Tag Archives: Tribute

Blood at the root: an MLK Day mixtape

January 15, 2024 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo January 13, 2024)

I came into this world on April 4, 1956. 12 years later, to the day, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. left it. My intention is not to attach any particular significance to that kismet, apart from the fact that I have since felt somewhat ambiguous about “celebrating” my birthdays (I could push the weird cosmic coincidence factor further by adding Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated 2 months later on June 5^th, 1968 – my parents’ wedding anniversary…cue the Twilight Zone theme). But this holiday weekend is about celebrating Dr. King’s birthday; so I have curated 10 songs to honor his legacy:

“Abraham, Martin, & John” – Late 50s-early 60s teen idol Dion DiMucci reinvented himself as a socially-conscious folk singer in 1968 with this heartfelt performance of Dick Holler’s beautifully written tribute to JFK, RFK, and MLK. Seems they all die young…

“Blues for Martin Luther King” – In 1968, music was our social media. The great Otis Spann gives us the news and preaches the blues. Feel his pain, for it is ours as well.

“400 Years” – The struggle began long before Dr. King joined it; sadly, it continues to this day. A people’s history…written and sung by the late great Peter Tosh (with the Wailers).

“Happy Birthday” – A no-brainer for the list. Good to remember that Stevie Wonder was also a key advocate in the lobby to make Dr. King’s birthday a national holiday.

“Is it Because I’m Black?” – Syl Johnson’s question may sound rhetorical, but he pulls no punches.

“Pieces of a Man” – Gil Scott-Heron’s heartbreaking vocal, Brian Jackson’s transcendent piano, the great Ron Carter’s sublime stand-up bass work, and the pure poetry of the lyrics…it’s all so “right”.

“Pride (In the Name of Love)” – The inclusion of U2’s most stirring anthem feels mandatory.

“Shed a Little Light” – James Taylor’s uplifting, gospel-flavored paean to MLK is featured on his 1991 album New Moon Shine.

“Strange Fruit” – “Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze.” Billie Holiday’s performance of this song (written by Abel Meeropol) was powerful then, powerful now, and will remain powerful forever.

“Why (The King of Love is Dead)” – Like the Otis Spann song on this list, Nina Simone’s musical eulogy (written and performed here just days after Dr. King’s death) is all the more remarkable for conveying a message at once so timely, and so timeless.

Comedy, Drama, Movie Movie, Neo-Noir, Western

But of tomorrow: RIP Ryan O’ Neal

December 9, 2023 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on December 8, 2023)

No lad who has liberty for the first time, and twenty guineas in his pocket, is very sad, and Barry rode towards Dublin thinking not so much of the kind mother left alone, and of the home behind him, but of tomorrow, and all the wonders it would bring.

-from Barry Lyndon

Oh man, oh God…we’ve lost another one:

Ryan O’Neal, the boyish leading man who kicked off an extraordinary 1970s run in Hollywood with his Oscar-nominated turn as the Harvard preppie Oliver in the legendary romantic tearjerker Love Story, has died. He was 82.

O’Neal died Friday, his son Patrick O’Neal, a sportscaster with Bally Sports West in Los Angeles, reported on Instagram. He had been diagnosed with chronic leukemia in 2001 and with prostate cancer in 2012.

“As a human being, my father was as generous as they come,” Patrick wrote. “And the funniest person in any room. And the most handsome clearly, but also the most charming. Lethal combo. He loved to make people laugh. It’s pretty much his goal. Didn’t matter the situation, if there was a joke to be found, he nailed it. He really wanted us laughing. And we did all laugh. Every time. We had fun. Fun in the sun.” […]

Patrick Ryan O’Neal was born on April 20, 1941, in Los Angeles, the older son of novelist-screenwriter Charles “Blackie” O’Neal (The Three Wishes of Jamie McRuin) and actress Patricia Callaghan. He competed in Golden Gloves events in L.A. in 1956 and 1957 and compiled a boxing record of 18-4 with 13 knockouts, according to his website.

In the late 1950s, O’Neal and his family moved to Munich, and he became infatuated with the syndicated TV series Tales of the Vikings, which shot in Europe and was produced by Kirk Douglas‘ company.

According to a 1975 newspaper account, he wrote to another producer, George Cahan, on the show: “I am six feet tall, and with a false beard I will look as much like a Viking as any actor on the set … I may be the Gary Cooper of tomorrow.”

O’Neal went on to perform as a stuntman on the series.

After appearing on such shows as The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, The Untouchables, Leave It to Beaver and My Three Sons, O’Neal co-starred opposite Richard Egan on Empire, a 1962-63 NBC Western set in New Mexico.

O’Neal would go on to land a choice role on the drama series Peyton Place, appearing in 500 episodes from 1964 to 1969. His big screen breakout was starring alongside Ali MacGraw in Arthur Hiller’s 1970 tear-jerker Love Story; not a personal favorite of mine, but a huge box office hit that assured him movie star status for the remainder of that decade.

Honestly, I wouldn’t call him a method actor…but O’Neal was undeniably a movie star, in the old school sense; I might even venture, “laconic”, much like “the Gary Cooper of tomorrow” that he once aspired to be. A toast to a fine career, and all the wonders that it brought him.

Here’s some recommended viewing:

Barry Lyndon – Stanley Kubrick’s beautifully photographed, leisurely paced adaptation of William Makepeace Thackeray’s rags-to-riches-to-rags tale about a roguish Irishman (Ryan O’Neal) who grifts his way into the English aristocracy is akin to watching 18th-century paintings sumptuously spring to life (funnily enough, its detractors tend to liken it to “oil paintings” as well, but for entirely different reasons). The cast includes Marisa Berenson, Patrick Magee, Leonard Rossiter and Leon Vitali.

This magnificent 1975 film has improved with age, like a fine wine; successive viewings prove the stories about Kubrick’s obsession with the minutest of details were not exaggerated-every frame is steeped in verisimilitude. Michael Hordern’s delightfully droll voice over work as The Narrator rescues the proceedings from sliding into staidness.

The Driver -Walter Hill’s spare and hard-boiled neo-noir about a professional getaway driver (Ryan O’Neal) who plays cat-and-mouse with an obsessed cop out to nail him (Bruce Dern) and a dissatisfied customer who is now out to kill him. “Spare” would also be a good word to describe O’Neal’s character (billed in the credits simply as: The Driver), who utters but 350 words of dialog in the entire film. O’ Neal is perfectly cast, exuding a Zen-like cool. Also with Isabelle Adjani. One of my favorite 70s crime thrillers, and an obvious inspiration for Nicolas Winding Refn’s 2011 film Drive (my review).

Nickelodeon -Peter Bogdanovich’s love letter to the silent film era, depicting the trials and tribulations of indie filmmakers, circa 1910. It leans a bit heavy on the slapstick at times, but is bolstered by charming performances by a great cast that includes Ryan O’Neal, Stella Stevens, Burt Reynolds, John Ritter, and Tatum O’Neal. It’s beautifully photographed by László Kovács. Anyone who truly loves the movies will find the denouement quite moving.

Paper Moon -Two years after The Last Picture Show, director Peter Bogdanovich had the audacity to shoot yet another B&W film-which was going against the grain by the early 70s. This outing, however, was not a bleak drama. Granted, it is set during the Great Depression, but has a much lighter tone, thanks to precocious 9 year-old Tatum O’Neal, who steals every scene she shares with her dad Ryan (which is to say, nearly every scene in the film).

The O’Neals portray an inveterate con artist/Bible salesman and a recently orphaned girl he is transporting to Missouri (for a fee). Along the way, the pair discover they are a perfect tag team for bilking people out of their cookie jar money. Entertaining road movie, with the built-in advantage of a natural acting chemistry between the two leads.

Also on hand: Madeline Kahn (wonderful as always), John Hillerman, P.J. Johnson, and Noble Willngham. Ace DP László Kovács is in his element; he was no stranger to road movies (Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces). Alvin Sargent adapted his screenplay from Joe David Brown’s novel, “Addie Pray”.

Tough Guys Don’t Dance – If “offbeat noir” is your thing, this is your kind of film. Ryan O’Neal plays an inscrutable ex-con with a conniving “black widow” of a wife, who experiences five “really bad days” in a row, involving drugs, blackmail and murder. Due to temporary amnesia, however, he’s not sure of his own complicity (O’Neal begins each day by writing the date on his bathroom mirror with shaving cream-keep in mind, this film precedes Memento by 13 years.)

Noir icon Lawrence Tierny (cast here 5 years before Tarantino tapped him for Reservoir Dogs) is priceless as O’Neal’s estranged father, who is helping him sort out events (it’s worth the price of admission when Tierny barks “I just deep-sixed two heads!”).

