A re-make – sort of – of the 2012 film, directed by the same person. It has its good points, but then gets a little dumb. I reviewed for Ebert.
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It’s almost too perfect that the man who spoke those words in the title of this post is named SANDMAN.
I was never on the Morphine train, although I had one of their albums, and they were ubiquitous in the East Coast Boston-originated college-radio world in which I grew up. You couldn’t escape Morphine! My brother Brendan, though, has a LOT to say about them, which I included here when I was posting his music writing every Monday. I miss those days! I love his writing so much. If you missed some of it, you can scroll through that archive. It’s so rich and diverse. I decided to “resurrect” as much of it as I could – tied to Birthdays (My Blog did not begin as a celebrity birthday calendar. But I’ve been doing this for so long there really is enough stuff here, already written, to fill up an entire year. It’s insane.)
So. In honor of Mark Sandman’s birthday today, here is Brendan’s essay on Morphine:
I’ve always loved Bruce Springsteen’s fervent adoration of Elvis. His fantastic memoir devotes an entire chapter to what it was like hearing Elvis’ music for the first time – and the chapter doesn’t once include the word “Elvis”. That’s how UNDERSTOOD it is who Springsteen is talking about. Here’s a good article about the whole Bruce/Elvis thing. If you haven’t read his memoir, I highly recommend it! Fascinating. That and Keith Richards’ memoir are well-dog-eared door-stops in my library. And Springsteen is (unsurprisingly) a wonderful writer, evoking whole worlds in a few carefully placed words:
“When it rains, the moisture in the humid air blankets our town with the smell of damp coffee grounds wafting in from the Nescafé factory at the town’s eastern edge. I don’t like coffee but I like that smell. It’s comforting; it unites the town in a common sensory experience; it’s good industry, like the roaring rug mill that fills our ears, brings work and signals our town’s vitality. There is a place here—you can hear it, smell it—where people make lives, suffer pain, enjoy small pleasures, play baseball, die, make love, have kids, drink themselves drunk on spring nights and do their best to hold off the demons that seek to destroy us, our homes, our families, our town.”
I haven’t written much about him, but here are two pieces (one of which wasn’t written by me at all):
Over the last couple of years, I had a lot of fun posting my brother Brendan’s music writing from his old blog. He did a 50 Best Albums list, and then did a whole series on bands he loved, shows he’s attended, artists he revered, etc. I love Bren’s writing. I posted all of it.
Bruce Springsteen’s eerie Nebraska was #45 on Bren’s 50 Best Albums list (and the numbering was pretty much arbitrary, just a way to collate all of it.) I love Bren’s words on the album, particularly because he’s not a huge Springsteen fan.
In 2019, I reviewed Blinded by the Light, based on journalist Sarfraz Manzoor memoir Greetings From Bury Park: Race. Religion. Rock’n’Roll. Manzoor broke free of his immigrant family’s expectations because of Springsteen’s music, which showed him a way out. It’s a wonderful movie (so many critics included words like “I’m not a Springteen fan, but–” in their reviews. Hey. It’s not about YOU. Who the hell cares. Bazillions of people DO love Springsteen. Welcome to the minority.) Anyway, right around the time that Blinded by the Light came out, my niece and nephew – ages 5 and 3 – discovered Springsteen and became obsessed. I wrote about this in the review. My niece Beatrice was Bruce Springsteen for Halloween. Like … that’s the level we’re talking about when we talk about Bruce Springsteen.
And finally: I love that Eric Church – country-rock-and-roll-crossover-superstar – wrote a song about Springsteen, and what Springsteen’s music evokes for him. Beautiful lyrics. Song as sense memory conduit. This is what music does for us. It transports us back.
“The primary math of the real world is one and one equals two. The layman (as, often, do I) swings that every day. He goes to the job, does his work, pays his bills and comes home. One plus one equals two. It keeps the world spinning. But artists, musicians, con men, poets, mystics and such are paid to turn that math on its head, to rub two sticks together and bring forth fire. Everybody performs this alchemy somewhere in their life, but it’s hard to hold on to and easy to forget. People don’t come to rock shows to learn something. They come to be reminded of something they already know and feel deep down in their gut. That’s when the world is at its best, when we are at our best, when life feels fullest, one and one equals three. It’s the essential equation of love, art, rock ’n’ roll and rock ’n’ roll bands. It’s the reason the universe will never be fully comprehensible, love will continue to be ecstatic, confounding, and true rock ’n’ roll will never die.” — Bruce Springsteen
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It’s his birthday today.
