecedents. Some plots, for example, follow investigations that expose corporate malfeasance. Others focus on murders committed within a corporate environment, as in Dorothy Sayers\u2019s novel\u00a0Murder Must Advertise<\/em> and Kenneth Fearing\u2019s novel (and film)\u00a0The Big Clock<\/em> and in more\u00a0modern instances like Michael Crichton\u2019s Rising Sun<\/em> and John Grisham’s The Firm.<\/em> Other corporate crime thrillers, like Bret Easton Ellis\u2019s\u00a0American Psycho<\/em>\u00a0(below) and Cindy Sherman\u2019s\u00a0Office Killer,\u00a0<\/em>involve serial murders in white-collar environments.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The corporate crime thriller enables writers and filmmakers to explore thematic parallels between the acts of brutality and violence committed by individuals and the cutthroat tactics employed by business institutions. The plots of many gangster films center on rival mobs battling for competitive dominance in black market trades. Such conflicts often seem like a logical extension of the laissez-faire<\/em> principles that undergird capitalism. Corporate crime thrillers tread similar thematic territory. They sometimes suggest that the personality traits that make for good business executives and titans of industry are the same ones that produce sociopaths and serial killers.<\/p>\n

The Player<\/em>\u00a0presents the familiar corporate-thriller rivalry, as Griffin works behind the scenes to outmaneuver Larry Levy. For example,\u00a0Griffin momentarily ponders using Larry\u2019s admission that he attends Alcoholics Anonymous meetings as a way of embarrassing him within the company. Larry quickly undercuts this strategy, though, when he states that he just goes to the meetings because they are a great place to network.<\/p>\n

Even more telling is Griffin\u2019s efforts to saddle Larry with a loser project, Habeas Corpus<\/em>. Midway through The Player<\/em>, Griffin makes a deal with Andy Civella and Tom Oakley at a Los Angeles restaurant. The next day, he convinces his boss to greenlight the project with Larry as producer, knowing that Tom will likely prove difficult to work with and that his plan to use unknown actors has disaster written all over it. Larry, though, has the last laugh when we get a sneak peek of Habeas Corpus<\/em> at film\u2019s end. Not only does it have big stars in Julia Roberts and Bruce Willis. It also has the kind of happy ending that the pretentious Tom claimed was too Hollywood when he pitched the project. It turns out Tom cares more about the results of preview screenings than he does the purity of his artistic vision.<\/p>\n

Not surprisingly, Altman doesn\u2019t give us a wholly straightforward version of the corporate thriller. In a reflexive and ironic touch, Griffin\u2019s successful ascent to studio boss seems to be secured by the same mysterious stalker who\u2019d been taunting him at the start of the film. In a phone call, the stalker pitches Griffin the plot of the film we\u2019ve just been watching, using his knowledge of Griffin\u2019s crime to leverage his project into development. Here we see Altman slightly reframing the genre\u2019s thesis about the relationship between crime and business. Griffin\u2019s pact with his blackmailing stalker is simply a mildly illicit version of the sorts of quid pro quo arrangements upon which thousands of business deals are made.<\/p>\n

If Griffin\u2019s efforts to forestall a rival evoke the political thriller, then his killing of screenwriter David Kahane connects\u00a0The Player <\/em>to the corporate crime thriller. Once again, \u00a0Altman deviates from some of the conventions. The crime doesn’t take place inside a corporate setting, as in Rising Sun<\/em> and Murder Must Advertise<\/em>. Griffin kills Kahane in the very public space of a Pasadena parking lot, with film noir overtones.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Similarly, Griffin\u2019s victim is not a colleague, co-worker, subordinate, or client. Rather, Kahane is someone with whom Griffin has had minimal contact, a name plucked almost randomly from a directory of screenwriters in order to jog Griffin\u2019s memory. Consequently, Griffin\u2019s motives for confronting Kahane seem quite different from the culprits in other corporate crime thrillers. More often than not, the murderers in these other stories fear job loss or try to silence others in an effort to cover up some smaller crime or bungled action. Griffin\u2019s actions with Kahane spring from fear about threats to his physical well-being, not from threats to his continued employment. (The latter is Larry\u2019s role.)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Some of The Player<\/em>\u2019s deviations from more conventional corporate crime thrillers come into relief if we compare it to Donald Westlake\u2019s novel\u00a0The Ax<\/em>, a purer example of the genre. The Ax<\/em> tells the story of Burke Devore, a production line manager recently downsized out of his job at a paper company. Still unemployed after eighteen months, Burke creates a phony job advertisement, and then begins to kill off the seven applicants he believes have the same qualifications he does. His plan is to eliminate all of the other unemployed middle managers in the paper business so that his resum\u00e9 will land at the top of the pile when a new factory opens in his area.<\/p>\n