Equally notable is a deliciously demented performance by B-movie trouper Wings Hauser as the hilariously named Captain Alvin Luther Regency. Norman Mailer’s “lack” of direction has been duly noted over the years, but his minimalist style works. The film has a David Lynch vibe at times (which could be due to the fact that Isabella Rossellini co-stars, and the soundtrack was composed by Lynch stalwart Angelo Badalamenti). A guilty pleasure.

What’s Up, Doc? – Peter Bogdanovich’s 1972 film is a love letter to classic screwball comedies of the 30s and 40s (the most obvious influence being Bringing Up Baby). Ryan O’Neal and Barbara Streisand have wonderful chemistry as the romantic leads, who meet cute and become involved in a hotel mix-up of four identical suitcases that rapidly snowballs into a series of increasingly preposterous situations for all concerned (as occurs in your typical screwball comedy).

The screenplay was co-written by Buck Henry, David Newman and Robert Benton. The fabulous cast includes Madeline Kahn, Kenneth Mars, Austin Pendleton and Michael Murphy. In his second collaboration with the director, cinematographer László Kovács works his usual magic with the San Francisco locale.

The Wild Rovers – Blake Edwards made a western? Yes, he did, and not a half-bad one at that. A world-weary cowhand (William Holden) convinces a younger (and somewhat dim) co-worker (Ryan O’Neal) that since it’s obvious that they’ll never really get ahead in their present profession, they should give bank robbery a shot. They get away with it, but then find themselves on the run, oddly, not so much from the law, but from their former employer (Karl Malden), who is mightily offended that anyone who worked for him would do such a thing. Episodic and leisurely paced, but ambles along quite agreeably, thanks to the charms of the two leads, and the beautiful, expansive photography by Philip Lathrop. Ripe for rediscovery.

Cop on the Edge, Drama, Neo-Noir, Tribute

The stars are God’s eyes: Adieu,William Friedkin

August 8, 2023 Dennis Hartley 1 Comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on August 7, 2023)

*sigh* One by one, the giants continue to fall:

William Friedkin, the Oscar-winning director behind The French Connection and The Exorcist who was one of the most admired directors to emerge from a wave of brilliant filmmakers who made their mark in the 1970s, died Monday. He was 87.

Friedkin died in Los Angeles, his wife, former producer and studio head Sherry Lansing, said.

His pictures, which also included 1977’s Sorcerer, 1985’s To Live and Die in L.A. and 2006’s Bug, were marked by an exceptional visual eye, a willingness to take what might have been a genre subject and treat it with high seriousness and a sense of how sound could add a subterranean layer of dread, mystery and dissonance to his stories — a haunted and haunting quality that lifted his visceral works into another realm, conveying a preternatural sense of “fear and paranoia, both old friends of mine,” as he said in his 2013 memoir, The Friedkin Connection.

Fear and paranoia. I’m not a religious person, but I distinctly remember jumping out of my seat and shouting “JESUS CHRIST!” about a dozen times the first time I saw The Exorcist.

It truly freaked me out, affecting me on a primal level like no other film I’d seen; to this day the very thought of sitting through it again makes me recoil. I remember feeling anger toward the filmmaker for triggering months of nightmares and lingering heebie-jeebies.

I was still in high school; I didn’t know from auteur theory or what a two-shot was…but I’d been to two world’s fairs and a rodeo and could sense that there was “something” about the atmosphere, the immersive nature of this film that raised the bar for horror tropes; there was a cinematic alchemist at the helm (“how did he do that to me?!”).

More from the Hollywood Reporter obit:

He was part of a brilliant generation of filmmakers who upended the studio system, making movies that were provocative, individualistic and anti-authoritarian. Several of its members at one time joined forces to create The Directors Company in an attempt to give themselves the independence they cherished, though internal disagreements led to its dissolution, not long after they had collectively turned down Star Wars.

About that “brilliant generation”…I “discovered” Friedkin’s 1971 crime drama masterpiece The French Connection, as well as the work of many of his contemporaries in a sort of ass-backward way-as I recounted in a 2017 piece about the death of the neighborhood theater:

Some of my fondest memories of the movie-going experience involve neighborhood theaters; particularly during a 3-year period of my life (1979-1982) when I was living in San Francisco. But I need to back up for a moment. I had moved to the Bay Area from Fairbanks, Alaska, which was not the ideal environment for a movie buff. At the time I moved from Fairbanks, there were only two single-screen movie theaters in town. To add insult to injury, we were usually several months behind the Lower 48 on first-run features (it took us nearly a year to even get Star Wars).

Keep in mind, there was no cable service in the market, and VCRs were a still a few years down the road. There were occasional midnight movie screenings at the University of Alaska, and the odd B-movie gem on late night TV (which we had to watch in real time, with 500 commercials to suffer through)…but that was it. Sometimes, I’d gather up a coterie of my culture vulture pals for the 260-mile drive to Anchorage, where there were more theaters for us to dip our beaks into.

Consequently, due to the lack of venues, I was reading more about movies, than watching them. I remember poring over back issues of The New Yorker at the public library, soaking up Penelope Gilliat and Pauline Kael; but it seemed requisite to live in NYC (or L.A.) to catch all these cool art-house and foreign movies they were raving about (most of those films just didn’t make it out up to the frozen tundra). And so it was that I “missed” a lot of 60s and 70s cinema.

Needless to say, when I moved to San Francisco, which had a plethora of fabulous neighborhood theaters in 1979, I quickly set about making up the deficit. While I had a lot of favorite haunts (The Surf, The Balboa, The Castro, and the Red Victorian loom large in my memory), there were two venerable (if a tad dodgy) downtown venues in particular where I spent an unhealthy amount of time in the dank and the dark with snoring bums who used the auditoriums as a $2 flop: The Roxie and The Strand.

That’s because they were “repertory” houses; meaning they played older films (frequently double and triple bills, usually curated by some kind of theme). That 3 years I spent in the dark was my film school; that’s how I got caught up with Francis Ford Coppola, Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese, Robert Altman, Hal Ashby, Terrence Malick, Woody Allen, Sidney Lumet, Peter Bogdanovich, Werner Herzog, Ken Russell, Lindsay Anderson, Wim Wenders, Michael Ritchie, Brian De Palma, etc.

I have probably seen The French Connection 25 times; if I happen to stumble across it while channel-surfing, I will inevitably get sucked in for a taste of Friedkin’s masterful direction, Ernest Tidyman’s crackling dialog (adapted from Robin Moore’s book), Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider’s indelible performances, or a jolt of adrenaline:

Gerald B. Greenburg picked up a well-deserved Oscar for that brilliant editing. Statues were also handed out to Friedkin for Best Director, producer Philip D’Antoni for Best Picture, Hackman for Best Actor (Scheider was nominated, but did not win for Best Supporting Actor), and Tidyman for Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium.

Just as his films were uncompromising and “in your face”, when it came to speaking his mind, Friedkin was certainly no shrinking violet. I found his irascibility endearing-like the sampling in this tribute Tweet posted today:

there will never be another William Friedkin — he was the definition of an iconoclast, told it like it was and was decidedly stubborn down to the bitter end

he leaves behind a career of great films, even a few bonafide masterpieces, but also a lot of perfect interviews

RIP pic.twitter.com/oYUxcYH2hN

— Justin LaLiberty (@jlalibs) August 7, 2023

Don’t hold back. Tell us how you really feel, Bill! Irascible …and irreplaceable.

In addition to the obvious “must-sees” The Exorcist (if you dare) and The French Connection, here are a few more Freidkin recommendations for movie night:

The Boys in the Band – Friedkin’s groundbreaking 1970 film adaptation of Mart Crowley’s off-Broadway play centers on a group of gay friends who have gathered to celebrate a birthday, and as the booze starts to flow, the fur begins to fly. It may not seem as “bold” or “daring” as perceived over 50 years ago (and many contemporary viewers will undoubtedly find certain stereotypes of the time to be problematic), but what the narrative reveals about human nature is universal and timeless.

It’s one of the best American dramas of the 1970s; a wicked verbal jousting match delivered by a crackerjack acting ensemble so finely tuned that you could set a metronome to the performances (Crowley adapted the screenplay). The production is also unique for enlisting the entire original stage cast to recreate their roles onscreen. Warning: Burt Bacharach’s “The Look of Love” will be playing in your head for days on end.

Sorcerer – The time is ripe for a re-appraisal of Friedkin’s 1977 action-adventure, which was greeted with indifference by audiences and critics at the time. Maybe it was the incongruous title, which likely led many to assume it would be in the vein of his previous film (and huge box-office hit), The Exorcist. Then again, it was tough for any other film to garner attention in the immediate wake of Star Wars.

