Tom Dowd & The Language of Music ..a new film uncovers an unsung music legend so talented that it will even make you reconsider "Sweet Home Alabama"
There was a time in the history of popular music, about a century ago, when a hit song was measured by the number of copies of sheet music that sold. Pop songs entered the national consciousness not through a particular performance or interpretation but by way of the middle- class parlor room, where a piano was nearly as common an object as a cd player is today.
Tom Edison changed all that with the invention of the phonograph, a discovery that, like many of Edison's most innovative ideas, came to him through studying an unrelated piece of technology when he discovered that he could feel vibrations coming through a telephone receiver. You don't have to be Walter Benjamin to realize that the ability to record and preserve a single performance changed the way music is heard, used and even created. As recordings - a specific, fixed document of a piece of music - replaced sheet music - a blueprint for a potential performance -, the nature of music changed forever. Music and technology were intertwined, evolving together into a new language that most of us have learned to take for granted.
If you've never heard of Tom Dowd - a reasonable assumption - you may find it hard to believe that one person could have had such a long- lasting role not just in the way musical recordings are made but in a wide-ranging field of genres from bebop and soul to "Southern rock". As an engineer and producer, Dowd's had a hand in more great recordings than you could even listen to in a day, but one of the most welcome things about Mark Moormann's film Tom Dowd and the Language of Music is that it keeps its subject off a pedestal, preferring to find him where he's happiest, working the knobs and sliders of a recording studio console.
The film, which opens theatrically in selected cities this week and will be released on video later this month, is a string of talking-head anecdotes, archival footage and musical performances but there's not a dull moment in it, even on a second viewing. (Moormann succumbs to the unfortunate trend of staging some period scenes, but does so sparsely, never pushing the film into the contrived fictional region that marred Standing in the Shadows of Motown.). Dowd, a shaggy man in his seventies (He died at 77 in 2002, the year the film premiered at Sundance) who not only was a living witness to pop culture and history (in addition to his recording career, he worked on the Manhattan Project but gave up a dream of becoming a nuclear physicist when government security prevented him from returning to college), but remained at the end of his life every bit as excited by the memory of a musical performance or a technical detail as he had been when he first faced them.
Dowd started engineering in the late 40s, when the limitations of a typical recording studio made capturing the dynamics of a band an almost insurmountable challenge. Hooking up with a new, fast-rising label, Atlantic, he recorded some of the most prominent jazz and rhythm and blues acts of the 50s, experimenting with multiple tracks before stereo had even been developed. (A few years later, Dowd's tapes allowed Atlantic to reissue their back catalog in authentic stereo, when most labels were stuck creating ineffective simulations of two-track sound.) Taking a cue from guitarist Les Paul's home studio, he began experiment with eight-track recording years before it became an industry standard, and when Atlantic became one of the major labels of the 1960s and moved to new offices, it was Dowd who called the shots and designed the recording studios.
And then there are the records, from classic jazz albums with Monk, Coleman and Mingus to the breakthrough pop hits like "Mack the Knife" and "Stand by Me", from Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin to the quasi-psychedelia of Cream's "Disraeli Gears" (where Dowd is credited for overcoming the suspicions of the musicians by coming up with the syncopated beat for "Sunshine of Your Love"). As he became in demand for sessions at the Stax studio in Memphis as well as in, Macon and Mussel Shoals, the New York born physicist-turned-engineer relocated to Miami, where he became closely associated with the early careers of Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Allman Brothers. What keeps the film from no more than a parade of guest stars and greatest hits, however, is the sense conveyed by Dowd's recollections and footage of studio sessions that we are watching artists at work, tending less to the illusion of celebrity than to the real labor of laying down tracks and making them work.
As one might expect, the film includes many interviews with Dowd's associates, from industry legends like Ahmet Ertegun and Phil Ramone to artists like Clapton and Charles. The finest moment, and the film's climax, is given to Dowd alone, as he sits at a mixing board listening to the original tracks for "Layla". He works the dials eagerly as he explores the raw materials, excitedly pulling an additional slide guitar part here, a second piano there. This, we finally see, is his instrument, and he moves his fingers over the board with the same skill and passion that others give to their guitars and keyboards. If you think recorded music is just a matter of aiming a microphone in the right direction, or if you're used to thinking of "Layla" as just another piece of "classic rock" background noise, this film is a real ear-opener.
Wednesday, August 11, 2004
Sunday, August 08, 2004
Lina who? Robert Hunt reaches deep into his files and recalls a mid-Seventies folly...
I was moving files out of a drawer and just reached the last handful: Wajda, Warhol,Welles, Wenders,Wertmuller. The last one took me by surprise. I imagine that many people interested in movies would be surprised to know that there was a time when Lina Wertmuller was a media cause celebre, subject of NYT profiles and cover stories: in fact, it might not be unreasonable to assume that most under the age of thirty will not even recognise the name at all (despite the recent blink-and-you'll-miss-it remake of Swept away...)
But things were quite different for a brief moment in 1976, when Wertmuller's blend of cruel comedy and politics found a home in American art-houses. Art-house taste at that time was set largely by a kind of snobbism (It's not that different now) and while a few of the giants of the Sixties (Truffaut and Bergman, most consistently) still made annual appearances and the occasional light comedy could break through (Anyone remember Cousin, Cousine ?), the audience had splintered. Individual directors had cult followings, but Eric Rohmer's fans generally weren't likely to have much in common with Ken Russell's. The American cinema was generally ignored. The occasional taboo-shattering scandal (Last Tango, The Night Porter, In the Realm of Senses) made for good conversation, but no one wanted to commit too seriously to them.
In this climate, Lina Wertmuller was the perfect director for the movie snob with Marxist and feminist intentions. Her films were political,feminist, serious. Or at least she said they were. And she talked a good game.
Wertmuller first entered the US arthouses with a modest hit called The Seduction of Mimi. Swept Away, with the same stars,Giancarlo Giannini and Mariangelo Melato, did even better. By the time Seven Beauties opened, New York Magazine had placed her on the cover calling her "the important European director since Bergman". Earlier Wertmuller films were given a belated U. S release. Hollywood stars plugged her movies on talk shows.
Talking to Wertmuller's fans could be exhausting, yet somehow you got the feeling that it was like talking to one of the fairy-tale emperor's supporters just after their hero had paraded nude past their block. She was praised as a political satirist, until you pointed out that both the political and comic points came from having her prole Everyman heroes (usually played by Gianini) abused by someone powerful (frequently a woman) and taking revenge by abusing them in turn, hardly a clear feminist statement. If you pointed out that the politics were simplistic and the humor crude at best, usually saved - barely- by Gianini's droopy-eyed appeal, they'd insist that the films you had seen were flawed, but whatever Wertmuller item you had missed was the masterpiece that saved her reputation.
But it must have appeared obvious to even the most devoted that Wertmuller's films didn't quite live up to her lofty claims of political insight, and that her penchant for lengthy titles like was at best pretentious, and worst, nonsensical. And wasn't it odd for an alleged Marxist/feminist that her biggest supporter in the US was the conservative critic John Simon (author of the "most important since Bergman" quote)? .
By the time her 1965 Let's Talk About Men was revived in 1976 (it was, coincidentally, the first film I ever reviewed in print), the game was up. In her interview with Simon, she had described the film as "extremely feminist", evidently confident that her US fan club would never see it: it turned out to be a standard, but minor, Italian farce, the kind of thing that arthouse audiences had given up on by 1965.
Like many European directors who find American success, Wertmuller was able to move up to international co-productions with American stars, but the audience lost interest by the time A Night Full of Rain (or if you prefer, The End of the World in our Usual beds on a Night Full of Rain) appeared, pairing Giannini with Candice Bergen. (European critics, by the way, were puzzled by the whole Wertmuller fad, much as you might be if you heard that a foreign magazine had just described Daniel Petrie or Joel Schumacher "the most important American director since Scorsese" or some such nonsense). By 1980, she was almost forgotten in the US, though a few of the Hollywood deals eventually resulted in The Seduction of Mimi remade as a Richard Pryor vehicle, and Swept Away was reworked, even prior to the recent Madonna interpretation as Overboard.
I didn't open the Wertmuller file. I know what's in it: old production notes and a glossy reproduction of the "New York" cover story, reprinted by one of her US distributors. To re-read them now, nearly 30 years later would simply raise the obvious question: What on earth were they thinking?
I was moving files out of a drawer and just reached the last handful: Wajda, Warhol,Welles, Wenders,Wertmuller. The last one took me by surprise. I imagine that many people interested in movies would be surprised to know that there was a time when Lina Wertmuller was a media cause celebre, subject of NYT profiles and cover stories: in fact, it might not be unreasonable to assume that most under the age of thirty will not even recognise the name at all (despite the recent blink-and-you'll-miss-it remake of Swept away...)
But things were quite different for a brief moment in 1976, when Wertmuller's blend of cruel comedy and politics found a home in American art-houses. Art-house taste at that time was set largely by a kind of snobbism (It's not that different now) and while a few of the giants of the Sixties (Truffaut and Bergman, most consistently) still made annual appearances and the occasional light comedy could break through (Anyone remember Cousin, Cousine ?), the audience had splintered. Individual directors had cult followings, but Eric Rohmer's fans generally weren't likely to have much in common with Ken Russell's. The American cinema was generally ignored. The occasional taboo-shattering scandal (Last Tango, The Night Porter, In the Realm of Senses) made for good conversation, but no one wanted to commit too seriously to them.
In this climate, Lina Wertmuller was the perfect director for the movie snob with Marxist and feminist intentions. Her films were political,feminist, serious. Or at least she said they were. And she talked a good game.
Wertmuller first entered the US arthouses with a modest hit called The Seduction of Mimi. Swept Away, with the same stars,Giancarlo Giannini and Mariangelo Melato, did even better. By the time Seven Beauties opened, New York Magazine had placed her on the cover calling her "the important European director since Bergman". Earlier Wertmuller films were given a belated U. S release. Hollywood stars plugged her movies on talk shows.
