It’s hard to grok, if you weren’t there, the ’90s supermodel era, when battalions of supermodels – impossibly gorgeous, otherworldly, like alien freaks – stomped across the land – on every magazine cover, on billboards, in every commercial, music video, everywhere – like Robert Crumb’s towering monster-women burst out of their frames and set loose upon the populace. It’s hard to get across what it was like when these Amazons – whom everyone knew by name, whom everyone knew everything about – were everywhere. My favorite was Linda (no last name necessary, at least not in MY world: they all were referred to by their first names). Linda said, famously, “I don’t get out of bed for less than $10,000.”
To this day, I still perk up when one of these women in the original superstar group does something, says something, shows up somewhere. I follow all of them on Instagram. They post pictures of their ’90s photo shoots, and they all tag each other, and I want to faint from awe.
In 1963, Brian De Palma made his first movie, basically a student film, co-directed with Wilford Leach. (It’s listed as 1969, because that’s when it was completed, and got released, because of De Niro/De Palma’s rising stardom. It’s just been released again in a new “early De Palma and De Niro” box set, with The Wedding Pary, Greetings and Hi Mom!). The Wedding Party brings in every cliche in the book: a young guy about to be married travels to Shelter Island before the wedding, meets his prospective wife’s slightly terrifying rich family, and on the eve of the wedding starts to freak out, egged on by his two rowdy friends (one of whom is played by De Niro). Now it’s 1963, okay. So we’re talking pre-ERA, pre-birth-control-pill, pre-women’s-liberation. Not that women hadn’t been bucking against constrictions and limitations and unfairness for centuries, but here, you can still feel the 50s’ influence on the characters. There are sections in the film that unfold in speeded-up fashion, like a Keystone Cops film, an early silent, and the sound is sometimes dubbed in later, giving an eerie dissociated quality.
This is Robert De Niro’s first film. This is Jill Clayburgh’s first film. It’s fascinating to see them before they became themselves.
Young pudgy Robert De Niro is cast as “one of the guys,” a rowdy friend of the bridegroom. It’s total miscasting, but he’s so young he doesn’t know it yet. It’s touching to watch him try to do what the character requires: being rowdy and funny and girl-crazy and joshing around with his friends. It doesn’t fit him at all! Already, it doesn’t fit. There’s something unformed in him, he doesn’t register, you would never pick him out for Great Things. It would take almost a decade – the decade where the culture broke apart, where things got ugly, where the studio system collapsed and independent film rose, where certainties vanished, where Bonnie & Clyde happened, ushering in violence on film … all of that … it would take all of that for films to catch up with him, to present him with the roles where he could actually use that unformed anti-social part of himself, the part of him as a person that “doesn’t register”. Because Travis Bickle “doesn’t register.” Travis is a void. De Niro understood that void. Robert De Niro didn’t need “forming.” He needed “revealing.” But who could even see it yet at this early point? But he tries in The Wedding Party and it’s sweet to see the attempt.
There’s also Jill Clayburgh, timorous and needy, girlish and hovering. She takes tiny little steps, meant to be funny I think, and she’s all slumped posture and body shape. Again, it would take the 1970s to unleash Jill Clayburgh, to make her THE symbol of the burgeoning women’s movement. There’s not even the slightest indication here of what is to come.
Except … that they’re both working, and working hard. They’re where they need to be.
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. He did series on books he loved, and albums he loved. I thought it would be fun to put up some of the stuff here. So we’ll start with his list of 50 Best Albums. I’ll put up one every Monday.
Brendan’s list of 50 Best Albums is part music-critique and part memoir and part cultural snapshot.
I have always loved these essays, because I love to hear my brother talk. I am happy to share them with you!
50 Best Albums, by Brendan O’Malley
44. The Descendents – Milo Goes To College
In 1982 The Descendents put out their first full-length record, Milo Goes To College. Anyone who was familiar with the band, and there were several hundred of us across the nation, knew that the title of the album was not code of any kind. Milo Aukerman was their lead singer and he had gone off to college. To us they were already superstars. Their debut album announced that they were no longer really a band thanks to higher education.
