I've been loading my thousands of CDs (most of which have been in boxes for about three years) into iTunes in recent weeks and it's been quite a revealing experience. (It explains, for one thing, why I've never been able to accumulate any money. And this project is going to require two 2TB external hard drives, because I'm using lossless compression.) Sometimes it's embarrassing or mystifying. What void was I trying to fill with a Kurtis Blow's greatest hits? I already had "The Breaks" -- one of the earliest non-Sugarhill rap/hip-hop hits -- and "Hard Times" on various compilations... but it sounds good. And I do love compilations, especially those from obscure jazz, soul and R&B labels from the '40s, '50s and '60s (like Minit or Specialty or Sue or Excello), up to the better-known Vee Jay and Okeh and Ace and Commodore, or the bubblegum label Buddah (yes, it's spelled that way). And, of course, various label, period, artist and thematic anthologies put together by Rhino (including the massive Stax/Volt and Atlantic boxes). The "Beg, Scream & Shout!" box is the greatest.
But the reason I'm writing this now is my reencounter with Robyn Hitchcock. I did a piece a while back about the cinematic imagination of Joni Mitchell, and I was happy to reacquaint myself with "My Wife and My Dead Wife" on the album "Fegmania!" It's quintessentially Hitchcockian, reflective of Robyn's eerie ectoplasmic humor (though much of his work is more surreally Cronenbergian, bursting with ghastly biological horrors, as in "Star of Hairs" or "Tropical Flesh Mandala"), and suggesting Sir Alfred, too. In some respects it's a twist on "Rebecca," but funnier. Notice, too, the ways Hitchcock chooses to belatedly reveal what's going on, almost as if you were suddenly catching a glimpse of a ghost out of the corner of your eye. And the final pull-back at the seashore is masterful. This is quite a movie:
My wife lies down in a chair
And peels a pear
I know she's there
I'm making coffee for two
Just me and you
But I come back in with coffee for three
Coffee for three?
This cover band, Young @ Heart, is the eponymous subject of a documentary to be released by Fox Searchlight in April, 2008. They do everything from the Bee Gees to the Clash to Sonic Youth. This is what punk is all about -- D.I.Y. Put me in a wheelchair and get me to the show.
View image Their hearts will go on, even if they're all wet.
Who says there's no accounting for taste?¹ Maybe there is. New Yorker music critic and Alex Ross (whose brilliant book "The Rest is Noise" I wrote about last month) mentioned another book on his blog and now I've gotta get ahold of it (as Barak Obama maybe sorta allegedly did).²
From a review by Sam Anderson in New York Magazine:
Wilson’s real obsession here is not Céline but the thorny philosophical problem on which her reputation has been impaled: the nature of taste itself. What motivates aesthetic judgment? Is our love or hatred of “My Heart Will Go On” the result of a universal, disinterested instinct for beauty-assessment, as Kant would argue? Or is it something less exalted? Wilson tends to side with the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, who argues that taste is never disinterested: It’s a form of social currency, or “cultural capital,” that we use to stockpile prestige. Hating Céline is therefore not just an aesthetic choice, but an ethical one, a way to elevate yourself above her fans—who, according to market research, tend to be disproportionately poor adult women living in flyover states and shopping at big-box stores. (As Wilson puts it, “It’s hard to imagine an audience that could confer less cool on a musician.”)
Sarah Silverman stands against an overexposed white background, addressing the camera (and her boyfriend of five years, talk show host Jimmy Kimmel). "Hey Jimmy," she says, "It's me." It's the quintessential Silverman line delivery: faux-awkward, sweet and self-consciously cute, but so sharp and precisely targeted that it almost hurts a little. Of course it's her. But where is she?
Well, she's in some netherworld hotel, neither here nor there -- been on the road so long, you know, she's not even sure what city she's in, to be honest -- and she has something on her mind, something she's been meaning to tell Jimmy, that she's been carrying around with her like excess baggage. Dressed in a snug, lipstick-magenta/pink shirt, she stands out, flush and ripe, from the soft pale light that envelops her. She strolls to the right, from one lush, clean-green tropical split-leaf philodendron to another, a sexy and innocent Eve in the unspoiled Garden of Eden (or a hotel lobby facsimile thereof). Her delicate fingers stroke a wistful figure on her guitar, again and again, as she works up the backbone to expose her true feelings. (Insert what we imagine to be a typical candid photo of the happy couple: Silverman draped adoringly over the shoulders of a drunken, blurry-eyed Kimmel.)
View image In the primeval Garden: The moment of first release, the revelation of Knowledge in the Biblical sense.
The segue, if you call it that, is abrupt, jarring. Cut to a close-up of her guitar ("Here it goes...") and a crunching electric riff begins. Medium shot of Silverman as she sings the first line (and the title), with an expression of "Omygod!" on her face, like a teenage girl at a slumber party confessing a crush on the cutest boy in school: "I'm f***ing Matt Damon!" This is inappropriate. Not only is she singing this to her boyfriend, she's doing it on his fifth anniversary show on network TV. She has not only swallowed the forbidden fruit, she has swallowed the serpent: Matt Damon!