Talking to Wertmuller's fans could be exhausting, yet somehow you got the feeling that it was like talking to one of the fairy-tale emperor's supporters just after their hero had paraded nude past their block. She was praised as a political satirist, until you pointed out that both the political and comic points came from having her prole Everyman heroes (usually played by Gianini) abused by someone powerful (frequently a woman) and taking revenge by abusing them in turn, hardly a clear feminist statement. If you pointed out that the politics were simplistic and the humor crude at best, usually saved - barely- by Gianini's droopy-eyed appeal, they'd insist that the films you had seen were flawed, but whatever Wertmuller item you had missed was the masterpiece that saved her reputation.
But it must have appeared obvious to even the most devoted that Wertmuller's films didn't quite live up to her lofty claims of political insight, and that her penchant for lengthy titles like was at best pretentious, and worst, nonsensical. And wasn't it odd for an alleged Marxist/feminist that her biggest supporter in the US was the conservative critic John Simon (author of the "most important since Bergman" quote)? .
By the time her 1965 Let's Talk About Men was revived in 1976 (it was, coincidentally, the first film I ever reviewed in print), the game was up. In her interview with Simon, she had described the film as "extremely feminist", evidently confident that her US fan club would never see it: it turned out to be a standard, but minor, Italian farce, the kind of thing that arthouse audiences had given up on by 1965.
Like many European directors who find American success, Wertmuller was able to move up to international co-productions with American stars, but the audience lost interest by the time A Night Full of Rain (or if you prefer, The End of the World in our Usual beds on a Night Full of Rain) appeared, pairing Giannini with Candice Bergen. (European critics, by the way, were puzzled by the whole Wertmuller fad, much as you might be if you heard that a foreign magazine had just described Daniel Petrie or Joel Schumacher "the most important American director since Scorsese" or some such nonsense). By 1980, she was almost forgotten in the US, though a few of the Hollywood deals eventually resulted in The Seduction of Mimi remade as a Richard Pryor vehicle, and Swept Away was reworked, even prior to the recent Madonna interpretation as Overboard.
I didn't open the Wertmuller file. I know what's in it: old production notes and a glossy reproduction of the "New York" cover story, reprinted by one of her US distributors. To re-read them now, nearly 30 years later would simply raise the obvious question: What on earth were they thinking?
Friday, August 06, 2004
Was it all a dream?
When Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers opened earlier this year, most of the criticism I read reflected disinterested confusion, some of it accusing the director of a simple-minded nostalgia, most of it unable to get past the film's NC-17 rating. Having finally caught up with the film on the recently released DVD, I'm even more disappointed with the lack of insightful criticism than I was earlier.
Is it a success? It's hard to say, though one of the unusual things about Bertolucci's work is that his failures (1900 and Luna, for example) are sometimes more rewarding for the risks they take. There are so many strands running through The Dreamers that it may take a few viewings to sort them all out: cinephilia, sex, May .68, the other cultural detritus of the 60s, and Cocteau's "Les Enfants Terribles".
I haven't read Gilbert Adair's novel "The Holy Innocents", though the author notes - approvingly - that the film makes many additions to his story (it has even been reported that he rewriting the book to incorporate Bertolucci's changes) but gather from descriptions that it's a revision of Cocteau's "Les Enfants Terribles" (one English translation of which was titled "The Holy Terrors") in the form of an autobiographical account of the author's experiences as a British student in France.
Cocteau's novel (which was filmed by Jean-Pierre Melville in 1948) is about a pair of semi-incestuous siblings playing psychological games in a Paris apartment. Though they adopt friends, they also manipulate them in an almost sadistic manner. It's a magical story, but with a cruel streak.
The Dreamers has a similarly incestuous couple living an intensely aestheticized life in an apartment sanctuary, but in this case their self-absorbed idyll is invaded by history and viewed from the perspective of a third party, a young American student who is pulled into the world as much from his own loneliness as by their magnetism.
One of the most curious scenes comes the absent parents return to the apartment, survey the damage, find the naked trio and, leaving a check behind to keep the kids in groceries, run off as if fearing for their lives.The abandonment of parental authority or its' defeat? And why does it this scene drive Isabelle to attempt suicide? Is she associating her death with Mouchette, or is Bertolucci making the connection?
The film offers little in the way of resolution. Do the events of May bring an end to innocence, a commitment to political change, a break between the romantic Matthew and the newly-committed Theo? Perhaps Bertolucci is trying to do too much and can't really answer his own questions. Much of the charm of The Dreamers is in the asking.
Fortunately, this perceptive review in "Bright Lights Film Journal" by A. Zubatov and Yaniv Eyny puts much of the film in perspective.
When Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers opened earlier this year, most of the criticism I read reflected disinterested confusion, some of it accusing the director of a simple-minded nostalgia, most of it unable to get past the film's NC-17 rating. Having finally caught up with the film on the recently released DVD, I'm even more disappointed with the lack of insightful criticism than I was earlier.
Is it a success? It's hard to say, though one of the unusual things about Bertolucci's work is that his failures (1900 and Luna, for example) are sometimes more rewarding for the risks they take. There are so many strands running through The Dreamers that it may take a few viewings to sort them all out: cinephilia, sex, May .68, the other cultural detritus of the 60s, and Cocteau's "Les Enfants Terribles".
I haven't read Gilbert Adair's novel "The Holy Innocents", though the author notes - approvingly - that the film makes many additions to his story (it has even been reported that he rewriting the book to incorporate Bertolucci's changes) but gather from descriptions that it's a revision of Cocteau's "Les Enfants Terribles" (one English translation of which was titled "The Holy Terrors") in the form of an autobiographical account of the author's experiences as a British student in France.
Cocteau's novel (which was filmed by Jean-Pierre Melville in 1948) is about a pair of semi-incestuous siblings playing psychological games in a Paris apartment. Though they adopt friends, they also manipulate them in an almost sadistic manner. It's a magical story, but with a cruel streak.
The Dreamers has a similarly incestuous couple living an intensely aestheticized life in an apartment sanctuary, but in this case their self-absorbed idyll is invaded by history and viewed from the perspective of a third party, a young American student who is pulled into the world as much from his own loneliness as by their magnetism.
One of the most curious scenes comes the absent parents return to the apartment, survey the damage, find the naked trio and, leaving a check behind to keep the kids in groceries, run off as if fearing for their lives.The abandonment of parental authority or its' defeat? And why does it this scene drive Isabelle to attempt suicide? Is she associating her death with Mouchette, or is Bertolucci making the connection?
The film offers little in the way of resolution. Do the events of May bring an end to innocence, a commitment to political change, a break between the romantic Matthew and the newly-committed Theo? Perhaps Bertolucci is trying to do too much and can't really answer his own questions. Much of the charm of The Dreamers is in the asking.
Fortunately, this perceptive review in "Bright Lights Film Journal" by A. Zubatov and Yaniv Eyny puts much of the film in perspective.
Thursday, July 29, 2004
Here's the Thunderbirds link, as promised:
Jonathan Rosenbaum, possibly the best working film critic in print these days (I'll be posting a review of his new book "Essential Cinema" soon) , uses the new documentary Outfoxed as an entry point to think about how DVDs have changed the way we use movies.
Jonathan Rosenbaum, possibly the best working film critic in print these days (I'll be posting a review of his new book "Essential Cinema" soon) , uses the new documentary Outfoxed as an entry point to think about how DVDs have changed the way we use movies.
Wednesday, July 28, 2004
Either I've lost all critical facilities or I'm just feeling generous. I went to a screening of Thunderbirds Saturday expecting the worst, and actually enjoyed it. My review will be hitting print on Friday and I'll provide a link to it.
Meanwhile, the latest edition of "Senses of Cinema" - now a quarterly, to judge from the headline- is on line - check out the link at the left - with articles on Welles, Kill Bill, Guy Maddin and the latest from Jacques Rivette.
CANDY IS DANDY BUT SWEETBACK IS BAADASSS!
A new book and film take detailed looks at the creation of two cultural sensations of the 60s and 70s: the scandalous comic novel "Candy" by Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg and the 1971 film Sweet Sweetback's Baadassss Song. Now read on....
Good Grief! It's our literary correspondent Nadja Bartleby!:
In the 1950s, two expatriate writers living in Europe collaborated on a dirty book. Well, not so much a dirty book - though there's no doubt that lecherous thoughts provided inspiration - as a satire of pornography, of postwar America, of various intellectual trends. Using Voltaire's "Candide" as their model, these two authors created the story of a naive but well-intentioned young girl whose empathy for the suffering and unfairness of the world somehow unavoidably leads her to provide sexual favors to every man she meets. It also became a marker in the legal road that would gradually undo literary censorship in this country and the victim of imprecise copyright laws in the US and Europe. Young Candy Christian would inspire not only lust but, outside the printed page, greed, litigation and outright theft. Not a bad streak for a girl who just wants to help others.
The novel, of course, was "Candy", written by the great Terry Southern and the more obscure Mason Hoffenberg, but the story behind the novel proves to be every bit as absorbing as (though certainly less amusing than) the bawdy adventures of a their Voltairean innocent. With access to reams of unpublished material from both parties, as well as their first publisher, the notorious Maurice Girodias, Southern's son Nile,a keeper-of-the-flame without equal (In addition to compiling "Now Dig This", a collection of previously uncollected pieces, he was able to find a permanent home for Dad's archive and maintains a groovy website at www.terrysouthern.com), has produced a fascinating volume called "The Candy Men" (Arcade Publishing, , $27.95) chronicling the strange and twisted story of the book, its creation and its subsequent career as both hip cultural scandal and legal battleground.
