Xark!

Eddie Izzard's Psychological Inner Peace

On Friday night, my Bonnie and I attended Eddie Izzard’s “Stripped” performance at the Ryman Auditorium.  Having been a dedicated fan since actually catching his “Dress to Kill” show on HBO several years back (even given my disappointment with some of the other performances available on DVD), it was with great anticipation that we took our seats. 

Izzard did not disappoint.  Pound for pound, the guy is the funniest man on the planet, and for almost two full hours, my stomach hurt.  When I wasn’t looking at Bonnie to see if she “got the joke,” I was banging my arm on the chair in front of me as a form of physical relief. 

Izzard’s performance worked for any number of reasons.  First, there was something especially delicious and slightly ironic about watching him in this former church and former home of the Grand Ole Opry.  Given his general left of center views, his engaged dismissal of religious based explanations of almost anything, and his occasion forays into transvestism, there is simply something rather non-Rymanesque about Izzard (well, on second glance, the transvestim fits elements of both country music and religion).  I felt it, and the entire audience understood it as well.  This was one of those magical moments when the setting itself made us all feel like we were part of a conspiracy.  With that as a starting point, Izzard had us as soon as the lights went down.  And with his quick pacing, he never let go.

Trumpet of the Living Dead

While I have more than a passing knowledge of most of the jazz canon from the 1950s to the 1980s, I never became much of a Chet Baker fan.  While I listened to his work with Gerry Mulligan, there was something about the . . . well . . . the lyricism of much of his playing that didn’t appeal to me.  Indeed, I always had something of an unearned snotty attitude about west coast jazz.  Nonetheless, it was with some excitement that I went to see the “revival” of Let’s Get Lost, the 1988 Bruce Weber documentary.  Evidently, in anticipation of a new print going to DVD for the first time this year, the film is making its rounds at art film houses, and it arrived in Nashville just this week.

My reactions to the film were wildly different than I had expected.  I had read that the film provided a poignant portrait of Baker, counterposing images of Baker as a young James Dean with a trumpet with contemporary (1987) images of an older Baker, ragged from a lifetime overuse of speedballs and alcohol.  While some question the veracity of the film’s narrative (i.e., the film makes it seem as if Baker’s life was in complete decline while, according to some accounts, his career was on something of a late upswing in the mid 80s), the accuracy of the narrative—hell, Baker himself--was the least of my concerns as I sat in the theater shaken by the awful physical transformation one sees between the young and older versions of him.

BOTLD UPDATE: Crew positions available!

From the Brunch of the Living Dead Cast and Crew Facebook group:

CREW JOBS NOW AVAILABLE!
If you'd like one of these jobs, send me an e-mail. In most cases I'll take the first volunteer and post the name in comments. There's no pay, but you'll be listed by title in the video credits. You'll also be eligible to get a T-Shirt with your crew title across the back (how we'll pay for those T-Shirts depends on how much money we can raise).

Nail Hard Catholicism

For my money, one of the worst aspects of being Catholic is the feeling of drudgery with which ritualized spirituality often appears to be approached.  While I know some of you might think it’s the politics of Catholicism that would be difficult, I’ve always found my struggles with those politics to lead to some of my most important spiritual insights.  So, no, it’s not the politics, and it’s not the ritual itself (which I like); it’s the way every song is sung as an offbeat dirge, the way every prayer is said as if one is communicating the contents of a phone book. 

I’ve always wished something could be done about this aspect of the Catholic “approach;” I’ve often wondered what changes would work, at least for me.   The only “different” approaches I’ve experienced have felt either downright ridiculous (e.g., the folk masses of the early 70s), or too much on that side of “magical” spirituality (e.g., the charismatic Catholic movement) for my comfort.