If you heard The Descendents right now you might not think twice about them. But in this case, context is everything. Hardcore punk music was rapidly transforming the music business against its will. Much like rap, it began to succeed in spite of the rigorous attempts of those in charge of mass media to squelch it. Most of the hardcore music was angry, political, naive, and boring. We listened to that section of the genre almost dutifully. But The Descendents were LIKE US. So like us that one of them was going to college. They weren’t Wham! They weren’t The Thompson Twins. The music they made that we loved so much was not lucrative enough for Milo to abandon his education.
There are 15 songs on the album, none of which clock in at longer than 2 minutes 14 seconds. I don’t even know if I should bother singling anything out. This album is like a time machine for me, instantly dropping me back into my buddy Tom’s room. We probably walked to his house from high school. We might have gone into a record store. We might have bought sodas at the 7/11. When we got to his house we rummaged through the cupboards and found something to eat.
We turned on his amplifier, he plugged his guitar in, and we started playing the songs we wrote. We were no different from The Descendents who we probably just listened to. Tom’s Mom would shout up to us and tell us to turn it down. So we would. Then we’d probably do our homework.
Justin would show up and we would bust each others balls mercilessly. Someone would get their feelings hurt, usually me. Feathers would be ruffled and then smoothed somehow without any real discussion. We longed for booze and weed. We lusted after chicks. We talked sports. We talked smack.
In the background Milo would be singing “Suburban Home”.
California pop run through a wood chipper. Imagine The Ramones are supposed to do a show in a garage that opens out onto Venice Beach. Their equipment is all set up and ready to go. But The Ramones can’t do the show! The Beach Boys circa 1964 stroll up to the stage and offer their services. They play their set without changing the amplification at all.
This might capture the spirit of The Descendents. Throw in a dash of potty humor, outsider resentment, teenage hormones, and you’ve got quite a brew.
I just came here from Facebook. If The Descendents happened today they’d have a Myspace or Facebook page 2 days after they got together. By the time I heard about them in 1984, Milo had already completed his freshman year.
I only wish they’d recorded the sequel. Milo Completes Grad School. Which he did.
An unremittingly dark film about the powers of populism, and what that would look like when unleashed on American soil by a storytelling “just plain folks” hayseed, who seethes with resentment about the Harvard graduates on the East Coast, and anyone anywhere who has … learning, critical thinking, expertise, tolerance. Similar to the “folksy” boob in Sinclair Lewis’ It Can’t Happen Here. With an astonishing lead performance from Andy Griffith who – at that point – had only done standup. Incredible film. The Criterion release comes out mid-April. If you haven’t seen this one, make sure you do. The dark underbelly of American politics now – sickeningly – gone mainstream.
I also reviewed the new book The Hollywood Jim Crow: The Racial Politics of the Movie Industry, by Maryann Erigha, an excellent study of the demographics of African-American films in Hollywood, and how the myth of black films being “unbankable” persists in the gate-keepers’ decision-making process, even when evidence to the contrary stares at them in the face.
Erigha may not reveal anything we don’t already know – but she lays out her case in detail, looking at the industries of film-making, distribution, foreign markets, marketing, and how all of these aspects then dovetail into the crucial point: who gets funding, who gets to work with big budgets, what films are considered worthy of big budgets, and etc. The conversation goes much deeper than who wins Oscars. Erigha has done an amazing job of pulling all of these strands together, and then suggesting next steps. I highly recommend the book!
Both pieces in the latest Film Comment, on shelves now.
I have been so bad about keeping up with comments the last two weeks. Lots going on. I will come back and comment when I have time to dig in. Same with this post. Have at it!
St. Agatha (2019; d. Darren Lynn Bousman)
I reviewed this nunsploitation horror film which I resisted at first for some reason, but then I got into the spirit of it. It’s fun. It’s what it needs to be. It also looks gorgeous. I reviewed for Ebert.
Cold War (2018; d. Paweł Pawlikowski)
The Oscar-nominated Cold War is Paweł Pawlikowski’s follow-up to Ida (which I wrote about here). Cold War feels like a continuation of Ida, and together they make this chilly tapestry – if a tapestry can have a temperature – of Cold War Poland. Music is present in Ida but it takes center stage in Cold War. I wrote about it here. Ted and I went to go see it during the run at Film Forum.
Supernatural, Season 14, episode 13 “Lebanon” (2019; d. Robert Singer)
Let’s hear it for Jared Padalecki’s amazing emotional work in the 300th episode. I haven’t re-watched since it aired, but I remember his work, in particular, vividly. It was heartbreaking.