I think he’s written two masterpieces. The Stand and 11/22/63 (a book Don DeLillo has been trying – and failing – to write for 40 years #sorrynotsorry). I was a rabid fan in high school, college, my 20s, reading every book as it came out. Somewhere around Tommyknockers I fell off a bit, not following along. Not for any particular reason, I just was focused on other authors. The copies, though, of It, The Stand, his early horror books … I have my original copies, so dog-eared I’m afraid to read them again. They’re falling apart.
For his birthday today, I want to post an excerpt from Under the Dome, an interesting novel with a very silly ending (my nephew Cashel and I read it together) … but there’s one passage in it – a passage that’s basically character development and scene-setting – not plot-driven at all – that is a perfect example of why I love King, and why I go to him again and again.
If you grew up in a small town, the anecdote has such a ring of truth, and it’s a truth I’d never heard put together before in such an accurate way. I grew up in a small New England town and when I was a junior/senior, the girls’ basketball team was the hottest ticket of the season. Normally our school was all about boys’ football. But they weren’t doing so hot that year. Neither were the boys’ basketball team. But the GIRLS were a winning JUGGERNAUT. My group of friends felt it was unfair that the boys’ teams had cheerleading squads, and the girls teams didn’t, especially since “our” girls were so phenomenal. So we formed our own cheerleading squad, called The Phys. Wrecks. You can read all about our experience there. In our own adolescent way, we exposed the underlying sexism behind much of high school sports, AND pointed out the absurdity that girls’ teams didn’t have cheerleading squads. Why is it WEIRD to have cheerleaders for a girls’ team? Why did people snicker? You snicker at yourselves, at your own shame. Creating The Phys. Wrecks is one of my proudest high school achievements. We wanted to acknowledge the great accomplishments of our unbeatable high school girls’ basketball team. And, as King writes below, those games were ferocious in a way that the boys’ games weren’t: King NAILS this very specific dynamic, how a whole town can become obsessed with high school kids running around on a basketball court.
There are other books about the furor around high school football in small towns, or college football. But high school girls’ basketball? A phenomenon that swept MY town back in the day? Not so much.
This is Stephen King at his very best. It brings me to tears.
Other than town politics, Big Jim Rennie had only one vice, and that was high school girls’ basketball – Lady Wildcats basketball, to be exact. He’d had season tickets ever since 1998, and attended at least a dozen games a year. In 2004, the year the Lady Wildcats won the State Class D championship, he attended all of them. And although the autographs people noticed when they were invited into his home study were inevitably those of Tiger Woods, Dale Earnhardt and Bill “Spaceman” Lee, the one of which he was proudest – the one he treasured – was Hanna Compton’s, the little sophomore point guard who had led the Lady Wildcats to that one and only gold ball.
When you’re a season ticket holder, you get to know the other season ticket holders around you, and their reasons for being fans of the game. Many are relatives of the girls who play (and often the sparkplugs of the Booster Club, putting on bake sales and raising money for the increasingly expensive “away” games). Others are basketball purists, who will tell you – with some justification – that the girls’ games are just better. Young female players are invested in a team ethic that the boys (who love to run and gun, dunk, and shoot from way downtown) rarely match. The pace is slower, allowing you to see inside the game and enjoy every pick-and-roll or give-and-go. Fans of the girls’ game relish the very low scores that boys’ basketball fans sneer at, claiming that the girls’ game puts a premium on defense and foul shooting, which are the very definition of old-school hoops.
There are also guys who just like to watch long-legged teenage girls run around in short pants.
Big Jim shared all these reasons for enjoying the sport, but his passion sprang from another source entirely, one he never vocalized when discussing the games with his fellow fans. It would not have been politic to do so.
