Granted, Electra – with its focus on identity and masks and persona – is very much my kind of thing already, but still: I loved it! It’s so playful, not self-serious – which I imagine would have been a huge trap with this material. Impressed. I reviewed for Ebert.
When Link Wray wails “Have you heard the news? There’s good rockin’ tonight” in his version of “Good Rockin’ Tonight” … it sounds like a threat that could topple civilization. And when he goes up the octave? Forget about it. Run for cover.
Link Wray’s “Rumble” was considered so dangerous at the time some radio stations refused to play it. It was banned – literally – in New York and Boston. There was fear that just HEARING the song – an instrumental, no less – would cause chaos, riots, actual “rumbles”. It’s one of the only instrumentals to ever be banned from radio play in America. And you know what? The song IS dangerous. The people who were afraid of it weren’t wrong. Those who were afraid of “Rumble” sensed correctly that the song was part of what was shattering the status quo. You listen to “Rumble” and you are altered. Nothing will ever be the same again.
“The first time I heard ‘Rumble’ … it was something that had so much profound attitude …” In the documentary It Might Get Loud, Jimmy Page listens to “Rumble, and then discusses with Jack White and Edge.
His “Fever” is pure sex.
Link Wray’s guitar-playing opened the way for others. It was that radical. Once people plugged in their guitars, following in the footsteps of Sister Rosetta Tharpe and other pioneers, “power chords” were always a possibility. But Link Wray is the one who discovered it, and pushed it, creating sounds that had never been heard before. He was playing around with interference in the late 1950s, a decade before Hendrix. Link Wray pushed those chords, the vibrato, the vibrations, the distortion, the interference and resonance, to their most extreme limits. In his hands, the sound becomes almost abstract, yet it never sacrifices power. Jimi Hendrix’s famous distorted version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” wouldn’t have been possible without Link Wray. Link Wray’s playing is aggressive. You can’t putter about watering plants when you’re listening to Link Wray. He will not stand for it.
I love Kim Morgan’s story of seeing Link Wray: “The crowd consisted of die-hard Rockabillies, a smattering of older people, varied Wray fans, me and my little sister. I stood in the front, hands on stage, and watched one of rock n’ roll’s most influential guitar Gods work his power — taking all that is raucous and dark and soulful and yes, light, and hypnotizing us. There were no bad vibes in that cramped crowd of potential rowdies. Moving on stage like the half-Shawnee he was, he worked us as if performing some kind of Native American rock and roll rain dance, while still playing down and dirty — music that made us feel alive and real and raw. And then dreamy — a seedy, sexy, soulful, demonic, beatific dream.”
I’m trying to picture just turning on the TV in 1959 and hearing … this.
Link Wray tells the story of how “Rumble” was born. (Naturally, I am happy about the shirt he is wearing). The song started as improvised “filler” at a record hop … but the kids heard the threat in the sound, the power of it, the sheer aggressive drive of it – they felt it immediately. Link Wray: “Now the kids are screaming because now something is happening.”
Speaking of Elvis, here’s Link Wray grinding out “Mystery Train,” live, in 1974. Even now, when his influence has so permeated our culture, and music, you can still pick his guitar out of a lineup and say “That. That’s Link Wray.”
“It’s the sexiest toughest chord change in all of rock ‘n roll.”
If you haven’t seen the documentary, Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World, I highly recommend it!
Thank you so much for stopping by. If you like what I do, and if you feel inclined to support my work, here’s a link to my Venmo account. And I’ve launched a Substack, Sheila Variations 2.0, if you’d like to subscribe.
It’s her birthday today.
Below you will find a clip of Lesley Gore, performing “You Don’t Own Me”, on the now-mythical 1964 T.A.M.I. Show, directed by Steve Binder (who also would end up directing Elvis Presley’s phenomenal 1968 “comeback special”). There’s tons of commentary out there about what went down on the T.A.M.I. Show (and you can rent it on Netflix – worth it to see the whole thing, although many of the clips are on Youtube.) All of these bands gathered for a live audience and performed. No biggie, right? But what ended up happening was a Musical Rumble, a death-match. Each band competing with each other, white British bands competing with Black American performers, inspirations to the Brits, but … it’s all fun and games but it’s kind of not, too. The concert becomes stressful and you can SEE the stress. My pal Trav SD has a great post about Gore on that show.
For example:
James Brown was placed second to last in the lineup, and the show closed out with The Rolling Stones, who were, of course, initially inspired by people like James Brown (Mick Jagger was one of the producers of the recent Brown biopic, Get On Up.) Brown was furious that he was placed second to last (“NOBODY comes after James Brown!”). James Brown came onstage and performed so well (understatement – it is a performance For the Ages), that he brought the house down for 20 straight minutes. Brown said later, “I danced so hard that night my manager cried.” And the Stones, watching him tear it up from backstage, started feeling incredibly uneasy and anxious, watching Brown. How were they supposed to follow that? No one should have to follow that. When they finally take the stage, they actually look … anxious. Richards said later that the T.A.M.I. Show was one of the biggest mistakes of their career. They don’t flop or anything, and they are riveting in their young 1964-glitter. But … following James Brown was an impossibility. Brown makes the Stones look derivative, and they know it.
All that fascinating background aside, I love Lesley Gore (she was one of the few women in the lineup – she and The Supremes!). And it’s important to remember that of all of the Macho-Rumble guys on that stage, SHE sold more records (at the time anyway) than all of them. I mean, “It’s My Party,” you know what I’m saying? She was the #1 female recording artist of 1964. She sang 4 whole songs on The TAMI Show, evidence of her star-power, but “You Don’t Own Me” is the standout.
Do not mess with this woman.
She’s not just singing the lyrics. She MEANS it, all of it.
The song is a feminist anthem, 10 years before “women’s lib” went mainstream. The song is a declaration of independence. It is also a WARNING.
I cannot tell you how happy I was that Eminem sampled it so heavily in his untitled track off of Recovery. (In doing a little research for this post, I came across the following quote from Lesley Gore: “I’ve listened to Eminem rap. That’s not daily fare for me, but I can’t help but admire how vivid what he does is. My own taste goes a little more toward Norah Jones.”) I love that.
