Supernatural: Season 1, Episode 9: “Asylum”

Posted on March 9, 2014 by sheila

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Directed by Guy Bee
Written by Richard Hatem

Dark and almost unremittingly gloomy, “Asylum” spends the majority of its time within the walls of a dilapidated mental asylum.

“Asylum” introduces the device of mental illness for really the first time in the series, and it will be a landscape they visit again and again (sometimes explicitly, sometimes opaquely). There are multiple levels of meaning with “madness”, and (fortunately), Supernatural is interested (as always) in examining it through a prism (rather than either a microscope or a macro-scope – which would be unnecessarily reductive, especially with such an important and upsetting topic). By that I mean; Sam and Dean operate in a world where they regularly see things that would put them into a psych ward if they ever made the mistake of telling anyone. Supernatural actually deals with that reality. Many of the witnesses/victims they come across are in mental institutions for telling the truth about what they saw. In one episode, Sam and Dean get themselves admitted into a mental hospital in order to investigate a possible spirit. (I found that particular episode tremendously upsetting, triggering even.) This is a personal issue for me, and the treatment of mental illness in our culture (either through commentary or its representations in film and television) is often appalling.

A tangent before we begin. Feel free to skip.

Continue reading →

Posted in Television | Tagged | 1 Comment

Elvis Is Everywhere

Posted on March 8, 2014 by sheila

Someone once got to my site by Googling something about George Washington and landed on a post I had written about the man. But she was distracted by the banner on the top, and the big button on the side, and her only comment was: “Why is Elvis everywhere?”

She wasn’t judging. Just confused about where she had landed on the Internet. “I came here looking for George Washington and am bombarded with … Elvis? Why?”

The innocent way she phrased her question made me laugh.

“Why is Elvis everywhere?”

Well, because he is the greatest performer to ever walk the earth, sister, how ’bout that? Does that answer your question?

I’m not one for memorabilia. Or so I thought. I do like to have images around of things/people that inspire me, which is why I have old-time framed posters of Carole Lombard and Barbara Stanwyck on my walls. This morning, as I was working, and getting text messages about my new perfect nephew (Yay!), I glanced around and basically saw that, over a period of time, Elvis has infiltrated my entire apartment, without me going for that effect, without me even really noticing. It became funny to me, so I decided to take snapshots of each Elvis-related object.

Let’s take the tour.

My ticket to Graceland on my bulletin board:

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1956 Elvis stuck in the frame of my old-timey dresser mirror:

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Three Elvis pens, one given to me by my friend Michele, the other two I can’t remember where they came from.

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One of my Elvis shelves: his movies, TV specials:

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Elvis magnet, bought at Graceland.

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My ridiculous Elvis doll, in his 1968 black leather outfit, sent to me by my friend Charlie.

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Part of my Elvis book collection. Small metal Elvis suitcase, given to me by my brother-in-law, and Elvis pocket-knife, sent to me by my friend Luisa.

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A rather cheesy “painting” of Elvis, which was given to me by the owner of a liquor store in Chicago. Spontaneously. Therefore, on the wall it goes, cheap frame and all.

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My “VIP” badge for my first Graceland tour, and also the flier for the “Elvis at 21″ exhibit I went to in Richmond, Virginia, which featured the extraordinary photos of Elvis taken by Alfred Wertheimer in the spring/summer of 1956.

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My aunt Marianne sent me an “Elvis gift set” for Christmas. It included a plate, a coffee mug, and two plastic Christmas ornaments.

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My sister Jean gave me this Christmas ornament. When you press the button, you hear Elvis singing “I’ll Be Home for Christmas”.

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My friend Allison sent me this Elvis-in-gold-lame card. An actual card, with an envelope and a stamp, sent through the United States Postal Service. An exciting event.

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I bought this at a record store in Memphis on Beale Street. It makes me happy just looking at it.

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My friend Kent sent me this framed poster of King Creole, one of Elvis’ best performances.

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More magnets bought at Graceland. I love magnets.

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See above comment.

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A grotesque china jumpsuit-Elvis Christmas ornament. Someone in my family gave this to me and I can’t remember who.

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Another Elvis shelf.

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More Elvis books.

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A watercolor “Jailhouse Rock” card, made for me by mother. I can’t really express how much I love this. My mother and I roared about it once I received it. I love his SHADOW most of all. Nice touch, Mum.

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And that’s it.

It’s more than I thought I had, although I haven’t reached HER level yet.

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It is something to strive for. Her commitment is admirable.

Charlie supports me by sending me links to Elvis bedspreads and leopard-skin “TCB” throw pillows. I said to Charlie, “But what about if I bring a man home? Won’t that freak him out?” Charlie’s response was: “Fuck ‘im.”

Either way you take that response, Charlie’s right.

Posted in Personal | Tagged | 11 Comments

A Farewell to Fools (2014)

Posted on March 7, 2014 by sheila

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A Farewell to Fools, shot in Romania, with a Romanian cast of actors, except for the two big stars, Harvey Keitel and Gerard Depardieu, wants to be a farce. It reaches farcical levels in one scene only. Other than that, it’s weird, flat, and not very good. Bummer.

My review is now up at Roger Ebert.

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Bethlehem (2014)

Posted on March 7, 2014 by sheila

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Bethlehem, co-written by an Israeli and an Arab, tells the story of an Israeli secret service agent and his teenage Palestinian informant. What does it mean to play both sides in a conflict? Can that situation EVER go over well?

My review is now up at Roger Ebert.

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The Mayhem of the PD Unit: “The scene lays a royal egg. And I’m thinking: This is not what Stanislavski had in mind.”

Posted on March 6, 2014 by sheila

I’m sharing this post because I’m having lunch with Sam today (the star of the notes below). I haven’t seen him since he showed up at a play I was in a couple years back, and I burst into tears at the mere sight of him. Sam was a great believer in me. A great friend, one of my champions. You hope you run into someone who believes in you the way Sam believed in me. It occurred to me recently that I miss him. So now we’re meeting for lunch. I re-read these notes yesterday and was guffawing with laughter at all of the memories.

First, the preamble:

In grad school, we had an intense Friday workshop which met for hours every week, and it was called the PD Unit: the Playwrights/Directors Unit. It was a requirement. In that workshop, projects were developed. Playwrights would bring in new work, actors would perform it, and directors would direct. Actors were looking for thesis projects, so actors would bring in existent work, Chekhov, Williams, and perform for the Unit, and see if the scene had legs enough, if it was right for you, whatever, to be your official thesis project. As you can imagine, managing this PD Unit was a BEAR of a task. It wasn’t a bunch of artists dicking around with no end in sight. We had to have end results. We had to get thesis projects approved. There were two PD Units, each run by a different teacher, and mine was run by one of my dearest teachers, Sam Schacht. Sam Schacht was (is) an incredible teacher, with an irreverent sense of humor but also an ability to make actors feel safe in his room. He loves actors. He was one himself. He was in the televised production of True West, with John Malcovich and Gary Sinise, but his career lasted decades. He studied with Lee Strasberg.The PD Unit was not a typical acting class, where actors work on scenes for weeks on end developing their process. No: the PD Unit was a fast, brash, commonsensical place, where we had to get through 8 or 9 projects a workshop, so there was very little time to stand on ceremony, or to be precious or careful. If someone brought something in saying, “I love this and I want this to be my thesis”, and then they went ahead and were awful in the presented scene, Sam would let them know. “That stunk,” he would declare. “Find something better.” Sam would wreck someone’s dreams, and then shout out, “NEXT” for the next project to go up in front of the group.

