I went into “Christmas, Again” 90% cold and was completely seduced by it. An enormous and emotional pleasure: first-time director (who also wrote the minimalist screenplay), compelling monosyllabic central performance by Kentucker Audley, steeped in mood, atmosphere. Now this is my kind of movie.
My review of “Christmas, Again” is now up at Rogerebert.com.
On the essays shelf (yes, there are still more books to excerpt in my vast library. I can’t seem to stop this excerpts-from-my-library project. I started it in 2006!)
NEXT BOOK: Baseball: A Literary Anthology
Tallulah Bankhead’s autobiography, Tallulah: My Autobiography
I always find her entertaining. Her face, her posture, her figure, remind me so much of my grandmother on the O’Malley side. Of course my grandmother was not a carousing floozy, but a traditional Catholic lady (albeit with a wise-cracking mouth, a love of pleasure and fun and an enormous belly-laugh, so maybe the resemblance is not just skin-deep.) Bankhead is insanely great in the The Cheat, a bizarre sexually-squicky violent pre-Code which involves her getting branded on the chest by a sexual maniac. (The Cheat is the movie where she wears this outfit, with no irony whatsoever.) She was in the running for the role of Scarlett O’Hara apparently but didn’t look good in Technicolor (according to those who saw the screen test.) She had a gigantic hit on Broadway in Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes, getting critical raves and a couple of awards. She was in a hugely popular revival of Private Lives that ran for a couple of years (and God, I would have loved to have seen her in that role). She also appeared in Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth, another good role in a major production. Her stage career was much more illustrious than her film career.
All of this is (or should be) well-known. What may not be as well known was Tallulah Bankhead’s firm residence in the Land known as the Passionate Sports Fan. Baseball seems to have been her main love, although she was equally fanatical about boxing. She grew up in a town that had a minor-league team, which initiated her into the pleasures and intricacies of baseball. She was no casual fan. She knew her stuff. She was a New York Giants fan all the way.
Exhibit A: Tallulah Bankhead in the stands:
This is not an act. This is real. During the end of the 2004 season, there were times when the game onscreen became so intense, I had to turn away, saying to my friends, “Please tell me when it’s over.”
She was so enamored of Willie Mays that she wrote an entire article about him for Look magazine. Please look at the first paragraph. I love her.
In that article she writes:
I keep a radio going in my dressing room whenever possible so I can hear the Giant games. I have always been a rabid Giant fan. The name Giants is right for my team. Who could stand in awe of a team named the Cubs? Cubs are cute. Or the Dodgers? I never dodged anything in my life. Cincinnati? Too many Republicans. Pittsburgh always depresses me. They beat the Giants too often, and the elevators in the William Penn Hotel are too confusing for words. What I like best about St. Louis is the zoo. And the beer is fine in Milwaukee. But the Giants are a name to look up to. And I simply must know how they are doing every day. Last summer during the Giants’ six straight over Brooklyn, I was on stage each day for most of the third act. So one of the cast wrote the inning score on a card and stuck it in his shirt where I could see it when he walked on stage.
Words cannot express how much I love that last story.
It reminds me of the time my cousin Kerry texted me a picture of herself while she was playing Abigail Adams in a production of 1776 at the Paper Mill Playhouse. If you know the show, then you know that Abigail is not on stage a lot. She comes on for her numbers and then disappears for long periods of time. How did Kerry occupy herself backstage? I’ll let the photo speak for itself. (Also, please note the sticker on the cover of Kerry’s laptop.) Tallulah Bankhead would have been in total sympathy.
I love that the editorial board of this baseball collection was aware enough of Bankhead’s fandom to include her writing. We need some ladies in there anyway. As Abigail Adams (speaking of which) chided her husband: “Remember the ladies!”
Bankhead’s prose does not, of course, have the tone of a professional sportswriter. It’s eccentric, it’s filled with breezy personal-confession moments, tossed off into the mix, and it’s very very funny. In the following excerpt, she describes how she (personally, you understand) has been the “hoodoo” for many a champion. She describes her love for Joe Louis, then a gift she sent to him as a good-luck charm, and then how he was knocked out in his next fight. Oops. The same thing happened with a tennis champion at Wimbledon: she met him, she gave him a four-leaf clover for luck, and he then proceeded to lose his next match. Then there were her beloved Giants, who lost the next game after she hosted a supper for the whole team. Bankhead was rightfully wary of jinxing her heroes after these devastating experiences. Like most sports fans, she was extremely superstitious.
I recommend her whole autobiography:
Here’s an excerpt. Please note the first sentence. Again, I love this woman.
Excerpt from Baseball: A Literary Anthology
Though I remain serene when confronted with royalty, I get downright hysterical when looking at a champion in action. About to fly to England to start my radio season in “The Big Show” in the fall of ’51, my enthusiasm was chilled because I would miss the “Sugar Ray” Robinson-Randy Turpin fight, would be out of touch with the Giants, panting, when I left, on the heels of the Dodgers.
Attending a Giants game with me, say my cronies, is an experience comparable to shooting the Snake River rapids in a canoe. When they lose I taste wormwood. When they win I want to do a tarantella on top of the dugout. A Giants rally brings out the roman candle in me. The garments of adjoining box-holders start to smolder.
I once lured the young Viennese actor, Helmut Dantine, to a set-to between the Giants and the Pirates. Mr. Dantine had never seen a game before. My airy explanations confused the émigré. Rapt in his attention to my free translation of the sacrifice hit, Helmut was almost decapitated by a foul ball. Mr Dantine looked upon the faux pas as a hostile act. He felt I had tricked him into a false sense of security that the hitter might have an unsuspecting target. He left before the ninth, a grayer if not a wiser man.
It’s true I run a temperature when watching the Giants trying to come from behind in the late innings, either at the Polo Grounds or on my TV screen. I was hysterical for hours after Bobby Thomson belted Ralph Branca for that ninth inning homer in the final game of the Dodgers-Giant playoff in ’51. The Giants had to score four runs in the ninth to win. Remember? There was blood on the moon that night in Bedford Village. But I don’t know nearly as much about baseball as Ethel Barrymore. Ethel is a real fan, can give you batting averages, the text of the infield fly rule and comment on an umpire’s vision.
Someone has said that Ethel Barrymore has the reticence born of assurance whereas my monologues indicate my insecurity. The point is moot. It’s unlikely I’ll ever submit to a psychiatrist’s couch. I don’t want some stranger prowling around through my psyche, monkeying with my id. I don’t need an analyst to tell me that I have never had any sense of security. Who has?
My devotion to the Giants, dating back to 1939, has drawn the fire of renegades, eager to deflate me. One of these wrote that on my first visit to Ebbets Field in Brooklyn I rooted all afternoon for Dolph Camilli, the Dodger first baseman. I had been tricked into this treason, swore my enemy, because I wasn’t aware that the Giants wore gray uniforms when traveling, the residents white. Though I invaded Flatbush to cheer Mel Ott, Giant right fielder, I wound up in hysterics over Camili, because both had the numeral “4” on the back of their uniform. Stuff, balderdash and rot, not to use a few other words too hot to handle in a memoir.
A daughter of the deep South, I have little time for the “Yankees.” They’re bleak perfectionists, insolent in their confidence, the snobs of the diamond. The Yankees are all technique, no color or juice. But they keep on winning pennants year after year. Not the Giants! They’ve won one flag in the last fourteen years.
Excuse me, I saw Brooklyn this morning and have been crying, off and on, for what feels like the entire day. I’m a wreck. My people! My great-grandmothers and fathers … that was what they did, and endured. Bah! I haven’t been to Ireland in almost 10 years, and that’s way too long a gap, after going almost every year for a stretch. I’m aching to go again. What a phenomenal and beautiful film.
Along with the Brooklyn-weep-fest, I also spent half the day thinking it was Tuesday. Have two deadlines this week, and just came up for air from heavy frenzied writing, and realized what day it was, like 10 minutes ago.
The Trickster directs! Take it away, Trickster!
Catch you all on the flip side.