Cut to... Damon himself, in tight black t-shirt (like snakeskin!), arms stretched cockily over the back of a white couch as if in post-coital repose. He's been seated just outside the frame, all the time, and he gives the camera a knowing, testosterone-fueled smirk: "She's f***ing Matt Damon!" He's got the cat-with-the-canary grin. The knowledge that he's avenging Kimmel's repeated, disrespectful scheduling slights is written all over his face. He is no longer the butt of the joke, he gets to deliver the punchline. Repeat. Silverman shoots him a naughty-girl look, then shifts her expression to one of rue and sorrow for: "I'm not imagining it's you." Next, in an instant, she grits her teeth and turns into Joan Jett. On cue, Damon launches into a Henry Rollins punk growl and threatens to lunge at the camera, seizing it the way we imagine him grabbing Silverman's waist before they do the nasty title phrase. It begins in a two-shot, with Silverman cheerily bending down into the frame:
On the bed, on the floor
On a towel by the door
In the tub, in the car
Up against the mini-bar
One can't help but recall Theodor Geisel's seminal "Green Eggs and Ham," in which Sam I Am pesters an increasingly exasperated, unnamed character who does not like the titular dish. In this case, however, Damon and Silverman are turning the tables: The song is an expression of rapacious appetite, and the way Damon delivers it -- with a mad glint in his eyes and a leer on his lips -- is a volatile mixture of lust and vengeful glee. He likes them apples....
After an investigation on the eve (literally) of the official Oscar ballot mailing, the executive committee of the Academy's music branch "has met and endorsed the validity of 'Falling Slowly' [from 'Once'] as a nominated achievement. The committee relied on written assurances and detailed chronologies provided by the songwriter of 'Falling Slowly,' the writer-director of 'Once' and Fox Searchlight" [the film's US distributor]. For details, see "Is Once ineligible for Best Original Song Oscar?" below.
The issue centered on whether the song was actually written for "Once" (as Academy rules require), or for the 2006 Czech film "Kráska v nesnázích" ("Beauty In Trouble"), or in some other context. In addition to its performance by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova in "Once," "Falling Slowly" appeared in various versions on three 2006 albums: Hansard and Irglova's "The Swell Season," the "Beauty in Trouble" soundtrack album (also sung by Hansard and Irglova), and "The Cost" by Hansard's band The Frames.
According to David "The Carpetbagger" Carr at the New York Times, music branch chairman Charles Bernstein released a statement about the evolution of "Once" and "Falling Slowly":
View image The Oscar-nominated song "Falling Slowly" (the only one not from "Enchanted" or "August Rush") may have been recorded for a Czech film -- and appeared on two albums in 2006, before "Once" was finished.
Not sure why this has become an issue now (does nobody at Fox Searchlight or the music branch of the Academy do any research until the last minute -- or beyond?), but Dublin film critic Paul Lynch passes along this report from his Sunday Tribune critical colleague Una Mullally:
The Sunday Tribune understands that the Academy query relates to whether the song, from the John Carney-directed movie "Once," was written specifically for the film, as the eligibility rules for the Best Original Song category demand.
"Falling Slowly" was originally recorded by the film’s co-stars Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova when Czech director Jan Hrebejk asked the two musicians to contribute songs to his 2006 film "Kráska v nesnázích" ("Beauty In Trouble"). Hansard and Irglova ended up recording the album "The Swell Season," of which "Falling Slowly" was a key track. That album was released in April 2006. Hansard’s band, The Frames, then rerecorded the song for their September 2006 album "The Cost. "Beauty In Trouble" was released in October 2006, with "Falling Slowly" played almost in full over the film’s trailer [above].
... Skip Lievsay, Craig Berkey, Greg Orloff and Peter Kurland -- and un-nominated co-conspirator, Carter Burwell -- for sound in "No Country for Old Men"! (See below.)
Meanwhile, I'm happy to see several mildly surprising nominations: Viggo Mortensen for "Eastern Promises"; Saoirse Ronan for "Atonement"; Hal Holbrook for "Into the Wild"; "Persepolis" for animated feature. No surprise, and absolutely proper: Roger Deakins for shooting both "No Country for Old Men" and "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" (though I hope they don't cancel each other out). But nothing for "Zodiac"? At the very least it should have received a nomination for its amazing visual effects. But unless you've seen the Director's Cut DVD (or some Digital Domain clips on YouTube) you probably wouldn't have known they were effects. That's how good they are.
Looking at the odds, "Atonement" is an unlikely best picture because its director (Joe Wright) wasn't nominated. "Michael Clayton" and "Juno" lack an editing nomination, which (statistically speaking) is are crucial to winning the top prize. On the other hand, "Michael Clayton" is honored in three acting categories, for George Clooney, Tom Wilkinson and Tilda Swinton -- and guess which branch of the Academy is the biggest? "No Country for Old Men" didn't claim a lead acting slot, perhaps because it's an ensemble piece. If you go strictly by statistically significant nominations, only "There Will Be Blood" has 'em all -- an old-fashioned Hollywood epic built around a big performance (by a previous Oscar winner). But will its unremittingly bleak nihilism (and the bizarre ending that alienated even some admirers) prove too bitter for Academy voters? I dunno.