At any rate, it’s an expertly directed, terrifically acted update of Henri-Georges Clouzot’s classic 1953 nail-biter, The Wages of Fear (I say “update” in deference to Friedkin, who bristles at the term “remake” in a “letter from the director” included with the Blu-ray I own).

Roy Scheider heads a superb international cast as a desperate American on the lam in South America, who signs up for a job transporting a truckload of nitroglycerin through rough terrain. Walon Green wrote the screenplay, and Tangerine Dream provides a memorable soundtrack.

Killer Joe – This 2012 film is a blackly funny and deliriously nasty piece of late-career work from Friedkin. Jim Thompson meets Sam Shepherd (with a whiff of Tennessee Williams) in this dysfunctional trailer trash-strewn tale of avarice, perversion and murder-for-hire, adapted for the screen by Tracy Letts from his own play. While the noir tropes in the narrative holds few surprises, the squeamish are forewarned that the then-76 year-old Friedkin still had a formidable ability to startle unsuspecting viewers; proving you’re never too old to earn an NC-17 rating. How startling? The real litmus test occurs during the film’s climactic scene, which is so Grand Guignol that (depending on your sense of humor) you’ll either cringe and cover your eyes…or laugh yourself sick. (Full review)

To Live and Die in L.A. – Essentially a remake of The French Connection (updated for the 80s), Friedkin’s fast-moving, tough-as-nails 1985 neo noir ignites the senses on every level: visual, aural and visceral.

Leads William Peterson (as an obsessed treasury agent) and Willem Dafoe (as his criminal nemesis) rip up the screen with star-making performances (both were relative unknowns). While the narrative adheres to familiar “cop on the edge” tropes, there’s an undercurrent of weirdness throughout that makes this a truly unique genre entry (“The stars are God’s eyes!” Peterson’s girlfriend shrieks at him at one point, for no apparent reason). Friedkin co-adapted the screenplay with source novel author Gerald Petievich.

Friedkin’s hard-boiled L.A. story is painted in dusky orange, vivid reds and stark blacks; an ugly/beautiful noir Hell rendered by the late great cinematographer Robby Müller (who worked extensively with Wim Wenders and Jim Jarmusch). The icing on the cake is Wang Chung’s ace soundtrack, woven seamlessly into the narrative by Friedkin and editor M. Scott Smith. This sequence alone is worth the price of admission (not to mention a masterclass in editing…if not counterfeiting):

Tribute

Serpentine, Serpentine: RIP Alan Arkin

July 1, 2023 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on June 30, 2023)

“Well, he died. You can’t get any older than that.”

– Alan Arkin as “Yossarian” in Catch-22

One by one, the acting heavyweights of my lifetime are diminishing and going into the West. This happens, of course, to every generation at some point; and I’ve been advised by some even more ancient than I that “you get used to it”. I’m not quite there yet, because this one hurts.

Sure, Alan Arkin was 89, but he didn’t burn out …nor did he fade away (sorry to blow your theory, Neil). As recently as 2021, he was garnering accolades and acting nominations for his wonderful work alongside Michael Douglas in the fourth season of the Netflix dramedy The Kominsky Method (if you are unacquainted, do yourself a favor).

I’d venture to say Arkin invented “dramedy”, with his penchant for delivering performances that could be intense, deeply affecting, wry, understated, and riotously funny all at once. As all great actors do, he effortlessly embodied the whole of human expression – and (as the song goes) all he had to do was act naturally.

The Brooklyn native also produced and directed on occasion, and (in his spare time?) taught acting classes. He was also a musician and a songwriter. In the mid-50s he sang lead and played guitar in a folk music group called The Tarriers (his film debut was in an appearance by the band in the 1957 film Calypso Heat Wave, although Arkin was uncredited). Here’s a mind-blower: he co-wrote “The Banana Boat Song”, which was a monster hit for Harry Belafonte.

But his most lasting legacy will be his film work; so in tribute I thought I’d share a few quick thoughts regarding my top four favorite Arkin performances. You may note that only one of them is a leading role; but just having him on board kicked any production up a notch. Rest well, sir.

Hearts of the West – Jeff Bridges gives a winning performance in this 1975 charmer as a rube from Iowa, a wannabe pulp western writer with the unlikely name of “Lewis Tater” (the scene where he asks the barber to cut his hair to make him look “just like Zane Grey” is priceless.)

Tater gets fleeced by a mail-order scam promising enrollment in what turns out to be a bogus university “out west”. Serendipity lands him a job as a stuntman in 1930s Hollywood westerns.

The film features one of Andy Griffith’s best screen performances, and Alan Arkin is a riot as a perpetually apoplectic director (he handily steals every scene he’s in). Excellent direction by Howard Zieff, tight screenplay by Rob Thompson. Also with Donald Pleasence, Blythe Danner, Richard B. Shull, and Herb Edelman.

Catch-22 – Yossarian: OK, let me see if I’ve got this straight. In order to be grounded, I’ve got to be crazy. And I must be crazy to keep flying. But if I ask to be grounded, that means I’m not crazy anymore, and I have to keep flying.

Dr. ‘Doc’ Daneeka: You got it, that’s Catch-22.

Yossarian: Whoo… That’s some catch, that Catch-22.

Dr. ‘Doc’ Daneeka: It’s the best there is.

Anyone who has read and appreciated the beautifully precise absurdity of Joseph Heller’s eponymous 1961 novel about the ugly and imprecise madness of war knows it is virtually “un-filmable”. And yet Mike Nichols knocked it out of the park with this 1970 film adaptation…and Buck Henry did a yeoman’s job of condensing the novel into a two-hour screenplay (although arguably some of the best exchanges in the film are those left virtually unchanged from the book).

Of course, it didn’t hurt to have such a great director and an outstanding cast: Alan Arkin, Martin Balsalm, Richard Benjamin, Art Gafunkel, Jack Gilford, Bob Newhart, Anthony Perkins, Paula Prentiss, Martin Sheen, Jon Voight, Orson Welles, Charles Grodin, Bob Balaban, et. al., with Henry playing the part of “Colonel Korn”. I think this 50+ year-old film has improved with age.

Little Murders – This dark, dark comedy from 1971 is one of my all-time favorite films. It was directed by Arkin and adapted by Jules Feiffer from his own self-described “post-assassination play” (referring to the then-relatively recent murders of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy). That said, it is not wholly political; but it is sociopolitical (I see it as the pre-cursor to Paddy Chayefsky’s Network).

Elliot Gould is at the peak of his Elliot Gould-ness as a nihilistic (and seemingly brain-dead) free-lance photographer who is essentially browbeaten into a love affair with an effervescent sunny side-up young woman (Marcia Rodd) who is bound and determined to snap him out of his torpor. The story follows the travails of this oil and water couple as they slog through a dystopian New York City chock full o’ nuts, urban blight, indifference and random shocking acts of senseless violence (you know…New York City in the 70s).

There are so many memorable vignettes, and nearly every cast member gets a Howard Beale-worthy monologue on how fucked-up American society is (and remember…this was 1971). Disturbingly, it remains relevant as ever. But it is very funny. No, seriously. The cast includes Vincent Gardenia, Elizabeth Wilson, Doris Roberts, Lou Jacobi (who has the best monologue) and Donald Sutherland. Arkin casts himself as an eccentric homicide investigator-and he’s a hoot.

The Seven-Per-Cent Solution – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s super sleuth Sherlock Holmes has weathered an infinite number of movie incarnations over the decades, but none as fascinating as Nicol Williamson’s tightly wound coke fiend in this wonderful 1977 Herbert Ross film.

Intrepid sidekick Dr. Watson (Robert Duvall), concerned over his friend’s addiction, decides to do an intervention, engineering a meeting between the great detective and Dr. Sigmund Freud (Arkin). Naturally, there is a mystery afoot as well, but it’s secondary to the vastly entertaining interplay between Williamson and Arkin.

Screenwriter Nicholas Meyer (who adapted from his own novel) would repeat the gimmick two years later in his directing debut Time After Time, when he placed similarly odd bedfellows together in one story by pitting H.G. Wells against Jack the Ripper.

More recommendations: Wait Until Dark, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Simon, The In-Laws, Glengarry Glen Ross, Edward Scissorhands, Little Miss Sunshine, Argo.

Animated, Fantasy, Sci-Fi

Movie night at the mini-mart: Top 10 Little People Films

February 20, 2023 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on February 18, 2023)

Train in vein: Raquel Welch (September 5, 1940- February 15, 2023)

In the canyons of your mind
I will wander through your brain
To the ventricles of your heart, my dear
I’m in love with you again

– from “Canyons of Your Mind,” by The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band

Earlier this week, I was mindlessly scrolling through Twitter (as one does) and noticed that Fantastic Voyage was trending. Initially, I was puzzled as to why that nearly 60 year-old film was on the radar. Then I saw “Raquel Welch” trending, and thought “Uh-oh…another pop culture icon of my youth has diminished and gone into the West.”

