Raintree County

I see a car smashed at night
Cut the applause and dim the light
Monty's face is broken on the wheel
Is he alive? Can he still feel?

When James Dean beefed it in his Spyder they said it was a tragedy. When Montgomery Clift got snuggly with a telephone pole and survived they said James Dean was lucky.

It was one night partway through filming Raintree County in 1956 that costar Liz Taylor found her dead Chevy down the road from her house, near Sunset. They never would have pulled Monty out of that car alive if Liz hadn't immediately crawled in to fish his teeth out of his throat. Surgeons rebuilt him and filming resumed. For the pain Clift prescribed himself a daily thermos of Mickey Finn. The founder of the Actors Studio, where Clift and Brando together learned the method, described the next ten years as the longest suicide in history. After wrapping on the Misfits in 1961, months before she poured herself a stiff Nembutal cocktail, Marilyn Monroe described her friend as "The only person I know who is in worse shape than I am."

I watched Raintree County, a lousy Civil War drama, for the same reason audiences bought tickets in '57: To see the grisly before-and-after. It's not worth it. They just glue on a bushy Stonewall Jackson.

Avengers

I've wondered how much of punk revival was revival and how much was something new. After all, the Dookie sound is not quite identical to the UK77 sounds of the Clash, Sex Pistols, Damned, Buzzcocks or Stiff Little Fingers or any combination thereof. Nor is it a rehash of the Ramones, who mapped their territory so thoroughly that it is impossible to sound like the Ramones without just plain covering the Ramones. As for the professional musicians of US77 — Television, Blondie, Richard Hell and X — they've been all but disowned by the (popular) punk community. So whose grave did Green Day rob to assemble their 15x-platinum monster?

I earlier claimed that the only two significant pre-hardcore L.A. punk bands were X and the Germs. (Such a claim correctly dismisses the Dickies as a novelty act.) To be sure, there was a flash scene in Hollywood in 1977 populated by legit L.A.- and Frisco-based punks like the Screamers, the Weirdos, the Bags, the Dils and Avengers, but the US record industry based right there completely ignored the nascent revolution. None of these groups was ever able to release a proper album, leaving behind only a hodgepodge of demos, live bootlegs, independently-pressed singles and local radio appearances. Contrasted with the London-Manchester scene, where Malcolm McLaren's chicanery persuaded the majors to sign anyone* willing to spit onstage and blitz the airwaves with punk singles and sensational live-TV rudeness, it's as if early L.A. punk wasn't merely underground — it never existed at all. So what I said was true, from a certain point of view.

Green Day sold a zillion records in 1994 by reproducing exactly the sound of the Avengers, who couldn't even cut, much less sell a record in 1977. There is something in the performance of those forgotten Cal punks that the Brits just didn't have. Something to do with sturdy limbs and churning guitars. Maybe it's sunshine.


* The Jam, Adicts, Adverts, Sham 69, Generation X, Stranglers, Vibrators, X-Ray Spex, Cockney Rejects, Cock Sparrer, Peter & the Test Tube Babies, Slaughter & the Dogs, Skids, Wire, UK Subs

Cleopatra (1963) + (1934)

I'm a big fan of Waterworld. There's a phrase I use to describe a certain old friend — sheer audacity. Coming from me it is more complimentary than perhaps he realizes.

Costner said one day, "I'm going to build a medieval fortress floating on the sea, and vikings will fly over the walls on jet skis while I drown in a tank of poo. I need one zillion dollars and the Exxon Valdez."

Before that Coppola once said, "I'm going to build a working fishing village in Thailand and then thirty Hueys will blow it up with rockets. ...Can we get Hopper to take every drug?"

In a list of the top ten most audacious film productions...well, they'd all have been staged by Werner Herzog. But further down the list would be names like D.W. Griffith, Cecil B. DeMille, Fritz Lang, David Lean and James Cameron. So many of our movies are timid, domesticated fare. That's why, whether the final product is of highest quality or not, we need the impassioned undertakings of these madmen.