Southern and Hoffenberg were part of the wave of quasi-beat Americans who migrated to Europe after World War Two to write or paint or just hang out in cafes soaking up an artistic vibe, grateful to escape the stifling atmosphere Eisenhower America. Some lived on next to nothing, while others were fortunate enough to burn their way through a trust fund - or to attach themself to someone who had one. Southern was in the "next to nothing" category, while Hoffenberg, a soul-eyed poet with a serious fondness for heroin, had family money he could call for when things got too bleak.
Enter Maurice Girodias, one of the most incorrigible con men to walk the streets of France. Girodias was a publisher who specialised in the kind of literature that couldn't be discussed in polite company, as well as more serious writing that strayed into taboos generally out of the realm of the mainstream publishing world. His ideal book was that which combined both, and he was the first to bring out such distinguished titles as "Lolita", "The Green Man" and "Naked Lunch".
It was Southern's idea to take expand a short story about a young woman's wide-eyed journey through a jungle of sexually needy characters into a full-length satirical novel, perfect for Girodias' under-the-counter line. With other projects also on the burner, he recruited Hoffenberg to add a few chapters. (It was one of the misfortunes of Southern's career that the three works for which he was most known, "Candy" and the screenplays for Dr. Strangelove and Easy Rider, were all collaborative, with later debates about credit inevitably rising. One of the welcome aspects of "The Candy Men" is that it clears up most of the confusion about who penned what.) The work went slowly, but eventually the nubile heroine wrapped herself in a book cover (whose author was listed as "Maxwell Kenton" ) and made her public debut.
Then the troubles began.
S & H had already learned how difficult it was to get money from Girodias while they were writing "Candy", but once published, it became next to impossible. "Gid", as he was known, would beg economic woe caused by his many legal troubles (which was partly true since most of his titles, "Candy" included, were regularly found obscene) but it appears that he was constituionally incapable of paying royalties without duress. The authors dueled with him for years, but had to play their side very carefully since they had no easy way of verifying sales figures. (They didn't realise that he outwitted the ban on "Candy" by reprinting it as "Lollipop", an edition for which they never saw a dime.)
By 1964, "Candy" was starting to the attention of America publishers, but clearing ownership was as difficult as negotiating with Girodias. By failing to hold a European copyright, the work was considered to be in the public domain, a major concern to Putnam who brought out the first US edition. (Their suspicion was justified: as the book became a success, more than a half dozen companies specializing in pornography made pirate editions.) The once-friendly authors became distant: Southern had made a name for himself writing for "Esquire", published " The Magic Christian" (which happens to be one of the funniest books ever written) and launched himself as a screenwriter with Strangelove. Hoffenberg, between bouts of addiction, became paranoid and insecure, irritated at press pieces suggesting that TS was,if not "Candy"'s sole author, then its most talented.
Between piracy, legal fees, vagaries of international copyright law and outright deception, the authors received very little money from the book, even as it climbed the best-seller list The complications over the rights, the pirates, and the ever scheming Girodias guaranteed that even with great sales and a movie deal on the horizon (the movie, which could be politely labeled a mess, came out at the end of 1968), neither author would ever see more than chump change.
No staid literary bio (for these were not staid literary men) "The Candy Men" becomes a frantic portrait of two men riding on the fringe of a cultural change, watching their book evolve from stoned fantasy to cause celebre, from a smut-for- hire job to contractual nightmare. But there's not a dull page in it, thanks to the generous selections from the authors' correspondence. Southern, in particular, was a master of the put-on, the absurd reverie, and notes to friends may have been his ideal medium. Fans of his distinct, wildly comic voice will find it here in abundance.
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For an artist who has remaned largely in the margins of popular culture, Melvin Van Peebles has had a very busy career. He's been an actor, a novelist and a filmmaker, written and directed Broadway musicals, recorded his own songs and, for a brief period when he faded from public view in the 80s, even had a seat in the stock market. But while Van Peebles clearly likes to move around artistically, he will probably remain most fixed in the public mind as the man who made Sweet Sweetback's Baadassss Song, a technically crude but sociologically daring film that launched the short but influential trend of black exploitation films in the early 70s. (MGM's Shaft, a more conventional crime film, opened three months later.)
Van Peebles published a diary of the making of Sweetback, a slim paperback that remained in print long after the blacksploitation trend had faded. (In fact, it's still in print today, in an updated edition.. see below) The book is stronger on personal information than technical advice, but it's considered something of a primer in guerilla filmmaking. Of course, this was at a time when every film studio had a token hippie producer in hopes of luring a share of that Easy Rider-Woodstock green and an "indie" film hadn't become a euphemism for "self-indulgent crap that you can put on your resume to impress producers at the WB".
Sweetback really isn't much of a film (it's not nearly as entertaining as Superfly or as ambitious as Bill Gunn's Ganja and Hess), but that in no way diminishes its cultural and important significance. So perhaps it makes sensee that the story behind it, recounted in Van Peebles' book and now in a fascinating, comical film Baadasss!, directed by his son, proves to be more enduring that the object itself.
Baadasss! ( still in release from Sony Pictures and due on home video in the fall) , is a curious film, part companion to other recent tales of minor history like Ed Wood or Man in the Moon, sometimes playing like a dramatized version of a "making of" featurette on a DVD, and always a manifesto about filmmaking, race and artistic independence. Mario Van Peebles' films (which I generally like, including New Jack City and Panther ) tend to be a bit more pedantic than those of his father, but he manages to lay the message on with a light touch. He's like the rare high school teacher who can actually share his enthusiam for a subject, rather than merely drill it into the students. And since he's actually portraying his own father and recounting his own reluctance, at age 13, to be involved with Sweetback (where he even had to participate in a sex scene), there's a built-in ambivalence to his story that could keep therapists shaking their heads for months.
Van Peebles sees his father's film and the struggle to make it as both a symbolic show of unity in the black (and hippie/political) community and a comic adventure. Besides having almost no money, the crew consisted largely of inexperienced if not outright amateurs. To prevent interference from the movie unions, they had to pretend to be shooting a porno film. Strapped for cash, the director even arranged a secret meeting to borrow from Bill Cosby, whose appearance in the fringes of the film (he's played by T.K.Carter) says much about the position of black talent at the time.
Faced with a project both daunting and absurd, Melvin Van Peebles perservered and Baadassss! gives a pretty good picture of both the time in which it was made and the inspired madman who made it. For the first half hour, you might find yourself thinking "this is amusing, but why bother to tell this story?" By the time it's over - and especially after the final credits in which the real participants (including Cosby) reminisce about Sweetback- you'll be convinced that it's an episode in film history that deserves to be told.
Meanwhile, the latest edition of "Senses of Cinema" - now a quarterly, to judge from the headline- is on line - check out the link at the left - with articles on Welles, Kill Bill, Guy Maddin and the latest from Jacques Rivette.
CANDY IS DANDY BUT SWEETBACK IS BAADASSS!
A new book and film take detailed looks at the creation of two cultural sensations of the 60s and 70s: the scandalous comic novel "Candy" by Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg and the 1971 film Sweet Sweetback's Baadassss Song. Now read on....
Good Grief! It's our literary correspondent Nadja Bartleby!:
In the 1950s, two expatriate writers living in Europe collaborated on a dirty book. Well, not so much a dirty book - though there's no doubt that lecherous thoughts provided inspiration - as a satire of pornography, of postwar America, of various intellectual trends. Using Voltaire's "Candide" as their model, these two authors created the story of a naive but well-intentioned young girl whose empathy for the suffering and unfairness of the world somehow unavoidably leads her to provide sexual favors to every man she meets. It also became a marker in the legal road that would gradually undo literary censorship in this country and the victim of imprecise copyright laws in the US and Europe. Young Candy Christian would inspire not only lust but, outside the printed page, greed, litigation and outright theft. Not a bad streak for a girl who just wants to help others.
The novel, of course, was "Candy", written by the great Terry Southern and the more obscure Mason Hoffenberg, but the story behind the novel proves to be every bit as absorbing as (though certainly less amusing than) the bawdy adventures of a their Voltairean innocent. With access to reams of unpublished material from both parties, as well as their first publisher, the notorious Maurice Girodias, Southern's son Nile,a keeper-of-the-flame without equal (In addition to compiling "Now Dig This", a collection of previously uncollected pieces, he was able to find a permanent home for Dad's archive and maintains a groovy website at www.terrysouthern.com), has produced a fascinating volume called "The Candy Men" (Arcade Publishing, , $27.95) chronicling the strange and twisted story of the book, its creation and its subsequent career as both hip cultural scandal and legal battleground.
Southern and Hoffenberg were part of the wave of quasi-beat Americans who migrated to Europe after World War Two to write or paint or just hang out in cafes soaking up an artistic vibe, grateful to escape the stifling atmosphere Eisenhower America. Some lived on next to nothing, while others were fortunate enough to burn their way through a trust fund - or to attach themself to someone who had one. Southern was in the "next to nothing" category, while Hoffenberg, a soul-eyed poet with a serious fondness for heroin, had family money he could call for when things got too bleak.
Enter Maurice Girodias, one of the most incorrigible con men to walk the streets of France. Girodias was a publisher who specialised in the kind of literature that couldn't be discussed in polite company, as well as more serious writing that strayed into taboos generally out of the realm of the mainstream publishing world. His ideal book was that which combined both, and he was the first to bring out such distinguished titles as "Lolita", "The Green Man" and "Naked Lunch".
It was Southern's idea to take expand a short story about a young woman's wide-eyed journey through a jungle of sexually needy characters into a full-length satirical novel, perfect for Girodias' under-the-counter line. With other projects also on the burner, he recruited Hoffenberg to add a few chapters. (It was one of the misfortunes of Southern's career that the three works for which he was most known, "Candy" and the screenplays for Dr. Strangelove and Easy Rider, were all collaborative, with later debates about credit inevitably rising. One of the welcome aspects of "The Candy Men" is that it clears up most of the confusion about who penned what.) The work went slowly, but eventually the nubile heroine wrapped herself in a book cover (whose author was listed as "Maxwell Kenton" ) and made her public debut.
