(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on May 18, 2019)
This neo-noir/murder mystery unfolds via flashbacks. A well-to-do businessman accused of murdering his mistress consults with a defense attorney 3 hours before he is to be taken into custody and officially charged. He claims to be the victim of an elaborate setup. The circumstantial evidence does not seem to be in his favor. Some moments of genuine suspense, but otherwise by-the-numbers genre fare that was rather obviously made while driving under the influence of The Usual Suspects.
(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on May 18, 2019)
While watching this extraordinarily intimate behind-the-scenes look at Vladimir Putin as he (sort of) campaigns for the Russian presidency in 2000, I began to think “OK…the guy who made this film is now either (a.) Dead (b.) Being held at an undisclosed location somewhere in Siberia or (c.) Living in exile…right?” I was relieved to learn that the correct answer is (c.) – Director Vitaly Mansky is currently alive and well and living in Latvia.
In 1999, Manksy (a TV journalist at the time) was assigned to accompany Putin on the campaign trail; hence the treasure trove of footage he had at his disposal for creating this unique time capsule of a significant moment in Russian history.
The most amazing sequence doesn’t even involve Putin…Mansky and his cameras are right there in the living room of noticeably unwell outgoing president Boris Yeltsin as he anxiously watches TV coverage with his family on election night in 2000. When former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev pops onscreen in an interview, Yeltsin (likely half in the bag) flies into a rage, yelling at the TV and demanding that it be turned off (Armando Ianucci couldn’t have written a funnier scene).
(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on May 18, 2019)
There’s an old Woody Allen joke: “Those who cannot do, teach. Those who cannot teach, teach gym.” A disenchanted, 40-ish housewife takes a job teaching gym (to the chagrin of hubby). If she was seeking excitement, she gets that and more after one of her students begins stalking her.
In real life, if a high school teacher received a text from a student saying “You look so hot when you run!” followed by a dick pic-she’d put the kibosh on it right then and there-but we’d only have a 10-minute movie. You’ll yell at the protagonist for her inappropriate choices, but if you’re a sucker for steamy erotic thrillers-this film will seduce you (although you’ll still hate yourself in the morning).
(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on May 18, 2019)
Initially, Mads Brugger’s documentary promises to be straightforward investigative journalism regarding the mysterious 1961 plane crash in Zambia that killed UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarsjkold. But around the halfway mark, Brugger pivots, now claiming (admitting?) it may all just be a wild conspiracy theory. Either way, it’s a riveting political thriller (and if true-very disconcerting). I was reminded of Orson Welles’ (more playful) semi-documentary ‘F’ for Fake, which teases the viewer’s perceptions regarding what it’s “about”.
(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on May 18, 2019)
Yes, it’s the oft-told tale of a ne’er-do-well Scottish single mom, fresh out of stir after serving time for possessing smack, who pursues her lifelong dream to become a country star and perform at The Grand Old Opry. How many times have we heard that one? This crowd-pleasing dramedy is a lot better than you’d expect, thanks to a winning lead performance from Jessie Buckley. Bonus…there’s a cameo by the BBC’s legendary “Whispering Bob” Harris!
(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on May 11, 2019)
It’s nearly time for the 44th Seattle International Film Festival (May 16th to June 9th). SIFF is showing 410 shorts, features and docs from 86 countries. Navigating festivals takes skill; the trick is developing a sense for films in your wheelhouse (I embrace my OCD and channel it like a cinematic dowser). Here are some intriguing possibilities on my list after obsessively combing through the 2019 SIFF catalog (so you don’t have to).
Let’s dive in, shall we? SIFF is featuring a number of documentaries and feature films with a sociopolitical bent. The documentary Cold Case Hammarsjkold (Denmark) follows intriguing new leads regarding the mysterious 1961 plane crash in Zambia that took the life of UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarsjkold.
Werner Herzog meets one-on-one with the eponymous former leader of the Soviet Union in Meeting Gorbachev (UK/USA). Russia, Russia, Russia…Putin’s Witnesses (Latvia) is filmmaker/Russian ex-patriate Vitaly Mansky’s unblinking look behind the scenes of Putin’s election in 2000.