Elizabeth Taylor's Cleopatra (1963) is the most expensive motion picture of all time. It cost slightly more than the third time Johnny Depp pretended to be a pirate. There is a difference between $300 million worth of CGI and $300 million worth of palatial sets, triumphal processions, bejeweled gowns, period costumes for ten thousand extras, full size war galleys, royal barge containing the Metropolitan Opera and wine enough to keep Taylor and Richard Burton on speaking terms. The difference is that I will happily sit through one and not the other. Make no mistake, Cleopatra is not that great a movie (neither is Waterworld), but it is a mind-boggling production. Every dollar spent appears on screen. The experience is not so much like watching a movie as visiting the Grand Canyon: I mean, just look at the fucking size of that thing!

DeMille is perhaps most responsible for the Bigger is Better aesthetic in Hollywood. His 1934 version of Cleopatra, starring Claudette Colbert, set a benchmark for spectacular excess that was not topped until...well, until DeMille made The Ten Commandments. I guess the Queen of the Nile inspires such epics because her tale has all the dramatic earmarks of the Greatest Story Ever Told — Jesus also fancied himself a god who struggled with his kingly obligations and earthly desires and eventually committed suicide — but with lots of sex and better clothes. It's like a burlesque version of the Passion...like the way Alex DeLarge imagines the Bible.

DeMille's film is further enjoyable for being wholly a creature of the early sound era. That is, everyone chatters all the time. Audiences of the day had no patience for solemn intonations that might as well be intertitles; they wanted a spectacle of voice and bubbling, exuberant personality. DeMille delivered a nose-thumbing modern take, very nearly a satire of stuffy historical drama. A typical scene involves cheesecake in leopard skins cartwheeling through hoops of fire. And of course a real leopard chained to every dais. Colbert is flippant and cheeky, a mere girl next to Taylor's goddess of fire and gravity.

There's a terrific, unintended laugh at the end. Both actresses must have been afraid of snakes: Taylor merely slips her hand into the basket to be bitten by something unseen. Colbert to her credit reaches into the basket to bring the serpent to her breast, but pulls out what looks like an especially large worm.


Okay, I have not been completely honest. There is an even more expensive movie out there...a leviathan I tremble even to mention. From 1961 to 1968 the Soviets produced a film adaptation of War and Peace. The Russian-language version clocks in at over 8 hours and estimated cost almost triple Cleopatra. Mr President, we must not allow a cinema gap!

My Man Godfrey

Sometimes you watch a movie all wrong. In My Man Godfrey there are two sisters both in love with a butler. The older sister is the more beautiful; throughout the show I kept waiting for the romance to develop between her and the butler. It never does. I considered the younger sister a nuisance to the plot, failing to recognize her as Carole Lombard, the star of the movie.

My ancient enemy Erasmus insists on knowing nothing before seeing a movie, believing that it is best to preserve an uncolored purity of experience. This is wrong. You are supposed to know the genre and the approximate running time. You are supposed to know who the stars are and to recognize them on screen. For an old movie or a foreign movie it is your duty to be familiar with the culture of its time and place. These are the expectations the filmmaker has of you. Fail to meet them and you do not give the movie a fair shake.

It is also your duty to see the movie in its best available print. I am a little furious with Netflix right now for sending me an inferior restoration when a pristine Criterion edition exists.

The Sopranos

I missed the boat on this show, but I catch an episode from time to time in syndication. I like the editing — brief images and subtle juxtapositions do a lot to suggest the characters' mood and thoughts. This is important in a poker-face culture of wiseguys. Quick transition between scenes: A truckload of asbestos has been dumped in one of those waterways in the industrial nether region between the suburbs and the Manhattan skyline. Poisonous work; Tony looks ill. I think of my favorite shot from the Godfather, when Paulie gets popped in the wetlands and the Statue of Liberty is visible in the distance.

Turbonegro in Frisco [SS]

[Written by Shirley Surely]

Turbonegro -- A turbonegro is a large, well-equipped, armed black male in a fast car, out for vengeance. We are his prophets.

Anyway, this is the first show I went to that was filled with such tension. Everyone was on high alert, as if at any time, there will be a giant spider popping out of thin air and gobbled up everyone. A few girls were around. Most people were just looking. Not much socializing, just anticipation.

A solid band from Seattle opened for us, his name is Kandi Coded, sounds a bit like Tiger Army X Turbonegro sans the Norwegian accent. Even as the opening band was playing, the main part of the hall was empty, people don't want to step into this space unless they have to.

