From an old PBS special, by way of YouTube, by way of GreenCine, a charming encounter between Woody Allen and Billy Graham in two parts:
Part One
Part Two

Memories of GMRX

One of these days I’m going to give in and write a long diatribe against the ratings system, the MPAA and the cowardly way a lot of well-meaning but uninformed people have allowed them to impose their will on movies for the last 38 years. In the meantime, these two features on Kirby Dick’s “This Film Is Not Yet Rated” a review and an interview with Dick - are worth looking into They're on "Salon", so you'll have to wait a few seconds to get past an ad...). I haven’t seen the film, so I can’t endorse it; in fact, both pieces raise a few well-considered doubts about Dick’s assumptions and his methods. But whatever doubts I may have about the film – and I’m very interested in seeing it – I can only hope that it draws attention to the power the MPAA wields and the irrational and illogical way they wield it.

The Sixth Degree

Atom Egoyan’s “Where the Truth Lies” didn’t get much of a release after losing a battle with the MPAA, and most of the critical comments on it I’ve read have been cheap shots that don’t give any idea of what the film is actually trying to accomplish. On the basis of one viewing, I’m not completely sure what I think, but I’ll at least credit the film as being a lot more interesting than its detractors would have you think – which is hardly a surprise given the director’s track record. Based on a novel by Rupert Holmes (who is probably best known as the composer and singer of “The Pina Colada Song”), it’s about a hugely successful nightclub act in the 1950s (think Martin and Lewis, only Martin’s English rather than Italian…) who break up after being involved in a scandal (the naked-corpse-found-in-hotel-bathtub kind). It’s also about a young writer in 1972 who begins a Kane-like investigation of the story while working on a book with the team’s straight man. In some ways, it seems like this is Egoyan’s “Far From Heaven”, an analysis of the repressed subtext of the 1950s, but his intentions aren’t entirely clear. Nonetheless, I liked the broad star turns of Colin Firth and Kevin Bacon and, despite the widespread criticisms of her performance, though Allison Lohmann was very appealing as the heroine/guide.

Announcement:

You may have noticed that the last post was the first in nearly a year. I originally told myself that I was going to take some time off and then give this a fresh start on New Year’s Day. Well, that didn’t happen, and asI began to reconsider exactly what I was trying to do here while my critical (and academic) career went on hold, I really wasn't sure what – if anything – I really wanted to say to the World At Large. But after far too long a break, I’m back: My goal: I’d like to say one post a day, but if that doesn’t work, at least three a week. I’ m also hoping for a slightly more personal approach though I don’t know how far I want to go with that… Keep watching…

