I have two pieces in the current issue of Film Comment (neither of which are online, so pick up a copy at your local bookstore – if they have it). The first piece is on Eliza Hittman’s Never Rarely Sometimes Always and the second is on Criterion’s release of Barbra Streisand’s Prince of Tides. You can check out the rest of the articles and reviews – excited to dig in – on their site, where you can also purchase a copy.
My talented brother Brendan O’Malley is an amazing writer and actor. He’s wonderful in the recent You & Me, directed by Alexander Baack. (I interviewed Baack about the film here.) His most recent gig was story editor/writer on the hit series Survivor’s Remorse. Brendan hasn’t blogged in years, but the “content” (dreaded word) is so good I asked if I could import some of it to my blog. I posted his 50 Best Albums. But I figured I’d keep “Music Monday” going with more of the stuff Bren wrote about music.
His writing is part music-critique, part memoir, part cultural snapshot. A reminder that many of these pieces were written a decade ago, in some cases more. Melody is now my brother’s wife (and like a sister to me), and they have two sons, whom I love dearly. And Bren’s son Cashel is now a college student. WTF.
I have always loved Bren’s writing, so I am happy to share it with you!
Hollywood Bowl, Pt. 1: Gayboy at the Hollywood Bowl
Rufus Wainwright will always hold a very special place in my heart. Melody introduced me to him right after we met in 1999. I am used to being the one with the hot album in my pocket so I was pleasantly shocked to hear undeniable genius issue forth. In her Ford Taurus on the way to the Raleigh/Durham International airport, we listened to impossibly romantic and simultaneously vastly sad song after song after song.
In another post I’ll articulate why this perfectly matched what was going on between Melody and I, but suffice it to say Rufus became the soundtrack to my life. He influenced my songs, the way I sang, the way I wrote lyrics, the way I listened.
I’ve been lucky enough to see him perform three times in wildly different settings.
Rufus # 1: CBGB’s
Which is now closed. I don’t remember how I heard about it but an AIDS benefit was happening at CBGB’s. All sorts of queer bands were going to try to put up with the filth that was CBGB’s. I know everyone is all nostalgic about CBGB’s but to my mind it had long outlived its storied past. Clean the fucking bathroom already. David Byrne is not coming back to pick up his shit.
A boatload of horrible music happens and then a grand piano is wheeled out onto the stage. It looks like a tophat on a hobo.
Rufus shrugs his way onto the stage wearing what looks like a chain mail shirt and girl jeans. He sits at the piano and is visibly aghast. This piano pains him, like fringe on a suit jacket. But it is for a good cause so he summons his will and begins to play.
No frills, no accompaniment. He is staggering. He plays a new song “Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk” which I take as some kind of omen because I’d very recently had a meltdown after spilling some while smoking the other.
He does a few of the songs from his first album, which is by now a classic in my mind, as familiar as anything in my collection.
He grimaces at the noises the piano makes while he plays, small irregularities of sound that we can’t hear but are unbearable to him. He is clearly thrown by the force of adulation rushing at him from the crowd. He seems to almost resent their love, like the aging high school jock who blows up at his friends when they start reliving the big play.
Overall it is a night of contrasts; the cesspool of CBGB’s put against the refinement of Rufus’ music; the pull of the masses vs. the lone singular voice of their hero.
Rufus # 2: With Tori
By now Melody has moved to NYC and we can finally openly enjoy Rufus, not weep in private to him separately.
He is opening for Tori Amos at The Beacon Theater. For Melody, seeing Tori Amos for the first time is akin to me seeing The Replacements for the first time. Add Rufus and 9/11 to the mix and it became a Holy Grail kind of deal.
Rufus seems to have relaxed into the spotlight a bit. He is much more at ease, which could also have something to do with the gorgeous piano he gets to play. He also has a guitar on stage. At one point in his set he is wearing a Future Farmers of America hat and joking about how odd that is. The whole show has an intense feel because it is October 2001 and every event in NYC has an extra edge.
Maybe the size of the room relaxes him, makes him feel less under a microscope. Maybe he hated the dirt at CBGB’s. Maybe he just got happier. Maybe 9/11 had opened him up in a new way. He later wrote about it in an amazing song called “11:11” where he notes that “everything really does happen in Manhattan.”