Thank you so much for stopping by. If you like what I do, and if you feel inclined to support my work, here’s a link to my Venmo account. And I’ve launched a Substack, Sheila Variations 2.0, if you’d like to subscribe.
Had breakfast with one of my oldest friends (she who rescued a hawk, in a blazing act of bravery, which I think the hawk recognized and appreciated). We now live pretty near each other, which is wild, after me living away for so many decades. So we met up at a local breakfast place and want to make it a regular thing. We talked about our families, our lives, our jobs, politics, and mascara. She said, “I brought you a gift.” I was shocked. It’s not my birthday. She put it in my hand. A little crystal middle finger upraised. I put it on my windowsill. Facing out. Facing to the world. She knows me so well.
The weather suddenly got really wet and then really warm and in response the flowers and the trees exploded overnight. There’s this beautiful patch of land – privately owned – called the “azalea garden”. It’s behind a home, it’s existed longer than I am alive, and this one family basically runs this place. It’s all azaleas and rhododendrons and spruces, and it’s not just a garden, it’s got to be a couple of acres. There are Adirondack chairs in tiny glades, and grassy lanes, flowers everywhere. This place is literally walking distance from where I grew up but I never went. My mother and I spent a beautiful morning there. It’s free. There are four parking spots behind the house. They take donations. That’s it. There was a couple with a baby there – we ran into them once – but other than that we were alone. We took pictures, we talked about the flowers, we stood and looked around us, soaking it in. We will make this a regular thing, we both enjoyed it so much.
The kids went outside to dye their Easter eggs, Cashel included, although he’s not a kid anymore. When I started this blog I was still babysitting him! What on EARTH. Cousins are a good thing. I should know. I have about 50 of them and we’re all on an extremely active group chat, which can get overwhelming during Red Sox season.
More hotel life. Reading one of the quintessential “hotel” books while being in an actual hotel is a little on the nose. Hopefully I won’t meet some gigolo who takes an interest in me. What am I SAYING. Hopefully I WILL. I’ll be starting May in New York hotels as well, because two dear friends of mine are getting married at City Hall and they asked me to be their witness. Truly honored!
Frankie has gained five pounds – five! – since I got him! Poor little dude was skin and bones because of his tough life on the streets. He’s all plump and happy now, but now I have to make sure he doesn’t get any plumper. We’ve done our job fattening him up, but the main thing is he is totally chill about food now. I look back on his absolute PANIC about food when I first got him – it was so sad! He had just eaten and he would wander around yowling and clawing at the pantry door – and I am amazed at the transformation. He sleeps me with now too. The only thing driving him insane now is the birdsong. I have the windows open now that it’s warmer, and my apartment is basically a tree house, since it’s in the roof of this house. Frankie is always on high alert because those birds are LOUD.
Had a great time discussing Network with programmer Ian LoCascio, after the film’s screening at Jacob Burns. The subscriber base at Jacob Burns is excellent: they come OUT to stuff, they’re always engaged, they are into it. It’s my favorite kind of audience, because more often than not about 70% of the audience hasn’t seen whatever film it is. That’s what you want!
The 92nd Street Y hosted an event with the creators of Stranger Things, which I have been binging with my niece Lucy (off an on) for about a year. We do it when we can. She is DEEP into it, she basically has grown up with these characters, and it’s been a really fun aunt-niece thing to do. It’s her birthday in May so I bought us tickets for the online version (basically to be uploaded following the live event at the Paris Theater). I kept it a secret and told her to save 8:30 on Monday for this surprise thing. When I told her what it was, you could have heard her screams two counties over. So we sat on her bed waiting for the start time. She clustered her Max squishmallow and Funko Pop figurines on the laptop, as though they were ready to watch as well. We were cracking up. And then … the whole thing was a bust. The video never launched. We waited! It was so sad! We salvaged the night by picking up where we left off and watched two episodes of Season 3.
Speaking of the 92nd Street Y: The event at the 92nd Street Y celebrating Liberties’ 5-year anniversary was wonderful. I met so many people I’ve only connected with online, and then also met a bunch of new people at the after-party, held at a restaurant across the street. It was great to see Jim Wolcott, whom I haven’t seen since before the pandemic. He, my friend Farran and I used to meet up, on average, once or twice a year at the Algonquin. I’ve missed doing that. So it was really cool to be on a panel with him and re-connect. Hearing American hero David Shipley – who moderated the panel – read an excerpt from one of my pieces was quite a trip! At the party afterwards, I met so many interesting people! I feel like I tend towards shyness in public situations – and I don’t socialize that much anymore – but I spent the entire party talking to really interesting people, exchanging emails and Insta handles, drinking wine (Okay, one glass, but that’s livin’ it UP for me) and staying out hours past my bedtime. It’s not every party where a guy you’ve literally just met throws in a reference to “Christopher Hitchens’ piece on blow jobs” – and you get to nod enthusiastically, like “oh God yeah, I know that piece!” My people! We just need to FIND our people. They’re out there! My sister and Cashel came to the event, which was really special.
Reading
Ashes and Diamonds, by Jerzy Andrzejewski
This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen, short story collection (based on his experiences in Auschwitz) by Tadeusz Borowski
The Hard Crowd, collection of essays by Rachel Kushner
To Write as If Already Dead, Kate Zambreno
It’s his birthday today. So … happy (?) birthday to this provocative sometimes-maddening always-fascinating auteur.
Question mark due to the doubt that “happy” has anything to do with the Danish film director, who has been poking the bear from the jump, outraging people (sometimes including myself), and then saying shit that puts him “way beyond the pale” – like his notorious press conference at Cannes which got him banned. If you watch that press conference, he’s got this little smirk on his face as he’s saying the shit about Nazis. I don’t trust him as far as I can throw him. He wasn’t “accidentally” making those comments as a “slip”. He knew they were provocative. It’s why he said them.
