A History Oral and Lived - THE MAN FROM EARTH (2007)

In Shadow of the Vampire, Max Schreck (Willem Dafoe) recites from Tennyson's poem "Tithonus", a monodrama of the Greek mythological figure who is immortal but continues to age physically.  He yearns for death because it will release him from his ever withering state, and the poem is a reminder that immortality isn't all it's cracked up to be, mirroring Schreck's own unfortunate existence.  There have been many works exploring the dark side of eternal life (Highlander), but only one of them can be categorized with My Dinner with Andre.

The Man from Earth was written by the late Jerome Bixby, a talented and lauded science fiction screenwriter who authored episodes of The Twilight Zone and Star Trek.  The script was found among his papers after his death in 1998, and this film makes one wonder why it wasn't produced earlier, or at least performed as a play.  It's a deeply written, heartbreaking work, a confession of a hidden life that throws everything the listeners believe in out the window.


John Oldman* (David Lee Smith of CSI: Miami and five seconds of Zodiac) is a professor at a California college, and invites his fellow profs over for drinks as he is leaving town the next day.  The peanut gallery (including Tony Todd and William Katt) covers a wide swath of disciplines from anthropology to art, and Oldman has been careful to assemble great minds for what he has to say.  The rest of them came by to drink and hash out the past, not aware of what past Oldman is referring to.  After some pleasantries and puzzlements, such as the discovery of a seemingly caveman-era tool and an authentic-looking Van Gogh, the real subject reveals itself, though at first as a hypothetical.  What if a prehistoric man simply didn't die, avoiding war and discovery through  history and surviving until the present?  At first the conversation is jovial, with theories of perfectly replicating cells and shifting identities put forth, but people are puzzled as to why he didn't pose the question as a normal hypothetical, saying "I" instead of "he".

As the "game" drags on further, his friends have caught on and the tone turns from lighthearted to frustrated.  His story, while unbelievable, is at the very least well constructed - he was a Cro-Magnon (a fact he had to figure out much later), and when his tribe shunned him for possessing evil magic and stealing their life to lengthen his, he wandered across the land, falling into whatever company would take him and leaving when they found out the truth.  Each logical query, such as how he knew where he came from and whether or not he remembers his first language, have plausible explanations offered, though coolly received.  Some are more angry than others, and eventually a psychologist is called in.  And everything that happens after that isn't mine to spoil.

All the acting is pitch-perfect (well, except for a woman who has a crush on Oldman, but whatever), and the dialogue is extraordinarily intelligent and well-researched.  Bixby has accomplished a difficult task: make the absurd not only believable but engrossing.  Oldman's life is not only exceptional but ultimately tragic, and the intellectual, and in some cases moral, trials posed to the listeners are equally heart-wrenching.  Set almost entirely in Oldman's living room, the script is a shining example of how science fiction doesn't need to have flashy special effects or expansive locales in order to provoke thought and discussion - it's a triumph of pure storytelling.  A couple of wrinkles do trip up the film, though - shot on a pair of Panasonic DVX100 camcorders and processed through Filmlook, the viewing experience is particularly grainy, especially when the conversation drags into night and pixels the size of postage stamps dominate the frame.  Also, the ending's a bit shaky, and the fact that it hinges on that female character I mentioned earlier doesn't help.  All of these are, of course, minor details.  The movie is not even 90 minutes long, an economic detail passed down from TV writing, so if you think for a second this movie will waste your time those thoughts should be put to rest.  Don't believe me?  The DVD company put it up on YouTube for free:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAarR4tVEHU (no embedding, sorry)

~PNK

*Get it?  Get it?!  LAUGH, CLOWN! LAUGH!!!

Special Report - THE TURN OF THE SCREW (1959, episode of "Startime")

One of the benefits of living in Seattle is the blessing of Scarecrow Video, the largest video store I've ever seen and widely considered one of the best in the world.  If you can think of a movie, they've got it as well as a dozen others like it you didn't know existed, or were even possible under the current understanding of quantum mechanics.  They've even published a mammoth review book, and many big film names have visited the place and signed their own work's boxes.  Having recently revamped the portion of the store previously reserved for selling used videos, Scarecrow has started hosting events (including the upcoming VHS Swapmeet, where I'll have a table (!)), and this month is VHS month in honor of their large collection of such and the current retro-craze for the obsolete and less-than-snuff format.  Though later in the month we'll get to see such treats as the ultra-obscure kung-fu-and-magic headscratcher Furious (1984) and the legendary shot-on-video anthology baffler Tales from the Quadead Zone (1987), Monday night's screening was much different - John Frankenheimer's The Turn of the Screw.

The concept of "made-for-TV movie" wasn't always a simile for "forgotten stool sample on the bus"; in the 50's and 60's there were programs dedicated to high-quality 75 minute adaptations and originals, with big names in front of the camera and talented workhorses behind.  Robert Altman started out in these productions, as did John Frankenheimer, director of The Manchurian Candidate and Seconds.  His name wasn't the least bit recognizable when he helmed Turn, but his work is exemplary, and it's a shame this version of Henry James's novella is so hard to find because it's a surprisingly scary, visually engrossing piece of film-making brevity.