Spotlight (2015; d. Tom McCarthy)
Excellent newspaper movie. I reviewed for Rogerebert.com.
Supernatural, Season 11, Episode 4, “Baby” (2015; d. Thomas J. Wright)
Perfection, both formally and structurally as well as emotionally and spiritually.
Truth (2015; d. James Vanderbilt)
Another newspaper movie, this one about the fall of Dan Rather following the whole “font controversy” in regards to President Bush’s National Guard career. The movie is terrible. Blanchett is very bad. Robert Redford is quite good. My perspective on this whole story – which has not changed since the original controversy – is that Mary Mapes deserved to be fired, deserved all of the criticism that she got. The film tries to tell the story that Mary Mapes was “punished for asking questions” (unfortunately, this is looped in over and over and over again with her childhood trauma for being “punished for asking questions”. “I am being PUNISHED for asking questions.” “You mean … she was PUNISHED for asking questions??” UGH. STOP IT.) Dan Rather, as figurehead, was pressured to step down. That’s too bad. The story was rushed onto the air before it was ready. But the responsibility for that does not lie at the network’s feet, but at Mapes’ feet. The film seems to set her up as a martyr for free speech. The final words on the screen state that Mary Mapes has not worked in television since. Are we supposed to think that is a tragedy and a loss? Because I thought, “Good.” Objectivity does not really exist in journalism. But integrity should matter. And there are checks and balances built into good journalism where a journalist can keep a watch on his own bias. Mapes’ bias against the President clouded her judgment. Blanchett gives an overblown actress-y performance that I thought was quite bad. Another problem is that Truth came out at the same time Spotlight did, and Spotlight made no mistakes while Truth made them all. Mary Mapes is not a martyr, nor is she admirable. “I’m being PUNISHED for asking questions!!” she sobs in the film. Yeah, well, Mary Mapes should have asked MORE questions before she put those phony memos on the air.
I’m Not There (2007; d. Todd Haynes)
A re-watch in preparation for Carol. I love this film so much I have very little to say about it. I love its examination of identity, I love its fractured narrative that ends up weaving together all of these different aspects of one man. I loved its stylistic diversity, but how it all poured into the whole. I love the performances. And I love that this film is not like anything else. Brava.
Operation Filmmaker (2007; d. Nina Davenport)
My God, this documentary made me feel uncomfortable. I almost wanted to stop watching it. Well-meaning liberals, aflame with the desire to do good and also to appear doing good, invite a young Iraqi film student to be a PA on Everything Is Illuminated, an American film being shot in Czechoslovakia. This was during the invasion of Iraq. What a heart-warming story it should be, right? However, when the Iraqi student shows up, he is not what anyone expected. He has such a sense of entitlement you are embarrassed for him, he’s lazy, he’s irresponsible, he half-asses every task he is assigned, rolls his eyes at the mundane tasks of the PA (“This isn’t my job,” he mutters). In short, he fails to be grateful in an appropriate way. And his failure to be grateful then makes everyone question their own well-meaning motives. It’s fascinating. All of these people who work on the film live in a bubble of liberalism and can barely mask their horror and incomprehension when the Iraqi kid says he supports the invasion of his country because Saddam was awful, and also, “I love President Bush.” Nobody knows what to DO when he says stuff like that. It makes them look politically unsophisticated, but no matter. It’s an interesting culture-clash, that’s for sure. Eventually, even though the kid is so annoying, so entitled, so RUDE, you start to think: who the hell can blame him? He’s been airlifted out of a nightmare, put down in the place of his supposed dreams, and expected to play a certain role. Gratified happy refugee. It’s insulting, almost, the position they put him in. This is not to say they MEANT to do that. Liev Shreiber, whom I love, is totally honest about how much he wanted to help this kid, how much he wanted to support a young artist whose film school had been destroyed in his home country. But then realizing, slowly, that maybe the kid was not on the level. Schreiber is honest. Elijah Wood is honest. The kid is an exaggerator, a complainer, a partier, the kind of guy you walk across the room to avoid because you know he’s gonna hit you up for 10 bucks. Fascinating documentary, very difficult, highly recommend it. It’s one of those examples of a documentary that started out with one intention (“let’s show the experience of a hopeful Iraqi kid working on an American film”) and then was forced to deal with reality, and give up what was planned/hoped-for. It reminded me of Daughter from Danang in that way, that clearly started out to be the heartwarming portrayal of a Vietnamese-American woman who had been airlifted out of Vietnam as a tiny child right before Saigon fell. Her biological father was white, so she could “pass” as white in America. Nobody even knew her ethnic heritage. Her American family encouraged her in that direction. But then, as a grown woman, she decides to go back to Vietnam (her first time as an adult). She speaks no Vietnamese. She says, worriedly, in her Southern accent, “I hope they know that I am completely Americanized.” At first, the reunion with her mother in the airport is so intense and emotional that you think the film is going to go one way, the expected way. Happy reunion, a new life unfolding, the cultures meeting and coming together. But boy, does the film NOT go that way. It completely falls apart. It’s unbelievable. Operation Filmmaker gives up its intentions, and becomes something way WAY more interesting than another self-congratulatory documentary about a bunch of people helping out someone less fortunate than they are. It becomes an examination of preconceived notions, assumptions, cultural divides too wide to be bridged, and a “lead character” who refuses to play the role assigned to him.
Supernatural, Season 11, Episode 5, “Thin Lizzie” (2015; d. Rashaad Ernesto Green)
I grew up in Rhode Island, where Lizzie Borden was as real to us as Goldilocks. We chanted the Lizzie Borden song on the bus during field trips. So it was fun to see that old story re-visited.
Call Me Marianna (2015; d. Karolina Bielawska)
An incredibly moving documentary about Marianna (born Wotjek) and her journey towards getting a sex change operation. A very human story. I introduced it at a showing at MoMA this past month.
The Assassin (2015; d. Hou Hsiao-Hsien)
One of my favorites this year. My review here.
Far from Heaven (2002; d. Todd Haynes)
Again, a re-watch to prepare for Carol. Gorgeous Sirk-ian colors and photography, every shot a keeper. Speaking of which …
All That Heaven Allows (1955; d. Douglas Sirk)
One of the most beautiful-LOOKING films ever made. Sirk was a master. Jane Wyman is very touching, and Rock Hudson is great. I want to live in that renovated mill.
Born to Kill (1947; Robert Wise)
A favorite. Claire Trevor is fascinating, as the hard-boiled cold-eyed dame who can turn on a dime and be ingratiating and soft. But this is one tough cookie. Lawrence Tierney is sexy sexy sexy. Lots of really interesting class issues too.
Supernatural, Season 4, Episode 13 “Afterschool Special” (2009; d. Adam Kane)
Ah, humor. “Walk it off.”
Supernatural, Season 4, Episode 15 “Death Takes a Holiday” (2009; d. Steve Boyum)
This one strikes a very deep chord in me. Not to be spoken about too much because it enters tricky personal waters but this episode captures what a love affair with death feels like in a very profound way.
Intervention, Season 1, Episode 8 “Tina” (2005)
I find this show irresistible. The format is pretty brilliant, especially the end title-card giving us the update. No sugar-coating. Super-depressing, I realize. But I can’t look away.
Intervention, Season 2, Episode 1 “Corinne” (2006)
See above.
The Long Hot Summer (1958; d. Martin Ritt)
Everyone is so sweaty! A hothouse environment of sexual frustration (Joanne Woodward) and sexual fun (Lee Remick). Paul Newman smolders and sweats and drawls. Orson Welles’ performance is a masterpiece of camp.
Safe (1995; d. Todd Haynes)
My first introduction to Todd Haynes. I saw it in the theatre. It destroyed me. 1995 was a hell of a year for me. I moved to New York. I left everything I knew and loved behind. I was heartbroken because of a man. I was completely unmoored from routine, reality. Safe was upsetting on all of those levels. Great film.
The Killer Speaks Season 2, Episode 5 “Lawrence Tarbert: Natural Born Killer” (2014)
This was chilling. So senseless.