He first came to my attention with Breaking the Waves, which every single person in my circle of friends FLIPPED over and I …. really REALLY hated. I don’t normally hate things, so even I was surprised by my reaction. I think the public fawning over it (as I saw it anyway) was partially why I rebelled against it so strongly. And so I was done with Lars von Trier. I proceeded to ignore him for a decade. He came out with films. Everyone talked about them. I ignored it all. (By the way: if your opinions have never changed over the years … you scare me.) I wasn’t working as a film critic back then so I felt no obligation to “keep up” with anything that irritated me so MIGHTILY as the guy who directed Breaking the Waves. There were plenty of other directors I loved and admired. He just wasn’t one of them.
Then … I saw Melancholia at the New York Film Festival (by that point I was working as a film critic), and …
I was flattened. Melancholia spoke to me in a way few films have … and it’s strange, but I didn’t get my proper psychiatric diagnosis until two years later, but I was already struggling – MIGHTILY – by 2011 (and had struggled since I was a kid). It was no longer even a crisis (in my mind anyway): this was just how I lived, how I saw the world, and I couldn’t make anyone understand. I couldn’t describe what it felt like. John Keats’ poem on melancholy helped. That Sylvia Plath poem where she describes what her son must see when he looks up at her from his crib: a “ceiling without a star”. That comes close to it. Emily Dickinson’s “slant of light”. These are all things which help to explain the experience – the experience which is beyond words.
Then came Melancholia. Not only is the story of a rogue planet on a crash collision course with Earth a perfect metaphor for what the approach of madness actually feels like – this is the thing sane people just can’t “get” because they are sane! – but on a more earth-bound level (heh), it’s almost a clarion call of respect for those who suffer – respect, not pity – because those who suffer are better able to face reality, the “melancholic” are WAY better equipped to face catastrophe than sane people. I mean, there’s not even a contest. Tennessee Williams’ plays are all about this: the “sensitivies”, the “fragiles”, the “broken” … they’re the strong ones. They’re the ones unafraid to face the truth of the matter. The healthy ones cringe and close their eyes.
Here’s what LVT had to say about “melancholy”:
“True values entail suffering. That’s the way we think. All in all, we tend to view melancholia as more true. We prefer music and art to contain a touch of melancholia. So melancholia in itself is a value. Unhappy and unrequited love is more romantic than happy love. For we don’t think that’s completely real, do we?…Longing is true. It may be that there’s no truth at all to long for, but the longing itself is true. Just like pain is true. We feel it inside. It’s part of our reality.”
Sane people believe the world is logical. And they call US delusional. And so logical people refuse to accept harsh reality, they push it away, saying “No No, this can’t be true.” Just like Charlotte Gainsbourg, the “stable” sister does in Melancholia. So responsible, so capable, she falls apart when the end of the world arrives. While Kirsten Dunst’s character, debilitated by depression, stares unblinkingly at the catastrophe and even – in one stunning scene – welcomes it, seduces it.
Melancholia is worth it for the insights provided in that scene alone. I don’t know if anybody is ready to listen. It’s a dangerous truth, which is why it is so rarely spoken, and – incidentally – WHY I have almost never “felt seen” in films. Nobody wants to hear the truth, that madness is sometimes preferable to sanity. That welcoming it is the only option.
The other psychological insight of the film, and the one that really matters, is: Those of us who have been drenched in psychological catastrophe since childhood, know how to accept – and endure – reality. You will just have to trust the word of the insane on this one. When things fall apart, come find the sufferers, come find the people you’ve been irritated by and have been telling to “cheer up” for 20 years. We won’t be freaked out at all when shit goes down. We’ve endured far worse in our own heads.
This is the element of Melancholia that REALLY got to me, and I suppose healthier people would think it’s a dangerous message. Like, don’t let anyone tell you there’s ANYTHING good about “melancholia”. It’s UNHEALTHY to admit that mania is sometimes fun. It’s DANGEROUS to think mood swings are sometimes productive. And etc. But Melancholia says: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, you healthy happy people have an easier time of it, but when the chips are down, when shit gets real … WE will be the ones who can face it. You will disintegrate. Your world view is WRONG. You have ALWAYS been wrong.
It’s not a particularly socially acceptable viewpoint, but … I fucking RELATE to it.
To say Melancholia changed my mind about Lars von Trier is a bit too simplistic. I still don’t care for Breaking the Waves. And there are aspects of his work I find extremely irritating. But I now understand he is a great artist. And like a lot of great artists, he is a complicated and not-always-great human being. (Who is always great, though? Please. Introduce me to that paragon because I’ve never met one.)
I have to come to things in my own way and in my own time.
I find consensus-driven thinking stifling. And always have. It’s why I quit Girl Scouts the day they had us make duffel bags and we were all supposed to be excited. I just felt my own difference too strongly and I couldn’t “fake” excitement. So I walked. I was 10. So consensus around people I’m “supposed” to like – or not like – just does not work on me.
I will make up my own mind. There are those who despise Lars von Trier. I get it. I was that person too.
I changed my mind. I went into Melancholia resistant – an important thing to remember, considering the strength of my response to it. I didn’t grudgingly concede anything to the film. I unabashedly loved it. And I continue to love it. Other people loathe it. I find it glorious, and funny and almost uplifting. Like, I get it. This is madness told from the inside.
I’ve written a couple of things about Melancholia, the first the review I wrote when it premiered at NYFF.
I also wrote about it in The Dissolve’s list of the 50 Best Films of the Decade So far (sadly, The Dissolve – a fantastic cultural site – has vanished from the internet). Here’s what I wrote about Melancholia:
In 1621, scholar Robert Burton published The Anatomy Of Melancholy, a mammoth study of the malady, in which he wrote: “And from these melancholy dispositions no man living is free, no Stoick, none so wise, none so happy, none so patient, so generous, so godly, so divine, that can vindicate himself… more or less, some time or other, he feels the smart of it. Melancholy in this sense is the character of Mortality.” Such a grand topic requires a grand film, and Lars von Trier’s Melancholia is an audacious masterpiece, operatic in scope and tone (and soundtrack: The film starts with a surreal prologue underscored by Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde.) Early on in Melancholia, Justine (Kirsten Dunst), in her fluffy wedding dress, stops and stares up into the night sky. She asks her sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg), “What star is that?” It’s actually a planet on a collision course with Earth. Justine’s depression prepares her for mortality better than the stable Claire, who falls apart. In one of the most gorgeous scenes in the film, Justine goes out at night and lies naked in the grass, luxuriating in the bright glow of the oncoming planet. There has rarely been a better depiction of the siren call of melancholy. And so despite its grim fatalism, Melancholia puts into images an experience so difficult to describe that even great writers falter. “There it is,” the film says. “That’s what it’s like.”
