Dogfight

“I was really excited to see that Criterion released Nancy Savoca’s Dogfight. And there was something about the idea of this movie that feels so relevant today, this idea of casual misogyny needing to be interrogated by men themselves, that, in this case, it’s not Lili Taylor’s character who has to do the work of explaining herself to him, it’s this kid played by River Phoenix who has to do the work of recognizing something in himself. And I’m really excited to revisit this movie because it had a really powerful effect on me when I first saw it.”

“My favorite, and I see it, and it's my favorite movie and I've mentioned it before so I hope I'm not like repeating myself: Dogfight. Oh my god, Dogfight. There's so many reasons why I really like this movie. I watched it when I was very, you know, a teenager and I really wanted to be an actress. So Lili Taylor in this movie completely affected how I thought about acting and how I thought about like what kind of actress I wanted to be. Because the movie is basically about these bunch of young lads are heading off to fight in Vietnam the next day, but the night before they go they have this game called Dogfight, where the challenge is to bring the ugliest girl to a party, and the guy who brings the ugliest girl wins. And River Phoenix, oh he's so brilliant in it, and he looks so young and innocent to be going off to Vietnam, and he's trying to find someone and it's late at night and he can't find someone, and then he goes into a cafe and he finds beautiful Lili Taylor. But in the story she's not beautiful, you know, she doesn't look perfect or whatever people think is beautiful. And, but anyways, he takes her out and there is a scene, she finds out it's a Dogfight—I'm not giving the whole story away, I'm just giving you the first bit of it—but there's a scene where she's playing the piano and she's singing a song and he's watching her and there's no dialogue. I'm going to start crying just thinking about it because he's smoking this cigarette and he's watching her, and he was such a pure, beautiful actor that like he starts to realize that, "Oh, hang on, she's really sweet and she's really deep and beautiful, and actually I don't want to hurt her." And it all happens just in his face while he's smoking, watching her. And it is so beautiful because it affected me as an actress, but also about love. It made me think that like, you know, love is like so personal and how someone affects your soul. And lads, this movie is amazing, and like it was directed by a woman too. So it's all, you know, "women directors this, women directors that"—this movie was directed by a woman a long, long time ago and I don't think it got the recognition it deserves.”

“Okay, Dogfight, River Phoenix and Lili Taylor. And those actors are some of the finest actors that have ever lived, but certainly, like, of my generation. Handsome boy meets, you know, we’re not supposed to think very beautiful girl, but come on, who are we kidding? Star-crossed lovers and empathy and love where you least expect it.”