The Sheila Variations

England In the Sky

Posted on July 20, 2013 by sheila

I’ve been reading Shakespeare’s plays in chronological order (at least as close to that as can be determined). I’ve done it before, but it was years ago, 15 years or something. I highly recommend it, if you feel so inclined. I have not been writing about it, because I’ve been trying to relax more and not everything I read/see has to be written about (although I want to, and already I’m defying myself – look at me, here I am writing about it). Anyway, I’ve been reading the plays in the mornings, and it’s been so much fun. So I suppose it is no surprise that on Thursday, walking back to my car after spending the afternoon at the beach, I glanced up at the sky and saw England hovering there. Sad to say, Ireland is not represented in the sky. And, as my friend Jackie observed, “It appears that the North Sea is on fire.”

I had just finished Richard II that morning, where, of course, one of the most famous speeches is by poor John of Gaunt, in Act 2 scene 1:

This royal throne of kings, this scepter’d isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,
Fear’d by their breed and famous by their birth,
Renowned for their deeds as far from home,
For Christian service and true chivalry,
As is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry,
Of the world’s ransom, blessed Mary’s Son,
This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land,
Dear for her reputation through the world,
Is now leased out, I die pronouncing it,
Like to a tenement or pelting farm:
England, bound in with the triumphant sea
Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege
Of watery Neptune, is now bound in with shame,
With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds:
That England, that was wont to conquer others,
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.

So naturally, after reading that ode to England, I would look up and see that “precious stone set in the silver sea” up there in the sky. It makes perfect sense.

Posted in Personal | Tagged Shakespeare | 3 Comments

Seen Recently: The Train Robbers (1973), Dark City (1998), Easy A (2010), His Girl Friday (1940), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949)

Posted on July 20, 2013 by sheila

The Train Robbers
directed by Burt Kennedy

Somehow I missed this totally entertaining film, despite my love for John Wayne, Ann-Margret (and Ben Johnson)! An absolutely gorgeous LOOKING film (it was cinematographer William H. Clothier’s final film), it stars John Wayne as a hired gunslinger, Ben Johnson as his right-hand man, and Ann-Margret as the widow who hires them. The opening sequence is masterful, with Ben Johnson standing by train tracks in the middle of a desert area, staring off into the distance. He’s in a “town”, but the town consists of a barn and a hotel, and a water tower. Rickety structures standing up in the middle of the desert, isolated. The film starts with a series of shots of empty rocking chairs rocking in the wind, shutters rattling against darkened windows, emptiness, desolation. It’s a very moody picture, filled with sandstorms, lightning strikes, pitch-black darkness, and fiery sunsets. Landscape and weather are used intuitively. Ann-Margret shows up and decides that she will ride with the men to find the buried gold out there in the desert. John Wayne had already lost a lung at this point, but he is still big, strapping, strong, and you can see he is doing many of his own stunts. Incredible. The dynamic between him and the much younger Ann-Margret is terrific. You can see that he is drawn to her (because, hell, she’s Ann-Margret), but, as he barks at her when she gets sentimental towards him later on, “I’ve got saddles older’n you.” But it’s a joy to watch the two of them work together. Ricardo Montelbaun plays a mysterious cigar-smoking character in pinstripes who appears to be tracking them on their journey for unknown reasons. The supporting cast, Ben Johnson and the other gunslingers, are all wonderful, with great scenes showing each character. There is a magnificent set – clearly not on a studio lot but legit out in the Mexico desert – of train tracks overrun by sand, and, half-buried in rolling sand dunes, a rusting train. This was built for the film, and it is a masterpiece of a set – like something from out of a dream, a train stranded in the sand. During the final shootout, John Wayne, realizing that they need to operate in darkness, reaches up with his rifle and smashes out the lantern above him. It’s just one example of many of how important gesture is, and how powerful he was onscreen, physically. He held nothing back. AND. I hadn’t seen the film before and TOTALLY did not see the final twist coming. I won’t give it away in case someone out there hasn’t seen it. But my jaw dropped. It’s like The Sting, where you realize that the film itself has “stung” the audience (that FBI office wasn’t real). The “sting” in The Train Robbers makes you re-think the entire film. I loved that it went that way.

Dark City
directed by Alex Proyas

I saw this when it first came out and am very grateful I saw it on the big screen. It’s a magnificent vision, an imaginary world, an imagined city built from different eras and time periods, from snatches of dreams and memories, crowded with different styles and remnants of past eras. Automats and Art Deco lobbies. It’s a marvel of production design. And yet unlike so many films where you can say the same thing, this one is also filled with a sense of psychological menace, mystery, and pain, which puts it in line with some of the great noirs. It has a noir sensibility, and some of the scenes look like they could have been lifted right out of Edward Hopper (dark streets, lit-up lonely Automat windows, one or two people at the tables). Rufus Sewell wakes up in a bathtub in the second-grimmest bathroom in cinema history (the first being the one in Trainspotting), and he has blood on his forehead, and he is filled with panic. He doesn’t know what has happened. He puts on clothes, goes out into his hallway, to see two men in fedoras coming down the hall to get him. Why, he has no idea. From that moment on he is on the run through the dark city. The city is an odd one. Everyone falls asleep, spontaneously, for about 5 minutes at midnight every night. Cars stop on the roads. People slump in doorways. Why? Clearly influenced by Metropolis, there is a city beneath the real city, an underground world inhabited by bald identical drones, complete with gigantic death’s-head. Some of the shots are direct steals from Metropolis and have the same sense of grinding industrialization of the human potential, very disturbing. Jennifer Connelly plays a luscious and troubled nightclub singer, and Kiefer Sutherland plays a mad scientist, basically, roped into helping the underground metropolis control the aboveground one. Rufus Sewell is fighting for his life, he is accused of murder, but he didn’t do it, or at least he has no memory of doing it. He has no memory of being married to the nightclub singer. He is being chased by these horrifying black-trench-coated creatures who fly through the air over the sleeping streets of the metropolis. There’s an Angel Heart aspect to this as well: because as he gets closer to understanding what has happened, there is no relief in his deeper knowledge. It just gets more and more terrifying. Alex Proyas wrote and directed, so this is his vision. It’s a beautiful film, stark and disturbing.

Easy A
directed by Will Gluck

One of my favorite films in recent years. I have the wonderful Dennis Cozzalio to thank for writing about this film so beautifully, so persuasively, that I had to check it out for myself. Emma Stone, who, of course, has become a big movie star since then, makes a gigantic impression here. She is a loony comedic presence, her spirit is irrepressible, her sense of what is funny is spot-on. This isn’t some obedient young starlet saying funny lines that makes her seem like she is funny/witty/snarky. This is an actress who understands humor (watch how she drones in her party host’s ear: “How have you been, Mellllanie BosTICK …” Nobody told Emma Stone to make that choice. That is Emma Stone being HILARIOUS.) I also appreciate a film that comments on the degradation of young women in movies such as this one, where your value is automatically LOW, because you are a young woman. What about a movie about teenagers that acknowledges the undercurrents around sex, the pressures, the ambiguities, from the female side of things? I’ve seen enough coming-of-age movies about teen boys to last a lifetime. I mean, of course, if it’s good, it’s good. Make your damn movie. But how I appreciate a film that takes on the situation with a female protagonist. If we only see women/girls through the eyes of men, then we are in a sorry situation. Easy A is a self-conscious film, similar to Will Gluck’s next film, Friends with Benefits, which acknowledges, in scene after scene, how movie tropes and cliches inform how we actually behave. Roles are set in stone, you be the kooky female lead, I’ll be the goofball male lead, and we’ll meet-cute, and etc. and etc. Will Gluck seems interested in how movies and pop culture filters down, how it gets inside of us. A lot of films are self-consciously self-referential and they are annoying and soulless. Easy A is almost a manifesto. It is a rhetorical device. It makes its points. Emma Stone plays a smart girl, a goofy girl, who, in order to get her bossy best friend off her back, tells her that she slept with a guy at a local community college over the weekend. This is a lie. There is no guy from the community college. She is still a virgin. She doesn’t even seem to care about being popular, or being “in” with the in crowd. Her lie comes out of being sick of her friend badgering her about what she did over the weekend (when all she did was sing in the shower and talk to her dog). So the lie gets spread. Suddenly, Olive finds herself branded the school tramp. They happen to be reading The Scarlet Letter in English class, and Olive, furious at how easily the lie spread, AND how disrespectfully she is treated just because people think she has lost her virginity, goes a bit insane, and starts dressing up in tight corsets and black leggings. She sews a scarlet “A” on the bosom of every corset. Her teacher (played beautifully by Thomas Haden Church) is disturbed, and wonders what might be going on with her. “I am glad to see you are taking your reading to heart, but …” Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson play her laidback parents, and they realize something is going on with their daughter but they are not sure how to handle it since she’s never had any problems before. Lisa Kudrow is awesome in her small part. It’s a tragic performance, in the middle of a comedy. Amanda Bynes, bless her heart, is very funny as the judgmental fundie who takes on Olive as her own special Jesus-freak cause. I love the script, I love the sentiments behind the script, and I love Emma Stone’s wacky confident performance. Here is something new, here is something other actresses can’t do, here is a truly comedic personality asserting herself in a world that wants her to just be pretty and hang on some guy’s arm.