I also posted something about it on Twitter back in 2018, and it generated such a discussion over there – mostly from people who hadn’t seen it and then saw it because of my recommendation – that I opened up a thread over here to continue the discussion. It’s a great one!
Then I reviewed his truly wacky and truly audacious (words fail) two-part erotic-intellectual manifesto, Nymphomaniac, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2.
The movie is everything at once: smart and silly, pretentious and simple, erotic and gross. After all of it, after watching both films … that last scene blew my hair back. I still think about it.
And I loved House That Jack Built, the movie deemed too controversial to even be seen, the movie people erupted in outrage over without even having seen it … and where it was considered socially unacceptable to even SEE it, let alone have any reaction to it other than pearl-clutching horror. Fuck that. I thought it was amazing. Dillon gives one of his best performances in years, I wanted Uma Thurman to get SOME kind of award for her one scene alone, and it was also quite funny, in such a weird deadpan way.
Back in the day, with Breaking the Waves, I was so irritated at Lars von Trier’s views of women. Yeah, well, I was younger then. I get it now.
A humorous exchange around the time Nymphomaniac came out: at a film critic party, a younger 20-something male, who had barely let me get a word in edgewise as he talked AT me about the horrors of misogyny (being a good ally, you understand) – told me how offended he was by Lars von Trier’s misogyny. This guy was so sure of himself, so sure that I – the poor woman afflicted by such a harsh society (these guys truly don’t realize how Victorian they are in sensibility) – would be so GRATEFUL that I had an ALLY in my fight against nasty mean old Lars von Trier – that he looked totally dumbfounded when I said, “Misogynistic? Really? I don’t think he’s a misogynist at all! Why do you say that?” (I didn’t go to acting school for nothing. I played dumb. Like I had never before heard that critique. Like I had never once felt the same way myself. Like, I was TRULY surprised to hear him say those words.) This poor guy literally had no idea what to do. I suppose he could write me off as “retro” or “unenlightened” because I’m older, but I hope it at LEAST made him feel a little less secure in his hyped-up look-at-me-be-a-great-ally attitude, and hopefully a little bit more hesitant the next time he feels like lecturing a woman about who is or is not a misogynist.
People always talk about how they “feel seen” by this or that story, and how important it is to “feel seen” by something happening onscreen. It’s important. And no one, male or female, has expressed the experience of mental illness and madness and depression – visually or otherwise – the way he did in Melancholia – in a way where I felt “seen.”
He still irritates me sometimes. He says some stupid thing and everyone gets mad and I roll my eyes, thinking, “Oh, come ON, Lars.”
But all of that is fine and really beside the point. I’m here for the art, after all. Lars von Trier has earned my undivided attention.
I’m going to end with a quote from the great Chantal Akerman. Very gratifying to hear what she has to say. She echoes my thoughts about Lars von Trier and women:
Lars von Trier is very, very, very clever about women. He gives the woman a space that I don’t know any filmmaker does. Because in Breaking The Waves, protagonist Emily Watson is the Christ. Which man is doing that? I don’t know any man giving that space to a woman. No one.
Take THAT you self-satisfied “feminist” manboy.
“My films are about ideals that clash with the world. Every time it’s a man in the lead, they have forgotten about the ideals. And every time it’s a woman in the lead, they take the ideals all the way.” — Lars von Trier
Thank you so much for stopping by. If you like what I do, and if you feel inclined to support my work, here’s a link to my Venmo account. And I’ve launched a Substack, Sheila Variations 2.0, if you’d like to subscribe.
This was part of a larger series. I would throw a name at Mitchell, ask him to describe that person in “one word” and then we would discuss. Here’s our discussion on Jill Clayburgh, whose birthday it is today.
SOM: One word.
MF: Awkward.
You know I have this whole thing about the 70s, and 70s filmmaking and 70s actresses. Jill Clayburgh, in much the same way Diane Keaton was, was so awkward. Even when she was playing women who were successful, she was still always a little bit awkward and unsure. She was this beautiful woman who wasn’t a knockout, she was a successful woman who wasn’t always competent. I think my favorite Jill Clayburgh movie is Starting Over with Burt Reynolds. It’s marvelous.
MF: Jill Clayburgh got to be famous in a very brief window of time that was tied to women’s liberation. She wasn’t famous for very long although she continued to work. She made An Unmarried Woman, and Starting Over, she played the first fictional woman on the Supreme Court in First Monday in October.
MF: She got to play grownups. She didn’t have to play child-brides or coquettish victims. She got to play grownup women with all of their power and neuroses intact, and not many people had that. Even Jane Fonda had to start as a sex kitten. Diane Keaton got to do it. The thing with Diane Keaton, of course, is that – not to take anything away from Diane Keaton – but she was Woody Allen‘s muse –
SOM: And Warren Beatty’s. She was tied to the two most powerful men in Hollywood at the time.
MF: She reaped the benefits of her incredibly interesting love life. Not that she didn’t deserve those parts, or that she slept her way to the top, but that the collaboration, emotionally, sexually, professionally, was fabulous, and she did it the way a man would do it. And she didn’t get shit for it. Like, “Look at Diane Keaton fucking to get a part.” She earned it. But that’s what Jill Clayburgh represents to me: the 70s woman. Diane Keaton, Jill Clayburgh, Jane Fonda… They got to play grownups. As the 80s came, and suddenly blockbusters came, and we had Tom Cruise, and Risky Business, suddenly an actress as beautiful and skilled as Rebecca De Mornay has to be a sex kitten for a horny teenager. We went backwards. Imagine if Rebecca De Mornay had become famous in the 70s. Imagine the roles she would have gotten.
MF: Jill Clayburgh escaped that. She started in the theatre, she was in the original Pippin, she comes up on my Shuffle every once in a while. And then she went back to the theatre, basically.