Magic Mike XXL (2015; d. Gregory Jacobs)
It has not diminished. It is still a weirdo miracle of a movie. It shouldn’t work. It breaks all the rules. It shows the irrelevancy of the rules. It’s an adrenaline shot of joy.
Intervention, Season 11, Episode 7 “Zeinah” (2012)
I mean, it’s all really the same story, isn’t it. Yet still: I am invested.
Intervention, Season 11, Episode 1 “Christina” (2012)
Nothing new to say. Drugs are bad.
Sweet Micky for President (2015; d. Ben Patterson)
An entertaining documentary about the insane Presidential elections in Haiti in 2010. I reviewed for Rogerebert.com.
Supernatural, Season 4, Episode 16, “On the Head of a Pin” (2009; d. Mike Rohl)
Sometimes I like to put myself through this.
The Killer Speaks, Season 2, Episode 4, “Gary Ray Bowles”
I’m into this show. I like looking into the minds of sociopaths.
Supernatural, Season 11, Episode 6, “Our Little World” (2015; d. John F. Showalter)
I enjoyed it.
Carol (2015; d. Todd Haynes)
Beautiful. I reviewed for Rogerebert.com.
By the Sea (2015; d. Angelina Jolie Pitt)
The more I think about this movie, the more I love it. And I think about this movie a lot. My thoughts on it here.
The Naked Kiss (1964; d. Samuel Fuller)
Really interesting film about a prostitute who gives up the life to work as a nurse in a hospital for disabled children. But her past life comes back to haunt her. Her last “gig” as a hooker was sleeping with the police chief in the small town she’s moved to. So he’s “onto” her. But at the same time, he likes her. He’s not a sneering misogynist, which is refreshing. Anthony Eisley is very sexy and taciturn as the policeman. Constance Towers is awesome as the prostitute. Great mood and jazzy feel.
Secret Admirer (1985; d. David Greenwalt)
My pal John recommended this to me a long time ago when we were discussing 1980s teen comedies. I had never seen it! C. Thomas Howell, Lori Loughlin … need I say more? It has a clever premise: an anonymous love note is passed around, and wreaks havoc on every single character – who thinks it’s for them. My favorite was the parents’ bridge night that derails into a group fist fight where a man falls into a grandfather clock. Unfortunately, like with all 1980s teen romances, you have to just “forgive” the casual homophobia. They all have them.
Night Nurse (1931; d. William Wellman)
One of my favorite pre-Codes. Barbara Stanwyck gets a job as a nurse in a hospital. Joan Blondell, another nurse, shows her the ropes. Stanwyck gets an assignment involving “home care,” visiting two little girls who seem very sickly for no apparent reason. Their mother is a floozy, cavorting with the chauffeur (Clark Gable, in riding boots!) and doesn’t seem to care what happens to her kids. Stanwyck nearly goes crazy trying to get help for them before it is too late. The plot summary does not do the film justice. Kim Morgan discusses “Night Nurse” over on her site.
Supernatural, Season 5, Episode 10, “Dark Side of the Moon” (2010; d. Jeff Woolnough)
One of my favorite episodes in the whole series.
Supernatural, Season 6, Episode 13, “Unforgiven” (2011; d. David Barrett)
I love this one. Not just because it takes place in Rhode Island.
Supernatural, Season 6, Episode 15, “The French Mistake” (2011; d. Charles Beeson)
Never gets old. “You married fake Ruby?”
Midnight Mary (1933; d. William A. Wellman)
Great pre-Code. Loretta Young comes out of a childhood bounced around in the system and starts sleeping with people for money and rabble-rousing. When the movie starts, she is on trial for murder, and she sits at the lawyer’s table, reading Cosmopolitan magazine, totally unconcerned. Young is just great. By the 50s, she was playing sweet motherly parts, but in the beginning she was a tough cookie.
Top Hat (1935; d. Mark Sandrich)
A frivolous beautiful Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers pairing, with the always-reliable Edward Everett horton providing backup. To-die-for dance numbers. Her feathered dress. Iconic.
Now, Voyager (1942; d. Irving Rapper)
A favorite. One of Bette Davis’ best performances. And it looks very different to me now than it did when I was a young woman. Bette Davis’ character provides an alternate path for strange difficult women who don’t fit in. Not without its sadness and loss – because don’t we all want the five-course meal not just the appetizer? But there is a triumph in it too. Because no, things don’t always “work out.” And you have to find a way to go on, to create a life that still has meaning.
Lonely are the Brave (1962; d. David Miller)
A film Gena Rowlands did, co-starring opposite Kirk Douglas. She only has two scenes but she kills them. This was in preparation for my big Gena Rowlands piece over at Rogerebert.com.
Tempest (1982; d. Paul Mazursky)
I love this film. Another re-watch for the Gena Rowlands piece.
Something to Talk About (1995; d. Lasse Hallström)
I had forgotten how much I liked this movie. Very unique, despite the fact that it was created as a vehicle for Julia Roberts. Callie Khoury’s script is very specific. It’s not particularly feminist. But I appreciate it, not despite that, but because of it. It’s different, in other words. The characters have unexpected attitudes, they don’t do what they’re supposed to do. And so the film is able to surprise you. The men are not evil buffoons, and the women are not saints. Everyone’s a little bit crazy. Another re-watch for the Gena Rowlands piece.
Creed (2015; d. Ryan Coogler)
One of the best films of the year.
The High Cost of Loving (1958; d. Jose Ferrer)
Gena Rowlands’ film debut! She’s wonderful.
Mouchette (1967; d. Robert Bresson)
Devastating and depressing. Hopeless, really. It had been years since I saw it. Suicide is triumph in this bleak picture.
Hysterical Blindness (2002; d. Mira Nair)
Another re-watch for Gena Rowlands. I loved it so much when it first aired on HBO and I still love it. It’s also bizarre because an old friend-with-benefits of mine has a small part in it. I laughed out loud when I saw him at the pool table. I had forgotten he was in it. He told me some pretty funny stories about the shooting of it. That Juliette Lewis was super nice to everyone is the main thing I remember.
The Big Knife (1955; d. Robert Aldrich)
It’s one of my favorite Clifford Odets plays. Obviously written with John Garfield in mind, in its story about a former radical who has gone on to become a Hollywood star, and in the process has sold his soul. It’s always cut and dry with Odets: you have money (and a soulless existence) or you don’t have money (and you are pure and free). It’s naive and would be very annoying if Odets couldn’t write like he did! For me, there’s something off about the film. It’s so melodramatic, the acting is at such a high pitch with no let-up that you want to tell everyone to take a Xanax. Everyone is great – Rod Steiger, Jack Palance, Ida Lupino, Wendell Corey, Shelley Winters … but I think it’s better on the stage. I saw it a couple of years ago with Bobby Cannavale in the lead role and it was excellent.
Supernatural, Season 11, Episode 7, “Plush” (2015; d. Tim Andrew)
Sheriff Donna!
Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck (2015; d. Brett Morgen)
Crushing. Wrote about it here.
Trouble Along the Way (1953; d. Michael Curtiz)
John Wayne, in a charming performance where he’s a dad (that didn’t happen often), plays an unconventional football coach, hired by a small Catholic college (run by Charles Coburn) to turn their school’s fortunes around. Donna Reed plays a CPS worker, hired to investigate whether or not Wayne’s young daughter should be allowed to stay with him. I’m not sure the ending is as happy as the film wants me to believe … like … she’s going off into foster care and this is okay?? But maybe he and Donna Reed will get married (of course they will) and get the daughter back and all will be well.