Keira Knightly stars in Official Secrets (USA), the true story of a whistle-blower prosecuted in 2004 under the UK’s Official Secrets Act after she exposed U.S. espionage shenanigans designed to drum up support for invading Iraq. Raise Hell: The Life and Time of Molly Ivins (USA) profiles the late, great, and fearless political writer who suffered no fools gladly on either side of the aisle. The Fall of the American Empire (Canada) is the bookend to Quebecois director Dennys Arcand’s trilogy of sociopolitical satires, preceded by The Decline of the American Empire and The Barbarian Invasions.
Thinking green: 2040 (Australia) is a hybrid eco-doc that speculates on a *possible* utopic future for the planet…if “we” get our act together. The eco-doc Anthropocene: The Human Epoch (Canada) is a “timely meditation” regarding modern civilization’s impact on the Earth’s environment (looks to be along the lines of Koyaanisqatsi). TheWild(USA) is filmmaker Mark Titus’ update to his 2014 eco-doc The Breach, which studied the threat to Bristol Bay, Alaska’s salmon industry posed by local copper mining.
Too much cold reality for you? How about a little levity, then? The Death of Dick Long (USA) is a self-proclaimed “ridiculous comedy” about “two idiots in small-town Alabama” (sounds about my speed) who bungle through a hasty cover-up after a mutual pal meets an untimely end while they’re all out partying together (good times!).
Support the Girls(USA) is a day-in-the-life “working-class comedy” from Andrew Bujalski (Computer Chess) starring Regina King as the harried manager of a Texas-based “breastaurant”. Emma Peeters (Belgium) concerns a struggling thespian who decides to end it all on her imminent 35th birthday (according to her, “the expiry date for actresses”).
Dramadies: Sword of Trust (USA) is this year’s Opening Night film at SIFF and the latest from Seattle-based director Lynn Shelton, wherein two young women encounter the conspiracy-laced worldview of a crotchety pawnshop owner (Marc Maron). Winter Flies (Czech Republic) is a road movie about the misadventures of two Czech teens as they joyride a stolen car through “the dramatic backroads of northern Bohemia”.
Go Back to China (China) is a family dramedy about a young woman living high off her trust fund in L.A. who gets cut off by her prosperous dad in China. If she wants back on the gravy train, he demands she must first come back to China for a year to work at his toy factory.
Pure drama: This is Not Berlin (Mexico) is a coming-of-age tale with an ensemble cast, set against the 80s new wave music and art scene in Mexico City. A 12-year-old girl deals with growing pains and tensions brewing at school between white and First Nations students in A Colony (Quebec). Alice (Australia) is a woman left high and dry by her husband who becomes a sex worker in desperation yet finds it unexpectedly empowering.
Burning Cane (USA) is the buzz-generating debut from 18-year-old director Phillip Youmans, set in rural Louisiana. Monos (Columbia) is an uncompromising war drama about 8 teenage guerilla fighters who go rogue in a dense South American jungle, with a female American hostage in tow.
Piranhas (Italy) is “a harrowing tale of gang violence” set in the Neopolitan crime world, adapted from a Roberto Saviano novel. The Ground Beneath My Feet (Austria) is a psychodrama about a workaholic facing mounting pressures in her personal and professional life that are nudging her closer to a breakdown.
Okay, enough with the drama, already. I wanna dance. Alt-rocker PJ Harvey literally travelled the world to find inspiration for her latest album, and her journey is documented in A Dog Called Money (Ireland). Yes, he’s still alive, and doing well, thank you-David Crosby: Remember My Name (USA) is “an aggressively honest portrait” of the rock icon, produced by Cameron Crowe. Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool (USA) sounds…cool.
And the hits just keep coming…Pavarotti (USA/UK) looks to be a full-scale (sorry) portrait of the late opera star from veteran director Ron Howard. The Apollo (USA) mixes archival stage (and backstage) footage with contemporary perspectives to reflect on the past, present and future of Harlem’s iconic performance venue. The rock ‘n’ roll comedy Yesterday (UK) sounds like a potential crowd-pleaser, considering it’s a Beatles-inspired musical fantasy that features the never-a-dull-moment Danny Boyle at the helm.