SOM: I loved seeing her in Bridesmaids.
MF: She’s so good and so real. It’s so sad that she passed away, in so many ways. Because, of course she’s playing Kristen Wiig‘s mother. Of course she is.
MF: In some ways, the character that Kristen Wiig is playing is the daughter of the neurotic “I hope I’m getting this right” character that Clayburgh played in the 70s. There’s a continuum there that I think is really great in Bridesmaids, and it would have been interesting to see her have that opportunity to play that in more dramatic parts. You know, play the mother of the daughter that she raised, in the Hollywood sense. There’s a daughter in An Unmarried Woman, and it would be interesting to see: where is she right now? How did her parents’ divorce and her mother’s response to it affect her life? It’d be interesting. One of the things I love about Catherine Deneuve‘s career is that she’s continuing to play interesting women who are the older versions of the women that we loved from her when she was younger.
MF: So many of Deneuve’s films are about what it must have been like to be such a beautiful woman. It is a part of her character. In France, they still revere her, and they revere women of a certain age, and in America we don’t. Jill Clayburgh wasn’t Rebecca DeMornay or Tawny Kitaen or Kelly LeBrock. She was a grownup woman playing grownup women, but after that brief window of time in the 70s, there was only room for Meryl Streep.
MF: Meryl Streep or Glenn Close but Glenn Close was sort of asexual in a lot of ways. She was either a sexual threat or she had no sex whatsoever. Except for the golden age of Hollywood when the studios made “women’s pictures”, there’s very little room for the female movie star.
MF: In a world that caters to blockbuster fan-boys, using the Kelly LeBrocks of the industry … in that world, there’s no place for Jill Clayburgh.
Thank you so much for stopping by. If you like what I do, and if you feel inclined to support my work, here’s a link to my Venmo account. And I’ve launched a Substack, Sheila Variations 2.0, if you’d like to subscribe.
It’s his birthday today.
Tom Lehrer was a staple in our household. Just like the Raunch Hands were. We had a Tom Lehrer songbook and we’d play it on the piano. I had no context for him. It was like my equal love around the same time of Max Shulman, another “relic” from the generation before, whom I tripped over by accident and adored. All that Cold War paranoia etc. I still understood something about that, Evil Empire “Star Wars”, etc. These people were MAD magazine people, still a force to be reckoned with at the time. I was drawn to the vibe just naturally, in the same way I was naturally drawn to P.J. O’Rourke later, without really connecting the dots. I was a child of the 80s and their anti-establishment nothing-is-sacred satire was in the air I breathed. I didn’t know Tom Lehrer’s background , but I loved his clever funny songs. “New Math”. Still cracks me up. I didn’t understand every reference but I certainly understood the objects of his mockery.
Which leads me to …
It was a tradition where I went to high school that the junior class would put on a variety show every year. It was meant to bond the class together ahead of the senior year. The show was student-organized, student-directed, with very little administration interference (can you believe this? Like, they did not oversee us and all kinds of insanely inappropriate things happened on that stage!) Its purpose was sound, though. The show was definitely a bonding agent for the class. We had to work together. Nobody was rejected. You want to come on and do a juggling act or a mime act? Go for it. Two of my good friends, Beth and Anne, were the emcees.
We wrote skits and sketches. There were lip synch re-creations of MTV music videos. People dressed up as the teachers, we lampooned the administration, etc. There were musical interludes where kids from the band would play songs. A couple of girls did soulful duets.
I made a bold move on my own to sing a solo. My friend Peter accompanied me on piano. My song was not soulful. I did not, for example, sing the theme from Ice Castles. I chose to sing Tom Lehrer’s gleefully sarcastic anti-war song “So Long, Mom (I’m off to drop the bomb)”. I wore camo pants, combat boots and a military jacket. I marched onstage waving an American flag.
Who the hell did I think I was??
I belted out those crazy funny lyrics with maximum bombast and patriotic fervor. Did I even know what I was saying? Well, in the specifics, no, i.e.
While we’re attacking frontally
Watch Brinkally and Huntally
Describing contrapuntally
The cities we have lost
I mean, okay? But what?
But the rest of it? I knew exactly what he was saying. I lived in fear of war and nuclear winter. Sign of the times. So I belted out lines like
I’ll look for you when the war is over
An hour and a half from now
with rage powered by razzle dazzle jazz hands. And big exaggerated military salutes.
I brought down the house. I was very proud, especially since – I won’t lie – I had a couple of insecure moments backstage, holding my flag, wearing my camo, surrounded by girls in frilly mini skirts and heels, practicing their dance moves … wondering uneasily if I was way too out on a limb all by myself. The other girls all looked so pretty and cute! Whereas I …
Here’s the man himself, singing it:
I got the message.
Don’t believe the bullshit. Interrogate the propaganda coming at you from all sides. Make fun of it. Be loud. Be smart about it. Upholding the status quo and submitting to consensus thinking is for unimaginative bores. At the very least, question everything. Resist. Puncture the self-serious. ROAST them. If it feels like bullshit, it probably is. Resist the group. Very important lessons for a teenage kid to learn.
Thanks for the music, Tom Lehrer. Thanks for your satirical bite. I “got it” at 15 and I’m the better for it.
Legend.
It’s his birthday today.
I will never ever forget his performance of “America the Beautiful” in the telethon on September 21, 2001. The date alone says it all.
It was heartbreaking to watch this then, when I was traumatized by what I had seen and experienced that day, and where I could see what I still call the hole in the sky out my bedroom window. But it’s even more heartbreaking to watch this now.
^^Photo by yours truly
I saw him in 2017 at Outlaw Fest, and it was such a thrill. One of the things that was a revelation, seeing him live, was the distinct jazz-like riffing quality of his guitar playing. His guitar speaks. It provides a counter to whatever is going on in the melody or in Willie’s voice. It has its own conversation going on, meditative, dreamy. Whatever is happening with the guitar is, of course, the melody – but it is a fractured prismatic version of it: Willie’s VOICE is the melody. It was unbelievable experiencing this live. It’s like he’s doing a DUET with the guitar.
This is one of the greatest Tweets/Pictures I’ve ever seen.