Face to Face (1976; d. Ingmar Bergman)
Liv Ullmann gives one of the greatest performances I have ever seen in this film. There’s one scene where she lies in bed with a guy who might be about to become her lover, you’re not sure. Early in the day, two random guys had tried to rape her, but didn’t succeed. She confesses to her new lover what happened. It strikes her as funny. She starts laughing uproariously, but the laughing turns to crying, then goes back to laughing, and then becomes serious hyperventilation which then morphs into screaming and wailing. She moves across the room to the chair, hysterical, and then when she tries to stand up, she literally can’t. She feels like she will fly apart. The sequence is over 5 minutes long, and it all happens in one unbroken take. It is one of the greatest moments of acting I have ever seen. The entire film is filled with moments like that. Some of the symbolism is a little on the nose, Bergman being oh so Bergman-ish, but Ullmann is BEYOND good. It’s harrowing just watching her. Then of course there’s this connection:
What Happened, Miss Simone” (2015; d. Liz Garbus)
Upsetting. But with amazing footage of Nina Simone performing. My thoughts here.
Supernatural, Season 11, Episode 1 “Out of the Darkness, Into the Fire” (2015; d. Robert Singer)
It’s even better than I remembered. Very rich Season 11 premiere.
The X-Files, Upcoming Season, “My Struggle” (2016; d. Chris Carter)
Yes! I saw the first episode of the new X-Files, the one that will air in January. I thought it was incredible: most of the old team has been assembled, Mark Snow, the editor, Chris Carter – and of course, Scully, Mulder, and Skinner. Very much looking forward to the rest!
Millennium, Season 1 Pilot (1996; d. David Nutter)
Keith and I started Millennium yesterday. He thought I would like it, and he is right. I love serial killers, and Lance Henriksen is just wonderful in this part.
Millennium, Season 1, Episode 2 “Gehenna” (1996; d. David Nutter)
There’s a lot of Supernatural echoes here: apocalypse, Revelations, Biblical plagues, plus David Nutter.
Millennium, Season 1, Episode 3 “Dead Letters” (1996; d. Thomas J. Wright)
This was the episode that hooked me: the dynamic between Henriksen and James Morrison, who played the troubled profiler who basically has a nervous breakdown over the course of the episode. I loved it because it showed two men working together, not a lot of peacocking, and also honesty between them, an “I know where you’re at” level of understanding. It’s rare that men get to have such relationships onscreen.
Millennium, Season 1, Episode 4 “The Judge” (1996; d. Randall Zisk)
John Hawkes! He’s so young!!
Millennium, Season 1, Episode 5 “522666” (1996; d. David Nutter)
KABOOM
Amy (2015; d. Asif Kapadia)
The documentary about Amy Winehouse. This is the third very very upsetting music documentary I’ve seen this month. This one is the most upsetting. I’m haunted by it. That poor poor girl.
Carl Perkins’ “Blue Suede Shoes” had been recorded on the Sun label in January of 1956, and had climbed all three of the national charts (on a very steep curve): country & western, pop, and r&b. It was that r&b placement that got everyone in a tizzy. Perkins was, generally, positioned as a country & western singer, and he considered himself that as well. Sam Phillips, owner of Sun Records, encouraged Perkins to speed up his songs, and put that beat in them that distinguished the new style that nobody even knew what to call yet.
When “Blue Suede Shoes” started selling on all charts, Philliips felt vindicated, and everyone, from music journalists in big snotty cities like LA and NY, to black artists and other music labels started taking notice. The fact that the African-American population were buying the song in droves – not to mention the fact that white kids were buying r&b albums – gave everyone the sense that something was changing in a huge way. Dominating all three charts was brand new (even Elvis hadn’t done that, at least not yet, although it was coming along at about the same time) and nobody quite knew what it meant or what to do.
This was before Nashville began its crackdown on these “rockabilly” bozos dominating their charts. Nashville didn’t approve of the sound (where was the steel guitar in these songs? is a simplified version of Nashville’s attitude) or the frank sexuality and did not appreciate that the Nashville Gods had somehow lost the say-so on what was a “hit.”
“Blue Suede Shoes” was an organic phenomenon. It was the biggest national hit on the Sun label. It wasn’t just a hit in the States, it went to #1 in the UK too. The B-side was “Honey Don’t”, one of my favorite Carl Perkins’ songs. With “Blue Suede Shoes”, Sam Phillips went crazy trying to keep up with the demand (Sun Records was poor, even with the influx of cash from selling Elvis to RCA for $35,000, the highest price ever paid for an artist ever), and the demand for Carl’s song stretched everyone to the limit.
Carl Perkins was scheduled to make his national television debut on The Perry Como Show in March, 1956, but on his way there he got into a horrific car accident and almost died. (The guy in the other car DID die, and Carl’s brother fractured his neck and eventually died: that was how bad it was). Elvis, who had been performing his cover of “Blue Suede Shoes” (and had held off on releasing it in respect to Carl) sent a note to Carl in the hospital asking if there was anything he could do to help. While Carl was in the hospital, his “Blue Suede Shoes” went gold.
Meanwhile, Elvis’ “Heartbreak Hotel” came out around the same time, and went to #1 on the pop and country chart, but Carl’s “Blue Suede Shoes” beat him on the r&b charts. In between January and April, “Blue Suede Shoes” sold over a million copies. Everybody – Sam Phillips – everybody – was astonished – the thing was a runaway train. Even Elvis’ songs had not generated this much money and recognition in their first releases.
While Carl was in the hospital, Elvis had started performing “Blue Suede Shoes” on his television appearances (which had to be upsetting to Carl, although he was also a realist, he understood that Elvis had to move forward with his own version while Carl was out of commission.) But interestingly, Elvis’ version (which everyone seems to know better than Carl’s, and the song seems to be associated entirely with Elvis) never charted as well as Carl Perkins’ original version. The song’s progress was like a fever burning: and with Carl’s version the fever was at its height. Elvis’ version happened while the fever was breaking, the hubbub burning itself out.
Carl was back to performing in April and in May came the long-delayed appearance on The Perry Como Show. He performed “Blue Suede Shoes” and at that point, the song had done what it was going to do on all the charts, and the furor had started to die down. Also: Elvis’ rise became the biggest story ever. RCA was putting out his songs and millions of copies were sold even before these songs were released. That had never happened before. Things were getting distinctly strange. So when Carl made his television appearance, maybe the perception was that Carl was following in Elvis’ blue suede shoes, when in a lot of respects it was the other way around. Not really, but that may have been the perception. Maybe that’s why Elvis’ version is better known, added to the fact that Elvis had become a popular figure in the imagination – not just in reality – and his fame had exploded to such absurd surreal heights in 1956. Carl Perkins did not have the “It” quality that Elvis had, that exotic sensual bizarre star-power. Very few artists do.
I prefer Carl’s version of the song. That “Go, cat, go!!” still leaps off the speakers, and Carl had viewed that as a mistake during recording: he wasn’t supposed to say “cat”, that was not what he wrote. Phillips said, “Nope, we’re gonna leave it in.” Carl Perkins describes in his autobiography all the little mistakes in the recording, things he would mention to Phillips as they were recording: “But Mr. Phillips, that guitar part has a goof in it. But Mr. Phillips, I messed up the words… ” Sam was like, “Who the hell cares, son. The energy in the thing is what matters. This is a DIFFERENT record.” (“Different” was his highest praise.)
The story of “Blue Suede Shoes” is one of the most important stories in 20th century American music because it represented the real crossover break-through, something already anticipated a decade before by Hank Williams who “broke out” of Nashville into a larger audience in a way that had not happened with country “hillbilly” stars before, and building and building, representing a cultural sea-change made possible by stronger radio signals bringing local artists to a national audience. Crossover was starting, with artists like Rufus Thomas, whose “Bear Cat” – an “answer” to Hound Dog – was the first hit on the Sun label, and other r&b guys making inroads into national charts. And then the Big Kahuna that was Elvis Presley. Little Richard has said that his songs were never played on mainstream radio until “after Elvis.” He always gives Elvis credit for that, for the fact that r&b – seen as a style played strictly on “race” stations, known as “race music”, for a black audience, went mainstream. R&B, the coin of the realm in black music along with gospel, BECAME pop music. Very few people saw that coming. People who knew about such things had hoped for it, black musicians but also white visionaries who set up labels to get these r&b guys out into the world. It was the teenagers – white and black – buying these albums in a feeding frenzy who REALLY made that happen. All of this music was played on the radio – “race” stations and otherwise. One of the DJs at one of the first black-owned radio station in Memphis (of course), said: “You cannot segregate the airwaves.” Revolutionary, really.