The Kenosha Kid Does America


Ten years have passed since the publication of Simon Callow’s “Orson Welles: The Road to Xanadu”, the first volume of what was supposed to be a two-part biography of the great actor-director. The first book, which contained a more thorough analysis of Welles’ 1930s theatre work than any previous biography, ended on a moment of triumph: the 1941 premiere of Citizen Kane. Anyone familiar with Welles’ career will know that the rest of the story - not to discredit the many excellent films that followed Kane – is largely a journey downhill.
It’s also too big to adequately fit in a single volume, so Callow has made the wise decision to turn his two-volume work into a trilogy, the second part of which - the just published "Hello Americans" - follows Welles through much of the 40s, ending with the 1947 departure for what essentially became a period of exile in Europe for most of the rest of his life. It was not a good time for Welles and the failures and false starts far outnumber the successes. His second film, The Magnificent Ambersons, confused preview audiences and was butchered by RKO as Welles’ primary sponsor, George Schaefer, lost control of the studio. Welles himself was unable (or unwilling, some would say) to defend the film because he was occupied elsewhere, having relocated to Rio for an ambitious but under-planned promotion of the Good Neighbor Policy called It’s All True. It was never completed (A partial restoration was assembled and released in 1993) and created the legend of Welles as a spendthrift and dilettante, starting projects that he could never complete.
His career as a director, much less as the Boy Wonder and Master of All Media, was not entirely over, but the films he made during the time covered in this book - The Stranger, The Lady From Shanghai and Macbeth - were the result of hurry and compromise, the result of the diligent work of his agent. (The one near-masterpiece in the batch, Lady from Shanghai, came about because Welles, desperate to finance his ambitious and circus-like stage production of “Around the World in 80 Days”, bartered the services of his soon-to-be-ex-wife Rita Hayworth).
While Callow takes a few shots at those who would defend all of Welles’ work, he doesn’t quite take the position of those critics who accuse the director of being constitutionally incapable of finishing a project. Instead, he points out that the director’s mind was often elsewhere during this period. Yes, that elsewhere often involved chorus girls and night clubs, but this was also a period in which Welles served as a radio commentator, wrote a newspaper column, gave speeches and contemplated a political career. He was, as Callow shows, committed to the cause of a co-operative world government, with close contacts in the Roosevelt administration.
So what went wrong? The story recounted in Hello Americans is largely and sad and frustrating one, and those familiar with Welles’ life know that it will only get worse in Volume Three. Callow shows how Welles’ was often his own worst enemy, not just because he overextended himself or refused to commit himself to ambitious schemes when they got in trouble (though he did those things) but also because he had to live up to his own reputation, a public image that raised as much suspicion among an increasingly reactionary and anti-intellectual America as it did praise. From preview cards at the test screenings of Ambersons (where one viewer complained that the film was “even worse than Citizen Kane”) to hate mail generated by his broadcasts against racism, Callow provides many examples of how the very public figure of Welles was already on his way to becoming a bigger-than-life caricature. Volume Three should have a field day with that issue.
But we should also remember that, brilliance and ambition aside, Welles was still barely an adult in the period covered in this book, only 25 years old when Kane opened, when America entered World War Two and when Nelson Rockefeller asked him to visit Rio as a representative of his country. Callow’s story is of a young man who has been handed a pretty heady gift, makes the most of it and remains, nonetheless, a fairly young and inexperienced man. Welles’ achievements sometimes make us lose sight of that. His story is an extraordinary one, and Callow’s detailed account, more than any previous biography, shows how the talent young man grew with and was shaped by his times.

All work and no play....

Poor Jack needs a change in this life. If you haven't seen this revised trailer, a brilliant send-up of movie trailer cliches, check it out immediately. (Requires QuickTime)

Gently down the stream...

As I have said before, I am not particularly good at sharing personal details. Though I have thought about creating a blog that would deal more directly with my own life (and actually even started one a long time ago – it’s out there somewhere if you look for it), I have to admit that I’m not all that comfortable with the idea. But my friend Jessica, who has a very open and direct blog about her life here, has thrown down the gauntlet for a series of What-I’m-Into-Right-Now lists. Fine, I’ll bite. (Beware the mixed metaphor or you might end up biting a gauntlet. Ouch.) Here are a few of the things I’ve been interested in lately. Nothing all that new, by the way, but see if you can follow the path of associations.

1. Bruce Campbell

Okay, this was kind of forced upon me by circumstances. I just wrote a small piece about the actor which will be appearing later this week. And by the way, is there anything quite as intimidating as being told by an editor to “just make it light and funny”? And having just watched “Bubba Ho-Tep”, you can see where that might lead to ….