I also want to point your way towards Waiting for the Miracle to Come, a film directed by Lian Lunson, starring Willie Nelson and Charlotte Rampling. The film was shot on Willie Nelson’s ranch in Texas. Willie sings a song written by Bono (who executive produced the film) over the end credits. Soundtrack is also available. I interviewed Lian about Waiting for the Miracle to Come here – and there’s a great Willie Nelson/Bono anecdote included.
I’ll end, though, with a poignant tender duet he did with Dolly Parton for his album of duets in 2014. She had already recorded it, and she wrote it with Kris Kristoffersen – evidence I think of Willie’s humility. It’s so beautiful, so heart-achey.
I love Willie Nelson. He’s getting so old now. I feel like I have to prepare myself for the next phase. Because it’s coming. I can’t imagine the American landscape without him being there. This obviously isn’t a career overview: I’ve written about him quite a bit, what he and Waylon Jennings did for country music – exploding the establishment and basically becoming establishment – how he continues to forget his own path. So many amazing songs (and films).
Ann-Margret entertaining US troops in Vietnam, 1966
Today is Ann-Margret’s birthday. Her autobiography, Ann-Margret: My Story
Of course, too, there is the Elvis connection and that is what I will write about today, although there are so many other phases to her extraordinary career. These are edited re-posts on Viva Las Vegas, the one film she did with Elvis. One of his best, partially because of her presence, and their onscreen chemistry. In a perfect world, the two of them would have made 5 or 6 movies together, instead of just the one.
It’s no secret that the two had a love affair. They remained friends to the end, and she was one of the only Hollywood people who made the trip to Memphis for Elvis’ funeral. The two of them were raised in similar old-fashioned conservative ways, and that was one of the ways in which they bonded, as she describes in her book: Respect for your elders, do the right thing, be kind and polite, grateful for what you have, etc. The entire time they were dating, Ann-Margret was living with her parents, and Elvis would come over, and have dinner, and hang out with her family, and do all the things a good old-fashioned boyfriend is supposed to do. He “got it”.
And while we don’t know about the sex they had, and neither should we, we do know that Elvis bought her a gigantic round bed. You figure it out. Beautifully, the check for that damn bed ($780.00) is on display at Graceland, with a note in Elvis’ handwriting in the Memo section: “Personal gift for home of Miss Ann Margret.”
The two of them were sometimes fish-out-of-water in the more brutal and selfish atmosphere of Hollywood show-biz, and they found much comfort and ease in one another’s company. They would drive around the Hollywood hills, and park the car, looking out over the skyline, and talk about everything under the sun. They were idealistic, hopeful, and total fans of one another. “You’re awesome,” “No, YOU’RE awesome,” was how they felt.
Ann-Margret wrote in her book, bluntly, “I will never recover from Elvis’ death.”
While she does devote a chapter to their relationship, she does not give away much, and never speaks of him in anything less than a totally complimentary way. She refuses to divulge “dirt”. (You will find that that is the case with all of his girlfriends. All of the women in his life. Including Priscilla. They are loyal to him, and protective. It says a lot about who he was in life.)
Watch this extraordinary clip of Charlie Rose’s interview with Ann-Margret. Watch her quiet firmness, the sense of heartbreak still there, the feeling of Love you get from her. Rose is not being too pushy, and is clearly reacting to what is right in front of him, her sensitive refusal to “go there”. Other than her book, Ann-Margret does not speak of Elvis. At least not of their relationship. That was their private business. Elvis trusted her. To betray his trust would be unthinkable, even from beyond the grave.
The two were paired up together in 1964’s Viva Las Vegas, Elvis being the biggest star in the world at that point, and Ann-Margret on her white-hot rise to superstardom.
From the first moment they met, each recognized a kindred soul in the other. They both said words to that effect. They drove the producers of the film crazy by risking their lives riding motorcycles like daredevils around late at night (there’s a motorbike sequence in Viva Las Vegas, too). Elvis’ nickname for her was “Ammo.”
Presley, at the time he was dating Ann-Margret, became so overcome by his feelings that he actually approached his manager, Colonel Tom Parker, and asked him to manage Ann-Margret’s career, too. Col. Parker only had one client: Elvis. It was a tense situation between the two men, the Colonel reminded him that if he took on Ann-Margret that would leave less time for Presley. It was a warning. The Colonel was not a fan of Viva Las Vegas anyway, because Ann-Margret had too much screen time. You know, as brilliant as the Colonel was, in his P.T. Barnum way, there were a lot of things he didn’t “get”.
It didn’t work out between Elvis and Ann-Margret, but for the rest of his life, any time Ann-Margret opened in Vegas, she’d find her dressing room filled with flowers (in the shape of a guitar) sent there by Elvis. She was always on his radar. She was in the inner circle of his heart.
To see Viva Las Vegas now is to see all of that happening in real-time. It translates onto the screen in unmistakable ways. I mean, watch this. (And look for Teri Garr! She was one of the dancers.)
Here’s a woman who not only can resist him, as well as hold her own onscreen beside him, but she also obviously openly adores him, who he is and what he does onstage. She looks up at him in “Come on Everybody”, dancing like the fangirl that she is, beaming a smile saying, “Give it to me! You’re so AWESOME! Give it to me!”
In that moment, she is US.
Elvis Presley and Las Vegas went way back. At the height of his exploding popularity in 1956, he played Vegas, which, at that time, was made up of a middle-aged establishment crowd. Entertainers like Patti Page, the Rat Pack boys, performed in small clubs, and well-dressed people sat at tables, clapping. Presley, the grease-bomb from Memphis, was already known for wreaking havoc at his shows. There had been a riot in Florida, where girls poured backstage and ripped his clothes off (at Elvis’ instigation, by the way). Playing Vegas was risky but an important step at broadening his fan-base. Unfortunately, though, the 1956 Vegas shows did not go well. Everyone (including Elvis) considered the whole thing to be a disaster, and Elvis walked around Vegas late at night after his shows there, beside himself with anxiety. Why didn’t they love him? Dismissive reviews were written in national magazines, and Presley and the boys went back on the road to connect to the teenagers who seemed to “get it”. And so Las Vegas remained a fearful image in Presley’s mind, although he loved to go there on vacation. Vegas was a potent symbol to Elvis of the rare crowd he could NOT conquer. (Of course, in the late 1960s and on until the end of his life, Elvis came back and took Vegas by storm).