His Girl Friday
directed by Howard Hawks

I watched it twice last week for a piece I was working on. One of my favorite films of all time. And it is that rare thing: a film that gets better with each viewing. I still don’t know where to look, at times: should I focus on Cary Grant, or should I just track Rosalind Russell? More often than not, Howard Hawks puts them both in the frame at the same time, a dazzling effect because what you know you are seeing, then, is two actors playing a scene like gangbusters. He rarely edits or cross-cuts, there are very few closeups. The takes are LONG. Scenes play out. You can’t believe that these people speak as quickly as they do and you don’t lose one word. A masterpiece.

She Wore a Yellow Ribbon
directed by John Ford

A love letter to the United States cavalry, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon is a fascinating look at what is ultimately a failure of a mission, to escort two ladies to a stage coach through dangerous territory where war is heating up. The various Indian Nations have bonded together into a coalition to drive the white man out. Filmed in Monument Valley, the scenery is devastatingly gorgeous and moody. John Wayne plays Capt. Nathan Cutting Brittles, who is 6 days away from retirement. He X’s off the days on a little calendar in his room. This is a film about growing old. It’s interesting to see John Wayne in that position, almost of submission and acceptance. He is so powerful a persona that it is difficult to think of him stepping aside from anything. There’s a painful scene between him and his commander where the commander basically tells him to let it go. Nathan has one day left in the service, and he has to let the other guys complete the mission, and make their mistakes, and perhaps pay for it with their lives: the two of them took their chances as young men, and now it’s time to let others test their own mettle. John Wayne is absolutely magnificent in that scene. Of course, he then has second thoughts about that whole “no country for old men” business, and has to go out and finish what he started, but in general this is still a film about old men stepping aside, about young men learning to grow up and take responsibility for themselves. There’s a killer scene where the cavalry troop gives John Wayne a silver watch on the occasion of his retirement. Wayne is taken aback, and then he is told that there is an engraving on the back of the watch. Wayne takes this in, preparing himself, subtly gearing himself up for the emotion (which, of course, must be hid and handled), then glances around a bit, before taking out his glasses. An eloquent gesture, as all of his gestures are. He needs his glasses, but he hesitates slightly before copping to needing them. Brilliant. He reads the inscription, and I find myself in tears, although Wayne himself does not shed a tear. Great movie stars can do that. The whole scene reminded me of George Washington with his glasses. Ben Johnson is fantastic here, again (like in The Train Robbers, 23, 24 years later) as John Wayne’s second-in-command. Some people have authority onscreen, others don’t. Ben Johnson does. Mildred Natwick is just marvelous in her small part. I can take or leave Joanne Dru. Nathan has a back story, a dead wife and dead children, (he visits their graves and talks to his wife, beautiful work from Wayne) and we don’t know what happened, not exactly, but in one scene he says to drunk-Irishman-pal Victor McLaglen, gesturing at the photographs on his desk, “I haven’t had a drink since that day.” With John Wayne, you never need things spelled out. He gives you everything, in the simplest way possible. How can you describe why he was so effective? He was a movie star. A great actor. Irreplaceable.

Posted in Movies | Tagged Ann-Margret, Cary Grant, His Girl Friday, Howard Hawks, John Wayne, Ralph Bellamy, reviews, Rosalind Russell, sci-fi, screwball comedy, westerns | 26 Comments

Heat Wave Shuffle

Posted on July 18, 2013 by sheila

Some tunes on the old Shuffle over the past week.

“Lawdy Miss Clawdy” – the great Lloyd Price. One of the first giant crossover hits, where white kids started buying a “race” record. Of course, Elvis would then record it a couple of years later.

“Polly Come Home” – Robert Plant & Allison Krauss. God, I love this entire album. What a sexy fascinating pairing.

“Hoodoo Voodoo Doll” – Brian Setzer. From Guitar Slinger, got that mix of big-band and electric guitar, with an old-school male chorus like Cab Calloway’s stuff or something.

“Will You Love Me Tomorrow” – Carole King & James Taylor, live at the Troubadour. Great song, one of the best pop songs ever written. I love Carole King’s songs, but not so much her voice. It doesn’t do it for me. I like the Shirelles version. But it’s beautiful here, with Taylor harmonizing. So melancholy. Will you still love me tomorrow? You know the answer is No. Although it’s the hope that the answer will be different that keeps people going. Or so I’ve heard.

“We’d Like to Thank You (Herbert Hoover)” – from the original Broadway production of Annie. Go Laurie Beecham. What a VOICE. I saw her play Fantine in the national tour of Les Miserables, when my aunt was in it, and I was thrilled to meet her. The narrator in Joseph! The “star to be” in Annie. I had been admiring her for years. Tina Fey has a funny bit in Bossypants about photo shoots and how she warns you not to play your own music during a photo shoot, because your iPod may blast out “We’d Like to Thank You Herbert Hoover”.

“She Said She Said” – The Beatles. The harmony here is really interesting. I love Revolver.

“Proud Mary” – Elvis, from his 1972 Madison Square Garden concert (recently re-released, with pristine sound, as Prince From Another Planet). He sounds phenomenal.

“I’m Falling In Love Tonight [Takes 1, 2, 3 & 4]” – Elvis Presley. I love this because you can hear him talking and laughing in between takes. He gets the giggles. He stops himself, he works over phrases to himself, he whistles for everyone to “stop”. I love the glimpses of him at work, in process. They have a bit of an issue at first, with counting out before he starts singing – Elvis has to pause for “5”, and they have to work it out. He’s a pure professional, you can hear it in his work process.

“Just Call Me Joe” – Sinéad O’Connor. Haunting. I love it when she almost whispers. Scary.

“Peggy Sue Got Married” – Buddy Holly. You know, you still want to get up and dance to this stuff. It’s still fresh.

“Riot Proof” – Tori Amos. This is from her double album To Venus and Back, which is quite strange, but I like it a lot. I like her when she’s loud and pissed, rather than melancholy and interior.

“In Only Seven Days” – Queen. Freddie Mercury is perfect. A perfect performer. Nothing he did was wrong. Sui generis.

“Funny How Time Slips Away” – Elvis, again from one of the 1972 Madison Square Garden concerts. I always love his version of this. He’s so easy with it, so melancholy, but without any self-pity. He keeps it light, conversational. He’s been there, done it, seen it all, and takes a philosophical view. The audience here is in the palm of his hand. When he sings, “gotta go now”, they erupt into random screams, bemoaning that he may mean what he says. He’s so magical. What IS it? WHAT. IS IT. I will never get sick of contemplating it.