From the crime/mystery/thriller files: I’m a “Nordic noir” aficionado, so I hope to catch An Affair (Norway) wherein a disenchanted housewife being stalked by a “hunky young man” becomes the stalker herself when he tires of the chase and moves on. Conviction (France) is a true crime legal thriller promising to be “a crackling nail-biter”. In Stray Dolls (USA), a South Asian immigrant woman fresh to the U.S. takes a job at “a seedy” New Jersey motel, then gets dragged into an ill-advised scheme by a fellow housekeeper.
Forays into sci-fi and fantasy beckon: Cities of Last Things (Taiwan), “a sci-fi-tinged noir” looks like it could be a mindblower, with three actors in separate vignettes all playing one character-a tortured Taiwanese police detective navigating one long dark night of his soul (or something to that effect). Sons of Denmark (Denmark) is a dystopian political thriller set in 2025, when an underground group desperately fights to stop a fast-rising ultra-nationalist, anti-immigrant party from taking power in Denmark (seems rather timely).
I’m intrigued to see As the Earth Turns (USA), a 1938 silent film shot in Seattle and recently discovered at the home of director Richard Lyford. Restored and featuring a new score by Seattle composer Ed Hartman, it is described as “a sci-fi thriller that cleverly foreshadows many things still relevant to us.” What an amazing find!
Fear not, midnight movie and/or horror fans-SIFF has not forsaken thee: The Legend of the Stardust Brothers (Japan) is “a lost gem of 1980s Japanese cinema” that I somehow missed on its first go-around. Looks like this will be my chance to catch the revival of this “Rocky Horror meets Hard Day’s Night” hybrid and report back to you. Ghost Town Anthology (Quebec) is a film “shot on grainy, 16mm stock” about a sleepy Quebecois hamlet that “has a ghost problem” (I’m scared already).
Last but not least…I don’t know what took him so long-but the maestro of deadpan cinema Jim Jarmusch has finally got around to making a zombie flick: SIFF just announced the late (but very welcome) addition of The Dead Don’t Die (USA) to the schedule (with Bill Murray, Adam Driver, and Chloe Savigny!).
Obviously, I’ve barely scratched the surface. I’ll be plowing through the catalog and sharing reviews with you beginning next Saturday. In the meantime, visit the SIFF site for full details on the films, event screenings, special guests, panel discussions and more.
(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on April 27, 2019)
I’m sure you have heard the term “Stockholm syndrome”? In the event you’re a hypochondriac who may lay awake tonight worrying you’ve “caught” it, let me put your mind at ease…unless you are currently a hostage, exhibiting all the following indications:
1. A development of positive feelings towards your captor.
2. There has been no previous relationship between you and your captor.
3. You’re refusing to cooperate with police forces and other government authorities.
4. You no longer feel threatened, as you’ve adapted your captor’s world view.
Granted, if you ticked all those boxes it could also indicate you’re a Trump supporter; but that discussion is for another time. This is (purportedly) a “movie review”, which I assume is what you came here for (and you’re free to leave…I’m not forcing you to stay).
Like the phrase “drinking the Kool-aid” (now routinely applied to any behavior felt to be analogous to the mass suicide of Jim Jones’ followers at the People’s Temple compound in Jonestown) “Stockholm syndrome” has an etymology that was torn from the headlines.
In 1973, Jan-Erik Olsson, a Swedish convict on leave from prison (Sweden’s penal system is a bit different from ours) held up a bank in Stockholm. What began as a run-of-the-mill “take the money and run” operation escalated once Olsson impulsively took hostages following a shoot-out with cops, who arrived before he could make his getaway.
Olsson’s behavior was eccentric; after wounding one of the two officers who made their way into the bank, he ordered the other to sit in a chair and “sing something” (the officer promptly launched into “Lonesome Cowboy”). Olsson himself was reportedly a tuneful fellow; frequently warbling Roberta Flack’s “Killing Me Softly” throughout the incident.