Then the troubles began.
S & H had already learned how difficult it was to get money from Girodias while they were writing "Candy", but once published, it became next to impossible. "Gid", as he was known, would beg economic woe caused by his many legal troubles (which was partly true since most of his titles, "Candy" included, were regularly found obscene) but it appears that he was constituionally incapable of paying royalties without duress. The authors dueled with him for years, but had to play their side very carefully since they had no easy way of verifying sales figures. (They didn't realise that he outwitted the ban on "Candy" by reprinting it as "Lollipop", an edition for which they never saw a dime.)
By 1964, "Candy" was starting to the attention of America publishers, but clearing ownership was as difficult as negotiating with Girodias. By failing to hold a European copyright, the work was considered to be in the public domain, a major concern to Putnam who brought out the first US edition. (Their suspicion was justified: as the book became a success, more than a half dozen companies specializing in pornography made pirate editions.) The once-friendly authors became distant: Southern had made a name for himself writing for "Esquire", published " The Magic Christian" (which happens to be one of the funniest books ever written) and launched himself as a screenwriter with Strangelove. Hoffenberg, between bouts of addiction, became paranoid and insecure, irritated at press pieces suggesting that TS was,if not "Candy"'s sole author, then its most talented.
Between piracy, legal fees, vagaries of international copyright law and outright deception, the authors received very little money from the book, even as it climbed the best-seller list The complications over the rights, the pirates, and the ever scheming Girodias guaranteed that even with great sales and a movie deal on the horizon (the movie, which could be politely labeled a mess, came out at the end of 1968), neither author would ever see more than chump change.
No staid literary bio (for these were not staid literary men) "The Candy Men" becomes a frantic portrait of two men riding on the fringe of a cultural change, watching their book evolve from stoned fantasy to cause celebre, from a smut-for- hire job to contractual nightmare. But there's not a dull page in it, thanks to the generous selections from the authors' correspondence. Southern, in particular, was a master of the put-on, the absurd reverie, and notes to friends may have been his ideal medium. Fans of his distinct, wildly comic voice will find it here in abundance.
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For an artist who has remaned largely in the margins of popular culture, Melvin Van Peebles has had a very busy career. He's been an actor, a novelist and a filmmaker, written and directed Broadway musicals, recorded his own songs and, for a brief period when he faded from public view in the 80s, even had a seat in the stock market. But while Van Peebles clearly likes to move around artistically, he will probably remain most fixed in the public mind as the man who made Sweet Sweetback's Baadassss Song, a technically crude but sociologically daring film that launched the short but influential trend of black exploitation films in the early 70s. (MGM's Shaft, a more conventional crime film, opened three months later.)
Van Peebles published a diary of the making of Sweetback, a slim paperback that remained in print long after the blacksploitation trend had faded. (In fact, it's still in print today, in an updated edition.. see below) The book is stronger on personal information than technical advice, but it's considered something of a primer in guerilla filmmaking. Of course, this was at a time when every film studio had a token hippie producer in hopes of luring a share of that Easy Rider-Woodstock green and an "indie" film hadn't become a euphemism for "self-indulgent crap that you can put on your resume to impress producers at the WB".
Sweetback really isn't much of a film (it's not nearly as entertaining as Superfly or as ambitious as Bill Gunn's Ganja and Hess), but that in no way diminishes its cultural and important significance. So perhaps it makes sensee that the story behind it, recounted in Van Peebles' book and now in a fascinating, comical film Baadasss!, directed by his son, proves to be more enduring that the object itself.
Baadasss! ( still in release from Sony Pictures and due on home video in the fall) , is a curious film, part companion to other recent tales of minor history like Ed Wood or Man in the Moon, sometimes playing like a dramatized version of a "making of" featurette on a DVD, and always a manifesto about filmmaking, race and artistic independence. Mario Van Peebles' films (which I generally like, including New Jack City and Panther ) tend to be a bit more pedantic than those of his father, but he manages to lay the message on with a light touch. He's like the rare high school teacher who can actually share his enthusiam for a subject, rather than merely drill it into the students. And since he's actually portraying his own father and recounting his own reluctance, at age 13, to be involved with Sweetback (where he even had to participate in a sex scene), there's a built-in ambivalence to his story that could keep therapists shaking their heads for months.
Van Peebles sees his father's film and the struggle to make it as both a symbolic show of unity in the black (and hippie/political) community and a comic adventure. Besides having almost no money, the crew consisted largely of inexperienced if not outright amateurs. To prevent interference from the movie unions, they had to pretend to be shooting a porno film. Strapped for cash, the director even arranged a secret meeting to borrow from Bill Cosby, whose appearance in the fringes of the film (he's played by T.K.Carter) says much about the position of black talent at the time.
Faced with a project both daunting and absurd, Melvin Van Peebles perservered and Baadassss! gives a pretty good picture of both the time in which it was made and the inspired madman who made it. For the first half hour, you might find yourself thinking "this is amusing, but why bother to tell this story?" By the time it's over - and especially after the final credits in which the real participants (including Cosby) reminisce about Sweetback- you'll be convinced that it's an episode in film history that deserves to be told.
Sunday, July 25, 2004
Cat Stevens !?!
Our musical correspondent Anne Dante is being followed by a moonshadow:
There are some things that will simply never reach those people standing at the edge of the great Chasm of Hipness sneering at those on the other side: Remember trying to explain Abba to your friends in the 70s as they floated in their smoky cloud of Eagles-Ronstadt-Fleetwood Mac? Did you ever try to get your 13 year old Britney Spears-fan niece to listen to Leonard Cohen?
Well, I’m afraid that Cat Stevens is one of those issues that will probably not make that leap back over to the edge of hipness anytime soon for most of you, even though his records are back in print and there’s even a greatest hits collection being hawked on tv at 3 am. He started to off some time around 1974 when he released “Foreigner”, an underrated album that featured one of his best songs, “The Hurt”, but was built around a rambling 20-minute long “Suite” of song fragments that was accused of overplaying the tortured artiste effect. (It’s really not that bad if you keep in mind that being a tortured artiste was part parcel of the whole 70s singer-songwriter bit for almost everyone - except Harry Nilsson). His next album, the excellent “Buddah and the Chocolate Box” got a better reception, but the release of a mid-70s greatest hits collection essentially stood as a career-ending marker. When the Cat announced his retirement a few years and albums later, few people noticed. Ask someone about him today and they’ll probably say “’Peace Train’ was alright, but didn’t he try to kill Salman Rushdie?”.
Scoff all you want, but the small and gloomy Stevens fans among us, the recent release of the “Majikat” DVD is a treasure. Filmed during a Stevens’ last tour (a theatrical event that apparently included magicians, jugglers and all that – very few of whom are preserved on the DVD), it consists of a 1976 concert with Stevens in top form. The real treats, however, are in the bonus materials, which include a reproduction of the concert program, a handful of early tv clips, including the animated “Moonshadow” short, and a lengthy interview with the man himself, now known as Yusuf Islam, who speaks openly about his career and his abandonment of the same.
Will it convert anyone (to use an appropriate metaphor) to Stevens’ music? Probably not. But if you’re in that small group that clings to your old vinyl copy of “Teaser and the Firecat”, “Majikat” is a pleasant rediscovery, a portrait of the artiste in a not-too-tortured mode.
So phooey on the rest of you.
Editorial note: The editor of this site is not sure that he approves of saying "phooey" to our readers.
Our musical correspondent Anne Dante is being followed by a moonshadow:
There are some things that will simply never reach those people standing at the edge of the great Chasm of Hipness sneering at those on the other side: Remember trying to explain Abba to your friends in the 70s as they floated in their smoky cloud of Eagles-Ronstadt-Fleetwood Mac? Did you ever try to get your 13 year old Britney Spears-fan niece to listen to Leonard Cohen?
Well, I’m afraid that Cat Stevens is one of those issues that will probably not make that leap back over to the edge of hipness anytime soon for most of you, even though his records are back in print and there’s even a greatest hits collection being hawked on tv at 3 am. He started to off some time around 1974 when he released “Foreigner”, an underrated album that featured one of his best songs, “The Hurt”, but was built around a rambling 20-minute long “Suite” of song fragments that was accused of overplaying the tortured artiste effect. (It’s really not that bad if you keep in mind that being a tortured artiste was part parcel of the whole 70s singer-songwriter bit for almost everyone - except Harry Nilsson). His next album, the excellent “Buddah and the Chocolate Box” got a better reception, but the release of a mid-70s greatest hits collection essentially stood as a career-ending marker. When the Cat announced his retirement a few years and albums later, few people noticed. Ask someone about him today and they’ll probably say “’Peace Train’ was alright, but didn’t he try to kill Salman Rushdie?”.
Scoff all you want, but the small and gloomy Stevens fans among us, the recent release of the “Majikat” DVD is a treasure. Filmed during a Stevens’ last tour (a theatrical event that apparently included magicians, jugglers and all that – very few of whom are preserved on the DVD), it consists of a 1976 concert with Stevens in top form. The real treats, however, are in the bonus materials, which include a reproduction of the concert program, a handful of early tv clips, including the animated “Moonshadow” short, and a lengthy interview with the man himself, now known as Yusuf Islam, who speaks openly about his career and his abandonment of the same.
Will it convert anyone (to use an appropriate metaphor) to Stevens’ music? Probably not. But if you’re in that small group that clings to your old vinyl copy of “Teaser and the Firecat”, “Majikat” is a pleasant rediscovery, a portrait of the artiste in a not-too-tortured mode.
So phooey on the rest of you.
Editorial note: The editor of this site is not sure that he approves of saying "phooey" to our readers.
Thursday, July 22, 2004
"We've got to make a movie where on the way out of the theater people are going to ask the ushers if they have any torches."