There’s a 65% chance that I couldn’t tell you where I left my goddam keys, but I have vivid memories of attending a Saturday matinee showing of Fantastic Voyage at Theater #1 (Fort Wainwright, Alaska) and becoming mesmerized by the sight of Raquel Welch cavorting about the movie screen in a skin-tight scuba outfit for 2 hours.

Being only 10 in 1966, I could not articulate exactly what it was about this vision that captured my imagination, any more than I could explain the similar fascination I had for watching Diana Rigg cavort about the TV screen in a skin-tight leather outfit (on the odd occasion my parents would let me stay up to watch The Avengers).

Of course, Raquel Welch starred in a number of memorable films; Hannie Caulder, Kansas City Bomber, The Three Musketeers, The Four Musketeers, The Last of Shelia, Lady in Cement, Bedazzled, The Magic Christian, and One Million Years B.C. round off my top 10. But Fantastic Voyage holds a special place in the ventricles of my heart.

So in memoriam to Ms. Welch (and our first encounter) I thought I’d take time out to thank all the little people-in alphabetical order:

The Borrower Arrietty – Based on Mary Norton’s 1952 novel, The Borrowers, Hiromasa Yonebayashi’s enchanting 2010 anime follows the travails of a family of 4-inch tall people who live under the floorboards of a country home. Teenager Arrietty (voiced by Mirai Shida) and her parents survive by “borrowing” items from the humans who live upstairs; items that they won’t necessarily miss (a cube of sugar yields a year’s worth of sweetener for their tea).

The tricky part, of course, is absconding with the provisions without attracting attention. Once Arrietty is spotted by the young boy who lives in the house, life for her family becomes complicated. This is a lovely film, beautifully animated. The screenplay was adapted by Studio Ghibli’s master director, Hayao Miyazaki, with Keiko Niwa.

Darby O’Gill and the Little People – Sean Connery…in a film about leprechauns?! Stranger things have happened. Albert Sharpe gives a delightful performance as lead character Darby O’Gill in this 1959 fantasy from perennially family-friendly director Robert Stevenson (Mary Poppins, The Love Bug, The Absent-Minded Professor, That Darn Cat!).

Darby is a crusty yet benign b.s. artist who finds himself embroiled in the kind of tale no one would believe if he told them it were true-matching wits with the King of the Leprechauns (Jimmy O’Dea), who has offered to play matchmaker between Darby’s daughter (Janet Munro) and the strapping pre-Bond Connery.

The special effects hold up well (considering the limitations of the time). The scenes between Sharpe and O’Dea are amusing (“Careful what you say…I speak Gaelic too!”). Stevenson later directed another “little people” movie, The Gnome-Mobile, in 1967.

Fantastic Planet – Lest you begin to think that every film on this list is “family-friendly”, think again. I wouldn’t show this one to the kids (unless they’re the kids from Village of the Damned).

Director Rene Laloux’s imaginative 1973 animated fantasy (originally released as La planete sauvage) is about a race of mini-humans called Oms, who live on a distant planet and have been enslaved (or viewed and treated as dangerous pests) for generations by big, brainy, blue aliens called the Draags. We follow the saga of Terr, an Om adopted as a house pet by a Draag youngster.

Equal parts Spartacus, Planet of the Apes, and that night in the dorm you took mushrooms, it’s at once unnerving and mind-blowing.

Fantastic Voyage – This Cold War thriller/sci-fi/action hybrid starring Raquel Welch (poured into a body suit), could only have been concocted in the 1960s. A scientist from behind the Iron Curtain sustains a serious head injury while being “brought in from the cold” by the CIA. Now it’s up to a team of scientists to operate on the life-threatening blood clot…from inside the man’s body (thanks to a top-secret government project that enables humans to be miniaturized to the size of a blood cell). The catch is that the team can only be miniaturized for one hour max (tick…tick…tick).

Welch is joined in the world’s tiniest lil’ submarine by Steven Boyd, Donald Pleasance, Arthur Kennedy and William Redfield. Richard Fleisher directed, and the film picked up Oscars (for art/set direction and special effects). The film undoubtedly inspired Joe Dante’s 1987 sci-fi comedy, Innerspace. BTW, director Fleischer’s Uncle Dick directed the next film on my list (OK, I’ll say it: Small world…).

Gulliver’s Travels (1939) – “There’s a giant on the beach!” Filmmakers have been trying to get this one right for over 100 years (the earliest version was made in 1902, the most recent was 2010), but for me, Dick Fleischer’s 1939 animated musical remains the definitive movie adaptation of Jonathan Swift’s classic novel.

Clocking in at just a little over an hour, it’s the breezy tale of a sailor named Gulliver, who washes up on the shores of the fantastical land of Lilliput. At first, the tiny Lilliputians aren’t sure how they should react to this mysterious “giant”, but he proves to be a valuable asset in helping to resolve brewing tensions between them and their neighbors in the equally diminutive kingdom of Blefiscu. A visual and musical delight (and you’ve gotta love a pacifist hero).

Help! – Compared to its predecessor A Hard Day’s Night, this film vehicle for The Beatles is more fluffy. Ringo is chased by a religious cult who wish to offer him up as a human sacrifice; hilarity ensues. But still, it’s a lot of fun, if you’re in the proper mood for it. Luckily, the Beatles themselves exude enough goofy energy and effervescent charm to make up for the wafer-thin plot line.

There are a few good zingers in Marc Behm and Charles Wood’s screenplay; but the biggest delights come from the Beatles’ music, and director Richard Lester’s flair for visual inventiveness. Which brings me to the reason I included this film on my list…a vignette entitled “The Exciting Adventure of Paul on the Floor”, wherein Paul accidentally receives an overdose of a mad scientist’s “shrinking” serum. It’s a small (*ahem*) section of the film, but it’s memorable.

Honey, I Shrunk the Kids –Rick Moranis stars as a suburban absent-minded professor-type who invents a shrinking device. Before he has a chance to work out the bugs, a freak accident reduces his two kids and the next-door neighbor’s two kids into spoon-sized humans. Hilarity (and unexpected poignancy) ensues, as the four shrunken victims encounter assorted microcosmic terrors in the backyard while Dad frantically brainstorms a solution.

Special effects are imaginative and well-done. While this is Disney (the original working title was The Teenie Weenies), it’s not as twee as one might expect. This was the directorial debut for Joe Johnston, who would later make the outstanding family drama October Sky.

The Incredible Shrinking Man – Always remember, never mix your drinks. And, as we learn from Jack Arnold’s 1957 sci-fi classic, you should never mix radiation exposure with insecticide…because that will make you shrink, little by little, day by day. That’s what happens to Scott Carey (Grant Williams), much to the horror of his wife (Randy Stuart) and his stymied doctors.

Unique for its time in that it deals primarily with the emotional, rather than fantastical aspects of the hapless protagonist’s transformation. To be sure, the film has memorable set-pieces (particularly Scott’s chilling encounters with a spider and his own house cat), but there is more emphasis on how the dynamics of the couple’s relationship changes as Scott becomes more diminutive. The denouement presages the existential finale of The Quiet Earth.

In the fullness of time, some have gleaned sociopolitical subtext in Richard Matheson’s screenplay; or at least a subtle thumb in the eye of 1950s conformity. Matheson adapted from his novel. He also wrote the popular I Am Legend (adapted for the screen as The Last Man on Earth , The Omega Man and the eponymous 2007 film).

The Indian in the Cupboard – Veteran Muppeteer Frank Oz teamed up with E.T. screenwriter Melissa Mathison for this light fantasy about a boy and a tiny Native American warrior who lives in his cupboard. Omri (Hal Scardino) receives a small antique cupboard as a birthday gift. A friends gives him a plastic Indian play figure, which he puts in the cupboard. His mother (Lindsay Crouse) digs up a family heirloom key, which enables Omri to secure his new toy.

There’s something about the combo of cupboard, key and figurine that results in the appearance of a living, breathing, toy-sized human named Little Bear (played by Native-American rapper Litefoot), who has time-traveled from 1761 (don’t ask). Soon he has two equally diminutive companions, a cowboy (David Keith), and a bumbling WW I English soldier (Steve Coogan). The film occasionally lags, but its sweet, gentle tone and positive message (promoting tolerance) isn’t the worst thing you could share with the kids.

The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb – This film, on the other hand, is probably about the worst “little people” fairy tale you could let the kids watch before bedtime. Closer to Eraserhead than, say, Pinocchio, this is one of those oddball films that nearly defies description.