But before all that, in 1964, Presley had taken another crack at the Vegas scene, with Viva Las Vegas, directed by George Sidney, and co-starring the young Ann-Margret, who had just made her first big splash in Bye Bye Birdie (a spin on the Elvis Presley story). Viva Las Vegas was the biggest and most traditional Hollywood musical that Presley ever did. The plot is the same as most of his other movies: Race car driver/singer, girl he wants, race he needs to win, exotic location, etc. Presley loved Vegas, as I mentioned, and even if he had never played Vegas so successfully in the 70s, he still might be associated with that town forever, due to the catchy anthem of the title song. It’s one of the few songs he ever sang that didn’t have to do with either a romantic relationship or his love for Jesus. It’s about his love for a town.
Viva Las Vegas works primarily because Presley was partnered with someone who could go toe to toe with him, and was actually compelling enough in her own right that the audience felt some tension in the romantic relationship (and tension is where it’s at, when it comes to cinematic romance). Who wants to see a smooth guy who knows he will get the girl get the girl? Yawn.
But Presley is so strong a sexual presence that it’s difficult to imagine anyone turning him down, and many of the movies made that mistake … of not investing enough in the tense possibilities of a girl who would play hard to get with such a strapping sex symbol. Ann-Margret, as the swimming instructor in Viva Las Vegas, doesn’t play hard to get, not exactly, although the first number, where she puts him off, and he pursues, could be construed as in that realm. The beauty of it is that you know she wants him, but she certainly doesn’t want to make it too easy for him. And he enjoys the pursuit.
The two of them together are charm personified.
It’s fun seeing Elvis Presley have to work to get the girl (and every time the champagne cork explodes out of the bottle, surprising him, during the scene where he is waiting on Ann-Margert and his rival, the Italian racing star, I laugh out loud. I have been laughing out loud at that moment since I first saw the movie when I was a kid. What can I say, I’m easily pleased.)
Ann-Margret was almost as much of a powerhouse, in terms of a sexual persona onscreen, as Presley was. Presley needed resistance, as a star, someone who could stand on her own, give as good as she got. At the same time, what she gives him, especially in the number “Come on Everybody” (clip above), is the adoration and gleeful attention of his hordes of young female fans. There are shots of him up on the stage performing, and she’s down below, rocking out, and looking up at him with total joy, pushing him on. (Look for the expression on her face at around the 1:23-24 mark. It’s abandoned with joy and need. Very honest moment.) I would also like to point out that the final section of the number, when the two are onstage together, is filmed in one take. No cuts.
It’s fun to watch because it seems real. It IS real. The mutual appreciation society of two big stars.
They were so in sync they were like twins. Elvis said to a friend after the first recording session with Ann-Margret for the film that they moved the same, that their impulses were the same, they both felt the music in the same instinctive way. It was such a pleasure for him to “play” like that with someone who anticipated his moves, reflected them, and brought her own fire to the process.
Presley, as a performer, offered sex, but it was a certain kind of sex. It was friendly sex. Not that he wasn’t overpowering, he was, but he still managed to seem friendly and fun about it, rather than off-puttingly confident and cool, and that was what his formula movies so often missed. He’s portrayed as a cool guy, surrounded by throngs of eager women, and while he is never less than entertaining … it’s that heat he brought to the table that was so watchable, erotic, undeniable.
In Viva Las Vegas, even Elvis seems surprised at what’s going on for him. A guy who looks like he looks will have an easy time with women, and the role encompasses that obvious fact. To pretend Elvis isn’t a stunner would be ridiculous, denying reality. But the way she watches him in the movie, the way she glories in him (while not losing a bit of her own power), makes him come alive, makes him explode with even greater heat, the kind of heat and need that made him famous in the first place.
You can see the exchange of heat in evidence in all of their numbers together, but the most powerful representation of it is in a number where they don’t sing at all (clip at the bottom of the post). They’re on their first date at some Vegas club, a quartet is singing a song with the dance moves in the lyrics (‘do the squat’, etc.), and the two of them are pushed together on a crowded dance floor surrounded by other couples.
And it is as though they are the only two people on the planet.
After the dance number, Presley takes the stage and does a groovy manic version of the Ray Charles song “What’d I Say”, as Ann-Margret, once again, wiggles and jams out beside him, pushing him on by looking at him with the adoration of all of his fans. Yet still: being fabulous herself. It’s a fascinating combination, part of her very own brand of indelible movie magic. Elvis Presley could be overwhelming. Ann-Margret meets him, lovingly, enthusiastically, on his level.
That’s why people still love Viva Las Vegas. That’s why people still think it’s fun, and why it was one of Presley’s most successful pictures. Because you get the sense you are in the presence of – or at least in the vague vicinity of – something that is actually real, that is actually happening. Nobody was more powerful than Elvis Presley when he was allowed to be real.
Observe how they are together in that first dance number in the clip below. It’s shockingly intimate. We are being let into a private world of appreciation, heat, and mutual enjoyment. And for a second or two during that dumb dance number, it almost feels like we shouldn’t be watching.
Ann-Margret, of course, has had a stunning career, with many other roles beloved by her fans. She continues to work. I am always happy when she shows up in anything. A class act. A true dame.
Happy birthday.
“Better the wound forever seeking balm
Than this gray calm!”
–Jessie Redmon Fauset, from “Dead Fires”
Jessie Redmon Fauset, whose birthday it is today, was a “forgotten writer” for many years, after her heyday in the 20s and 30s. Her work was resurrected by feminist academics and scholars in the 1970s, after which awareness of her has risen (complete with full biographies and critical studies of the groundbreaking aspects of her work at the time when she was writing it).