2. Elvis

Okay, granted, there’s never really a time when Elvis isn’t part of the cultural landscape, like it or not, And the current interest actually predates my viewing of “Bubba Ho-Tep”. I was listening to recordings of the 1969 concert appearances recorded for the documentary “That’s the Way it Is” and have an increased respect for the much-derided final part of Elvis’ career, the white-jumpsuit performer of his final six or seven years. This was the period that produced his best movie (the 1972 “Elvis on Tour”) and what are, in my opinion, his two best recordings, “Suspicious Minds” and “Burning Love”. What’s interesting about the “That’s the Way it Is” performances is that they show Elvis at a crossroad. . The movies of the 1960s had brought in large paychecks, but you could sense that the cycle of increasingly bad vehicles like “Easy Come, Easy Go’ and “Stay Away Joe” was just going to get worse. The music industry had changed. As the FM vs. AM chasm widened, one thing was pretty much certain; Elvis didn’t have a “Sgt. Pepper” in him. While he would still find a place on the top 40 charts from time to time on the strength of his name alone, making records wasn’t something that particularly interested him. His management and handlers had made the process so difficult and conflicting that studio time was regarded mostly as a dull obligation. What else could he do? So he returned to live performances and created the Vegas persona that would dominate the remainder of his public life. On “That’s the Way It Is”, it hasn’t solidified yet. No “Thus Spake Zarathustra”, no “American Trilogy”, no karate moves. And while the hipper-than-thou crowd would deride his song selection and the whole Vegas showroom ambience, Elvis’ playlist – everything from current hits of the day like “Sweet Caroline” to torch song standards like “Love Letters” - is perhaps most interesting for it’s absences. When he performs his own hits like “Love Me Tender” or “Hound Dog”, it’s almost out of a combined sense of duty and embarrassment, as if he suspects that both he and his audience have outgrown the hysteria of the 1950s. Listening to him work his way through familiar numbers, you sense that Elvis is less interested in establishing or living up to his own legend and is simply trying to function as a professional singer, subtly leading the band and actually trying to sell the songs as sincerely as possible. Given the essentially tragic and chaotic nature of his personal life, the stage became the one place where he still had some kind of control.

3. Billboard yearly Top 100 lists

I’ve been downloading collections of “Billboard’s Top 100” for various past years, and reading over the lists, especially those prior to 1975, a few things stand out. First, of course, is the great sense of variety that Top 40 radio once offered. It was a format where Bob Dylan could sit alongside Perry Como, as did Jerry Butler and the Ohio Express, the Rolling Stones and the Singing Nun. Of course, there was a lot of garbage: If ever a corollary to Sturgeon’s Law could be found, it’s in these charts. But there’s also a sense of openness and experimentation that today’s overly formatted radio could certainly use.

4. Simon Pegg and “Spaced”

I finally got around to watching “Shaun of the Dead” a few weeks ago and discovered that it really was as good as everyone had told me. So I became interested in “Spaced”, a short-lived British tv series from the same source and featuring many of the same players. The premise of the show is that two people pretend to be married in order to get a decent apartment. But f that sounds a little too “Three’s Company”, the real premise of “Spaced” is no premise at all. The apartment and the pretense are just centering points for episodes that cover everything from alien invaders to performance art. Evidently many jokes in “Shaun” are references to “Spaced” episodes (my favorite is when Pegg and his zombie-hunting team run into an identical team headed by his former roommate) – but don’t that let that dissuade you from checking it out. Alas, I’ve only been able to find the first season of “Spaced” (I think there were only two…) and am hungry for more.

5. CS Blues

I’m being polite and using only the truncated version of the title of photographer Robert Frank’s fascinating documentary about the Rolling Stones’ 1972 America tour. The film faced immediate distribution problems and has generally only been available for screening when Frank was actually present. (In the late 70s, the Stones attempted to suppress it altogether, concerned that its relentless depiction of sex, drugs and rock and roll would work hurt Keith Richards’ defense against drug charges in Canada Frank, who also shot the cover photos for “Exiles on Main Street”, was evidently given free access to every part of the tour, (– and one could just as easily ask why, after “Gimme Shelter”, would they even give a filmmaker such a free rein in recording ttheir backstage behavior?) and while this is by no means a conventional concert film, it provides a pretty strong portrait of all of the temptations of the rock and roll lifestyle. As the tour progresses, a sense of decadence-for-it’s-own-sake takes over, and Frank’s unrecoiling camera records it all not only as a testament to access, but as a parallel to the dark vision of Nixon’s re-election, which provides a backdrop as seen through tv news reports.

6. Sigur Ros
Okay, I have to admit that 18 months ago I had never heard of Sigur Ros until about a year and a half ago when I went to a Kronos Quartet concert that featured an arrangement of one of their songs. , After that, I started running across references to them everywhere, They’re an Icelandic band with an ethereal quality that sounds something like a cross between the ambient albums Brian Eno made in the 1980s and Radiohead. Of course, the songs are all in Icelandic, so I have no idea what any of them are about, but the music is simultaneously scary and majestic. Their new album is called “Takk” and is well worth a listen.