I just want to take a moment here to acknowledge my favorite nomination. (This is where I congratulate myself on my foresight -- hey, I predicted Tom Wilkinson, too -- even though I'm a lousy Oscar guesser.) Back in September when I first saw "No Country for Old Men" in September, I wrote:
View image Attend the pale and Teeny Todd. He doesn't exactly cut an imposing figure. Jack Skellington with a thicker head of hair.
"Tim Burton has made a miniaturist 'Sweeney Todd.' Wispy, anemic, paper-thin, sanitized. Petit Guignol. Teeny Todd..."
Those were among the first notes to myself that I typed after returning from a December screening of "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street." Before that, it had seemed to me that Tim Burton (the Tim Burton of "Batman" and "Batman Returns," not "Mars Attacks!" or "Nightmare Before Christmas") might be, hypothetically, an ideal choice to make a film of Stephen Sondheim's musical-thriller masterpiece about a vengeful barber who conspires with a randy pie-shop proprietress to bake his victims into meat pies. Surely Burton would make it his own, a movie that wouldn't have to compete with the stage version because it would be a Tim Burton Film, existing in parallel to, but apart from, Sondheim and Harold Prince's achievement.¹
Not quite. It's one thing to Devoid of passion, grandeur, ghastly humor and operatic lunacy, Burton's "Sweeney Todd" is a plastic wind-up toy, a fast-food tie-in trinket. It belongs on a little gingerbread tchotchke shelf, next to your collectible "Macbeth" action-figurines. The best that can be said for it is that nobody's yet adapted the title property for film, so maybe that's something we can still look forward to.²
Sondheim himself has done a fine job of explaining why the filmmakers made the choices they did in bringing this "Sweeney" to the screen (New York Times: "Sondheim Dismembers 'Sweeney' .") And they're all perfectly good reasons. I understand the difficult choices that had to be made. How do you squeeze the show into less two hours? Slash some numbers, condense others, speed up the tempos. Do the performances (and the voices) have to be as strong and idiosyncratic for film as they do on stage? Not necessarily....
View image Jude Quinn. Bob Dylan. Mona Lisa. (Cate Blanchett.) Enlarge and see. The eyes, the mouth, the verge of a smile.
The message may not move me,
Or mean a great deal to me,
But hey! it feels so groovy to say...
-- Peter, Paul & Mary, "I Did Rock & Roll Music" (1967)
The sun's not yellow
It's chicken
-- Bob Dylan, "Tombstone Blues" (1965)
I listen to Bob Dylan for the music, not the words. I know: heresy. But it's the truth: I listen to him for the way he sounds, and that includes the sound of the words. The literal meaning of the lyrics, or what people used to call the "message" (if one can be found or deciphered), is secondary, just one dimension of his art. In his 1960s folk-pop-culture ascendance, Dylan's songs were scrutinized for coded messages -- supposedly embedded "between the lines," as die-hard folk-popsters PP&M put it in their satirical ditty about the superficiality and commerciality of rock 'n' roll music. That pop-culture illusion -- that Dylan and the Beatles were sending out encrypted signals into the collective consciousness, and especially to you -- is something Todd Haynes plays around with quite a bit in "I'm Not There" -- a pseudo-documentary/biopic not unlike his "Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story," but with six actors playing Dylan instead of Barbie dolls playing The Carpenters.
But before we get to that: No, I'm not at all knocking Dylan as a poet or a lyricist. (I read Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot and e.e. cummings for their music as much as anything else, too.) If Dylan's words weren't so satisfying to sing out loud, he wouldn't be much of a songwriter, would he? I mean, how does it feel to sing "How does it feel?" It feels fantastic, that's how. The black bile of those spleen-venting, "finger-pointing" songs ("Like a Rolling Stone," "Positively 4th Street," "Ballad of a Thin Man") can be so cathartic. All those playfully cryptic, electric-surrealistic rhymes in "Subterranean Homesick Blues" (cue cards, anyone?) can make you dizzy with delight. A simple couplet like, "They sat together in the park / As the evening sky grew dark," doesn't look like all that much on the page, but you hear Dylan sing it and you feel a spark tingle to your bones.
What I mean to say is that, even if Dylan were writing in a language no one else on Earth knew (and sometimes I think that's exactly what he means to do), his great songs would still be great songs. Take Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Do you need to know the meaning of the words in Schiller's "Ode to Joy" to appreciate the fusion of vocal and orchestral sounds in the last movement?
O Freunde, nicht diese Töne!...
Freude, schöner Götterfunken,
Tochter aus Elysium,
Wir betreten feuer-trunken,
Himmlische, dein Heiligtum!
Deine Zauber binden wieder,
Was die Mode streng geteilt;
Alle Menschen werden Brüder,
Wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.
Admit it! It feels so groovy to say! (Or sing.) I feel the same way about "My warehouse eyes, my Arabian drums," and "Awop-bop-a-loo-mop alop bom bom" (by Dylan's idol Little Richard) and "Beat on the brat with a baseball bat" (The Ramones) and "A mulatto, an albino, a mosquito, my libido" (Nirvana).
