Some Came Running

I Remember Anton Fier

I remember my campus friend Bob in 1978 or so expressing fake annoyance when telling me of drummer Anton Fier's imminent move from Cleveland to New York, where he would join the Haledon, N.J. band The Feelies. "I guess he heard somewhere that I had a pool at my house," Bob said. By which, I believe, Bob meant his parents' house. "And he said 'Well I'm going to be spending a lot of time at Bob's place then.'" I don't think that actually occurred. 

I remember seeing Anton Fier and John Zorn sitting around Soho Music Gallery, where Anton had a day gig, talking about Charlie Parker and ignoring customers such as myself. 

I remember Anton and Bill Laswell looking at a big photo book about Sergio Leone at a table at Maxwell's once.

I remember several Feelies shows where they began implementing the policy of finishing  their set with the extremely frantic "Raised Eyebrows," which ended with high-speed drum fills and cymbal clashes embellishing the incredibly hurried beat, and then IMMEDIATELY launching into "Crazy Rhythms," and seeing Anton, red-faced, between the closing of "Eyebrows" and guitarist Glenn Mercer's downbeat signal for "Crazy" looking at Glenn with pleading eyes, as if to say "please don't make me do this." 

I remember Anton being rather put out on discovering that, on the first pressing jackets of the album Crazy Rhythms, he was credited as "Tony Fisher." (Stan Demeski remembers it was "Andy Fisher" and I reckon he is correct.)

I remember drinking with Anton at Maxwell's and making some kind of stupid joke about why was Greg Tate giving himself a byline after a Marvel Comics character. "'Iron Man' is the name of an Eric Dolphy number, you idiot," he said in an indulgent tone, and I went "Oh yeah, sure, knew that all along." 

I remember going to Anton's apartment to interview him for Musician magazine, my first and only feature for the magazine. I couldn't believe he had to slog his kit to a fifth-floor walkup after every gig. During the interview, which would be about, among other things, the first Golden Palominos album, I remember Anton saying of his label head, "Jean Karakos is a dog. He's a dog rat bastard, the lowest of the low. And I give you permission to put that in your interview."

When the interview came out, he was pretty pleased with it. "I didn't put in that stuff about Karakos," I pointed out. "That was  a good call," he said. 

I remember Anton coming off the Rockit tour with Herbie Hancock and expressing befuddlement. "I don't understand how you can be such a genuinely devoted Buddhist and do all that cocaine." I told Anton that Buddhism was one of those religions that kind of let you do, and wish for, whatever you liked, which is probably why it was so attractive to so many.

I remember when the second Palominos album, Visions of Excess, came out, and the dual dedication to John Bonham and Jim Gordon raised eyebrows, as did the back cover shot of an already soused Anton mid-cocktail-sip, probably snapped at Maxwell's. "I don't care," he said to me apropos all that. "I'm not going to live to be thirty-five." He lived to be sixty-six, but he's still survived by...Jim Gordon. 

I remember sitting in a studio in the dead of night somewhere in Manhattan for about five or six hours while Anton and another musician and a recording engineer tinkered with the opening snare hit on "Something Becomes Nothing," the opening track of the third Golden Palominos album. Just. The. Opening. Snare. Hit. I thought I would lose my mind. Everyone else seemed fine. If cocaine was present at this occasion, I was not offered any.

I remember interviewing Anton at his new apartment, on Eldridge Street, for a Spin feature on the Palominos and their aforementioned album, on which not a single snare hit would be anything less than perfect. (I heard later that Anton abandoned the mix and sent the tapes to Japan for a $250,000 remix.) Peter Blegvad was in attendance, and Anton brought a couple of bottles of "Chinese wine" as a social lubricant, and it worked rather well. Anton upbraided Peter for marrying up, so to speak. He called me "college boy." ("It's a STATE SCHOOL," I protested.) It was the first and last interview I conducted in which all the parties were literally horizontal by the time the tape ran out. I never found out what the fuck that "Chinese wine" was.

I remember Anton asking me to write the press release for A Dead Horse, the fourth Palominos album. That wasn't really my thing but you try saying no to Anton. I did my bit, and I was to present him with hard copy at the Bottom Line, after his debut as the drummer in the Bob Mould trio, with Tony Maimone. It was a pretty great show, I thought. Anton didn't. "BAND MEETING" he bellowed coming off stage, leading Mould and Maimone to the dressing room. I don't remember what happened after that. 

I remember walking into Rebel Rebel Records some time in the spring of 1997, when I had just started on the staff at Premiere magazine. Anton was hanging around the back. I excitedly told him about my new gig, and when I was done, said, "What are you up to?" He extended his hands, palms up. He was as assistant manager there. 

The last time I saw him was in Hoboken, a long time ago, where he came out to see a Yung Wu gig in a park. He had a crew cut and wore a dark gray overcoat. "Oh I see you're going full Fenster," Dave Weckerman said to him.

I remember he was always the most exciting drummer to see and hear. I remember that he turned me on to Han Bennink. From mutual friend (and key Palomino) Syd Straw's Facebook page I learn that he is now dead, age 66.  

Blu-ray and 4K Consumer Guide, "Laser Joe" Memorial Edition

Equipment: Sony UBp-X800 multi-region 4K player, Sony KD50X690E display, Yamaha RXV-385 A/V receiver.

Alligator (Shout Factory 4K Ultra)

Back in the early 2000s, my colleagues at Premiere thought it would be a good idea to entrust a feature on the Ten Greatest Sex Scenes in Cinema to me and me alone, and since at the time I was still addicted to my own cleverness, such as it was, I put the David Hemmings/Veruschka photo shoot scene from Blow-Up, in which no actual sex, simulated or not simulated, occurs, at the top spot. The magazine’s media booker put me on whatever show Anderson Cooper was hosting on CNN at the time to bang the drum for the piece and the magazine in general. I didn’t want to go on. I was feeling fat, and I couldn’t put together an outfit that would accommodate a tie, and I just didn’t want to go. On the plus side, the studio was just a short walk from the office. I got there, got made up, and went to the green room with a complimentary can of Diet Coke. Anderson’s guest before me was this big beefy dude who was talking about how conversion therapy changed his life. I stood there in the green room lounge watching the segment with a skeptically cocked eyebrow. On the couch sat a young woman with a blonde bouffant hairdo wearing something not unlike a prom dress. The guy on the screen was detailing the depredations of the homosexual lifestyle. “I was a homosexual…a violent homosexual…I had sex with strangers in public restrooms…I did drugs…” Impressed, I said to the screen, “Dude…” And the woman on the couch snapped, “That’s my husband.”

“How’s that working out for you?” I asked. Kind of rude, but it was the first thing that came into my head, and such was my mood anyway. A little later, when the Formerly Violent Homosexual was through, they corralled me upstairs. As the segment started, Cooper, in his amiable way, laid into me. “A lot of old movies on this list,” he said, citing Blow-Up as the main offender. While not a math whiz, I made some mental calculations and pointed out that Anderson and the Antonioni film were precisely the same age (OK, Blow-Up was maybe a year older). Ever since then I’ve pondered the question of how old a movie has to get before it can legitimately be considered old.

So: Alligator, directed by Lewis Teague, starring Robert Forster, written by John Sayles, released 1980. Here in a 4K Ultra form scanned from the original negative, which is how experts such as Robert A. Harris like it.  An under-the-wire entry in the 1984 Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film (as too, one infers, was 1981’s Dead And Buried.) My old friend Joseph F. (also known as “Laser Joe” by the clientele at Tower Video in Paramus) and I were not, as a rule, big fans of revisionism in genres. So we tended to mistrust comedic horror pictures. Unless they had a connection — by lineage or otherwise — with the Corman horror comedies of the late ‘50s and early ‘60s such as Little Shop of Horrors and A Bucket of Blood. While Alligator was not directly affiliated, both script writer John Sayles and director Lewis Teague were more or less straight out of the Corman dugout. And as Jaws rip-offs went it had a spiffy concept (adapted from the urban myth about toilet-flushed baby water beasts growing to giant proportions and roaming city sewers), and, as we would discover, a tidy, blood-soaked execution. And look at that cast! Robert Forster! Jack Carter! Michael Gazzo! Henry Silva!

The 4K Ultra disc looks great — flawless color and detail. The flavor of a well-crafted low-budget picture is entirely there. Cinematic innovations include a toilet’s eye view of a baby alligator (named Ramon!) being flushed. Indirectly the whole thing turns out to be the fault of the herpetologist/love interest played by Robin Riker. Forster is reliably himself while Silva is very funny as an effete Quint variant. This movie’s only 42, but it actually feels old to me in a way that Blow-Up, say, does not. But pleasantly so in any event, like a longtime pal. — A+

The Brain Eaters (Shout Factory)

Psychotronic catnip from the title down. This barely-a-feature from 1958 starts off ultra-strong with gorgeous gray scale semi-abstract paintings backing the opening credits. (The credits were by Paul Julian, a fact I gleaned from the invaluable Tim Lucas’ great review of this disc, of which you ought to avail yourself.) The transfer shows a lot of grain but I reckon accurately so. If authentic sadistic cinema, per Benayoun, steeps the viewer in an atmosphere of perdition, this strain of genre picture steeps one in an atmosphere of narcotized wooziness and clammy unease. Like the out-of-step-by-a-beat walking bass line of the Pere Ubu song “Chiller!” (featuring audio of a no-doubt-TV-derived soundtrack of a movie that could be, but is not, this one), The Brain Eaters stumbles about when not hitting on bizarre moments of slap-you-awake shock. As when the pronouncement “The mayor’s back!” motivates a quick cut to the mayor having a hand-shaking mental breakdown and trying to put a gun to his head. Essential. — A+

Escape From L.A. (Paramount 4K Ultra)

On its announcement — as a theatrical release, back in 1997, we did not understand the point of this movie’s existence. I mean, 1981’s Escape From New York was a pretty pointed and entirely self-contained piss-take. The Big Apple was still in its ostensibly scary and blighted graffiti-splattered iteration. Making it into a literal sci-fi dystopia was an amusing conceit even if you lived there for real at the time. (Which I didn’t, yet. But five days a week Joseph took the bus from Dumont to the Port Authority, and then the 6 train down to 23^rd Street to attend SVA classes. That counted for something.) To come back 16 years later and say “Okay, Los Angeles sucks too” felt like a weak move, a dilution of the original “vision.” And it’s not as if any of the filmmakers were splitting from Hollywood, either.

Maybe I was/am overthinking this. John Carpenter’s 1996 picture, co-written with Debra Hill and star Kurt Russell, who I suspect was leaning ever so slightly left in his libertarianism at the time, is a bouncy and largely comedic near-sendup of the dystopia genre, with a fair amount of rewarding action/exploitation goods. An earthquake and authoritarian politics = L.A. as a prison island and Hollywood self-parody. (Plastic surgery disasters, free-throw competitions; they’re in here. One wonders how Russell’s Snake Plisken sinks his shots with no depth perception. Because the eyepatch. You know.) There’s also, to an even greater extent than Alligator, a truly (and delightfully) random-ass supporting cast: Peter Fonda! Valeria Golino! Steve Buscemi! Bruce Campbell! Cliff Robertson! Peter Jason! Leland Orser! Amusingly enough the movie’s “now” is 2013.  It all boils down to being a comic book movie of the good sort. (Marvel indeed did a Snake comic book in 1997.) The production design is droll but cheap, as the detail on this handsome but hardly extras-laden 4K disc underscores. Not essential but fun. Inspirational dialogue: “What are you here for?” “I was a Muslim in South Dakota.”  Also: “We’re going to Anaheim!” — A

 Expresso Bongo (Cohen)

The movie that taught at least two generations how to mispronounce “espresso.” Also the origin of the band name Tom Tom Club (here an actual nightclub). Laser Joe was a longtime lowkey fan of director Val Guest, particularly the getting-scarier-every-day 1961 The Day the Earth Caught Fire. This 1959 Guest picture, possibly a British-inflected riff on Sweet Smell of Success, is deft and pacey and more eccentric than it initially looks. Right from the sharp opening credits, which print the talent names all over the attractions of an arcade, ending with one of the film’s co-writers, Wolf Mankowitz, displaying Guest’s credit on a sandwich board. Laurence Harvey, playing a nonchalantly sleazy wannabe talent agent, really commits to his louche look — that skinny bow tie and so on. While not big on the verisimilitude that was catching on courtesy of the French New Wave, the movie’s contrived milieu does give a coherent picture of the strivers of Soho in this era. As Harvey’s discovery, whom the agent names “Bongo,” Cliff Richard, oft disparaged by us Yanks, really does have some charisma. And Shadows fans (I’m one) will be gratified to recognize Hank Marvin as a member of Bongo’s backing band.  It IS a little disconcerting when the movie turns into an actual musical; one rarely expects to see Laurence Harvey breaking out into song. But he does, as does Sylvia Sims and others. So yes, this is also an obvious precursor to Absolute Beginners.  A faboo time capsule served up with a spotless 2K scan. Inspirational dialogue: “Look, definitely no jazz.”  — A

The Godfather Trilogy (Paramount 4K Ultra)

This — meaning, to begin with, 1972’s The Godfather — was the movie that changed everything for us, really. As much if not more so than Mean Streets, because it was first. There is SO MUCH in it. The character dynamics — which we recognized in at least small part from our own Italian-American upbringings — are so intense and lively. The “don’t talk business at the table” bit happens in less than two minutes and it’s amazingly revealing and frightening. Fredo going in to look at his ailing dad and holding his knees together like that… It’s just immaculate filmmaking and by filmmaking I mean all of it, acting staging shooting direction, dialogue, it just kills. “Look how they massacred my boy.” Jesus. Watching it fifty years later I’m staggered that this movie was made in my lifetime. No wonder it haunts Coppola. Whose introduction is lovely, by the way; generous and soulful and truthful and he commemorates his daughter Sofia’s birthday as much as he commemorates the anniversary of the movie and you can see he’s so proud of her. Made me tear up a little.  Yes, Part II is a remarkable film but the first is the miracle, the precedent-setter. As to Part II: Pretty crafty, on learning that Richard Castellano was out, to not just put Michael Gazzo in the cast but to remake the character; he’s not a proxy Clemenza and he’s also, at first, something of an annoying jackass. Also: Al Pacino looking at Troy Donahue in contempt is cinema semiotics gold. In the final analysis, yes, it really is very nearly as good as the first. The emotions are even more wrenching; what goes on between Pacino and Cazale is palpable. And Strasberg is great. Have you seen, here and there, people who’ve decided they don’t like Strasberg as an acting teacher, who go after him in this film, citing it as evidence that he couldn’t “actually” act? Christ. Are they watching a different movie? Why am I bitching at you about this?  Maybe it’s just because I no longer have the friend I want to talk about these movies with, not to get maudlin. As for III, or Coda: Andy Garcia is often a great actor but his performance here is initially pitched between Joey Tribbiani and Cage at his most manic. (Inspirational line reading: “I say we hit back and take ZAZA OUT !!!”) He does settle in, but he was the first sore thumb I noticed in this picture, which is a lot more lumpy than the first two but hardly a disaster.  It definitely has its moments, many of them not directly connected to the diegesis so to speak: the curtains of a castle bedroom moving in the wind as an Elvis Costello song blasts from the open window, for instance. And some that certainly are, like Michael’s confession. And how about that Raf Vallone, huh?  I gotta give Puzo (and I presume it’s Puzo all the way down the line) credit: he comes up with the best gangster names ever: Luca Brassi, Al Neri, Johnny Ola, Joey Zaza. I think all the pictures in this set look remarkable. The reviewer at DoBlu.com pointed out a couple of instances of “frozen grain,” one being Diane Keaton’s face in the first picture, starting at around the 13 minute mark, when Kay is remarking on Luca Brassi. Honestly I think those are actually Keaton’s freckles. Which I’d never noticed before. If I’m incorrect I shall be very embarrassed. — A+