“Monkberry Moon Delight” – Paul McCartney. Yes! From Ram. I always love it when Paul screams, in the Beatles, or here. He’s a great screamer.

“So Long” – The Nylons. We were so into them in college, thanks to Brett. An a capella doo-wop group? Sure, sign up the theatre nerds.

“Christmas Time is Here” – Shawn Colvin, from what I call her “suicidal holiday album”.

“Spring Fever” – Elvis, from Girl Happy, a movie I love. Maybe I’ll watch it again today. Jeremy Richey talks about it here in our QA about Elvis as an actor.

“The Real” – Tracy Bonham, from her incredible album The Burdens of Being Upright. She is so awesome.

“Blow, Gabriel, Blow” – Patti LuPone, in the Broadway revival of Anything Goes, which I saw, back in the day. I love this big gospel number. Shows off LuPone’s phenomenal pipes.

“Let’s Have a Party” – Wanda Jackson. Rough, raw, and thrilling. The rough-ness of her voice, it’s primal, a primal scream. I feel so fortunate that I got to see her live. If you get the chance, don’t miss it. Legend.

“Not Fade Away” – Buddy Holly. I love the macho-ness of the song. “I’m gonna tell how it’s gonna be …” Yes, sir.

“God Only Knows” – the incomparable Beach Boys.

“You Belong to Me” – Dean Martin. He’s so perfect that I imagine young singers should stay far away from him, in order to keep their confidence level up. It’s like me avoiding James Joyce when I am trying to write something big. He makes me lose confidence. I mean, listen to him here. You never ever feel him working at ANYTHING.

“If I Can Dream” – Elvis Presley. Legendary performance.

“Now She Cares No More for Me – A.K.A. When You Stop Lovin’ Me” – Doug Poindexter. Another Sun Records artist. It’s got that classic in-the-moment Sun sound. This is pretty pure country, with swoopy steel guitar.

“8 Mile” – Eminem. Excellent. Relentless.

“Good Morning Starshine” – the Broadway revival of Hair. Beautiful. I get a bit sick of the hippie-dippie stuff, but I love this musical.

“Bad Way To Go” – Lydia Loveless. My pal Charlie and I went to see her at Webster Hall. She’s great. Great live, too.

“My Happiness” – Elvis Presley, recorded in 1953, one of two songs he recorded as a “gift for his mother”. Story here. He’s 18 years old. He can barely play the guitar. He is doing something with his voice, he’s imitating something, the Ink Spots, perhaps, so you can’t quite hear him … hard to believe that a year later he’d record “That’s All Right”, when you listen to this warbly gentle recording. Full of ache and heart, though.

“Come See About Me” – the band Yipes!, which, if I’m not mistaken, was Pat McCurdy’s first band. I have all their stuff. I don’t even remember where I got it. I had it on cassette tape, I think. I have no idea.

“One Night” – Elvis Presley. A searing version of this song, which Elvis then recorded again (unforgettably) in 1968 during the live sit-down section of his NBC special. Elvis was forced to change the lyrics in his original version because they were too racy. Basically the original version was about a hot night of sex which he now regretted on some level, but also didn’t, due to the gloriousness of the sex experienced. Make the earth stand still, etc. Pretty racy stuff. That wouldn’t fly, though, so Elvis, who recorded it in 1958, sat down and rewrote the lyrics himself. “One night of sin is what I’m now paying for” then became “One night with you is all that I’m praying for.” Not too shabby, Elvis. Eventually, a “take” was discovered of Elvis singing the original lyrics which involved “one night of sin”, and so now we all can be happy to listen to all three versions back to back, should we so desire. Funnily enough, even with the tamer lyrics, you can tell what Elvis is really singing about. He couldn’t BE tamed.

“I Love It When You Call Me Names” – Joan Armatrading. Another singer we were obsessed with in college. She’s incredible, I still get excited when her songs come up on Shuffle. What a great and interesting career.

“You Don’t Know What Love Is (You Just Do As You’re Told)” – The White Stripes. Boy, I couldn’t stop listening to Icky Thump there for a while. Think I over-listened to it, but I still like it.

“It’s a Sin” – Elvis Presley. Deep in the RCA years now, Elvis is a Pop God by now. Much of the Sun Records rough-ness is gone, and here he oozes and smoothes his way through a sweet ballad. He’s a pro.

“I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” – U2, live from Milan, 2005. Maybe my favorite of all of their songs. Goosebumps.

“Blue Veins” – The Raconteurs. Two of my favorite people are involved in The Raconteurs, Jack White and Brendan Benson. It’s all a bit self-indulgent, but if it’s talented people being self-indulgent, I’m usually okay with it. More, more, more.

“Baker Street” – Foo Fighters. This is from the special edition of their breakthrough album The Colour and the Shape, not on the original version. Love them.

“I’m Happy Just to Dance With You” – The Beatles, from Hard Day’s Night. So simple, and so good.

“Moonlight Swim” – Elvis and pals, 1966, at home around the piano. It is truly bizarre. Elvis is playing “Moonlight Sonata”, and he and pals are singing gloomy “ohs” as accompaniment, sometimes cracking up in laughter. So weird. Just a regular day at home in Bel Air or Memphis. Listen to Elvis play that Beethoven though!

“Born This Way” – Lady GaGa. When I go for a run, I put this on repeat. You just have to keep moving.

“Go Away” – Lorrie Morgan. I think these lyrics are fantastic. Funny, ironic, emotional, it’s a well-developed monologue and character. Great job.

“Thousand Times Why” – Pat McCurdy, a Midwest legend. If you live in the Chicago, Milwaukee, Madison area you have probably heard of him. I performed with him at the Milwaukee Summer Fest in 1994. I wore a bustier, a bowler, and fishnet stockings. And 3,000 people chanted my name. It’s hard to believe that that even happened, but it did. I have the battered video tape footage to prove it.

“I’ll Never Tell” – the aforementioned Brendan Benson. He’s such an awesome songwriter. He hasn’t written a boring song. Not yet anyway. I’m a fan for life.

“Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” – The Five Blind Boys of Alabama. I’ve been reading Peter Guralnick’s wonderful biography of Sam Cooke and immersing myself in the gospel groups who surrounded Sam and the Soul Stirrers. These guys are amazing, and this version crackles with life, faith, and sexiness. That’s the thing with the gospel movement in the 50s, how it also tapped into the seething sexuality of the audience, through the guise of faith-full release. Controversial, sure, at the time, and now – but you can’t deny listening to this that you want to get up and move your self around. It’s amazing!

“Before the Parade Passes By” – Barbra Streisand, in Hello, Dolly!. The song has such a build. It starts almost as a ballad and then … yeah, it doesn’t end as one.

“One Short Day” – the cast of Wicked. Lots of fun. The first time I posted about Wicked, some guy named Otis left a comment, which is indicative of the problem I had on my site back in the day, with right-wingers being political and full of cultural resentment in places that were not appropriate. Ugh. These people saw everything through the filter of their resentment. So boring. After my Stalinist purge, I didn’t have much trouble with such folks anymore.

“How’s the World Treating You?” – Elvis Presley. From the early RCA days in 1956 when the engineers at RCA, in trying to re-create the raw slap-back echo of the Sun sounds, put an echo on Elvis’ voice which sometimes goes over the top and makes him sound like he is calling for help at the bottom of a well.

“King Creole” – this is actually the re-vamped re-mix used in the Cirque de Soleil show Viva Elvis. I’m not big on re-mixes, although there are a couple I really love (the “Blue Suede Shoes” one they play in Elvis’ car museum at Graceland), and, of course, the wildly successful “Little Less Conversation” re-mix that took the world by storm. But this is fun!

“Love Me Tender” (instrumental) – Elvis and friends, on the Million Dollar Quartet day (so-called) in December 1956. Things have slowed down a bit in the impromptu jam session. Someone fiddles with an electric guitar, and someone (Jerry Lee Lewis) plays “Love Me Tender” on the piano.