English slum dwellers Ma and Pa Thumb (Deborah Collard and Nick Upton) are shocked when Ma gives birth to an infant you could fit in your pocket. Still, the proud parents soon find themselves showering their adorable (if freakish) little Tom with love and affection. Unfortunately, this happy family scenario is rudely interrupted when Tom is kidnapped by black-clad henchmen, who spirit him away to a truly creepy genetic lab. Tom’s secret adventures are only beginning.

Writer-director Dave Borthwick utilizes stop-motion techniques, combining actors with claymation to create an overall unsettling mood. It almost plays like a silent film; any “dialog” is unintelligible gibberish. All of the actors employ the same bizarrely mannered facial tics and line delivery, which are strangely reminiscent of Billy Bob Thornton’s character in Sling Blade. It’s weird, yet compelling.

On Music

How quick they pass: RIP Burt Bacharach

February 10, 2023 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on February 9, 2023)

Well, here we go again:

One of the most accomplished pop music composers of the 20th century, Burt Bacharach, has died at age 94. The musical maestro behind 52 top 40 hits including “Alfie,” “Walk on By,” “Promises, Promises,” “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head,” “What the World Needs Now is Love” and “Do You Know the Way to San Jose?,” Bacharach had an untouchable run in the 1960s and 1970s with a wide range of pop, R&B and soul artists. According to the Associated Press, Bacharach died on Wednesday (Feb. 8) at his home in Los Angeles of natural causes.

Working with lyricist partner Hal David, Bacharach and David were dubbed the “Rodgers & Hart” of the ’60s, with a unique style featuring instantly hummable melodies and atypical arrangements that folded in everything from jazz and pop to Brazilian grooves and rock.

Many of their songs were popularized by Dionne Warwick, whose singing style inspired Bacharach to experiment with new rhythms and harmonies, composing such innovative melodies as “Anyone Who Had a Heart” and “I Say a Little Prayer.”

Bacharach’s music cut across age lines, appealing to teens as well as an older generation who could appreciate the Tin Pan Alley feel of some of David’s lyrics. His fresh style could keep the listener off balance but was intensely moving, defying convention with uplifting melodies that contrasted the often bittersweet lyrics.

Granted, he was 94, and enjoyed a long and productive life, but this is another one that hurts (we’ve had a string of them lately). I realize it’s generational; as I Tweeted today:

With all due respect to Mike Myers, it's weirdly disheartening to see "Austin Powers" trending with "Burt Bacharach" (why not "Casino Royale","What's New, Pussycat?", "Butch Cassidy", "The Boys in the Band", "Arthur", et. al.?). Or perhaps I'm THAT f**king old.

— Dennis Hartley (@denofcinema5) February 9, 2023

And get off my lawn. I guess I AM that f**king old, which became abundantly clear after I received a number of replies schooling me on a thing or two…prompting this apologia:

Here’s what “the kids” were referring to:

At any rate, the Bacharach/David catalog is a rich vein of pure pop for now people of any generation; which is why their songs can play any room-from cocktail lounges to mosh pits.

That said, the recording artist most synonymous with the legendary songwriting team is Dionne Warwick. Bacharach, David, and Warwick had an amazing chemistry. Here’s a clip from a 1970 episode of The Kraft Music Hall, which illustrates why Bacharach and Warwick were such a perfect match of composer/arranger and recording artist…the easygoing rapport, mutual respect, and the creative inspiration each took from the other is palpable.

Casual brilliance. Like most pop geniuses…he made it look so easy. A much harder task is picking my 10 favorite Bacharach songs, so I’ve cheated a bit and made it an even dozen.

Always Something There to Remind Me (Burt Bacharach, Hal David) – Sandie Shaw

This was a #1 hit in the UK for Shaw back in 1964.

Baby, It’s You (Burt Bacharach, Luther Dixon, Mack David) – Smith

This early Bacharach hit had previously been covered by The Shirelles and The Beatles in the early 60s, but I’ve always loved this swampy blues version, with a seductive and soulful lead vocal by Gale McCormick. It made the U.S. top 5 in 1969.

Do You Know the Way to San Jose? (Burt Bacharach, Hal David) – Dionne Warwick

Warwick’s version is, of course, definitive.

God Give Me Strength (Burt Bacharach, Elvis Costello) – Kristin Vigard

This version (sung by Kristin Vigard) appears in the sleeper Grace of My Heart. Allison Anders’ 1996 film features a knockout performance by Illeana Douglas. Elvis Costello recorded a version for Painted From Memory, his 1998 collaboration album with Bacharach-but curiously, Vigard’s beautiful interpretation remains unavailable in any other format.

I Say a Little Prayer (Burt Bacharach, Hal David) – Aretha Franklin

Another definitive rendition. Three words: Queen of Soul.

The Look of Love (Burt Bacharach, Hal David) – Dusty Springfield

Dusty Springfield’s breathy delivery and the most laid-back sax solo in the history of recorded music make this one really special. This version memorably graced two film soundtracks: Casino Royale (1967), and The Boys in the Band (1970).

Make it Easy on Yourself (Burt Bacharach, Hal David) – The Walker Brothers

Scott Walker’s mellifluous baritone makes this a winner. The 1965 single topped the UK charts at #1, and peaked at #16 on the Hot 100 Chart in the U.S.

Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head (Burt Bacharach, Hal David) – B.J .Thomas

Bolstered by its utilization for a memorable (if oddly incongruous) scene in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, this song hit #1 in the U.S. and Canada in late 1969.

This Guy’s in Love With You (Burt Bacharach, Hal David) – Herb Alpert

Herb Alpert was never in love with his own voice, but his laid-back performance (and subtle trumpet work) struck a chord with millions of record-buyers, which handily pushed this to #1 on the Billboard charts in 1968. Bacharach arranged.

Walk on By (Burt Bacharach, Hal David) – The Stranglers

I was torn on this one, because I love Isaac Hayes’ epic version equally (featured on his classic 1969 album Hot Buttered Soul, which I wrote about here). But I decided to go with The Stranglers, who released this fab version in 1978. Shades of the Doors’ “Light My FIre”.

What the World Needs Now (Burt Bacharach, Hal David) – Jackie DeShannon

This peaked at #7 in 1965. Covered by many artists, but DeShannon’s version rules.

The Windows of the World (Burt Bacharach, Hal David) – Dionne Warwick

Warwick has declared this haunting, moving antiwar statement to be her personal favorite from her own catalog. Unusually political for a Hal David lyric, it was released in 1967.

Bonus Track!

Bacharach Medley (Burt Bacharach, Hal David) – The Carpenters

Say what you will about the Carpenters…but their Bacharach medley was killer-bee. No Autotune here, kids…absolutely live. Harmonies pitch-perfect as the studio version, AND she’s keeping perfect time.

On Music

This Byrd has flown: RIP David Crosby

January 23, 2023 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on January 21, 2023)

In his Jeff Beck tribute last week, music industry maven Bob Lefsetz observed:

And [Beck’s] death was so sudden. At 78. May sound old to you, but then you’re probably not a baby boomer. I mean the end is always looming, but you always believe it’s at some distant point in the future, when in truth it’s closer than you think.

But it’s even weirder than that. The giants are falling. The building blocks of not only the British Invasion, but classic rock, are passing. The icons and the secondary players. But they were all major players to us, music was everything. Not only was it soul-fulfilling, it told you which way the wind blew. And the hits were not all the same and new ones popped up all the time, it was a veritable smorgasbord of greatness.

Falling like dominoes. To paraphrase The Giant in Twin Peaks: “It is happening again.”

I don’t know what to say other than I’m heartbroken to hear about David Crosby. David was an unbelievable talent – such a great singer and songwriter. And a wonderful person. I just am at a loss for words. Love & Mercy to David’s family and friends. Love, Brian pic.twitter.com/Hjht7LeGiv

— Brian Wilson (@BrianWilsonLive) January 19, 2023

God bless David Crosby and peace and love to all his family peace and love Ringo 😎✌️🌟❤️🌈🍒🎶🥦☮️ pic.twitter.com/7wNvVDkO57

— #RingoStarr (@ringostarrmusic) January 20, 2023

David Crosby stuck to his guns. A difficult and gifted man. Whose talent and taste was immense. His harmonious voice still echoes in Laurel Canyon. A proud man who said what he said, and felt what he felt with no apology. A brilliant songwriter, and an American Icon, RIP. pic.twitter.com/lwL5emAdQ3

— Michael Des Barres (@MDesbarres) January 19, 2023

“Difficult and gifted” would be a fitting epitaph. But with Crosby, the “gift” far out-trumped the “difficult”. No matter how bad things got for him, that heavenly, crystalline voice never faltered. In fact, his pipes were so pure and pitch perfect that while I can always isolate Stills, Nash, and Young’s individual parts in those patented harmonies…try as I might, I can never “hear” Crosby. I know he’s in there, somewhere-but I’ll be damned if I can detect his contribution. Yet, I would notice if he were not there.