The Halfway House (Severin)

One of those things Joseph and I might have given a very skeptical look at while DVD-trawling at a Chiller Expo. The kind of movie in which a woman brings in a picture of her missing relative to a couple of detectives and one of them looks at the snapshot and says “Nice tits,” and this is supposed to be a laugh line. Later, another cop introduces himself as “Sergeant Sheen. Dick Sheen.” Soon follows a sex scene in which the woman with the missing relative displays her own nice, um, secondary sexual characteristics, and the thing that’s supposed to be funny is that she and Sergeant Sheen are delivering exposition all through their exertions.  While this horror comedy has a 2004 release date, it is clearly happily situated in the mid-80s world of Dave De Coteau. Not surprising, as director Kenneth J. Hall is a friend and past collaborator with the man. Anyway. This was shot on high-def video and it looks it; not bad for 2004, but there are instances when the images seem to be struggling to hit 1280. Mary Woronov plays a crazed nun. Of course. IMDb user review from 2006, headlined “Campy Schlock Crap From The Writer Of ‘PUPPET MASTER:” “OH LORD this one sucks. Pseudo-Lovecraftian garbage with very little gore, a few tits (but NO full-frontal), horrible acting - oh Christ, I give up - the list of negatives about this film is just way too long and encompasses just about every aspect of this piece of trash.” The kids have really gotten very demanding in this century. On the plus side, the movie features a pre-Benedetta use of a religious sculpture as dildo. Extras are minimal (the not replicated director’s commentary from a prior edition notwithstanding, what is there really to say about the movie as such?) relative to say, Night of the Demon (see below) which has a whole separate disc of them. But they’re not THAT minimal — the Hall and cast and crew interview is over 30 minutes. There’s also a tribute to Hall’s departed brother Cleve, a close collaborator of the director. I sound pretty bitchy about this so I should add that I am not wholly unmoved by the schlock love that clearly motivated this production. — B

Labyrinth (Sony 4K Ultra)

Really pretty staggering in the looks department. A genuinely eccentric film too. Kid’s film trappings with YA literature themes making for an interesting balancing act for the creators. For folks like myself, the puppet monsters and Bowie are the draws. The picture detail shows the seams in the ambitious special effects, which just makes you admire the ambition all the more. From the maggot pit of Phenomena (1985, see below) to this movie’s Bog of Eternal Stench (1986), lead actress Jennifer Connelly (okay, okay, she too is one of the draws for folks like myself) could not catch a break. In the aggregate, there are more fart noises in this movie than in Blazing Saddles, I think. Most of the relatively generous extras in this package are on the second BR disc. The  Arif Mardin produced Bowie songs are pretty much what you’d expect of such a collaboration. — A+

 

Last Night In Soho (Universal 4K Ultra)

I’ve praised this movie elsewhere, and I remember telling Joseph that I’d be interested in hearing what he thought of it — he could go either way with contemporary genre pictures, to be sure — but that won’t happen now. Phooey. The 4K presentation is just as one would both hope and expect with a new production, that is, spectacularly close to the theatrical version. Extras include two commentaries, one with Wright and editor Paul Machliss and composer Steven Price, another with Wright and Cairns. They are properly energetic and wonky. The other supps are EPK Goes To Film School, so to speak, showing off Wright’s astonishing technical command and resourcefulness. Deleted scenes are a little over 9 minutes total and not without interest. — A+

Mister Majestyk (Kino)

Nothing says gritty like an opening shot of the title character leaving a gas station rest room. It’s actually a plot point, setting up M. Majestyk as anti-racist, and good for him. A lovely young woman whom Charles Bronson’s title character assists in getting access to the sink (Linda Cristal) introduces herself as Nancy Chavez, “Not related to the other Chavez.” So Bronson’s got 160 acres of watermelon ready to be cut, and Bobby Kopas, evil labor exploiter, wants to tell him who he can or can’t hire. But this isn’t the main thrust of the plot, as it happens. (And if you think film critics today are snobs, back when this first came out nearly every review I read made snarky sport of the watermelon-farming angle, for real.) That happens when Majestyk goes to the pokey and gets thrown in with a highly volatile gangster played by Al Lettieri.  The pretty spectacular shoot out about 20 minutes in is the convincer that this Dick Fleischer picture isn’t interested in wasting any time. This story is from an Elmore Leonard script that the author later novelized, and rather interestingly, here Leonard the screenwriter doesn’t invest in ultra-vivid-hood dialogue the way Leonard the novelist did. And it doesn’t really matter. I didn’t get Charles Bronson as a teen — I was about to turn fifteen when this came out, and almost as snobby as your average watermelon-farming-disparaging critic — but Joseph always waved the flag for the guy’s persona, which was so taciturn as to make Clint Eastwood look like William F. Buckley. Eventually I got it. And I dig this picture, and the new transfer, which really pops out those highly saturated 70s colors. (In an onscreen extra, cinematographer Richard Kline is still excited to discuss his work on the picture.) Bronson biographer Paul Talbot contributes an enthusiastic commentary too. “Bronson had piercing green eyes — that was part of his persona.” Well, Paul, that was actually part of his physical makeup. He also discusses the “no mustache, no Bronson” rule. And tells a filthy story about Lettieri, saying “He had two young hookers with him he had brought to service the crew.” (No wonder he died of a heart attack at age 47.) Lee Purcell, on the other hand, in an on-camera interview, remembers Lettieri as a devoted husband looking forward to the birth of his child. Oh well. He was a man, take him for all and all, we shall not look upon his like again, etc. Good Blu-ray. —A

Monster From Green Hell (Film Detective)

Whoa, those giant animated stop motion flying insects menacing rear-projected stock footage in this perky 1957 monster cheapie are something else. Also featured: colonialist racism, which is courtesy of stock footage as well, and also of King and Brower’s 1939 Stanley and Livingstone.  Some of it — and by “it” I mean the non-effects material — looks really great in terms of detail and contrast. The better to enjoy some of the weirdest production design ever (the lab with the sloped windows looking out on the desert mountain, with a brand new car parked just outside). The monster comes in a stop motion miniature model and, like Kong in his debut film, a full size head. Also, here, full size pincers. Kong did not have pincers. The Kenneth Hall film saves the “best” effects work for over 50 minutes in. The whole thing ends with a fabulously ridiculous tinted sequence. Maven Steven Bissette’s commentary is engaging and pretty thorough. As home-grown restoration outfits go, Film Detective is an exemplary enterprise that has a pleasingly random catalog (their prior release was 1947’s The Fabulous Dorseys). Their digital cleanups aren’t likely to blow you away, but if you have any feel for the film collector aesthetic as it is expressed herein, they’ll make you happy. Inspirational dialogue: “Nature has a way of correcting its own mistakes.” — A-

Night of the Demon (Severin)

Another piece of rare schlock you’d find in a poor quasi-boot at a Chiller Expo, or so I like to imagine. (Much of its notoriety derives from its having been classified as a “video nasty” in Great Britain.) Hence, the fantastic image quality here comes off as more of a shock than is sometimes customary. I was never one for Bigfoot movies and this 1980 item did not convert me, but it certainly kept me engaged in a morbid curiosity kind of way. The special effects are really gross.  The approach, it seemed, was for an actor to hold a package of offal to the “stump” of whatever limb the bigfoot had torn off, and let it droop and drip. Yuck. The score by Dennis McCarthy is very Manos to start — flute driven and such — but then the synths come in. (In end credits, one Stuart Hardy is credited with the score. I’m so confused.) Director James C. Wasson makes some genuinely odd shot choices, cutting to the ceiling of a van after Bigfoot snatches the dude having sex therein, and the van’s bloody windshield after.  It’s also got a weird structure, juggling flashbacks and opportunistic dream sequences among a wide range of peculiar characters. The penis--tearing-off scene is very John Waters. And throughout, the blood looks like a kind of hot sauce. The picture often feels like a weird high/low point of regional filmmaking at a particular point in time. Except it was made in L.A. by a director who’d later get into gay porn. (“How do you know about that?” he asks the interviewer in a pretty entertaining supplement.) Inspirational dialogue: “Officials found this camera with the film in it. But no trace of the people.” — A

No Way To Treat A Lady (Shout Factory)

Like Wait Until Dark, this movie scared the bejesus out of my mother when I was a kid. 1967/68 was a good time for scaring the bejesus out of my mother I guess. I was sufficiently impressed that I still haven’t seen Dark and I only just watched this for the first time on the spiffy Shout Factory Bluray, which properly puts across how production design and cinematography in urban-set contemporary pictures was then starting to hew to a slightly drab realism. Anyway, sorry mom, but it did not scare the bejesus out of me. The conception of the killer hasn’t aged well — strangler as walking audition reel, but Rod Steiger makes a meal of it, including Ye Olde Homophobic Hairdresser Caricature. That’s another reason I didn’t see this movie at first — when I was a kid I really couldn’t stand Rod Steiger. I somehow got it into my head that he was a slob in real life, and I was very confused as to how he could be married to that nice, refined Claire Bloom. Boy did I have a lot to learn. Maybe if I’d seen this earlier my misconceptions would have been a little straightened out, as he really does act it up here. “You should hear my W.C. Fields some time, it’s absolutely uncanny,” he taunts cop George Segal. Prophetic words, as Steiger would play the man — Fields, not Segal — in 1976. As to the killer’s actual identity, wow, did William Goldman (on whose novel this is based) have a bad experience with a Broadway theater manager? And what about his relationship with his mother? Poor Eileen Heckart has to enact a Jewish mother that even Philip Roth might consider a bit much. The picture picks up as it becomes more procedural, the double female impersonator scene with Kim August (at Joe Allen’s) is a real eye-opener. As are scenes of the superfresh Lee Remick conducting tours around a still-under construction Lincoln Center. In the sole extra, dapper film critic Kim Newman provides a cogent and informative appreciation of the movie, pointing out a Theater of Blood analogy; my two cents are that Vincent Price’s gay hairdresser bit wasn’t nearly as pointedly nasty as what Steiger does here. — A-

Phenomena (Synapse 4K Ultra)

This has a 1.66 aspect ratio, so I guess it’s Dario Argento’s most art-film horror. It begins with a killing, of course, the lush greens of the ostensibly Swiss hills giving way to a grimy window’s view of a waterfall and a purposefully grainy gruesome slow motion shot. That deliberate effect aside, the 4K presentation here is spotless and beautiful. In Argento’s cut there’s a moody slowness that lets the more outré points of the storyline settle in. The movie frequently riffs on De Palma’s Carrie but unlike Brian, Dario here really believes in innocence, and makes Jennifer Connelly’s character a veritable angel. To these old eyes the FX shot of insects swarming around the girl’s school looks faboo. I haven’t explored this multi-disc set in its entirety yet but what I’ve already seen warrants the grade I’m giving it. I remember trying to see the U.S. release of this (mutilated from 106 minutes to 83 by New Line, who also retitled it Creepers) in Wayne with Joseph in the late summer of 1985, only to be turned away from the box office because we were the only ticket buyers and the theater manager didn’t think it was worth his while to run the projector for just two patrons. That’s bush league theater management for you. — A+

Repeat Performance (Flicker Alley)

“Is Repeat Performance really a film noir?” Eddie Mueller asks in a good intro to this restored 1947 rarity. A few months back (or a few years back, who can keep track in this economy) I got pedantic on Twitter and, using Out of the Past as my template, held forth on how a true noir needs implacable fate and a femme fatale, and that I was getting kind of fed up with every policier being called a noir these days. Anyway, Performance sure is not a policier, it’s a quasi-supernatural tale of “if I could do it all again” that has to pull the trick of making sure that likable Joan Leslie doesn’t have to go to jail like the Production Code would say she would otherwise. Directed by the workmanlike-and-often-better-than-that Alfred Werker, it’s pretty absorbing stuff. Albeit not a 100-percent noir, let’s say. The fatalist angle is damn strong, the redolence of noir is definitely there. The depiction of a theatrical-milieu quasi bohemia is kinda like The Seventh Victim with money, etc. all very commendable. And the restoration looks fabulous. Leslie’s character at one point encouraging Louis Hayward’s character to have a drink is a real good grief moment. Also fun: “It’s William Williams, the poet,” said of Richard Basehart by Natalie Schafer. (Interestingly — and I swear I’m not making this up — I was having lunch at the counter at Hiram’s in Fort Lee last Friday, after visiting my mother’s grave, and one of the other guys at the counter was waxing rhapsodic over Schafer. “A lot of guys go for Ginger or Mary Ann, but give me ‘Lovey’ any time,” he pronounced. He then averred that Schafer was a multi-millionaire at the mid-point of her career, due to real-estate investments, and didn’t need to act when she took the Gilligan’s Island gig. And that she donated a lot to the Lillian Booth Actor’s Home [this is confirmed by Wikipedia]. And that John Lennon wrote “Lovey Do” as a tribute to her [this is not confirmed by Wikipedia]. Again, I’m not making this up.) My friend Farran Smith Nehme, looking good and talking sense, contributes an appreciation of Leslie, and the commentary by Nora Fiore (aka The Nitrate Diva) is crisply delivered, offering astute analysis, interesting anecdotes, and wisecracks. Inspirational dialogue: ”I feel wonderful except for my legs!” — A+

Stage Fright (Warner Archive)

One of the most peculiar passages in Hitchcock/Truffaut is when Truffaut whales on Alastair Sim apropos this 1950 picture. “I objected to the actor as well as to the character,” Truffaut says, and Hitchcock just rolls over: “Here again is the trouble with shooting a film in England. They all tell you, “He’s one of our best actors; you’ve got to have him in your picture.’ It’s that old local and national feeling, that insular mentality again.” The dude was still alive (he died in 1976, about ten years after the book’s first edition). Of course the thing that’s most objected to in the conventional wisdom is the movie’s false flashback. Which is itself a pretty snappy fifteen minute mini-movie of death, pursuit, and escape. And, among other things, sees our maestro trying to get a diopter effect through rear-projection. Truffaut said to Hitchcock that this movie did nothing to add to the director’s “prestige” and he’s not wrong if you want to be that way about it, but if we learn anything in Today’s Hitchcock Studies it’s that not one of his films does not contain essential points of interest. This has some standard Hitchcock features in various stages of development, including an inchoate change-of-identity theme. In the absence of standard suspense we get a series of moral corkscrews, and challenges to affinity. For instance, although the ever-grand Marlene Dietrich is (spoiler alert) the murderer, the way Sim hounds her with the bloodied doll in the fair scene is genuinely abominable. As for whether the false flashback works, or is even permissible at all, Chabrol and Rohmer as usual were right the first time around: “The revelation of the lie is at the heart of the story. Far from being an artifice, the lying account is the very basis of the film. In this light the arabesques themselves lose their apparent gratuitousness, since they are variations on the theme of innocence.” The only extra on this Warner Archive presentation — the transfer is never less than fab — is a Laurent Bouzerau 2004 produced doc with Robert Osborne, Peter Bogdanovich, superfan Richard Franklin, cranky Richard Schickel trying to look agreeable, and more, and in which the clips from the movie look like absolute crap,  which underscores how good the actual presentation here looks.  Alternate title: How I Found A Better Boyfriend. Inspirational dialogue: “Double gin and lemon. Not too much lemon.” — A