I've never had the pleasure of reading the story, and haven't seen any other adaptations (with The Innocents being a shameful hole in my horror-viewing repertoire).  No matter - Startime makes it easy for us.  A young governess (Ingrid Bergman) has been hired by a London-based man who has been charged with taking care of his nephew and niece whose parents have just died.  He has no interest in looking after for them himself, so the governess makes for their country mansion, Bly (which has its own carriage bearing its seal).  The niece, Flora (Alexandra Wager) is chipper enough, with far too many teeth visible at a time, but the nephew Miles (Hayward Morse) has been expelled from his private school, and will be home any day now.  The governess and their maid surmise that the only cause (because none is stated) would be causing harm to others, though what harm that is we may never know.  Plenty of creepy harms are implied, though, as well as many other phantomic creeps (faces in the window, songs from distant rooms).  When he does return he meets his sister's cute precociousness with an unsettling precociousness, and the governess's grip on the children and reality start to spiral out of control.

Horror fare from this time period can usually be shelved under quaint anti-fright, but Turn has far too much going on to be punted to that oubliette.  B&W fullscreen has never looked better, as Frankenheimer takes a fluid, askew method to filming a deeply shadowed house.  There are many small uniquities, my favorite being a panning shot across a staircase that ends looking down a hallway, the camera tilting slightly at the entrance to uproot the Earth in wait of Bergman's discoveries.  Anybody who has seen the Shining-centric documentary Room 237 will remember the observation that during the first half of The Shining Kubrick transitioned between scenes with very slow dissolves, so slow they forced you to study the superimposition.  While Kubrick may not have meant anything like that, Frankenheimer certainly does, pulling out double- and triple-exposures to great effect (my favorite being the Bly house seal over a doll in a pond).  

Production designer Warren Clymer utilizes the handful of sets offered to him to great effect, allowing period design to fold into darkness and creating some of the most unsettlingly fake exteriors I've ever seen.  Flying in the face of 50's TV, the soon-to-be-accomplished classical composer David Amram supplies a hair-raising Avant-Garde soundtrack, terse and shrieking with a healthy supply of alien clangs and burbles.  It's always nice to see that quirk of Victorian wear in film whereby too-tight dresses make the wearer look like a gliding bobblehead.  As for the actors, Bergman is excellent, steadily mounting upon a professional manner with nervous terror.  The two child actors are unbelievable, displaying a creativity and control beyond their years; Hayward Morse is so precocious in his performance it makes his later scenes downright chilling.

I've never been much of a fan of ghost movies, mostly because ghosts, by design, shouldn't be scary.  When you get down to their motivations and what they were like alive the darn things just don't make any sense, and all the frights come from what might be there rather than what's actually there.  If there's a lesson we learned from The Blair Witch Project it's that suggestion is far more fear-inducing than explanation.  The Turn of the Screw renews my faith that a traditional ghost story can induce frights if done properly, and much like the classic Witchboard the usual logistical issues are sidestepped via careful details.  At the end of the 75 minutes I was invigorated and a little spooked, and if you can track it down you won't be disappointed.  I have to emphasize the "if" here, because this movie is so rare that Scarecrow's copy was hand-donated by Frankenheimer himself (!) and comes with a hefty rental deposit.  That screencap standing in for a poster was on YouTube, so there must be a torrent floating around there somewhere.  Hopefully it looks better than Scarecrow's copy, which had a slow warble and seemed to have grown a coat of cheesecloth.  For my money, a smudgy presentation may have helped the experience, as the shadows are that much more concealing.  Get it ASAP.  Don't wait.

~PNK

Swimming in Now-stalgia - CUADECUC, VAMPIR (1970/71)

Here's a neat contest for cinephiles: list every Dracula movie you can off the top of your head.  Not just adaptations of the novel, but every movie he's ever appeared in.  If you've spouted out more titles than you have fingers and toes, don't worry - you haven't even scratched the surface.  According to IMDB the not-really-a-dragon-at-all has appeared in 326 movies and TV shows.  Attempting to rank the central performance is such a lost cause it needs its keys on a necklace, much like squabbling over the extreme excess in Ebenezer Scrooges.  Dracula isn't a story anymore - it's a pageant, a Thanksgiving turkey, anything but vital unless met with an assured hand.  Cuadecuc, Vampir isn't Dracula, rather an account of the making of one.  The subject isn't the least bit vital.  Its chronicler is. 

Spanish director Jesús Franco has the unique trait of being un-recommendable to just about anybody.  A legend among fans of 70's-and-80's exploitation hooey, his impossibly vast filmography swings between Nyquilled horror and disquieting porn.  After attempting to watch his work, I am reminded of the golden Siskel & Ebert law by which it's perfectly fine to walk out on a movie if you fully admit to the act.  In 1970 Mr. Franco decided to syphon off some sweet Hammer moolah and pulled out Count Dracula, attaching fangs to Christopher Lee in proper Hammer fashion.  I'll save you some time by relaying the stark fact that Count Dracula is worth less of your time than Billy the Kid vs. Dracula and certainly less than Alabama's Ghost (look it up, you won't be sorry).  Vaguely atmospheric and mostly vague, Franco's approach uses cheap 70's zoom knobs and opaque padding to create total, devastating detachment in the name of Hurry Up I Start Shooting My Next Movie On Tuesday.  Which is why Cuadecuc is not only the only way to watch Franco but also a fascinating piece of contemporaneous upcycling.