The girls took the sport personally, and that made them better haters.
The boys wanted to win, yes, and sometimes a game could get hot if it was against a traditional rival (in the case of the Mills Wildcats sports teams, the despised Castle Rock Rockets), but mostly with the boys it was about individual accomplishments. Showing off, in other words. And when it was over, it was over.
The girls, on the other hand, loathed losing. They took loss back to the locker room and brooded over it. More importantly, they loathed and hated it as a team. Big Jim often saw that hate rear its head; during a loose ball-brawl deep in the second half with the score tied, he could pick up the No you don’t, you little bitch, that ball is MINE vibe. He picked it up and fed on it.
Before 2004, the Lady Wildcats made the state tournament only once in twenty years, that appearance a one-and-done affair against Buckfield. Then had come Hanna Compton. The greatest hater of all time, in Big Jim’s opinion.
As the daughter of Dale Compton, a scrawny pulp-cutter from Tarker’s Mills who was usually drunk and always argumentative, Hanna had come by her out-of-my-face ‘tude naturally enough. As a freshman she had played JV for most of the season; Coach swung her up to varsity only for the last two games, where she’d outscored everyone and left her opposite number from the Richmond Bobcats writhing on the hardwood after a hard but clean defensive play.
When that game was over, Big Jim had collared Coach Woodhead. “If that girl doesn’t start next year, you’re crazy,” he said.
“I’m not crazy,” Coach Woodhead had replied.
Hanna had started hot and finished hotter, blazing a trail that Wildcats fans would still be talking about years later (season average: 27.6 points per game). She could spot up and drop a three-pointer any time she wanted, but what Big Jim liked best was to watch her split the defense and drive for the basket, her pug face set in a sneer of concentration, her bright black eyes daring anyone to get in her way, her short ponytail sticking out behind her like a raised middle finger. The Mill’s Second Selectman and premier used car dealer had fallen in love.
In the 2004 championship game, the Lady Wildcats had been leading the Rock Rockets by ten when Hanna fouled out. Luckily for the Cats, there was only a buck-sixteen left to play. They ended up winning by a single point. Of their eighty-six total points, Hanna Compton had scored a brain-freezing sixty-three. That spring, her argumentative dad had ended up behind the wheel of a brand-new Cadillac, sold to him at cost-minus-forty-percent by James Rennie Sr. New cars weren’t Big Jim’s business, but when he wanted one “off the back of the carrier”, he could always get it.
Sitting in Peter Randolph’s office, with the last of the pink meteor shower still fading away outside (and his problem children waiting – anxiously, Big Jim hoped – to be summoned and told their fate), Big JIm recalled that fabulous, that outright mythic, basketball game; specifically the first eight minutes of the second half, which had begun with the Lady Wildcats down by nine.
Hanna had taken the game over with the single-minded brutality of Joseph Stalin taking over Russia, her black eyes glittering (and seemingly fixed upon some basketball Nirvana beyond the sight of normal mortals), her face locked in that eternal sneer that said, I’m better than you, I’m the best, get out of my way or I’ll run you the fuck down. Everything she threw up during that eight minutes had gone in, including one absurd half-court shot that she launched when her feet tangled together, getting rid of the rock just to keep from being called for traveling.
There were phrases for that sort of run, the most common being in the zone. But the one Big Jim liked was feeling it, as in “She’s really feeling it now.” As though the game had some divine texture beyond the reach of ordinary players (although sometimes even ordinary players felt it , and were transformed for a brief while into gods and goddesses, every bodily defect seeming to disappear during their transitory divinity), a texture that on special nights could be touched: some rich and marvelous drape such as much adorn the hardwood halls of Valhalla.
Hanna Compton had never played her junior year; the championship game had been her valedictory. That summer, while driving drunk, her father had killed himself, his wife, and all three daughters while driving back to Tarker’s Mills from Brownie’s, where they had gone for ice cream frappes. The bonus Cadillac had been their coffin.