He was one of the best harmony singers that I have never heard.

Crosby was not only an ideal “middleman” for facilitating lovely harmonies, but an essential catalyst for several iconic bands that sprang from the Laurel Canyon scene of the 1960’s. In my review of the 2019 documentary Echo in the Canyon, I wrote:

“The Byrds were great; when [The Beatles] came to L.A. [The Byrds] came and hung out with us. That 12-string sound was great. The voices were great. So, we loved The Byrds. They introduced us to a…hallucinogenic situation, and uh…we had a really good time.”

– Ringo Starr, from the 2019 documentary Echo in the Canyon

Someone once quipped “If you can remember anything about the 60s, you weren’t really there”. Luckily for Ringo and his fellow music vets who appear in Andrew Slater’s documentary Echo in the Canyon, they’re only required to “remember” from 1965-1967.

That is the specific time period that Slater, a long-time record company exec, music journalist and album producer chooses to highlight in his directing debut. His film also focuses on a specific location: Laurel Canyon. Nestled in the Hollywood Hills West district of L.A., this relatively cozy and secluded neighborhood (a stone’s throw off the busy Sunset Strip) was once home to a now-legendary, creatively incestuous enclave of influential folk-rockers (The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, Mamas and the Papas, et.al.). […]

Frankly, there aren’t many surprises in store; turns out that nearly everybody was (wait for it) excited and influenced by The Beatles, who in turn were excited and influenced by The Byrds and the Beach Boys, who were in turn inspired to greater heights by the resultant exponential creative leaps achieved by the Beatles (echo in the canyon…get it?) […]

One comes away with a sense about the unique creative camaraderie of the era. Roger McGuinn once received a courtesy note from George Harrison that the main riff he used for the Beatles’ “If I Needed Someone” was based on the Byrds’ “Bells of Rhymney”. Apparently, McGuinn was totally cool with that. […]

According to Stephen Stills, there was so much musical badminton going on at the time that a little unconscious plagiarism now and then was inevitable. In one somewhat awkward scene, Dylan asks Eric Clapton about the suspiciously similar chord changes in Stills’ song “Questions” (by Buffalo Springfield) and Clapton’s “Let it Rain”. After mulling it over for several very long seconds, Clapton shrugs and concurs “I must have copped it.”

Crosby was right there, at the epicenter. As Michael Des Barres noted, he “stuck to his guns”, wearing the ethos of 60s counterculture idealism and political activism on his sleeve until his dying day. From my review of the 2008 documentary Déjà Vu:

Cracks about geriatric rockers aside, it becomes apparent that the one thing that remains ageless is the power of the music, and the commitment from [Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young]. Songs like “Ohio”, “Military Madness”, “For What it’s Worth” and “Chicago” prove to have resilience and retain a topical relevance that does not go unnoticed by younger fans. And anyone who doesn’t tear up listening to the band deliver the solemnly beautiful harmonies of their elegiac live show closer, “Find the Cost of Freedom”, while a photo gallery featuring hundreds of smiling young Americans who died in Iraq scrolls on the big screen behind them, can’t possibly have anything resembling a soul residing within.

Adieu to a musical icon. Here are 10 of my favorite Crosby songs. Feel free to tear up.

What’s Happening?!?! – The Byrds (written by David Crosby; from Fifth Dimension)

Triad – The Byrds (written by David Crosby; from The Notorious Byrd Brothers)

Guinevere – Crosby, Stills, & Nash (written by David Crosby; from Crosby, Stills, & Nash)

Wooden Ships – Crosby, Stills, & Nash (written by David Crosby, Paul Kantner, and Stephen Stills; from Crosby, Stills, & Nash)

Déjà Vu – Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young (written by David Crosby, from Déjà Vu)

Almost Cut My Hair – Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young (written by David Crosby, from Déjà Vu)

Laughing – David Crosby (written by David Crosby; from If I Could Only Remember My Name)

Have You Seen the Stars Tonight? – The Jefferson Starship (written by Paul Kantner and David Crosby; from Blows Against the Empire)

Whole Cloth – Crosby & Nash (written by David Crosby; from Graham Nash David Crosby)

In My Dreams – Crosby, Stills, & Nash (written by David Crosby; from CSN)

On Music, Tribute

The Alchemist: RIP Jeff Beck

January 12, 2023 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on January 11, 2023)

Goddam it all, anyway. This one hurts.

On behalf of his family, it is with deep and profound sadness that we share the news of Jeff Beck’s passing. After suddenly contracting bacterial meningitis, he peacefully passed away yesterday. His family ask for privacy while they process this tremendous loss. pic.twitter.com/4dvt5aGzlv

— Jeff Beck (@jeffbeckmusic) January 11, 2023

The music world has lost one of its greatest vocalists. That is not a typo. Jeff Beck could make a guitar speak, in every sense of the word. He rarely stepped up to the mic during the course of his 60+ year career, but whenever he set his fingers to a fret board, he told you a story; sometimes joyous and life-affirming, sometimes sad and melancholy…but it never meandered into masturbatory self-indulgence. Every note held import, serving a distinct narrative that had a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Like all great artists, he was loathe to dawdle too long in a comfort zone; he never stopped exploring, pushing the boundaries of his instrument ever-further with each performance (whether on stage or in the studio). While he was generally relegated to the “rock” section, he could slide effortlessly from blues, boogie, and metal to funk, R & B, soul, jazz and fusion (more often than not, all within the same number).

He made it appear easy as an oil change, but I’m sure he put in his “10,000 hours” of practice at some point (when he wasn’t tinkering with his cars, which was his “happy place” off stage). I’ve been playing guitar for 50 years, and no matter how closely I’ve studied his fingers in concert videos, I am stymied as to how he wrestled those sounds from his axe. All I know is that it had something to do with the whammy bar, volume knobs, thumb-picking, and a magic ring. It’s some kind of alchemy way beyond my ken.

I saw Beck in L.A. with The Jan Hammer Group, circa 1976 at the Starlight Amphitheater. I was in the nosebleed section, but I. was. mesmerized. A command performance.

You’ve heard the term “musician’s musician”? The Twitter tributes confirm he was.

His technique unique. His imaginations apparently limitless. Jeff I will miss you along with your millions of fans. Jeff Beck Rest in Peace.https://t.co/4h1DfXXmWI

— Jimmy Page (@JimmyPage) January 11, 2023

🙏Now Jeff has gone, I feel like one of my band of brothers has left this world, and I’m going to dearly miss him. I’m sending much sympathy to Sandra, his family, and all who loved him. I want to thank him for all our early days together in Jeff Beck Group, conquering America. pic.twitter.com/UareDAdtZ9

— Ronnie Wood (@ronniewood) January 11, 2023

1/2
Jeff Beck was on another planet . He took me and Ronnie Wood to the USA in the late 60s in his band the Jeff Beck Group
and we haven’t looked back since . pic.twitter.com/uS7bbWsHgW

— Sir Rod Stewart (@rodstewart) January 11, 2023

I was totally shocked to hear the very sad news of Jeff Beck’s passing. Jeff was such a nice person and an outstanding iconic, genius guitar player – there will never be another Jeff Beck. His playing was very special & distinctively brilliant! He will be missed. RIP Jeff -Tony pic.twitter.com/i6BGdqTUKU

— Tony Iommi (@tonyiommi) January 11, 2023

And how can we forget his Antonioni moment?

Even from somewhere out there in the ether, he’s expressing what I’m feeling right now, as I listen to my favorite Beck instrumental. Rest in peace, maestro. Rave on.

On Pop Culture

Not necessarily in that order: A (roundabout) tribute to Jean-Luc Godard

September 19, 2022 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on September 17, 2022)

December 3, 1930-September 13, 2022

A film should have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order. –Jean Luc-Godard

Speaking of “non-linear”, that reminds me of a funny story (well, not “ha-ha” funny). I once had the privilege of seeing the late Jean Luc-Godard in the flesh before I had seen any of his films. To be honest, this memory had been tucked away in the cobwebs of my mind until several days ago, when it was triggered by this AP news flash:

Jean-Luc Godard, the iconic “enfant terrible” of the French New Wave who revolutionized popular cinema in 1960 with his first feature, “Breathless,” and stood for years among the film world’s most influential directors, died Tuesday. He was 91.

Godard died peacefully and surrounded by loved ones at his home in the Swiss town of Rolle, on Lake Geneva, his family said in a statement. The statement gave assisted suicide, which is legal in Switzerland, as the cause of death.

A medical report recently revealed the director had “multiple invalidating pathologies,” according to the family statement, which did not specify the conditions.

Over a long career that began in the 1950s as a film critic, Godard was perhaps the most boundary-breaking director among New Wave filmmakers who rewrote the rules for camera, sound and narrative — rebelling against an earlier tradition of more formulaic storytelling.