Like Altman, Westlake has some fun with his central conceit. Just as The Player <\/em>includes faux film clips and rushes as a means of satirizing Hollywood production practices, The Ax <\/em>incorporates fictional resumes that tweak jobseekers’ business-speak. What makes Westlake\u2019s social criticism in The Ax <\/em>so resonant, though, is the utter banality of Burke\u2019s ambitions. He doesn\u2019t aspire to the garish lifestyle we see displayed by Tony Montana or Jordan Belfort in Scarface <\/em>and The Wolf of Wall Street <\/em>respectively. Instead Burke just wants to return to his modest middle-class lifestyle and to the dignity that a decent job afforded him. Serial murder just seems like the simplest way to achieve that.<\/p>\n

As this comparison suggests, one of the things that makes The Player<\/em> somewhat unusual as a corporate crime thriller is its play with character motivation and point of view. Facing threats and intimidation, Griffin looks more like the target of a crime than a perpetrator. In corporate thrillers, the lawbreaker is more likely to be somewhere in the middle of the corporate ladder, like Burke, than at the top of it. Moreover, although his actions are motivated by a strange combination of both vanity and insecurity, Griffin more or less stumbles into the crime he commits rather than coolly plotting it the way Burke does.<\/p>\n

Despite these differences, The Player <\/em>and The Ax <\/em>share an important feature that markedly deviates from the crime thriller as a whole. Both Griffin and Burke get away with it. The plots of most crime thrillers resolve in ways that balance the scales of justice. The bad guys are usually either arrested or killed after climactic confrontations with law enforcement. But this doesn\u2019t always happen. Burke, Patrick Bateman in American Psycho,\u00a0<\/em>and Dorine in Office Killer\u00a0<\/em>escape punishment. Even though Jordan Belfort is arrested in The Wolf of Wall Street<\/em>, he gets a slap on the wrist for his crimes.<\/p>\n

Perhaps this aspect of the corporate crime thriller reflects the cynicism and amorality that pervades the genre. After all, if your belief is that most corporations get away with murder in a figurative sense, then it\u2019s not hard to accept this idea when it occurs in fictional contexts in a literal sense.<\/p>\n

Still, in the case of The Player<\/em>, the Pasadena police\u2019s failure to prove their case against Griffin Mill may reflect a meshing of both authorial and generic tendencies. When Griffin embraces June in the stylized happy ending of The Player<\/em>, it quite deliberately parallels the tacked on happy ending of Habeas Corpus<\/em> we\u2019ve seen just moments earlier. The dialogue Griffin exchanges with June amplifies the similarity between these scenes. When June asks, \u201cWhat took you so long?\u201d, Griffin responds, \u201cTraffic was a bitch.\u201d These are the exact same lines exchanged by Julia Roberts and Bruce Willis in Habeas Corpus<\/em>. By allowing Griffin to get away with it, The Player<\/em>\u2019s \u201cup\u201d ending sharpens Altman\u2019s critique of Hollywood convention, and allows him to subvert the kinds of mainstream genre filmmaking he\u2019s long detested.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Both allusive and elusive: Comparing The Player <\/em>to Hollywood Story<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

One of the other topics I discuss in my video essay on The Player <\/em>is the way the film pays homage to various aspects of Hollywood tradition. Much of this is bound up with its satire of commercial filmmaking. But it also strengthens the film\u2019s relation to the crime thriller. Throughout The Player<\/em>, Altman makes reference to Hollywood\u2019s past in multiple ways. Celebrity cameos, film posters, and production stills populate the mise-en-scene. The characters also frequently mention older film titles in dialogue.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the most interesting allusion in The Player<\/em> involves a poster of Hollywood Story<\/em> that hangs in Griffin\u2019s office. The latter is a 1951 film noir directed by William Castle, who later became famous for his use of outrageous gimmicks in the production and promotion of horror films. For The Tingler<\/em>, Castle supervised the installation of devices that would vibrate theater seats, anticipating today\u2019s 4DX Theater Experience in places like Los Angeles, New York, Seattle, and Orlando.<\/p>\n