A Star Is Born (Warner Archive)

The 1937 original, and this Warner Archive presentation will convince you that it’s still the greatest. Staggering. I’d forgotten it opens with a wolf howling. I quite dug the Hollywoodized Willa Cather stuff with grandma: “We burned in summer and we froze in winter!” This recreation of Technicolor is just magnificent. It is an amazing edition but it’s JUST TOO SAD TO WATCH! Definitely, to my mind, the saddest of the four (but Cukor’s is of course a very close second). Director William Wellman serves up Hollywood self-hatred at its most pointed, but still delivers an earnest no biz like show biz ending. Are this and Rebecca Selznick’s best movies? Discuss. Alternate title: More About Alcoholism. — A+

 The Three Musketeers (Warner Archive)

Joseph and I and so many of our consort from the 1980s on were real fiends for Technicolor, which only started looking good on home video when laserdiscs came along. For some time the consensus was that a Japanese laser disc of Vincent Sherman’s 1948 The Adventures of Don Juan, starring Errol Flynn and Vivica Lindfors, was the best presentation of the format, so we all paid through the nose for that, and enjoyed the sumptuousness, while also wishing the thing had been directed by Michael Curtiz.  Nowadays the Warner Archive and Criterion people do an absolute bang-up job with Technicolor, quite a bit more often than not. It’s a veritable golden age. With this disc, of a George Sidney picture also from 1948, you get the dose right away, and you also notice that in the opening credits those arms holding up swords for two minutes have poor actual humans attached to them. This looks incredible throughout. It’s a slightly goofy movie overall, sometimes more pratfall than action oriented. But in a pleasant enough way. Gene Kelly doesn’t so much play D’Artagnan as play Gene Kelly playing D’Artagnan. After a bit one may start chuckling at all those swordfights facing the Pacific Ocean.  Kelly going all SuperWolf over June Allyson is about as MGM as any MGM film gets. George Sidney directs. June is a bit more hotsy totsy than is customary. She, Marie Windsor (in a single close-up), Patricia “Funky Cold” Medina, Angela Lansbury and Lana Turner make this a real (elaborately costumed) babefest. The storytelling is a model of Hollywood narrative dispatch. Good Tex Avery cartoon too. Inspirational dialogue: “It takes a good man to prevent a catastrophe, my lady. And a great man to make use of one.”— A+

The Vampire Lovers (Scream Factory)

Not much to say here, except to thank Shout!/Scream Factory for the conscientious update of a canonical release that is also the absolute quintessence of Ingrid Pitt. How awestruck were we by her back in 1970, and so we remain. The transfer here really pops, in all the ways it ought to. — A +

Who Framed Roger Rabbit (Touchstone 4K Ultra)

This is another movie that seemed like a miracle upon its 1988 release. It’s still plenty engaging, and inventive, and it definitely trucks in mythology rather than IP grabbing…but seen from this vantage point, it certainly seems to contain the seeds of something that became pernicious. Also, the allegorical race angle the scenario trucks in feels weird and alienating, or maybe I should say more weird and alienating; I can’t honestly recall exactly what I thought about it back then, but I was uncomfortable. And I think that Bob Hoskins, who could generally do no wrong, was directed into a corner by Robert Zemeckis. So…I did not enjoy revisiting this as much as I’d anticipated, as it turns out. It’s still a landmark, and still very enjoyable in parts, and relatively tidy as superproductions go — not even 105 minutes. And of course it is a superb source of Richard Williams. Not to mention Mel Blanc and June Foray. And this disc looks beautiful.  Inspirational Wikipedia sentence: “Michael Eisner, then-CEO, and Roy E. Disney, vice-chairman of The Walt Disney Company, felt the film was too risqué with sexual references.”  — A

The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (Warner Archive)

Boy, can you imagine trying to get away with a two-hour-and-20-minute CHILDREN’S MOVIE nowadays? I mean, I guess if you consider MCU pictures to be children’s movies, it happens all the time, but I mean this sort of thing — a full on fairy-story anthology cum pasteurized biopic. Come on. And it was a hit back in 1962. Maybe it was the Cinerama? Laurence Harvey as plays one bro, Karl Boehm is the other. Man, Boehm was lucky to get this part after Peeping Tom, huh? The biopic part depicts the bro grammarians being upbraided for their dry output and soon discovering the joys of entertainment for kids which is also folklore. This is a great presentation of the kind of movie they really do not make any more AT ALL. The color! The lighting! The steadfast avoidance of close-ups of even standard medium shots because of the Cinerama dimensions! It’s a really unusual mix of the cinematic and theatrical. One that reveals its co-director George Pal as one of the truest inheritors of Melies. This is a two-disc set, one presenting the Cinerama image in “Smilebox” format, and if you haven’t looked at such a thing in a while, it takes a little getting used to. And even the standard widescreen version presents the implication of a Cinerama curve, of course. Among its diverse components, the movie offers Terry Thomas AND Buddy Hackett in the same sequence. And they’re both excellent. And the dragon they battle is a cool dragon bro. A picture of considerable charm when you come down to it. And damn, those cobbler’s elves puppets. — A+

Failla on Film

I was looking through my electronic correspondence with my friend Joseph Failla (see below) and wanted to share some of it here. The first entry is a response to a request; I asked him, after the death of horror maven Forrest J. Ackerman, to contribute something for this blog's own tribute to the man. The last piece of correspondence is following the death of Christopher Lee, and is, like all the other bits of writing, self-explanatory. 

December 7, 2008

G,

There's never been any question that fantasy and horror films were the birth of my movie obsessions. But Forrest J. Ackerman's Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine was the lightning rod that brought it all home for me in a way that was attractive (colorful cover artwork), informative (how great to discover who Lon Chaney Sr. was!) and addictive (every issue packed with plenty of b&w photos, both from the films and behind the scenes). It was definitely aimed at kids but that was its genius and lasting gift. I'm still amazed I knew who Todd Browning was before I learned about Orson Welles. For a kid to long to see the lost silent LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT, at a time when all he had access to was afternoon television is pretty unheard of.  

I saw my first still from a Fritz Lang film in the pages of FM, it was a shot of the dragon from SIEGFRIED and it looked as realistic as I could imagine, I immediately tried to figure out how they made it work. And I can't tell you how I felt seeing the surviving remnants of KING KONG's spider pit sequence, or the only recognizable pics of James Arness in full THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD regalia, let alone all those Willis O'Brien and Ray Harryhausen original art sketches before I understood the animation process. I vividly remember the concept drawings for an unmade O'Brien project KING KONG VS. PROMETHEUS, which I still regret never saw the light of day in the form presented. 

One of my favorite articles was a piece on the 50 worst horror movies ever made called "Dante's Inferno", written by a teenage Joe Dante. This is where I first read about PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, I don't remember it's ranking but he said Tor Johnson rising from the grave was the best thing about it. Not a bad job of reporting, because when I caught up with PLAN 9 so many years later, this bit of early film criticism ran through my mind during that very scene. 

Although I never made it to LA to tour the famed Ackermansion, I did get to meet the great man himself at a local collector's convention. As this would be my one opportunity to explain how important his magazine and devotion to fantastic films had been to me, I felt a little inhibited. Once we began talking however, I could tell any apprehension I had wasn't necessary, he was gracious and every bit the old friend FM lead me to believe. At the time, I was contributing to a mystery and nostalgia film magazine which FJA was also associated with. I pointed out how proud I was that both our names appeared regularly under the same letterhead. It certainly was something I never thought possible while I was reading FM during those days when we first learned about the films, stars and legends that would occupy so much of our time and influence us throughout our lives. 

For a good look at FJA's legacy, I recommend Criterion's EQUINOX special edition DVD, a low budget special effects wonder, with a video introduction by Forry. THE SCI-FI BOYS, an affectionate reflection on classic sci-fi with much input from FJA, Ray Harryhausen, Ray Bradbury, Roger Corman, John Landis, Rick Baker, Dennis Muren, Peter Jackson and others. RAY HARRYHAUSEN: THE EARLY YEARS COLLECTION shows exclusive footage of FJA with friends Harryhausen and Bradbury reminiscing fondly over their lives spent pursuing their dreams through a common love of all things sci-fi and fantastic.

Joe

April 6, 2009

G,

I'm actually glad to hear ADVENTURELAND is not your usual coming of age comedy and offers quite a bit more. John Hughes by way of Truffaut? Not an easy match but I'll take a look. I'm writing you about this because the ADVENTURELAND trailer I saw looked like anything else except what you describe in your review. It appeared to be just one more in an endless line of goofy teen comedies which I long ago outgrew (or was I ever into goofy teen comedies?). Even the theater goers sitting near me seemed to be put off by remarking how glad they'll be to skip this one.

But that was a mistake I made with DAZED AND CONFUSED when the trailer I saw perfectly sold it as an unfunny stoner comedy. I didn't catch up with DAZED until years later and realized how misled I could be. Sure, as a teen this was not my group of friends and I didn't grow up in Texas, but in a way I felt I knew many of the characters depicted in that film regardless. As a result, DAZED is now a favorite trip back in time for me and I still regret not catching it when I first could. I just find it fascinating that a trailer can sometimes work in reverse and hide the special film it is by taking the hard sell approach. 

Btw, speaking of comedies, I watched RACHEL GETTING MARRIED this weekend and while some of it was very funny, the performances were natural and the atmosphere inviting, I found Demme's insistence to manufacture an "independent" film to be very distracting. Hasn't that fly on the wall approach become tiring to anyone else but me at this point? I would have much preferred a less "observant" point of view than the one chosen as traditional techniques would have tended to call less attention to themselves. Still the film has its moments but I wish it were more of the return to Demme's roots in the '70s and '80s that I heard it was. Why doesn’t someone just release HANDLE WITH CARE so I can complete my early Demme collection? 

Joe

February 4, 2010

G.
Friedkin's TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A. was almost completely ignored at the time of its release, but as you'll remember, I couldn't stop talking about it and saw it several times theatrically. What most people hated, was not it's cold blooded-ness per se (there never has been any shortage of tough cop flicks), but the combination of excessive brutality and cynicism was simply too unappetizing for mass audiences to embrace.

Advertised as a big screen MIAMI VICE action pic, L.A. manages to shake that false impression fairly quickly. Not long after the film begins, anyone expecting trendy television fare, will find themselves extremely shaken. If anything the psychotic counterfeiter (Dafoe) has more scruples than the clearly unbalanced agent (Petersen) on his tail. But it's the unexpected twist the story takes at the end that really separates L.A. from anything found on television or at the cineplex. Most folks I encountered felt confused, even cheated, but having seen CRUISING a few years prior, I was well prepared for L.A.'s transfer of personality finale.

Although coming smack in the middle of the '80s, L.A. seems to simultaneously harken back to the gritty '70s cop film Friedkin helped define years before ("The director of THE FRENCH CONNECTION is on the streets again!" was its tag line), while prophetically introducing us to the notion of Middle East suicide bombers, even before the film officially begins.

Is it true Scorsese was so captivated by Dafoe's performance portraying pure evil, that he felt compelled to cast him as a complicated Christ in LAST TEMPTATION?

Quick, what is the connection between TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A. and TOUCH OF EVIL? Why it's Val De Vargas of course, the creepy judge who Petersen threatens, is the same actor who plays Pancho, the Mexican street hood in leather jacket, who menaces Janet Leigh in EVIL. I didn't realize it for years, but I always knew there was something eerily familiar about the judge's voice. Maybe because it's post synched, it stood out all the more.

The most amazing thing about the film on disc, is the extra offered as the deleted ending. It's pretty incredible that such a thing was conceived, let alone actually shot. It's a great glimpse into what compromises sometimes have to be taken to satisfy everyone who has a say. You can plainly see how it's inclusion would have voided everything that came before.

Joe

June 29, 2010

G,

I don't know if this helps or hurts your stand on Reed but did you ever see FLAP (1970), his next to last film? Most folks probably never heard of it (and I've only watched it once many years ago), but this unfunny, totally unenjoyable tragicomedy about the plight of modern day, Native Americans was Reed's curious follow-up to his Oscar winning OLIVER!

Although FLAP did receive a good review in the NY Times, saying star Anthony Quinn was once again given a role worthy of his talents, all I can recall is Quinn spending most of the film ranting in a drunken stupor (see some of the pics). Much of his antics are played for laughs, but the finale (in true '70s fashion) was as depressing as they come.

Whatever your feelings for OLIVER!, it's still quite an achievement turning the despairing, Dickensian material into such a lively musical without embarrassing itself. The Bill Sykes caper and chase in the second half is reminiscent of Reed's hunted man thrillers and is at least as exciting. So how does this explain the dreariness of FLAP? I don't know the circumstances that lead Reed to want to make it but having just won an Oscar (over Kubrick for 2001), he certainly would have his choice of projects and must have found something compelling here. 

Joe

January 26, 2011

G,
I'm actually glad to hear you enjoyed THE MECHANIC remake because the original was just the type of violent action pic that I used to enjoy Sat afternoons during the early days of our '70s movie going education. I got a big kick out of the Bronson/Winner version precisely because it was so amoral and straight forward in presenting its hero as a cultured cold blooded type who took his unusual line of work extremely seriously. The film's first murder I remember as being particularly ingenious and "executed" in a very pragmatic style. The payoff to which (a fiery inferno sparked by the killer's well aimed, high power rifle shot) was a terrific conclusion to one of Winner's few truly suspenseful sequences.

But in order for this kind of thing to really work, it's all in the casting and I wonder how Statham with his nonstop energy will compare to Bronson's steely, silent, unbreakable menace. A good part of the film's appeal for me came from seeing the normally unvarnished Bronson, strutting about in expensive bathrobes, tailored suits and luxury living quarters. I seem to remember Bronson also being a well-read professional that stood in direct comparison with the many blue collar tough guys he was usually cast as. Now say what you want about Winner's blunt directorial approach to the material, but there was something about the way '72 MECHANIC slowly lumbers from one murderous set piece to the next that coincided with Bronson's own brand of minimalist emoting which works completely in its favor.