“All I Do Is Dream Of You” – the dreamy dreamy Doris Day.

“Damage Case” – Metallica. The best part of Shuffle is going from Doris Day to Metallica.

“We Shall Overcome” – the unbelievable Mahalia Jackson. I should have mentioned her “cameo” in Imitation of Life when I wrote about it. The look on Lana Turner’s face in the pews, as Mahalia sang, was apparently not “acting” (although, of course, that’s what it was). She was overcome listening to Mahalia and you can see it on her face. She is decimated. Powerful scene.

“Don’t Bring Me Down” – the wonderful Ok Go doing an acoustic version of ELO’s song. It’s just one guitar and the guys. They’re in some tiny club in SoHo. I love these guys.

“Even Flow” – Pearl Jam. Boy is this song a time-traveler. Evocative of a whole era in my life.

“Reel Around the Sun” – good ol’ Bill Whelan, for Riverdance, the opening number, which is still quite thrilling.

“Rockin’ Years” – Dolly Parton. I swear, at the first chords of a Dolly song, I start to feel myself relax, sink in, open up, be more present. She has a gift. This is a duet with Ricky van Shelton. Beautiful!

“(I’ve Got a Gal In) Kalamazoo” – Tony Burgos & His Swing Shift Orchestra. Takes me back to those old dance halls. Oh, that’s right, that’s before my time. But I can picture it all when this comes on.

“Nobody’s Crying” – Patty Griffin. If I’m feeling tender or too-sad, I stay far the hell away from Patty Griffin.

“My Truly, Truly Fair” – Guy Mitchell. I don’t know, this is awesome and also slightly psychotic! The background chorus of dames is so funny. It sounds like it could be a strictly country number but all this other stuff is added to it.

“I Am the Walrus” – Bono, from Julie Taymor’s Beatles-inspired film Across the Universe. This is good.

“Something In the Air” – Thunderclap Newman. The song is great, and will always be associated with Easy Rider.

“The Golden Age” – my cousin Liam O’Malley, who is one of the most talented songwriters I know. He wrote a couple of essays on The Kinks on my site a million years ago. He has a new album out now, under the pseudonym Dr. Mars. I love his stuff so much. Go, Liam!

“Forgiveness” – Patty Griffin. See comment above in re: Patty.

“I’m Leavin'” (take 3) – Elvis Presley. Beautiful song, very different for him. The arrangement (the “la’s” of the chorus, the picking of the guitar, the melody) – is very complex. It took some time to get it right. This is a beautiful take, if a bit rough. Elvis feeling his way through all of the different elements. He can sense where the song needs to go, he can sense the final version in his head (he always could, it was just a matter of matching the reality in his head to the reality out in the world). Listen to his vocalizations, how high he goes, how he flips up to the falsetto. It’s so beautiful, but the song isn’t quite “there” yet in the take. When the song ends, you hear Elvis give a whistle and say, “That is tough, man.” There’s a pause and then he declares, “This thing is worth working on.”

“Rock and Roll Ruby” – Warren Smith. Ruby just wants to rock, and nobody should hold her back from her destiny.

“Pump It Up” – Elvis Costello. My second favorite of his songs.

“King of the Road” – Roger Miller. Swing it, Rog! I love Dino’s version best, but the song is great pretty much regardless of who sings it.

“Because Of You” – Kelly Clarkson. Chick can sing.

“Physical” – the cast of Glee and the great Olivia Newton-John. I remember when this song came out, I remember the video, I remember how “shocking” it was. I like the distortion of this version, I think it’s hip.

“Wildwood Carol” – Jane Siberry and friends, in her recorded Christmas concert at The Bottom Line (I think it was). A lovely album of traditional Christmas carols, funny monologues, and twists on the familiar theme.

“Second Hand News” – Fleetwood Mac. From that very rare thing, a perfect album.

“Complicated” – Avril Lavigne. Jeez, member her?

“We Three Kings” – Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. A mournful dirge with horns.

“Showbiz Is My Life” – Pat McCurdy, live. The man speaks the truth.

“Baby Won’t You Come Out Tonight” – Buddy Holly. Reminiscent of Elvis’ Baby Let’s Play House, with the same “buh-buh-baby …” Released on a posthumous album. It rocks.

“Mean Woman Blues” – Elvis Presley, from Loving You, 1957. Hot. “She kissed so hard she bruised my lips, hurts so good my heart just flips …” Racy stuff. I love the scene in the film, where Elvis is really set loose.

“All Shook Up” – Elvis, live in Honolulu at his fund raiser concert for the USS Arizona memorial. March 25, 1961. It’s a poor recording but a gold mine because this was Elvis’ last live appearance until the late 60s. He is on FIRE and the audience is out of CONTROL. Piercing screams.

“Not a Second Time” – The Beatles. From With the Beatles. I take Wikipedia with a grain of salt, but there is some interesting information here.

“Brown Derby Jump” – the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies. I love these guys. Short-lived, with the revived swing craze, but I love them.

“Ask Me” – Elvis, in full-on Dino Crooner Mood. Gorgeous.

“Dim All the Lights” – Donna Summer. We listened to her constantly at college parties. This song brings back a lot of memories.

“Life’s Too Short” – Pat McCurdy. This was from The Sound of Music, the first album of his I bought. A cassette tape at a local Tower Records in Chicago. This is still one of my favorite songs of his. He always remembers, too. Any time I have shown up at one of his shows, and it could be years apart these times, he’ll play this one, along with “Paris When It Burns”, all for me. He remembers.

“Louise” – the great Robbie Williams on his bizarre album Rudebox.

“All Of Your Love” – this really great band called Hellogoodbye. My friend Emily introduced me to them.

“Boys” – The Beatles. Hot. I love the “bop bop shoo-wop” behind the real action: it’s cliche, but it somehow sounds fresh and new in the context of the Beatles.

“Real Man” – Bonnie Raitt. I’m with you, girl. I got your back on this one.

“And She Was” – Talking Heads. Boy. Memory lane, man!

“Like You” – Evanescence. I was so into them for a while. Have kind of lost track of what they are up to. Her voice kills me. It’s so honest and powerful.

“Your Cheatin’ Heart” – Elvis Presley. Elvis goes way country here, and I love how he swings with his voice. Sexy too, what he does, “When-uh tears-uh come-uh do-OWN …”

“Impromptu” – Queen, live at Wembley Stadium. Eerie. Powerful. He blows me away, what he is able to do with his voice.

“I Say a Little Prayer For You” – a kind of kick-ass Glee cast version of Dionne Warwick’s classic. Now Dionne cannot be replaced, but I do like this.

“Twenty Days and Twenty Nights” – glorious full-blown 70s-era Elvis Presley. Beautiful.

“I’ve Got a Woman” – Ray Charles, live. He starts soulfully, slowly, powerful. The audience can barely bear the excitement, knowing what is coming. Just had a big conversation about Ray Charles last night.

“Jesus Gave Me Water” – Sam Cooke, with the Soul Stirrers. This was their first hit as a gospel quartet. It would bring the house down whenever they performed it. It’s gorgeous. Sam Cooke is so young here, but he already dazzles with brilliance and confidence. Some people just “have it”.

“So Glad You’re Mine” – Elvis Presley. Sexy as hell. Early RCA stuff. Elvis is so open and confident with his talent, you get the sense that whatever he wants to do, he does, because he know it is right. Every choice he makes, every vocal choice, where he breathes, where he doesn’t breathe …. all conscious, and yet not studied or deliberate. A genius, basically.

“In the Ghetto” – Elvis. This is live, in Vegas, 1969. “A record that just did very well for me, ladies and gentlemen,” he says, by way of introduction. That’s an understatement. Live, it’s rousing and powerful. He’s so IN it.

“Endgame” – from the Broadway production of Chess. It feels like Chess, in all its versions (I have three of them) is always overly represented in Shuffle. It’s annoying. Again with the freakin’ Chess? I realize I could ban it from Shuffle, but my OCD tendencies forbid such an action. I need to have everything in one place at all times.