[JUMP CUT]

Be advised that this will not an assessment of his oeuvre. No one could accuse me of being a Godard scholar; out of his 40+ feature films, I’ve seen 12. And out of that relative handful, the only two I have felt compelled to watch more than once are Breathless and Alphaville.

The aptly entitled Breathless still knocks the wind out of me; it was (and remains) a freewheeling, exhilarating poke in the lens of conventional film making. And…sodamsexy. Despite its flouting of the rules, the film is (possibly) Godard’s most easily digestible work. Over the years, his films would become ever more challenging (or downright maddening).

Indeed, even my second-favorite Godard film, Alphaville, played hard-to-get with me. From my review of the 2019 Blu-ray reissue:

The first time I saw this 1965 Jean-Luc Godard film I said to myself “WTF did I just watch?” I shrugged it off and forgot about it for about a decade. Then, a couple weeks ago I picked up a copy of this newly restored 4K Blu-ray and watched it a second time. This time, I said to myself, “Oh. I think I got it.” Then, after pausing a beat “No. I don’t got it.” Now bound and determined, I watched it AGAIN several days later.

This time, by George…I think I got it: Godard’s film, with its mashup of science fiction, film noir, dystopian nightmare and existential despair is a pre-cursor to Blade Runner, Dark City and Death and the Compass.

See? I freely admit to being a middlebrow film buff with a high school diploma who’s been to two worlds fairs and a rodeo, but I eventually “get it”. Now, it’s possible the stumbling block that I can’t quite articulate is the “disturbing quality” of Godard’s films that Pauline Kael expounds upon thusly in her 1966 essay “Movie Brutalists: The French New Wave”:

There is a disturbing quality in Godard’s work that perhaps helps to explain why the young are drawn to his films and identify with them, and why so many older people call him a “coterie” artist and don’t think his films are important. His characters don’t seem to have any future. They are most alive (and most appealing) just because they don’t conceive of the day after tomorrow; they have no careers, no plans, only fantasies of the roles they could play, of careers, thefts, romance, politics, adventure, pleasure, a life like in the movies. […]

An elderly gentleman recently wrote me, “Oh, they’re such a bore, bore, bore, modern youth!! All attitudes and nothing behind the attitudes. When I was in my twenties, I didn’t just loaf around, being a rebel, I went places and did things. The reason they all hate the squares is because the squares remind them of the one thing they are trying to forget: there is a Future and you must build for it.”

He’s wrong, I think. The young are not “trying to forget”: they just don’t think in those terms. Godard’s power—and possibly his limitation—as an artist is that he so intensely expresses how they do feel and think.

OK, I think I get it now. Godard was intense. Like a repo man (to paraphrase Harry Dean Stanton). And you know what? Akin to Ms. Kael’s elderly gentleman, when I was in my twenties, I didn’t just loaf around, being a rebel, either… I went places and did things. Like that time I was living in San Francisco and went to see Pauline Kael and Jean-Luc Godard.

[FLASHBACK]

I should back up a second and explain how it was that I ended up seeing Godard before seeing any of his films. From my 2017 essay about the demise of the neighborhood theater:

Some of my fondest memories of the movie-going experience involve neighborhood theaters; particularly during a 3-year period of my life (1979-1982) when I was living in San Francisco. But I need to back up for a moment. I had moved to the Bay Area from Fairbanks, Alaska, which was not the ideal environment for a movie buff. At the time I moved from Fairbanks, there were only two single-screen movie theaters in town. To add insult to injury, we were usually several months behind the Lower 48 on first-run features (it took us nearly a year to even get Star Wars).

Keep in mind, there was no cable service in the market, and VCRs were a still a few years down the road. There were occasional midnight movie screenings at the University of Alaska, and the odd B-movie gem on late night TV (which we had to watch in real time, with 500 commercials to suffer through)…but that was it. Sometimes, I’d gather up a coterie of my culture vulture pals for the 260-mile drive to Anchorage, where there were more theaters for us to dip our beaks into.

Consequently, due to the lack of venues, I was reading more about movies, than watching them. I remember poring over back issues of The New Yorker at the public library, soaking up Penelope Gilliat and Pauline Kael; but it seemed requisite to live in NYC (or L.A.) to catch all these cool art-house and foreign movies they were raving about (most of those films just didn’t make it out up to the frozen tundra). And so it was that I “missed” a lot of 60s and 70s cinema.

Needless to say, when I moved to San Francisco, which had a plethora of fabulous neighborhood theaters in 1979, I quickly set about making up the deficit.

[FLASH-FORWARD]

Which brings us back to the news of Godard’s passing this week. I suddenly remembered attending an event in the early 80s that featured Pauline Kael and Jean-Luc Godard onstage somewhere discussing (wait for it) film. But since my memory has been playing tricks as of late (I mean, I’m 66…however the hell that happened), I thought I’d consult someone who was there with me…my pal Digby. She not only confirmed that she and I and my girlfriend at the time did indeed pile into Digby’s Volkswagen to see Kael and Godard (at the Marin Civic Center in Mill Valley, as it turns out), but somehow dug up a transcript of the proceedings.

There was much lamenting and gnashing of teeth when we realized this happened 41 flippin’ years ago (oh, to be in my mid-20s again). Anyway, the evening was billed as “The Economics of Film Criticism: A Debate with Jean Luc-Godard and Pauline Kael” (May 7, 1981). I recall primarily being super-jazzed about seeing Kael (I was more familiar with her work than Godard’s). I can’t recall a word either of them said, of course, but I do remember my surprise at how engaging and effusive Godard was (I had fully expected to see the “enfant terrible”).

Reading through the transcript…I must have learned a lot (it didn’t stick). For the most part, Godard was wearing his thoughtful critic’s hat that evening. Here’s one fascinating exchange:

J-LG: Well, just five minutes ago you told me that I should not hold you responsible for all American film criticism, but I think you are, in a way, just as I feel responsible for the movies I see even if I have not made them.

PK: Oh, no, I won’t accept that. I can’t believe that you personally feel that you are responsible for the work of somebody whose work you hate.

J-LG: Well, let’s take this article, for example. You wrote about why movies are so bad, and you attack (and I disagreed with you) a good fellow you mentioned by name who was Vice President of some conglomerate. You made him responsible for everything that is bad in the movies. I said to myself, “How can one man be responsible for… ?” I mean a movie is made by a hundred people at least. It’s like war. Nixon is responsible, but the American people are responsible for electing Nixon.

PK: Well, let me explain what I mean about the people at the top having that much influence. If the people at the top of the movie company are not primarily interested in movies, but come either from agencies or law firms or the business community itself, if they are from the Harvard Business School, as many of them are, and they are put in to rationalize the business, and if they look strictly in terms of how much money they can get out of a project before it goes into production, that is to say of how much they can be sure of from television, from overseas televisıon, from cable, from cassettes, they know they can get the most money from pictures that have stars or have a big bestseller property. Those pictures are the easiest to market, and so it is the marketing decisions that determine which pictures they will make. And often if a picture comes along that they did not have much confidence in and really couldn’t sell in advance, they don’t do anything for it so that a picture like Melvin and Howard or, say, All Night Long or Atlantic City doesn’t get anything like the promotion of those movies that they are sure of. As a matter of fact, they are embarrassed to be connected with those movies because they assume those movies are going to fail financially and so, inadvertently, they make those pictures fail.

J-LG: Yeah, but it’s not a good reason. It’s right, but it doesn’t describe the reality of making a movie. They alone are not making the movies, the movies are made by the audience, the movies are made by the cinematographers, by the union people, they are all responsible. . . I mean why don’t they sell American cars today?

PK: Jean-Luc, let’s put it this way….

J-LG: No, it’s because who is obeying this order? I try never to obey it. That’s why….

PK: You don’t work in a big studio system.

J-LG: I wish I could (laughter).

PK: But the reason you can’t is the reason I am explaining. It’s the same reason that an American Godard could not work in the big studio system.

Plus ca change…

That’s my Jean-Luc Godard story, and I’m sticking to it. As mentioned earlier, I did eventually catch up with some of his earlier work; now that his final reel has played and the lights have come up, I should probably catch up a little more before my end credits start rolling (or they revoke my film critic’s license…whichever comes first). Maybe I’ll begin with his final film and work my way back until I meet myself in the middle. In the end, it’s all relative. After all, as supercomputer ALPHA-60 says in Alphaville, “Time is like a circle which turns endlessly.”