That's Michael Moore in an interview in the latest "Film Comment". It's a good piece, one of the few in the dozens of recent pieces on Moore that actually deals with his work from a cinematic perspective rather than concentrate solely on the controversy and the attacks surrounding Fahrenheit 9/11. It's not on the FC website, but they have posted some excerpts that didn't make it into print. You can also read Kent Jones' review online here.
Also in the latest FC: articles on Jacques Tati, Kill Bill, and documentaries about making movies (Burden of Dreams, American Movie, Lost in La Mancha, etc). But alas, nothing's perfect; they've also brought back the "Guilty Pleasures" column with a contribution from Joan Rivers, of all people.
It's ironic that Film Comment's last interview with Moore, a notably hostile piece that appeared in 1989 at time of Roger and Me, is rumored to have been one of the things responsible for ousting then-editor Harlan Jacobson, thus indirectly contributing to the magazine's gradual and uneven improvement over the last fourteen years. I' ve been buying FC since 1976 (only missing one issue in that time). but in the 1980s it had become nearly unreadable.
Which makes another small item in the current issue an ironic sign of change. A passing reference to James Toback's Fingers in the "Opening Shots" column calls it "Toback's only watchable film". That might be true, but it's quite a step away from the days when FC allowed film critic/novelist/habitual name-dropper David Thomson ramble on about nothing in particular in almost every issue, many of his pieces little more than extended love-letters and press releases to and on behalf of the director of Exposed.
Incidentally, my favorite Thomson moment had nothing to do with Toback or even with his endless references to his friendships with Toback, Warren Beatty, Buck Henry and others. Here's an excerpt from a 1982 interview with Goldie Hawn.
You swept your hair back off your face just now, and you have lovely hair. But when your hair goes back you look less pretty and stronger. Your eyes get older.
That's why these hairdressers are making a fortune of money.
But don't they do what you want them to do?
Some do, some don't. What I'm saying is that people want to look a certain way, so they have their hair done a certain way. I'm not somebody who's liked the hair off my face. I don't think it's becoming. And I must admit I like to look as nice as I can. But for a film I'd do it. But, you know, right now we're in a meeting, and why would one arbitrarily put one's hair up if you don't think you would look nice?
You must have sat for hours in front of a mirror experimenting as a child. I didn't tell you anything about your hair you didn't know already.
Could Bruno from the Ali G. show have done any better?
That's Michael Moore in an interview in the latest "Film Comment". It's a good piece, one of the few in the dozens of recent pieces on Moore that actually deals with his work from a cinematic perspective rather than concentrate solely on the controversy and the attacks surrounding Fahrenheit 9/11. It's not on the FC website, but they have posted some excerpts that didn't make it into print. You can also read Kent Jones' review online here.
Also in the latest FC: articles on Jacques Tati, Kill Bill, and documentaries about making movies (Burden of Dreams, American Movie, Lost in La Mancha, etc). But alas, nothing's perfect; they've also brought back the "Guilty Pleasures" column with a contribution from Joan Rivers, of all people.
It's ironic that Film Comment's last interview with Moore, a notably hostile piece that appeared in 1989 at time of Roger and Me, is rumored to have been one of the things responsible for ousting then-editor Harlan Jacobson, thus indirectly contributing to the magazine's gradual and uneven improvement over the last fourteen years. I' ve been buying FC since 1976 (only missing one issue in that time). but in the 1980s it had become nearly unreadable.
Which makes another small item in the current issue an ironic sign of change. A passing reference to James Toback's Fingers in the "Opening Shots" column calls it "Toback's only watchable film". That might be true, but it's quite a step away from the days when FC allowed film critic/novelist/habitual name-dropper David Thomson ramble on about nothing in particular in almost every issue, many of his pieces little more than extended love-letters and press releases to and on behalf of the director of Exposed.
Incidentally, my favorite Thomson moment had nothing to do with Toback or even with his endless references to his friendships with Toback, Warren Beatty, Buck Henry and others. Here's an excerpt from a 1982 interview with Goldie Hawn.
* * *
You swept your hair back off your face just now, and you have lovely hair. But when your hair goes back you look less pretty and stronger. Your eyes get older.
That's why these hairdressers are making a fortune of money.
But don't they do what you want them to do?
Some do, some don't. What I'm saying is that people want to look a certain way, so they have their hair done a certain way. I'm not somebody who's liked the hair off my face. I don't think it's becoming. And I must admit I like to look as nice as I can. But for a film I'd do it. But, you know, right now we're in a meeting, and why would one arbitrarily put one's hair up if you don't think you would look nice?
You must have sat for hours in front of a mirror experimenting as a child. I didn't tell you anything about your hair you didn't know already.
* * *
Could Bruno from the Ali G. show have done any better?
Wednesday, July 21, 2004
Cowboy Apocalypse
The enthusiasm of Quentin Tarantino aside, the Spaghetti Western remains a cult taste even more esoteric than one for kung-fu movies or Seventies cheerleader comedies. The days when The New York Times could dismiss Spaghettis as "The Burn, The Gouge and the Mangle may be gone but once you get past the Leone canon, you're not likely to find much in the way of critical recognition. (An exception to be made, of course, for Christopher Frayling's masterful "Spaghetti Westerns: from Karl May to Sergio Leone" which covers all aspects of the Europeanised version of the West ).
Spaghetti westerns made less of an impact in the US than you might think, once the dust had settled and the dollars counted from United Artists' highly profitable release of the Dollars trilogy. Though most of the major studios picked up one or two Spaghettis for their drive-in markets, most of the US releases came courtesy of smaller and now forgotten distributors.
Over the last few decades (the Spaghetti boom was more or less over by 1971), most of the non-Leone films became almost impossible to find. Thanks to a few DVD companies, the situation has improved slightly especially with the release of two boxed sets, Once Upon a Time in Italy, from Anchor Bay and The Spaghetti Western Collection from Blue Underground . There are no classics on the level of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly or Once Upon a Time in the West, but for those with an interest in the western genre, the nine films display the wide range of variations Italian directors played on familiar frontier themes. Those who only know Leone's masterpieces will find surprises here: European-filtered westerns that rework traditions, bend generic rules and add elements of politics, slapstick and even horror.
The oddest film in the Anchor Bay collection - not the best - is unquestionably Lucio Fulci's Four of the Apocalypse, of which little has been written. Frayling simply cites it as an example of a Spaghetti western made late in the cycle and claims that it attempts to apply the style of Easy Rider to the genre. That's true up to a point: there are lots of solar effects, self-consciously loose focusing and a vague sense of counter-cultural sympathy. But that doesn't begin to cover the inadvertent and almost heavyhanded weirdness of the film.
Four of the Apocalypse is based on stories by Bret Harte, loosely strung together as random encounters. (I don't know much of Harte's work, but I recognised elements from "The Outcasts of Poker Flats" and "The Luck of Roaring Camp".) A chance encounter in a prison massacre brings four outsiders together: a gambler (Fabio Test), a pregnant prostitute (Lynne Frederick), a drunk and an off-balanced black man who talks to the spirits of the dead. Heading out with particular destination, they cross paths with a psychotic, Manson-like outlaw (Tomas Milian) who torments them, feeds them peyote and leaves them to die in the desert.
(Much of the film's loopy charm is in the casting. Testi is likable in an only-here-for the-ride way. Frederick, better known as the widow of both Peter Sellers and David Niven, is an actress of limited skills, yet endearingly earnest. Pollard, of course, was a cult figure whose post-Bonnie and Clyde career never really happened. And Milian is a major figure in the Spaghetti canon, but better known for his comic work in political Spaghettis like Companeros, which gives his complete lack of sympathy in this film an even more chilling edge.)
Fulci is best known as a director of gory and occasionally colorful horror movies, a specialist in the Italian sub-genres of zombies and cannibalism.And true to form, he even manages to include a particularly unpleasant meal and a gratuitous torture scene in a film that shifts its emotional tone with every sequence. (The "Luck of Roaring Camp" episode, for example, is an unabashedly sentimental segment in which an exclusively male mining town become surrogate fathers to a newborn baby.)
No, it's not really a very good movie, nor a particularly coherent one, but that's part of the charm of minor Spaghetti westerns. The filmmakers simultaneously borrow the traditions of the western genre and treat them in the most cavalier fashion. They love the genre but they can't stop trying to change it.
Click on either of the links below to buy Frayling's book or either of the DVD collections from Amazon.
The enthusiasm of Quentin Tarantino aside, the Spaghetti Western remains a cult taste even more esoteric than one for kung-fu movies or Seventies cheerleader comedies. The days when The New York Times could dismiss Spaghettis as "The Burn, The Gouge and the Mangle may be gone but once you get past the Leone canon, you're not likely to find much in the way of critical recognition. (An exception to be made, of course, for Christopher Frayling's masterful "Spaghetti Westerns: from Karl May to Sergio Leone" which covers all aspects of the Europeanised version of the West ).
Spaghetti westerns made less of an impact in the US than you might think, once the dust had settled and the dollars counted from United Artists' highly profitable release of the Dollars trilogy. Though most of the major studios picked up one or two Spaghettis for their drive-in markets, most of the US releases came courtesy of smaller and now forgotten distributors.
Over the last few decades (the Spaghetti boom was more or less over by 1971), most of the non-Leone films became almost impossible to find. Thanks to a few DVD companies, the situation has improved slightly especially with the release of two boxed sets, Once Upon a Time in Italy, from Anchor Bay and The Spaghetti Western Collection from Blue Underground . There are no classics on the level of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly or Once Upon a Time in the West, but for those with an interest in the western genre, the nine films display the wide range of variations Italian directors played on familiar frontier themes. Those who only know Leone's masterpieces will find surprises here: European-filtered westerns that rework traditions, bend generic rules and add elements of politics, slapstick and even horror.