Mad Men, Season 4, 5, 6, 7 (2010-2014)
Fell into a re-watch. This has been a weird couple of months. Surreal, almost. There’s been a lot of comfort food round these here parts, drawn to the familiar. Like this.
Ruben Brandt, Collector (2019; d. Milorad Krstić)
I absolutely loved this animated film. I reviewed for Ebert. I just got a note from the PR company asking if they could blurb my review in upcoming marketing. This is the quote they want to use: “‘Ruben Brandt, Collector’ is like ‘To Catch a Thief’ as filtered through the multi-eyeballed gaze of Joan Miró, or ‘The Pink Panther’ as imagined by Pablo Picasso.” It’s not exactly “Fun for the whole family”, is it?
A Face in the Crowd (1957; d. Elia Kazan)
I reviewed the upcoming Criterion release of this classic film for the current issue of Film Comment. I hadn’t seen it in a long time. Certainly not since the 2016 Presidential election. I watched it with a sickened queasy feeling. It’s all there.
Russian Doll (2019; d. Leslye Headland, Jamie Babbit, Natasha Lyonne)
I need to write about this extraordinary series eventually. I took it very personally. It was eerie, actually. My life in New York has felt like that. And I’m sure I’m not alone in this.
Badlands (1973; d. Terrence Malick)
One of my most engrossing projects during this weird last two months was a long piece on Badlands – a film I love, have loved, go to again and again, and YET I have never written about it. Until now, that is. The piece isn’t live yet, whenever it’s live I’ll put up a link.
Man of Aran (1934; d. Robert Flaherty)
I reviewed Robert Flaherty’s 1934 “documentary” Man of Aran for Film Comment. He made his name, really, with his 1922 film Nanook of the North. Supposedly the “father of documentary film” – even though so much of what we see onscreen is fabricated. But the nature photography (for lack of a better word) is awe-inspiring (especially when you consider how huge the cameras were then). This footage is incredible.
A Boatload of Wild Irishmen (2010; d. Mac Dara Ó’Curraidhín)
I watched this documentary in preparation for Man of Aran – I mention it in the review. It’s about Flaherty’s career, and it was helpful.
Climax (2019; d. Gaspar Noé)
God, I loved this film. The dance sequence at the beginning is so exhilarating I wanted to cheer. I reviewed for Ebert.
I Am Cuba (1995; d. Mikhail Kalatozov)
Charlie and I went to go see this at the Film Forum. It felt like I was watching low-rent poorly-written Clifford Odets, or agitprop “literature” from 1936. The propaganda is STIFLING. It’s such BULL. SHIT. and you wonder: who on earth would be fooled by this? You literally can’t breathe the propaganda is so … bossy. Afterwards, Charlie said to me, “I kept wanting to go back to the hotel with the hookers” and I burst out laughing. Me too! Those opening scenes were supposed to show the decadence of Western corruption but … sitting in a nightclub listening to live music and having a cocktail … To quote my dad, “I see no problem.” I mean, I GET it, I get the critique, don’t explain it to me, but the rest of it was so dreary and didactic and noble peasants and dead doves, etc. Meanwhile: the people in Cuba – the REAL people – suffered, beneath this STIFLING propaganda. It’s infuriating. (The backstory of this film is interesting. Look it up!)
Hidden Figures (2016; d. Theodore Melfi)
Member what I said about comfort food? This is comfort food. It makes me laugh, cry, swells my heart, and etc. It works every time. Here’s what I wrote about it.
Love (2015; d. Gaspar Noé)
I’m an Enter the Void girl. (The opening credits sequence is one of my favorite opening credits ever). I missed Love when it came out, even though I was excited to see it the second I heard about it: Gaspar Noé was directing a sex movie … in 3D. WHAT? So I watched Love, getting ready for Climax, and I found it less than exciting. Even the sex got boring. Of course there are moments, visually, where it grabbed me, but other than that … Still: I’d rather watch Gaspar Noé’s less-than-thrilling 3D sex movie than some other conventional movie playing it safe with no distinction whatsoever.
The Master (2012; d. Paul Thomas Anderson)
It says a lot about me that this movie counts as “comfort food.” But it’s true.