Maybe there should just be a category in the right column for "Lists." Here's one from the film and music writers of Time Out London (which will always be the only real Time Out) called "50 greatest music films ever except for 'Spinal Tap'." No, I added those last four words, but the editors explain in their intro that "we’re celebrating great films – dramas and documentaries – about real musicians."
As if David St. Hubbins and Nigel Tufnel and Derek Smalls never actually toured in the flesh? As if they aren't at least as "real" as, say, KISS or the Monkees or Hootie and the Blowfish, which contained no one named "Hootie" and nobody named "Blowfish." (BTW, the Ramones weren't really "Ramones"! Those were just stage names!) Oh, and Gus Van Sant's "Last Days" was about a guy named "Blake." Michael Pitt looked like Kurt Cobain, but it was only about Cobain in the sense that "Velvet Goldmine" is about Bowie or Iggy Pop or Lou Reed, or "Grace of My Heart" is about Carole King or Brian Wilson or any of the Brill Building writers (even though a lot of them wrote songs for the movie). Then there's "'Round Midnight" (which is on the list) with Dexter Gordon playing Dale Turner, a fictionalized version of Bud Powell...
View image Downey, CA: "What happened?" Third shot of "Superstar." Compare to second shot of "Zodiac" -- establishing a neighborhood, from a car on the street...
So, OK: No "Spinal Tap." But no "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart: A Film About Wilco"? No "You're Gonna Miss Me: A Film About Roky Erickson"? No "Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser"? No "X: The Unheard Music"? No "The Girl Can't Help It"? No "Wattstax"? No "Woodstock"? No "The Kids are Alright"? No "No Direction Home"? No "The Buddy Holly Story"? No "Theramin: An Electronic Odyssey"? No "Heart of Gold"? No "The Filth and the Fury"? No "We Jam Econo: The Story of the Minutemen"? No "La Bamba"? No "Kurt and Courtney"? See how much fun this is? Really, though, I'd substitute any of these for several of the selections on the list.
But, OK, many of my favorites are included: "24 Hour Party People," "Jazz on a Summer's Day," "Stop Making Sense," "DIG!," "Art Pepper: Notes from a Jazz Survivor" (his autobiography, "Straight Life," is the best account of addiction I've ever read), "The Decline of Western Civilization Parts I and II (The Metal Years)"...
At the toppermost of the poppermost: Todd Haynes' 1987 "Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story," a 45-minute lo-fi "dramatization" that was never officially released because of music clearance troubles (that is, brother Richard wouldn't let Haynes use any Carpenters tunes). Still, after 20 years as an "underground" item, it's available from Google Video here. It's something you really need to see: a documentary-style biopic of Karen Carpenter performed mostly by Barbie dolls. Yes, its a parody (so are most musical biopics, including others on the list -- see the upcoming Jake Kasdan/Judd Apatow picture, "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story" for more on that score). But it presents straightforward facts about anorexia that could have been excerpted from any PBS or 16mm educational doc of the period. It's also a formula showbiz melodrama. But for all the layers of artifice, like Haynes' Sirk opera "Far From Heaven," it becomes strangely, hypnotically -- and genuinely -- moving. Prepare yourself for Haynes' Dylan fantasia, "I'm Not There," by watching "Superstar" and "Velvet Goldmine."
ASIDE: From an interview with Haynes at The Reeler:
I actually think that it's easier for people who know less about Dylan to go with it, if they're up for something different. Clearly, that's the first thing: Whether you know Dylan or not, you have to surrender to the movie to have a good time at all and get anything out of it. If you have a lot of Dylanisms in your head, it's kind of distracting, because you're sitting there with a whole second movie going on. You're annotating it as you go. It's kind of nice to sit back and let it take you. I think people get it: Even if you don't know which are the true facts and which are the fictional things, and when we're playing with fact and fiction, from the tone of it, you know that it's playing around with real life. In a way, that's what biopics always do. They just don't tell you that they're doing it, and they don't make it part of the fun. You have to follow the Johnny Cash story and just sort of think, "This is what really happened." Of course, you know it's being dramatized, but you're not in on the joke. You're not in on the game of that. In this movie, at least, you get tipped off to it.