“Fingerprints” – Katy Perry. I don’t know what she’s talking about.

“Help Is On Its Way” – Little River Band. That is very good news and not a minute too soon.

“Anna (Go to Him)” – The Beatles. Love that lead guitar.

“I Will Follow” – U2. Insanely exciting. Still. After all these years.

“Symphony No. 6 in F Major, Op. 68 “Pastoral”: I. Allegro Ma Non Troppo” – Beethoven (London Symphony Orchestra). Beautiful, almost courtly-sounding. Formal and yet emotional.

“Going Through Changes” – Eminem. Lots of pain and self-loathing. In other words, just a day in the life of Marshall. But still, very honest.

“Crazy In Love” – Eminem, an absolutely nuts song written about his relationship with his wife/ex-wife/wife/ex-wife/and-counting Kim. Not perhaps as nuts as the most famous one, but this one is more openly autobiographical, a monologue to her. “Kim” is a fantasy/nightmare/wish-fulfillment. “Crazy In Love” is an analysis of their relationship and what binds them together. It’s quite revealing. He’s really a one-woman kind of guy, as ridiculous a statement as that might seem. Kim is the only one that matters. Also, I love it because he samples Heart’s song “Crazy On You”.

“Girl On My Mind” – Buddy Holly. Beautiful, aching, yearning. I’m psyched there’s so much Buddy in this Shuffle.

“Where Were You On Our Wedding Day” – Lloyd Price. Great. The thing about that era – the 40s and 50s – is that everyone was making it up as they went along, and we had geniuses at work who realized that the culture was blending, integrating, before the laws came down from above. You can’t stop white kids from buying “race” albums, although certain powers-that-be tried. Things like gospel, hillbilly, and rhythm and blues, from a culture perhaps unfamiliar to the kids growing up in Boston, or Milwaukee, or Portland, were suddenly accessible – through greater radio transmissions, and also artists who sensed that all of these different “genres” were actually part of one giant river. You can hear all of that in songs like this one. It’s still vibrant and exciting.

“One After 909” – The Beatles. With everything they did, with all of their great songs, and things like Sgt. Pepper and the White Album, this is one of my favorite Beatles recordings.

“Overkill” – Colin Hay. Ouch. This is his acoustic version. I think Grey’s Anatomy used it to poignant effect. It also was a great inspiration for me in writing my play. It’s an inner monologue.

“Jamaica Jerk-Off” – Elton John, from the great Goodbye Yellow Brick Road album. In college, my friend Betsy won tickets to an Elton John concert as well as a limo ride to said venue. It was a last-minute thing. She called me, “Can you be at my house in a couple of hours??” Hell yes I could and was. We had a great night.

“Steamroller” – James Taylor. I grew up hearing James Taylor around the house, my parents had all his albums. I’ve seen him in concert a bunch of times, most memorably with my group of friends in Chicago. But I remember being a kid and not understanding the sexual metaphor of the song. I took it literally. Why does he want to run over that nice lady and crush her flat?

“Thanks To the Rolling Sea (take 10)” – Elvis, from Girls! Girls! Girls! This is 100% absurd. I love it. But I’m trying to picture those who had loved the Sun stuff and the RCA stuff trying to understand a track like this one. Go, Elvis. Keep ’em guessing.

“Love Me” – Buddy Holly. Yeah!

“Just Blew In From the Windy City” – Doris Day from Calamity Jane. Read my conversation with Mitchell about Doris Day!

“Down the Line” – Buddy Holly. Well. I am in heaven. This is sexxxxxxxy.

“Drown Soda” – Hole. I loved them. This is a great soundtrack, by the way.

“Hey Eugene” – Pink Martini. I’ve written about this song before. The description of that night always reminds me of a similar New York night I had with a similar charming guy.

“Folsom Prison Blues” – Johnny Cash, the original Sun Records recording. It’s almost scary. Cash is so authentic, so present … it almost acts like an indictment of all of us who have a hard time being present. He’s an example. Here I Am, I Live, I Exist, Here Is My Voice, Here Is Who I Am.

“The Interview” – from Chess In Concert. See what I mean?

“And I Love Her” – The Beatles. That opening is so unique. It seems to start in the middle of something. But it’s the beginning.

“So Sad (To Watch Good Love Go Bad)” – The Everly Brothers. Their harmony is perfection. Them and the Louvin Brothers. It’s just gorgeous.

“I Want Your Sex, Pts. 1 & 2” – George Michael. That album WAS my junior year in college. We listened to it constantly.

“My Eyes Can Only Look At You” – Nina Simone. I have to gear up to be able to deal with her. She is so intense. So brilliant. It’s not that I have to be “in the mood”, but she always takes me somewhere, moves me from one place to the next, and I have to be up for something like that. I am unable to be passive listening to Nina. This is wonderful.

“Dirty Rotten Bastards” – Green Day, from the recently released ¡Tré!. A lot of the songs are totally stock, but I like many of them nonetheless. This is very stock, with a “nyah nyah nyah” sound to the melody (a Green Day staple). I like it.

“There’s No Cure Like Travel/Bon Voyage” – from the new Broadway cast recording of Anything Goes, starring Sutton Foster. Fun.

“Everyday” – Buddy Holly. I feel like I have hit the Holly jackpot. But listen to this, the little slapping sound, the metronome, the child-like keyboard, it’s a fascinating arrangement.

“Jolene” – from Glee. A nice rendition of the song, and nicely woven into the storyline. Can’t compare to Dolly, of course, but what can?

“I Got a Woman” – Elvis, again from that 1961 concert in Honolulu and one of my favorite recorded versions of this song in his career (he sang it for his whole life). The later versions from the 70s were polished, often ferocious, and energetically performed, but often the deep-down-dirty sex drive, which Elvis was so able to tap into, was skidded over. It’s implied, rather than explicit. Here it is explicit. The song is an expression of sex, the need for it, the love of it. You feel like he’s about to attack the audience, or himself. Again, the sound quality of this particular concert is extremely uneven but in a way that adds to its power – you feel like you are out there in the audience.

“Free Speech for the Dumb” – Metallica, from Garage, Inc. I don’t keep up with the Metallica controversies amongst fans and music critics. What’s the vibe out there right now about them? I’ll buy whatever they put out, and for the most part, love it – even the despised Load. I’m fascinated by them, in general.

“High School Confidential” – Jerry Lee Lewis, at Sun Records. Rockin’. He’s so nuts.

“Introductions” – Elvis introducing his band at a show in Dallas in 1975. At one point, some insane woman screams, “I love you” and he says, “I love you too, honey, but don’t fall out of that balcony.”

“Shame On You” – Indigo Girls. You know, I’m not earnest, and have a weird visceral dislike of earnest-ness (I know it’s partially a flaw of mine) – but I love these women and am so glad they weren’t just a fluke. I look forward to their albums.

“Husky Dusky Day” – Elvis Presley and Hope Lange from Wild in the Country. Not a number, strictly, there’s no accompaniment. It’s the two of them singing as they drive. And not to be a total nerd, but he sings harmony briefly, one of the few times in his entire career that he got to take the harmony line.

“Quartet (A Model of Decorum and Tranquility)” – from the London cast recording of Chess. Again: see what I mean?

“Me and Julio Down By the Schoolyard” – Paul Simon. Another artist I grew up listening to, from my parents’ record collection.

“Could You Lie” – the gorgeous Alison Krauss. I find her very soothing.

“In Love With My Lover” – the great great Bleu. He has a new one coming out.

“Love Coming Down” – Elvis Presley, sexy powerful ballad with a country feel. He’s awesome.

“Midnight Shift” – Buddy Holly. Thank you music Gods. Funny vivid lyrics. Annie comes alive, doesn’t she?