The multiple-fatality crash had been front page news in western Maine – Julia Shumway’s Democrat published an issue with a black border that week – but Big Jim had not been grief-stricken. Hanna never would have played college ball, he suspected; there the girls were bigger, and she might have been reduced to role-player status. She never would have stood for that. Her hate had to be fed by constant action on the floor. Big Jim understood completely. He sympathized completely. It was the main reason he had never even considered leaving The Mill. In the wider world he might have made more money, but wealth was the short beer of existence. Power was champagne.
Running The Mill was good on ordinary days, but in times of crisis it was better than good. In times like that you could fly on the pure wings of intuition, knowing that you couldn’t screw up, absolutely couldn’t. You could read the defense even before the defense had coalesced, and you scored every time you got the ball. You were feeling it, and there was no better time for that to happen than in a championship game.
This was his championship game, and everything was breaking his way. He had the sense – the total belief – that nothing could go wrong during this magical passage; even things that seemed wrong would become opportunities rather than stumbling blocks, like Hanna’s desperate half-court shot that had brought the whole Derry Civic Center to its feet, the Mills fans cheering, the Castle Rockers raving in disbelief.
Feeling it.
Working Girls (1931)
Directed by Dorothy Arzner! I did a deep dive into this pioneering director’s work when I was working on the Dance Girl Dance essay for Criterion. I really like her films. I hadn’t seen this one! Two sisters move to New York City, get jobs, live in a boarding house for women. One sister is street-smart, the other not so much. They know how to hustle, and they both want to find men, but one has a more practical view of things, while the other one is more romantic. In 1930s pre-Codes, being romantic means being naive. It means you’re prey. No big stars in this, but I really like Arzner’s visual choices: there are a lot of cool mirror scenes, but also just the framing, and the way bodies move across the screen: there’s real alive-ness in her films. There’s one scene where all the bored curfew-bound women in the boarding house dance with each other to the music coming in through the window, and it’s quite beautiful.
Yup. (It’s Murray’s birthday today.)
I have often said that it’s interesting to consider what films made today might be considered classics to future generations. Something like Casablanca was not a “prestige picture”, it was not filmed with a ponderous eye towards posterity. It’s a couple steps above a potboiler. But LOOK at what has HAPPENED with that movie. I guarantee that the films that will last from our day and age won’t be the expected, won’t be the ones carefully tailored to address How We Live Now … because How We Live Now will date by next week. The ones that last have something to say about How We Live Always. And for me, top of the list of contemporary-and-future classics, is Groundhog Day. Groundhog Day is the It’s a Wonderful Life of the late 20th century, and it will last long after we are all dust.
I “fell in love” with Bill Murray at age 13, 14, 15, when I was old enough to stay up late to see him on Saturday Night Live. I wasn’t watching SNL in grade school. How DID he come on my radar when I was so young? He seemed more childlike maybe than the other actors, definitely more childlike than Chevy Chase (whom I also harbored a crush on), but he also had a wink-at-the-camera sincere-un-sincerity which was ironic-adult-in-nature but I – a kid – got it. There was something attractive about a grownup man lampooning HIMSELF in some way even I could perceive. It was Murray’s nerdy “Todd” who really got to me, got under my skin as a kid, perhaps because Todd was an awkward high school kid, and I was also in high school. Huge crush.
I wrote about all this and more some years back in a guest-post for Jeremy Richey’s great site Moon in the Gutter: Bill Murray’s performance in Lost in Translation, and how the karaoke scene (in particular) summed up his career – but also transformed it into something else. One of my points was that Sofia Coppola saw what I (and many others) saw: Murray was not just a character actor, he was a plausible leading man.
Side note: As I am sure is well-known, Bill Murray headed to Memphis to attend Elvis Presley’s funeral in August, 1977. He just started on Saturday Night Live at the time. He wasn’t that famous yet. Murray was not friends with Elvis, and was not particularly a fan (although he did like him, and used him as inspiration in a lot of his work.) But he felt the enormity of the event, and wanted to be there to pay his respects, and bear witness to the exit of this enormous force of the 20th century. So off he went.
This, to me, is classic Bill Murray.
Here’s a picture of Murray at the funeral. It’s almost too good to be true.
Bill Murray told the story of attending Elvis’ funeral and grave-side ceremony on The David Letterman Show. There’s only audio, but it’s well worth checking out.