Looped synths and smeary B&W photography beckon to us, playing out an early scene from the film with none of the original sound in place (and eventually no sound at all).  Soon after the title flies out from the center of the screen, switching over to smooth 60's soundtrack orchestral jazz placed over a car driving through the countryside.  A man with a crude fog machine.  Bouts of tape collage experiments and semi-comprehensible Dracula moments.  Christopher Lee giving us the finger.  Fake spiderwebs.  Clashes of soft-focus with sharp-focus via hueless exposures.  Long stretches of total silence.  These are the techniques by which director (later politician) Pere Portabella makes not only one of the best production documentaries ever made, but also his own Dracula adaptation as well as entrancing statements on artifice, meta-fiction, and collective memory.  If you thought I was going to agree with the conventional criticisms of this work (which you are of course well-researched upon) and say that a documentary that deconstructs the filming of a bad horror movie is a metaphor for Gen. Franco's regime, then get ready for me to take some more interesting paths.


Rather than following the production schedule, Portabella orders the footage to follow Count Dracula's plot, encapsulating the story in gauzy silence.  I'll save you from a plot description because you already know it.  Everybody knows it, and fortunately for Portabella Franco doesn't stray too far from the novel that we'd miss serious elements of the story without sound.  At the very least you can point at the screen and shout whenever Dracula appears, and I wouldn't want to deny you that small pleasure.  It's fitting that a documentary on a Dracula movie also be Dracula itself; Stoker was no stranger to narrative layers.  Keeping with the tradition of Gothic Horror, Dracula is told via journal entries, letters, and other types of records to give the illusion that the story was a real event, experienced and recorded by several people and compiled rather than authored by Stoker.  Frankenstein also pulled this trick, and its effect is that of a found-footage movie (such as The Blair Witch Project), applying a veneer of stark realism to the supernatural.  In the case of Cuadecuc, the veneer is that of a moldy, forgotten reel of film left in a closet in an asylum, or in the attic of an elder relative who had recently passed away, leaving you with their puzzling hobby-art.


If we allow for a meta-fiction route of analysis we can safely say that Cuadecuc turns the Dracula structure on its head.  Whereas realist elements were added to Dracula to draw the reader into the world of the story, Cuadecuc uses realist elements to draw attention to how fake the whole thing is.   The word Cuadecuc translates from the Spanish to "worm's tail," but importantly here also refers to the tail end of a reel of film.  Jesús Franco's production foibles are frequently spotlighted, such as makeup sessions with cheesy music, that guy with the fog concoction, and a hilariously awful bat effect, as well as Franco's trademark zoom-heavy photography.  And why shouldn't it?  Franco stated publicly that he hated most of his movies, and their often-times rushed, lifeless productions end up reflecting that whether he liked it or not.  There are few novels more dead-horsed into the public subconscious than Dracula, and so any attempt to make the story seem real is almost a moot point.  Christopher Lee had already played the Count in two movies prior, and would go on to play him five more times, so why not wear sunglasses on set and flip the bird?  Why not laugh and roll your eyes at the artifice of it all?  Consider the last time you went to an elementary school production of the Nativity, and you'll understand that sometimes its okay to joke with tradition.


And for that matter, if Dracula is burned into our gray matter and need not repeating, why not play off that?  A tried and true rule of fiction is that some things are more emotionally resonant when a certain amount of distance is woven into the storytelling, evoking rather than imposing, showing rather than telling.  One of my favorite adaptations of Dracula is Jon Muth's gorgeous graphic novel Dracula: A Symphony in Moonlight and Nightmares.  The plot remains the same as with Stoker, but the presentation splits the pages between lines of dialogue suspended in air with extraordinarily beautiful paintings depicting scenes and moods.  Nothing is lost in translation.  The disconnection allows the reader to see each half on their own terms and let them experience the power of Dracula with a certain degree of discovery.  It's the simple effort of combining the words and the images in your head that gives a boost to your emotional reaction, as if you were the one who found out the true meaning and it's shouting down your door.  With the smudgy, ambiguous footage and the largely nonsensical soundtrack, a little extra brainpower is required to glean a complete Dracula from Cuadecuc, seeming more like a distant memory than a sober experience.  Consider this piece from the eccentric YouTube video artist Chriddof (and don't worry about watching all 9 minutes):