Hollywood Story<\/em> dramatizes the efforts of film producer Larry O\u2019Brien to develop a project around the unsolved murder of silent film director Franklin Ferrara. O\u2019Brien hires one of Ferrara\u2019s old scenarists to write the script. He also develops a close relationship with Sally Rousseau, the daughter of one of Ferrara\u2019s biggest stars. Once the project is announced, O\u2019Brien finds himself the target of an assassin\u2019s bullet. He surmises that his assailant is trying to prevent the case from being reopened. And as Sally reminds O\u2019Brien, he doesn\u2019t have an ending to his movie is he can\u2019t determine the killer\u2019s identity. O\u2019Brien, thus, sets out to solve the crime, bringing closure to one of the biggest scandals in Hollywood\u2019s history. Hollywood Story <\/em>offers an even better synthesis of The Player<\/em>\u2019s mixture of industry expos\u00e9 and crime film story beats. O\u2019Brien\u2019s lone wolf investigation is treated as being a necessary stage of project development.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

If the Franklin Ferrara story sounds vaguely familiar to you, well\u2026.it should. Hollywood Story<\/em> offers a fictionalized account of the unsolved murder of William Desmond Taylor, who was shot to death in his bungalow in the wee hours of a February night in 1922. (David blogged about the crime here<\/a>.) The subsequent investigation of Taylor\u2019s death ensnared some of the industry\u2019s biggest stars of the period. Mabel Normand\u2019s reputation was tainted by her association with Taylor and by reports of drug use. She took a brief hiatus from filmmaking because of the scandal, but never completely recovered from it. Normand later died of tuberculosis in 1930 at the tender age of 37.<\/p>\n

As a fictionalized account of a notorious unsolved crime, Hollywood Story <\/em>anticipates more modern thrillers that provide speculative solutions to real-life murders. Zodiac <\/em>and The Black Dahlia <\/em>are prime examples, as are any number of Jack the Ripper films. Hollywood Story<\/em>\u2019s approach was not unprecedented. James M. Cain based Double Indemnity<\/em> on the Ruth Snyder case that was fodder for New York tabloids in the late 1920s. That said, Taylor\u2019s death lingered for decades in popular memory in a way that the Snyder case did not.<\/p>\n

What are we to make of The Player<\/em>\u2019s citation of Hollywood Story<\/em>? On the one hand, viewers might well notice the almost immediate parallel of our \u201cfilm execs in jeopardy\u201d storylines. Just as Griffin is stalked by an unknown assailant, so, too, is Larry the target of a shadowy aggressor. Moreover, Hollywood Story<\/em>, along with Sunset Boulevard<\/em>, might well be an inspiration of one of The Player<\/em>\u2019s most interesting features: its intermingling of real life stars with fictional characters. Hollywood Story<\/em> includes cameos by Joel McCrea and several noted performers of the silent era, such as William Farnum, Francis X. Bushman, and Betty Blythe (below). The Player<\/em> pushes this aspect of Hollywood Story<\/em> to extremes, containing plentiful cameos by Cher, Jack Lemmon, Burt Reynolds, Lily Tomlin, Susan Sarandon, and other A-listers.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In several other respects, though, The Player<\/em> seems like an inversion of Hollywood Story<\/em> with Griffin emerging as a more venal counterpart to the latter\u2019s crusading producer, Larry. In Hollywood Story<\/em>, Larry\u2019s investigation actually produces results. This strongly contrasts with Griffin\u2019s guesswork, which, as the result of a tragic mistake, leads to David Kahane\u2019s death in a Pasadena parking lot. In Hollywood Story<\/em>, Larry\u2019s blossoming romance with Sally furnishes the standard double plotline commonly found in classical cinema. In The Player<\/em>, though, Griffin\u2019s interest in June seems genuinely sleazy. It also exacerbates the Pasadena police\u2019s doubts about Griffin\u2019s alibi, making him their prime suspect. Finally, the revelation of screenwriter Vincent St. Clair as Franklin Ferrara\u2019s killer provides closure both to Larry\u2019s script and to Hollywood Story <\/em>itself. In contrast, none of the crimes presented in The Player <\/em>are really solved. Griffin is blackmailed into greenlighting a project during the film\u2019s epilogue, but the audience never learns the identity of the mysterious stalker. Similarly, although the Pasadena police believe that Griffin is guilty of murder, the botched lineup ensures that he will go free and that David Kahane\u2019s death will remain an unsolved crime. In an odd way, The Player<\/em> returns to the narrative roots of Hollywood Story<\/em>. The fate of Kahane, our aspiring screenwriter, seems destined to mirror that of poor William Desmond Taylor, our successful silent film director.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A thriller with no thrills<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve sketched out a number of different ways in which The Player<\/em> relates to the basic conventions of the crime thriller, but all of this is ultimately, in the parlance of the genre, a red herring. This is because The Player<\/em> is that rare bird: a crime film that engenders relatively little curiosity about its solution and even less suspense about the fate of its protagonist.<\/p>\n