The Post (2017; d. Steven Spielberg)
“Comfort Food” again. It works every time.
The Nice Guys (2016; d. Shane Black)
Comfort Food. The most comforting. I love this movie so much, and love Shane Black’s movies. “The porno …. young lady …” Why didn’t people go see this? I so want a sequel. I want to watch more movies where these two guys fight crimes.
In my latest for Film Comment, I wrote about Robert Flaherty’s “documentary”, Man of Aran, filmed out on the Aran Islands in 1932-33, released in 1934. Its footprint is pretty huge and if you go to the Aran Islands now, you can’t escape its presence. The story behind the story is almost more interesting than the film itself – but the footage of the island is awe-inspiring. I mean, look at this.
In 2013, my first review over on Rogerebert.com went live. Roger himself had assigned it to me. It was a review of Christian Petzold’s wonderful Barbara. I sent in my draft to him, terrified and excited. He emailed back in 10 minutes, saying, “This is wonderful. I love how you start with the details of what you saw.” My mother was staying with me at the time (long story: I was very very ill and could not take care of myself at the time), and the two of us shared an intense moment of triumph, her for me, and me for me, that in the midst of my sickness this amazing unforeseen opportunity had come along. It felt like such a hopeful harbinger. It is so special to me that my mother was there for me in that moment. It had been a terrible and hair-raising 5 years. I will be forever grateful. Ebert reaching out to me changed my life.
I have reviewed 3 to 5 movies a month ever since then for Ebert. It’s a great gig, and rare in this terrible racket. I have interviewed directors. I have gone to Ebertfest every year. It’s a gig I am grateful for. I feel proud to be a part of it. Roger Ebert died a month after my Barbara review went up. But at least I got to have that one moment with him. Roger, wherever you are, thank you.
Here are some of the pieces I’ve written over the years, things I’m proud of.
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. He did series on books he loved, and albums he loved. I thought it would be fun to put up some of the stuff here. So we’ll start with his list of 50 Best Albums. I’ll put up one every Monday.
Brendan’s list of 50 Best Albums is part music-critique and part memoir and part cultural snapshot.
I have always loved these essays, because I love to hear my brother talk. I am happy to share them with you!
50 Best Albums, by Brendan O’Malley
45. Bruce Springsteen – Nebraska
I don’t like the E Street Band. There. I said it and I don’t care who knows it.
OK, fine, Born In The U.S.A. is a perfect album but I think “Born To Run” is overrated, “The River” sounds like it was recorded at the bottom of one, and “The Wild, The Innocent, and The E-Street Shuffle” is just embarrassing. At their worst they remind me of a coked-out middle manager over-dancing to Journey in white jeans.
Most bands are BANDS. You can’t separate one of the members from the rest. This is why the E-Streeters are ultimately session players and not members of a band. I don’t care how many photos they put on the cover of Bruce leaning on Clarence or Little Stevie or Max. It is Bruce and whoever he brings along for the ride.
Which is why Nebraska is perfect. Much of Springsteen’s music in the ’70’s suffered under the weight of ambition. I SHALL NOW CAPTURE THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA IN 4 MINUTES OR LESS, AND BY SPIRIT I MEAN THE DIRTY UNDERBELLY AND THE SOARING HOPE, THE PASSION AND THE DESPAIR, THE EVERYTHING AND NOTHING, THE OVER AND THE UNDER, WHAT THE HELL WAS I SAYING?
The E-Street Band did their best to uphold this mandate but who could live up to an all-encompassing quest for immortality? The true anthem occurs not with forethought, but with humility. Listen to “Born To Run” and try to find a humble moment. You can’t do it.
I also find it ironic that Nebraska is considered Springsteen’s first solo album. In my opinion his albums were all solo records, this one merely was honest enough to admit that he didn’t need all those other guys, they were just part of his show.
Admittedly, to this point this has not been a review of Nebraska but a referendum on The E Street Band. While this might seem unnecessary, it is vital in understanding just what makes this album so great and such a departure. Bruce recorded the songs you hear on Nebraska as templates for the band to build from. They took these home demos and expanded on them in typical E-Street fashion.
Bruce then decided it was time to let the dream die. He scrapped the full band recordings and released Nebraska as he’d recorded it…alone.
Nebraska begins with “Nebraska”.