Oh yeah, but about that list. Here it is. Make of it what you will:
1 "Superstar: the Karen Carpenter Story" (Todd Haynes, 1987)
2 "Don't Look Back" (DA Pennebaker, 1967) -- Bob Dylan
3 "Gimme Shelter" (David Maysles/Albert Maysles/Charlotte Zwerin, 1970) --Rolling Stones
4 "24 Hour Party People" (Michael Winterbottom, 2002) -- Manchester scene
5 "Topsy-Turvy" (Mike Leigh, 1999) -- Gilbert and Sullivan
6 "Monterey Pop" (DA Pennebaker, 1968) -- concert
7 "Be Here to Love Me" (Margaret Brown, 2004) -- Townes Van Zandt
8 "Thirty Two Short Films about Glenn Gould" (Francois Girard, 1993) -- Glenn Gould
9 "Cocksucker Blues" (Robert Frank, 1972) -- Rolling Stones
10 "Bird" (Clint Eastwood, 1988) -- Charlie Parker
11 "The Last Waltz" (Martin Scorsese, 1978) -- The Band & Friends farewell concert
12 "Rude Boy" (Jack Hazan, David Mingay, 1980) -- The Clash
13 "Scott Walker: 30 Century Man" (Stephen Kijak, 2006) -- Scott Walker
14 "Bound for Glory" (Hal Ashby, 1976) -- Woody Guthrie
15 "The Decline of Western Civilization Parts I & II" (Penelope Spheeris, 1981, 1988) -- LA punk; '80s metal & hair bands
16 "The Devil and Daniel Johnston" (Jeff Feuerzeig, 2005) -- Daniel Johnston
17 "Sweet Dreams" (Karel Reisz, 1982) -- Patsy Cline
18 "Art Pepper: Notes from a Jazz Survivor" (Don McGlynn, 1982) -- Art Pepper
19 "Elgar" (Ken Russell, 1962) -- Edward Elgar
20 "Rust Never Sleeps" (Neil Young, 1979) -- Neil Young
21 "The Future is Unwritten" (Julien Temple, 2006) -- Joe Strummer
22 "DiG!" (Ondi Timoner, 2004) -- Brian Jonestown Massacre, Dandy Warhols
23 "Some Kind Of Monster" (Joe Berlinger, Bruce Sinofsky, 2004) -- Metallica
24 "A Hard Day's Night" (Richard Lester, 1964) -- The Beatles
25 "Jimi Hendrix" (Joe Boyd, 1973) -- Jimi Hendrix (more)
View image Movement, music & lyrics: Fred Astaire with George & Ira Gershwin.
Over a wet, grey Seattle weekend, I immersed myself in Wilfred Sheed's delightful book about the architects of the American popular song, "The House That George Built: With a Little Help from Irving, Cole, and a Crew of About Fifty." (This is one of the big reasons I love Seattle: There's nothing better on such a day, when the leaves are just starting to pop yellow orange and red against those dark slate skies, than kicking back with such a book and the Sunday New York Times, and spending the day quietly and cozily soaking it all in.)
Sheed's memoir/survey is an idiosyncratic/anecdotal appreciation of the greats -- Berlin, Gershwin, Arlen, Carmichael, Ellington, Kern, Porter, Rodgers, and others who are included in his canon only if, by his estimation, they have published more than fifty standards "by which I mean in this case more than fifty tunes that are still popular enough over fifty years later for most cocktail lounge pianists to have a rough idea of them, and for their copyrights still to be worth fighting for." Or, perhaps, if he happens to have met them.
To me, film is just music set to light. Yes, once "talkies" became the technological standard, the "lyrics" increased in importance, but the dialogue and the stories it help to tell were never so much about the words. They were about the music -- of motion and stasis, shadows and light, gestures and expressions....
Sheed describes his view of music and lyrics this way, and I see parallels to the relationship between movie and script:
There's musical genius and then there's verbal genius. To match the explosion of melody [in the early 1920s] came a river of light verse that turned up everywhere, from the largest magazines to the smallest local papers, and it seeped into the most minor songs, guaranteeing some wonderfully literate and accomplished lyrics.
But -- and here some readers and I may split -- the tunes were still the big news. "Didn't they write great lyrics back then?" is a common question I've heard, to which I have two Yes, but... answers, one being Yes, but it's my impression that they still do. [...]
My second answer is Yes, they wrote some great lyrics but they also wrote some lousy ones. The standards didn't care. There have seldom been dumber words to anything than those of the young Ira Gershwin's "Lady Be Good" and "The Man I Love," while the Ellington-Strayhorn gem "Take the 'A' Train" barely has a lyric, only an address you wish would change from time to time.
On the other hand, there has never been a standard without a great tune -- not even a great funny standard. Surf the Cole Porter songbook and you will undoubtedly find some great comic poems still waiting for the right tune to drive them off and make them rich and famous. But although Cole could have dashed off another two hundred choruses of "You're the Top," he couldn't have written a second tune to save his life. And without those magic tunes, his light verse was as unsalable as most poetry.
This doesn't mean the right lyric can't make all the difference. A lyricist is a musician too, one who arranges tunes for the human voice so that you can "hear" them for the first time. But once the lyrics have done that, and made you laugh or cry two or three times at most, they fade in importance. Again and again, people will request a favorite song while knowing only its tune.
I don't think anyone would dispute that it's possible to make a good movie from a pretty bad script, or that it's possible to make a lousy movie from a really good script -- but a good script greatly improves one's chances of making a good movie. It's just as hard to make a bad movie as it is to make a good one, yet the odds decisively favor the former over the latter.
Are some movies terrific primarily because of the script? Probably. Preston Sturges and Billy Wilder come to mind. But the script wouldn't work unless it had been acted and directed well. I've heard recorded arrangements of "Night and Day" that made me cringe. Likewise, I've seen actors and directors (and editors and composers) butcher a scene or a sequence that could have been great if they knew how to play it. (Remember, however, that if a scene doesn't work, it's probably least likely to be the actor's fault. Choosing the wrong takes and/or assembling them poorly can make the greatest actor in the world look like a grade school thespian.)