Technically all the footage is from Dooby Duck's Disco Bus but the effect is an opaque wash of imagery under a D-major drone.  The frequent tape damage in the transfer only adds to the disconnection.  In a previous upload of the video a comment appeared praising the video as being a perfect representation of nostalgia, consistent with a damaged old tape of a children's TV special.  I'd like to posit that if asked, most people would have a memory of the first time they saw a Dracula movie and how old they were, as the 1931 version is often cited as one of the first horror movies people see in their lives.  Fans of the genre often have fond memories of their first "real" horror movies (mine being the Universal monster movies followed by Psycho), and the fact that horror movies are often watched on Halloween and/or late at night adds to their dreamy quality in our minds.  Cuadecuc is a strange, lovely recollection of a mediocre Dracula movie, allowing the viewer to feel nostalgic for something they may have never personally experienced.  Oddly enough, it's nostalgia made contemporaneously with its source, as if we needn't actually sit through Count Dracula to get to the good stuff.  And though you may never fully be in the mood to watch Cuadecuc, vampir, it's short enough that you don't really have to be.  For the benefit of mankind it's been uploaded to YouTube, so drift with it when you've got a spare 66 minutes and a hankering for cheap surrealism.


~PNK

A quick three chairs for PERFECT FRIDAY (1970)

I love a good heist movie, and there's no better era for them than the late 60's and early 70's, when Mod stylings and twist endings abounded.  This one has slipped through the cracks, so much so that I only found out about it in researching the great Theatre of Blood, required viewing for fans of black comedy, Shakespeare and Vincent Price.  Specifically, I was looking into Anthony Greville-Bell, a man with a fabulously British name who co-wrote this as well as the oddly excellent thriller The Strange Vengeance of Rosalie (which I'll get to in good time).  I can't speak to how much he actually contributed to this screenplay or the others but in my mind a man with a name that clever should have contributed to the quirkiness and smart dialogue of these movies.  And while Perfect Friday is the most conventional of the three movies it's a great little caper for an empty afternoon.

Mr. Graham (Stanley Baker) is the deputy manager at a London bank, stiffly professional and secretly fed up.  Enter Lady Dorset (Ursula Andress), whose light accent and Andressness swiftly sucks Graham into an affair that births a crazy idea: use the inside connection to rob the bank.  The sadly foppish Lord Dorset (a young David Warner) gets involved as the third party, and as the plan is formed it seems each of the men want to make off with the money and Lady without the other's being any the wiser.  Of course, the snazzy heist sequence.  Of course, a race to the airport.  Of course, a twist ending that assures a moral-minded censor office that even though they get away with it, they don't REALLY get away with it.

Though the plot has an assembly line feel, I have the advantage of ignoring that if the Knack is present.  Perfect Friday floats above a stock plot through simple panache and tight technique, meeting the action's inherent fun with surprisingly sharp photography, off-kilter editing tricks, knowing restraint and an infectious, enthusiastic soundtrack.  The performances are all effortless and perfectly played off each other, and the pacing never falters, especially in the heist sequence itself, proving once again that real tension can be made through a lack of music rather than a girth.  An early Spring setting meets the performances and the bank's minimalist 70's futurism for a crisp, satisfying mood, a fine counterpoint to the outlandish feel of older capers like Ocean's 11 and Who's Minding the Mint?  Everything points to a nifty, fittingly British confidence, leaning over and whispering sweet nothings into your ear.

Never available on video in the U.S., Perfect Friday may need a bit of digging to find, but I'm sure torrenting and iOffer have you covered.  The boot I viewed was sourced from a widescreen BBC broadcast and looked great, so if you can get that one go for it.  I wasn't able to find it on YouTube but I did find a trailer for a recent PAL DVD/Blu-Ray release, so if you've got a region-free DVD player you've got yourself a winner.  It probably won't become your favorite caper but it still put a grin on my face, like an unexpected free latte or finding five bucks in a gutter.  Do as you will and remember to make a smooth getaway.

~PNK

Point and Line to Joy: the Animation of Paul Glabicki

It occurs to me that there hasn't been nearly enough animation on this blog.  Sure, I began with my favorite animated movie of all time but that's no excuse for slacking off.  The animators sure haven't been slacking, and you're (I'm) just bringing the whole enterprise down (as this is the first post here in about a month).  Animation is really, really time consuming, its efforts only fully understood by its practitioners, and when it gets experimental or somebody dares to make a short film in this day and age festival curators are the only people who give it a shot.  Though I'm not a junkie for animation festival compilations I've admitted myself into AA (Animataddicts Anonymous) for future reference; those lonely-looking discs and tapes are goldmines of creativity and joy, showcasing some of the most astounding work in the medium and a heck of a lot of variety.  Seriously, just rent any one of them (like The Animation Show, anything from the National Film Board of Canada, anything from Expanded Entertainment) and have a blast with the illusion of movement.  With that said, I don't know if anything by our friendly artist today has shown up on those comps, but he did get a solo tape (The Paul Glabicki Animation Tape) from the arthouse distributor Facets Video, and if you'll click any of my links it'll show the Amazon page for it (used, O.C.(of course)).  Don't worry, I've supplied free stuff below, as well as the rest of the article.