The oddest film in the Anchor Bay collection - not the best - is unquestionably Lucio Fulci's Four of the Apocalypse, of which little has been written. Frayling simply cites it as an example of a Spaghetti western made late in the cycle and claims that it attempts to apply the style of Easy Rider to the genre. That's true up to a point: there are lots of solar effects, self-consciously loose focusing and a vague sense of counter-cultural sympathy. But that doesn't begin to cover the inadvertent and almost heavyhanded weirdness of the film.
Four of the Apocalypse is based on stories by Bret Harte, loosely strung together as random encounters. (I don't know much of Harte's work, but I recognised elements from "The Outcasts of Poker Flats" and "The Luck of Roaring Camp".) A chance encounter in a prison massacre brings four outsiders together: a gambler (Fabio Test), a pregnant prostitute (Lynne Frederick), a drunk and an off-balanced black man who talks to the spirits of the dead. Heading out with particular destination, they cross paths with a psychotic, Manson-like outlaw (Tomas Milian) who torments them, feeds them peyote and leaves them to die in the desert.
(Much of the film's loopy charm is in the casting. Testi is likable in an only-here-for the-ride way. Frederick, better known as the widow of both Peter Sellers and David Niven, is an actress of limited skills, yet endearingly earnest. Pollard, of course, was a cult figure whose post-Bonnie and Clyde career never really happened. And Milian is a major figure in the Spaghetti canon, but better known for his comic work in political Spaghettis like Companeros, which gives his complete lack of sympathy in this film an even more chilling edge.)
Fulci is best known as a director of gory and occasionally colorful horror movies, a specialist in the Italian sub-genres of zombies and cannibalism.And true to form, he even manages to include a particularly unpleasant meal and a gratuitous torture scene in a film that shifts its emotional tone with every sequence. (The "Luck of Roaring Camp" episode, for example, is an unabashedly sentimental segment in which an exclusively male mining town become surrogate fathers to a newborn baby.)
No, it's not really a very good movie, nor a particularly coherent one, but that's part of the charm of minor Spaghetti westerns. The filmmakers simultaneously borrow the traditions of the western genre and treat them in the most cavalier fashion. They love the genre but they can't stop trying to change it.
Click on either of the links below to buy Frayling's book or either of the DVD collections from Amazon.
Friday, April 30, 2004
WARHOL ! GODARD!
Factory Made: Warhol and the Sixties, by Steven Watson
Pantheon, 512 pp.
In 1964, Andy Warhol told friends, critics and reporters that he had given up on painting. In only five years, Warhol had made the transition from magazine illustrations and advertising to chic galleries and become the art world’s latest thing. Pop Art was big and Warhol its king, yet the paintings that had generated so much gossip, the soup cans and celebrities and grainy news photos, remained largely unsold. He had actually been making more money when as a commercial artist, and for Warhol, whom we now know was something of a businessman-savant, the irony of that point couldn’t have set well.
A compulsive collector (at the time of his death, his home was stuffed with boxes of things, worthless as well as expenses, which he purchased solely to store away), Warhol’s work as a painter stemmed less from a particular aesthetic theory than from his ability to take pleasure in all kinds of images, from movie-star publicity photos to mug shots, from comic strips to Coke bottles. Warhol’s paintings, generated from existing images and produced in multiple sets, were one way of collecting images. Making movies (and later, tape recordings) was even better, because the images were alive. And best of all, the movies were a will way of collecting people.
Warhol had always enjoyed the company of flamboyant outsiders, but the art world and the gay community of the 1950s were too marginalized, too eccentric for the rest of the world to take much notice. Suddenly, as the country woke up from the gray Eisenhower era, that all changed. Everyone was flamboyant and no one had to be left outside. Perhaps it was all an illusion, but if that was the case, Warhol made sure that he was the man behind the curtain.
A postmodernist before there was such a word, and in a time when even modernism was suspect, Warhol remains as crucial a guide to the culture of the last fifty years as ever, and even fifteen years after his death an endless stream of documents, artifacts, films, biographies, memoirs and miscellany keep his work at the center of attention. He’s been outed, denounced, imitated and turned into a cultural institution (and on a postage stamp!) We’ve had Queer Andy, gossip Andy, Republican Andy, even Andy as the hero of a children’s book. An Andy for every occasion, every argument. As long as people keep chasing after their fifteen minutes of fame, Warhol will be the man holding the stopwatch.
A painter may get by with a simple studio, but Warhol needed an environment. He found it in a large industrial loft on East 47th Street. The Factory, as it became known, was office, theatre and playground, its walls lined with aluminum foil (to amuse the speed freaks) and its most conspicuous item of furniture a beat-up couch, rescued from the street. (It even became the star of a Warhol film.) Playing on the themes of mass produced art and Hollywood “studios”, the Factory, -the people it attracted and the stories it generated - became one of Andy’s most enduring works. It was easy; Andy kept the doors open and the room filled with all the most interesting people in New York.
There were the handful of writers and artist who wrote the scripts and helped make the paintings and documented the entire scene, like Billy Name, who gave the Factory its foil-lined design, then spent more than a year without leaving his small darkroom or Gerard Malanga, dancer/poet/whip artiste who worked as Warhol’s assistant, then resentfully took off for Europe forging Warhol works for quick cash. There was Ondine, an opera-loving postal worker whose caustic, amphetamine-fueled raps placed him high on the Warholian pecking order. In “The Chelsea Girls”, he holds court as “the Pope.” In 1966, Warhol spent 24 hours with Ondine tape-recording every minute. The transcription of those tapes was released in 1968 as ”a”, Warhol’s first (and only) “novel”, the closest thing we have for experiencing the Factory in all its glamour and ennui.
There was a long string of beautiful women, from exotic models like Nico and Ultra Violet to more modest beauties like Viva, Edie and Mary Woronov. Some understodd that they were only playing at being movie stars; other started to believe the game and were abandoned as quickly as they were discovered.
These stories have been told many times before, on film, in books, even in song. Some of their accounts are bitter (Mary Woronov’s “Swimming Underground”), some powerfully emotional (Lou Reed and John Cale’s “Songs for Drella”), some gossipy and worthless (Ultra Violet’s ghost-written memoir), some gossipy yet fascinating (Warhol’s own “Popism”) but rarely as well or as inclusively as in Steven Watson’s “Factory Made”, the first book on the Warhol sixties to remove the cast of characters from the glare of the Pop Art King. It’s Warhol’s story too, of course, but he’s there less as a Great Artist than as a host, providing a setting where dozens of other lives, from street hustlers and art collectors to black-sheep heiresses and self-proclaimed underground legends.
And finally there was Valerie Solanas, a more disturbed than talented writer who became fixated on both Warhol and Maurice Girodias, the semi-legendary owner of The Olympia Press. Unfortunately for Warhol, Girodias was out of town when Solanas’ paranoia/resentment bubbled over one day in June, 1968, so she wandered up to the Factory and pumped a few bullets into the artist. Feminists like Ti-Grace Atkinson were rooting for her 15 minutes, but she was upstaged by Sirhan Sirhan’s assassination of Robert Kennedy a few hours later.
Warhol nearly died, but managed to pull through. The Factory scene wasn’t so lucky. A frightened Andy withdrew, no longer to accept the speed-soaked craziness. He moved uptown, where the people weren’t as interesting or as unpredictable. He disassociated himself from the past by removing his films from circulation. His former court moved on, few of them able to shake the label “former member of Andy Warhol’s Factory” from their name. (A few unlucky ones didn’t even make it to the end). Watson’s book is the first to attach real lives to the make-believe names and glamorous pictures, the first to catch the foil-lined, strobe-lit Factory of myth as it really was, the chance meeting of fad and fashion at a time when definitions of art had dissolved and exotic figures like these became their own best creations.
This review originally appeared online at www.playbackstl.com in December 2003
Godard: A Portrait of the Artist at Seventy by Colin MacCabe, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 432 pp., $25.00
There is a story that Jean-Luc Godard, whose first film “Breathless” made Jean-Paul Belmondo an international superstar in 1959, approached the actor sometime in the 1970s to propose a new collaboration. Belmondo is said to have asked “Do you still know how to direct?”
As Colin MacCabe notes in his new book, many people in the post-Spielberg/Lucas era know Godard only by reputation as a name from the past, barely noticing that his innovations in film language have become commonplace. His great deluge of films in the 1960s – “Contempt”, “Alphaville”, “Vivre sa Vie” and “Weekend” among them - paved the way for the first generation of movie-conscious American filmmakers like Scorsese and DePalma (who paid homage in early films like “Mean Streets” and “Greetings”) and continue to shape new cinematic voices – even when they don’t recognize the source. Godard’s jump cuts, genre-breaking narratives, collage-like forms of address and dismantling of the traditional illusionist boundaries of film have influenced filmmakers from Richard Lester to Tarantino (whose production company A Band Apart is a pun based on a Godard title.)
But despite major award-winning films like “Nouvelle Vague” and “Passion”, dozens of film and video projects, numerous “comebacks” and enough recognition to be imitated in mainstream television commercials (when the French version of the employment website “Monster” was launched, their tv campaign involved a check-out clerk– obviously recognizable as a young version of Godard- find his cinematic calling via an on-line ad) the idea that the New Wave maverick has spent most of the last three decades living a hermit-like existence, awash in incomprehensible theory and up to his ears in unfinished and unwatchable political ravings – an image that Godard himself has used as self-parody - has become an easy way for an increasingly trivial film culture to dismiss his work. That’s one of the myths that MacCabe sets out to debunk in his book, the first biography in English of the man whom many would argue was not just a major voice in film, but one of the most significant intellectual figures of the last century.