I'm also assuming (or shouldn't I?) that the original's potent twist ending will be conveniently avoided in order to provide a possible follow up if necessary? It was the first film's final chilling closing moments that perfectly punctuated all the unconscionable mayhem that proceeded it, and in a sense made the character's lethal cunningness, easier to accept in its abrupt sense of justice.

Let's see if they have the nerve to remake THE STONE KILLER next? Just kidding.

Joe

January 3, 2012

G,

It took a while but when I caught up with DON'T MAKE WAVES, I wasn't disappointed in the least. While I have a liking for some of the sillier beach movies, WAVES as directed by Mackendrick seemed to have more on its mind, basically skewering many American values of excess. This would make a good double feature with the incredibly acidic THE LOVED ONE, also helmed by an English director taking an even angrier aim at the same subject (in fact both films feature a sequence with valuable beach front property precariously teetering on the edge of destruction). 

I realize to call DON'T MAKE WAVES, the LA DOLCE VITA of beach films is a stretch, although these pics from both movies are interesting to look at side by side. I may not have picked up on the white suits, but I find Tony Curtis makes for a decent Marcello Mastroianni, American style (just think of press agent, Sidney Falco in SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS as a more smarmy counterpart to Mastroianni’s famous paparazzi, Marcello Rubini from VITA). While the inclusion of Claudia Cardinale reminds me of the presence of a European's eye view of the sweet life in '60s southern California. You may not feel both films should be mentioned in the same conversation but is there not a similar glint in Curtis' eye for Cardinale that Mastroianni has for Ekberg?

Btw, could WAVES have been where Curtis first met up with Roman Polanski thru co-star Sharon Tate and later be cast for a voice cameo in ROSEMARY'S BABY?

Joe

March 1, 2012

G,

By now I'm sure you know of the passing of Davy Jones but were you also aware Lina Romay succumbed last week to cancer at the far too young age of 57? A very odd week of celebrity passings indeed, having read about Erland Josephson on your blog last Sunday, I looked at CRIES AND WHISPERS to do a little reflecting. But who knew I'd have to do the same this weekend with HEAD for Jones and FEMALE VAMPIRE for Romay?

In fact the untimely passing of Davy Jones comes when I was getting acquainted with the Monkees television show all over again. What surprised me about revisiting the series was not how consistently funny the first season is but how drastically experimental (which ultimately doomed the show) the second season really was. Probably due to the boys insisting on more input themselves, the second season episodes are alternately daring, free form and even a bit irritating at times. But they are an eyeful and certainly point the way to HEAD, which seemed to have found the perfect mixture of Monkee humor while commenting on the times and their own prepackaged image. I don't know how well the show has aged with you but I can't recall you disagreeing with me it was anything but fun in the day. 

Joe

 

August 22, 2012

G,

For a better idea of how Tashlin might have tackled SEVEN YEAR ITCH, why not take another look at SUSAN SLEPT HERE? Made a year before ITCH, SUSAN also incorporates the idea of an older man (Dick Powell) sharing his apartment with (in this case) a sexy teen (Debbie Reynolds), causing him endless frustration and turning his life upside down during her overnight stay. Although he's not married, he does have a sultry Anne Francis as his interfering girlfriend, adding even more pressure to his plight, rather than a non-present wife away on summer vacation as in Wilder's movie. 

I'm not unhappy with the way Wilder handled ITCH, although it may be a film that's better remembered than how it actually plays and the censors would have come down hard on anyone trying to make a film version of the original show. What I do like about it is how it clearly details what was really on most folk's minds regarding sex in the oppressive 50's. Everything seems to simmer in the summer heat, from the fans in motion, to the underwear placed in open ice boxes, until it spills over with Marilyn's more than suggestive bubble bath scene and the ever famous shot of her white dress billowing over the subway grating. 

Incidentally, I did manage to see Walter Matthau’s screen test for ITCH years ago on a television program promoting the film. As I remember, he was much more lively than Ewell, not sad or downhearted at all, if anything, he's overly giddy and self-satisfied. Running up and down a staircase while managing a fair balancing act with a tray of items he's bringing to the girl waiting for him upstairs. He also worked that crick in his neck bit quite a lot, never missing a chance to bring attention to it. That said, this is one of those rare instances where Matthau can actually appear youthful in comparison to Ewell's droopy, wannabe rebel. 

 

September 30, 2012

G,

This might amuse you, upon reading of Herbert Lom's passing the other day, I immediately had this flashback to the two of us at the Oritani theater in Hackensack 1972. While waiting for a double feature of TALES FROM THE CRYPT and THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD to begin, the trailer for the next week's attraction, MARK OF THE DEVIL turned up. As I recall it was a fairly no holds barred advertisement (this was widely publicized as rated V for Violence) complete with uncensored shots of sadism and bloodletting which the theater management apparently had no problem running for an afternoon audience of kids. Amid the mayhem of torture by rack, branding, stabbing, a beheading and burnings, a familiar face appeared on screen, that of Herbert Lom in full Witchfinder General mode. 

At which point I exclaimed to you, "That's the guy!" 

You responded, "What guy?"

Me: "The guy from the Pink Panther!"

You: "That's not Peter Sellers!"

Me: "Not THAT guy! The OTHER Pink Panther guy!"

Talk about "Who's On First?"

Seriously, as popular as his Inspector Dreyfus was, my favorite Lom character was Kristo the London racketeer in NIGHT AND THE CITY, who ruthlessly ran the wrestling promotions that Richard Widmark's small timer Harry Fabian tried to muscle in on. Lom is thoroughly sinister here (even more so than usual), you just know Widmark will suffer dearly for his ambitions. When Lom says after the death of his father whom Harry was inadvertently responsible for, "Bring me Fabian!" he can still raise the same harrowing chill within me (despite so many viewings) till this day. 

I also remember him fondly as the psychiatrist who tries to help Ann Todd in THE SEVENTH VEIL, the most dangerous member of THE LADYKILLERS, the pirate who betrays SPARTACUS,  the villainous Moor from EL CID, Captain Nemo in MYSTERIOUS ISLAND, a very sympathetic PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, the Clouseau -hating Dreyfus (from A SHOT IN THE DARK in particular), a Van Helsing for Jess Franco in his version of COUNT DRACULA, a clever and suave Russian spy in HOPSCOTCH, the kindly doctor who tells Christopher Walken how he'd deal with Hitler in THE DEAD ZONE and even a buffoonish German officer in the '80's KING SOLOMON'S MINES remake. But can either of us ever forget the deadly, tiny mechanical dolls made in his likeness for ASYLUM?

By chance TCM was running one of Lom's earliest films, THE DARK TOWER last week when I heard that unmistakable voice of his. As I turned my attention to the movie, there he was looking as young as I've ever seen him, he was thin, trim and quite dapper but already a commanding presence at the start of a very long career. 

Joe

Joe's companion at the Tales from the Crypt/House That Dripped Blood double feature at Hackensack's Oritani Theater in 1972. 

April 3, 2014

G,

With all the distractions you have with assignments and deadlines, you may have missed that today is the 45th anniversary of the opening of the roadshow engagement of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY at the now long gone Capitol Theatre in New York City. Beginning on April 3rd, 1968 (although the film had its world premiere the evening before in Washington D.C.) 2001 ran for a total of 24 weeks in Cinerama with reserved seating arrangements. 

It may interest you to know the theatre was located at 1645 Broadway, which should sound familiar, as it's been replaced by the Paramount Plaza, the local home of Premiere Magazine (not to mention the offices of Jerry Langford in THE KING OF COMEDY). 

I've included a few photos which should help us appreciate what the experience might have been like seeing 2001 in that wonderful setting. Note in the newspaper clipping, while 2001 was enjoying its run at the Capitol, BELLE DE JOUR could have been seen at the Little Carnegie theatre just several blocks away. 

Joe

July 22, 2014

G,

Back in its day, this James Garner western double feature laserdisc provided me a lot of welcome entertainment, both DUEL AT DIABLO and HOUR OF THE GUN are solid, adult themed genre examples that deserve to be better known than they are. However neither showcase the usually genial Garner we're most familiar with, but a much more somber and angry fellow which broadens my appreciation for the actor who too infrequently got these kinds of opportunities. Make no mistake, we're not in SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL SHERIFF territory here, as directed by Ralph Nelson and John Sturges respectively, these films introduce us to a Garner more in line with James Stewart's conflicted, complicated, Anthony Mann heroes. 

In DUEL AT DIABLO (1966), Garner is out to avenge the murder of his wife by tracking those responsible and signs on to escort cavalry soldiers through hostile Indian territory in his quest. The action is violent and realistic, Dennis Weaver is particularly intolerant and twitchy, while Garner convinces as a man caught in the grip of vengeance. In that sense this does prefigure Nelson's much more brutal SOLDIER BLUE, which was still several years off, but was not as successful as he is here thematically. DIABLO is also a progressive film for its time in presenting a very dapper Sidney Poitier (complete with designer vest) navigating a racially charged western landscape, and casts Bibi Anderson as a woman held captive by Apaches, now an object of scorn by local townsfolk and her own husband (whoever thought we'd see Bibi opposite Garner in a western no less?). 

Revenge is taken to obsessive lengths in HOUR OF THE GUN (1967), with Garner as a doggedly determined Wyatt Earp hunting down the surviving Clantons in the aftermath of the O.K Corral gunfight. HOUR serves as more of an update than a sequel to Sturges own GUNFIGHT AT O.K. CORRAL from a decade earlier as attitudes during the '60s towards violence and retribution in films reached new heights. Along with Jason Robards as a very cynical Doc Holiday, he and Garner make for the screen's most underrated pairing of the two western legends, Garner distinctly impresses with a cruel edge not fully explored before. He brings to justice those he feels have wronged him by systematically eliminating them in a series of showdowns staged with such cold blooded bitterness, he chances alienating himself from the audience. So much so, I can somewhat understand the plight the ornery Clantons find themselves in, I mean did you ever think you'd sympathize with a villainous Robert Ryan? 

Building on these, Garner made a number of films which continued to present him in a light far less appealing than you'd suspect, MARLOWE (1969) a late '60s telling of the Philip Marlowe story "The Little Sister" with Garner, an oddly, folksy choice as the famous private eye. It's not totally on target, but the L.A. depicted is bright, sunny, sweltering and seedy, it's a setting Garner navigates with an unexpected naturalism (the bit with Bruce Lee is a gem) and the finale is a tense one. SKIN GAME (1971) is a western comedy of sorts in which Garner sells a slave (Lou Gossett) to various owners only to con them and meet up again afterwards to split the money. This set up immediately recalls the dubious bond between Clint Eastwood and Eli Wallach in THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY. It begins humorously enough as we know Garner and Gossett are working together but before long, things turn much more serious. Why this film wasn't discussed in the wake of DJANGO UNCHAINED still surprises me. In THEY ONLY KILL THEIR MASTERS (1972), Garner is the police chief of a small costal California town trying to solve a recent murder with the main suspect being a dangerous Doberman pinscher. At the time this was an exceptionally well-reviewed film which has seemed to drop off most everyone's radar but it plays today as a decent mystery, low key thriller and character piece with Garner acquitting himself nicely in a moderately irritating role that makes him less likable than those he's investigating. 

The flip side of all this for me was 2000's SPACE COWBOYS, a film I continue to enjoy despite its more farfetched and silly moments, mainly because it teamed Garner with Eastwood and the results couldn't have been more pleasing. The scene where they meet after years apart and Eastwood discovers Garner has become a preacher is a delight as we notice Clint suppress his surprise and smile in response, giving the sense of the two old friends they really were. In a way this was my own reaction to seeing Garner in a theatrical film after far too long, my only regret is they hadn't costarred before in a more traditional cowboy film (their MAVERICK episode not withstanding). But it was a thoughtful reminder of just how much I admired Garner and was grateful for the chance to have him on screen once again.  

June 13. 2015

G,

Believe it or not, it was my mother who first introduced me to the world of Christopher Lee when she bought me the Famous Films issue #2, CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN / HORROR OF DRACULA magazine, which featured both Hammer classics in pictorial form. Except for the cover art, all the pics used were in black and white, it did however get across the unique tone of the films, already having a background in Karloff and Lugosi, I knew (so to speak), I wasn't in Kansas anymore. It thrilled me to read a film in comic book form, in a sense becoming my first keepsake of an actual movie, if only my mom could imagine the door she was opening for me!

But more to the point, she brought me into the orbit of Christopher Lee who would have such a presence outside the confines of horror and fantasy so that when the time came for me to widen my view to other genres, Lee was still there in full force. Although, I was never quite able to separate him from the humble Hammer productions where I first learned of him, he remained a recognizable, charismatic and enduring connection to my own youth as my movie appreciation and understanding continued to grow.

To explain the longevity of my relationship with Lee and his films, the first time I saw Lee onscreen in a theatre was in DR. TERROR'S HOUSE OF HORRORS in 1964. The first time I saw HORROR OF DRACULA, it was on Super 8 black and white film, projected on a sheet in a friend's garage, even though it was only snippets of the film's highlights, it was extremely exciting to experience in any form regardless. It would be another 30 years before I could see a 35mm print with slightly faded color, projected properly in a legitimate theater.

While HORROR OF DRACULA cannot be beat for shocks, tautness and the teaming of Lee with Peter Cushing, I may actually prefer DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE as my favorite Lee Dracula film since it's the most religious of the series, making the struggle between good and evil even more profound.

Lee was the best of all possible Fu Manchus in some of the oddest films made about the character. 

He was a great Bond villain in one of the weakest Bond films, said Lee about playing a Bond villain, his only regret was "you can only do it once". 

A favorite Lee performance was in a rare turn as the hero battling sin and depravity in THE DEVIL RIDES OUT, making it a wonderful flip side double feature with HORROR HOTEL, with Lee as his own devil worshipping "opposite number”.

His expert swordsmanship was on full display in Lester's THREE and FOUR MUSKETEERS. It was here he seemed to inherit the same fate of Basil Rathbone, who also could slice up any of his fellow performers but was not allowed to win any of his screen sword scuffles as we could not ask for a more effective villain.

One of the great strengths of Jackson's Rings Trilogy of films is the casting, even down to the smallest of roles. But no actor was made better use of in this series than Lee himself. He was a most believable practitioner of the black arts, having demonstrated an affinity for such mischief in a host of prior films setting the foundation for an evil film persona in stone.

Perhaps now his involvement in the STAR WARS prequels will garner a little more respect for the much disliked recent series of chapters. I for one couldn't have been happier to see Lee join the ranks of STAR WARS in any capacity but his Count Dooku, while recalling his gothic villainy, complete with cape and castle bring more of a sense of symmetry and coming full circle with the original trilogy than any other element I could imagine. Although belated, Lee would now join his former screen partner Peter Cushing once again as a participating co-star, at least in spirit. 

So yes, this one really hurts.

Joe

I Remember Joseph Failla

In 1973. 

[I learned yesterday that Joseph Failla, who I’ve mentioned on this blog and who contributed to Premiere’s Home Guide when I was running it in the 1990s and 2000s, died in hospital after experiencing shortness of breath. Like me, he was 62.)