Paul Glabicki is a multi-media artist who teaches at the University of Pittsburgh, and is seen up top with the best background for a Jefferson Airplane show I've seen since Woodstock.  Swerving through not only animation but also painting, photography, sound design and installation art, Glabicki has made a name for himself internationally via his profound exploration of geometry (hence the Kandinsky joke in the title).  Not just geometry with lines but also psychological association of line and form, and how formal relationships work in other mediums such as language and memory.  If you just went slack-jawed I'll give you a second to pick your chin up off the floor, because what I'm going to show you is fun.  FUN.  When was the last time geometrical experiments were fun, aside from Donald in Mathemagic Land (and do watch that, it's amazing)?  Glabicki not only dives into linework with enormous skill but also with enormous entertainment value.  Edwin Abbott won't know what hit him.

Those of you dorky enough to know a bit of history of early fantastic film (or happened to see Hugo) will notice the Man in the Moon from George Méliès's Le Voyage dans la lune as one of the two central repeated images.  If you're a superdork like me and recognized Winsor McKay's Gertie the Dinosaur as the other your toaster oven is in the mail.  Small polygons and seemingly random strings of letters and numbers fly across the screen, and I'd look close to catch a guy at the bottom center of the frame.  Each new sound collage brings a new dimension and humor to the cycle, the third one pushing the short into Don Hertzfeldt territory with the use of Italian opera.  The linework is fantastic, so fantastic that you'd think computers had to have been used.  Nopez.  All by hand.  Including that cartoony little fall-apart at the end.  I can't even draw a circle freehand, and Pauly's kicking graphs and taking names.  And that's just before he started working in kitchen tables.

(sorry about the video decay)

Object Conversation explodes sound and language in a series of bracing and humorous sound collages, accompanied by lively blueprint-esque animations.  The fixed yet constantly shifting tableaux allow the viewer to focus on different elements of the frame, and encourage repeated viewings to catch all the interplay and allusion on display.  The effect is a little indescribable, but is highly reminiscent of the Beatles' "Revolution 9" as seemingly improvisatory collage art.  As with Five Improvisations the line work is fantastic and beautifully 3-D, making up for the lack of color with movement and definition.  There's so much going on it's impossible to talk about specific moments, but it's never overwhelming, maintaining a perfectly watchable balance of elements (unlike a lot of complex film art that ends up being confusing and therefore dull).  I think my favorite detail is the pair of scissors that closes and cuts a bunch of lines behind it, sending them falling down in impeccable slow motion.


Despite the recognition he received for these films his IMDB list is only five items long, four of which were collected on The Paul Glabicki Animation Tape, released in the 90's by Facets Video and never released to DVD.  I would highly recommend tracking it down if you have a working VCR, as the other two films on the tape are larger and even better than these two, especially his 30 minute magnum opus Film-Wipe-Film.  He's continued working in other mediums, and what I've seen is quite cool and worth investigating.  I'll close with a collaborative piece he contributed to called Academy Leader Variations (1987), a fantastic collection of unique countdowns by an international animation roster (including the jawdropping Swiss paint-on-glass animator Georges Schwizgebel).  According to YouTube his film is number 15, but in reality it's number 7 (you'll know).

~PNK

I Sing a Fruitful Conformity - PRIVILEGE (1967)

When I was a child my mother bought an old 16mm rental catalog to use for art projects.  Before home video schools and individuals could rent movies from the big studios to show with 16mm projectors, and the interest for me were the blurbs and screenshots of movies I had never seen but would be burned in my memory for years to come.  The selection was fine snapshot of the film landscape of the mid-70's, highlighting such now-obscure movies as Spielberg's The Sugarland Express and the Walter Matthau-Carol Burnett dramedy Pete 'n' Tillie.  It also had a lot of older movies that looked really cool, including the as-yet unreleased-on-video wacky comedy What's So Bad About Feeling Good? and the Anthony Newley vanity musical Can Heironymous Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?  And one movie I searched high and low for once I got to college was Privilege, only to find it didn't get a video release in the U.S. until 2008.  I found out later that Universal essentially buried the film after its release due to its upsetting message.  How upsetting?  It's only directed by the man who made the most terrifying nuke documentary of all time.

Peter Watkins started as a documentarian for the BBC and first became known for Culloden, which "covered" the 1745 Jacobite uprising as a current news story.  That is, Watkins recreated the battle and had people of its time interviewed as if a TV crew was at the battle.  Watkins has used this technique many times, including in his 3-hour Edvard Munch and La Commune (Paris, 1871).  He also used it for The War Game, a speculative documentary commissioned by the BBC to educate the public on the real facts of nuclear warfare.  It's one of the most terrifying films ever made, showing the processes of evacuation, the effects of bombing itself, and life after the bombs in soul-crushing detail.  It was actually banned by the BBC for being too disturbing, later winning the Academy Award for Best Documentary.  His most ambitious film project is Resan (The Journey), a 14 & 1/2 hour documentary about nuclear war filmed over two years across several continents.  Privilege is thankfully only 100 minutes, and as you'll see at the bottom on YouTube.  Prepare yourselves for the performance of a lifetime.