I don’t know what had changed, but the chip on Rufus’ shoulder was gone. Let’s just say that Tori had a tough act to follow.
Rufus # 3: Gayboys at the Hollywood Bowl
When I heard that Rufus was bringing his Judy Garland Carnegie Hall Tribute show to the Hollywood Bowl, I knew I had to take Melody. Her love of Tori and Rufus pales in comparison to her Wizard of Oz fascination. I know, I know, all girls love the Wizard of Oz, but Melody in her usual fashion always took it a step further.
She insisted on dressing up as Dorothy to go to the supermarket as a child. She actually has red slippers. Now I don’t want to paint her as one of those annoying kooks who latch onto something and use it to define themselves. The very fact that she introduced me to Rufus Wainwright should be a testament to her taste and wisdom.
But this is a girl who didn’t dream of being a princess, she dreamt of being Dorothy. So there was no way we were going to miss Rufus singing Judy Garland at The Hollywood Bowl. In addition, Melody was still relatively new to LA and hadn’t been to the Bowl yet. I love killing many birds with one stone so I snapped up tickets.
Let me set the scene for you. A gorgeous Los Angeles night. An outdoor arena. A modern gay icon recreating THE performance of THE gay icon of all time.
There were picnic baskets, monogrammed. Watercress and cucumber sandwiches. Chardonnay. Bowties. Cologne. Not a single unironed shirt. Silk socks. Purely cosmetic eyeglasses. Cufflinks. Tasteful pleats. Decorative sliced fruit laid out on checkered tablecloths. Squeal after squeal in response to Melody’s ruby red slippers.
I was an interloper. An outsider. If it hadn’t been for Melody’s shoes I would have been ostracized completely. As it was, my presence was merely puzzling, as if I were a machine shop gearhead at a Latin club meeting.
Rufus didn’t disappoint them. The tribute element of the show allowed them to fantasize right along with him. They were Judy. They were playing The Hollywood Bowl. They were the apex of culture and refinement.
I fought the urge to smell my armpit and grunt.
Instead I sang along to “Chatanooga Choo Choo” and took a picture on my cell phone of The Bowl lit up like a rainbow. I was the luckiest one of all. I got to take Dorothy no place like home.
— Brendan O’Malley
Of all the pics of screaming Elvis fans, she is my favorite. This is from a show at the Philadelphia Arena in April, 1957. I love it because although people are screaming behind her, she’s the only one in … this particular state. She’s way out there on a limb by herself. The girl down the row, clearly caught up in her own emotions, looks shocked at what is happening with the girl. She’s feeling the same things. Maybe she wishes she could be as free with her feelings. In the second photo, the girl right next to her stares at her with a look of contemplation, like, “Wow. Check THIS out.”
It’s life-changing. To feel things like that. And to feel them so hard you don’t care who knows.
Please note, too, that she brought her binoculars.
My talented brother Brendan O’Malley is an amazing writer and actor. He’s wonderful in the recent You & Me, directed by Alexander Baack. (I interviewed Baack about the film here.) His most recent gig was story editor/writer on the hit series Survivor’s Remorse. Brendan hasn’t blogged in years, but the “content” (dreaded word) is so good I asked if I could import some of it to my blog. I just wrapped up posting his 50 Best Albums. But I figured I’d keep “Music Monday” going with more of the stuff Bren wrote about music.
His writing is part music-critique, part memoir, part cultural snapshot. A reminder that many of these pieces were written a decade ago, in some cases more. Melody is now my brother’s wife (and like a sister to me), and they have two sons, whom I love dearly. And Bren’s son Cashel is now a college student. WTF.
I have always loved Bren’s writing, so I am happy to share it with you!
Just Before Sonic Youth
My college years were inextricably linked to my high school years in many ways. I went to college in my hometown. Every school break we had, my old friends would come streaming back into town and we would catch up. This usually meant drinking way too much beer at someone’s house and then moping around the next day drinking even more coffee, or in Justin’s case, whatever he liked to drink for a hangover.
Late one summer, my friend Mike, the one who got U2 tickets for me, urged everyone to go see Sonic Youth with him. In New Haven? I seem to remember seeing them in New Haven twice over the years, the only two times I ever went to Toad’s. This was the first time I’d seen them and I was quite excited.