I remember in seeing Night of the Living Dead with Joseph Failla on the night before Halloween, known in our town of Dumont as “Cabbage Night.” I remember Joseph’s father picking us up and driving us back home. I remember some moron kid actually trying to apply shaving cream to one of the car’s windows while it was actually moving. I remember that Joseph’s father, who was not by any yardstick a “devil may care” person, being very irritated at having to come and chauffeur us home from the movie, which had upset us into witless silence. I remember him saying “nonsense.” I remember this being maybe 1969.

I remember seeing Night of the Living Dead, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Cowboys, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, several Godzilla movies, and a million more pictures, at the Palace Theater in Bergenfield with Joseph.

I remember Joseph drawing and writing a "Peanuts" parody called "Charlie Blech." 

I remember walking with Joseph and with Mark and Aaron L. all the way from Dumont to the Stanley Warner Theater in Paramus, over roads with no sidewalks, risking death, just so we could see Dirty Harry in the spring of 1972.

I remember Joseph and I discussing our highly unrealized film projects. The anti-Vietnam film  eroM oN (read it backwards), told from the POV of a dead soldier, in reverse. Johnny Angel, based on the Shelley Fabares song, the story of the loves of a girl biker. The Ballad of somebody or other, a Peckinpah-inspired Western.

I remember getting off the phone with Joseph after we had a long and rambling conversation during which Joseph insisted that Fellini was preparing an adaptation of the comic strip Beetle Bailey. I remember after I cradled the handset my puzzled mother asked “Don’t you two ever talk about anything real?”

I remember Joseph and I creating a book together, called Canadian Alligators and Otter Things. It was a group of illustrated comical stories about a quarter of alligators who were members of the Royal Canadian Mounties. I remember many years later an uncle of mine asking why we had never done anything with the book, because we had apparently created what could have been the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles of its day. I remember saying to my uncle, “Well, we were ten.”  

I remember in eighth grade, during gym class, sitting on a bench with Joseph, as we invariably did, because after a long period of being picked last for baseball or dodgeball or what have you teams, the gym teacher decided to leave well enough alone and just exclude us from play. I remember telling Joseph that I had been invited to a party that evening (a rather extraordinary occurrence) but that I wanted to get home in time to catch Psycho on the 11 p.m. movie on some local station. I remember our gym teacher, Coach M., whose life claim to fame had been being on the 1964 Mets frm team, overhearing me and smirkingly saying, “What is it, Kenny, an all-boy party?” I remember Joseph and I then clamming up.

(I remember many years later Joseph telling me that Coach M. had died of a heart attack. “Oh well,” I said.)

I remember taking a bus home from a movie in Paramus with Joseph and telling him about a small piece I’d read in Time magazine stating that in California, a TV ad for condoms was run during a late-night slot. I remember we concocted a storyboard for a condom commercial then and there, and that later on Joseph, who was getting more and more uncomfortable writing expository prose, then making a comic strip out of the fake ad for health class. I remember many years later the both of us being flummoxed by actual condom commercials featuring “Trojan Man.”

I remember that Joseph somehow got to see Mean Streets before I did. I remember him calling me and describing its opening scene, the “home movies” and the Ronettes song “Be My Baby.” I remember him saying, “This is for me.” I remember we both had to have been 14.

I remember in his senior year in high school Joseph writing and drawing, for a class project, an elaborate comic based on Dante’s Inferno, with the nine circles of hell represented by eight class periods and then the prom. I remember that he drew me as the Virgil character.

I remember Joseph telling me about one of his instructors at the School of Visual Arts, Art Spiegelman, and of his initially appalled reaction to Spiegelman’s comic about his mother’s suicide, “Prisoner on Hell Planet.”

I remember standing on line with Joseph and with My Close Personal Friend Ron Goldberg™ at Cinema Village for a double feature of The Shining and The Killing. I remember a couple of fellows standing behind us going on about Clint Eastwood’s directorial career, talking about how with Play Misty for Me Eastwood hadn’t yet found his “water level.” I remember Joseph squinting at me and saying, in an Eastwood rasp, “What do you know about my work, punk?”

I remember being mildly irritated with Joseph for not having submitted any work for an SVA comic magazine that published student art, and which contained a ton of work by his fellow student Drew Friedman.

I remember Joseph admiring Friedman’s talent but being very disapproving of Drew’s classroom behavior, especially with respect to the instructor Harvey Kurtzman.

I remember an animated character Joseph concocted while at SVA, “The Slug,” which was, indeed, an anthropomorphic slug who smoked a cigar and made wisecracks.

I remember Joe’s graphic novella, “Ed Victory,” about a paunchy, washed-up former superhero living in a North Bergen tenement.

I remember when Joseph was a co-manager of the Stanley Theater in Jersey City, and how he once proposed to put up on the marquee: COMING FOR XMAS: TAXI ZUM KLO.

I remember Joseph working at a video store in Teaneck where one of his regular customers was the jazz guitarist George Benson, who once made a special order for Raymond Chow’s Lady Kung Fu.

I remember Joseph telling a group of friends at lunch that another customer came in requesting Henry V: Portrait of a Serial Killer.

I remember when Joseph became the manager of the laser disc section at Route 17’s Tower Video, where he quickly acquired the nickname “Laser Joe.” I remember his clientele included Ernest Dickerson and Gordon Willis, and that he became friendly with them both. He also had a couple of New York Yankees as customers.

I remember having Joseph over at the very messy studio apartment of a Manhattan girlfriend for some reason, and of him saying upon entering, “It looks like Catherine Deneuve’s place in Repulsion.”

I remember also having an intimacy mishap with that girlfriend, in which I bonked her nose with my forehead, which caused her considerable pain and swelling. I remember her being very angry with me over the course of several days and at one point saying “I’d like to grind your bones into dust.” I remember relating all this to Joseph, in great earnest. I remember Joseph then paraphrasing a Raging Bull line: “She ain’t pretty no more.”

I remember the funeral for my cousin Mark, who died of lymphoma in 2002. I remember my father showing up for the wake, which I had not expected, as he had been self-estranged from this side of the family since the early 1980s. I remember he spoke to me with a seriousness that was unfamiliar to me and that he said, “I can’t imagine anything worse than for a parent to lose a child.” I remember my father perking up when Joseph appeared. I remember my father asking him “So do you still get to spend time with Herman here,” using a nickname for me that he concocted after I had a sudden growth spurt at age twelve, a nickname my dad knew that Joseph would be the only person in the room to get. I remember Joe giving my dad an affectionate half-smirk and saying “We manage.”

I remember several years after the Route 17 Tower Video closed, its building was repurposed to be the gym in Burn After Reading. I remember Joseph telling me of seeing hand-painted signs with an arrow and the word “BAR” painted on them, on the north side of the highway.

I remember in one of our last phone conversations telling Joseph that I must be getting soft in my old age, because I didn’t think No Time To Die was so bad. “For me the Bond franchise ended with On Her Majesty’s Secret Service,” he said, and I could hear the shrug. I remember responding, “Man, you are hardcore.”

I remember learning recently that my cousin, Tommy Gentile, who had been so helpful with my mother’s funeral and who helped Joseph a great deal when his own mother died about a year after mine, had himself died in May of 2021, and that for whatever reason our side of the family had been kept out of the information loop on this one. I remember that I had intended to call Joseph and to say to him, “So if any of you are thinking of DYING, you should know that there’s a small change of management at Gentile Funeral Home.”

In 2020. 

Tavernier and the fraught story of "In The Electric Mist"

John Goodman and Tommy Lee Jones, In The Electric Mist, Tavernier, 2009.

Bertrand Tavernier, who died today at age 79 ("So young," gasped this 61-year-old) had a long, distinguished, and honorable career, one difficult to sum up quickly, in no small part because a good deal of his substantial filmography is unjustly obscure in the States. I met and interviewed him in 2011, when he was in New York promoting his exceptional, vivid historical film The Princess of Montpensier. By now you've probably read this before, but he was a great interview, warm, erudite, good-humored, always eager to talk cinema. 

Aside from Montpensier, we discussed his prior picture, one of his infrequent English-language pictures, In the Electric Mist. When word got out in 2007 or so that Tavernier was making it, cinephiles and fans of hard-boiled literature were pretty excited, as I mention below. The U.S. release of the movie befuddled more than a few viewers. So, for feature package the interview yielded — this was for a e-magazine startup named Nomad (you remember startups) for which I was the editor of the movie organ, called "Wide Screen," I wrote a piece comparing the U.S. cut with Tavernier's own version of the movie, which he put together in France surreptitiously, and which was put out on French DVD.

In Bertrand's memory, I reproduce the piece below. And after that, as he is no longer with us and no longer bound by whatever egregious contractual enjoinment prevented him from talking about the film on the record, I include a section of the transcript of our conversation, lightly edited. 

When it was announced a few years back that the French director Bertrand Tavernier would be returning to English-language filmmaking with an adaptation of James Lee Burke’s crime novel In The Electric Mist With The Confederate Dead, several different breeds of enthusiasts started drooling. Fans of the crime writer Burke had to be stoked that one of his works was about to be tackled by Tavernier had to have been excited that their man was getting a film treatment from a director who clearly appreciated genre material—Tavernier’s terrific Coup de Torchon was an excellent transposition of a novel by Jim Thompson, one of Burke’s acknowledged antecedents. Fans of Tavernier were tickled by the notion of the director working in the U.S. for the first time since his very well regarded Round Midnight. Fans of actor Tommy Lee Jones were excited that the actor was going to be embodying Burke’s recovering-alcoholic-lawman Dave Robicheaux. (The character was last portrayed on film by Alec Baldwin, in the not-entirely successful Burke adaptation Heaven’s Prisoners, directed by Phil Joanou.) Especially coming after Jones’ superb portrayal of Texas lawman Ed Tom Bell in the Coen brothers’ 2007 No Country For Old Men. In the Electric Mist, as the title was shortened to, looked like it had a shot at being a very worthy quasi-successor to that excellent film.

But the picture didn’t even wind up having a theatrical release in the United States, coming out straight to DVD in spring of 2009. Hardly an event picture, as it happens. What happened? As Chris Mosey explains in an interview with Tavernier that was a web exclusive for Cineaste magazine in the 2010,  “Tavernier and both his American producer, Michael Fitzgerald, and editor, Roberto Silvi [had a conflict] concerning the cutting of the movie. When their disagreements proved impossible to resolve, the only solution was to release two versions of the same film, one for either side of the Atlantic. Fitzgerald, head of Ithaca Pictures, supervised Silvi on the cutting of the shorter, faster-paced film for the U.S. market. Tavernier, with the help of editor Thierry Derocles, completed his own cut." If you are lucky enough to own a multi-region DVD player (foreign-manufactured DVDs are often embedded with a “region code” that makes them impossible to play on domestic machines), it’s possible to make a comparison between the two versions.

The initial difference is pretty stark and immediately discernible just by looking at the information on the respective box covers. My Image Entertainment domestic DVD lists a running time of 102 minutes; the French-issued TFI  Video Blu-ray disc shows “1h57,” or 117 minutes. So we’re talking about an American issue that is a full fifteen minutes shorter than the American one.

The differences start at the very beginning. In Tavernier’s version, there are atmospheric slow-lateral-dollying shots of the titular mist sitting in a gray swamp. Tommy Lee Jones’ unmistakable voice comes on the soundtrack: “In the ancient world, people placed heavy stones on the graves of their dead, so their souls would not wander…” The American opening is a little more “on the nose,” as it were: a shot of Jones sitting at a bar, a bartender pouring him a shot of whiskey, and Jones getting up and walking away without taking the shot. The voiceover here: “My name’s Dave Robicheaux. I’m an alcoholic. Sometimes I’m tempted to have a drink. But I never do.”

This kind of encapsulates the essential difference between the two versions: the American cut is rather more direct and literal minded, while Tavernier’s cut has more emphasis on atmosphere, mood, and so on. It might therefore follow that the American version is brisker, more story-driven, more conventionally entertaining. It actually isn’t. It’s just more literal-minded, is all. As it happens, Tavernier’s version, after its atmospheric beginning, kicks off with Robicheaux’s investigation of the grisly murder of a part-time prostitute, the uneasiness of the shady characters he’s interrogating creating an absorbing tension that seeps into the film as a whole. The restructuring imposed by Fitzgerald and American editor Silvi introduces the movie-actor characters played by Peter Sarsgaard and Kelly MacDonald earlier on, for no real reason except to maybe bring more recognizable faces into the picture sooner than later. One excised scene, of Robicheaux attending an AA meeting, doesn’t advance the story all that much, but does do a better and subtler job of enhancing the characterization of Robicheaux than the above-cited opening shots and narration achieve. Another excised scene showing the malevolent local big-shot played by John Goodman deliberately beaning Robicheaux with a baseball represents an even dumber cut, as it’s a great showcase for both Goodman and Jones and it gives Goodman’s character more of the sinister “he’s-not-bluffing” sense that makes the viewer eventually feel more empathy for the fix Robicheaux finds himself in at the film’s climax.

Some of the footage from that excised scene does find its way into the ending of the American version, in a way the most egregious of the many egregious changes. A shot of Goodman swatting a baseball is included in a “where are they now” montage, narrated by Jones, detailing the fates of all the characters in the scenario. Needless to say Tavernier’s ending is both far more evocative and emotionally/narratively satisfying, I won’t give it away here. But I will say that while Tavernier’s cut of the film DOES represent a worthy quasi-successor to No Country For Old Men, the American cut plays like a better-than-average thing you might have caught in the wee hours on Court TV back in the day. A no doubt very frustrating state of affairs, not just for Tavernier (who I believe is contractually enjoined from discussing the matter in any detail), but for American film lovers as well.

 

And here's a portion of that interview. 

 

WIDE SCREEN:  I want to talk a little bit about In the Electric Mist.

TAVERNIER:  Yeah.

WIDE SCREEN:  Because of working in America after you worked intermittently throughout your career with American actors and American themes, American writers.  And I wasn't able to read the journal you kept of the film, but there was an interesting thing in an article about it about working with an editor who always wanted to do transitions through close-ups.  And it seems interesting when you're looking at your written work and looking at the films that inspired you and getting to the point where American or Hollywood film grammar has gotten to the point where it's almost split off into something different than what inspired you.

TAVERNIER:  And from the grammar in Hollywood and some of the directors I admire.

WIDE SCREEN:  Yeah.

TAVERNIER:  I mean because when I was told that I was doing too-long takes and not enough coverage I was thinking of Otto Preminger and many, many brilliant directors.  On the whole I find the contribution of Tommy Lee Jones invaluable.  I found him brilliant, very, very respectful of the other actors.  Very.  I've never seen an actor so polite, so respectful of his colleagues.  I mean he could be...he could come on the set and not say good morning to anybody.  And some people on the crew hated him.  But I mean with Levon Helm or with Ned Beatty, with John Goodman, or with Mary Steenburgen, everybody, he was always trying to help.  With Kelly Macdonald he was--he says, Kelly, I want to help you so we can see you better.  We'll turn you there.  So I've never seen somebody so refined, so attentive, so full of admiration for the others.  I never see.  And for me the real Tommy Lee Jones is there, is not the guy who can be a bit rocky and sometimes a bit difficult, is somebody  who  — a person who contributed in the writing, to some of the best lines of the movie.  And the best scene, the fishing scene, is a scene which he himself wrote during the shooting.  I thought I was missing a scene between him and Bootsie [Steenburgen], and he said to me, 'Bertrand, what the scene should be about?'  And I said, 'About understanding.'  And two days after, he came with that scene.  On the salamander, does she know she's a salamander.  And does she understand--I mean beautiful scene.  Lovely scene. 