While acknowledging that spirituality should and can be practiced in multiple ways, and while acknowledging that such practice can be a matter of taste rather than substance, I’ve always wanted to see a Catholicism with a raging sense of excitement and a voluminous muscularity, for lack of a better word.  As I’ve noted before, I’m Catholic because I was born with it, and I like the way it forces me to struggle.  Nonetheless, being a rather loud and boisterous personality, I’ve never seen why I had to struggle with the style as well as the politics.  It is this combination of my commitment to Catholicism with my desire for a different style of worship that made me so interested in the new HBO documentary on the Hard as Nails ministry.

Personal Politics and the Unwritten Future

Julien Temple's documentary, Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten, about the career/life of Clash and Mescaleros’ frontman Joe Strummer is, to be generous, an engaging collection of sometimes rare video clips and new interviews that offers an adequate introduction to the singer and irritatingly dogmatic politico.  To be more frank, it—like The Filth and The Fury, Temple’s Sex Pistols’ documentary—is something of a cobbled together mess of new and vintage clips that leaves someone like me—a Clash fan from jump--fairly bored.  Not that I can’t find a way to talk about it; I can always do that; it’s more that I wouldn’t want to encourage you to go see it. 

About the documentary itself:  while it is no doubt a nice pleasure to watch documentary clips of the Clash throughout their career (nothing warms a middle aged heart more than mass mediated self-absorption), and while it was both informative and charming to learn (and see) Joe’s early life and upbringing as well as his life post-Clash (about which I knew little), the composition of the story telling was baffling. 

Temple tells Strummer’s story by interposing archive footage of Strummer with interview clips of a variety of unnamed friends sitting around campfires in different global locations. When you know the person being interviewed, and understand their connection to Strummer, this is charming.  When you don’t know the person and/or don’t know their connection, this is distracting and irritating (“Who is that bearded guy?” “Why is Johnny Depp being interviewed?”)

Sean Penn and the Better Story

Ten years ago, like a lot of the rest of the country, I found myself intrigued by the story of Chris McCandless as depicted in Jon Krakauer’s “Into the Wild.”  My reactions to it were perhaps predictably conflicted.  On the one hand, I’m one of the large multitude of people who, especially as a young man, was very attracted to the idea of doing something extreme—hiking the AT straight through, walking across the U.S., that sorta thing.  I loved to think about how long I would have lasted had I been one of the guys on Stephen King’s Long Walk, or how far I could have run with Forest Gump. While not attracted to the idea of trying to live “in the wild” for any period of time, there was something about the romance of McCandless’s quest that I did find compelling.

On the other hand, I couldn’t help but picture the guy as being a member of the arrogant- self-righteous-mystical-I-walk-alone-but-want-you-to-know-it tribe.  As one of my friends (who was reading the book at the same time) remarked, “I knew tons of guys like this in high school.  Always so self-righteous, always so full of themselves.  I didn’t like them then, and I don’t want to read about them now.”  I knew what she was talking about.  In a way similar to the old equation I used to hear in the late 1970s--“I like the Doors; I just don’t like the people I have to hang out with to listen to them”--I liked the romance of extreme self-reliance, but I didn’t like the people I had to hang out with to dream about it. 

My primary problem with Krakauer’s account, however, wasn’t with the representation of McCandless so much as with Krakauer’s over romanticism of it.  If you’ve read the book, you’ll probably know what I mean:  Krakauer not only writes an apologia for McCandless by telling a story about his own youthful extremism that makes both their acts seem like reasonable masculine rites of passage, but he also creates elaborate explanations to explain McCandless’s ultimate demise.  Krakauer’s explanations—which now demand a great deal of scrutiny—ultimately work to suggest that McCandless’s journey was a remarkable masculine adventure, one only foiled by a few very unfortunate bad turns.  In my mind, Krakauer’s account went way too far to make McCandless’s “great Alaskan adventure” appear admirable with no inkling that it might have been simultaneously reckless and damaging to others.

Hoping for Redemption

Warning:  Contains minor Michael Clayton and Rosemary’s Baby spoilers, as well as some grossly massive overgeneralizations.