As Bruce brings us along on a murder spree that spans the Badlands, he immediately announces that this isn’t going to be your father’s Bruce Springsteen record. There is no glory, just a polite sociopath who is not sorry for his crimes, but glad to have at least “had us some fun”. America is not the breeding ground for dreams but merely monsters who kill them.
“Atlantic City” brings us back East and into the shoes of a man who is about to commit murder for money. He’s in a jam and can’t see any other way out.
He consoles himself by saying, “Maybe everything that dies one day comes back” but it is small consolation indeed. Juxtaposing these two murderous narratives, Bruce dares us to find sympathy for either devil. Sure the down-on-his-luck would-be gun-for-hire of “Atlantic City” is a pawn in some boss’ game, sure his victims won’t be quite so innocent as the drifter’s kill in “Nebraska”, but victims they will be.
“Mansion On The Hill” is simple is as simple does. Poor man looks at rich man’s house.
Next up on the docket is “Johnny 99” in which a man is sentenced to 99 years in prison for killing a night clerk.
The line “I got debts no honest man can pay” recurs here and the economic thrust of the album becomes clearer. Is a man’s guilt lessened by his circumstances? The men accused seem to think so but the horror of these tales doesn’t allow us that kind of certainty.
Until this moment, the album is stark, finely carved, emotionally resonant, and haunting. It is about to rocket into tragedy and genius.
“Highway Patrolman” packs so much action into its 5 minutes and 38 seconds that Sean Penn made a movie out of it.
It tells the story of two brothers who grow up on a farm. One goes off to fight in Vietnam, the other stays behind to work the land. They may or may not be in love with the same girl who marries the one who took over the farm. The farm goes under and the farmer becomes a cop to provide for his family. The Vietnam Vet comes back and can’t seem to stay out of trouble, as much as his cop brother looks out for him. Finally he gets into a scrape that turns fatal and a car chase ensues. The Patrolman allows his brother to escape across the Canadian border.
How Springsteen manages to pull this all off in rhyming couplets is astonishing. The human cost of crime and its collateral victims is brutally apparent.
“State Trooper” flips the coin to view law enforcement from the point of view of a criminal driving on the New Jersey Turnpike.
He says, “I got a clear conscience ’bout the things that I done” but still he prays that the State Trooper won’t pull him over. After the first 5 songs, we share that prayer because the desperate men that people this world use murder as a means of escape.
“Used Cars” returns to the mind of the poor, as a young boy dreams of being able to afford a new car some day.
The violence of the other songs persists, however, and that very dream of wealth seems like a surefire path to destruction.
“Open All Night” might have been an outtake from “Born To Run”, it’s all chrome and wheels and late night driving and nowhere and no-how.
But again, the context has changed so drastically that even these declarations of love and fidelity seem as if they’d been wrought with weapons, bathed in blood, cured in filth.
“My Father’s House” drops an emotional A-bomb into the proceedings.
A man dreams of his father’s house. He wakes determined that their relationship will be repaired, that they won’t hurt each other anymore, that they will love as father and son. He rushes to his car, drives to his father’s house, and finds that his father doesn’t live there anymore. The primal relationship is forever scarred.
“Reason To Believe” seems innocuous enough, a litany of woes that end with Bruce saying, “Still at the end of every hard earned day/People find some reason to believe.”
Upon closer inspection, this is hardly the uplifting gospel moment it appears to be on the surface. In the first stanza the narrator is laughing at a man who is prodding a dead dog with a stick. In the second, a scorned lover waits every day for the man who will never come back to her. In the third, he compares a baby being baptized to the death of an old man. In the fourth, he witnesses a marriage but later sees the groom waiting for the woman who has spurned him. The singer of these songs doesn’t sympathize. There is a glint of amusement in his jaded eye, the eye of a man who laughs at the weak, manipulates the uncertain, kills the inconvenient.
This is not the sound of a man who is in a good time rock and roll band. This is the sound of a man who has decided that his band is for shit, his fans don’t get the message, his image has preceded him like some sort of bullshit carnival barker, and the only connection he is able to muster is with drifters who kill for pleasure, money, or panic.
The album isn’t called Reason To Believe. It’s called Nebraska. The almost deserted setting that housed a man who thought it would be “fun” to steal a car, drive off into the sunset, and kill everything in his path.