This is largely because Robert Altman mostly uses crime film conventions as scaffolding for the things that really interest him: quirky characters, digressive dialogue, and a loose, improvisatory feel to the film\u2019s performances. At its heart, The Player <\/em>is a comedy that draws upon crime film conventions in much the way Altman\u2019s adaptation of Raymond Chandler\u2019s The Long Goodbye <\/em>does.<\/p>\n

Compare, for example, each film\u2019s tweaking of the genre\u2019s standard interrogation scenes. In The Long Goodbye<\/em>, Detective Farmer\u2019s tough questioning of Philip Marlowe is punctured by the latter\u2019s goofy responses. At one point, Marlowe uses the ink from his fingerprinting procedure like it was the \u201ceye black\u201d used by an athlete. Later, he smears the ink all over his face and sings \u201cSwanee\u201d in a mocking homage to Al Jolson in blackface. Similarly, in The Player<\/em>, the Pasadena police\u2019s interrogation of Griffin is disrupted by Detective Avery\u2019s disarming exchange with her partner about tampons, her mangled pronunciation of \u201cGudmundstottir,\u201d and her dialogue with Paul about Todd Browning\u2019s Freaks<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Player<\/em> has many ingredients characteristic of crime films: a dead body, an investigation, a shady suspect, and a campaign of stalking and extortion. Yet, by the time Altman\u2019s film reaches its ironic and deeply reflexive conclusion, viewers might well conclude that they are the ones who just got played.<\/p>\n

\n

Thanks as usual to Peter Becker, Kim Hendrickson, Grant Delin, and all their Criterion colleagues. A list of our Observations on Film Art<\/em> series is here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For more on Robert Altman\u2019s career, see Patrick McGilligan\u2019s excellent biography, Robert Altman: Jumping Off the Cliff<\/em><\/a>. There are also several books featuring interviews with the iconoclastic director. These include David Sterritt\u2019s Robert Altman: Interviews<\/em><\/a>, Mitchell Zuckoff\u2019s Robert Altman: The Oral Biography<\/em><\/a>, and David Thompson\u2019s Altman on Altman<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Those interested in learning more about crime fiction should consult Martin Rubin\u2019s Thrillers<\/em><\/a>, Charles Derry\u2019s The Suspense Thriller: Films in the Shadow of Alfred Hitchcock<\/em><\/a>, John Scaggs\u2019s Crime Fiction<\/em><\/a>, Richard Bradford\u2019s Crime Fiction: A Very Short Introduction<\/em><\/a>, and Martin Priestman\u2019s The Cambridge Companion to Crime Fiction<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Hollywood Story<\/strong> (1951).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Player (1992). Jeff Smith, our collaborator on Film Art: An Introduction\u00a0just recorded an installment of our Observations on Film Art series for the Criterion Channel on FilmStruck. Here’s a supplement to that. –DB In my installment, focusing on genre play in The Player,\u00a0I discuss Robert Altman’s film\u00a0in relation to two important traditions in Hollywood […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[246,7,1,84,228,57,40,54,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-directors-altman","category-film-and-other-media","category-film-comments","category-film-genres","category-filmstruck","category-hollywood-aesthetic-traditions","category-hollywood-the-business","category-narrative-strategies","category-narrative-suspense"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38918"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38918\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38943,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38918\/revisions\/38943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}