“What’s Your Sign?” – the gorgeously talented Des’ree. Member her? I should see what she’s up to. Wonderful songwriter. She’s a Sagittarius, apparently, just like me. “I’m always aiming into the sky, I point my arrows extremely high! Everyone has a sign, whether supernatural or divine. Believe or not, if you’re so inclined, cause in this great big universe, we’re the stars on earth!”

“One Track Heart” – Elvis Presley, from Roustabout. He has a one track mind and a one track heart, people.

“Cockies of Bungaree” – The Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem. Come to think of it, the Irish have been very under-represented in this here Shuffle! Hi, lads!

“Wouldn’t It Be Nice” – The Beach Boys. Classic.

And since it’s 99 degrees out today, I’ll stop with the summery Beach Boys. I’m off to the beach myself.

Posted in Music | Tagged Brendan Benson, Buddy Holly, Clancy Brothers, Dean Martin, Dolly Parton, Elvis Costello, Elvis Presley, Eminem, Glee, Green Day, Johnny Cash, Metallica, Nina Simone, Ok Go, Pat McCurdy, Queen, Robbie Williams, Sam Cooke, shuffle, Sinéad O'Connor, The Beatles, The Everly Brothers, Tori Amos, Wanda Jackson | 2 Comments

Heading North

Posted on July 17, 2013 by sheila

Getting ready to travel into the wilds of New Hampshire again, like we do every year. It will be a beautiful family reunion. We haven’t all been together in a long time. My brother didn’t come home for Christmas this year, and despite things like Facebook, where I feel like I talk to him every day, there is nothing like being in person. And my sisters, and their husbands, and my nieces and nephews, and my mother …. I have been working so hard and there is a relentless quality to my schedule (which I am grateful for), but I need some relaxation. I need some fun. Once you get on the freelance wagon, sometimes it is hard to give yourself the permission to step off for one cotton-pickin’ second. Come Saturday night, I’ll be on that dock again. My health is getting better every day, but it requires vigilance. I have to work the program. The paradigm shift in my life has been all-encompassing, and will be a challenge to keep going on vacation. But it has to be done, so whatever, I’ll do it. I’ve been listening to a lot of Sam Cooke these days, he makes me happy, he soothes my spirit. I love my family and I am counting the days until we are all together again!

Posted in Personal | 8 Comments

“He Did a Fabulous Job with Presley, You Know.” – Howard Hawks on Colonel Tom Parker

Posted on July 15, 2013 by sheila

In 1976, 80-year-old American director Howard Hawks was interviewed by the staff of Wide Angle I:2, including Peter Lehman, Marilyn Campbell, and Lynne Goddard. In his introduction, Peter Lehman writes:

At age eighty, Mr. Hawks is an extremely alert, lively man. He speaks eagerly, not only about the wealth of his past experiences, but about contemporary situations and his own future plans as well. Those future plans include several projects for new films.

Howard Hawks is my favorite director of all time, and I spent the weekend researching him for something I’ve been working on. In my research, I came across this interview. Now, Hawks told the same stories, in almost the same way, for about 40 years straight. He was clearly a brilliant raconteur, and if he always comes out as #1 in his stories, then that just makes him more human. Besides, he usually WAS #1 and you don’t get points for false humility in show biz. I never get tired of hearing the same stories (how he helped Wayne work against his penchant for “corniness”, how he “discovered” Lauren Bacall – or, his wife did, how he came up with the idea to turn the characters in The Front Page to a divorced man and woman, and all the rest). But here, I discovered a small anecdote which had escaped my notice up until now. Why I am interested in this should be immediately obvious.

Remember, the year is 1976.

After pages and pages of discussion of Josef von Sternberg, and Wayne and John Ford, suddenly we come to this:

PETER LEHMAN: You try many things than many directors would … all these things we’re talking about. Many directors would be afraid to think of having a cowboy recite a poem to another cowboy, but it works when you do it, like some of these comic things we’re talking about.

HOWARD HAWKS: Well, you search and search for an idea that will make a character a little different from all those others or you’ll fall into the same thing. People said, “You’re nuts for putting Ricky Nelson in Rio Bravo.” He added about two million to the gross. Over in Japan they had Ricky Nelson in the middle of the posters, great big ones, over at the side were Wayne and Dean Martin.

MARILYN CAMPBELL: Were you ever asked to do a movie with Elvis Presley?

HOWARD HAWKS: The Colonel [Tom Parker, Presley’s manager] asked me to, but I said, “I don’t think I’d be any good. You’d better get somebody else.”

LYNNE GODDARD: Why did you think you wouldn’t be any good? Because you didn’t relate to his kind of music at all?

HOWARD HAWKS: No, to the type of picture.

LYNNE GODDARD: They were always very zany, weren’t they?

HOWARD HAWKS: Corny.

PETER LEHMAN: They were corny, right. They were mostly very …

LYNNE GODDARD: They were very romantic and he would burst into song and then …

HOWARD HAWKS: John Ford was the only person who could do corn good.

PETER LEHMANN: Did you know the Colonel by the way?

HOWARD HAWKS: Oh, he was working at the same studio I was.

PETER LEHMANN: They worked mostly with MGM, didn’t they?

HOWARD HAWKS: No, they worked all around. This was over at Paramount. Or else he would just happen to be over there and we’d just start talking, you know. He did a fabulous job with Presley, you know. Hell, Presley is still going. He’s a little lame, he can’t do quite as many twists as he did but …

PETER LEHMANN: I saw him a couple of years ago. He sounded very good still. You probably never cared for him in the first place but he’s still going very strongly.

HOWARD HAWKS: Oh, you never know why you put something in a movie. Except I always figure if I don’t like it I can always cut it out.

Hard to picture Howard Hawks at the helm of an Elvis Presley movie, but it’s certainly something I can enjoy fantasizing about.

Go check out my conversation with Kent Adamson about the Colonel and Elvis. Our take is a bit different from the “oh, he held Elvis back” narrative. We agree with Hawks: he did a fabulous job with Presley. And Presley delivered.

Posted in Actors, Directors | Tagged Elvis Presley, Howard Hawks, Ricky Nelson | 7 Comments

R.I.P. Cory Monteith

Posted on July 14, 2013 by sheila

Such sad news. I loved his performance on Glee, and the free openness of his voice and body language. He was beloved by his castmates. The clip above is from the pilot. I remember thinking at the time, Jeez, this show is kind of fantastic. I am biased, obviously, but I still felt that the show was special, from the get-go, and this was the number that did me in. And watch Monteith, and how accessible he is, how available. He’s a big strapping guy, a foot taller than everyone else, and his body shows the awkwardness of not quite knowing what to do with himself, but that just makes him more honest, more open: there is no artifice in him, no protection, no holding back. It was touching to see. Rare.

He was 31 years old.

“I don’t think many people have figured him out at all.” – Raul Ibanez on Mariano Rivera

Posted on July 14, 2013 by sheila

Wonderful piece on legendary soon-to-retire pitcher Mariano Rivera, from the perspective of those who have faced him down. Great stories. I love Bill Mueller’s one comment (and boy do I remember that hit):

Rivera has appeared in 96 postseason games, and it speaks to his brilliance that we mostly remember those stunning occasions when he didn’t record the final out.

“That’s why you’re talking to me,” Mueller acknowledged. “It is shocking. That’s how dominant he’s been over the years, especially in the playoffs. He’s one of the most special guys in the history of the game.”

I love great pitchers. It seems to me they have the secret to … something. They know stuff we don’t. They see the world in ways we can’t imagine. Even professional baseball players, who are all thoroughbreds in their own given field, seem in awe of Rivera. He’s on another level. Love it.

And the last anecdote brought tears to my eyes.

Posted in Miscellania | Tagged baseball | 6 Comments

The Books: Life Stories: Profiles from The New Yorker; edited by David Remnick; ‘How Do You Like It Now, Gentlemen?’, by Lillian Ross

Posted on July 14, 2013 by sheila

Next up on the essays shelf:

Life Stories: Profiles from The New Yorker, edited by David Remnick

Life Stories is a collection of “profiles” from The New Yorker, edited by David Remnick.