Elvis did not get there first. Elvis never claimed that and always gave credit to the artists who had inspired him, gospel, country and rhythm and blues, but Elvis brought the music (mixing it all up, playing country songs with an r&b feel, playing pop songs with the fervor of a country preacher, etc.) into the white mainstream.
It needed to happen. And you needed a figure who could make that happen. It was a confusing time. Nothing was foreordained. Everything seemed to exist in a vague yearning: that something would break, something would start to coalesce, that r&b – as important to American culture as country – as well as the gospel-Baptist-preacher style that was so important to this kind of music as well as the vibrant rambunctious culture that existed outside of Patti Page and Frankie Laine – would start to flow into the white mainstream.
These dirt-poor white boys like Carl and Elvis and Johnny Cash and Jerry lee Lewis – all came from Baptist Pentecostal “church” backgrounds – speaking in tongues and all that – and lived in poor areas with black churches on the corner, the music pouring out into the air on Sundays. So the ‘crossover” existed in the culture already. Similar to Ray Charles saying that one of his major influences was Hank Williams and that he was inspired by the Grand Ole Opry broadcasts. Back, forth, back, forth. But this “mixing” was a local issue, it hadn’t cracked through to the rest of the world.
Sam Phillips had had small hits with his black artists but there seemed to be a “ceiling” to how many records those artists sold, since radio stations were scared of the sound, and outside of the population already buying those records, nobody else was buying.
Then all that changed. Little Richard, and other geniuses, rushed through the door blasted open by Elvis. Elvis’ RCA stuff, and earlier stuff like “Baby Let’s Play House” were national hits that climbed the charts. Hound Dog and Don’t Be Cruel competed with each OTHER on every single chart in the spring of 1956. (No wonder Nashville was pissed. Their entire Billboard chart was filled with Elvis singles. Get that grease-bomb off of here. He doesn’t use steel guitars!)
But Carl’s “Blue Suede Shoes” got there first in the biggest most attention-getting way.
Here’s Perkins performing “Blue Suede Shoes” on The Perry Como Show.
This Liz Garbus-directed documentary on the life of Nina Simone is a powerful and honest piece of work, very difficult at times to take (such intensity, such sadness), with incredible live footage of Nina Simone performing (some of it never before seen seen), as well as clips of interviews with Simone, throughout her life. Simone’s own voice leads us through it, telling us why she did this, what she felt, what was really going on … Additionally, at times there are floating images of Simone’s journals, scratched onto hotel stationery, the bleak and angry words filling the screen.
A difficult woman, a woman who had such depth of feeling, such rage, that life was never easy for her. The rage that ate her up, the rage that made life so unbearable for her, also made her write “Mississippi GODDAM”, a song that went off like a bomb in the civil-rights movement. People couldn’t believe she had actually SAID it. Even her fellow black musicians (interviewed for the documentary) were amazed at her courage to come out and SAY that.
Simone’s songs became more and more radical (she did not go for Martin Luther King’s brand of civil disobedience, stating: “I am NOT non-violent.” She said she was happy she didn’t know how to shoot a gun because “I am sure I would be a murderer”), and there’s footage of her at a concert/rally screaming at the crowd that she’s ready to kill to get what she wants, and everyone screaming back that they were ready to kill too. Booking agents, TV producers, events producers … all of them saw shit like that and stopped inviting her to perform.
Her politics hurt her career. Everyone who knows anything about Nina Simone knows this story, knows her childhood dream of being the first black classical pianist to play Carnegie Hall… and also knows her phenomenal songbook by heart. Always with Nina Simone, you get the sense of life being a mixed-bag. Triumph tempered by loss. Happiness tempered by rage. That’s what you hear in her music too.
Near the end of her life, she said in an interview, with that sadness you always felt in Simone, “I wish I had been a classical pianist.” It’s devastating because … my God, her career was so amazing – how much she has given to so many with her songs, her voice, her arrangements, her piano playing … but it was classical music that was her first love, classical music that showed her a way out, yanked her up out of her situation when she was a kid – thanks to a white lady who gave her SERIOUS piano lessons for years for free and who introduced her to Bach – and all the other great composers. Bach was the great comforter of Simone’s life. When Simone finally did play Carnegie Hall in 1963, she called her mother and said sadly, “Well, I’m playing Carnegie Hall. But I won’t be playing Bach.” This just makes me want to cry, but it is also what is so beautiful and so unique about Nina Simone.)
Nina Simone at Carnegie Hall, 1963
Simone’s daughter helped produce the documentary, and is also interviewed throughout about her very difficult childhood with two extremely volatile parents. By the time Nina Simone moved to Liberia and then France – the documentary had done such a good job of giving a feeling for the intensity of Nina Simone’s mental distress that you practically heave a sigh of relief for her. But life would never have been easy for anyone like Nina Simone, and believe me, going undiagnosed bipolar for 40 years is an experience that is pretty much beyond language’s ability to describe.
The footage of Nina Simone performing – at jazz festivals, both early and later on – is unforgettable. She has to be one of the greatest live performers of all time. There are moments where she notices someone fidgeting, or getting up to leave, and she says from the stage: “You over there. Sit down.” She needed to feel that she was creating a collective EVENT. You can hear that in the live recordings, when she talks to the audience or to her band: it was essential that everyone be on the same page.
Nina Simone was one of those rare performers who literally could not do it if she didn’t mean it.
The testimony from her friends and other musicians provide great counterpoints to her own narrative. These are all people who cared deeply about her, even when she was very difficult to love. They worried for her. The image of Nina Simone living in filth in a tiny dump in Paris, never going out, her career seemingly over, dead-broke, is heart-rending. Supportive friends with money swooped in, set her up in an apartment, took her to the doctor (that’s when she got the diagnosis), and basically removed all the pressure for having to take care of herself. “Everything is taken care of – you just get better so you can get back out onstage where you belong.” And that’s what ended up happening.
Documentaries about famous troubled artists can go wrong in a number of ways. The most common way is by focusing on all the “trouble” (craziness, drug addiction, salacious love life) … and forgetting the ART that makes us care about that person in the first place. Another way is trying desperately to EXPLAIN the artist by conflating art with biography. (“He was abandoned as a child. Therefore he became a great artist.” Many people are abandoned when they were children. Almost none of them become great artists.)
With the title of the Nina Simone documentary, you may think that the film will try to set out to explain Simone, or dwell in a voyeuristic way on the bad marriage, the mental illness, the temper tantrums. Thankfully, it does not. It shows all of it, but it contextualizes it, and it’s told through people who love her, who tried to make allowances for her, and who also (let’s not forget) were bowled over by her genius as a performer. So there’s a kindness there, but it’s also not a white-wash job or a “sanctification” project. It’s an in-depth engrossing look at the life of a great American artist.
Maya Angelou was the one to ask the question in a poem: “What happened, Miss Simone?” The documentary shows us, without diminishing her as an artist.
You hold your breath watching those live performances. It’s a high-wire act of raw honesty and sheer musical virtuosity.
What Happened, Miss Simone? is currently streaming on Netflix.
On the essays shelf (yes, there are still more books to excerpt in my vast library. I can’t seem to stop this excerpts-from-my-library project. I started it in 2006!)