Sonic Youth are The Rolling Stones of the American Underground. They seem to have always been there and so it is quite easy to take them for granted. But turn your thoughts back to the ’80’s and see just how truly bizarre and unique they are. They covered Madonna, shepherded Nirvana into their spotlight, kept the same lineup for over 20 years, and managed to incorporate the marriage of their two main singer/songwriters Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon into the dynamic of the band.
But this post is about S.C., the girl I dated when I was a senior at South Kingstown High School. She was a year behind me and from the wrong side of the tracks. I use that outdated phrase deliberately because it perfectly encapsulates the differences between us.
There was a wide gap between us culturally. But young love sometimes feeds on these factors. The romance was intensified by the differences in our lives. She had no intention of going to college. I never entertained the notion of not going. She deeply mistrusted her parents but spent a lot of time with them and considered her mother to be her best friend. I trusted my parents implicitly but would never have called them “friends”. I still wouldn’t. They are my parents! I wondered at the fact that she felt constantly betrayed by her “friends”.
She also had a bit of a “reputation”. She’d dated an older football player and rumors had gotten around. She had nothing to worry about from me. I could barely put my arm around her without breaking into a sweat.
She broke up with me a month before my senior prom. She wrote me a letter and poem that I still have somewhere. In essence, she was reading the writing on the wall. She knew I was going to college. She would be in high school for the next year and then going out into the real world and getting a job. She was letting me go. I was devastated.
But she’d been right. I quickly moved on and dove headlong into college life the next year. Even though I was still in my hometown, I didn’t hear anything about her. Our circles were vastly different and her name simply never came up.
I’m sitting in my room listening to Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation in anticipation of the evening entertainment. The phone rings at my folks’ house. Either I answer it or my mother calls to tell me it was for me.
It was S.C. She wondered if I could come over right then.
It had been at least 2 years since I’d seen her. I was waiting for Mike and Justin to come get me. Instead I found myself speeding out into the woods to her house which held so many memories…sneaking in her bedroom window, having my first cup of tea, parking and making out at The Great Swamp. I was young, too, but I distinctly remember being in awe of her youth and beauty. Her skin seemed impossible.
These moments flooded me as I approached her driveway. Was she in trouble? Did she want to get back together? In spite of all that had transpired since we’d dated, I could not say for sure that I would turn her down. My feelings for her had not abated in the least. They’d just been abandoned out of necessity.
I walked up the brick to the small house that sat tucked up against the bottom row of trees in a hilly forest. She opened the door and my heart leapt, as usual. In her arms she held a glowing baby girl.
For a moment I had the absurd thought that it was mine even though we broke up over two years ago. Not to mention that we’d never slept together in the first place.
We sat on her couch and reminisced briefly. She’d just wanted me to meet her, she said. She’d worried that I’d heard, that I knew she wasn’t married, that I’d judge her like she was so constantly judged in this town. I told her that I was proud of her, that the baby was beautiful. And beautiful she was. I don’t remember her name.
Mike and Justin were pissed off that I was late. I could barely speak and told them to back the fuck off. Then I apologized and told them the score.
I don’t remember the concert in detail. Thurston Moore shoved a drumstick under the guitar strings and banged on it with another one; Kim Gordon wore a miniskirt and somehow managed to be a pin-up and a renegade all at once; the crowd surged and roared.
Somewhere back in the woods of Rhode Island, a young mother put her baby girl to bed. What had my blessing meant to her?
— Brendan O’Malley
I walked out of the press screening, saying to my friend, “My GOD, that was romantic.” It really was. How many adaptations of Emma do we need? Clearly we need one more. I love this! My review over at Ebert.
If you’ve been round these here parts, you know my obsession with the miracle on ice. Many thanks to the editors at Film Comment, for taking my pitch to write a piece on the 1980 Winter Olympics, as seen through the HBO doc Do You Believe in Miracles?, Gabe Polsky’s recent doc about the Russian team, and the 2004 film Miracle, starring Kurt Russell.
My talented brother Brendan O’Malley is an amazing writer and actor. He’s wonderful in the recent You & Me, directed by Alexander Baack. (I interviewed Baack about the film here.) His most recent gig was story editor/writer on the hit series Survivor’s Remorse. Brendan hasn’t blogged in years, but the “content” (dreaded word) is so good I asked if I could import some of it to my blog. I just wrapped up posting his 50 Best Albums. But I figured I’d keep “Music Monday” going with more of the stuff Bren wrote about music.