But the problem I had, I lost...I had a total moment of despair and I could not — I was not getting along with the editor, to a point that I didn't want to provide any ideas.  I was dry.  I became dead.  I just wanted to leave the editing room to see my friends.  There was no pleasure.  That was the first time that happened in my whole life.  And then when I went to Paris and I could have an agreement with the producer, Michael Fitzgerald, and I could start the editing of the version that is called the French version, then suddenly in four weeks — I mean it took very little time — and suddenly I found enthusiasm.  I was working with a crew which was enthusiastic, who loved what they saw.  And all the ideas which I kept every time I was trying a few of them in New Orleans and I was facing a crisis and I was...I decided to fight.  I recorded all the voiceover I'd been writing. I was listening on the phone to Tommy Lee recording it.  And Tommy Lee was like that first stage.  I've never seen somebody so good with voiceover.  The control he has of his voice, of the music of his voice.  And that was so important, the voice, because Burke's book are told in the first person and they have a rhythmic melody. 

What I found difficult in America, I found the crew are very big, I found some of the rules are so strange that it's becoming embarrassing.  I found that you have a hierarchy where people do not talk to each other, so sometimes you have a conflict because two different or two different kind of people are working on the same thing and they are not communicating.

But speaking of talent, I had some of the best people I've ever worked with. I had the best person on sound, Paul Ledford, who is a genius of sound, has been working with Stephen Soderbergh on many films. Paul is a genius.  And a lovely man. When they learned I was editing the film in Paris they sent me hours of wild sounds for me, to help me.  And when I wanted to pay them, they said 'No, Bertrand, because we had so much love working with you, so much fun, we are giving it to you' so I had wonderful people.  Wonderful.  And I gave Paul a credit, a main credit, as sound mixer. and that's a typical kind of thing when suddenly becomes something with the union. 

I mean for instance I wanted to to start my version with the credit 'This film is dedicated to Philip Noiret who loved so much the novels of James Lee Burke.'  So the WGA calls me and says, 'Bertrand, we cannot put that there; you named somebody from the WGA before your own credit.'  And all those calls, I was in Paris, were taking place between 2 and 4 in the morning.  And after 15 days I said, let's forget about that.  And that's what I found rigid.  That system, very rigid.  

Nicolas Roeg 1928-2018

Don't Look Now, 1973

1. 

How exciting and confounding it was to be a teen cinephile in 1976, when Nicolas Roeg's The Man Who Fell To Earth was released. I was sixteen going on seventeen that spring and Roeg's movies were not for kids, but I fought to see them anyway, and worked to understand them after I saw them, and Man proved to be the toughest picture yet. My small circle and I thought this was largely because the cut that was dumped into the U.S. market was two hours, and the cut Roeg delivered was twenty minutes longer. As utterly dazzled as we were by the two hour version, we were unusually thrown off by it too.

I particularly recall being flummoxed by the introduction of Bernie Casey's character, Mr. Peters. Yes, I understood the internal rhyming of the shots — how the defenestration of Buck Henry's Oliver, the kidnapping of David Bowie's Newton after an abortive space launch, and the silhouette of Casey's perfect body in the sky, an Icarus without wings, coming down to earth (or rather, water) of his own volition, made beautiful poetic sense. What I didn't get was why this was the character's introduction; in most English language films I knew of at the time, a new character entering the story was dealt with as exposition, not poetic metaphor. (I suppose you can guess that I saw The Man Who Fell To Earth well before I ever saw Shane.)  I thought, well, in the longer cut I'm sure this will be spelled out in a more conventional way. 

It is not. 

More than any other English-language narrative filmmaker, Roeg apprehended Tarkovsky's notion of "sculpting in time" with the same radical freedom as the Russian director himself did. Roeg came into filmmaking as a cinematographer, and two of the directors he worked for, David Lean and Richard Lester, both had as astute a grasp of editing as any filmmaker you can name. During his most creatively fecund time as a director, Roeg made temporal leaps and jumps that were exhilarating provided you could keep up, which was sometimes a challenge. After Mr. Peters enters the movie, diving naked into his swimming pool and lifting his equally naked poolside wife (Claudia Jennings) to take her to the bedroom for some philosophizing, he turns up again a short time later, this time with gray in his hair; Rip Torn's Judas, here named Bryce, has aged as well. Roeg was not the kind of director to put up a title card saying "X Years Later" or whatnot; to do so in this film in particular would have been especially inimical to the whole project. With respect to the idea of film poetry, if Tarkovsky worked the long, flowing line, Roeg worked in jagged sometimes anti-linear lines, the better to evoke the dissociative effects the modern world has on individuals and their ideas of love and freedom. But not just that — it evoked something beyond the modern world, something eternal, the suddenness of what we still call fate, the potential suddenness of the end of it all. 

2.

This music began to emerge in Venice, during the winter of 1972, on the tiny island of Giudecca in a huge old house overlooking the lagoon.

For a couple of months I spent the days alone, while Alfie and a bunch of friends spent their days working on a film. After years of constant work, in groups and on the road, I was uneasy about doing nothing all day. To keep me occupied, Alfie bought me a very basic little keyboard with a particular vibrato, that shimmered like the water that surrounded us. The basic structure of the music was written there, in between watching the lizards on the walls of the house and visiting the local bar to listen to out-of-work gondoliers practicing 'O Sole Mio.'

'Don't Look Now,' the film that my friends were working on, centred around a series of unforseen disasters in the life of a couple. Venice itself featured as a sinister presence in the film. Alfie always remembered Nic Roeg, the director, reiterating the theme of the film: WE ARE NOT PREPARED.

That's Robert Wyatt, writing in 1998, for the liner notes of a reissue of his 1974 album Rock Bottom, which he recorded after a long recovery from a fall from a window in June of 1973, which cost him the use of his legs. In 2015 I wrote about the connections between these two great works for the Criterion Collection website; the piece is here. 

3.

"[T]heatrical acting, in the course of the last centuries, has led to incredible refinements of stylized pantomime in the representation of, say, a person eating, or getting deliciously drunk, or looking for his spectacles, or making a proposal of marriage. Not so in regard to the imitation of the sexual act which on the stage has absolutely no tradition behind it. The Swedes and we have to start from scratch and what I have witnessed up to now on the screen — the blotchy male shoulder, the false howls of bliss, he four or five mingled feet — all of it is primitive, commonplace, conventional, and therefore disgusting. The lack of art and style in these paltry copulations is particularly brought into evidence by their clashing with the marvelously high level of acting in virtually all other imitations of natural gestures on our stage and screen. This is an attractive topic to ponder further, and directors should take notice of it."

So Vladimir Nabokov complained in 1969, apropos Tony Richardson's adaptation of his novel Laughter in the Dark. Let's not kid ourselves — Borges references or no Borges references, VN probably would not have thought much of Performance. But his "attractive topic" was one Roeg clearly gave a good deal of thought to, and his approach to the erotic was always, above all other things, vital; it was anti-Puritan (and hence anti-American) because of its insistence that the erotic life wasn't something to be compartmentalized, it was the thing itself. The narrative function of the Newton/Mary Lou sex scene in The Man Who Fell To Earth is self-evident enough. But to be confounded by the sex scene in Don't Look Now (as many reviewers at the time of its release were, including Rex Reed, who I recall made some very snotty "put your clothes back on" comments about the nudity of its performers) is just to not get Roeg at all. (And the fact that, to this day, almost every time that scene is brought up, it's with some grotesque "did the actors really 'do it'?" eyebrow raising, is the reason Trump is President.)

Notes on Tobe Hooper (1943-2017)

1) I didn't see 1974's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre until 1977 or '78, when I was a projectionist at my college student center and had to screen it. I say "had to" but I had always wanted to see it. Particularly since having seen Johnny Rotten wear a "I Survived The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" t-shirt in some pictures of a Sex Pistols gig. The movie's lurid rep scared me a little so I, like a lot of people coming to the movie for the first time, was a little surprised at how not-gory it was. Although of course it was still entirely harrowing. And rather unexpectedly funny. I became obsessed with the movie right away and have seen it almost as many times as I have seen Psycho or Repulsion or any of the other romantic comedies I'm so steeped in. 

I was lucky to have friends who were equally obsessed, and we largely talked to each other in Massacre dialogue. If Ron was going down the the convenience store to get cigarettes, I'd say, in my Franklin voice, "I go witcha! I go witcha!." Peter came up with the very amusing idea of adapting the movie into a twelve-tone opera, and he would crack me up by dissonantly declaiming "Look what your brother did to the door" in German. Anything our crew approved of was "good barbecue." And so on. 

The movie was also in my mind inextricably tied up with punk rock, which I was also heavily into at the time. There was Johnny Rotten's t-shirt but there was also the fact that the Ramones had a Texas Chainsaw Massacre-inspired song on their first album. The Ramones' first two albums and Texas Chainsaw Massacre were to me standard-bearers of a certain kind of American art: cheaply made but not amateurish, fast, brash, loud, unsettling, pop but intellectual, intellectual but pop, and also in some not insignificant way, very free. 

2) In 1979 my buddies Ron and Steve went up to Toronto's Festival of Festivals (which is now the Toronto International Film Festival) to see the critic Robin Wood (with whom Steven had studied) head a multi-session symposium called "The American Nightmare" in which the films of Romero, Hooper, De Palma, Cronenberg, and other directors were discussed. Many of the filmmakers themselves attended, although sitting here right now when it's too early to call Ron or Steve, I don't recall if Hooper had been among them. I couldn't go, as I had zero money, but my pals very considerately brought me back the program, which contained essays by Wood and Richard Lippe. Reading these pieces validated a notion that was inchoate in my 20-year-old brain, which was that genre films were worth taking seriously. I began, in a small way, to explore on my own what made movies like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre tick.

3) The film Hooper made after Massacre, 1976's Eaten Alive, was a nasty funny grisly guignol which made the best use of Neville Brand since 1965's That Darn Cat. Nevertheless, it did not deliver quite the frisson that Massacre did. That's another thing Hooper's movie had in common with the Ramones; you come out with something that startling right off the bat (in the case of the Ramones I would say it was the first two albums, released with less than a year dividing them, that count here), it's hard to top. It's even harder I suppose when the artist has produced that something with a relative lack of self-consciousness. That Hooper did not necessarily want to be a genre director—there was a sense that Massacre sort of wanted to be at least in part a calling-card film, but busted through the boundaries of such a product in a way that even its creators weren't fully in control of—could have conceivably compounded the challenge. In any case, regardless of whoever "really" directed 1982's Poltergeist, my Massacre crew and I left our first screening of it trying to tell ourselves that our man Tobe had not been TOO thoroughly Spielbergized. 

4) Like so many, my boys and I were very confused by 1985's Lifeforce. We were of course very entertained but not quite willing to go so far as to say it was good. I can see that at this very blog, almost ten years ago, I remained non-committal. Well never mind that shit. It's great. Hooper's decision (it it was indeed his) to leapfrog back from Alien and make a full-on Hammer-style space vampire movie, complete with dribbling lasciviousness, was, if not revolutionary (ideologically it's irrefutably reactionary), hilariously transgressive on a kind of termite-art level. 

5) By the time I landed at Premiere magazine in the 1990s, Massacre had become at least semi-respectable, so much so that, in my short lived film-technique column in the back of the book, I was able to use Pam's fateful walk from the swing to the house as an example of a great tracking shot. It is indeed, because we have some inkling of what's going to happen to her when she gets to the porch (and what happens is actually way worse than what we might have been imagining; the guy who went in before her was pretty much done with a blow to the head). It's entirely worthy of Hitchcock's Psycho and also entirely its own thing. I can't find the piece itself. I remember I might have done a phone interview with cinematographer Daniel Pearl, who had by this time graduated to directing music videos (including at least one for Mariah Carey). He mentioned that the location itself suggested the shot, which was accomplished with a relatively small track and a simple tilt. The result is an enormity, doom embodied in the looming facade of a white house we know now is hardly innocent. It's a nice door, a shame that the oldest son had to ruin it...

Jerry Lewis, 1926-2017

In "The Ladies Man," 1961

In late 2008 or early 2009 I began writing for the MSN editorial website, specifically MSN Movies, and the first thing my editor asked me to draft was a Jerry Lewis obituary. Word on the street, or some street, was that Lewis' various ailments were about to bring him down for good. As MSN then aspired to a print-style editorial standard, it was thought that having an obit on file would be the good newspapery thing to do. 

I wrote the piece with that standard in mind, so it was newspapery, dry, factual , but it does have a thread of critical appreciation running through it. Since the great artist is now gone, having outlived the editorial website of MSN by more than five years, I thought I might offer the obit as I filed it, oddly undated, TKs left unfilled. 

 

Jerry Lewis obituary

For [REDACTED]  at MSN Movies

By Glenn Kenny

Date Filed: 

Date of death TK

Jerry Lewis, the comedian, comic actor, filmmaker, inventor and philanthropist who was a defining, contentious figure in both American show business and art, died at LOCATION TK, of CAUSE TK. He was AGE TK.

Born in Newark, New Jersey on March 16, 1926, Lewis (whose actual last name was Levitch) had show business in his blood; both of his parents were entertainers on the circuit known as the “Borscht Belt,” which included the resorts in the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York that attracted a largely urban, Jewish clientele. Lewis’ humor--boisterous, energetic, often sardonic and loud—derived from that heritage. Before he had even turned 20, he was a bizzer; the high-school dropout married band singer Patty Palmer in 1944, and developed a standup act in which he played recorded vocals of well-known performers and parodied/mimicked their actions. In 1946 he met the Ohio-born crooner Dean Martin, and they teamed up to concoct an anarchic nightclub act which shot a jolt of adrenaline, or maybe even amphetamine, into the ethos created by Bob Hope and Bing Crosby.

Martin and Lewis began making films together in 1949, and their pictures together helped define ‘50s culture. Not the bland, conformist, Eisenhower-defined culture of popular myth that, the myth continues, was upended by the swinging ‘60s, but the roiling, industrialist, somewhat ruthless culture of a post-war America that was redefining itself as a global power. As the film critic Andrew Sarris put it, “The great thing about them was their incomparable incompatibility, the persistent sexual hostility, the professional knowingness they shared about the cutthroat world they were conquering.” That knowingess translated on to celluloid in fascinating ways, particularly when the team was paired with the director Frank Tashlin, who had a background in animated shorts. The later Martin and Lewis films “Artists and Models” and “Hollywood or Bust” are replete with self-conscious, fourth-wall-breaking gags that would later influence not only sitcom humor but highbrow cinema as well. The tension of the Martin-Lewis act itself, with Dean the amiable, smooth, serious one and Jerry as the often remarkably obnoxious man-child who always gets the duo into another fine mess, increasingly bled into their off-screen relationship, and the team broke up in 1956, after which the two performers were personally estranged for some time.