Over the past week, my Bonnie and I went to see the new George Clooney vehicle, Michael Clayton, and—in her ongoing attempt to educate me about movies made before 1985—we watched Rosemary’s Baby at home.  For very different reasons, these were both interesting experiences for me.  In the case of Michael Clayton, we have an intriguing, emotionally heavy, and complexly constructed legal narrative with some career-worthy acting performances (Tom Wilkinson and Tilda Swinton had exceptional turns, and George Clooney keeps getting better, and more subtle; kudos as well to Sydney Pollack).  While Roman Polanski’s direction of Rosemary’s Baby somehow seems dated (or maybe it’s simply Mia Farrow’s “I’m a dumb little girl” acting that bothered me), the story—and the pacing of the story—kept me intrigued.

I’m coupling these films together, however, not because I’m endorsing each of them—which I am—but because I want to talk about the role of redemption, and my reaction to it, in each film.  At the conclusion of Rosemary’s Baby, I turned to Bonnie and observed that I thought it was a gutsy movie because it ended without redemption.  If anything, the only traditionally redemptive character in the film gave in to the particular forces of evil in the narrative.  You cannot leave the film feeling as if the forces of good won out (well, I suppose you could if you’re particularly fond of shouting heavy handed stuff like, “All hail Satan”).  After I made this comment, Bonnie made the claim—and I have no idea about its quantitative truth although it seems right—that classic popular films were always less redemptive than contemporary films. 

High Score

As an undergraduate at Appalachian State University, I learned to play video games—or at least one video game--with my friends Robert Huffman and Tim Lesch.  After more than a few pocketfuls of quarters, I became a fairly good Ms. Pacman player, the type of guy who played long enough to annoy you if you were waiting to put a quarter in yourself. While I was not one of those players who wanted to move on to other games (indeed, I was disappointed when Robert and Tim moved on to Donkey Kong and other games), I understood what it was like to become slightly obsessed with a game and to have it slightly alter the way I saw the world. 

As evidence:  one evening, after a full day of Ms. Pacman, I went to see a play—The Prime of Ms. Jean Brodie, it was—performed by ASU’s Theatre.  In the first act, I watched one of the characters exit stage left.  My immediate impulse?  I looked to stage right to watch her reenter, just the way Ms. Pacman would have done had I been controlling her with a joystick.  After the third or fourth time this happened, I remember thinking, “I’m obsessed.  I need to lay off Ms. Pacman.”  The next day, I loved telling that story to whoever was around watching me play another game.

Zombie Rethinks the Franchise

Over the years, my son and I have developed a number of rituals that have kept us amused and engaged in conversation.  As he has reached the age of 17 and has developed the grunting language of a great number of adolescent males in this culture, I have been grateful that he continues to enjoy one of the rituals we began so many years ago:  the everlasting, ever entertaining, pursuit of the horror film sequel.  The coupling of our desire for completion with the studio’s desire for proliferation insures that several times each year, my son and I will spend an afternoon together watching a film and several hours afterward discussing it. 

Last year, we attended a special screening of John Carpenter’s original Halloween on October 31 and saw an accompanying tribute film in which Rob Zombie discussed the remake on which he was currently working.  It’s been ten long months, my friends, but it was worth the wait.  With the help of some adequate, and some wicked fine, performances (Malcolm McDowell somehow makes the Dr. Loomis character emotionally deeper and more complex than did Donald Pleasance, and Pleasance was frighteningly good himself) and a surprisingly thoughtful screenplay, Zombie offered more than I dared expect.  Given the time that has past since the original first screened, this film is of course darker, bloodier, and nastier at almost every turn.  While still far less gory than most horror film fare today---it doesn’t come close to any of the Saw series or the Hostel films—it holds its own in making one squeamish.  (As a side note:  I challenge you to watch the original today and not laugh at how silly some of the scenes appear in today’s context). 

Organic Process goes live

Over the past few weeks I've been helping out some friends of ours with a website they've been remaking, and I've waited to write about their project until the site went live.  But this is not about their site (which is a perfectly nice site, designed by the fine folks at Fuzzco): This is about creative people who are redrawing the lines between art and journalism and activism and commerce.