Privilege is set in a near-future England where the whole country is obsessed with pop star Steven Shorter.  He is given the country's first ticker-tape parade, and there are 300 ghastly, tacky Steven Shorter Discoteques, built "to spread happiness throughout Britain."  Shorter has turned into an icon of anguished youth, capturing the admiration of countless young people through a stage show where he is taken out in handcuffs, beaten by stage police, and finally led off stage, followed by minor rioting in the audience.  The camera-work in this performance is crucial, capturing intense weeping on the part of the teenage girls present, probably a nod to the droves of screaming fans who flocked to the Beatles' American concerts.  We first get a good amount of time with Steven at one of his Discoteques, and it is obvious that he's deeply unhappy, saying almost nothing and wincing at laughter.  You would too if you were forced to walk through one of the 300 Steve Dream Palaces, a tin-foiled monstrosity blaring advertisements for various Steven Shorter-sponsored crap, designed "to keep people happy and buying British."

Steven's entourage includes: his galpal Vanessa Ritchie (Jean Shrimpton), who's been commissioned by the British government to make paintings of Steven and keep an eye on him; his manager Martin Crossley (Jeremy Child); his music publisher Julie Jordan (Max Bacon) who clearly knows nothing of music beyond chintzy lounge tunes; Alvin Kursch (Mark London) whose vanity is only outmatched by his disregard for Steven's feelings; and Andrew Butler, chairman of Steven Shorter Enterprises, ltd.  There is also the board of Steven Shorter Enterprises, ltd., who speak of Steven's grueling American tour (about 80 different appearances across 25 days, with 3 days off).  

We follow Steven through various photo shoots, including a tacky-looking apple commercial which the Apple Marketing Board and the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries is relying on to get the British public to eat "six apples a day for the whole of the summer."  If this doesn't happen 640,000,000 apples will rot on the tree, and their existentialist art director insists on people in fiberglass apple costumes and bizarre period reenactments.  Though I have no idea how the commercial is supposed to sell apples I am certain none of the actors have any idea what's going on.  The director screams like a John Cleese character and Steven looks as if he wants to shoot lasers from his eyes to kill all of England.

The real plot of the movie comes forth with the second board meeting, where the bring in Steven to discuss the new direction of his pop stardom.  Professor Tatham (James Cossins) speaks that the first phase of Steven's career was to appeal to the violent and ambivalent zeitgeist of British youth, and now, in order to curb "critical elements in youth," and undesirable elements (Communism and Anarchism).  His new phase is to repent, to accept law and order, and fuse with the M.O. of the Anglican church to transform the youth of England into an ultra-repressed, purified race (demonstrated by a pair of models in Hello Dolly-esque yellow attire).  We are also treated to a nameless rock band recording a psychedelic version of "Onward Christian Soldiers", complete with monastic shaved-top hairdos and bottles of milk to drink.  ("Excellent!  I think you've been influenced by Count Basie, but excellent!").  

All of this is leading up to Christian Crusade Week, a massive cultural reeducation project of which Steven has been made the opener, at "the largest staging of Nationalism in the history of Great Britain."  We are shown every stage of its mounting, including the first glimpse of a concert poster featuring Steven with outstretched, semi-stigmata hands.  Steven has been put in the color red, a symbol of his release from bondage, and at a press conference he appears with handcuffs that are temporarily taken off (we had seen earlier his real bleeding from the cuffs).  Afterwards, he asks Andrew, with enormous quavering, to stop all this madness.  This is met only by a chilling speech on Steven's "importance to society" (which I won't dare spoil).  At a meal it is apparent that Steven is close to losing his mind, reverting to a childlike state with a request for hot chocolate after an unrelated question.  And then, at the National Stadium in London, we get to witness one of the most spectacularly mounted and chilling pageants this side of the North Korean Mass Games.


I cannot begin to tell you how frightening this film is.  As outlandish as some of the content may seem, all the critical imagery hits home in its dissection of the intersection of British cultural values and the rise of revolutionary rock, and makes a good point of the fine line between one totalitarian regime and another.  The opening ceremony to Christian Crusade Week is the spectacular centerpiece, and I imagine Universal shelved the movie because the production was too harsh and terrifying.  The pseudo-documentary technique here is crucial, putting us in the center of the action and making us feel like one of the crowd.  The narrator is cool and silken, more fit for a documentary on the life cycle of salmon than a man's life.  I can't speak for Jean Shrimpton, but aside from her the acting is perfect, with special mention to Paul Jones as Steven.  Jones is incredibly vulnerable, saying little and ready to crack into fits of weeping at any second.  Steven's handlers are brilliantly placed in their self-absorbed coldness, and the hundreds of extras and side figures give their all to a very risky cause.  