A mood of hilarity was often the overwhelming energy of the PD Unit. The only way to get through it was to keep things light, take nothing personally, and also – when it came time to work – to really show your best work. You couldn’t blow off the work itself, you couldn’t laugh your way through the work. So much was riding on everything. So all of that: high stakes, too-long hours, 30 creative people in a room for hours on a FRIDAY with Sam Schacht at the helm – added up to some of my funniest experiences in grad school. I took notes during the PD Unit, some of which are below. Taken all together, these “notes” really give a feeling for what that dreaded PD Unit was like. In the middle of hilarity, would be a quiet moment of truth. Sam never skimped on that – he always was a teacher. Despite his official duties (“everyone in here must walk out with an approved thesis project”) he still took the opportunity to TEACH when opportunity arose. But mainly, just to pass the time, I took note of funny things that people said, and now, years later, I am so glad I did. Much of this will be incomprehensible, but hopefully it gives an outsider a feel for what that workshop was like. By this point in grad school, too, we had been in school with each other for two years straight. We all knew each other really really well. This was acting school, too, remember. The whole point of acting classes is to get personal, reveal yourself, and be vulnerable when attempting to do something. So you get to know people really well, even if you are not intimate friends with them. You know people’s issues, their hangups, their drawbacks, their strengths. All of that was present in that high-stakes yet hilarious PD Unit room. Things often get funny when the stakes are very high, as they were for all of us. Work is work, it is important, but the process itself can often descend into absurdity. These notebooks show that mix. The deep questions being asked, the demands being made, and then the complete LUNACY of spending 100% of your time with creative people who are all working their asses off.

Also, random unconnected memory, I was very close to getting hitched at this particular moment in time. Michael had proposed, out of the blue, I hadn’t seen him for three years, but he proposed. I said yes. We wondered what we should do and Mitchell gave us a talking-to. Obviously, we did NOT get hitched, although we’re still great friends, and I’m still not sure how that worked, but it did. Long-time readers know all about Michael. So along with worrying over my thesis project, I was also having basically urgent conferences with Michael about what the hell we were supposed to do. We came close to meeting up in Vegas on New Year’s Eve to have Elvis marry us. Or go on a killing spree. Either one. I’ve had three proposals, and this was the one I said Yes to. There is a scribbled note in here about Michael, interspersed with PD Unit notes, a reminder of the multi-layered experience of that time. A lost era. Filled with excitement and ambition. Many things are lost, but look how lucky I am. I am still friends with Michael and I am having lunch with Sam today. So not everything is lost.

September, PD Unit

“A half-hour where you stink is no great shakes.” – Sam

Sam: “I wanted people to be ready to bring in work today—”
Barbara: “Oh, for cryin’ out loud.”

9/9 PD Unit

Cowboy Mouth – Chaos.

“We could do a merchandising tie-in.” – Sam

“We have 2 striving artists yearning to be free.” – Sam

9/11 PD Unit

Arcadia – Tom Stoppard -
actors: Matt and Barbara

Sam: “The grapes don’t solve the problem.”

Sam: “Not everything is Hat Full of Rain.”

Barefoot in the Park – actors: Elena, Mike Z.

Sam: “It’s like trying to revive a 2nd rate dead horse.”

Home Free – actors: Wade and Kara

“This play is like 2 panic attacks meeting each other.” – Sam

“Hoffman’s won Oscars playing morons and bums.” – Sam

Somehow I think that if actors are bored watching something … what is the good of doing this? Like Sam said: Recognize when you are bored. It’s not that you are being rude to your fellow students by being inattentive. Boredom is a sign that something is not working. It is a valid response.

“The Ski Lift Named Denial.” – Jen on doing Streetcar in Vermont

9/16 PD Unit

Buried Child – actors: Tom, Nina

“Anything can be good. If it’s good.” – Sam

To extract a scene: it needs to have its own internal arc. Make sense on its own

Am I Blue – by Beth Henley – actors: Mike Z., Kara, Cheryl
The writing of this play is lousy. Lifeless. You’d have to invent the subtext. With plays like Streetcar or Death of a Salesman – the subtext is IN the lines.

“If there’s any poetic dimension to this, it escapes me.” – Sam

“She’s not a waif physically. She’s a waif emotionally.” – Sam – on This Property is Condemned)

Breathless – movie – long scenes, jump cuts
The thing that gives it its stature is the legends. When you stand back, you see the universal. It is in the fragments that you have the uniqueness.

Playwright: “Then why these scenes in this specific order?”
Sam: “I have no idea.”

St. Joan – actors: Tom, Kelly

“Yeah, fuck you, Rich!” – Sam

“Tom, you fuck-head, listen to me!” – Sam

“Do whatever you want to do. Just don’t have a rod up your ass and think you’re playing Shaw.” – Sam

“Cast well, and then shut up.” – Sam, to the directors

“All the plans that you think you’ve made may be just delusions on your part.” – Sam

9/18 PD Unit
A Loss of Roses – by William Inge – actors: Barbara, Tom
Warren Beatty made his stage debut in this

“I know I’ve been manipulating you, but I think I’ve been helpful to you.” – Sam to Barbara
Barbara: “You have.”

Snow Angel – Elena, Mike Z.
It’s one thing to act material – it’s another thing to embody material.

“It looks like your soul is adrift in the wrong play.” – Sam to Mike Z.

Gertrude Down
Kevin: “What’s it about?”
Matt: “It’s about a door.”

“You talk a little bit like a French art critic.” – Sam to Rich

9/23 PD Unit

9/23
Michael. Las Vegas. New Year’s. Yes, Michael, let’s get this thing done.

There are more things in heaven and earth,
Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Cloud Tectonics – by Jose Rivera

“This was a bore.” – Sam

“You look like you have parentheses around you at all times.” – Sam to Cheryl

Sam: “Blackout. Slow fade.”

Sam: “Renee Taylor, in reality, is larger than life.”

9/30 PD Unit

Barbara, dressed in green, lying spreadeagled on the floor, trying to relax. Sam said, “You look like a human pool table, Barbara.”

10/9 PD Unit
We read German Lullaby – Sam said to Lesley afterwards: “Lesley, you should be very proud of yourself for what you have created.”

Sam discussed subtext – for him a play needs subtext – that “subterranean tide pulling us forward.”

Sam on PD issues: “The main issue is the bored actors.”

Sam to me and Jen: So how are you 2 Irish broads doing?
Me: We were just sitting here appreciating you.
Sam: Oh – really? (he got all excited – stretching his arms)
Me: Yeah. You’re not afraid of anything, are you?
Sam: No. (He went right there with me)
Me: I can tell. Have you worked really hard to get that?
Sam: Yes.

10/14 PD Unit

Sam to the directors: “Actors at their best are fantastic creatures. If you give them the correct stimuli – character, circumstance, objective – and then Get Out of the Way – they can work miracles.”

10/16 PD Unit

Speed the Plow – out of context this scene is hard to follow. The relationship is not clear.

“Relaxation should not be a spectacle.” – Sam

10/22 PD Unit

Sam, at one point: “Who do I have to fuck to get out of here is what I want to know.”

Sam: “I’m just trying to keep my spirits up.”

Liz on SRO hotels: “You could be killing people in there and no one would care.”
Wade: “Where is this?”

Kara: “Are we still not allowed to be naked in school?”

Sam: “All this love of Jesus is just as obsessive as any other form of narcissism.”

Sam: “You know who originated this part? It was Geraldine Page.”
Kara: “I bet she sucked!”

10/23 PD Unit

Sam: “Fences is a masterpiece of structure.”