Her name is Farrah Hoffmire. His name is Mitchell Davis. They both grew up in Summerville, both graduated from C of C. She started off to be a mental health counselor but became an artist. He started off as a musician but became one of the founders of BookSurge.com, one of those magnificent little software-commerce marriages that's just so smart it practically squeaks when you rub up against it. When BookSurge sold to Amazon a couple years ago, Farrah and Mitchell moved to Seattle to help integrate their company into the mega-bookseller's operations. And while they were out there, Farrah decided to learn to make films. That was the spring and early summer of 2005.

In late August of that year, Katrina struck the Gulf Coast and swamped New Orleans. A few weeks later, Farrah packed up her camcorder and headed to the Delta, where she began recording her own personal history of the aftermath of the storm.

Talk to Me, Quietly

Last weekend, I went to see Talk to Me, the new Don Cheadle film about Washington D.C. radio personality Ralph "Petey" Greene, an ex-con who became a radio personality, political activist, and alcoholic. This combination of attributes constitutes a wonderful character sketch; the film traces out Greene’s ups and downs, as well as his relationship with Dewey Hughes, who becomes his best friend after a troubling beginning (Dewey has his own family issues and problems with his understanding of what it means to be a “successful black man” in the early 1960s). I can’t imagine anyone not liking the film.  Cheadle’s been a miracle of the screen ever since Picket Fences; the story is engaging but not heavy handed, and the pacing keeps you engaged throughout the film.  More, if you have any sense of the history of the 60s through the 80s, you’ll certainly find the soundtrack, styles and events seductive.  In short, I endorse this film; I can’t imagine you leaving dissatisfied with your decision to see it.

But I’m not writing this post solely to endorse the movie.  It’s more of my entryway to rant about a number of aspects of going to see films.  At the risk of disappointing Brittney Gilbert, who hates lists, I’m going to provide a rant list of five aspects of going to see films that irk me, all of them occurring in a perfect storm at this one film, almost ruining the experience:

The A-Word

Supposedly, a quarter of the pregnancies in the United States end in abortion each year. Who are those women? Where are those women? Here’s one place they’re not—in popular culture. In the last two weeks, I saw two well-reviewed films: Waitress, a small independent film written and directed by the late Adrienne Shelly (who also plays a supporting role), and Knocked-Up, the Judd Apatow comedy. Both of these comedies turn on the consequences of unwanted pregnancy. In the former, the lead character, Jenna (played by Keri Russell), is an abused and unhappy wife and waitress who is dismayed to be pregnant, as she had been planning an escape from her thug of a husband. She then begins an affair with her obstetrician, has the baby, finds the strength to leave her husband and becomes the owner of a pie shop (her skill at pie making is a significant theme in the film). In Knocked Up, the lead character, Alison (played by Katherine Heigl of Grey’s Anatomy fame), is impregnated by a one night stand with an oafish slacker, Ben, played by Seth Rogan. She elects to go through with the pregnancy and embarks on a campaign to get to know the father so that he can participate. In rom-com style, they have a variety of travails but end up happily together, with the new baby, at the conclusion of the film.

No one ever utters the word abortion in either one of these films, although, without using the word, Ben’s friends do raise the possibility when he reveals his situation to them. Indeed, one review of Knocked Up that I read claims that this moment in the film is a riff on how the word cannot be spoken in popular culture, although I found that moment so subtle as to be almost unrecognizable. Alison’s mother, hilariously played by Joanna Kerns, also raises the issue, again without naming it. So here’s my question—is it really a choice if you can’t even say it? Neither central character in either film articulates a thoughtful rationale for having a baby, and Alison’s response to her mother’s implicit suggestion that she abort her pregnancy is a kind of muted exasperated outrage, but it is unaccompanied by any articulated opposition to the idea of abortion. It’s so unacceptable that, not only can it not be uttered, it doesn’t even have to be argued against. It’s a non-option.

Graduation photo

I'm the tall one in the back.

Snitched from these guys.