Quotable dialog -- epigrams, witticisms, punchlines -- can be fun, but they don't make a good movie any more than they make a good song. "Here's looking at you, kid" is an immortal line, but it could have been a howler. You wouldn't remember it without the music of Bogart's voice and the look in his eyes. I will never quite understand how "You can't handle the truth!" entered the public domain (however briefly it may remain there) because, although Nicholson sells the hell out of it in "A Few Good Men," it's not a particularly memorable moment. Although both these lines are often used jokingly, acknowledged as clichés when used in casual conversation, one affectionately acknowledges a classic while the other includes an element of sarcasm or satire of the movie itself (almost like "No wire hangers!").
When the words and music seem inseparable, as if one could not exist without the other, that makes for greatness. And in song, and in film, it's a matter of composition -- but also performance and orchestration, whether it's Sinatra singing "So make it one for my baby/And one more for the road," or Walsh (Joe Mantell) intoning those famous last words, "Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown."
AP, LOS ANGELES (July 24, 2007) -- Lindsay Lohan says she's innocent.
The 21-year-old actress was arrested and released on bail for investigation of misdemeanor driving under the influence and with a suspended license, and felony cocaine possession, early Tuesday in Santa Monica, less than two weeks after completing her second trip to rehab.
"I am innocent ... did not do drugs they're not mine. I was almost hit by my assistant Tarin's mom I appreciate everyone giving me my privacy," Lohan wrote in an e-mail to "Access Hollywood" host Billy Bush, the show reported on its Web site Tuesday night.
Police found cocaine in one of Lohan's pockets during a pre-booking search, Sgt. Shane Talbot said. Police initially said Lohan was also being booked for investigation of transporting a narcotic but later said she was not.
Police received a 911 call from the mother of Lohan's former personal assistant saying that Lohan was chasing her in an SUV, said Lt. Alex Padilla. The assistant had quit hours before, he said.
Authorities found Lohan and the woman in a "heated debate" in the parking lot of Santa Monica's Civic Auditorium at about 1:30 a.m.
Lohan's arrest comes as she still faces DUI allegations connected to a Memorial Day weekend hit-and-run crash in Beverly Hills. The actress completed more than six weeks in rehab less than two weeks ago, and had checked into a recovery clinic in January.
She had worn an alcohol-monitoring ankle bracelet since her July 13 release from rehab and was tested daily to support her sobriety, her attorney, Blair Berk, said. She said Lohan had relapsed and was receiving medical care at an undisclosed location. Lohan's publicist, Leslie Sloane Zelnik, had no comment.
This story moved me to write a song, to the tune of "Unforgettable":
Uninsurable, that's what you are
Always crashing in your fancy car
Tabloid photos, so embarrassing
Flash your breasts when you're out Paris-ing
Media whore is a role you adore, but you're
Unemployable for picture work
Unprofessional, and quite a jerk
Keep the cast and crew awaiting you
And you wonder why they're hating you
Fear next year, you're carbon-dating your career
Unreliable, and more each day
Less than "adequite" in every way
Stanwyck wore an anklet to seduce
Not to monitor her booze abuse
You're a boor, a poor excuse for loose, too
Uninsurable, in Calvin Klein
Unendurable, no sign of spine
Famous for your notoriety
Not ability, insobriety
Pie-eyed claims of future piety, pooh!
Uninsurable, such a cliché
Scourge of SAG, Double-, and Triple-A
Liquored-up but not Anonymous
"Lindsay" has become synonymous
With pathetic DUI arrests, eeww...
View image Hejira: The refuge of the road, a prisoner of the white lines on the freeway...
Joni Mitchell is a gifted musician, a great songwriter, and a damn fine actress. (People always talk about her lyrics, but its her performances that make those words sing.) She's also a terrific director and cinematographer and all-around filmmaker and critic -- and I'm taking exclusively about her recorded music. I've been thinking about this for a long time, and then a thread on girish's blog a while back made me want to write about it. So, here goes. A few of my favorite examples, music and lyrics, analysis and critique (hers), composition and montage:
How about the camerawork in this shot from "The Boho Dance" (from "The Hissing of Summer Lawns"):
A camera pans the cocktail hour
Behind a blind of potted palms
And finds a lady in a Paris dress
With runs in her nylons
I see this as a horizontal dolly shot more than a "pan." And not too much zeroing in on the legs. Maybe a tilt down as the lady drops an hors d'oeuvre, just so you have a chance to notice. Or maybe somebody seated in the foreground spots the flawed stockings from across the room and there's a bit of rack focus to the lady's gams. Maybe we just see her in a full shot, with her back to us, standing in a cluster of other people who can't see the runs that are turned toward the camera. Or, if she's seated, perhaps she crosses or uncrosses her stems briefly, allowing us a glimpse of the telltale hosiery. There are lots of ways to shoot it, but Mitchell tells you what the shot needs to convey so you can come up with the specific compositions yourself.
Then there's this amazing zoom out from "Hejira" (song and album -- my personal favorite):
White flags of winter chimneys
Waving truce against the moon
In the mirrors of a modern bank
from the window of a hotel room
You see the snow-topped chimneys and the moon and you feel the mood. Then your perceptual awareness shifts. The tone drops a bit and you realize what you're seeing is a reflection off a bank building. The music slips higher and you pull back even further. These images aren't just objectively out there. You're watching them from the window of your hotel room.