“Do you have the time?”
“What am I, fuckin’ Swiss?”

10/28 PD Unit

“Speaking of surly and disrespectful, where is Kara?” – Sam

Quote from Gingerbread Lady: “My apartment is on a sublet from Mary Todd Lincoln.”

Sam: “If you do a high-class piece that lays an egg, no one will think: ‘Boy, that’s a high-class broad.’”

Sam: “I wouldn’t care if you had them do it on pogo sticks.”

Sam to D.: “To whatever degree you can get it up, try to create some authentic misery.”

Sam: “Method acting the stereotype is eyeballing your partner, mumbling, breaking up your sentences in illogical ways. You can be 100% full of shit and be a Method actor.”

Sam: “I studied with Strasberg for 21 years and I never felt that gave me the license to be an asshole.”
Mike Z.: “So where’d you get your license then?”

11/11 PD Unit

“The PD … boring or otherwise …” – Sam

“While she’s making all this $ on a soap opera, she can do her creepy parts off-Broadway.” – Sam

“Don’t try to pull yourself together. Fall apart.” – Sam to K.

“I feel like a two-bit whore. Next!” – Sam

11/25 PD Unit

“I don’t think it’s self-indulgent unless it’s self-indulgent.” – Sam on crying in stage

“Tom?”
“Never mind.”

Let’s count how many times K. says “double-edged sword” in the next 3 hours.

“If she’s peeing loudly, that’s a beer-drinkin’ woman.” – Tom

Eileen: “I know that women are bad lays, too.”

“Are you a spy from Juilliard?” – Sam to Brenda

Sam: “The ‘chink in the armor’ is not a racial slur …”

Lesley began throwing paper airplanes at Christine. Everyone is falling apart.

Acting in film:
Think loud.
Talk low.

Sam: “Every scene is Fight or Fuck. Make a choice. Do you want to fight the person you’re in the scene with? Or do you want to fuck them? Fight or fuck. Choose.”

“You were doing some oddly inappropriate emotional work …” – Sam to Tom

“in the hallowed halls of ivy …” – Sam

12/2 PD Unit

“I’m totally confused from an organizational point of view.” – Sam

“Totally uninhibited. No apologies. Go.” – Sam

Liz: “Every woman in this room has gotten their period –”
Sam: “I don’t want that kind of talk here.”

12/4 PD Unit

“Do you want to speak, Richard, or are you just breathing?” – Sam

Brenda told Sam that she is a soprano. Sam said, “I don’t care what you call yourself, your high notes stink.”

“Life is short. Keep moving.” – Sam

Brenda: “Should I use my body?”
Sam: “If you don’t use it, I will.”

Sam on Method acting: “I’m flopping around honestly in my moments.”

Sam: “The punchline is ‘The cocksuckers are throwing paper clips’ – so you can work your way backwards from there.”

12/9 PD Unit

If you really go after your objective, that takes care of the pacing.

“If you 2 ever decide to start a theatre company … count me in.” – Sam to me and Jen

“Go out, say the line, and get the hell off.” – Sam

“They need you to go Ping when it comes up.” – Sam on playing the triangle in a huge orchestra

“If Alaska is germane to your piece …” – Leslie

12/11 PD Unit
“I hate it when I don’t get jokes.” – Elena

Sam: “Trust yourself. Don’t be conservative. Go out on a limb.”

Kara: “There’s something almost superior to people who are spiritually intact.”

Sam: “It’s always a mistake for an actor to fight his own instrument. It is like a violin saying, ‘I wish I was a piano.’”

“Get Strasberg out of your ass and think about somebody else for a second!” – Sam

12/16 PD Unit

“Is that that long-lost play by Chekhov?” – Sam

“I’m a little afraid of my boss.” – Barbara

Hamlet to the players: Do not saw the air.

PD Unit
I love how Sam interrupts scenes.

Sam: “So I saw that you had such ecstatic oneness with the part that you were barely in the room with us.”

Sam: “The scene lays a royal egg. And I’m thinking: This is not what Stanislavski had in mind.”

1/20/ PD Unit

“And if you’re a talented prick, who needs you?” – Sam

Lee Strasberg: “Your trump card is always the disaster that’s befalling you in the moment.”

January PD Unit
Sam, after watching a particularly bad series of scenes, “I feel like I’m having an out-of-body experience.”
Mike Z.: “You’re lucky.”

Posted in Personal | 4 Comments

Happy Birthday, Dean Stockwell

Posted on March 5, 2014 by sheila

Those of you who have read me for a while will remember the Dean Stockwell Year. Today is his birthday.

Dean Stockwell is still with us. I treasure his entire body of work.

Here is a piece I wrote about Stockwell. I am really proud of that one.

Happy birthday to my favorite living actor.

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Posted in Actors, On This Day | Tagged | 3 Comments

Tick-Tock Shuffle

Posted on March 5, 2014 by sheila

The clock winding down on the two new babies arriving in my family this month. Very exciting. I am juggling three jobs right now, and doing pretty well with it. My sleep is good, my moods are good, and I’m gearing up for some big activity in 2014. Got my plan going, working it out. Here are the songs that have accompanied me over the last 4 or 5 days, as we wait for news of new babies, as I go to screenings, as I set up meetings, as I wind down. The days are getting longer. That feels good, too.

“Better Be Good To Me” – Tina Turner. I saw Tina Turner in concert, during the Private Dancer tour. Wang Chung opened for her. And if that isn’t a time-travel detail, then nothing is. She was incredible live, of course. She’s so petite, yet her persona is so HUGE. You’d think she was over six feet tall. This song currently makes me think of this. Because how could it not.

“Spank Thru” – Nirvana, from their messy live album “From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah”. When Cobain screams, it makes every hair on my damn body stand straight up. Still true after all these years listening to them.

“Do What U Want” – Lady Gaga and R. Kelly, from her latest album, ARTPOP, which I haven’t really had a chance to absorb in full. It seems a bit of a mess, uneven, but with some good beats. I haven’t been paying attention, really, to the critical reception of the album. There are some songs I really love, the one about Donatella Versace in particular. This one isn’t really an ear-grabber for me.

“I’m Wrong” – Sharon Van Etten. My cousin Mike sent me one of her CDs. Beautiful songs, beautiful dreamy voice. Pretty intense, though. I have to be in the mood for her stuff. What is so great about this track is how small it starts, and then how big it gets.

“Tell Me Why” – The Beatles. “But you left me sittin’ on my own!” I love the harmonies there, the intensifying of energy. The whole thing has this insouciant innocence to it, a buoyancy, even though what they’re singing about is “why the hell are you such a Lying Liar who Lies?”

“The Wonder of You” – Elvis Presley, in rehearsal for the Vegas show, from the awesome album That’s the Way It Is. This is a rough rehearsal, Elvis doesn’t even know the words yet. I love listening to him work, in these out-takes and botched takes. It shows his professionalism and his workmanship.

“The Girls In My Life, Pt. 1″ – Randy Newman. I am so glad he was “around” when I was first becoming aware of pop culture and music and entertainers. You know, when I was a child. I took him for granted. Which means I took weirdness for granted. Would that even happen now? Are we more homogenized as a culture? Seems so. But I grew up in a time when weirdos came through the cracks. Or, weirdos always come through the cracks, but they rarely reach mainstream approval in a way that it would filter down to a child’s perception. I hear his music and I see my whole life. I love that.

“Lodi” – Creedence Clearwater Revival. I love them. Music of loneliness, restlessness and the back roads of America. I can dig it.