7. Wong Kar-Wai’s “2046”
Wong Kar-wai’s films are hard to explain, hard to absorb in a single viewing and far too melancholy for all tastes. Fine. But “2046” , while probably not in the same league as “In the Mood For Love”, is a haunting footnote/appendix to the earlier film, a disturbingly believable look at failed love and other misunderstandings….

8. Sugar Free Popsicles

Do I really have to explain?

"Criminals are a superstitious, cowardly lot"

My review of Batman Begins can be found here, though the link will probably only work for the next week or so...

Pre-montage scribbles

Though he's best known - and deservingly so - for splitting cinematic hairs as the leading theorist of montage-based cinema, Sergei Eisenstein was also an enthusiastic artist and cartoonist, as this new website launched by the Daniel Langlois Foundation demonstrates. It's a very flashy display of cartoon-filled notebooks kept by young Sergei as a teenager, long before he ever dreamed of dialectical materialism and the montage of attractions.

We're at a place called Vertigo...
There is a moment that many rock performers have reached, the perilous point just after they have been named The Big New Thing . For many, the next step is a disastrous one, the stage where they Believe Everything That Is Written About Them, and the list of BNTs who crashed on its rocks is a long one. In fact, it’s not even necessary to fall for your own press releases; Simply having the public think that you do is sufficient.
The members of U2 have, almost miraculously, avoided such a disaster, though there was a time (somewhere around Rattle and Hum and through the early 90s) when it looked otherwise. Their response to the tightrope-walk set up by their own success has been to stay hungry, to continue producing new and original music of the caliber of 2000’s “All That You Can’t Leave Behind” or last year’s “How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb”. Is there another act old enough to be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame but still functioning as a significant contemporary act rather than cruising through tours on the strength of their greatest hits? A few – Springsteen, Prince - but there aren’t too many other names from the early 80s hat haven’t already walked the slow crawl from MTV to VH1 and on to “classic rock” oblivion.
Having said that, I’m sure there are plenty of cynical folks who resent U2’s success and find it easy to denigrate Bono’s image as a globe-hopping do-gooder. Needless to say, the new book “Bono, in conversation with Michka Assayas” is not going to appeal to them. For fans and those interested in the singer’s increasingly significant role as a diplomat, this lengthy interview provides many answers as to how the band has survived for so long as well as well as to the sincerity of his work for debt relief in Africa. Assayas, a French journalist, knew the band in their early days but had just renewed his acquaintance with them after a long absence when he decided to approach Bono with the idea of collaborating on a book.
The project must have grown in ways that Assayas didn’t expect. It’s not the “life story” of the singer, despite the claims of the jacket, nor is it particularly strong on celebrity gossip or sex-drugs-and-rock-and-roll anecdotes, yet neither of those absences prevent the book from being an intelligent and illuminating portrait of a thoughtful and innovative artist.
What seems to take Assayas by surprise, and what ultimately comes through as the book’s strongest theme, is the sincerity and the informed nature of Bono’s commitment to African relief. By the final chapters, when every conversation seems to somehow lead into Africa, the interviewer seems just a little frustrated and tries to poke holes in Bono’s idealism, but the singer usually manages to provide commonsense answers to every one of Assayas’ doubts. Make fun of him, call him “St. Bono” if you will, but the man has done his homework and isn’t just signing on to a celebrity-cause-of-the-day. What ultimately surfaces from Assayas’ book is the portrait of a serious and sensible man who has achieved fame as a rock star but has used the privileges his musical career has provided to ask hard questions about the economic realities of the world.
If you’re already U2 fan, Assayas’ book is a useful guide to understanding some of the directions that the band follows. If you’re not necessarily interested in U2, you should at least take a look at some of the relief projects Bono has sponsored and see if they’re deserving of your support.
Check out DATA (Debt, Aids, Trade, Africa)
And
The One campaign..

Salman Rushdie on atheism.