His first demand was that his friend Clark Olofsson be released from prison and brought in to join him at the bank. The authorities agreed; hoping to utilize Olofsson as a liaison for negotiation with police. That plan went nowhere fast; resulting in the two cohorts retreating into the bank’s vault with the four hostages and barricading themselves there.
Any leverage that the authorities may have had at the outset was compromised when the incident became a media circus; it was covered on live television, marking the first time that Swedish viewers had been offered a ringside seat to an unfolding crime-in-progress.
In the course of the 6-day incident, something unique occurred regarding the relationship between the hostages and their captors. After a phone call Olsson made to Prime Minister Olaf Palme threatening to kill a hostage if his demands to be given safe passage from the bank were not met by a deadline failed to yield results, hostage Kristin Enmark placed her own follow-up call to express her disapproval; she chastised Palme for his “attitude”. This bonding between captors and captives led to the coining of “Stockholm syndrome.”
You couldn’t make this shit up, right? Sounds like perfect fodder for a slam-bang seriocomic heist-gone-awry true-crime thriller a la Dog Day Afternoon. Unfortunately, writer-director Robert Budreau’s Stockholm is not that film. Which is a real shame when you’ve got excellent actors like Ethan Hawke, Noomi Rapace and Mark Strong on board.
As in the aforementioned Dog Day Afternoon, principal character’s names have been changed to protect the guilty; Jan-Erik Olsson is “Lars Nystrom” (Hawke), Clark Olofsson is “Gunnar Sorensson” (Strong) and Kristin Enmark is “Bianca Lind” (Rapace).
Hawke’s costuming makes him a ringer for Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider (now that I think about it, I could swear he was consciously channeling Hopper’s idiosyncratic tics and mannerisms). His performance dances on the edge of hammy, as if he wasn’t quite sure whether to play it for comedic or dramatic effect; although that may attributable to the bathos in Budreau’s script (which I feel fails to reveal the humanity of the characters).
The most glaring hole in the script is the writer’s apparent lack of interest in the biggest question: “why” did the hostages side with their captors? What turned them? There is nothing in the actions of the characters themselves that suggests exactly when this pivotal moment has occurred; we only know that this has “happened” when the head police negotiator wonders aloud why the hostages have allied themselves with their captors.
Good question, as we in the audience would kind of like to know why this happened too.
(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on April 13, 2019)
Do you like poetry? Do you like song mashups? Here’s an interesting mashup for you:
And then I heard them lift a Box And creak across my Soul With those same Boots of Lead, again, Then Space – began to toll,
I never realized the lengths I’d have to go All the darkest corners of a sense I didn’t know
As all the Heavens were a Bell, And Being, but an Ear, And I, and Silence, some strange Race Wrecked, solitary, here –
Just for one moment – Hearing someone call Looked beyond the day in hand There’s nothing there at all
Two of those verses are taken from a poem by Emily Dickinson (circa 1861). The other two verses are lyrics from a Joy Division song (circa 1980). Can you tell which is which?
Well…if you are more cultured than I (which is highly likely) or know anything about poetry (which would be more than I know) it’s plain as the nose on your face that verses 1 and 3 are from a 19th-Century poem, and verses 2 and 4 come from a 20th-Century song.
I made this association while conducting extensive background research for my review of Madeline Olnek’s Wild Nights With Emily(OK, I Googled “Emily Dickinson poems”, and that was one of the first search results. Happy now?). I was struck by Ms. Dickinson’s magnificently dark and timeless…Goth-iness. I mean “Wrecked, solitary, here”? I could totally hear (the wrecked, solitary, and late) Ian Curtis crooning the words.
Who was this intriguing woman of letters who toiled in relative obscurity for the 55 years she strolled the planet (1830-1886), seeing only a dozen or so of her 1,800 poems published during her life, but is now revered and studied and mentioned in the same breath as Whitman, Frost and Eliot? Was she really (as legend has it) the brooding, agoraphobic spinster who wears a Mona Lisa expression in that lone Daguerreotype portrait-or did she feel life was a banquet, and most poor suckers were starving to death?