The following profile of Ernest Hemingway was written by Lillian Ross, and was published in 1950. Hemingway and Mary Welsh arrive in New York (Lillian picks them up at the Idlewild airport), and they are there for a few days, to talk to publishers, go to museums, and have a visit with “the Kraut” (as Hemingway refers to Marlene Dietrich, who makes an entertaining cameo in the profile).

So. It’s 1950. Where is Hemingway at this point in his life? It’s 5 years since the end of WWII. Hemingway, of course, was present at the liberation of Paris (and many other historic moments). He personally went to liberate his old pal Sylvia Beach’s famous bookstore, Shakespeare & Co. Most of his contemporaries had started dying off, Fitzgerald in 1940 (at a tragically young age), James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, Ford Madox Ford, and all the rest. He had already had a full life of adventure and fame. He is only 51 years old at the time of this profile, but for a man who so prized physical activity and virility, you can sense here a bafflement/anger at his loss of physical power. This would just increase over the next decade which was rather brutal for him, despite brief bursts of his old intellectual power. He endured two plane crashes in the 50s, which left him debilitated by injuries, and his drinking had caught up to him. Although he won the Nobel Prize in 1954, he hadn’t written a book the critics liked in years. He blusters about in this profile about how he doesn’t care about critics, but it seems like he had to have cared. That’s the impression I get. Of course he cared. If you’re a writer, and you had such fame as he had, and suddenly you are unable to write something that “hits” with the public/critical establishment … then where does that leave you? Who are you? Of course, he had a couple of brief bursts of creativity in the 50s, writing A Moveable Feast and Old Man and the Sea. But Old Man and the Sea is short, so short that you wonder if it is a final gasp from a man who used to churn out words unstoppably. He suffered from crushing depression, and would retreat for months on end, lying in bed, drinking to dull the pain. But all of that was in the future when this piece came out. I wonder what Hemingway thought of it.

Ernest Hemingway and Mary Welsh, Hemingway’s fourth wife

I haven’t done research on his reactions to the profile. But here is my impression, my guess, based on the end result. Hemingway felt comfortable with Lillian Ross. He spent a couple of days in her company, accompanied by his wife (the two come off as two peas in a pod), his son Patrick, and, occasionally, the “Kraut” – all people who loved him, gave him great leeway, and took care of him emotionally. My point here is that Hemingway clearly felt comfortable, to let his mouth run off, to just talk and talk and talk. Such moments often make great profiles, but often the profile reveals more than the subject may have realized. (We’ll get to Truman Capote’s famous profile of Brando, which was a similar situation.) What feels like a casual hanging-out conversation is actually being recorded by the writer in question, who is making observations, seeing things that the subject may not be aware of. Hemingway seems relaxed, in other words. This may seem like a good thing, but there’s a reason why people like George Clooney never “relax” in the presence of a journalist. People at press junkets or those who have interviewed him say that he is charming, personable, nice, and you get the impression that you are having an AWESOME interview with him, and then you go home and transcribe the tapes and realize that he said nothing of interest whatsoever, he revealed nothing. Clooney knows that his image is up to him, and he guards it carefully.

Again, I don’t know Hemingway’s reaction to Ross’ piece, and he might not have cared, but what I get here is a portrait of a man trying to work himself up to fighting weight, so to speak, trying to psych himself out, trying to talk himself up. The underlying feeling is one of, “Yeah, I’ve still got it, right? I’ve still got it.” The neverending refrain, “How do you like it now, gentlemen?”, which he says about 5 times in the piece, is a way to say, “Look at me. I’m Hemingway. I’m still the greatest of them all, right?” There’s something tragic about it.

At the same time, he is a fascinating raconteur, and his off-the-cuff comments are often brilliant. They all go to the Met to look at paintings, and Hemingway pontificates on why so-and-so is good, and what he learned from Picasso or whoever. He brags, quite a bit. He compares his own writing to the music of Bach, to a Picasso. He did in writing what those two did in music and paint. Meanwhile, his son points out a painting he likes, and his father tells him why he is wrong and why that painting is not good. Ross observes that the son, Patrick, stops pointing out the stuff he likes after that.

It’s small moments like that that end up adding up to a whole. Unfair, perhaps, because we all have such moments in our lives, when maybe we brag, or we’re not as kind/open/giving as we should be, whatever. This is a snapshot of a moment in time.

I actually ache for Hemingway here. It’s weird. There are all of these encounters, where he and an old friend punch each other in the stomach, playfully, but with an edge of violence, each one trying to prove what a tough guy he still is. Meanwhile, Hemingway is basically babied by his wife, Mary, who has to remind him to buy a new coat, get his glasses fixed, make sure you eat, etc. Again, nothing WRONG with any of this, it’s all human, but the cumulative effect leaves a reader (me) uneasy. I can feel Hemingway’s depression licking at his heels. Of course, I know “the end”. He would kill himself in 1961, after a terrible couple of years, when he was hospitalized, given shock treatment which deepened the depression. His ego was such that he could not be happy if he was not “the greatest”. The Old Man and the Sea is a wonderful book, but it’s quite thin, compared to his earlier successes … and you can feel that that is the best he can do. That is all he has left in him. (Although, seriously, if any of us who want to be writers “only” had Old Man and the Sea in us, we all should be very happy. But in Hemingway’s mind, it was a failure, representative of the death of his power.)

He has come to New York with his new manuscript, Across the River and Into the Trees, which would come out later that year, and nobody liked. Bad reviews. Here, though, that is still in the future. Hemingway blasts critics, and much of what he says is inspiring (the famous quote about “I know the ten-dollar words” is from this profile), but again, you feel like he doth protesteth too much. I see a man who DOES care, who IS hurt by his critical downfall, who IS anxious that he has “lost it”, that what he has lost he will never find again.

Also, there’s the drinking. He drinks throughout. He carries a flask to the museum. It’s an underlying uneasy detail.

This is not a hatchet job, I don’t want to make it seem like Ross crucifies Hemingway. She doesn’t. But I certainly get the sense that Hemingway was too relaxed in her presence, and not at the top of his game. I want to tell him to protect himself a little bit more. Then, of course, if he had protected himself, it wouldn’t have been as interesting a profile, now would it?

You can see here that Woody Allen’s impression of how Hemingway might have spoken in real life (in Midnight in Paris) is not so far-off the mark. It’s a parody, sure, but Hemingway actually did speak like that.

I love the snippet about how, when writing dialogue, it goes too fast for him to keep up with it. You can really hear that in his books, the dialogue feels so so real.

Here is an excerpt.

Life Stories: Profiles from The New Yorker, edited by David Remnick; ‘How Do You Like It Now, Gentlemen?’, by Lillian Ross

I said that there was a tremendous amount of talk about him these days in literary circles – that the critics seemed to be talking and writing definitively not only about the work he had done but about the work he was going to do. He said that of all the people he did not wish to see in New York, the people he wished least to see were the critics. “They are like those people who go to ball games and can’t tell the players without a score card,” he said. “I am not worried about what anybody I do not like might do. What the hell! If they can do you harm, let them do it. It is like being a third baseman and protesting because they hit line dries to you. Line drives are regrettable, but to be expected.” The closest competitors of the critics among those he wished least to see, he said, were certain writers who wrote books about the war when they had not seen anything of war at first hand. “They are just like an outfielder who will drop a fly on you when you have pitched to have the batter hit a high fly to that outfielder, or when they’re pitching they try to strike everybody out.” When he pitched, he said, he never struck out anybody, except under extreme necessity. “I knew I had only so many fast balls in that arm,” he said. “Would make them pop to short instead, or fly out, or hit it on the ground, bouncing.”