After parting ways with Martin, Lewis threw himself into his solo film career with great ferocity, and began producing films right off the bat. He had ever been an apt pupil of the medium. In 2003 Lewis told the critic Chris Fujiwara, “The first year Dean and I were on the lot, they couldn’t find me. I was in the camera department, I was in editing, I was in miniatures, I was in wardrobe, in makeup, in post; they had to find me to get me on stage to do a scene.” Despite having been thrown off the set of “Hollywood or Bust” by Tashlin for bad behavior that was a by-product of the deterioration in his relationship with Martin, Lewis re-teamed with the director for such innovative pictures as “Cinderfella” and “It’s Only Money.” His debut as a director was 1960’s “The Bellboy,” starring himself in the title role. A lengthy series of situations and gags set in and filmed at the then hyper-modern Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach, Florida, it’s largely a homage to the clowns of silent cinema; Lewis’ bellboy character does not speak throughout, and the filmmaker consulted with the great golden age comic Stan Laurel on the script. It was on this film that Lewis pioneered the “video assist” that has since become a staple of filmmaking; a video system, with its camera mounted concurrent to the film camera, recorded the action so that director Lewis could instantly assess a take from performer Lewis.

Lewis also appeared as himself in “The Bellboy,” and the difference between the “self” he portrayed in that picture--a slick, arrogant, uncaring star surrounded by sycophants—was a stark contrast to the inept, silly, but at least ostensibly sweet and lovable overgrown child who was the title character here, a variation on whom made up the standard Lewis onscreen persona at the time. This dichotomy recalled the tension that animated the Martin-Lewis team-ups, and reached an apotheosis of sorts in 1963’s “The Nutty Professor,” in which Lewis played the good-hearted but clumsy and grotesque scientist Julius Kelp, who transformed, with the help of a potion of his own concoction, into the unctuous, mean-spirited, and multi-talented “lady killer” Buddy Love. This eye-popping update of “Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde” was seen by some as a commentary by Lewis on the relationship between himself and Martin. But Lewis himself more or less admitted that the cocksure Buddy Love was merely another version of himself. The various contradictions he embodied in his private self and his public personae were also reflected in his charity work. In March of 1952 Martin and Lewis co-hosted their first “telethon,” a midnight-to-nearly-5 p.m. televised variety show to which viewers could call in to donate funds for a cause; in this case, the construction of a cardiac hospital, and the charity chosen by Martin and Lewis themselves, the Muscular Dystrophy Foundation. Since 1966, Lewis has been the driving force behind a Labor Day Weekend telethon for the foundation, and the phrase “Jerry’s Kids” (Muscular Dystrophy is a disease that targets children) has entered the pop culture lingua franca. Lewis’s all-nighters hosting these telethons, during which he was by turns wheedling, dismissive, treacly, manic, and often genuinely flabbergasted and overwhelmed (as when a surprise on-air reunion with Dean Martin, engineered by their common friend Frank Sinatra, happened in 1976) are still the stuff of show business legend.

As is his reputation as a filmmaker. His solo pictures of the ‘60s were terrific moneymakers, but were largely critically reviled in his native land. In France, however, the intellectuals at publications such as “Cahiers du Cinema” and “Positif” took him quite seriously indeed. His work profoundly influenced the critic-turned-director Jean-Luc Godard, whose “cutaway” set of a sausage factory in his 1972 “Tout va bien” (co-directed with Jean-Pierre Gorin) was a direct reference to a similar piece of stagework in Lewis’s 1961 “The Ladies Man.” A joke among mainstream American middlebrows of a certain generations runs along the lines of “Well, what do the French know; they think Jerry Lewis is funny/an artist.” (Indeed, as for the latter designation, Lewis was officially inducted into the order of the Commandeurs of the Légion d’honneur in France in 1984.) There is also the matter of Lewis’s self-directed foray into “serious” drama, the notorious, much-speculated-upon but never-released 1972 picture “The Day The Clown Cried,” in which Lewis plays a once-celebrated clown in a Nazi death camp. “When Lewis decides he has something to say, it comes out conformist, sentimental and banal,” Andrew Sarris said of the filmmaker several years prior to the making of “Clown.” Never officially completed, it is unlikely that the picture will ever be seen.

For all that, Lewis acquitted himself brilliantly in a more-or-less straight dramatic role, playing comic and talk-show host Jerry Langford, who falls victim to seemingly goofy celeb stalker Rupert Pupkin (played by a here very uncool Robert DeNiro), in Martin Scorsese’s chilly, alienating 1983 showbiz parable “The King of Comedy.” In 1983 he also made his final feature as a director, “Cracking Up.” His film appearances began to dry up (he did a turn opposite Johnny Depp in the eccentric 1993 picture “Arizona Dream,” directed by the Serbian filmmaker Emir Kusturica), but he nonetheless continued to seem a tireless entertainer, particularly in light of the various health crises he has had since at least the mid-60s, when a spinal injury from a fall led to an addiction to painkillers that he conquered in the mid-70s. Heart attacks, diabetes, prostate cancer and other such troubles plagued him, and he nonetheless soldiered on like the trouper he always took pride in being. In the mid-1990s he played on Broadway and toured with a production of the musical “Damn Yankees.” In addition to continuing to host his telethon, he made scattered television appearances, and talked often of adapting his film “The Nutty Professor” into a Broadway show. Seemingly unable to help being a lightning rod for controversy, his unfortunate penchant for wisecracking concerning homosexuals caused some to protest his receiving a 2009 Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award from the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences. More recently, he raised some eyebrows with his suggestion that troubled starlet Lindsay Lohan might benefit from a spanking. Through a career that spanned more than half a century, he established, and retained, a remarkable figure that achieved solidity and grandeur almost entirely via its contradictions. “I know Jerry,” Lewis told Chris Fujiwara; “I sleep with him, remember? I know him, I know that son-of-a-bitch in and out. I know his needs, I know that without him I wouldn’t have food on the table. He works for me and very well. When I talk about him in the first person, people look at you askance. Are you f—kin’ schizophrenic? In the creative, yes.”

Lewis’s 1944 marriage to Patty Palmer endured to 1984; the couple had six children, including Gary Lewis, whose band The Playboys had a ‘60s hit with the Al-Kooper-penned “This Diamond Ring.” In 1983 Lewis married SanDee Pitnick. Lewis is survived by her and seven children and TK grandchildren.

There is not much emotion in the above so I will say now that Lewis is a subject near and very dear to both my heart and my aesthetic. The more you learn of his work, the more impressive he becomes. I do not believe I entirely agree with Andrew Sarris' estimation of Lewis' attempts at serious statement, although I can't say he was entirely wrong either. What remains true it that the one sure sign in film conversation that you are dealing with a near-irredeemable philistine is a "Well they love Jerry Lewis in France" remark. 

UPDATE: Thanks for reading this but my friend Dave Kehr's obit for the New York Times, which was also written a while ago as Dave is no longer with the paper, is the one. 

Gregg Allman, 1947-2017

I was saddened to hear this afternoon of Gregg Allman's passing. 

I interviewed him in 2011, for the MSN website. The current pod people who administrate said site have disappeared almost all of its content prior to whenever they took control of it, but I have a draft saved, and I thought it would be apt to post it, as a tribute. It runs below. 

“It’s a funky day outside,” Gregg Allman observes of the grey cold Manhattan afternoon he sees from his 15^th-floor window at a quiet Upper East Side hotel. The rock legend himself is relatively cozy, albeit a little on the tired side. He’s in town to flog his new solo album, Low Country Blues, his first such effort in 14 years and a project instigated largely by near-ubiquitous producer T-Bone Burnett, who of late has specialized in revitalizing both the careers and muses of rock gods of a certain age (c.f., Robert Plant’s collaboration with Allison Krauss, Raising Sand). Allman, whose main project, a little combo known as The Allman Brothers Band, still gets plenty of work (the group will return to New York in March to resume its much celebrated sort-of residency at the Beacon Theater for a marathon run of concerts), didn’t necessarily need the stretching, but after meeting Burnett (of whom Allman had in fact very little consciousness of) the singer, guitarist and organist figured a little artistic adventure might be in order. Which meant working with some new musicians (including Burnett’s much-vaunted rhythm section of bassist Dennis Crouch and drummer Jay Bellerose, and guitarist Doyle Bramhall II) and one old friend (Mac Rebennack, a.k.a. Dr. John, on piano) to lay out a selection of vintage blues tunes in a very intimate and old school recording style. The making of the record was followed by another, more frightening milestone in Allman’s life, which has already seen plenty of tragedy and trouble (including the death of his beloved brother, the great guitarist Duane Allman, in a motorcycle accident in 1971, not to mention a half a dozen marriages): the musician, after long battling Hepatitis C via medication, was obliged to undergo a liver transplant. Today, ruddy and red-cheeked, soft-spoken and just a trifle abstracted, he seems less a man with a couple of new leases on life than a troubadour wise in the ways of musical enchantment who’s just happy to have been given the chance to keep on keepin’ on.

MSN MUSIC: In preparation for this talk, I was listening to The Allman Brothers Live At The Fillmore '71 and hearing all the different things that were going on in the music at that time: there’s blues, there’s improvisation that’s almost in a Coltrane style, there’s a little bit of psychedelica. And it reminded me that the late producer Tom Dowd, who you worked with so extensively, was intimately connected with those styles--he was in the studio for both Cream’s Disraeli Gears and Coltrane's Giant Steps. Thinking about how all that music must have affected you made me wonder if you still listen to a lot of those different things yourself?

GREGG ALLMAN: From time to time I do. In my car, I keep a real good stash of music, as well as having the XM and Sirius radio. ‘Cause if I'm going to drive in a car, man, I want to hear some sound. That's the best time to listen to it. So I don't know why, but for some reason I was getting some gas at this place and I went inside and saw on the counter, it said “Pavarotti;” there was one of his records there for sale. I thought,” I think I'll just go, man, I'll listen to that.” And it was like 2 weeks before I was through with it. And God, it was so many great licks going down in there. I mean this guy's got a throat. Ooh. I mean man, I don't see how Sting ever got up the balls to sing with Luciano Pavarotti. Whoa. I think he might have held his own. He did. But there are not too many other bass players I know could have done it!

MSN MUSIC: No, that's for sure. Let’s talk about how this record came into being. Your manager hooked you up with T-Bone, is that correct?

GREGG ALLMAN: I was just going to meet him, and I did figure the idea of recording would come up. I wasn’t sure ‘cause Michael didn't tell me he was a producer. He just said, I want you to meet this fellow. I wasn’t too keen on it, because I’d just finished a long tour and I just wanted to go home, and I didn’t want to step in Memphis on my way home. I had never heard the man's name. I didn't know who T-Bone Burnett was. I mean I'm just one of the ones that hadn't. I learned he's had some big things, and a lot of them were recently. But our paths had never crossed.

He has some very, very different, very old school ways of recording. Some of them are old school enough you could say they’re back in the school that my grandfather went to. I mean, for room tone he would use one of those old square RCA mikes, with those letters on top, you know. I think it was next door to a ribbon mike! I remember that being the funkiest microphone, but I mean it picked up that warm sound that he wanted. And once he got that, he could bring it up or down, that particular quality. It was like, “How much cheese do you want on this pizza?”

MSN MUSIC: Elvis Costello has worked with T-Bone extensively, and also very recently, and when I spoke with Costello last fall he was saying that T-Bone creates an environment where all the players can really hear each other.

GREGG ALLMAN: Oh yeah. Oh, definitely. He does that. I didn't really know that anybody had been there in that studio before us, but after I got thinking about it, I said, you know, “Everything is laid out here perfectly. This is getting scarier by the moment!” It seems like the most obvious thing, to set up the room so that all the players had to be looking at each other. We were able to see everybody right in the face but were still separated sound-wise. That was the most fun I ever had recording, I think, in my life. The only thing I can compare it to is, well, I was a spectator and a partial player on [Derek and the Dominoes’] Layla or at least with that band, because we did a long jam and recorded that and it was released later on. But prior to that, I stayed down there and watched the sessions. And it was something else, watching Layla. It was great. Making Low Country Blues really reminded me of that.

With T-Bone, it was kind of interesting to let him take the reins. When I met him in Memphis, he was staying at the Peabody Hotel, and he was doing a study of Sun Studios, because he was aiming to build a replica of the room on this piece of land that he's got next to his house. That is so cool. We just got to talking and, man, one of the first few things he said was about Tommy Dowd, and how much he admired him. And then he brought up this idea, he said he had this hard drive that had thousands of old songs on it. And that he would peel off about 45 of them, and I could just sift through that and come up with fifteen I'd like to record. That was fine. And then, the next meeting he had he tells me, “Sorry but you can't bring your own band.” Well that just about erased it. I said, man, I just--I laughed. I said, I need to think on this. And I did. A couple weeks. I was kind of pissed off actually. And then I thought about something my brother told me once. Something that happened once when we thinking about working with Tommy Dowd. We had met him, and the first thing he says, “I want you to come down to Miami to record.” And we had found out that they had just finished the Capricorn Studios where Duane and I were already at, and we could stay home and record if we wanted to, because we had settled down in Macon there real nicely. And so anyway, I thought at the time, “What do we want to go to Miami for?” Tommy’s studio was in this section of town where they parked all the produce trucks at night, you know. You'd never find it unless somebody took you there. But I remember Duane saying, “Look, it's his sand box, it's his studio, it's what he's used to working with. We know what we got here. Let's just take it down and do it.” And I thought about that. And I thought, “It's been 14 years and you know maybe I ought to just go with this one.”

And so I took off on down there and I mean less than two weeks later T-Bone said, “Wrap,” and it was a wrap. I could barely believe it. And he hadn’t told me who was in the band until I got there. They didn't tell me it was some of my good old friends that I've already played with. Mac Rebennack, Dr. John, who played on the 1976 record that I made, my second solo album, Playing Up A Storm. It was so much fun. It really was.

MSN MUSIC: It was a little different playing with Dr. John now than it was then, I’ve gathered.

GREGG ALLMAN: Yeah, cause we were both up in the clouds back then. Yeah. He's become quite the fellow. He's so friendly in his happiness. He's got happiness. He looks like he found that legitimately happy place.

MSN MUSIC: It was after this record that you had the liver transplant surgery. Before that point, Hepatitis C is treated with the drug interferon, in a regimen of weekly shots over the course of almost a year; that’s pretty brutal.

GREGG ALLMAN: That's right. It makes you feel so lousy. And then by Saturday night you just start to feel like a human being, here come the fuckin' shot again on Monday. And then two big pills you take with it. Together. They get in there and cook. That's some kind of suck.

MSN MUSIC: So to go through all that, and then get the news that the treatment didn't take; that's got to mess with your head somehow.