“Don’t Pass Me By” – The Beatles. Creepy. It’s Charles Manson’s fault. But what a sound, that violin, the chugging of the background instruments.

“Mama” – Elvis Presley, from Girls! Girls! Girls! An absolutely ridiculous minor-chord folk-song type song that sounds vaguely Eastern European in nature. WTF.

“My Prayer” – the exquisite Ink Spots.

“Taking Over Me” – Evanescence. What a voice she has. It goes through me. It’s so honest, so real.

“Yeah Yeah Yeahs” – Sacrilege. I think this is Hella Sexy.

“Bitter End” – Paul Kimble & Andy Mackay. From the fun Velvet Goldmine soundtrack.

“Doth I Protest Too Much” – Alanis Morissette. She has that “Let me rattle off a list at you” structure that is so typical of her stuff, as well as the weird phraseology (“I am enrag-ed”, etc.) But I love her. I don’t care.

“Paper In Fire” – John Cougar Mellencamp. Holy crap, I totally forgot about this song and that I own it.

“Blasphemy” – Robbie Williams. How I love him. He’s got it all. My favorite Robbie anecdote: asked by an interview the question: “What’s the most interesting thing a fan has given you, Robbie?” Robbie answered, “Herpes.” He so easily could have flamed out. He hasn’t. He’s still here. I hope he lasts forever. “Was it a blast for you? Because it’s blasphemy.”

“He Touched Me” – Elvis Presley. Jesus-loving Elvis soothes my soul. Elvis is magnificent here. Just magnificent.

“Jigsaw Puzzle of Life” – the glorious Kate & Anna McGarrigle. If you haven’t seen Sing Me the Songs That Say I Love You, the concert film in tribute of the recently-passed Kate McGarrigle, I can’t recommend it highly enough. Directed by my kindred-spirit-in-all-things-Elvis, Lian Lianson – Please see it.

“Take It As It Comes” – James Lee Stanley & Cliff Eberhardt. Gorgeous. I wish more men sang duets with one another. This is beautiful.

“Search and Destroy” – Skunk Anansie, from the awesome Sucker Punch soundtrack. Speaking of Sucker Punch, one of these days I’ll write up my thoughts on that movie, which I thought was brilliant, dark, bold, emotional, and fiercely feminist. There’s been chatter on the movie in that regard, but I need to weigh in on it. It was in my Top 10 for that year. Which, needless to say, gives me Outlaw status. Kinda like my adoration of Pain & Gain from this past year. Regardless, Sucker Punch is great.

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“Cinco De Mayo” – Liz Phair. From Whip-Smart, which, clearly, she is. I feel strangely connected to her for various reasons. She’s so tough, but then she has these shockingly romantic moments, like in this song: “I’ve never been to Rome … until you smiled.” And, kindred spirit again, I think her song “Supernova” is her most romantic, including the line, “And you fuck like a volcano and you’re everything to me.” Now that’s love.

“Mine” – the Glee cover of Taylor Swift’s sweet ballad with some great lyrics. Sung beautifully by Naya Rivera.

“New Orleans” – Elvis Presley, from King Creole, one of his bluesiest most over-the-top performances. I wrote a whole post about it. Let’s revel in him again.

“Leaving Home Ain’t Easy” – Queen. I was taking a brisk walk when this song came on, and it transported me into another mindset, another dreamspace. Beautiful.

“Cold Hands, Warm Heart” – Brendan Benson. Are you all aware of him? I think he’s one of the best things going right now.

“Grasping at Straws” – the awesome Bleu, from his latest album To Hell With You which I love. He’s so romantic. Almost girlie in his yearning for love, not to mention his masterful use of falsetto on occasion, but mixed with a macho performance-style, all aggression and striving … to speak in totally stereotypically gender-binary terms. But that’s at work with him: he mixes it up. I love him. And what a voice.

“Wind Up” – Foo Fighters, from The Colour and the Shape which was on constant rotation for me for well over a year. Similar to The Eminem Show and, once upon a time, Tori Amos’ Little Earthquakes. And others. Some of those constant-rotation albums I actually listened to too much and can’t really listen to them anymore (Tori’s being a case in point). So far still going strong with Foo Fighters. It was such a thrilling event, that album, and the one before it … especially to Nirvana fans. And how great that it wasn’t a one-time deal. Foo Fighters are one of my favorite bands, and they’re still with us.

“True Love Ways” – a sweet Buddy Holly ballad. I like his rougher sexy stuff, but he’s marvelous here too.

“Into Each Other” – Pat McCurdy. An old friend. I performed with him at the Milwaukee Summer Fest for 3,000 people. I’m on one of his albums, in a duet he wrote for me and him to do. It’s a bit intense to listen to that, an entire world and time re-erecting itself around my eyes, remembering recording that in a small recording studio in Milwaukee with him. It’s a live take, the two of us singing to each other. The first take. I admit I am proud of that because I was pretty out of my mind that day. I got sick in the bathroom of the studio before recording. I emerged feeling much better, and ready to get to work. But still. NUTS.

“Fool’s Paradise” – Buddy Holly. Love the beat here, the chugging boogie-woogie piano going on underneath it all.

“I Will Follow” – Katie Herzig, another one of those soulful female singers my cousin Mike is always introducing me to. I love her!

“I Want All My Money Back” – Lonnie Brooks. Great blues singer, great blues artist. This song MOVES. You MUST move when you listen to it. It’s live, you can hear the crowd screaming in response. Now THAT’S the blues. Reminds me of that great quote about the blues from Langston Hughes:

The Blues always impressed me as being very sad, sadder even than the Spirituals, because their sadness is not softened with tears, but hardened with laughter … of a sadness where there is no god to appeal to.

“Drama Queen” – Green Day, from ¡Tré!. Sweet. I love it when they get sweet.

“I’m With You” – Avril Lavigne. Boy, she really disappeared, huh. I have a really personal memory attached to this song, too painful to really get into, but a redemptive moment too. So I keep it around. As a reminder.

“Hell Is For Children” – the great Pat Benatar. I love that it wasn’t until she tapped into her anger that her career took off. Such a beautiful voice, made for ballads, but that’s not the way it went.

“All Is Not Lost” – Ok Go. I love these guys so much.

“Come On, Little Mama” – Homer “Ray” Harris, one of those nutso Sun Records rockabilly recording artists. Boy, you could pick that Sun sound out of a lineup.

“The One On the Right Is On the Left” – Johnny Cash. Speaking of Sun records … This song is funny. “And the guy in the rear … was a Methodist.”

“Bear Cat” – Rufus Thomas. Back to Sun Records! This song is crazy, Rufus Thomas is crazy, and so amazing. The sound JUMPS out at you in a way it flat out doesn’t with other recording studios’ output. That sound says “Sun”. If I could put my finger on it, it goes beyond the slap-back echo which richer studios spent thousands of dollars trying to replicate. What is going on is that Sam Phillips created a safe space where artists who were already doing their thing in clubs and juke joints could come in and freely BE THEMSELVES. You can’t manufacture that kind of authenticity.

“Mama Told Me Not to Come” – Three Dog Night. I wonder how many times this song has been used in a film. I am sure there is a website out there with the answer.

“Sacrifice” – from the awesome Clint Mansell composed score to Moon, a movie I LOVED. I love Clint Mansell’s stuff. Eerie.

“I’ll Get Over You” – Pat McCurdy. You keep telling yourself that.