It's a song about traveling, about getting away, about returning to oneself after the "possessive coupling" of a recent love affair. But it's been fairly impressionistic ("all emotions and abstractions," as she sings in "Song for Sharon") until this point: "I'm traveling in some vehicle/I'm sitting in some cafe." It's an anonymous landscape, dotted with specific observations: "... as natural as the weather/In this moody sky today," or "snow gathers like bolts of lace/Waltzing on a ballroom girl. And then, at the end, you (and the narrator) are actually back in the world, at a specific place at a particular moment, with the understanding that, even as a "defector from the petty wars," it's only until "love sucks me back that way." Jaco Pastorius' gray and wintery bass is just like that moody sky.
If Mitchell has a signature shot, it may be that hotel-room long shot. Like this one overlooking Central Park in "Song for Sharon" (from "Hejira"):
Now there are 29 skaters on Wolman Rink
Circling in singles and in pairs
In this vigorous anonymity
A blank face at the window stares and stares and stares and stares
Or this one from "Harry's House"/"Centerpiece" ("The Hissing of Summer Lawns"):
He opens up his suitcase
In the continental suite
And people third stories down
Look like colored currents in the street
A helicopter lands on the Pan Am roof
Like a dragonfly on a tomb
Mitchell is also an expert sound designer. Watch (and listen) to this, from "For the Roses" (song and album):
I heard it in the wind last night
It sounded like applause
Chilly now
End of summer
No more shiny hot nights
It was just the arbutus rustling
And the bumping of the logs
And the moon swept down black water
Like an empty spotlight
Or this atmospheric (and subjective) sound work from "Car on a Hill" (on "Court and Spark"), where the protagonist waits, anxiously and uncertainly, for her lover to arrive in the Hollywood Hills. I think of this song as a kind of sequel to the Beatles' "Blue Jay Way":
Ive been sitting up waiting for my sugar to show
Ive been listening to the sirens and the radio
He said he'd be over three hours ago
Ive been waiting for his car on the hill...
Fast tires come screaming around the bend
But theres still no buzzer
They roll on...
Can you hear that? Definitely a Surround effect. Squealing tires in the canyons, maybe emerging out of the distant sound of sirens -- you can't quite tell where the sounds are coming from up here -- getting closer, then... no buzzer. The song ends with a repeated circular figure on Fender Rhodes and guitar, with drive-by oboe (or synth), that leaves you -- and her -- hanging...
I don't know how I missed mentioning David Bowie's 60th birthday in January, but I did. On a plane to LA recently I experienced my best-ever experience listening to "Hunky Dory" (1971). You know how that happens sometimes: You reconnect with something you haven't listened to in a while (no matter how familiar you are with it) and you rediscover it as if you were really hearing it for the first time? ("Changes" spoke directly to me like nothing else on the radio when it came out, and I was a confused pubescent 13.) Anyway, that's what a good close listen (iPod, passive noise-cancelling earphones, eyes closed, window seat on a plane) can do for you.
And, when I got home, I found this on YouTube, from a 1973 "Midnight Special." A belated happy 60th to The Artist Formerly Known as Ziggy -- and an early 61st birthday greeting to Lucy Jordan!
View image Eddie Murphy and back-up singers in a soul revue from "Dreamgirls."
Atlantic, Stax/Volt, Motown... Those are three (four?) of my favorite record labels -- and two of 'em are in the news now. Of course, Bill Condon's film of the 1981 musical "Dreamgirls" is loosely based on a slice of Motown history involving Diana Ross and the Supremes. (The slick diva lead singer is named Deena. Subtle.) "Dreamgirls" is playing roadshow engagements in LA, NY and SF -- and opens around the rest of the country on Christmas.
But on a far more significantly note: Last week, music mogul Ahmet Ertegun, founder of the great soul/jazz/pop/rock label Atlantic, died at age 83. Ertegun, along with several others whose names on LP jackets I came to associate with great music (his brother Neshui, Jerry Wexler, Tom Dowd, Arif Mardin...), made Atlantic into one of the greatest recording imprimaturs in American history. (In no small part thanks to its partnership with Memphis-based Stax and Volt.)
Today, the Atlantic/Stax/Volt legacy is in the hands of the brilliant archival label, Rhino, which recently released a terrific box set: "What It Is! Funky Soul and Rare Grooves (1967-77)" from the vaults of Atlantic, Atco and Warner Bros. Records (which includes stuff from Curtom, Cotillion, Reprise... -- labels are as fascinating to me as movie studios, and some have equally distinctive house styles). An earlier indispensable Rhino collection -- "Beg, Scream & Shout! The Big Ol' Box of '60s Soul" -- has a lot of the Stax/Volt material, and comes in a replica carrying case for 7" 45 rpm singles. And I'm thrilled and relieved to see that the 203-track, 8-disc "Atlantic Rhythm and Blues 1947-1974" (which I originally had on LP, then repurchased on CD in the 1980s) is still in print -- along with many of the original albums.