It’s his birthday today.
51 years old. It seems incomprehensible. Like a lot of people, he first came on my radar through the extraordinary scene in the motel room with Patricia Arquette in True Romance (“you gotta lotta heart, kid.”) The moment I always remember, though, the moment that struck me most when I first saw it, was the look on his face after he punches her for the first time. There’s a little smile, the eyes flying up to the ceiling. It’s absolutely brilliant: what I see in that smile, is the tiny flash of shame this character can still feel, and the smile is the way it’s handled. Watch for it again. It’s not a sneering “I just showed this bitch” psycho smile. It’s the smile of a little kid who stole something and got busted. It’s extremely chilling, and representative of the kind of emotionally detailed and instinctual work Gandolfini would become known for.
While Gandolfini’s impact on the culture can’t really be measured, due to The Sopranos (his work in that is such an enormous accomplishment it’s still daunting on a re-watch) … his film work was also superb and varied. It wasn’t just a retread of Tony Soprano. He played a lot of gangsters and heavies, but always with their own complex little spin. He was a great great character actor. And I treasure the wonderful Enough Said, unique in his filmography, because he got to play a romantic lead. And he killed it. Gandolfini’s final role was in The Drop, which came out in 2014, a movie I really liked. I wrote about it here.
But the main thing I remember about Gandolfini is the enormous privilege of going to see him in God of Carnage on Broadway (with Marcia Gay Harden, Hope Davis, and Jeff Daniels). I went with three of my cousins and we sat in the third row. It was THE ticket in town and so we were very very lucky. It’s one of the most exhilarating theatrical experiences I’ve ever had as an audience member. I wrote about it here. It was the first thing Gandolfini did after The Sopranos ended, which speaks volumes about who he was as an actor.
When he died, I wrote an obit for Capital New York, and I focused mainly on that live performance. It wasn’t captured on film. 19th c. actor Edwin Booth said, “An actor is a sculptor who carved in snow.” The reality of theatre. You can’t keep it forever the way you can a film. But that doesn’t make it any less precious. In many ways, it makes it MORE precious. God of Carnage is one of Gandolfini’s best and I will always be so grateful I got to see it. A beautiful sculpture made of snow.
New newsletter out: some thoughts on what I am trying to do in my writing, at Liberties mostly, but elsewhere, always. No paywall for this one.
Tumbledown (2015; d. Sean Mewshaw)
Allison and I re-watched this. I reviewed for Ebert when it came out in 2016. I really like it. Gosh, August feels like a long time ago. I was in New York for half of August, and then I went to Scotland, and now I’m back and I have bronchitis. The two biggest things in my life right now are not “on social media”. Not a trace. You’d never guess. I started “leaving stuff out” early on in the years of my blog, a decade before social media arrived. I remember some nosy commenter saying “I am getting sick of all these red herrings”, like I was being coy or whatever. As though I’m “known” for baring all in my writing. Believe me. I don’t. I have almost no time right now – due to the two big things – hence, the low number of movies watched. This movie was so much fun to re-visit! It came out in 2015 and it feels like it comes from a simpler time. I mean, I guess it does.
Good One (2024; d. India Donaldson)
I reviewed for Ebert. This was really fun. I went to the press screening in New York at Soho House – the plush-est most comfortable screening room in New York. I took Allison with me as a plus one (sometimes “they” don’t allow plus-ones). It is SUCH a good movie, one of my favorites of the year. And it was just so fun to see it with Allison. We walked back to her apartment – it was a hot steamy night – and we talked about the movie for hours. It was fantastic and so much a part of the experience that I included it in my review.
Wicked Little Letters (2024; d. Thea Sharrock)
I reviewed this eccentric little true-life caper for Ebert. Allison hadn’t heard of it, so I sang its praises and then we watched and had a blast.
The Fall Guy (2024; d. David Leitch)
Allison and I watched this. I saw in the movie theatre with my niece who basically INSISTED that I take her. She had seen it the day before and NEEDED to see it again. I love this so much! It’s just what I was doing at age 15. And it did not disappoint. I loved it so much and I knew Allison would love it too. We had a blast.