“Please Mr. Jailer” – Wynona Carr. She’s got that great rough-ness to her voice that comes from a life of hard knocks, and a belief in herself. Her journey is a sad one. We don’t have much from her. Like Sam Cooke, she started out as a gospel singer (known as “Sister Wynona Carr”), and her gospel stuff is awesome. And like Sam Cooke, she switched to secular music, and this album, Jump Jack Jump! is the only secular album of hers in existence. She never “hit”. She sank into obscurity. But, beautifully, her song “Life Is a Baseball Game” was chosen to roll over the closing credits in 42. I hope that many more people will be introduced to this amazing artist!

“New Way Home” – Foo Fighters. Also from Colour and the Shape. See above comment. It’s one of those albums where I can still list the track order, because we still bought “albums” in those days, not just a collection of tracks. It’s one of the reasons why, when I buy a new album today, I always listen to it first in the order the artist intended. It’s still an ALBUM. Track placement matters. “New Way Home” was the final track on Colour and the Shape and what a way to go out.

“I Love New York” – Madonna. Great song. I love that whole album.

“Magic Man” – Heart. I love how so many of their songs are like, “Your name is irrelevant. Just do your thing and get me off, baby. You’re the best.” Sexy. And dysfunctional.

“Connection” – Elastica. I was in a show with an all-female cast and we would blast this song in the rehearsal room prior to every show, and dance. It got us in sync, and had the perfect energy for what we were attempting as an ensemble. I was dressed in a pinstripe suit and a fedora. Loved my costume and my part. Super fun show, won some script awards. Here are a couple of shots. So I always think of that show and all of those fabulous actresses when I hear this song.

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“King of the Whole Wide World” – Elvis Presley, from the unfairly-maligned movie Kid Galahad. He’s wonderful in it. He should have played more boxers. He worked hard on that role. And there’s some good songs, this one being an example. Yeah, it’s “movie-Elvis” and not “sexy Sun Records Elvis” or “Superstar RCA Elvis”, but it’s also a valid Elvis, and he “shows up” here as fully as he did in every aspect of his life.

“Johnson’s Motorcar” – The Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem, from their Carnegie Hall album, an album I had memorized by the time I was, what, 5? Probably early. Basically the album has always been there in my life.

“Purple People” – Tori Amos. WTF, Tori? What are you talking about?

“The Lady Is a Tramp” – Frank Sinatra. Swing it, blue-eyes.

“You Like Me Too Much” – The Beatles. That piano opening. It’s so innovative, so strange, a great way to lead in to the song. Unexpected.

“Say Yeah” – Pat McCurdy. I could write a 10-page essay on what this song means and where it came from. But I won’t.

“Tuesday’s Gone” – Metallica covering Lynyrd Skynyrd, so basically, put a fork in me, I’m done.

“I Shall Not Be Moved” – J.B. Burnett. Rough, raw, honest.

“Time Stands Still” – Pat McCurdy. Pat, it’s time for you to get off this Shuffle. NOW.

“Even Though” – Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. My brother gave me a double album of his for Christmas and I have been having so much fun with it. He’s out of his MIND. So BIG, so dramatic, you can’t believe he gets away with it. But he believes every word, every choice. So much fun.

“I’m On My Way” – The Vocal Majority. This awesome men’s chorus out of Texas. I’m a tiny bit obsessed with them. Youtube them, watch their performance-style. It’s incredible. And what a sound. I love men’s voices blending together. Check it out.

“Eat What You Want” – my beautiful talented and about-to-become-a-mother-any-day-now sister Siobhan O’Malley. This is from her latest album. This song makes me want to cry.

“Into the Silence” – Robbie Williams. One of the best things about Robbie? He’s prolific. And he rarely disappoints. He basically has two albums out right now – his latest swing album and then “Take the Crown” – at least they feel like they came out simultaneously. I can’t keep up. And that’s such a great feeling to have with an artist one loves.

“Lonely Weekends” – Brian Setzer, who did a tribute album to the rockabilly giants of Sun Records, including this song, recorded of course by the great Charlie Rich. The whole album is awesome.

“Street Hassle” – Lou Reed, live. A 7-minute track that never loses its taut structure, its forward drive, its sense of an inevitable build. Exciting.

“Somewhere It’s Spring” – Pat McCurdy. You know, his songs come up a lot, because I have all of his albums and all that. But this Shuffle songs seems designed to kill me! Not a silly one yet.

“The Death of Queen Jane” – Oscar Isaac, from Inside Llewyn Davis. Great film, great soundtrack.

“Superblind” – Robbie Williams. He’s so dramatic. And he means it. You have to mean it.

“‘Cuz I Can” – Pink. Rocking, obnoxious, one of her many “I’m a big rude rock star, get out of my way” songs that I love. Great for working out.

“Keeper Of My Heart” – Faye Adams. Talk about “meaning” everything you do. She’s so awesome.

“Mother” – Tori Amos, from Little Earthquakes. See above comment somewhere about this album. I listened to it too much. It, and Annie Lennox’s Diva, were the soundtracks to my life when I first moved to Chicago, and met M., and began my years-long adventures with him. Time and place. I saw Tori Amos at the Park West before Little Earthquakes came out, right before it all “hit” for her.

“Candles” – a beautiful version of the Hey Monday song by the Glee cast. I like the Glee songs best when they are re-imagined in glee-club style, like this one.

“Louisiana 1927″ – Randy Newman. So beautiful, why does his stuff make me so sad. Like, unbearably sad. I have to be feeling real strong to listen to Randy Newman. It’s the chord changes.

“Hocus Pocus” – Focus. This song should really only be played at 11. Any lower decibel just won’t do.

“I’ve Been Deceived” – Charlie Feathers, another one of those Sun Records compilations I have. A real country number, a wailing voice, a swoopy guitar. You can hear the world shifting beneath such songs, genres blending, the country blending.

“The Fairest of the Seasons” – Nico. Of course I can’t think about Nico without thinking of Lester Bangs’ essay about her.

“Heaven on Earth” – Britney Spears, from the appropriately-named album Blackout, during her worst period on earth thus far. I will always be a Brit-Brit supporter, not just because I have a fellow-human-in-pain empathy for her (and did then as well), but her songs are great, and Blackout, despite the horrible conditions under which she recorded these songs, is a lot of fun, with a disturbing undercurrent, making for interesting listening. This is my favorite track.

“The Black Widow” – Link Wray. So so hot.

“Blackened” – Metallica. From …And Justice for All (love those ellipses). Their first album with Jason after the death of Cliff. And Jason was (famously) unhappy with the sound of the album, the bass being indistinguishable from the other guitars. It’s almost an experimental album, a show-off album. The whole album is pretty extreme, these songs are FAST (except when they’re not, and the song shrieks on the brake), with all of these big ol’ mood changes mid-song. You can’t keep up. You are pulled along for the ride.

“The Night Before” – The Beatles. I can’t pick my favorite Beatles song. But this one would definitely be on whatever list I came up with.

“Hidden Charms” – Link Wray. Any Shuffle that features two songs by Link Wray has my vote as Freakin’ Great. Please read my friend Kim Morgan’s awesome piece on Link Wray.

“Never Been to Spain” – Elvis Presley, one of his more ferocious 1970s songs. Wow. This particular recording is from the Prince from Another Planet box set, of his 4 record-breaking shows at Madison Square Garden in 1972. He is so IN the song that the song obliterates all peripheral existence. That is what a great and powerful performer can do.

“Oh! The Breeches Full of Stitches” – The Chieftains. Makes me want to step-dance right on outta here.

“Kim” – Marshall Mathers. A masterpiece. Unsurpassable in imagination and execution. I said what I needed to say here.

“Lady Luck” – Lloyd Price. He’s so fantastic. A real showman. And the songs rock, making you want to MOVE, preferably pressed up close in a hot-and-heavy manner to some dude/broad you’re into.