Here's a short and simple note on the "intelligent design" controversy from Salman Rushdie, someone who know his share about facing down the forces of fundamentalism.....

Loving the Alien: The Very High Notes of Klaus Nomi

The first time I saw Klaus Nomi perform was in the 1981 punk/new wave concert anthology Urgh! A Music War where his unusual collage of styles – electronic space opera with a touch of Cabaret ( I remember being reminded of some of the Blue Meanies in Yellow Submarine as well)– stood out even among the self-consciously trend setting New Wavers. That one brief appearance wasn’t enough to make it clear if Nomi was a put-on or a genuine avant-garde crossover, but a great new documentary The Nomi Song (now in theatres and coming to DVD on June 14th) makes an indisputable case for the latter. Andrew Horn’s excellent account of Nomi’s brief career (he died of AIDS in 1983) on the fringe of art/pop tells the story of a lonely, slightly eccentric young German man with a distinctive falsetto voice and a love for opera who came to New York, fell in with the punk crowd and grew into an unusual and unclassifiable performer of highly theatrical operatic techno-pop. Of course, the pop music industry rests on its ability to pigeonhole performers, so Nomi remained a minor figure for most of his brief life, his widest public exposure being a guest slot as back-up singer for David Bowie on “Saturday Night Live”. With personal recollections from his band members and friends and a generous assortment of musical performances, The Nomi Song suggests that his work deserves reassessment, but also offers a strong look at the art-meets-punk cultural landscape of the early 80s.

This group deserves your support and encouragement.
Film Aid International is an organization which helps people around the world by using movies, first by presenting educational films to help people deal with health issues and other concerns, secondly by providing film screenings to entertain the millions of people currently living in refugee camps and recovering from the effects of war, poverty, starvation and disease. Sounds like a simple idea? Yes, and a brilliant one.
On July 3rd Turner Classic Movies will use their annual screening of The Wizard of Oz to draw attention to their work of Film Aid International, with the organization’s founder Caroline Baron introducing two showings of the film. This is a great opportunity to draw attention to their work and to remind the audience for this much-loved film of the power of cinema to make the world a better place. Don’t miss it. And in the meantime, check out their website and consider making a donation.
(The website also features a link to a Sarah MacLachlan video called "World on Fire". Even if you're not a fan of MacLachlan, this short piece makes a powerful comment on charity by comparing the budgets of charitable organizations like Film Aid to the production costs of a typical music video.)

As far as I can tell there are no nice round-numbered anniversaries at play here, and the man's still living, so evidently the editors of Bookforum decided to pay tribute to America's best living reclusive author just for the hell of it. (The print issue feature of cover photograph of Professor Irwin Corey, of course. )
The whole thing is well worth your time, but the real highlight, and the centerpiece of the whole issue, is Gerald Howard's account of the publishing history of "Gravity's Rainbow", written from the perspective of a professional editor. There's much to enjoy here, though not in the way of gossip or candid photos.
But is Pynchon really all that reclusive? I sometimes suspect that the Salingeresque reputation is exaggerated: Just because you don't show up on "Entertainment Tonight" doesn't make you a hermit. Given recent reports - there were even rumors of a book tour to promote "Mason & Dixon' - I'd like to think that Pynchon has developed a sense of humor about his so-called reclusiveness after all these years. If he ever decides to drop his vow of no-publicity, I hope he bypasses the usual talk shows and makes his first public appearance on "The Simpsons".

List-o-mania!

If anyone's interested, you can find my review of The Longest Yard here.(They use frames, so you'll have to look around for it...)
My interview with documentary filmmaker Albert Maysles won't be hitting print until next Friday, but due to a misunderstanding of some sort, it's already online here and here.
Meanwhile, lists of the "greatest films of all time" have made a sudden resurgence.I suppose it was about time. It's been ten years since the American Film Institute released their all too predictable list of the "100 Greatest American Films", so Time Magazine's Richard Corliss and Richard Schickel have stepped in with their choices here. I respect both Corliss and Schickel, but, as they more or less admit, list-making is just a parlor game.
The New York Times, not to be outdone, has come up with their own list, only ten times as long, here.
Yes, I could quibble about the fact that their list of 100 titles doesn't duplicate my hypothetical list of 100 titles, but that, as Corliss and Schickel argue, is part of the appeal. So all I can really say is that if you're the sort of person who enjoys this kind of thing, then this is the kind of thing you will enjoy.