As MacCabe shows, Godard’s prolific output (the useful filmography fills forty pages) has brought him into contact with a wide range of cultural and social figures, from philosophers to pop stars, from Brigitte Bardot, Jack Palance and the Rolling Stones to Jean-Paul Sartre and Charles Bukowski. Accordingly, a biographer must have an equally comprehensive grasp of the influences that helped shape such work, and MacCabe adeptly juggles the full range of Godard’s background – from the Lutheran Church and the Resistance through auteurism, Maoism and MacMahonism. Brechtian theatrical theory, a major factor in understanding Godard’s work, is given a full accounting, as is the inestimable (and no less significant) charm of Anna Karina, Godard’s first wife and muse for seven films. There is, somewhat surprisingly, only limited critical discussion of Godard’s actual films, and the few that receive lengthy analysis seem to have been selected simply on the basis of the author’s preference.
The result is sometimes more of an encyclopedic, digressive cultural history than a conventional biography, tracking down dozens of intellectual currents and chance encounters, frequently slipping from the analytical to the anecdotal, yet remaining curiously distant from its real subject. Despite a long acquaintanceship with Godard, there is no indication that the filmmaker aided or in any way endorsed the book, so like many unauthorized biographies, friendly or otherwise, the subject remains awkwardly remote. Would it necessarily have been any different with Godard’s cooperation? He is, MacCabe reports, notoriously taciturn and averse to small talk. His own comments on his earlier work are frequently cryptic and rarely favorable. By the time one follows MacCabe’s account of his life from a comfortable childhood in Switzerland, through the heady rush of the “Cahiers du Cinema” and nouvelle vague days, over the obstacle course of radical politics and on to his self-imposed exile near the town where he grew up, Godard’s continued questioning of the moral dimension behind the use of words and images and his obsessive video projects (like the four-hour “Histoire de cinema”, a free-associating summing-up of the medium so rich in associations and loose in its appropriation of film clips that it will probably never see a U.S. release) begin to merge slightly with the slapstick self-caricature in “First Name: Carmen” and other films. “Uncle Jean” (the label he gave himself in “Carmen”, now adopted as a term of endearment among Godardians) is still engaging in an intense dialogue about the nature of cinema and the power of images, but in the degraded state of contemporary film, he may appear like a solitary and somewhat comical old man talking only to himself. MacCabe’s necessarily incomplete biography is a useful guide to anyone hoping to join in on the discussion.
(This review originally appeared in the April 2004 issue of "Playback"
Factory Made: Warhol and the Sixties, by Steven Watson
Pantheon, 512 pp.
In 1964, Andy Warhol told friends, critics and reporters that he had given up on painting. In only five years, Warhol had made the transition from magazine illustrations and advertising to chic galleries and become the art world’s latest thing. Pop Art was big and Warhol its king, yet the paintings that had generated so much gossip, the soup cans and celebrities and grainy news photos, remained largely unsold. He had actually been making more money when as a commercial artist, and for Warhol, whom we now know was something of a businessman-savant, the irony of that point couldn’t have set well.
A compulsive collector (at the time of his death, his home was stuffed with boxes of things, worthless as well as expenses, which he purchased solely to store away), Warhol’s work as a painter stemmed less from a particular aesthetic theory than from his ability to take pleasure in all kinds of images, from movie-star publicity photos to mug shots, from comic strips to Coke bottles. Warhol’s paintings, generated from existing images and produced in multiple sets, were one way of collecting images. Making movies (and later, tape recordings) was even better, because the images were alive. And best of all, the movies were a will way of collecting people.
Warhol had always enjoyed the company of flamboyant outsiders, but the art world and the gay community of the 1950s were too marginalized, too eccentric for the rest of the world to take much notice. Suddenly, as the country woke up from the gray Eisenhower era, that all changed. Everyone was flamboyant and no one had to be left outside. Perhaps it was all an illusion, but if that was the case, Warhol made sure that he was the man behind the curtain.
A postmodernist before there was such a word, and in a time when even modernism was suspect, Warhol remains as crucial a guide to the culture of the last fifty years as ever, and even fifteen years after his death an endless stream of documents, artifacts, films, biographies, memoirs and miscellany keep his work at the center of attention. He’s been outed, denounced, imitated and turned into a cultural institution (and on a postage stamp!) We’ve had Queer Andy, gossip Andy, Republican Andy, even Andy as the hero of a children’s book. An Andy for every occasion, every argument. As long as people keep chasing after their fifteen minutes of fame, Warhol will be the man holding the stopwatch.
A painter may get by with a simple studio, but Warhol needed an environment. He found it in a large industrial loft on East 47th Street. The Factory, as it became known, was office, theatre and playground, its walls lined with aluminum foil (to amuse the speed freaks) and its most conspicuous item of furniture a beat-up couch, rescued from the street. (It even became the star of a Warhol film.) Playing on the themes of mass produced art and Hollywood “studios”, the Factory, -the people it attracted and the stories it generated - became one of Andy’s most enduring works. It was easy; Andy kept the doors open and the room filled with all the most interesting people in New York.
There were the handful of writers and artist who wrote the scripts and helped make the paintings and documented the entire scene, like Billy Name, who gave the Factory its foil-lined design, then spent more than a year without leaving his small darkroom or Gerard Malanga, dancer/poet/whip artiste who worked as Warhol’s assistant, then resentfully took off for Europe forging Warhol works for quick cash. There was Ondine, an opera-loving postal worker whose caustic, amphetamine-fueled raps placed him high on the Warholian pecking order. In “The Chelsea Girls”, he holds court as “the Pope.” In 1966, Warhol spent 24 hours with Ondine tape-recording every minute. The transcription of those tapes was released in 1968 as ”a”, Warhol’s first (and only) “novel”, the closest thing we have for experiencing the Factory in all its glamour and ennui.
There was a long string of beautiful women, from exotic models like Nico and Ultra Violet to more modest beauties like Viva, Edie and Mary Woronov. Some understodd that they were only playing at being movie stars; other started to believe the game and were abandoned as quickly as they were discovered.
These stories have been told many times before, on film, in books, even in song. Some of their accounts are bitter (Mary Woronov’s “Swimming Underground”), some powerfully emotional (Lou Reed and John Cale’s “Songs for Drella”), some gossipy and worthless (Ultra Violet’s ghost-written memoir), some gossipy yet fascinating (Warhol’s own “Popism”) but rarely as well or as inclusively as in Steven Watson’s “Factory Made”, the first book on the Warhol sixties to remove the cast of characters from the glare of the Pop Art King. It’s Warhol’s story too, of course, but he’s there less as a Great Artist than as a host, providing a setting where dozens of other lives, from street hustlers and art collectors to black-sheep heiresses and self-proclaimed underground legends.
And finally there was Valerie Solanas, a more disturbed than talented writer who became fixated on both Warhol and Maurice Girodias, the semi-legendary owner of The Olympia Press. Unfortunately for Warhol, Girodias was out of town when Solanas’ paranoia/resentment bubbled over one day in June, 1968, so she wandered up to the Factory and pumped a few bullets into the artist. Feminists like Ti-Grace Atkinson were rooting for her 15 minutes, but she was upstaged by Sirhan Sirhan’s assassination of Robert Kennedy a few hours later.
Warhol nearly died, but managed to pull through. The Factory scene wasn’t so lucky. A frightened Andy withdrew, no longer to accept the speed-soaked craziness. He moved uptown, where the people weren’t as interesting or as unpredictable. He disassociated himself from the past by removing his films from circulation. His former court moved on, few of them able to shake the label “former member of Andy Warhol’s Factory” from their name. (A few unlucky ones didn’t even make it to the end). Watson’s book is the first to attach real lives to the make-believe names and glamorous pictures, the first to catch the foil-lined, strobe-lit Factory of myth as it really was, the chance meeting of fad and fashion at a time when definitions of art had dissolved and exotic figures like these became their own best creations.
This review originally appeared online at www.playbackstl.com in December 2003
Godard: A Portrait of the Artist at Seventy by Colin MacCabe, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 432 pp., $25.00
There is a story that Jean-Luc Godard, whose first film “Breathless” made Jean-Paul Belmondo an international superstar in 1959, approached the actor sometime in the 1970s to propose a new collaboration. Belmondo is said to have asked “Do you still know how to direct?”
As Colin MacCabe notes in his new book, many people in the post-Spielberg/Lucas era know Godard only by reputation as a name from the past, barely noticing that his innovations in film language have become commonplace. His great deluge of films in the 1960s – “Contempt”, “Alphaville”, “Vivre sa Vie” and “Weekend” among them - paved the way for the first generation of movie-conscious American filmmakers like Scorsese and DePalma (who paid homage in early films like “Mean Streets” and “Greetings”) and continue to shape new cinematic voices – even when they don’t recognize the source. Godard’s jump cuts, genre-breaking narratives, collage-like forms of address and dismantling of the traditional illusionist boundaries of film have influenced filmmakers from Richard Lester to Tarantino (whose production company A Band Apart is a pun based on a Godard title.)
But despite major award-winning films like “Nouvelle Vague” and “Passion”, dozens of film and video projects, numerous “comebacks” and enough recognition to be imitated in mainstream television commercials (when the French version of the employment website “Monster” was launched, their tv campaign involved a check-out clerk– obviously recognizable as a young version of Godard- find his cinematic calling via an on-line ad) the idea that the New Wave maverick has spent most of the last three decades living a hermit-like existence, awash in incomprehensible theory and up to his ears in unfinished and unwatchable political ravings – an image that Godard himself has used as self-parody - has become an easy way for an increasingly trivial film culture to dismiss his work. That’s one of the myths that MacCabe sets out to debunk in his book, the first biography in English of the man whom many would argue was not just a major voice in film, but one of the most significant intellectual figures of the last century.
As MacCabe shows, Godard’s prolific output (the useful filmography fills forty pages) has brought him into contact with a wide range of cultural and social figures, from philosophers to pop stars, from Brigitte Bardot, Jack Palance and the Rolling Stones to Jean-Paul Sartre and Charles Bukowski. Accordingly, a biographer must have an equally comprehensive grasp of the influences that helped shape such work, and MacCabe adeptly juggles the full range of Godard’s background – from the Lutheran Church and the Resistance through auteurism, Maoism and MacMahonism. Brechtian theatrical theory, a major factor in understanding Godard’s work, is given a full accounting, as is the inestimable (and no less significant) charm of Anna Karina, Godard’s first wife and muse for seven films. There is, somewhat surprisingly, only limited critical discussion of Godard’s actual films, and the few that receive lengthy analysis seem to have been selected simply on the basis of the author’s preference.