Luckily for those of us who flee in terror at the prospect of sitting through a scholarly cinematic treatise soaking in the mannered trappings of a genre that a longtime friend of mine dismisses with a snort as “hat movies”, Olnek concocts kind of a mashup herself by mixing material from Dickinson’s poems and private letters with a touch of spirited speculation regarding details of her private life (think of it as well-researched fan fiction).
This lighter tone is assured by casting SNL veteran and comic actor Molly Shannon, who tackles the lead role with much aplomb. Her performance suggests an Emily Dickinson who indeed may have spent most of her adult life house-bound and somewhat socially isolated, but perhaps not so completely bereft of passion and joy as historically portrayed.
Most of that passion and joy manifests itself in the scenes depicting Emily’s longtime “close friendship” with her sister-in-law Susan (Susan Ziegler), the woman who some biographers and historians have theorized to be the key romantic figure in Dickinson’s life; confidant, mentor, muse, and (assumed) secret lover. This is complicated by the fact they live next door to each other (at least in the film), adding door-slamming “Oh no! Your husband/my brother is home early-get dressed!” bedroom farce to the proceedings.
There are echoes of Comedy Central’s costume drama parody Another Period throughout, exacerbated by an appearance from Brett Gelman-one of that show’s more recognizable cast members. Gelman does a nice turn as Thomas Wentworth Higginson, an early advocate of women’s rights and prominent staff member of The Atlantic Monthly who was a mentor (of sorts) to Dickinson (oddly, even though they formed a long friendship and exchanged many letters-he never pushed her hard to get published while she was still alive; but he did co-edit the first two posthumous collections of her poems).
Another key figure in Emily’s orbit is Mabel Loomis Todd (well-played by Amy Seimetz). Mabel is an interesting character; the de facto heavy of the piece, she also serves as the film’s narrator. Mabel Todd was the longtime mistress of Emily’s brother Austin (Kevin Seal), who (if you’ve been paying attention) was married to Susan, Emily’s longtime secret lover. Todd was also an editor and writer, who ended up co-editing the aforementioned posthumous collections of Dickinson’s poems with Thomas Higginson (which is a bit weird considering that Emily and Mabel never met in person).
This is about as far from an Oscar-baiting prestige biopic one can get, but as movies about writers and poets are a hard-sell to begin with (not enough explosions, car chases, CGI characters or Marvel superheroes to capture the general movie-going public’s attention) Olnek made a wise choice to think outside the box. Wild Nights with Emily may not be the flashiest film in theaters now, but it’s the only one with poetry in its soul.
(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on April 6, 2019)
In my 2007 review of A.J. Schnack’s documentary Kurt Cobain:About a Son, I wrote:
It’s virtually impossible to live here in Seattle and not be constantly reminded of Kurt Cobain’s profound impact on the music world. Every April, around the anniversary of his suicide, wreaths of flowers and hand taped notes begin to cover a lone bench in a tiny park sandwiched between the lakefront mansions I pass on my way to work every morning. Inevitably, I will see small gatherings of young people with multi-colored hair and torn jeans holding silent vigil around this makeshift shrine, located a block or two from the home where he took his life.
This past Friday marked the 25th anniversary of Cobain’s passing. It’s funny how your perception of time recalibrates as you get older. My memory of attending a spontaneous memorial at the Seattle Center along with thousands of others on the day the news broke in April 1994 makes it seem like relatively “recent” history to me. However, when I stop to consider I was 38 then-and that I’ve just turned 63 (not to mention that Cobain has been dead nearly as many years he was alive) …25 years is a generation ago. Even on a good day, Time is cruel. From my piece on Kerri O’Kane’s 2008 documentary, The Gits:
In the fall of 1992, I moved to Seattle with no particular action plan, and stumbled into a job hosting the Monday-Friday morning drive show on KCMU (now KEXP), a mostly volunteer, low-wattage, listener supported FM station broadcasting from the UW campus with the hopeful slogan: “Where the music matters.” I remember joking to my friends that my career was going in reverse order, because after 18 years of commercial radio experience, here I was at age 36, finally getting my first part-time college radio gig. I loved it.