A great disturbance in the Force...

No, I haven't seen Revenge of the Sith yet, though I imagine that I'll get around to it eventually. (Actually, I haven't seen Attack of the Clones either; I tried watching it on tv about a year ago but found it unbearable.) But in keeping with the spirit of every other media source, here are a few Star Wars items online worth the wasting a minute or two:

First, there's Store Wars. Yes, I know there's really nothing here that wasn't done over twenty-five years ago by Hardware Wars, but I laughed anyway. Especially at the organic version of R2-D2.
(Hardware Wars isn't online, but you can see an excerpt here.)

Meanwhile, the folks at MoveOn have created a fairly good Star Wars parody of their own to challenge the current Senate showdown.

And then there's the new collection of Star Wars toys at Burger King. Check out the demos at their website, especially the spitting Jabba the Hutt, the wind-up Han Solo and - this one really shouldn't be missed - the Princess Leia Image Viewer.

A few changes to my network may make it possible for me to post more often - okay, I don't believe it either, but humor me, okay?. Anyway, you can find my recent reviews of Days of Being Wild and Mondovino here at Playback, but you'll have to look around for them. I'll have a few more links to some other recent pieces soon.

We love Ted!
A shameless plug:
Hey, I don't care what Jane Fonda or the folks at the WWE say about him; Ted Turner is on our permanent list of all-time media good guys. Oh, I know he can say crazy things and threaten to apply crayons to every old movie in his library, but he just does that because he likes the way it makes your face turn all purple. In his heart of hearts, Billionaire Ted is a genuine hero. Why? Because no matter what else he may have done in his life, he brought us Turner Classic Movies, the classiest act on cable.
While the once-praised "American Movie Classics" has become so unwatchable that it's not even worth bothering to check its listing, TCM sticks to its artistic guns and exceeds expectations time and time again.
The evidence:
Tomorrow's five-film tribute to Jean Renoir;
A four part "Star of the Month" feast of Orson Welles films in May, including screenings not only of the obvious Kane and Touch of Evil, but also of The Immortal Story, Mr. Arkadin, F For Fake and Othello;
and a Cinco de Mayo salute to Luis Bunuel featuring Los Olvidados, Nazarin, Viridiana, The Exterminating Angel and Simon of the Desert.

"Do you know anything about a guy going around playing the harmonica? He's someone you'd remember. Instead of talking, he plays. And when he better play, he talks..."

I don't know about you, but my Sergio Leone obsession hasn't brought me anything but a stack of Ennio Morricone albums and a wish that I could find a nice long duster. Lucky Christopher Frayling got a knighthood for his... The Independent talks to the man who wrote the definitive book of Spaghetti Westerns.

Rescuing Ryan

In the early 70s, Ryan Larkin's animated short films like "Walking" and "Street Musique" were heralded as small masterpieces of personal expression, lively free-style displays of movement and color that gave the impression of an impressionist's sketches brought to life. Thirty years later, Larkin's successes have largely been forgotten and he's been reduced to living on hand-outs. In this year's Academy Award winning Ryan, Chris Landreth uses a very different style - imagine an animated version of Cronenberg's Naked Lunch - to tell the chilling story of Larkin's fall from grace. The Guardian tracks the animator down and suggests that Ryan may have been just the boost his dormant career needed.

(Ryan was viewable online earlier this year but seems to have disappeared. If anyone knows where to find it, let me know...)

"If... my films are in contradiction with the age I live in, it's perhaps in the sympathy I have for anybody who must struggle to enter a world from which he's been excluded."
Though he's been dead for more than two decades, Francois Truffaut's films are as fresh as anything you'll see released in theatres this year. Gilbert Adair offers a brief assessment in the Guardian.