The Bachelerotte Australia, season 1
Allison and I fell into this one. We love watching this series together. We have in-depth discussions about male-female relationships, and interpersonal dynamics, and dating, and hierarchies and etc. Yes, the whole thing is fake, but the issues on display – the things that come up – are real. So it’s fun. And stuff like this is a necessary distraction from all the other shit I’ve got going on.
Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on Trial (2024; d. Joe Berlinger)
Nothing new here in this Netflix series, but it’s Joe Berlinger so I decided to watch. William Shirer’s experiences in Berlin are utilized throughout, which is an interesting perspective, and the Nuremberg Trials are also an organizing motif. They colorized all the extant footage which – to me – is a sketchy choice, but … I know they’re going for a younger audience whose mush-brains turn off when they see black and white footage? or something like that? Berlinger has said he made the series to try to reach millennials/Gen-Z, many of whom seem to not know about the Holocaust, or who somehow think the Jews somehow started it. I wasn’t crazy about using an AI re-creation of Shirer’s voice. It’s unnecessary manipulation. Nobody knows what William Shirer sounds like. Nobody alive, anyway. Just get an actor with an old-timey radio-announcer voice, and avoid the fakery! Some of the re-enactments are harrowing, particularly the Babyn-Yar sequence. But you hear just one fact about Babyn-Yar and your brain fills with horrifying images. The fact that anyone survived it to tell the tale is a fucking miracle.
The Apartment (1960; d. Billy Wilder)
In August, I hosted the audience discussion on The Apartment at the Jacob Burns Theatre, which was so much fun. There’s so much going on in my life (see first comment in this post) I considered canceling this, but I decided to just stretch myself and go for it. It was a lot: I had to drive down in the morning, work my day job, go to the theatre, sleep over at my sister’s, get up at 4 am, and drive home – in time to sign on and work my remote day job. But it ended up being a magical experience. I got to see some old friends: Keith, Monica – my friend Jen came, I got to discuss the film onstage with Ian – and Cashel took the train up!! We all went out for a beer afterwards at the bar down the street. Life felt normal. Life hasn’t felt normal since the pandemic, to be honest. I got offstage to the news that Gena Rowlands had died. So I also had to write the Gena tribute for Ebert the following day. Along with everything else. A 3-hour drive. An 8-hour work day. I don’t know how I did all this. No wonder I have bronchitis for the third time this year.
Dog Day Afternoon (1975; d. Sidney Lumet)
I was a guest on an Al Pacino podcast, where every guest picks a Pacino movie to discuss. Amazingly, Dog Day Afternoon hadn’t been chosen. I have such personal associations with this film I have barely re-watched it. I don’t need to. It got to me, and it got to me EARLY. But I figured what the hell. So I re-watched. It’s a masterpiece.
The Wasp (2024; d. Guillem Morales)
This was good. A fun watch with a bunch of twists. It’s hard to “fool” me but I was fooled. Really good performances. I tried not to give anything away in my review for Ebert.
Janet Planet (2024; d. Annie Baker)
One of my favorites of the year. Annie Baker wrote The Flick, one of the most astonishing plays I have ever seen – no lie – and I’ve seen a lot. And I saw it when it was at the Barrow Street, and still kind of an underground off-Broadway phenomenon. It’s 3 hours long. A little over, actually. She is a BOLD artist. I love it. This is her directorial debut and it’s a stunner.
Sometimes a piece rattles around in your head for years and you finally get an opportunity to just go ahead and write it. For my monthly column at Liberties magazine I wrote about Marion Keisker, and how I think she’s the one who saw and recorded Elvis first. a year before Sam Phillips did. in the world of Elvis-ania, this is a slightly controversial opinion – Peter Guralnick, who interviewed them both, agonized about it in print – in his Elvis book, in his Sam Phillips book … but … it just makes more sense to me that Marion was the one who first recorded him. I made my case.
Marion Keisker Loved Elvis First
And thanks Baz Luhrmann for … agreeing with me!
Of all the deep cuts in the Elvis movie, the treatment of Marion Keisker was most gratifying.