Privilege  may have been the first of a series of irreverent examinations of the British psyche, paving the way for If...., A Clockwork Orange, and Monty Python's Flying Circus in one way or another.  It also acknowledged the full circle effect of the British Invasion coming home and bringing American counterculture with it.  Watkins has said that he suspects A Clockwork Orange lifted design and content elements from Privilege, and I can certainly see that in the use of hideous interior design and plastic clothing.  It's also been noted that Privilege was heavily influenced by the 1962 National Film Board of Canada documentary Lonely Boy, which followed the growing hysteria surrounding Paul Anka.  I'll admit that some of the message in Privilege may seem blunt or overstated.  I would point out that one of the greatest strengths of the film is its mounting dread, a kind of catharsis through inevitability, and as all the elements come together at Christian Crusade Week the viewer is paralyzed by the possibility that this could happen here.  I once saw a filmed interview with Margaret Atwood, and when asked about The Handmaid's Tale, she said she found it interesting how different English-speaking countries reacted to its dystopian, misogynistic future.  She noticed that the British asked "Can it happen here?", the Canadians "Will it happen here?", and the Americans "How long until it happens?"

~PNK

Special Report - LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THE FABULOUS STAINS (1980-1982)

The rise of punk scenes on both sides of the Atlantic in the late 70's saw a fascinating change in how music was marketed, not just what kind of music but how.  Media was turning its focus towards a bottomless underground collective, each group as exciting as they were nameless.  As marketing teams noticed the sheer mass of talent and joyous rage, the film industry saw the opportunity to capitalize not only on a couple artists but a genre, and ever since The Blank Generation punk, new wave, and no wave movies were churned out and sold based on their soundtracks.  Some movies employed punk rockers as actors, such as Richard Hell in Susan Seidelman's acidic debut film Smithereens (1982).  Many of them were documentaries (such as Urgh!  A Music War (1982)) and others were just movies that crammed every aural nook and cranny with cheaply-licensed songs (such as Get Crazy (1983)).  You'll notice that both of those movies came out after the initial explosion of punk had died off and post-punk and new wave had taken over (which may have been better music but more distanced from the raw emotion that started the movement).  Many of these movies have been locked up in copyright issues for years, such as those two, because of how cheap music licensing was in the 70's and 80's and how expensive it is now.  The technique rose again in the early 90's once grunge, college rock and jangle pop came to the fore, with movies like Singles and Reality Bites doing good business because of their OST's (lasting into the late 90's, when straightforward rock music giving way to rap rock and nu metal).  It's an interesting reminder that subcultures are generated by corporations just as much as genuine volition.  It came back in the mid-2000's, with Garden State being the maidenhead of the indie-rock soundtracks (and actually having some good music on it), and is still going to a certain extent.  I'll return to the first wave in good time (I've got the intriguing Incident at Channel Q coming in the mail), but for today we've got one of the rarest and most legendary: Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains.

I call this article a "special report" because I had the extraordinary privilege of seeing this at a midnight screening at the Coolidge Corner Theater in Brookline, MA.  The theater had secured an extremely rare print from a private collection, and I can't think of a better way to get acquainted with this movie than the original print with all fading, dirt and grain.  Set for a theatrical release, Stains had a troubled production and spent a year in editing, being pulled from wide release after a disastrous test screening in Denver.  Aside from scattered festival screenings it's studio, Paramount, dumped the movie to late-night cable, where it slowly gained a cult following and the admiration of rock figures such as Jon Bon Jovi and Courtney Love.  It didn't get a video release until 2008 with Rhino Entertainment.  I can't begin to tell you how lucky I was to see this movie on the big screen, and tonight you can too, at midnight at the Coolidge.  It's the last night they're doing it, so let me give you all the reasons to see the thing right here, right now.

Diane Lane (only 14 when she auditioned!) plays Corrine Burns, whose mother has just died from lung cancer.  She keeps smoking.  She had been interviewed for a TV news special on teens in her backwater mill town, and in the process blew up at her fast-food boss and lost her job.  Being interviewed for a follow up on her now broke and basically homeless state, she says she's going on tour with her band, The Stains.  It's just her, her sister Tracy (Marin Kanter) and their cousin Jessica (Laura Dern), who prefers to be called Peg, to the chagrin of her mother Linda (Christine Lahti).  At a local show they see The Looters (an electrifying Ray Winstone as Billy and members of the Sex Pistols) and are transfixed, only to see that they are merely the support group for the washed up Metal Corpses headed by Lou Corpse in terrible makeup (Fee Waybill of The Tubes).  Corrine gets a deal with Billy to play on their American tour, despite the Stains only having three rehearsals, and they hop on the bus, driven by a fascinating Rastafarian (Barry Ford).

Their first show is some 70's styled club in Pennsylvania (though the movie was shot in British Columbia), and from the first note it's apparent the Stains can't play.  At all.  After being laughed off stage, Corrine storms back on and takes her outer clothes off, revealing an outrageous hairdo and a see-through blouse with no bra.  Though catcalls erupt, some of the women are awestruck.  What follows is a brilliant anger catapult, with Corrine verbally abusing a man in the front row and espousing the Fed Up Teenage Girl manifesto ("I'm perfect!  But nobody in this shithole gets me, because I don't put out!").  She tears of stage, and Billy recognizes her raw spirit, encouraging her to practice more and hone her music.  Unfortunately, tragedy strikes - the guitarist for the Metal Corpses, who spent the first part of the movie hiding behind hilarious sunglasses and sleeping off highs, is found dead in the ladies' room*.  Sent into scramble mode, Billy calls his agent to get them a support group, as he's not interested in the Stains opening for them despite his supportive words.

