You Know How To Whistle, Don't You Steve? You Just Put Your Lips Together and Blow

The above is a classic line from "To Have or Have Not", a film that starred Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart together. It's the kind of movie where you feel bad for the filmmakers, because no one remembers shit about the actual film, but remembers it just for "that movie where Bogie and Bacall met".  Their union, scandalous yet seductive and totally fitting to the standards of Hollywood (she was 20 at the time and he was in his forties) was one of the hot things going on at the time. 

 WOW.

Sadly, he died about a decade after they got married, but Lauren Bacall is still alive and kicking. I've ALWAYS wondered about how old-time stars feel about the current movie era. How does this time of raw, provocative small films + smashing blockbusters compare to to "Old Hollywood", a once upon of time when stars were larger-than-life, US Weekly didn't exist, and all the films were glittery and happy? 

Well, you either go the "in the old days," path like Olivia de Havilland (yes, she's also alive at the ripe age of 93 and is apparently writing some book about 1930's Hollywood), or you go the Liz Taylor route. She joined Twitter, befriended Michael Jackson, and happily embraced the zeitgeists of each decade (am I using that word correctly?).

Bacall is happily a contemporary dame as well. She just joined Twitter, and though her press occasions are rare, I have seen her attending premieres of artsy fare like "I'm Not There" and "Milk". She proclaims herself a huge Hayao Miyazaki fan, which I also find impressive. Her Tweets are littered with movie references - she said she was thrilled about the trailer for "Nine", was furious with her granddaughter for showing her "Twilight" and resisting the impulse to whack her head with shoe lest a "Grannie Dearest" be written upon her death, gave her teenybopper granddaughter a copy of "Nosferatu" instead, calling it a real vampire movie. You go, grandma.

I wonder if she still secretly laments the end of classic Hollywood, though. I just can't separate the two images in my head, one of Bacall, almost ethereal in her old-film beauty, flirting with Bogart (the title quote was about as racy as Hollywood got those days) and the present Bacall whose last onscreen performance I can remember was as herself on "The Sopranos", cursing (and getting punched) as she tussled with Michael Imperioli.

Her tweets are overall pretty entertaining. She is shamelessly self-promoting, listing her autobiography and three of her movies in her description title, but all I can say, what a great, sassy, old-school broad. She also mentioned that she would like to be in a Quentin Tarantino movie. It's nice to see that she's simply a genuine movie lover after all. I admittedly twittered her, asking her what her favorite TV shows are. She definitely goes for the edgy, so it tickles me with wonder to think that she'd watch anything as raunchy as True Blood.