The best appreciation of Ertegun and Atlantic that I've read is from That Little Round-Headed Boy, who even includes a convenient 45 adapter for use on 33 1/3 rpm long-playing turntables! (Bur remember: For best results observe the R.I.A.A. high frequency roll-off characteristic with a 500 cycle crossover.) Not only that, TLRHB adds his own list of favorite Atlantic sides. (And, yes, I've always had a soft spot for Clarence Carter's "Patches," too... and I fervently believe that Aretha Frankin's "Until You Come Back to Me" is to Atlantic what the Temptations' "My Girl" and Stevie Wonder's "Signed, Sealed, Delivered" are to Motown/Tamla -- single-slices of heaven on Earth.)
This is a mono posting and may be played on stereo equipment.
Here's a dazzling concept for a music clip: One shot, stationary camera, five guys. This performance of "Cold Irons Bound," from which Amazon.com is posting on their page for Bob Dylan's new album "Modern Times" (to be released Tuesday), lets you do your own cutting as you watch it. Keep your eye on Mr. Zimmerman as much as you want, but you'll no doubt find yourself focusing at times on the bass player, or one of the guitar players or the drummer. So, it's different every time you watch it. It's interactive! (And further proof that the integrity of mise-en-scene is aesthetically and morally superior to montage...)
A couple days ago we published an Opening Shot contribution for Woody Allen's "Annie Hall" in which Allen cited an old joke to illustrate a point about his view of life:
Two elderly women are at a Catskills mountain resort, and one of 'em says: "Boy, the food at this place is really terrible." The other one says, "Yeah, I know, and such small portions."
I couldn't help but think of that when I saw the open letter Steely Dan's Donald Fagen and Walter Becker posted on their web site ("Open Letter to the Great Comic Actor, Luke Wilson"). Be sure to check out the groovy Residential Suites at Longworth stationery: "Where Value is King... And So Are You!"
Fagen and Becker address their open letter to Luke to complain about his brother Owen's movie, "You, Me and Dupree," which they say is a bad movie that they think Owen should have thanked them for, because they think the story (and title) resemble their song "Cousin Dupree," off the "Two Against Nature" album. "Cousin Dupree" is about a guy who... well, let them put it in their own words:
Well I've kicked around a lot since high school
I've worked a lot of nowhere gigs
From keyboard man in a rock'n ska band
To haulin' boss crude in the big rigs
Now I've come back home to plan my next move
From the comfort of my Aunt Faye's couch
When I see my little cousin Janine walk in
All I could say was ow ow ouch
Honey how you've grown
Like a rose
Well we used to play
When we were three
How about a kiss for your cousin Dupree
Write Fagen and Becker:
Anyway, they got your little brother on the hook for this summer stinkbomb -- I mean, check the reviews -- and he's using all his heaviest Owen C. licks to try to get this pathetic way-unfunny debacle off the ground and, in the end, no matter what he does or what happens at the box office, in the short run, he's gonna go down hard for trashing the work of some pretty heavy artists like us in the process. ... I mean, we're like totally out in the cold on this one -- no ASCAP, no soundtrack, no consultant gig (like we got from the Farrelly Bros. when they used a bunch of songs in their movie, "You, Me and Irene" or whatever). No phone call, no muffin basket, no flowes, nothing....
But, hey, luke, man -- there is one petite solid you could do for us at this time -- do you think you could persuade your bro to do the right thing and come down to our Concert at Irvine and apologize to our fans for this travesty?
OK, I can see some similarities between one Dupree and the other -- especially the ramblin' nature of the character, the sleeping on the couch, and all that.
But, frankly, I think Owen Wilson's Dupree is even more like the out-of-place "special friend," the unwelcome guest who will not leave, who is the title character of the Dan masterpiece "Gaucho":
Can't you see they're laughing at me
Get rid of him
I don't care what you do at home
Would you care to explain...
Who is the gaucho amigo
Why is he standing
In your spangled leather poncho
And your elevator shoes
Bodacious cowboys
Such as your friend
Will never be welcome here
High in the Custerdome...
No he can't sleep on the floor
What do you think I'm yelling for
I'll drop him near the freeway
Doesn't he have a home...
UPDATE: Discussion of various interpretations of "Gaucho" (any or all of which work) here. Best of all: " It's obvious that the singer is berating an acquaintance (a roommate or other such cohabitant?) for his association with some poseur, a lightweight, freeloading hipster fraud who's long overstayed his welcome. Beyond that, though, we know nothing. Who are these characters? What are the circumstances of their involvement? What is the Custerdome? In the end, of course, it doesn't matter, because we're hearing a snippet of a diatribe from one character to another, and that's all we're supposed to be hearing."
Stephen Colbert on the role of artists in popular culture
After Bruce Springsteen referred to "present company included, the idiots rambling on on cable television any given night of the week" in an interview with something called Soledad O'Brien (what is a Soledad O'Brien, and why was Springsteen having an interview with it?), Stephen Colbert was outraged. He offered these Words of Wisdom -- something to keep in mind during the summer movie season, as well:
"All Soledad did was ask a perfectly legitimate valid question about whether artists should do anything other than entertain us! I've said it before: Popular music should be a series of meaningless cliches strung together by a pleasing melody to help pass the time during long commutes or loveless marriages."
C'mon, people: Isn't willful vacuity, and the lack of any ambition other than the monetary, the very recipe for what makes life so worth living?