NEXT BOOK: Baseball: A Literary Anthology
The following piece, written in beautifully breathless prose – complete with multiple ellipses … describes Jackie Robinson’s minor league debut on April 18, 1946 at Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City. It was the first time the color line was broken in baseball. Historic. Jackie Robinson, a second baseman, the child of sharecroppers (so many great game-changing men have been the children of sharecroppers!) had been tearing up the Negro Leagues, although he was a great all-around athlete who had played many sports in high school, including tennis. He excelled in them all. He was that kind of natural athlete. That trajectory continued in college (he eventually ended up at UCLA). He was the first athlete to letter in four separate sports at UCLA. He served in the military during WWII (and was court-martialed for refusing to sit in the back of the Army-requisitioned bus. Interestingly: the Army made it a point to announce that their buses were not segregated but the individual bus driver had a different idea and ordered Robinson to sit in the back. Robinson refused. When the eventual trial went down, Robinson was acquitted by a jury made up only of whites. So there was some sea-change going on … deep down in the culture, perhaps hard to quantify or even point your finger at. At any rate, the experience helped Robinson shore up his character, something that would come in handy when he went to the major leagues and was confronted by racist abuse on a systemic scale. Part of the accusation against Robinson by the bus driver was that he was drunk and disorderly, which was patently untrue. Robinson was a clean-living polite man, by all accounts, and nobody believed that part of the accusation. In any case, he was acquitted but of course the experience left a mark.)
After the war ended, Robinson started playing for the Negro Leagues. The early 1940s saw the beginning of the crack in that color line. It was more an attitude than anything concrete. Major league ballclubs held tryouts for black players (but these were often little more than publicity stunts). But Branch Rickey, the Scripture-quoting general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, actually meant it. He wanted to expand his roster to include black players, and started casting around in the Negro Leagues for a good candidate. He used scouts, and he used a black journalist named Wendell Smith (whose essay is excerpted below) who wrote about the Negro Leagues for a black sports weekly and knew every player’s strengths, weaknesses, temperament. Branch Rickey was very specific: He wanted a good player who had the strong moral character that could withstand the abuse that would come his way. Rickey wasn’t looking to start a race war, and did not want a hotheaded rabble-rousing black man on his team. He wanted someone who could “take it”, and go about his business of playing baseball. Wendell Smith recommended Jackie Robinson, who was known as a good guy, principled, well-mannered, who had faced a lot of abuse already (primarily from his experience in the military that had formed much of his outlook).
Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey
There was a lot of resentment in the Negro League about Jackie Robinson getting his chance in the Major Leagues because everyone knew he was not the best player of all of them. People’s hearts were broken. This is what happens when only ONE person is allowed to succeed at a time. Because to a Negro League player: you knew that if Robinson got his chance, that meant you would probably not get yours. Players’ spirits were broken by this, although they also felt pride too, that one of them was up there in the Majors. So many conflicting emotions: Maybe future generations of black athletes would benefit, but not them, not them. Very sad.
Jackie Robinson started off in the minors, placed with the Montreal Royals. Wendell Smith, hired by Branch Rickey, as well as his own newspaper, followed Robinson around from game to game to game, writing up stories on Robinson, to get the word out, pump up the publicity, “soften” the upcoming moment for the audience. A Major League debut was imminent. Get them dying to see it!
Wendell Smith and Jackie Robinson
Wendell Smith was an interesting guy. He hailed from Detroit (his father was a cook for Henry Ford). Smith excelled in two things: athletics and writing. He went to college at West Virginia State, played sports, wrote for the school paper. After graduation, he got a job at The Pittsburgh Courier, one of the best and most well-known African-American newspapers in the country. He wrote about baseball (among other things), and was an evangelist for baseball to integrate. A lot of his writing was pained and angry, making his point again and again that it was ridiculous and outrageous that black people would pay money to see a sport that excluded black athletes. At times a note of despair came into his writing: “We keep on crawling, begging and pleading for recognition … We know that they don’t want us, but we still keep giving them our money.” The “we” is eloquent and says a lot about Smith’s engaging and personal style. By using “we” he included himself, first of all, but it was an expression, too, of single-mindedness, an expression of a community out there – coalesced, complex, made up of millions of individuals – who all felt the same way. “We” can be cowardly in some writers’ hands: they don’t want to own their own feelings, and fall back on the group. But in Smith’s hands, that “we” is frankly political.
It’s worth it to familiarize yourself with all of Smith’s work, because you can then feel the buildup of excitement as it became clear to Smith that his long-deferred dream was going to come true: a black man would play on a major-league field. The world was going to change. Everything would not be roses/rainbows – but integration, slow as it may be, needed to happen. And so the moment should be celebrated. (You can feel that excitement in the piece below. It is enough to bring tears to your eyes.)
Not only did Jackie Robinson become a superstar, but Wendell Smith made his name on his association with Jackie Robinson. The year after Jackie Robinson’s minor league debut, Wendell Smith got a job at the Chicago American, making him the first black sportswriter with a byline at any major daily paper. He was also the first black member of the Baseball Writers Association. If you haven’t seen the film 42, I highly recommend it. A great and corny (in the best sense) sports movie: a mainstream movie about a black hero. (I’d like to point you to my friend Odie’s piece on 42 and other things over at his site Big Media Vandalism. As a Jersey City resident, the fact that Robinson made his debut at Roosevelt Stadium just down the block was incredibly meaningful to Odie.)
So back to April 18, 1946. The Jersey City Giants played The Montreal Royals at Roosevelt Stadium. In a moment almost too good to be true, Robinson’s first hit was a three-run homer. He also stole two bases. It was a star athlete’s performance, given under extreme pressure – both from the whites who had banked on him – and the whites who hated that he was there in the first place and hoped he would fail, and the blacks in the crowd (and looking on across the nation) who hoped against hope that disaster would not ensue, that Robinson would do them proud. To be able to compete under that kind of mental pressure is extraordinary, and something white players never had to face (although pressure is part of the game of baseball, of any sport – but Robinson had all that OTHER stuff on his head. Not easy to be a symbol! Not easy to have a bunch of people wanting you to either succeed or fail – and then just go up there and do your best and make such a fine showing of it.)
Jackie Robinson greeted at the plate by his teammate, April 18, 1946, Jersey City
There’s a statue of Jackie Robinson, arms in the air in triumph, in Jersey City to this day.
The following piece by Wendell Smith appeared in The Pittsburgh Courier. Listen to that tone of triumph. It’s poetry. It’s beautiful. Here, he describes Robinson running around the bases after his first three-run homer hit. (The ellipses do not represent any cuts in the original text, they are Smith’s own. )
Excerpt from Baseball: A Literary Anthology
Robinson jogged around the bases – his heart singing, a broad smile on his beaming bronze face as his two teammates trotted homeward ahead of him … When he rounded third, Manager Clay Hopper, who was coaching there, gave him a heavy pat on the back and shouted: “That’s the way to hit that ball!” … Between third and home-plate he received another ovation from the stands, and then the entire Montreal team stood up and welcomed him to the bench … White hands slapping on his broad back … Deep Southern voices from the bench shouted, “Yo sho’ hit ‘at one, Robbie, nice goin’ kid!” … Another said: “Them folks ‘at wouldn’t let you play down in Jacksonville should be hee’ah now. Whoopee!” … And still another: “They cain’t stop ya now, Jackie, you’re really goin’ places and we’re going to be right there with ya!” … Jackie Robinson laughed softly and smiled … Johnny Wright, wearing a big blue pitcher’s jacket, laughed and smiled … And, high up in the press box, Joe Bostix of the Amsterdam News and I looked at each other knowingly, and, we, too, laughed and smiled … Our hearts beat just a bit faster, and the thrill ran through us like champagne bubbles … It was a great day in Jersey … It was a great day in baseball!
But he didn’t stop there, this whirlwind from California’s gold coast … He ran the bases like a wild colt from the Western plains. He laid down two perfect bunts and slashed a hit into right field … He befuddled the pitchers, made them balk when he was roaring up and down the base paths, and demoralized the entire Jersey City team … He was a hitting demon and a base-running maniac … The crowd gasped in amazement … The opposing pitchers shook their heads in helpless agony … His understanding teammates cheered him on with unrivaled enthusiasm … And Branch Rickey, the man who had the fortitude and courage to sign him, heard the phenomenal news via telephone in the offices of the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbetts Field and said admiringly – “He’s a wonderful boy, that Jackie Robinson – a wonderful boy!”