The result is sometimes more of an encyclopedic, digressive cultural history than a conventional biography, tracking down dozens of intellectual currents and chance encounters, frequently slipping from the analytical to the anecdotal, yet remaining curiously distant from its real subject. Despite a long acquaintanceship with Godard, there is no indication that the filmmaker aided or in any way endorsed the book, so like many unauthorized biographies, friendly or otherwise, the subject remains awkwardly remote. Would it necessarily have been any different with Godard’s cooperation? He is, MacCabe reports, notoriously taciturn and averse to small talk. His own comments on his earlier work are frequently cryptic and rarely favorable. By the time one follows MacCabe’s account of his life from a comfortable childhood in Switzerland, through the heady rush of the “Cahiers du Cinema” and nouvelle vague days, over the obstacle course of radical politics and on to his self-imposed exile near the town where he grew up, Godard’s continued questioning of the moral dimension behind the use of words and images and his obsessive video projects (like the four-hour “Histoire de cinema”, a free-associating summing-up of the medium so rich in associations and loose in its appropriation of film clips that it will probably never see a U.S. release) begin to merge slightly with the slapstick self-caricature in “First Name: Carmen” and other films. “Uncle Jean” (the label he gave himself in “Carmen”, now adopted as a term of endearment among Godardians) is still engaging in an intense dialogue about the nature of cinema and the power of images, but in the degraded state of contemporary film, he may appear like a solitary and somewhat comical old man talking only to himself. MacCabe’s necessarily incomplete biography is a useful guide to anyone hoping to join in on the discussion.
(This review originally appeared in the April 2004 issue of "Playback"
Tuesday, April 27, 2004
Robert Altman's "Three Women" on DVD (finally!)
1977 was a great year for American movies. There was Richard Dreyfus making a model of the Devil's Tower mountain out of mashed potatoes and the goofy kid with the pageboy learning how to handle a light sabre. And those weren't even the best of the crop. There was Woody Allen analysing his doomed relationship with a midwestern girl with an an unusual sense of fashion. There were brilliant, underrated, Altmanesque views of small town values (Jonathon Demme's "Citizen's Band") and big city alternative media (Joan Silver's "Between the Lines") - both films sadly unavailable on DVD. But the best film of 1977 came from Robert Altman, returning to psychological territory he had explored earlier in "That Cold Day in the Park" and "Images". Those two films had been dismissed as failed excursions into "Repulsion" territory, but with "Three Women", Altman blazed his own trail into the feminine psyche, adapting the film from one of his own dreams. It's a unique horror-comedy about women who hide their on identities to conform to the expectations of society. Sissy Spacek plays Pinky, a childlike innocent who falls under the spell of Rose (Shelley Duvall), a young woman who wears her superficiality like a medal, proudly pointing out the "best" parking spaces or delighting in her recipe for "pigs in a blanket". Rounding out the trilogy is Janice Rule, a mysterious artist who has given up on the social games that rule Rose's life.
Never before released on video in any form, "Three Woman" is finally available in gorgeous Panavision, courtesy of the Criterion Collection.
P.S. "Three Women" isn't the only Altman film making an overdue video appearance. His adaptation of Sam Shepard's "Fool for Love", starring Shepard, Kim Basinger and - - HARRY DEAN STANTON !!! --- has also just been released. Now if they'll just get around to bringing out "Thieves Like Us" or "California Split" or "Brewster McCloud" or "Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean" ....
1977 was a great year for American movies. There was Richard Dreyfus making a model of the Devil's Tower mountain out of mashed potatoes and the goofy kid with the pageboy learning how to handle a light sabre. And those weren't even the best of the crop. There was Woody Allen analysing his doomed relationship with a midwestern girl with an an unusual sense of fashion. There were brilliant, underrated, Altmanesque views of small town values (Jonathon Demme's "Citizen's Band") and big city alternative media (Joan Silver's "Between the Lines") - both films sadly unavailable on DVD. But the best film of 1977 came from Robert Altman, returning to psychological territory he had explored earlier in "That Cold Day in the Park" and "Images". Those two films had been dismissed as failed excursions into "Repulsion" territory, but with "Three Women", Altman blazed his own trail into the feminine psyche, adapting the film from one of his own dreams. It's a unique horror-comedy about women who hide their on identities to conform to the expectations of society. Sissy Spacek plays Pinky, a childlike innocent who falls under the spell of Rose (Shelley Duvall), a young woman who wears her superficiality like a medal, proudly pointing out the "best" parking spaces or delighting in her recipe for "pigs in a blanket". Rounding out the trilogy is Janice Rule, a mysterious artist who has given up on the social games that rule Rose's life.
Never before released on video in any form, "Three Woman" is finally available in gorgeous Panavision, courtesy of the Criterion Collection.
P.S. "Three Women" isn't the only Altman film making an overdue video appearance. His adaptation of Sam Shepard's "Fool for Love", starring Shepard, Kim Basinger and - - HARRY DEAN STANTON !!! --- has also just been released. Now if they'll just get around to bringing out "Thieves Like Us" or "California Split" or "Brewster McCloud" or "Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean" ....
Monday, April 26, 2004
Warning! Contains Spoilers!
Rosebud was the name of his sled.
Darth Vader is Luke's father.
Norman's mother is really dead.
Dil is really...a man!
Anna Karenina throws herself in front of a train.
Hamlet dies, Romeo and Juliet die.
The shark dies.
Rhett leaves Scarlett. The murder was committed by everyone on the train.
James Bond wins. Indiana Jones wins. Apollo Creed wins. Rocky wins. Bullwinkle wins. The tortoise wins.
Roger Aykroyd was killed by the narrator. Dorothy wakes up and discovers it was all a dream. Marcel remembers the past and decides to write a very long book about it. The bride's name is Beatrix Kiddo.
Peter runs away from Mr. McGregor and goes home wet and tired while the other rabbits have a good time. Everyone lives happily ever after. The world ends with a whimper, not a bang.
Have I made my point? From gossip sites to academic e-mail lists, it appears that there are an awful lot of people who can't enter a discussion about film without first acknowledging the official Internet Taboo against Spoilers. Can't we drop this silly pretense?
First of all, it rests on the notion that the only reason to see "Psycho" or read "Anna Karenina" is to find out how the story ends. Once we learn that, we can cast the work aside and move on to the next one.
And who exactly do the Spoiler Police believe they're protecting? If your imaginary reader is going to be irritated/devastated by narrative details, whether it's in a critical discussion or a report on a preview screening on "Ain't-it-Cool-News", then why are they reading it?
Obviously, there are times when common sense should prevail. Anyone writing a review of the hypothetical "Mystery of the Old Dark Mansion" probably knows to respect the convention of revealing what is obviously intended as a surprise. (I once got an editor angry with me, after having already warning me against mentioning the ending of a new film, because she claimed that I had inadvertently provided information that allowed her to figure out its climactic plot twist..)
In the long run, the Spoiler Police are just another symptom of the increasing Superficialization of all critical discourse. The writer who cautions that his message "contains spoilers" is really just using it as a come-on, a promise of inside knowledge in a disposable culture. "Step right up, folks. Hey you, over there looking at that copy of "Ulysses".. The guy makes it home while his wife is in bed having smutty dreams. That's old news, forget it. Now you want something new, like the scoop on "X-Men 3"? Come on over. Let me tell you about it... "
Rosebud was the name of his sled.
Darth Vader is Luke's father.
Norman's mother is really dead.
Dil is really...a man!
Anna Karenina throws herself in front of a train.
Hamlet dies, Romeo and Juliet die.
The shark dies.
Rhett leaves Scarlett. The murder was committed by everyone on the train.
James Bond wins. Indiana Jones wins. Apollo Creed wins. Rocky wins. Bullwinkle wins. The tortoise wins.
Roger Aykroyd was killed by the narrator. Dorothy wakes up and discovers it was all a dream. Marcel remembers the past and decides to write a very long book about it. The bride's name is Beatrix Kiddo.
Peter runs away from Mr. McGregor and goes home wet and tired while the other rabbits have a good time. Everyone lives happily ever after. The world ends with a whimper, not a bang.
Have I made my point? From gossip sites to academic e-mail lists, it appears that there are an awful lot of people who can't enter a discussion about film without first acknowledging the official Internet Taboo against Spoilers. Can't we drop this silly pretense?
First of all, it rests on the notion that the only reason to see "Psycho" or read "Anna Karenina" is to find out how the story ends. Once we learn that, we can cast the work aside and move on to the next one.
And who exactly do the Spoiler Police believe they're protecting? If your imaginary reader is going to be irritated/devastated by narrative details, whether it's in a critical discussion or a report on a preview screening on "Ain't-it-Cool-News", then why are they reading it?
Obviously, there are times when common sense should prevail. Anyone writing a review of the hypothetical "Mystery of the Old Dark Mansion" probably knows to respect the convention of revealing what is obviously intended as a surprise. (I once got an editor angry with me, after having already warning me against mentioning the ending of a new film, because she claimed that I had inadvertently provided information that allowed her to figure out its climactic plot twist..)
In the long run, the Spoiler Police are just another symptom of the increasing Superficialization of all critical discourse. The writer who cautions that his message "contains spoilers" is really just using it as a come-on, a promise of inside knowledge in a disposable culture. "Step right up, folks. Hey you, over there looking at that copy of "Ulysses".. The guy makes it home while his wife is in bed having smutty dreams. That's old news, forget it. Now you want something new, like the scoop on "X-Men 3"? Come on over. Let me tell you about it... "
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