Very slowly the hall was filled with people, we know where the pit is.

I was about 5 people away from the edge of the pit (sometimes I am at the edge, depending on the music) the whole time.

Music came. Crowd roared, some in Norwegian! I think all the norwegians (like a total of 10) in town were in the pit. Euroboy is hot as hell, fresh back from death pit. Hank started stripping at the third song -> DO YOU DO YOU DIG DESTRUCTION?

One intriguing feature of Hank's clothes (now down to his jeans, belt like structure around his waist, metallic black material all around his forearm)... Then I realized: His pants were duct-taped around his waist, probably to prevent himself from removing the pants on stage... his chubby arm are duct-taped too (to prevent drug use on stage? or just to look pretty?)

But these details do not matter! Hank was trying to give oral sex to everyone of us. With his tongue, lips, fingers and the magic stick ...

I was (and still am) absolutely sure that he was doing that to me at one point ... he was mine and only mine for a 3 seconds! And then he wiped his sweating chubby body all over ... and threw that towel right at me, well it landed on my head anyway!

This was all happening while Euroboy was rocking metal riffs over and over again! He is oh so tender oh so strong ... By the way, I think I may still have it, Euroboy gave me a bottle of water !! :)

Oh I forgot this tiny detail: I was wearing a sailor hat all this time! It was really non-trivial to dance with it in the crowd ...

We asked for an encore, and they gave us one! A six song encore!

Last Turbonegro song was: ALL ABOUT PIZZA !! The Age of Pamparius
Last song of the show was: SEARCH AND DESTROY !

I don't understand half of what Hank said, but I think he said that SAN FRANcisco has the GREATEST crowd! Love ya, SF !

The Hopeless Journey continues...

My impetuous ally Gaius Alabaster (aka SpaceTiger) is pursuing his pointless quest to master all of Western music from the beginning (yes, even before the Ramones!) over at his new blog, The Hopeless Journey. Check it out for everything you ever wanted to know about what this guy you may or may not know thinks about old ass music that makes you want to whack yourself with a plank.

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three

About as good as a hijack movie not starring Bruce Willis can be. Walter Matthau wears the world's worst shirt.

A remake hits theaters in June, with the "One Two Three" changed to "1 2 3" since I guess people don't know how to spell numbers anymore.

Observe and Report

Midway through the movie Seth Rogen is called into the detective's office to be told that he has failed the pyschological profile and will not be admitted to the police academy. Another officer hides in the closet to overhear Seth get what's coming to him. As Seth is delivered the news his confusion, diappointment and hurt are painful to watch. The officer steps out of the closet and sheepishly excuses himself, "I'm sorry. I thought this was going to be funny, but it's just sad."

This is a wink from writer-director Jody Hill, letting you know that he knows exactly what he is doing when he manipulates audience expectations. We tend to expect our movies to observe certain rules about the tone of the story: How the tone is allowed to change and what sorts of things are allowed to happen once the tone is established. People who don't like to see their rules broken and mocked will not like this movie. Hill is a merry prankster, and the joke is on you. Once you get it, the experience becomes a thrill ride as the flick wickedly shifts from lighthearted to grave, from irresponsible to moralistic, from palatable to tasteless, from sober reality to cartoonish fantasy and then back again. The pleasure in his movies is to recognize your own instinctual reactions to the material, to see how transparently your moral compass and logical circuitry operate. In a way, the best part of the feature would be to see someone walk out of the theater in disgust. There is an element of perversity in this filmmaking approach, and it can certainly be taken too far in the direction of exploitation, but Hill finds the right balance by showing us reprehensible assholes who are nevertheless deeply sympathetic, wounded and believable individuals. But they're still assholes.

If Observe and Report has a flaw it is the underuse of Patton Oswalt. Most movies have this flaw. Anna Faris shares the supporing female part with the chipmunk-adorable Collette Wolfe, who is too pretty for her role but who cares. Faris deservingly gets the movie's funniest line, in the scene around which the (transparent) media is stirring fake controversy.