I couldn’t believe I was getting paid to cue up whatever I felt like playing, as opposed to kowtowing to the rigid, market-tested “safe song” play lists at the Top 40, Oldies and A/C formats I had worked with previously. A little Yellowman, Fugazi, Cypress Hill, Liz Phair, maybe a bit o’ Mudhoney with your Danish? Followed by a track from Ali Faka Toure, some Throwing Muses, topping the set with an oldie like the Velvet Underground’s “Heroin” to take you up to your first coffee break? Sure, why not? I was happier than a pig in shit.
What I didn’t realize until several years following my 7-month stint there, is that KCMU was semi-legendary in college/alt-underground circles; not only was it literally the first station in the country to “break” Nirvana but counted members of Mudhoney and Pearl Jam among former DJ staff. I was just a music geek, enthusiastically exploring somebody else’s incredibly cool record collection, whilst taking my listeners along for the ride; in the meantime, I obliviously became a peripheral participant in Seattle’s early 90’s “scene”.
Reminds me of a funny story. Within a few weeks of moving to Seattle, I went to see Cameron Crowe’s Singles, which had just recently opened. If you’re familiar with the film, you are of course aware that it is a romantic comedy about a group of (wait for it) young singles living in Seattle, incorporating the city’s contemporaneous music milieu as a backdrop.
At one random point during the film’s opening sequence (a flash-cut montage of various Seattle neighborhoods and landmarks) the entire house spontaneously erupted into cheers and applause. I felt sheepish…I didn’t “get” it. What did I miss, I wondered?
Years later, I happened to watch the film again on cable…and that’s when I caught it. Only then I noticed that during that montage, there’s a momentary shot of a movie marquee. It was the Neptune, the very theater I’d been in when the audience freaked out. I suppose that my point is…sometimes, you can’t see the forest for the Screaming Trees.
In retrospect, I feel blessed to have moved to Seattle at that point in time, as the city was the nexus for a paradigm shift in rock. As Hua Hsu wrote in TheNew Yorker this week:
The success of Nirvana and other Seattle bands, including Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Alice in Chains, changed the music industry. The breakout rise of “Nevermind” suggested that so-called alternative bands and niches could be commercially viable—not just as steady, low-risk earners but as the proverbial next big thing. Major labels began showering loads of money on tiny, Nirvana-esque bands that played a similar kind of “grunge” rock. The “grunge gold rush,” as the journalist Steve Knopper termed it, created boom-or-bust trajectories for bands that might have once settled for modest regional fame. It was no longer hard to find alternative sounds; major labels were desperate to pitch everyone as the next Nirvana.
[…]
After his death, there were articles and nightly-news segments about Cobain’s nihilism, and what his choice suggested about the younger generation. Mostly, I remember listening to “Nevermind” over and over—not as a search for clues (for that, you’d listen to Nirvana’s last studio album, “In Utero,” and its many references to despair and illness), but as a reminder of how unlikely his trajectory had been. It was the first time I’d wondered how you could work both inside and outside the system—whether you could be critical of, say, the corporations underwriting your art while making art that aspired for worlds beyond those realities.
There’s a sort of bittersweet aftermath to this story. “Nevermind” has since been absorbed into the rock canon. Just as kids a couple of years younger and older than me at school had wildly different opinions about whether Cobain was a saint or a sellout, every generation has their own version of the Nirvana legend. Nowadays, Cobain has become a fashionable reference point for musicians across genres, from pop to hip-hop, who want their music to seem brooding and emotional. Dr. Dre and Jay-Z today express admiration for the cultural rebellion that Cobain represented, describing his music as powerful enough to have briefly “stopped” hip-hop’s ascendancy.
Maybe that’s the paradox of alternative culture that’s always been true, only it was our turn to realize it: pop culture is born anew each time an outlaw is discovered. Your pose lives on, even if the seeds of your own rebellion are forgotten.