“I’m Not Angry” – The Everly Brothers. That sound. It’s so THEM, and it is also an amalgamation of all of the influences pouring into their heads during their formative years. Country, folk, gospel, blues … the harmonies are so influential, perfect. Funny lyrics, too, that completely contradict the title. “I hope your records break … but I’m not angry. I’m just sad.”

“The Back Seat Of My Car” – Paul McCartney from his awesome first solo album post-Beatles, Ram. The song starts slow, and then changes, with a BANG.

“Everywhere I Go, Everything I Do” – Pat McCurdy. This is getting ridiculous. Weird memory attached to this song too. From a show he did at Hoghead McDunna’s. Crazy days.

“Hurry Hurry” – from the wonderful band Air Traffic Controller. I love them! Just wrote a post about one of their songs. I saw them open for Bleu. They’re great.

“Do I Love You?” – The Ronettes. One of the things I love about them, besides their songs and who they are, in general, is the SOUND of them. There’s such a sense of space around them, and I’m not sure how that was accomplished, in terms of recording them. It’s a really big sound, with a space between them and the background – but not too much space. They fill that space. There’s an echo, too. I love it. Anyone who knows anything about the Ronettes care to weigh on on that SOUND?

“Angels From the Realms of Glory” – from Annie Lennox’s awesome Christmas album. This was my father’s favorite Christmas carol.

“If I Were Brave” – Shawn Colvin. OUCH.

“Crackin’ Up” – Bo Diddley. Classic.

“Working on the Building” – Elvis Presley, in classic Jesus mode. One of my favorite gospel tracks of his. And when you can hear him start clapping? Kills me.

“Even Flow” – Pearl Jam. Boy, is this a time-machine or what. My coming-of-age years.

“The Past” – Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. Those ladies wailing behind him, him wailing … Guy is a lunatic, an awesome performer. I wish I could “forget yesterday” too, buddy.

“Since U Been Gone” – Kelly Clarkson. She’s fine with ballads, but she kicks ass with “Puttin’ you in the rear view mirror where you belong, pal” songs.

“Cool, Cool, Considerate Men” – the cast of 1776. Goosebumps. Member what I said about how much I love men’s voices blending together? Not to mention the fact that I grew up with this album, and grew up knowing all of these stories by heart. Speaking of which, today is the anniversary of the Boston Massacre, where John Adams showed himself to be a “cool, cool, considerate man”, something rarely attributed to him.

“Baby, Let’s Play House” – Wanda Jackson, the queen of rockabilly, playing a cover of one of Elvis’ more controversial early hits. Of course, they dated. Elvis dated everyone. And she credits him with encouraging her to broaden her style outside of country into the rockabilly world. Saw her live. She’s awesome.

“Something In the Air” – Thunderclap Newman. Another song that has been included on more movie soundtracks than can probably be counted. I love the song.

“Summertime Blues” – The Who, live at Leeds. Pretty ferocious.

“Isn’t It Grand, Boys” – The Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem. I was in some pub in Dublin, and someone started singing this song, the whole crowd joined in, myself included. Sometimes life really is a cliche, and it’s not only not awful, but it’s BEAUTIFUL. Holding up pints of beer and shouting, “Let’s not have a sniffle, let’s have a bloody good cry, and always remember the longer you live, the sooner you’ll bloody well die” with a group of strangers is one of the more beautiful experiences I’ve ever had. Then I made out with a big lug named Tom, and we had a blast, after chatting/flirting all night. Because that’s how Dublin usually goes for me. I really am long over-due for a visit.

“I Can’t Control Myself” – The Troggs. These guys have perpetual boners. Their music is filled with that kind of urgency. And they want to return the favor, which makes them gentlemen, in my book. Naturally, I must link to Lester Bangs’ extraordinary essay about them with what is, perhaps, the most combative title in the history of music writing.

“Hailie’s Song” – Eminem, from The Eminem Show. Track 14, if you must know. One of the first times where he actually sang almost the entire song. I remember discussing this fact, in awe, with my siblings – because he’s got a good voice, even though he says “I can’t sing”. Well, no, he actually can sing. The entire O’Malley family was OBSESSED with this album when it came out. We had loved his earlier albums, too, but this one blew the lid off. We were at a family wedding, with happy smiles and champagne and traditions and wedding cake and family chit-chat, and we all sat at the “cousin’s table” and didn’t even catch up with each other on our own lives – all we did was talk about The Eminem Show. Welcome to the O’Malley family.

“Columbus Day Parade” – the wonderful Mike Viola. Please check him out, both his solo stuff and the stuff he’s put out there with his band The Candy Butchers. Wonderful songwriter, singer, musician. My sister Siobhan opened for him once, and he’s an idol of hers, so it was one of those “wow, life is so COOL SOMETIMES” moments.

“The Way” – Fastball. Oh my word, remember when you could not turn on the radio without hearing this song? What happened to these guys?

“Dark I Am Yet Lonely” – from Sinéad O’Connor’s bore of a double album, Theology. I’ll buy whatever she does. I will give whatever she does a chance, because I’m a loyal fan. But this one got on my damn nerves.

“Scheiße” – Lady GaGa, speaking German in a deadpan voice. I find it so entertaining. I have zero idea what is going on and I don’t care!

“Look At Her Face” – The Coral Sea. Some songs get beneath my skin in a way that is obviously obsessive. Something is being worked out in me whenever the song comes on. I have written about this before. This is one of those songs. I associate it with the writing of my script.

“Blue Christmas” – Michael Buble. I winced when I heard he was covering this song of Elvis’, but surprise surprise, I really liked it, mainly because of the boozy floozy burlesque arrangement.

“Minnie the Moocher” – Robbie Williams on his latest swing album, Swings Both Ways (awesome). This is hot. I have about 6 different versions of this song by different artists. I was so psyched to hear that Robbie was covering it. It’s about time.

“You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet” – Bachman-Turner Overdrive. Oh hell to the Yes.

“Land of Lola” – the amazing Billy Porter from Cyndi Lauper’s Broadway musical Kinky Boots. I haven’t seen it but the music is (no surprise) incredible. And the performances! Porter and Stark Sands – who was also so memorable in Inside Llewyn Davis as the sweet folk-singing soldier.

“Honey Don’t” – Carl Perkins, recorded at Sun Records. One of the chord changes that changed the world.

“V.I.P.” – Sinéad O’Connor, from her 2012 album. I love it. I know she will go her own way, and put out reggae albums or drippy religious albums like Theology, and I will follow, but I was thrilled to hear this album, song to song to song, personal and angry and bone-chilling. And funny, too. Here, she takes back control of her place in the music business. She calls a spade a spade. It’s almost 7 minutes long. There is no chorus. No real beat. It’s a monologue. A raging monologue. I love her.

“Kyrié Eléison” – Sinéad O’Connor, from Faith and Courage, another one of hers I love. She taps into something very primal for me. Faith, belief, Irish-ness, anger, love.

“Mad About You” – Sting. A great song about obsession.

“Mandinka” – Sinéad O’Connor. A Sinéad cluster! This one comes from The Lion and the Cobra, very early Sinéad, which has that sudden screaming thing she does, the switches in range, from belting to falsetto – a sound that calls to mind chanting monks in the early Christian days, as well as war cries. It sounds violent. Like she’s about to toss something up into your face.

“You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go” – Bob Dylan. I rarely feel strong enough to withstand listening to this song.

“Satan’s Jeweled Crown” – the Louvin Brothers. God, I love these boys. I love them for their harmonies, and I love them for this completely un-ironic album cover.