BUtterfield 8

I have a certain book of postcards featuring paperback cover illustrations from 40s and 50s pulp. There is of course The Big Sleep, with the oh-so-subtle image of a skull wearing a blond wig. Sally Bowles reclines on the cover of Goodbye to Berlin (the basis for Cabaret) and does appear to be wearing green nail polish. A Rita Hayworth-type presents herself bedside in a strapless black push-up on the cover of the perfectly-titled Kiss Tomorrow Good-Bye. And then there is I Was a Nazi Flier, which says it all. But my favorite is H is for Heroin (not a Sue Grafton novel), which depicts Nancy Drew standing in the dark, head hung with hand over eyes. Apparently she is "only seventeen and married to a boy who gave her heroin." I believe the story was later adapted for an installment of The Baby-sitters Club.

The cover of BUtterfield 8 is somewhat less provocative, featuring a call girl in elbow-length red gloves flashing a bare shoulder at a tuxedoed trick at a martini bar. Classy, but boring. The same could be said of the 1960 Liz Taylor movie, minus the classy part.

Suddenly, Last Summer

I once sat in Fontainebleau State Park with a girl, encircled by the croaking bayou and its primordial oaks, and read aloud from The Call of Cthulhu. The sun sank into Lake Pontchartrain behind a veil of Spanish moss just as the Alert landed upon R'lyeh. The swamp haunts me. As the darkest corner of American folklore, the septic wound into which all the sins of middle America drain, it calls to the most savage aspects of our nature.

There is a grotesque garden, prehistoric and carnivorous, at the heart of Tennessee Williams' one-act. It is the godless world of predation inhabited by Sebastian (Williams' proxy), himself at odd times a sexual predator and a struggling, doomed insect. I learn that both Williams and Lovecraft published in Weird Tales during the twenties.

This play, so overgrown with visual metaphor, begs to be filmed. Joseph L. Mankiewicz directs with a gothic flair studied from Billy Wilder and the great films noir. The picture opens with the clinical unease of medical horror, suggesting gruesome things to come. Surrealism stalks around the edges, waiting to strike until the sudden brutal finale. It's very bleak. The director's elder brother, legendary screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, had died a horrible alcoholic's death six years earlier. You sense a despair behind JLM's affinity for this material.

Gore Vidal's screenplay does however pad out the story a bit too much (the movie's only major flaw). The surgeon played by Montgomery Clift is an unformed character, merely a witness to represent the audience. Nevertheless his presence in the role serves to create additional unease, because in the films Clift made after his crippling car accident he seems a person fractured through; given to stammering, pained staring and the tremors of withdrawal. His pain infects the viewer.

Katharine Hepburn does a fine version of Norma Desmond, minus the mothballed sexuality. (Hepburn always kinda scares me, with her masculine posture and seizing creepiness.) Thankfully we get Elizabeth Taylor as the standard Williams mad heroine. Liz is at her most sensuous in her first scene in the care of the nuns, before she gets cleaned up and put in her New Orleans society finery. When Clift first enters her stuffy confinement she's wearing a plain cotton dress, smoking and flush with warmth. No longer the coltish teen Clift coveted in A Place in the Sun, she here presents herself earthy with sex.

My favorite of Tennessee Williams' major works.

South Pacific

What a shame. This could have, should have, been one of the most beautifully photographed Technicolor pictures of the 1950s. Location shooting in the Hawaiian islands is so breathtaking you can't go wrong — unless you spoil the palette by tinting half the movie with a hideous gold color filter. The studio could not have been more wrong in trying to enhance the romantic luxuriance of the tropical paradise, which is already perfect in its vivid and pristine natural coloration. Under the heavy amber tint turquoise reef waters become leaden and lush jungle greenery takes on all the grubby brown barrenness of Tatooine. It's inexcusable and it ruins the whole movie, which isn't otherwise all that good anyway.

But Mitzi Gaynor makes it (almost) worthwhile as our love-dizzy navy nurse/bathing beauty. She is perfectly 50s — you adore her somehow without thinking naughty things — with her polite figure, short blond curls (best when wet) and fraught and pretty eyebrows.

That being said, my grandfather loves this movie. I've never known him to sit to watch anything besides baseball, but he sat and laughed and sang and applauded for South Pacific. He also provided solemn commentary on the racism at play, deeply stirred by the effects of prejudice and moved to quiet joy when overcome.