His writing is part music-critique, part memoir, part cultural snapshot. A reminder that many of these pieces were written a decade ago, in some cases more. Melody is now my brother’s wife (and like a sister to me), and they have two sons, whom I love dearly. And Bren’s son Cashel is now a college student. WTF.
I have always loved Bren’s writing, so I am happy to share it with you!
The Best Ever Never Was
Like any small town, Los Angeles has its best kept secrets. And those who are in the know spend an inordinate amount of time trying to give the secrets away to as many people as possible. When you are new in town, everyone and their mother wants to show you something.
Larry took me to the 101 for chow, to Runyon Canyon for hikes, and the House of Pies. Mike touted Marino’s on Melrose as the best Italian food he’d ever had, and Jeff brought me to some cowboy bar on Sunset to ride the mechanical bull.
There was a band called The Broken Remotes, fronted by a good friend Jon Leahy. He helped produce a play I was in when I first arrived on the left coast and he was going around foaming at the mouth about something called Big Mondays at The Joint.
What do you think of when you hear the name Waddy Wachtel? If you’ve never heard of him then you probably aren’t a guitar nerd. Guitar nerds turn into teenage girls when Waddy’s name gets mentioned. Put it this way: when Keith Richards records albums, Waddy Wachtel is the guitar player, okay? He worked with EVERYBODY: Stevie Nicks, Warren Zevon, everybody. Master session player but also a true collaborator and creator.
So when Jon told me that Waddy played EVERY Monday night at The Joint and called it Big Mondays, I was beside myself. Little did I know that Waddy would become an afterthought for me once I went.
The Joint is tucked away on Pico down near Robertson surrounded by pharmacies and Starbucks and almost-ritzy car dealerships. But inside it feels like a roadhouse. At least, it did until they renovated. I am not crazy about the new Joint. The old one was like a dead-end street in a noir film. You came in the front door and there was nowhere to go but straight to the stage. A tunnel with a bar lining the right side and tiny booths on the left. The stage was the width of the tunnel and elevated almost eye level.
On either side of the stage, framing the action, were what seemed to be two elephant tusks. The booth side was bordered above by a huge mirror that reflected the tops of heads and almost down behind the bar.
The Big Mondays lineup is a revolving door of singers backed by Waddy, a silent bass player who plays with Neil Young, and Tom Petty’s drummer when he isn’t with The Heartbreakers. They know how to play every song you’ve ever heard.
When I started attending, the two singers were Stacy P. from Tennessee, a blonde lanky bombshell who could play guitar like a mofo and sing in that country/rock mode that Bonnie Raitt and Sheryl Crow mine so well. She later went pretty far in the Nashville Star series, the country American Idol thing and we all wished her luck from down on the floor of The Joint.
And the other singer? Oh, how do I even start? I didn’t recognize him. He was a handsome English gentleman in his 60’s with a pencil mustache, unruly dark hair, and a gray suit with white sneakers. As the band rolled through classic songs, he didn’t cover the songs, he interpreted them. Authorship was unimportant as all history seemed useless in the face of his expression. He growled, he roared, he rasped, he falsettoed, he cooed, he blared.
His voice seemed limitless. When they did AC/DC, the rasp was cut with an R&B lilt that brought out the blues under the metal. When they did Zeppelin the whine was deeper and fuller than Plant so that even on impossibly high notes the voice was wide and hard. When they did the Beatles, the melody of McCartney and the power of Lennon were woven together in a single voice.
Then came the apex of the evening, a cover of The Kinks “Waterloo Sunset.” How to put in words what music does? That is the question I’ve been trying to answer in this blog and I am always going to have to admit the impossibility of this equation. I am not a religious man in an easily definable sense, but this performance was of the ecstatic variety that can only come through faith. The audience was encouraged to sing along at one point as the band played the most minimal of vamps. We sang along with this golden-voiced shaman and felt closer to the divine.
I’ve deliberately withheld his name up to this point because I wanted to impress upon you how deeply he affected me. I left that first night convinced that I had just seen THE GREATEST ROCK AND ROLL SINGER WHO EVER LIVED. Where the hell had he been hiding? How come I had to go to The Joint to see him? How come I could afford it?
Well, it turns out that these questions are quite common when people talk about Terry Reid.