A waiter arrived with the caviar and champagne, and Hemingway told him to open one of the bottles. Mrs. Hemingway came in from the bedroom and said she couldn’t find his toothbrush. He said that he didn’t know where it was but that he could easily buy another. Mrs. Hemingway said all right, and went back into the bedroom. Hemingway poured two glasses of champagne, gave one to me, and picked up the other one and took a sip. The waiter watched him anxiously. Hemingway hunched his shoulders and said something in Spanish to the waiter. They both laughed, and the waiter left. Hemingway took his glass over to the red couch and sat down, and I sat in the chair opposite him.

“I can remember feeling so awful about the first war that I couldn’t write about it for ten years,” he said, suddenly very angry. “The wound combat makes in you, as a writer, is a very slow-healing one. I wrote three stories about it in the old days – ‘In Another Country,’ ‘A Way You’ll Never Be,’ and ‘Now I Lay Me.'” He mentioned a war writer who, he said, was apparently thinking of himself as Tolstoy, but who’d be able to play Tolstoy only on the Bryn Mawr field-hockey team. “He never hears a shot fired in anger, and he sets out to beat who? Tolstoy, an artillery officer who fought at Sevastopol, who knew his stuff, who was a hell of a man anywhere you put him – bed, bar, in an empty room where he had to think. I started out very quiet and I beat Mr. Turgenev. Then I trained hard and I beat Mr. de Maupassant. I’ve fought two draws with Mr. Stendahl, and I think I had an edge in the last one. But nobody’s going to get me in any ring with Mr. Tolstoy unless I’m crazy or I keep getting better.”

He began his new book as a short story. “Then I couldn’t stop it. It went straight on as a novel,” he said. “That’s the way all my novels got started. When I was twenty-five, I read novels by Somersault Maugham and Stephen St. Vixen Benét.” He laughed hoarsely. “They had written novels, and I was ashamed because I had not written any novels. So I wrote ‘The Sun’ when I was twenty-seven, and I wrote it in six weeks, starting on my birthday, July 21st, in Valencia, and finishing it September 6th in Paris. But it was really lousy and the rewriting took nearly five months. Maybe that will encourage young writers so they won’t have to go get advice from their psychoanalysts. Analyst once wrote me, What did I learn from psychoanalysts? I answered, Very little but hope they had learned as much as they were able to understand from my published works. You never saw a counter-puncher who was punchy. Never lead against a hitter unless you can outhit him. Crowd a boxer, and take everything he has, to get inside. Duck a swing. Block a hook. And counter a jab with everything you own. Papa’s delivery of hark-learned facts of life.”

Hemingway poured himself another glass of champagne. He always wrote in longhand, he said, but he recently bought a tape recorder and was trying to get up the courage to use it. “I’d like to learn talk machine,” he said. “You just tell talk machine anything you want and get secretary to type it out.” He writes without facility, except for dialogue. “When the people are talking, I can hardly write it fast enough or keep up with it, but with an almost unbearable high manifold pleasure. I put more inches on than she will take, and then fly her as near as I know to how she should be flown, only flying as crazy as really good pilots fly crazy sometimes. Most of the time flying conservatively but with an awfully fast airplane that makes up for the conservatism. That way, you live longer. I mean your writing lives longer. How do you like it now, gentlemen?” The question seemed to have some special significance for him, but he did not bother to explain it.

I wanted to know whether, in his opinion, the new book was different from his others, and he gave me another long, reproachful look. “What do you think?” he said after a moment. “You don’t expect me to write ‘The Farewell to Arms Boys in Addis Ababa,’ do you? Or ‘The Farewell to Arms Boys Take a Gunboat’?” The book is about the command level in the Second World War. “I am not interested in the G.I. who wasn’t one,” he said, suddenly angry again. “Or the injustices done to me, with a capital ‘M.’ I am interested in the goddam sad science of war.” The new novel has a good deal of profanity in it. “That’s because in war they talk profane, although I always try to talk gently,” he said, sounding like a man who is trying to believe what he is saying. “I think I’ve got ‘Farewell’ beat on this one,” he went on. He touched his briefcase. “It hasn’t got the youth and the ignorance.” Then he asked wearily, “How do you like it now, gentlemen?”

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Posted in Books | Tagged Ernest Hemingway, essays, Life Stories | 4 Comments

Here Again

Posted on July 13, 2013 by sheila

Boardwalk rebuilt. It is like a miracle, considering what it was like only a couple of months ago. Of course it’s not a miracle at all, just representative of hard work and determination. You can still see vestiges of Hurricane Sandy everywhere. There are vacant lots where once there were houses, there are ripped-up portions of sidewalk where a tree once was. The sand is still everywhere, filling up the grass lawns from blocks away. But the boardwalk is rebuilt. The sea wall is rebuilt. There are many communities, still, which have not been so lucky.

With everything in recovery, I still remember it the way it was right afterwards. Horrible time.

Posted in Personal | 2 Comments

The Books: Life Stories: Profiles from The New Yorker; edited by David Remnick; ‘A House on Gramercy Park’, by Geoffrey Hellman

Posted on July 12, 2013 by sheila

Next up on the essays shelf:

Life Stories: Profiles from The New Yorker, edited by David Remnick

Life Stories is a collection of “profiles” from The New Yorker, edited by David Remnick. The pieces span the 20th century, one of the best parts of these compilations. I also love that it’s not just celebrities who are covered, although they are represented here too. There are celebrities in certain sub-cultures, and then also a couple of people who are virtually unknown (“Mr. Hunter” from Staten Island), and yet fascinating. The best part of the profiles is that they are so in-depth and so lengthy (some of them run to 40 pages long), that you actually feel like you have met these people.

Benjamin Sonnenberg was a Russian immigrant who came to the United States in 1910 with his family. His father owned a clothing stand. Sonnenberg early on attracted attention from people who recognized his abilities, his intelligence – people who looked out for him, made sure opportunities came his way. He did all kinds of things in his career, journalism, fund-raising, etc., until he became a P.R. man for the rich and famous. He died in 1976.

I didn’t know anything about the guy, although surely he has shown up in many a biography I have read. He represented Samuel Goldwyn, David O. Selznick – but eventually he moved away from show business clients (although never entirely) to big corporations. He managed the PR for Bergdorf Goodman’s and CEOs and what-have-you, and did so from his gigantic home on Gramercy Park. The home has since been sold. He would host legendary dinner parties (his goal was to make his home as good as eating out in a restaurant). The top floor of the house was a movie theatre and he would have private screenings there. His heyday was in the 40s, 50s, and 60s, but he lived as though he were a baron of industry in the Gilded Age of the Industrial Revolution. Smart about business and smart about people.

Here is the man in question, with his famous walrus moustache.

Benjamin Sonnenberg by Man Ray

He wore bowler hats, and walked with a cane. He wanted the people who hired him to realize that he made more money than THEY did.

Geoffrey Hellman wrote the following piece in 1950, and, as the title suggests, it is about Benjamin Sonnenberg’s house, and what an extraordinary structure it is, first of all (gigantic for a private home in Manhattan), and also Sonnenberg’s philosophy of entertaining. He goes into his theories on entertaining in great detail. He is a raconteur. He speaks with a daunting vocabulary. He is somewhat ridiculous, but also clearly a genius at business, at getting clients, at doing what his clients want. His story is a classic rags-to-riches tale. He had little formal education, but he knew how to get along with people, and he knew how to get people to buy what he was selling.

The Sheila Variations

England In the Sky

Seen Recently: The Train Robbers (1973), Dark City (1998), Easy A (2010), His Girl Friday (1940), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949)

Heat Wave Shuffle

Heading North

“He Did a Fabulous Job with Presley, You Know.” – Howard Hawks on Colonel Tom Parker

R.I.P. Cory Monteith

“I don’t think many people have figured him out at all.” – Raul Ibanez on Mariano Rivera

The Books: Life Stories: Profiles from The New Yorker; edited by David Remnick; ‘How Do You Like It Now, Gentlemen?’, by Lillian Ross

Here Again

The Books: Life Stories: Profiles from The New Yorker; edited by David Remnick; ‘A House on Gramercy Park’, by Geoffrey Hellman

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