Saint or sell-out, I don’t care…it’s the music that matters. Nirvana was but one fraction of the “Seattle Sound”, and I think a lot of it has held up rather well. With that in mind, I’ve selected my top 10 grunge-era songs by Seattle-based bands. In alphabetical order…
“Come As You Are” (Nirvana) – Yes, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” is iconic, and a fantastic song, but this has always been the most compelling track from Nevermind for me. I find the band’s “MTV Unplugged” performance of the song particularly haunting.
“Hunger Strike” (Temple of the Dog) – Sadly, the history of Seattle’s grunge scene is full of heartbreak and shooting stars. Such was the impetus for this “one-off” supergroup, formed by Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell as a tribute to Andrew Wood. Wood, lead singer of early Seattle grunge outfits Malfunkshun and Mother Love Bone (the latter band featuring future Pearl Jam members Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament) OD’d on heroin in 1990. Cornell recruited Gossard, Ament, their Pearl Jam bandmate Mike McReady, plus Soundgarden/future Pearl Jam drummer Matt Cameron. Eddie Vedder added vocals on some tracks, including this gem. Vedder and Cornell singing together is beyond sublime.
“Jeremy” (Pearl Jam) – Still one of the most powerful and moving songs of the era.
“Loud Love” (Soundgarden) – The late Chris Cornell had one of “those” voices; a force of nature. There was a raw immediacy in the band’s early recordings, nicely encapsulated by this standout track (and single) from their 1989 sophomore album Louder Than Love.
“Man in the Box” (Alice In Chains) – While this ominous yet compelling dirge has become a classic rock staple, it still doesn’t sound quite “right” coming out of your car radio…as in “how in the fuck did they ever sneak this one into the Top 40?” All I can say is, whatever dark regions of the human soul this tune sprang from, I daren’t even go there to snap a quick picture. Weirdly enough, lead singer Layne Staley tragically died of a drug overdose on April 5th, the same date as Kurt Cobain (but a different year…in 2002).
“Nearly Lost You” (The Screaming Trees) – Another early grunge outfit (formed in the mid-80s) the Screaming Trees got their first major national exposure in 1992 when this catchy number was featured on the soundtrack for Cameron Crowe’s hit movie Singles.
“99 Girls” (Young Fresh Fellows) – OK, they are not super well-known outside of Seattle, but I have a soft spot for the album this cut is taken from, because it was the Fellows’ “latest” when I worked at KCMU in 1992, and my introduction to the band’s quirky goodness. Originally formed in the early 80s, they had a college radio hit with their tune “Amy Grant”, which was a parody of Contemporary Christian Music. Their “sound” is sort of a mix of garage and punky power pop, frequently with cheeky lyrics. This song is a bit of clever wordplay referring to a stretch of Highway 99 (AKA Aurora Avenue where it runs through Seattle city limits) that is infamous as a sex worker haunt.
“Second Skin” (The Gits) – One of the Seattle scene’s greatest tragedies was the loss of this band’s dynamic and talented lead singer Mia Zapata, who was raped and murdered in 1993 at the age of 27 (thanks to the advent of DNA technology, her killer was eventually arrested, convicted and jailed 10 years later). This song was released as a single in 1991.
“Touch Me I’m Sick” (Mudhoney) – I love the amplifier buzz in the intro. Says it all.
“Tribe” (Gruntruck) – This band, which featured members of seminal Seattle grunge outfit Skin Yard leans closer to hard rock, but sometimes…I just wanna fly my freak flag.
(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on March 30, 2019)
Did you know there is now a popular aggregator website called Florida Man, created to keep track of a seemingly endless stream of bizarre news items from The Sunshine State?
There is a possibility that the site is satirical. That said…the stories seem plausible to me.
It is in this spirit that one must dive headfirst into Screwball, the newest “is he making this shit up?” documentary from film maker Billy Corben (perhaps best known for his Florida drug trade trilogy-Cocaine Cowboys, Cocaine Cowboys 2 and Square Grouper).
I had some trepidation going in. On the upside, the film involves one of my favorite things (drugs). On the downside, it also heavily involves my least favorite thing (sports).