THEY MOBBED HIM AFTER THE GAME
When the game ended and Montreal had chalked up a 14 to 1 triumph, Robinson dashed for the club house and the showers … But before he could get there he was surrounded by a howling mob of kids, who came streaming out of the bleachers and stands … They swept down upon him like a great ocean wave and he was drowned in a sea of adolescent enthusiasm … There he was – this Pied Piper of the diamond – perspiration rolling off his bronze brow, idolizing kids swirling all around him, autograph hounds tugging at him … And big cops riding prancing steeds trying unsuccessfully to disperse the mob that had cornered the hero of the day … One of his own teammates fought his way through the howling mob and finally “saved” Robinson … It was Red Durrett, who was a hero in his own right because he had pounded out two prodigious home runs himself, who came to the “rescue.” He grabbed Robinson by the arm and pulled him through the crowd. “Come on,” Durrett demanded, “you’ll be here all night if you don’t fight them off. They’ll mob you. You can’t possibly sign autographs for all those kids.”
So, Jackie Robinson, escorted by the red-headed outfielder, finally made his way to the dressing room. Bedlam broke loose in there, too … Photographers, reporters, kibitzers and hangers-on fenced him in … It was a virtual madhouse … His teammates, George Shuba, Stan Breard, Herman Franks, Tom Tatum, Marvin Rackley and all the others, were showering congratulations on him … They followed him into the showers, back to his locker and all over the dressing room … Flash bulbs flashed and reporters fired questions with machine-gun like rapidity … And Jackie Robinson smiled through it all.
As he left the park and walked out onto the street, the once-brilliant sun was fading slowly in the distant western skies … His petite and dainty little wife greeted him warmly and kindly. “You’ve had quite a day, little man,” she said sweetly.
“Yes,” he said softly and pleasantly, “God has been good to us today!”
With the new Star Wars fast upon us, get ready for the “I remember my experience first seeing Star Wars when I was a wee lad and my eyes were open to wonder …” kind of commentary. I get it, I do, but with something like Star Wars, having a blown-away experience as a child to that film is not, how you say, unique. However, I really do get it. And here is my entry in the “This film brought up all kinds of memories, and here is what it means to me personally” brand of response.
Brett Morgen’s Cobain: The Montage of Heck was devastating. It had an irrevocable feeling to it, because we all know the ending, and yet it was devoted to the small details, the paraphernalia of life, the notebooks, the home movies, the home recordings, the complex tapestry (literally – all the threads interlocking) of life. Kurt Cobain seems real, not an easy thing when someone dies young, and in such a way as Cobain did. The Myth then takes over The Man. Montage of Heck is not part of a myth-making push. It’s not a re-examination, it’s not a salacious pulling a man down off his pedestal. It’s honest, it’s painful, and it has a style that helps the audience go deeper into the psyche of the main subject. It’s not distant in its approach. Montage of Heck is one of the best documentaries of the year (and this has been a great year already for both music biopics – Love & Mercy and Straight Outta Compton in the same year? and documentaries, with What Happened, Miss Simone and Amy both powerful entries as well). Brett Morgen’s mellow collage-effect in The Kid Stays in the Picture was one of that documentary’s most memorable aspects – and it helped tell the story RIGHT, as well as using Robert Evans’ voice as narration. Maybe Evans is an unreliable narrator. Who cares: aren’t we all. It was Evans’ style in telling his story that made that book what it was, and Morgen hews close to the original. In Montage of Heck, Morgen uses a similar strategy: it’s made up of unforgettable collage, extant footage, touching home movies (from Cobain’s childhood, from his early Nirvana tours, from his marriage to Courtney Love) but also animation (Cobain’s journals coming to life in freaky little cartoons), and animated sequences showing Cobain recording himself in his home, or appearing on local radio stations, or the infamous raging telephone message he left to a journalist.
There are talking-heads included: Cobain’s mother and sister, his father, his first girlfriend Tracy, Courtney Love, Krist Novoselic … but the talking-heads are all friends/family members. There are no critics weighing in on the importance of Cobain’s song-writing or execs at Geffen or SubPop providing “context” to what Nirvana unleashed (a smart move, because we all already KNOW all that), or music journalists reminiscing about what it was like to hear “Smells like Teen Spirit” for the first time, and blah blah blah. There is none of that here. The documentary is not a critical assessment of Nirvana’s place in music history. It is a “montage of heck,” the name Cobain scribbled on a mix tape he made when he was a teenager.
Without any voiceover narration, or sign-posts, you get the gist of the journey: the troubled childhood and chaotic family, obsession with music and punk rock, the start of Nirvana, the little shows, the Sub Pop moment, the bigger tours, and then the explosion of Nevermind – but you get it all through sensitive collage-aspects (Cobain’s scribbles in his journal: “GEFFEN.” Or a flier from SubPop. Moving us to the next phase.)
His friends and family speak only to the man they knew, not the icon everyone knew. Kriss Novoselic: “Kurt hated being humiliated. If he felt humiliated, you’d see the rage come out. Me? You can humiliate me. I humiliate myself. But not Kurt. Never Kurt.”
Courtney Love (whose interview is great): “Kurt had no idea he was as good-looking as Brad Pitt.” Cobain’s mother describes Kurt popping in the master tape of Nevermind, before the album was released. She says that within moments she felt – “not pride … but fear. Fear. Because I knew this record was going to be HUGE. And my thought was, ‘Buckle up. Are you ready for what’s coming?'” Everyone comes off as honest.
Love is honest about the “drug addicts doing drugs” aspect of their relationship, but also speaks of how these two misfits really were devoted to creating a home life, family life: “I am telling you right now, I would have had more babies with him.”
There is a closeup of Cobain’s father as his wife speaks that is so filled with silent pain you want to look away. Nothing detracts from the purely subjective focus of Montage of Heck. It is a personal film. You are in Cobain’s head. You see what life felt like to him. The people interviewed still feel the loss. There were multiple times when I started feeling a sense of dread, because I knew how the story ended. You could see it coming so clearly. There’s a reason why his mother has been quoted as saying she was not surprised her son took his life. She had had a feeling that that might have been in the cards for him since he was a teenager.
The home video footage of he and Courtney at home, playing with Frances, is heart-rending, because the tenderness they both feel, these two messy kids who just had a kid, is so real. Courtney sits in a bathtub with Frances, washing Frances’ hair, as Kurt films. They’re babbling about nothing stuff to each other, focused on Frances’ cute shenanigans, and suddenly Courtney looks up at the camera and says, “You know what? I’m really happy right now.” And she looks it. And Cobain sounds happy too. It’s a gut-punch, the whole damn thing.
Now for my Nostalgic Section
I remember where I was, what I was doing, who I was with, when I heard the news. And I’m sure I was wearing a little ripped baby-doll nightie, ripped thick tights, and a purple plastic barrette and Doc Martens, because I was fully IN the movement of the moment. You know … every photo of me in the mid-90s involves fingerless gloves, plastic barrettes, combat boots, and bright red lipstick. Sometimes, rarely, what is “fashionable” also happens to be exactly what SUITS you, not so much physically, but emotionally. The grunge era/riot grrl thing – including all its ferocious music – was that for me. That was who I WAS.
Exhibit A: On the subway with my boyfriend behind the camera, the year Cobain died.
I had already been that in high school, but the style at the time was preppy (layered sweaters, dock siders, whale logos, etc.) or, then, Madonna-ish leg warmers and rubber bracelets. Neither of these styles had anything to do with my spirit, which is why I dressed in high school as though it was 1954: I wore my dad’s shirts, black pedal pushers, and little ballet flats, and I put a red scarf around my neck. My clothes came from thrift stores. I was proud of that. It was my little rebellion against conformity. I listened to Devo and the Go Gos and Adam Ant, but I also loved The Beatles and The Rolling Stones and The Sex Pistols and The Clash. The 80s were a tough time for diversity of tastes, at least in terms of what got a “stamp of approval.”
