Fran Magazine: Issue #85

A special issue of Tessa Magazine

📝 Thanks for reading Fran Magazine, a biweekly blog by usually Fran Hoepfner (me) but is written by guest Tessa Strain today while I’m otherwise out of town. Wednesday issues are free to everyone and Sunday issues are for paid subscribers only. Consider subscribing or upgrading your subscription for access to more Fran Magazine, and feel free to follow me on the website formerly known as Twitter or the website currently known as Letterboxd.

A note from Fran

I’m on vacation!!! Sorry! I’m sorry! At the time of writing, I’m in Helsinki, but I was in Tallinn last week. Everyone keeps wondering why I’m here, why I’m not in “France” or “Italy” or another place where people go on vacation, and I wish I had a better, more compelling answer than, “I actually like when weather is bad.” There will be more to come about vacation later on, not that I think anyone really cares what anyone “did” on vacation, sort of in the same way that dreams are never that compelling to recap. For now, I’m happy to have longtime friend and beloved Middlemarch May commenter Tessa Strain here with this week’s issue. I’ll see you all on Sunday!

Tessa Magazine starts in 3… 2… 1…

---

Who here is the horse?

In early February 2020, when I was enjoying an uncharacteristically joyful period of unemployment, and when the novel coronavirus had not yet made being coughed on by the elderly patrons of MoMA film seem like a uniquely bad idea, I made an observation about the year’s Oscar contenders, which was that none of them was about or prominently featured a horse. Oscar LOVES a horse—whither the horse, I mused? 

I received a reply from Fran Hoepfner, editor in chief of Fran Magazine (which was then a mere twinkle in her eye and joke in her Twitter bio and not the illustrious publication I’m now writing for), suggesting that “Leo in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood isn’t not a horse.” And you know what? She was right! And it was in that very moment that we had arrived at a new cinematic critical framework/party game, which asks a deceptively simple question: “Who here is the horse?”

horse

Does every movie have a horse? No! Of course not. But most do. What makes someone the horse? This is where it gets a little complex. 

Sometimes the horse is the protagonist, in the mode of, say, Black Beauty. In fact, I’d go so far as to say any story in the picaresque genre is essentially about a horse. Barry Lyndon? That guy is a horse. But a horse can also be a sidekick or beloved companion (Ben Affleck is the horse in Good Will Hunting). A horse can be a symbolic figure, onto whom the more sentient characters project (Ethan Hunt of the Mission Impossible series is a horse). A horse can be a vehicle (Pee Wee Herman’s bike is a horse). A horse can be an athlete, or a person of extraordinary value within narrowly defined parameters (Dirk Diggler of Boogie Nights is a horse, Nina Sayers of Black Swan is a horse). A horse can even be a horse, but a horse is almost never a dog. Once you develop an instinct for it, you’ll find you can usually tell who the horse is.

Michael Mann movies are great for this. Everyone who participated in the heist in Heat other than Robert De Niro is a horse. Thief is about thinking you’re a man and realizing you’re a horse (come to think of it, James Caan also memorably played a horse in both The Godfather and Rollerball). Manhunter is about thinking you’re training a horse, but uh-oh! You’re the horse :(

Priscilla is the horse in Priscilla (but Elvis is the horse in Elvis). Leo is the horse in Killers of the Flower Moon. David Krumholtz is the horse in Oppenheimer. M3GAN is the horse in M3GAN. Don’t be confused by the acknowledgment of actual horses in Barbie: everyone in Barbie is a horse, like an animated movie where the animals talk. Michael Fassbender is the horse in The Killer (which makes sense, since it’s rather studiously in conversation with Thief). I haven’t seen May December yet, but I have a very strong suspicion that Charles Melton is the horse and that Julianne Moore thinks she’s the horse. In the Napoleon trailer, Napoleon himself all but says “everyone thinks I’m a horse, but in fact I am a brilliant military strategist who is destined for greatness”—I’ll be the judge of that, Napoleon!!!!

Let’s look at some career-spanning trends: John Wayne is almost always a horse, and James Stewart almost never is — that’s what The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is about. Robert De Niro is rarely a horse, making his horse turns (Raging Bull, The Intern) noteworthy. Kristen Stewart’s big break was playing against horse Robert Pattinson in Twilight, after which she pivoted to mostly horse, and he pivoted to mostly not horse. Eddie Murphy is pretty much never a horse, except in Shrek (arguably too obvious, but Donkey is indeed the horse). Tom Cruise has seemingly retired from non-horse roles and is now full-time horse.

A good director (and particularly a good casting director) always knows who the horse is, even if they aren’t aware of it. The Fabelmans is arguably about the process of learning how to spot the horse (which is why the bully cries after he sees Sammy’s grad day montage — he just found out he’s a horse). And once you get deep enough into it, it’s hard to escape the realization that there is a certain type of star quality that is almost inextricable from horsiness. Are stars not the beasts of burden upon whom we pin our hopes and dreams? Do they not possess a certain combination of horsey spark and vacuity that lets them effortlessly inhabit characters and spaces that don’t exist in reality? You’re telling me you wouldn’t feed Robert Redford a sugar cube?? What about a carrot? Have I let this metaphor get away from me, like some kind of wild mustang????????????????

Okay, godspeed, tell me who’s the horse in the comments.

Tessa Strain is a writer and actor, appearing in the forthcoming Revelations of Divine Love. She’s just now wondering if she’s the horse in that.