GREGG ALLMAN: Oh yeah. Oh hell yeah. And during the damn thing they would kind of, not joke, but they would kind of touch on the transplant subject. Then I thought to myself, I wonder what this is going to come to. God. That's the most painful thing I've ever been through in my entire life. It’s like when you build a ship inside of a glass bottle. Because you’ve got a rib cage here it's got to go inside of there. So it’s like they’re building that ship inside my body. They're actually doing it. They had to get more room, so they had this machine goes down inside your ribs, spreads you inside, so they can get in there and work. And that's seriously painful. But I came out of it OK. And now I'm just approaching my 7th month. The 23rd of June.

MSN MUSIC: And you’re coming back strong with the live work. I see you and the Allman Brothers Band have got another stint lined up for the Beacon. Are you excited?

GREGG ALLMAN: I really am. That is such a great place to play. I played there recently, actually, with T-Bone and his Speaking Clock Revue. They did shows in Boston, New York, San Francisco. T-Bone asked me to come along. And I was still in bed. I said, “Man, I'm not going to make that.” But then I though, “Yes, I'm going to make that.” I did. It came off without a hitch. It was really good. It was a little painful, but hey. Where they cut, where they stitched, where it hurts, that’s not the part of the body where you sing from.

Hollywood To Tehran To Tokyo: The Journey Of "Like Someone In Love"

Tadashi Okuno and Rin Takanishi (in mirror), Like Someone In Love, 2014, directed by Abbas Kiarostami

Songs are a form of storytelling, so it stands to reason that most great or even good songs have at-least-good stories attached to them. One of the most popular songs by composer Jimmy Van Heusen and lyricist Johnny Burke, was, for instance, inspired by an argument that the songwriting team overheard their friend and collaborator Bing Crosby having with his first son Gary.

According to Van Heusen biographer Christopher Coppula, Burke and Van Heusen were dining at Crosby’s home; Gary, who was about ten at the time, was expressing dissatisfaction with having to go to school. The elder Crosby upbraided him, saying, “So you want to be a mule, be a mule.” Burke was thunderstruck. He and Van Heusen had been stuck for quite a while on their latest assignment, writing songs for an upcoming Crosby picture, Going My Way, directed by Leo McCarey. McCarey had instructed the duo to concoct a pop song version of the Ten Commandments, wisdom that Crosby’s priest character could infectiously impart to his young charges at the church’s school. “So you want to be a mule, be a mule” was not exactly “thou shalt not,” but it flipped a switch for Burke, and “Swinging On A Star” was born.

There’s no such lore surrounding “Like Someone In Love,” the beautiful ballad by Van Heusen and Burke that debuted in 1944, the same year as “Swinging On A Star.” In the midst of one of their busiest years, the team composed it, and a couple of other songs, for an RKO period comedy called Belle of the Yukon. An amiable trifle directed by veteran William Seiler, Belle stars Randolph Scott and Gypsy Rose Lee as a couple of quasi-grifters in the late-19^th-century Great White North. The juvenile romantic leads are William Marshall as Steve, a new-in-town piano player, and radio discovery Dinah Shore as Lettie, daughter of a saloon owner. About 22 minutes into the picture, Steve is tinkering with a tune at the piano and Lettie comes down the stairs; Steve says he’s been working on a song, and he plays the head of “Like Someone In Love.” Lettie says “It’s lovely,” and Steve says “Why don’t you try it?” She picks up the sheet music and starts singing. Two verses and two refrains later, you have a new addition to The Great American Songbook.

A confection in appealing Technicolor, Belle is one of those movies whose narrative evanesces even as you’re watching it; it must have been something of a tonic to U.S. audiences in the waning but still uncertain days of late World War II. It says nothing dishonorable about the great Randolph Scott to note that he more or less sleepwalks through his role; the part of “Honest John Calhoun” demands nothing more. If you’ve ever wondered why burlesque great Gypsy Rose Lee never had the film career of her sister June Havoc, Belle will answer all your questions in that department. Shore is the most engaging presence in the film. Her features are not those of what was considered a classic beauty at the time, but she’s terrifically attractive and projects a personality both earnest and sly. And she sings like a bird; as the performer who gave birth to “Like Someone In Love,” she delivers something absolutely beautiful. Oddly enough, though, the Van Heusen/Burke song from Belle that made a bigger splash, initially, was the now largely forgotten (but still delightful) “Sleigh Ride In July,” which earned the duo an Oscar nomination for 1945. (Belle was released on December 27, 1944, which apparently pushed it ahead for Academy consideration at the time.) “Like Someone In Love” became a hit in spring of 1945 via its recording by Bing Crosby.

Burke and Van Heusen were among Crosby’s favorite songwriters; they of course wrote the tunes for Crosby and Bob Hope’s Road pictures. In the final Road picture, The Road To Hong Kong, made in 1962, after the Burke/Van Heusen team dissolved, Hope’s character was named Chester Babcock—which had been Van Heusen’s birth name. (The one-time bordello piano player was known for, among many other things, making elaborately hilarious ribald sport of that birth name.) For his stage name, the composer “chose Van Heusen, the name of a famous line of men's shirts, because he felt it was a name associated with old money, elegance and class,” David Lehman notes in his book A Fine Romance: Jewish Songwriters, American Songs. “What he didn't realize was that the Van Heusen line was the creation of a German-Jewish peddler named Israel Phillips."

Crosby’s rendition relocated the song at the crossroads of pop and jazz, as the crooner’s singing tended to do. About a dozen years later—on August 16, 1957, to be exact—the young tenor saxophonist John Coltrane, with bassist Earl May and drummer Art Taylor, recorded a version of the tune at Rudy Van Gelder’s studio in Hackensack, New Jersey. There’s a peculiar notion among some younger folks about jazz musicians like Coltrane and Miles Davis—that they made their recordings of pop and musical theater songs out of some mission to apply a veneer of “hipness” to white bread or just plain white music. At its most extreme, this presumption posits that Coltrane cut his revolutionary version of “My Favorite Things” mainly to troll Sound of Music fans. This is mistaken thinking. What attracted Davis, Coltrane, Charles Mingus (his playful retitling of “All the Things You Are” notwithstanding) and so many other great musicians to these songs was a musical deftness that intertwined beguiling melody with a harmonic complexity that opened up all manner of improvisational doors. Van Heusen biographer Coppula writes of “Like Someone In Love:” “This tune, like ‘Darn That Dream,’ has enjoyed broad pop/jazz crossover popularity, with recording by Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, John Coltrane, Stan Kenton, Coleman Hawkins, and Stan Getz (among many others). The appeal to jazz artists is explained in part by the linear structure of Van Heusen’s melody, permitting the artist to utilize all variety of harmonies in a chromatic bass line. It offers a suitable vehicle for the artist to express his creativity in fashioning harmonies while providing an interesting enough melody in its own right.” Indeed, Coltrane’s rendition of the song begins with the saxophonist playing alone, as if in mid-solo, extrapolating on a phrase from the verse in a near-keening cry, and fluttering in that register for a couple of bars before the bass and drums come in and Coltrane states the theme itself.

Ella Fitzgerald recorded her version two months later, October 15, 1957, in Los Angeles. She and/or producer Norman Granz also titled the attendant album Like Someone In Love. The LP was made after one of her grandest masterpieces, the still-amazing four-LP Ella Fitzgerald Sings The Duke Ellington Songbook. This album is less thematically ambitions, but Fitzgerald’s singing is no less exacting or elegant than it ever was in this period. Burke and Van Heusen appear throughout, albeit in differing permutations; “I Thought About You,” by Van Heusen with lyrics by Johnny Mercer is here, as is “What’s New,” lyrics by Burke, music by Bob Haggart. “Like Someone In Love” is the sole Burke/Van Heusen tune. The orchestral arrangement by Frank De Vol is more Hollywood sound stage than Cotton Club or any other swinging locale; the impeccably tasteful De Vol never had the swinging brashness of a Nelson Riddle or the Debussy leanings of early Gordon Jenkins but he gets the song…as Ella, of course, also does. She begins the song with a bit of a fake-out after the string intro, singing the opening word “Lately” as if to explicitly rhyme it with “stately.” But the very slight hiccup she makes at “myself” lets her completely melt into “out gazing at stars” and from that point on the whole thing’s like a beautiful dream. Her version is still, arguably, the definitive vocalization.

“Nowadays we don’t like watching an old man, especially an old man in love,” the Iranian film director Abba Kiarostami says in a making-of documentary included on the Criterion Collection edition of his 2012 feature Like Someone In Love, the picture that would be his last. It was the second that he shot outside of his native country, a French/Japanese co-production. It tells a necessarily incomplete story of an elderly academic, a young prostitute he awkwardly procures for an evening, and the disturbed, possessive boyfriend of the prostitute, who the professor meets even more awkwardly on the day following the night of his assignation. Kiarostami, as seen in photographs, exuded the kind of cool one associates with certain cinematic masters, aided in no small part by his ever-present sunglasses. But in interviews, it’s clear that the character with whom he most identified in this film is the decidedly not-chill Takeshi Watanabe (Tadashi Okuno, playing his first lead in his early eighties after, according to Kiarostami, a career of bit roles and extra work), the widowed professor who is, among many other things, hugely clueless about sex workers, even a sex worker as ingenuous as Rin Takanashi’s Akiko. “When I started searching for music for the moment the girl enters the old man’s apartment,” Kiarostami told Dennis Lim in an interview for the New York Times in 2012, “it came naturally that as someone from my generation, he would listen to jazz. The first album I took off my shelf was Ella Fitzgerald and I just bumped into this song, ‘Like Someone in Love,’” In pre-revolutionary Iran, Western music was widely known, and the artistic cognoscenti of Tehran was well-versed in jazz, as was the case in other cosmopolitan centers throughout the world. Kiarostami scored his first short film, 1970’s Bread and Alley, with a Paul Desmond version of the Beatles tune “Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da.”

Kiarostami (who presumably held on to his jazz record collection after the revolution, whose regime’s animus to all things Western very definitely extended to music) went on to explain to Lim that he also thought that song title would be a better title for the film itself; in script form the movie was called The End. “The phrase itself sounds good to me too,” the director continued in his conversation with Lim. “There is nothing determined and definitive about love. It’s better to say that we are like someone in love rather than asserting that we are in love. Death or birth are definitive; love is nothing but an illusion. We have in this film four people who are like some people in love.”

Akiko arrives at Takeshi’s apartment in a confused rush, and doesn’t even take off her coat after he invites her to have a seat in the living room of his cozy, book-lined apartment. After Takeshi tries to make small talk with Akiko—their conversation, while amiable, is also nearly mortifyingly awkward—she hops into his bedroom. A Duke Ellington & His Famous Orchestra rendition of “Solitude” plays softly on Takeshi’s stereo. Takeshi follows Akiko into the bedroom, seats himself on a chair facing the bed, and we see a soft-focus reflection of Akiko in the dresser mirror next to the chair. Takeshi tries to lure her out of bed…with the promise of a soup he’s cooked, a specialty of her region (he knows where she’s from because her pimp, a former student of his, told him). While we can’t see Akiko’s face, we can practically see her wrinkling her nose as she tells him, “I’ll hate that. My Gran made it all the time when we were little.”

He’s a little crestfallen; he gets up and goes back into his study/dining room. He’s been getting vexing business-related phone calls all evening, so he unplugs his desk phone. He looks out his front window. Some interesting stuff happens with the sound mixing; the noise form the street outside, including a honking horn, is foregrounded, and the strains of Ella Fitzgerald singing “Like Someone In Love” almost seep in to the audio track, very nearly inaudible at first. As Takeshi putters around, the song gets louder, and more distinct, but it never reaches what one might call an aggressive or even definite volume. Nevertheless, Takeshi turns down the volume on his amplifier. And the phone rings again—the landline in the bedroom is still plugged in. Takeshi, concerned with letting Akiko sleep, goes into the bedroom and disables the phone. A clock on a shelf above the bed indicates that it’s 11:30 at night. Who’s calling at this hour?

Takeshi leaves the room after tucking Akiko in, so we can assume they did not sleep together, but he still looks pretty pleased with himself as he drives her around the next morning (taking her to her college, where she has an exam), smiling as he watches her put her grey leggings on. Soon enough Akiko’s sweaty, strung-out looking boyfriend Noriaki (Ryô Kase) enters the picture, and everybody acts with spectacularly bad judgment. “When you know you may be lied to, it’s best not to ask questions,” Takeshi says to Noriaki even as he sort-of masquerades as Akiko’s grandfather. The flimsy webs of deceit escalate a situation that ought never have come into being in the first place, and when Akiko expresses worry, Takeshi sings “Que Sera Sera” to her, in Japanese translation, and elicits one of her final (slight, tentative, and, hell yes, awkward) smiles in the movie.

The movie ends in Takeshi’s apartment, with a wounded, traumatized Akiko sitting in his living room and Takeshi scrambling around, with Noriaki raging outside, letting them know that he knows that they are (still) lying: “Don’t pretend you can’t hear me.” Things are going from bad to worse both on screen and on the soundtrack. As Noriaki yells, the microwave in which Takeshi was warming milk for Akiko beeps to signal the end of its heating cycle, and then continues its periodic reminder beep. A rock comes through the front window, and the shattering of glass is terribly disturbing, as is Takeshi’s disappearance from the frame. And at this time the Fitzgerald recording of “Like Someone In Love” comes on again, louder than it was the first time it was heard. “Lately I find myself,” Fitzgerald sings, as all three characters in the scene seem as lost as they’ve ever been. Is the music diegetic or extra-diegetic? While it’s not likely that the stereo has somehow turned itself back on, there’s so much madness going on that this is not entirely outside the realm of narrative probability. The credits begin to go up, and the screen goes black, and soon Fitzgerald sings “sometimes the things I do astound me.”

Kiarostami told Dennis Lim, “I’ve said before that fortunately or unfortunately, I’m unable to be a real storyteller. I’m sure that we can never be the witness of a story from its beginning to its end. I would say that this film doesn’t have an adequate opening and it doesn’t have a real ending either, but it also proves my idea that all films start before we get into them and they end after we leave them.” The filmmaker presses this point more insistently in Like Someone In Love than in any other film, including his previous feature, the spectacularly knotty and moving Certified Copy.

“Like Someone In Love” was conceived and written in Los Angeles, recorded there years later by Ella Fitzgerald, and then many years later than that, Abbas Kiarostami pulled that Ella Fitzgerald album off of his shelf at home in Tehran. And subsequently played its title song on the stereo of an imaginary elderly man in the vicinity of Tokyo/Yokohama, where American jazz is well-loved by substantial (albeit possibly quickly disappearing, these days) pockets of its population.

It is an incidental irony that the song’s composer Jimmy Van Heusen, an aviation enthusiast from the thirties on (despite the fact that he did quite well both professionally and personally in Hollywood, he never much liked the place, and would fly himself back to New York between movie assignments), safety-tested American fighter planes for Lockheed prior to and in the early days of World War II.

Thanks to James Kaplan (whose excellent Vanity Fair profile of Jimmy Van Heusen you might want to read next) and to Brook Babcock, keeper of the flame.

In memoriam Abbas Kiarostami, 1940-2016.