But then the early-mid 90s came, and something else, another sound, another energy, came roaring out of the Pacific Northwest. It burst apart all that came before it. The culture had been pinpricked, somehow, and artifice came crashing down. (Which was part of the problem … because, naturally, it then immediately started being corporatized.) To quote Cobain: Whatever. Never mind. This is all well-trod ground.
Kurt Cobain killing himself was a “moment” for us Gen-Xers. And Millennials, I realize how annoying it is to have op-ed pieces written about how much your generation sucks, but you shoulda been there back in 1992, 93, 94, 95. We were the worst generation ever. We were awful dirty un-grateful assholes, all of us, according to … everyone. And Nirvana was a flash-point for all of these worried columns: We were a generation who had so little taste that we idolized this pimply whiny “passive” punk. (A lot of the criticism at the time had a distinctly homophobic slant to it: Cobain was not enough of a MAN. Suck it up, boy, stop whining, be a real man, and etc. Which makes me wonder if they had ever listened to Nirvana’s music. Whining? You call “Lithium” whining? “Smells Like Teen Spirit” whining? “Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle” whining? What I hear there is a “real man” present to his own feelings, his rage, his openness, the unfairness of life … and if you call that “whining” then you’d better throw Shakespeare on that heap too. King Lear, man. What a whiner.) We were made fun of when we cried at news of his death. It all felt like a calculated attack on us, the very thing that Nirvana had been raging against, and speaking TO. Just like Eminem went over the heads of his critics and mainlined into his audiences his concerns/hopes/fears … Nirvana skipped the ingratiating press-run stage of a career, and went straight to the audience. You cannot manufacture fan identification like that, although millions in R&D money is devoted to trying. Nirvana was US and people were VICIOUS in making fun of us for it. So Millennials, here’s the deal: I am friends with many of you, have worked with many of you, and I do not recognize the caricature being put out there in these dumb op-ed columns about you. Maybe there are some assholes among you, people whose parents are overly involved in their lives, who freak out when their every banal thought isn’t praised to high heaven. Sure. Your generation got way more praise when you were kids than our generation ever did, than most other generations ever did, actually. But there are assholes in every generation, for God’s sake, and some of the biggest assholes I know are Baby Boomers, who think they invented good sex, political activism and cool music. If all you knew of Millennials was what you saw on Tumblr, you would literally tremble for the future. These people sound certifiably insane and DEVOTED to their sense of victimization. I know the whole “You just love to be a victim” thing is used as a battering-ram against people with legitimate complaints, but there ARE people who cherish their special-snowflake status and tremble at any perceived threat to their special-ness and sensitivity. But out in the real world, of course, on a one-to-one basis it’s not quite like that. I also feel protective of Millennials in a way, because my generation went through a similar period where everyone was talking about how much we SUCKED. I never thought we sucked. I am proud of my generation. We are tough, gritty, self-sufficient, practical. We do shit for ourselves. Many of us were born before man walked on the moon. The Internet did not come along until we were in our mid-20s. We had to occupy ourselves. We did not wear seat belts or bike helmets. Dodgeball was not banned. My kindergarten teacher tied a string around a loose tooth in my mouth, attached the string to the door knob of the classroom, and yanked the door shut. Out came the tooth. It was HORRIFYING, but here I am today, with a funny story to tell. Our teenage years were dominated by pop culture so sanitized, on such a corporate model, that – as my brother put it – “You couldn’t feel any air in the music.” Just as we reached sexual maturity, AIDS hit. So yes, we were alienated. Yes, we were pissed.
Nirvana voiced something important about all of that. Nirvana was not interested in being ingratiating. We loved them for that. They tried, how they tried, to avoid becoming a “product.” They were surly during interviews. They wanted to hear what WE thought their songs meant. It was not their job to feed it to us. They misbehaved. They were a little bit scary. I loved The Clash, I loved The Sex Pistols, the Stones, Joan Jett: rock ‘n’ roll SHOULD be a little bit scary. Rock ‘n’ roll SHOULD challenge the status quo. As much as I loved Huey Lewis, he was not challenging the status quo. It doesn’t mean he should even try – but those who change everything, those who practically single-handedly displace all that came before … who inject some AIR into the culture, some SPACE … are ALWAYS a little bit scary. Nirvana did not “play nice.” We appreciated that, we rooted for them. The gigantic swirl of corporatized magnetic energy was already sucking them in. Nirvana meant something to us. And they do still. But it’s a scar, what happened.
Watching Montage of Heck opened up that wound again. There is a “missing” in all of us, because we felt like he was ours. And he couldn’t take it and he left.
Nothing I say here is original. My experience is not unique. I do not own any of it. Every generation has a defining moment. Along with Reagan being shot, John Lennon being shot, and The Challenger explosion, Nirvana was one of ours.
Artists try to be universal and when they try they often come up with banality and cliche. Nirvana didn’t try. Cobain didn’t try. He did not give a shit about that. He wrote about his own experience and observations. And he ended up tapping into the motherlode of unexpressed rage in millions of teenagers, something that had had no place in the culture literally 2 years before.
With one punch, he created SPACE.
And when he left, that space remained. Only now it was empty.
Cobain: Montage of Heck is a superb documentary, I can’t say enough good things about it. It touched me to no end to see that Frances Bean was one of the executive producers.
— Wonderful interview with director Hou Hsiao-Hsien on his film “The Assassin” (in theaters now. I loved it.). He says:
I’m 68 and I’m running out of time. I started reading martial arts novels when I was in elementary school, the fifth grade, but it wasn’t until my first year of college that I began reading these short stories from the Tang Dynasty, written by people from the Tang Dynasty and published at that time. I found them quite fascinating. The short story “Nie Yinniang,” especially, stuck in my head. I kept thinking that at some point I would like to make a film based on “Nie Yinniang.” As you know, I haven’t made a film in a while because I was serving as the president of the Taipei Film Festival as well as the Golden Horse Awards. That took five years of my life. I’m not getting any younger and realized that now would be the time to make this movie.
— Kim Morgan’s gorgeous piece on Angelina Jolie’s By the Sea, which is being panned left and right, totally unfairly (I, for one, cannot get it out of my head.) Kim digs deep into the film. Don’t miss it.
— Extraordinary article by Adrian Chen in The New Yorker about how a young woman broke out of a family cult (the Westboro Baptist Church). It’s a long article. To be read in full. It made me tear up. Her “conversion” came through interactions on Twitter which made other people seem real and not evil, plus a moment having to do with the death of Brittany Murphy, which should shut people up forever who sneer at those who grieve celebrity deaths. Her emotion about that event is what helped her realize her mind was her own. Incredible article.
— My friend Odie Henderson’s review of Creed. The movie made me cry (maybe 7 or 8 times, so basically I cried all the way through), Odie’s review made me cry, so basically I’ve been making a spectacle of myself all over town. The accolades, though, are well-deserved. One of the best films of 2015. And you know I’m honing down my list now.
— My pal Miriam Bale interviewed director Todd Haynes about the cinematic influences for the gorgeous Carol out in theaters now. (I I loved the film.) I love how Miram and Haynes discuss the “artifice”, and how it used to BE cinema, and how it is also “natural” in that context. (Speaking of which, that is what critics panning By the Sea don’t seem to get.)
— Just starting Peter Guralnick’s Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock ‘n’ Roll
For Roger Ebert, I discuss Gena Rowlands’ extraordinary 6-decade career in all its facets, not just the productive Cassavetes years. She did a lot of television, and, as she got older, smaller parts in movies with large ensembles, but these roles should not be dismissed. If we want to celebrate the life, and the dedication of one woman to a career in film, to her own art, then let’s look at all of it. This was very fun to research. I had seen all of these films, but many I hadn’t seen in years and years.
I wrote this up because of Gena Rowlands’ recent Honorary Oscar, presented to her at the Governors Awards on November 14th. Still no sign of the Rowlands Tribute Reel, for which I wrote the narration for Angelina Jolie to read. I will share once it’s up!
In the meantime, check out my Gena Rowlands: A Life in Film over on Rogerebert.com.