[FIN]

Con Game, Drama, Great Depression, Road Movie, Romantic Comedy

It’s only a canvas sky: R.I.P. Peter Bogdanovich

January 8, 2022 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on January 7, 2022)

From a 2017 piece I wrote on the demise of neighborhood theaters:

Some of my fondest memories of the movie-going experience involve neighborhood theaters; particularly during a 2 ½ year period of my life (1979-1981) when I was living in San Francisco. But I need to back up for a moment. I had moved to the Bay Area from Fairbanks, Alaska, which was not the ideal environment for a movie buff. At the time I moved from Fairbanks, there were only two single-screen movie theaters in town. To add insult to injury, we were usually several months behind the Lower 48 on first-run features (it took us nearly a year to even get Star Wars).

Keep in mind, there was no cable service in the market, and VCRs were a still a few years down the road. There were occasional midnight movie screenings at the University of Alaska, and the odd B-movie gem on late night TV (which we had to watch in real time, with 500 commercials to suffer through)…but that was it. Sometimes, I’d gather up a coterie of my culture vulture pals for the 260 mile drive to Anchorage, where there were more theaters for us to dip our beaks into.

Consequently, due to the lack of venues, I was reading more about movies, than actually watching them. I remember poring over back issues of The New Yorker at the public library, soaking up Penelope Gilliat and Pauline Kael; but it seemed requisite to live in NYC (or L.A.) to catch all of these cool art-house and foreign movies they were raving about (most of those films just didn’t make it out up to the frozen tundra). And so it was that I “missed” a lot of 70s cinema.

Needless to say, when I moved to San Francisco, which had a plethora of fabulous neighborhood theaters in 1979, I quickly set about making up the deficit. While I had a lot of favorite haunts (The Surf, The Balboa, The Castro, and the Red Victorian loom large in my memory), there were two venerable (if a tad dodgy) downtown venues in particular where I spent an unhealthy amount of time in the dank and the dark with snoring bums who used the auditoriums as a $2 flop: The Roxie and The Strand.

That’s because they were “repertory” houses; meaning they played older films (frequently double and triple bills, usually curated by some kind of theme). That 2 ½ years I spent in the dark was my film school; that’s how I got caught up with Francis Ford Coppola, Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese, Robert Altman, Hal Ashby, Terrence Malick, Woody Allen, Sidney Lumet, Peter Bogdanovich, Werner Herzog, Ken Russell, Lindsay Anderson, Wim Wenders, Michael Ritchie, Brian De Palma, etc.

Alas, as it is wont to do, Time has caught up with a number of those filmmakers. This week, it caught up with Peter Bogdanovich. Along with Coppola, Scorsese, Altman, Ashby, Malick, and De Palma, Bogdanovich was at the core of the revolutionary “maverick” American filmmakers who flourished from the late 60s through the late 70s.

Yesterday, The Hollywood Reporter called him “a surrogate film professor for a generation”. That’s a good encapsulation of his professional life off the set; he lived and breathed cinema. Perhaps not surprising, considering he wrote about movies before becoming a filmmaker (as did Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Paul Schrader, et.al.).

One of Bogdanovich’s contemporaries, Martin Scorsese, issued this statement:

“In the 60s, at a crucial moment in the history of the movie business and the art of cinema, Peter Bogdanovich was right there at the crossroads of the Old Hollywood and the New. Curator, critic, historian, actor, director, popular entertainer…Peter did it all. As a programmer here in New York, he put together essential retrospectives of then still overlooked masters from the glory days of the studio system; as a journalist he got to know almost everybody, from John Ford and Howard Hawks to Marlene Dietrich and Cary Grant. Like many of us, he made his way into directing pictures by way of Roger Corman, and he and Francis Coppola broke into the system early on: Peter’s debut, ‘Targets,’ is still one of his very best films.

“With ‘The Last Picture Show,’ he made a movie that seemed to look backward and forward at the same time as well as a phenomenal success, followed quickly by ‘What’s Up Doc’ and ‘Paper Moon.’ In the years that followed, Peter had setbacks and tragedies, and he just kept going on, constantly reinventing himself. The last time I saw Peter was in 2018 at The New York Film Festival, where we appeared together on a panel discussion of his old friend Orson Welles’ ‘The Other Side of the Wind’ (in which Peter gives a great performance, and to which he dedicated a lot of time and energy throughout many years). Right up to the end, he was fighting for the art of cinema and the people who created it.”

I think Scorsese has articulated why this passing feels significant. I’m confident there are curators, critics, historians and filmmakers who will pick up the torch …those who can “look backward and forward at the same time”. It’s important. After all, as someone says in The Last Picture Show: “Won’t be much to do in town with the picture show closed.”

Here are my picks for the five most essential Bogdanovich films:

Targets – Bogdanovich created a minor classic with this impressively assured directorial debut; a low-budget wonder about an aging horror movie star (Boris Karloff, not a stretch) who is destined to cross paths with a “nice” young man (a Vietnam vet) who is about to go Charles Whitman on his sleepy community. It holds up well, as it is (sadly) quite prescient. Chilling and effective. The film marked the first of several collaborations between the director and cinematographer László Kovács. Bogdanovich co-wrote the script with (his then-wife) producer/production designer Polly Platt, and Samuel Fuller.

The Last Picture Show – Oddly enough, I was Tweeting about this film only last week:

I always forget what a fabulous cast Bogdanovich assembled for this joint. You can't swing a ten-gallon hat around without hitting another great character actor in THE LAST PICTURE SHOW. And of course, "introducing…" so many future stars. #TCMParty

— Dennis Hartley (@denofcinema5) December 31, 2021

Indeed, Bogdanovich’s most celebrated film, which he co-adapted with the great Larry McMurtry from the author’s eponymous novel, is an embarrassment of riches on every level-directing, writing, cinematography (outstanding B & W work by Robert Surtees), production design (Polly Platt), and acting.

Set in the 1950s, this network narrative (a sort of “Peyton Place on the prairie”) concerns the citizens of a one-horse Texas burg called Anarene (it was actually filmed in McMurtry’s home town of Archer City). This is a town of beginners and losers, with naught in-between but those living lives of quiet desperation. Okay, it’s depressing as hell.

But what a cast: Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, Cybill Shepherd, Ben Johnson (Best Supporting Actor Oscar), Cloris Leachman (Best Supporting Actress Oscar), Ellen Burstyn, Eileen Brennan, Clu Gulager, Sam Bottoms, and Randy Quaid. Every performance, down to the smallest part, feels authentic; you feel like you know these people (and if you’ve ever lived in a small town…you do know these people). A landmark of 70s American cinema.

What’s Up, Doc? – Bogdanovich’s 1972 film is a love letter to classic screwball comedies of the 30s and 40s (the most obvious influence being Bringing Up Baby). Ryan O’Neal and Barbara Streisand have wonderful chemistry as the romantic leads, who meet cute and become involved in a hotel mix-up of four identical suitcases that rapidly snowballs into a series of increasingly preposterous situations for all concerned (as occurs in your typical screwball comedy).

Paper Moon – Two years after The Last Picture Show, director Peter Bogdanovich had the audacity to shoot yet another B&W film-which was going against the grain by the early 70s. This outing, however, was not a bleak drama. Granted, it is set during the Great Depression, but has a much lighter tone, thanks to precocious 9 year-old Tatum O’Neal, who steals every scene she shares with her dad Ryan (which is to say, nearly every scene in the film).

Saint Jack – After refreshing my memory by dusting off my DVD copy for a re-watch last night, I have to say that Bogdanovich’s least “commercial” project is my favorite, after The Last Picture Show. Adapted from Paul Theroux’s novel by the author, Howard Sackler and Bogdanovich, this 1979 drama is a low-key character study about an American (Ben Gazzara) hustling a living in Singapore during the Vietnam War era.

Gazzara plays Ben Flowers, an ingratiating fellow who specializes in showing visiting foreigners (mostly Brits) a good time. His modest brothel and bar isn’t exactly Rick’s Cafe, but he dreams of expanding, making a bundle and heading back to the states with a comfortable nest egg.

Unfortunately, this has put him on the radar of the local triad, who are escalating their harassment by the day. Flowers is wary, but too good-natured to go to the mattresses, as it were (he’s the antithesis of a “mobster type”, which is what makes the character so interesting). Eventually, however, he’s forced to seek another avenue-running a CIA-sanctioned brothel for soldiers on R&R from tours of duty in Vietnam.

I haven’t seen all of his films, but Gazzara’s performance is surely one of (if not “the”) best he ever delivered. The film is also a late-career highlight for the perennially underrated Denholm Elliot, who was nominated for a BAFTA award in 1980 (but didn’t win). Keep your eyes peeled for George Lazenby in the penultimate scene-a wordless, yet extraordinary sequence. Bogdanovich casts himself as a mysterious government spook. Leisurely paced but completely absorbing, it’s one of those films that has an immersive sense of “place” (beautifully shot on location by the late great Robby Müller).