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And on that disturbing and yet pleasing note, I will end.

Posted in Music | Tagged | 13 Comments

Those Who Kill on A&E

Posted on March 4, 2014 by sheila

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Kerry O’Malley as Mia Vogel in “Those Who Kill”, A&E series which premiered last night.

The show is scary, intense, and super stylish. Dark, gloomy, cinematic. It was filmed on location in Pittsburgh and it has such a powerful atmosphere, evoking Pittsburgh’s coldness, grit, and stark beauty. It looks great! It’s awesome to see James D’Arcy in such a large role (I wrote this whole piece about one tiny moment he had in Master and Commander), and Kerry is excellent in her role as the pathologist, who works in the gloomiest lab ever in existence (like I said: great use of locations to create mood). I said to Kerry that I totally believed that she was that person who had that job. The technical language came trippingly off her tongue, it sounded like words she was well-used to saying. Her scene is one of the opening scenes, and it helps establish mood and character, for the show and for the Chloe Sevigny character. The whole show looks promising, especially in regards to Sevigny’s Arc as a character (lots of interesting backstory tidbits thrown in our path), not to mention the whole “serial killer psychology” aspect – something I find fascinating.

Check out Those Who Kill! Go, Kerry!

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Posted in Television | Tagged | 3 Comments

The Books: The Complete Essays of Mark Twain, ‘Is Shakespeare Dead?’

Posted on March 4, 2014 by sheila

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On the essays shelf:

The Complete Essays Of Mark Twain

Whatever you may think of the Shakespeare author controversy, it sure is interesting. I don’t follow along with all the scholarship (that would be a full-time job and I am quite busy already), but I’m aware of the main pillars of it all. There was even a very bad movie made, called Anonymous, which put forth the Earl of Oxford theory (badly). I reviewed the thing here, and that is really my only contribution to the “Shakespeare Authorial Wars”. But I made my point there, and I stand by it!

Historians and scholars pick through the little information we have about Shakespeare (and, really, we have almost nothing), and then erect gigantic biographies around … nothing. I have never read a biography of Shakespeare, and I never will – for that reason. I don’t know if I could bear reading an entire biography filled with language like “might have”, “it can be assumed that”, “it seems likely that”. But it would have to have language like that, because with Shakespeare, who can say for sure? Anyone who does say “for sure” is a charlatan! And any assumption one makes about the few facts we have in regards to Shakespeare – could also be twisted around to reflect entirely the opposite. You know, the whole “second best bed” brouhaha. Has there ever been a piece of furniture more obsessed over in the history of furniture? I am not saying it’s not a tasty and interesting mystery, but honestly: if we can’t know the truth, then stop pretending we can! Have fun with the mystery. Stop trying to smash the mystery out of existence!

Also, I beg of you: do not try to explain his life through the works of art. That’s a backwards kind of analysis and it never ends well. “He wrote this in the plays. Therefore, he must have actually experienced it.” Biographers make this error all the time, and it is super-annoying. If you’re going to take that route, then I implore you to just ADMIT that you are GUESSING.

Oh well. The Shakespeare Author Controversy is big business, at least in the world of academia, and nobody’s listening to my pleas to let the mystery stand, so why even bother? Stephen Greenblatt’s Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare is the only book I’ve read which makes some educated guesses about who Shakespeare was. I babbled about it here years ago. He does make some pretty far-fetched leaps, and again, who can know for sure? But there were some compelling arguments there, the main one being that Shakespeare was a Catholic, in a time that Catholics were being hounded and persecuted. Greenblatt is still clearly guessing, but he didn’t hide that fact. The main contribution of that book was its analysis of John Falstaff, a fascinating chapter. It’s been years since I’ve read the book, so some of the details are lost. But the Falstaff bit is what I really remember. At least Greenblatt admits that what he is talking about cannot, actually, be known. Unlike some other scholars who say that “Shakespeare knew so much about the law, because his plays are filled with legal language: Therefore, he was probably a law clerk at some point.” But if he WERE a law clerk, then there would be some record of him being so, and there is no record.

The flip-side of all of this is the theory that because we have so little information about Shakespeare, and the information we have is not all that persuasive, then he couldn’t have written those plays. Where would he get his obvious legal expertise? (There is barely a scene in ANY of the plays that does not use legal language and concepts, which check out, in terms of accuracy.) Where would he get his obvious expertise in all things monarchical and royal? Was he a courtier or diplomat? Of course he wasn’t. But others were, and maybe THEY wrote the plays. And so the carousel turns. People get tenured positions and book deals and the business continues.

I suppose my point of view is this: I don’t really care who wrote the damn things. I am just glad they exist.

Now: would I be excited if a manuscript of one of the plays, written in Shakespeare’s actual hand, was ever uncovered? Are you kidding me?

But ultimately, I don’t really CARE. I am fine with the mystery.

But I am swayed to the viewpoint that a man named Will Shakespeare wrote those plays – not because he was probably a law clerk at some point, or a diplomat, or any of the other ridiculous airy-fairy theories based on nothing. I believe he wrote them, as opposed to the other candidates, because he was a man of the theatre. And only a man of the theatre would write such masterpieces. Only an actor and a theatre manager and, basically, Show Trash, would understand the dramatic needs of that medium to such a genius degree. This is the viewpoint which is most scorned, of course, because actors are still scorned, and actors are not seen as intelligent. Well, that’s a stupid viewpoint which I don’t credit and try not to even acknowledge. I made the point about Shakespeare being an actor in my review of Anonymous, a film which seemed interested in the histories and the tragedies mostly: that Shakespeare wrote these to bring about political change in England. Sure, great, whatever, but how, then, do you explain Twelfth Night or Much Ado? Or anything as wacky as Midsummer Night’s Dream? Your theory falls apart. If Shakespeare was humorless, then obviously the comedies don’t make sense. Maybe one man wrote the histories and another man wrote the comedies then? Please, enlighten us with your scholarship to explain that away. For me, the only thing that makes sense is also one of the only things that we can KNOW about Shakespeare the actual man, without a shadow of a doubt: The man was an actor.

And that’s good enough for me.

Now. To Twain’s essay. He was introduced to Shakespeare by one of the steam-boat captains he worked under in his earliest days. The captain could recite Shakespeare off by heart, as they trawled up and down the Mississippi, and Twain gives a beautiful portrait of that experience. However, he has since read books about Shakespeare, where the guess-work about his biography reaches absurd levels, and in this essay he sets about dismantling all of the myths. It is his viewpoint that Shakespeare, the man we know so little about, could not have written the plays – mainly because of all of the legal jargon coursing through the plays. That, for Twain, is the “tell”. Scholars have been “worried” about the legal jargon for centuries: how can it be explained? How would Shakespeare get his expertise? Twain says, basically: “That’s easy. He DIDN’T. Therefore, someone else who HAD legal expertise is CLEARLY the author.”

In classic Twain style, he destroys the arguments of his opponents, making them seem totally absurd. I suppose if you have some vested interest in Shakespeare being the one who wrote the plays, you may not find this essay funny. But, like I said, I do think Shakespeare wrote the plays, due to his being an actor and man of the theatre, but I’m not going to fall on my sword defending that viewpoint. I’m just glad we have the plays, whatever assclown wrote them. So my ass doesn’t clench up defensively when I read such an entertaining takedown as Twain’s here. This essay makes me laugh out loud. It’s Twain at his best. He is sarcastic, logical, and contemptuous. I have contempt for some of the same things, the scholars who use words like “might have”, and “it must be assumed that” … I distrust biographers who fall back on those phrases. Twain looks at all of the different theories, the ones that insist that Shakespeare must have written the plays, and goes about destroying them. Helpfully, he lists the facts that we have about Shakespeare, facts that wouldn’t take up 2 pages of note-paper. His signature, of which we only have five actual pieces of evidence, five times he wrote his name (that we know of, in his lifetime). The lawsuit. His controversial will with that pesky “second-best bed” line item which has tortured scholars for centuries. And that’s IT. From these meager facts, these scholars build entire urban cities, with Shakespeare working as a law clerk in his off-hours, and other sorts of nonsense. Twain gleefully rips the scholars to shreds.