Something curious happens in the wake of the death of the Corpses's guitarist.  The female newscaster who did the interviews on Corrine from the beginning of the movie covers the scene and gets Corrine's take on events, which are complete lies made to impulsively grab attention and notoriety.  The newscaster gets a grand idea.  She begins following the Stains and encouraging young girls to see them in makeup, creating a feminist movement out of thin air.  Corrine gets Tracy and Peg/icca to dress like her, and the band does improve dramatically, but she remains stupid and impulsive.  The problem arises in that a Stains fanbase, calling themselves Skunks, is erupting at an alarming rate, fueled by the media coverage following the tour, and neither Corrine, the Looters or the bus driver know what to make of it.  Things only get more insane as Billy's slimeball agent gets involved, but I shouldn't spoil the rest.

The plot is familiar, now much more so from the parade of fallen music idol movies and Spinal Tap imitators over the years.  However, the strength of the movie isn't just in the set-up but rather in the conflict, density, and character depth that drive the film towards its loaded conclusion.  The character dynamics in Stains are terrifically rich, and both Corrine and Billy, as well as many of the lead supports, are deeply drawn and entirely engaging.  Diane Lane is astounding here, this being only her second movie, energetic and completely fearless.  The movie would have been a lot less compelling if she didn't completely sell her vitriolic, kick-in-the-pants role.  I'm not sure Thora Birch has ever seen this film but I wouldn't be surprised if she based Enid in Ghost World off of Corrine.  I've always loved Ray Winstone and he's perfect as the pissed-off leader of a second-tier punk outfit far from their home.  His presence and assured movement radiates from the screen, and he adds a great deal of depth to a role that could have easily been one note.  Fee Waybill is excellent as Lou Corpse, turning in a simultaneously repulsive and fragile performance for a non-actor.  Barry Ford's Rastafarian bus driver is perfectly placed, and I wouldn't dare spoil his character's secrets here.  And Christine Lahti, though not in much of the movie, brings a lot of sober heart to a somewhat out-of-control story.  I've only seen her in three movies (the others being Sidney Lumet's Running on Empty and Bill Forsyth's Housekeeping, which I'll get to in good time) and already I'm entranced by her worldly sensitivity and appealing down-to-Earthyness.  She's something of another Catherine O'Hara (another actress I don't see nearly enough), and if they played sisters in a movie I'd pre-order tickets before it was even filmed.


The script is dense and full of emotion, coming from Nancy Dowd (Slapshot, Coming Home), who actually took her name off the film because of her dissatisfaction with the production and sexual harassment issues.  She didn't see the film in its entireity until she caught it on cable years later.  Her story of punky teenage girl rebellion has similarities to Times Square (another wonderful and hard-to-find movie from the early 80's), where two runaways amass a small cult of defiantly-dressed followers, though that movie was more naive in its message and at least got released properly.  The director is record producer Lou Adler, turning down Airplane! to make this and coming off of Cheech and Chong's Up In Smoke.  For somebody who wasn't trained in film school and had only directed one movie prior, Stains looks great.  The shots are knowing and sensitive to the drama of the story and characters, and the movie does a great job of making rainy, dismal British Columbia stand in for rural American doldrums.  He also does a great job of filming the music performances, of which there are naturally many.  Adler spent about a year editing the movie by himself, and the continual trouble shows its face now and again.  I normally don't want movies to be longer but this is one that could have used a few more establishing scenes and another edit from an industry professional.  The only other problem I can think of is the slimeball agent, whose character is completely stock and could have been much more interesting, though everything else in the movie is so captivating I didn't care all that much.

Despite it's production trouble, unlikely talent (including producer Joe Roth, who went on to head Disney!) and somewhat rushed pacing, Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains is one of the wisest, richest, and most engaging movies I've ever seen about music.  The central conflicts between teenage feminist rebellion, the dark side of rock stardom, and the pains of growing up are brilliantly played out and could inspire endless discussion.  The performances are marvelous and Lane and Winstone should have won awards for their work.  The fact that Paramount pulled the movie from release angers me immensely, considering how everybody involved with the film thought it was going to be a hit.  The DVD release is a godsend to fans of punk on film, and there are plenty of cheap used copies on Amazon if you're curious.  And for those of my friends still in Boston the Coolidge is doing one last screening of the super-rare 35mm print tonight at midnight, and if you have any interest I would suggest supporting their excellent series and coming out to the show.  I couldn't find the movie for free on YouTube but I did find this 11-minute documentary of the movie and its impact, so have a look.  Perhaps we can all love Stains, but nobody in this shithole will get us because we don't put out.

~PNK 

*One of my favorite moments in the movie is really subtle.  Once Jerry Jervey is found dead, most of the time is shots of people looking into the bathroom.  A bunch of people come by, look into the bathroom, talk about how he's dead, and have diverse reactions.  We only see Jerry for about five seconds at the end.  It's a nice reminder that, in a fame-driven world like rock, the fact that people are looking at the subject is more important than the subject itself, which is more often tragic than not.