She was born in 1882. The family she was born into was very large, and somewhat complicated. They lived in poverty. I believe her mother died when Fauset was young, but not before she impressed on her daughter the importance of education. Fauset took the lesson to heart. She was valedictorian of her mostly-white high school class. She set her sights on Bryn Mawr but was rejected due to her race. Cornell, however, accepted this promising young student. At Cornell, she studied classical languages, and went on to get a Master’s in French from the University of Pennsylvania. Fluent to the point where she was bilingual, she visited France often, and ended up translating many black European and African authors into English for the first time.
After getting her master’s she taught French at a prestigious and exclusive black high school in Washington D.C., where poet Anne Spencer was the librarian for 20 years (post about Spencer here). The two knew one another, were colleagues, members of the NAACP, and there’s probably a good story in there about their friendship. During the ‘teens of the 20th century, when Fauset was busy teaching, she spent her summer vacations in France, studying at Le Sorbonne, as well as visiting some of France’s colonies in Africa.
Along with all of this, Fauset began her writing career. She joined the NAACP and started contributing to the organization’s magazine, The Crisis, founded by W.E.B. DuBois. This was around 1917-18. Her op-eds, poems, essays, journalism so impressed DuBois he offered her the job of Editor. She accepted. This began an exciting time, not just for her, but for everyone, what with the explosion of creativity going on (which she helped foster as editor of such an important magazine). She served as editor from 1919 to 1926. During that time, she basically “discovered” Langston Hughes. Hughes said:
“Jessie Fauset at The Crisis, Charles Johnson at Opportunity, and Alain Locke in Washington were the three people who midwifed the so-called New Negro literature into being. Kind and critical—but not too critical for the young—they nursed us along until our books were born.”
DuBois asked Fauset to move to New York when she took the job. She did. This thrust her into the center of the Harlem Renaissance. She was a major figure. As Hughes wrote, she was critical of his writing, but “not too critical”. Most of the black writers she championed were new – with zero experience in being published anywhere. She was often the first editor they encountered. So she was caring and nurturing, but also strict and exacting. In this fashion, she was a great mentor to not only Hughes, but Claude McKay (post about him here), Countee Cullen (post about him here), Jean Toomer (post about him here), her former colleague Anne Spencer.
At the SAME time , she was the co-founder and editor of a children’s magazine called Brownie’s Book (you can read more about Brownie’s Book here). She eventually got a teaching gig at a high school in the Bronx, where she taught French and Latin for 20 years. She also wrote 4 novels in the 1920s and 1930s; these novels took place mostly among the Black middle-class (an unheard-of ‘category’ in literature at the time her novels were published.) The hierarchy of skin color among the Black community was one of her main themes, but she also addressed issues of feminism, economics, as well as what it was like to be part of a generation whose parents and grandparents had been slaves. There can’t be a bigger generation gap than that.
Her first novel, There Is Confusion
There is confusion worse than death,
Trouble on trouble, pain on pain–
If you want to learn more about this amazingly learned pioneer, in researching this piece I stumbled upon this essay in The New Yorker, which is well worth checking out.
Here are two of her poems, as well as an excerpt from There is Confusion.
Dead Fires
If this is peace, this dead and leaden thing,
Then better far the hateful fret, the sting.
Better the wound forever seeking balm
Than this gray calm!
Is this pain’s surcease? Better far the ache,
The long-drawn dreary day, the night’s white wake,
Better the choking sigh, the sobbing breath
Than passion’s death!
Rondeau
When April’s here and meadows wide
Once more with spring’s sweet growths are pied
I close each book, drop each pursuit,
And past the brook, no longer mute,
I joyous roam the countryside.
Look, here the violets shy abide
And there the mating robins hide—
How keen my sense, how acute,
When April’s here!
And list! down where the shimmering tide
Hard by that farthest hill doth glide,
Rise faint strains from shepherd’s flute,
Pan’s pipes and Berecyntian lute.
Each sight, each sound fresh joys provide
When April’s here.
Excerpt from her first novel There Is Confusion (notice how she gets an entire world and its context and its generation gap into her specific description of one young man’s journey):
But alas for poor Joel! His idea of greatness and his Mammy’s were totally at variance. The kind of greatness he had envisaged had been that which gets one before the public eye, which makes one a leader of causes, a “man among men.” He loved such phrases! At night the little boy in the tiny half-story room in that tiny house in Virginia picked out the stories of Napoleon, Lincoln and Garrison, all white men, it is true; but Lincoln had been poor and Napoleon unknown and yet they had risen to the highest possible state. At least he could rise to comparative fame. And when he was older and came to know of Frederick Douglass and Toussaint l’Ouverture, he knew if he could but burst his bonds he, too, could write his name in glory.
This was no selfish wish. If he wanted to be great he also wanted to do it honestly and faithfully, the things that bring greatness. He was to that end dependable and thorough in all that he did, but even as a boy he used to feel a sick despair,–he had so much against him. His color, his poverty, meant nothing to his ardent heart; those were nature’s limitations, placed deliberately about one, he could see dimly, to try one’s strength on. But that he should have a father broken and sickened by slavery who lingered on and on! That after that father’s death the little house should burn down!
He was fifteen when that happened and he and his mother both went to work in the service of Harvey Carter, a wealthy Virginian, whose wife entertained on a large scale. It was here that Joel learned from an expert chef how to cook. His wages were small even for those days, but still he contrived to save, for he had set his heart on attending a black seminary. Some day he would be a minister, a man with a great name and a healing tongue. These were the dreams he dreamed as he basted Mrs. Carter’s chickens or methodically mixed salad dressing.
His mother knew his ideas and loved them with such a fine, if albeit uncomprehending passion and belief, that in grateful return he made her the one other consideration of his life, weaving unconsciously about himself a web of such loyalty and regard for her that he could not have broken through it if he would. Her very sympathy defeated his purpose. So that when she, too, fell ill on a day with what seemed for years an incurable affection, Joel shut his teeth and put his frustrated plans behind him.
Extraordinary.
It’s the only one of hers I’ve read, and it’s probably the most famous (the Modern Library brought out an edition), but I’m sure her other novels are well worth checking out.
Thank you so much for stopping by. If you like what I do, and if you feel inclined to support my work, here’s a link to my Venmo account. And I’ve launched a Substack, Sheila Variations 2.0, if you’d like to subscribe.