Even typing the name gives me chills. As the details of his career were made known to me, it made his performance seem all the more otherworldy. He was Jimmy Page’s original choice to front Led Zeppelin but he was already an established solo act. He’d been a teen sensation as a blues singer and was touring America opening for Cream. He SUGGESTED Robert Plant and John Bonham. He created Zeppelin by turning them down. A series of missteps left him floundering in Los Angeles in the early seventies. Rumor had it that Bob Dylan let him stay at his house for 5 years because he was broke.
I’m going to make another effort at describing his sound. Imagine if Ray Charles grew up listening to Led Zeppelin, or if Robert Plant had the silkiness of Smokey Robinson ingrained into his wail. Take Frank Sinatra and feed him Scotch and cigarettes and a jukebox full of Motown and metal and you’ll get a pale imitation of Terry Reid.
Here’s the bottom line. Somewhere in heaven, God has Hendrix on guitar, Keith Moon on drums, Jaco Pastorius on bass, and he’s waiting to book gigs until Terry Reid shows up to sing.
I felt angry at the world on his behalf. Imagine coming upon Mount Rushmore and finding it defaced with graffiti, left untended, unweeded. This man ought to be a treasured and honored icon. Instead, he carried that talent down to Pico and Robertson every Monday and let loose for pocket change. Unfortunately, Terry doesn’t sing at Big Mondays anymore. Why? I am not really sure.
As usual, Terry Reid is the one that got away.
— Brendan O’Malley
I wrote booklet essays for two of Criterion’s May 2020 releases – Dorothy Arzner’s 1940 film Dance, Girl, Dance, and the 1963 beloved classic The Great Escape. There are multiple reasons these were very exciting assignments. Dance, Girl, Dance is the first Arzner film to “get the Criterion treatment” so it’s a pretty big deal. Dorothy Arzner, who directed films as diverse as Christopher Strong, The Bride Wore Red, Craig’s Wife, Merrily We Go to Hell (my fave), and Dance Girl Dance, was the only female director under contract anywhere in the 20s/30/40s era of the Hollywood studio system. So I’m very excited to have been asked to be a part of this. Arzner was known for being a “star-maker” – she directed Katharine Hepburn, Joan Crawford, etc. – in early vehicles which showed how much she understood their unique personae. She does the same again, here, with Maureen O’Hara and Lucille Ball.
And The Great Escape! I’ve always loved it. My Dad loved it. So many people love this movie. What’s not to love? This was a particularly fun project because it had such a wide scope. I read memoirs by ex-POWS in WWII, I read about the RAF pilots, I read about the Luftwaffe, the research was so huge. And then there’s the film itself, a celebration of cooperation and cunning and courage. I watched it over and over and over again in the last couple of months, and it never gets old. I’m really happy to be a part of this one.
Also, there’s so much commentary now about how film criticism needs a “female perspective” and we need more “female film critics” and blah blah and okay, yes, of course. But sometimes what this means is there’s an assumption that women like and respond to specific things in a specific way. Or there’s an assumption that women won’t like a certain thing because 1. there are no women in the movie 2. the movie is violent and/or misogynistic, and etc. I am used to men spouting shit like this, but when women spout it – and they do often – it’s really disheartening. And if I go against the consensus – if I like something that “most women” hate – then I am ignored/shunned/nobody links to my stuff, etc. Because they can’t deal with it: I’m a woman and yet I love/hate that thing that everybody else assumes all women love/hate. You see? I WISH we could stop doing this. AT ANY RATE. The Great Escape has no women in it. The Great Escape would be ruined if they had caved to pressure to add a romance or a romantic flashback (and there was pressure back then too). Please don’t add women to a story just to placate what you think I want as a woman.
SO. All of this is just background to say: I think it’s important that Criterion asked a woman to write about this movie, and I am more than happy to chip away at the stereotypes that women don’t really like movies like this. Or that it’s not “for” them. Who are you to tell me what is and is not “for” me?
Shout out to the design team at Criterion for these extraordinary designs. I want The Great Escape one in poster size.
I’m so excited Tanya Wexler has directed another feature film. It’s been 9 years since Hysteria. I reviewed her latest – Buffaloed – for Ebert.
I reviewed Angela Schanelec’s latest – her tenth feature – for Ebert.