The subject of the film is Anthony Bosch, a Florida man (heh) who gained notoriety from his involvement in the Biogenesis “performance-enhancing drug” scandal back in 2013. Biogenesis was the name of Bosch’s clinic, where he “consulted” (“dispensed”, mostly) for a wide-ranging variety of clientele, from parents looking to juice up their kids’ performance on the school team to some very high-profile names in professional sports.
Bosch’s clinic had a shaky start. From a 2013 Miami New Times expose by Tim Elfrink:
Biogenesis’s history really begins in 2009, when Bosch started a firm, called Colonial Services, based in Key Biscayne.
That same year, on May 7, Major League Baseball suspended L.A. Dodgers slugger Manny Ramirez after he tested positive for HCG — a women’s fertility drug often used at the end of a steroid cycle to restart testosterone production. Ramirez, who lives in Weston, issued a statement that a “personal doctor” had prescribed a medication he didn’t realize would violate the drug code.
Reporters at ESPN quickly identified that doctor: Pedro Bosch, whose son, Anthony, was “well known in Latin American baseball circles,” the network reported. “His relationships with players date at least from the earlier part of the decade, when he was seen attending parties with players and known to procure tickets to big-league ballparks, especially in Boston and New York,” ESPN wrote.
The DEA was “probing” both Bosches for their role in getting Ramirez the medication, ESPN reported. MLB President Bob DuPuy also confirmed he was “aware” of the investigation and cooperating.
Tony Bosch never responded to the allegations, but in a letter to ESPN, Pedro lashed back two weeks later, claiming that Ramirez was never his patient, that he’d “never prescribed” anyone HCG, and that there was no federal investigation. No charges were ever filed.
(Pedro Bosch was a defendant in an unrelated federal civil case that same year. The U.S. attorney accused him, along with more than two dozen other doctors and a similar number of lab owners, of running a kickback scheme to inflate drug costs. The government withdrew the claims two months later.)
While father and son both dodged a bullet in 2009, it’s a telling prequel to where Corben picks up the story; it also gives you an idea of what types of characters are involved. It is quite the tale, told by Anthony Bosch himself (along with some of his former associates).
Corben employs an interesting variation on the usual docudrama tropes. He uses child “reenactors” throughout the film. At first, it was distracting; it felt “gimmicky” and borderline precious. However, as the story gets wilder, the reenactments accrue more entertainment value (it’s the same quotient that makes Drunk History so funny). Bosch is quite the entertaining raconteur himself (as most bullshit artists and con men tend to be).
In fact, I was so entertained I nearly forgot how little I care about sports. Joking aside, the film is not so much “about” sports, as it is about the business of sports. It’s also about that peculiar obsession homo sapiens have with “winning”. In my 2013 review of Rush, I wrote this:
I’ll admit up front that I don’t know from the sport of Formula One racing. In fact, I’ve never held any particular fascination for loud, fast cars (or any kind of sports, for that matter). If that makes me less than a manly man, well, I’ll just have to live with that fact.
However, I am fascinated by other people’s fascination with competitive sport; after all, (paraphrasing one of my favorite lines from Harold and Maude) they’re my species. There’s certainly an impressive amount of time, effort and money poured into this peculiarly human compulsion to be the “champion” or securing the best seats for cheering one on; even if in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t mean shit to a tree.
There is an interesting political sidebar to the story. Turns out, Anthony Bosch is related to Orlando Bosch. From my 2007 review of the documentary 638 Ways to Kill Castro:
The most chilling revelation concerns the downing of a commercial Cuban airliner off Barbados in 1976 (73 people were killed, none with any known direct associations with the Castro regime). One of the alleged masterminds was an anti-Castro Cuban exile living in Florida, named Orlando Bosch, who had participated in numerous CIA-backed actions in the past.
When Bosch was threatened with deportation in the late 80’s, a number of Republicans rallied to have him pardoned, including Florida congresswoman Ileana Ross, who used her involvement with the “Free Orlando Bosch” campaign as part of her running platform. Her campaign manager was a young up and coming politician named…Jeb Bush. Long story short? Then-president George Bush Sr. ended up granting Bosch a pardon in 1990. BTW, Bosch had once been publicly referred to as an “unrepentant terrorist” by the Attorney General. (Don’t get me started.)