I re-read this essay last fall, when I was struggling mightily, again, with my illness. And there’s one line in particular (“I would like to know who held the horses”) which made me laugh so loud and so long in such a dark period that I will always be thankful for this essay. I had to put the book down and guffaw for five minutes. It was beautiful and fun.

Anyway, it’s all very interesting, no matter what side of the argument you come down on!

Here’s an excerpt, which includes the line I love. The essay is quite long in its entirety, this excerpt represents only a small portion of it.

The Complete Essays Of Mark Twain, ‘Is Shakespeare Dead?’, by Mark Twain

The historians find themselves “justified in believing” that the young Shakespeare poached upon Sir Thomas Lucy’s deer preserves and got haled before that magistrate for it. But there is no shred of respectworthy evidence that anything of the kind happened.

The historians, having argued the thing that might have happened into the thing that did happen, found no trouble in turning Sir Thomas Lucy into Mr. Justice Shallow. They have long ago convinced the world – on surmise and without trustworthy evidence – that Shallow is Sir Thomas.

The next addition to the young Shakespeare’s Stratford history comes easy. The historian builds it out of the surmised deer-stealing and the surmised trial before the magistrate, and the surmised vengeance-prompted satire upon the magistrate in the play: result, the young Shakespeare was a wild, wild, wild, oh, such a wild young scamp, and that gratuitous slander is established for all time! It is the way Professor Osborn and I built the colossal skeleton brontosaur that stands fifty-seven feet long and sixteen feet high in the Natural History Museum, the awe and admiration of all the world, the stateliest skeleton that exists on the planet. We had nine bones, and we built the rest of him out of plaster of Paris. We ran short of plaster of Paris, or we’d have built a brontosaur that could sit down beside the Stratford Shakespeare and none but an expert could tell which was biggest or contained the most plaster.

Shakespeare pronounced “Venus and Adonis” “the first heir of his invention,” apparently implying that it was his first effort at literary composition. He should not have said it. It has been an embarrassment to his historians these many, many years. They have to make him write that graceful and polished and flawless and beautiful poem before he escaped from Stratford and his family – 1586 or ’87 – age, twenty-two, or along there; because within the next five years he wrote five great plays, and could not have found time to write another line.

It is sorely embarrassing. If he began to slaughter calves, and poach deer, and rollick around, and learn English, at the earliest likely moment – say at thirteen, when he was supposedly wrenched from that school where he was supposedly storing up Latin for future literary use – he had his youthful hands full, and much more than full. He must have had to put aside his Warwickshire dialect, which wouldn’t be understood in London, and study English very hard. Very hard indeed; incredibly hard, almost, if the result of that labor was to be the smooth and rounded and flexible and letter-perfect English of the “Venus and Adonis” in the space of ten years; and at the same time learn great and fine and unsurpassable literary form.

However, it is “conjectured” that he accomplished all this and more, much more: learned law and its intricacies, and the complex procedure of law-courts; and all about soldiering, and sailing, and the manners and customs and ways of royal courts and aristocratic society; and likewise accumulated in his one head every kind of knowledge the learned then possessed, and every kind of humble knowledge possessed by the lowly and the ignorant; and added thereto a wider and more intimate knowledge of the world’s greatest literatures, ancient and modern, than was possessed by any other man of his time – for his was going to make brilliant and easy and admiration-compelling use of these splendid treasures the moment he got to London. And according to the surmises, that is what he did. Yes, although there was no one in Stratford able to teach him these things, and no library in the little village to dig them out of. His father could not read, and even the surmises surmise that he did not keep a library.

It is surmised by the biographers that the young Shakespeare got his vast knowledge of the law and his familiar and accurate acquaintance with the manners and customs and shop-talk of lawyers through being for a time the clerk of a Stratford court; just as a bright lad like me, reared in a village on the banks of the Mississippi, might become perfect in knowledge of the Bering Strait whale-fishery and the shop-talk of the veteran exercises of that adventure-bristling trade through catching catfish with a “trot-line” Sundays. But the surmise is damaged by the fact that there is no evidence – and not even tradition – that the young Shakespeare was ever clerk of a law-court.

It is further surmised that the young Shakespeare accumulated his law-treasures in the first years of his sojourn in London, through “amusing himself” by learning book-law in his garret and by picking up lawyer-talk and the rest of it through loitering about the law-courts and listening. But it is only surmise; there is no evidence that he ever did either of those things. They are merely a couple of chunks of plaster of Paris.

There is a legend that he got his bread and butter by holding horses in front of the London theaters, mornings and afternoons. Maybe he did. If he did, it seriously shortened his law-study hours and his recreation-time in the courts. In those very days he was writing great plays, and needed all the time he could get. The horse-holding legend ought to be strangled; it too formidably increases the historian’s difficulty in accounting for the young Shakespeare’s erudition – an erudition which he was acquiring, hunk by hunk and chunk by chunk, every day in those strenuous times, and emptying each day’s catch into next day’s imperishable drama.

He had to acquire a knowledge of war at the same time; and a knowledge of soldier-people and sailor-people and their ways and talk; also a knowledge of some foreign lands and their languages: for he was daily emptying fluent streams of these various knowledges, too, into his dramas. How did he acquire these rich assets?

In the usual way: by surmise. It is surmised that he traveled in Italy and Germany and around, and qualified himself to put their scenic and social aspects upon paper; that he perfected himself in French, Italian, and Spanish on the road; that he went in Leicester’s expedition to the Low Countries, as soldier or sutler or something, for several months or years – or whatever length of time a surmiser needs in his business – and thus became familiar with soldiership and soldier-ways and soldier-talk and generalship and general-ways and general-talk, and seamanship and sailor-ways and sailor-talk.

Maybe he did all these things, but I would like to know who held the horses in the mean time; and who studied the books in the garret, and who frolicked in the law-courts for recreation. Also, who did the call-boying and the play-acting.

For he became a call-boy; and as early as ’93 he became a “vagabond” – the law’s ungentle term for an unlisted actor; and in ’94 a “regular” and properly and officially listed member of that (in those days) lightly valued and not much respected profession.

Right soon thereafter he became a stockholder in two theaters, and manager of them. Thenceforward he was a busy and flourishing business man, and was raking in money with both hands for twenty years. Then in a noble frenzy of poetic inspiration he wrote his one poem – his only poem, his darling – and laid him down and died:

Good friend for Iesus sake forbeare
To digg the dust encloased heare:
Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones
And curst be he yt moves my bones.

He was probably dead when he wrote it. Still, this is only conjecture. We have only circumstantial evidence. Internal evidence.

Shall I set down the rest of the Conjectures which constitute the giant Biography of William Shakespeare? It would strain the Unabridged Dictionary to hold them. He is a brontosaur: nine bones and six hundred barrels of plaster of Paris.

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It’s Been a Week …

Posted on March 3, 2014 by sheila

… and I’m not sick of it yet.

Posted in Television | 3 Comments