Author Archives: Dave's Strange World

“Pecker” (1998) dir. John Waters

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“Pecker” is arguably John Waters’ last good film. I hate to say this, because I personally like Waters as a raconteur and essayist. Even for his movies that I didn’t particularly like (“Cecil B. Demented” and “A Dirty Shame”), the audio commentaries on the DVDs are a riot and are worth the price of the DVDs alone.

Having said that, “Pecker” is Waters’ very funny and appealing utopian vision of an unusually cool, but diverse underground … a mix of high-brow and low-brow, blue-collar and hipster, gay and straight, criminal and non-criminal, etc. I’ve never really liked Edward Furlong as an actor, but he’s really great as the title character, an “outsider” artist and photographer who sees beauty and art in (mostly blue collar) things many people dismiss or laugh at “ironically.” His navigation from obscurity to fame to fame on his terms may be unrealistic, but it is inspiring and very sweet.

Despite my sentiments about what a sweet film this is, there is full frontal nudity and a lot of rude jokes / language scattered throughout “Pecker” so if you’re prudish, it’s best to stay away. However, “Pecker” is a very fun movie and it gives one hope that someday, artistic and social barriers can come down and all the cool people can finally come together, hang out, and well, be cool with what each person decides makes them happy.

For better or worse, “Pecker” is the pop cultural artifact that introduced “teabagging” to a wide audience.

“Don’t Change” – INXS

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I’m not a fan of INXS, but there’s a few of their songs I really like. “Don’t Change” is one of them. I think the reason I like this song so much (along with the other exceptions that appeal to me) is that it doesn’t really sound like most of their other stuff. When “Don’t Change” pops up on 80s or New Wave stations I sometimes listen to, I don’t change the dial. A very underrated song in their oeuvre. From the stupidly titled 1982 album “Shabooh Shoobah.”

“When You Walk in the Room” – Jackie DeShannon

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An absolutely wonderful example of early 1960s pop: the driving bass and drums, the dramatic strings, the Byrds-like guitar sound, and that voice of DeShannon’s cracking with emotion. The Searchers and Pam Tillis may have had bigger hits with their covers of this, but the original by DeShannon is nothing short of magnificent.

“Up the Junction” – Squeeze

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From the 1979 album “Cool for Cats,” this is one of Squeeze’s most popular songs. “Up the Junction” is based on a 1968 British film of the same name (and a 1965 British television film directed by famed director Ken Loach), which in turn, was based on a 1963 novel by Neil Dunn.

I love the way the lyrics play out in this song, which tells a bittersweet tale of young love, resulting in some heavy consequences, which ultimately leads to a sad end. Despite the sad way the song ends, this is a brilliantly written pop song. An amazingly complex tale told in just slightly under three and a half minutes.

“I Got You” – Split Enz

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One of the best singles of the 1980s, “I Got You” is the only Split Enz song that ever made an impact in the United States. A fine blueprint for the terrific pop Split Enz-bandmate Neil Finn would later produce with his band Crowded House. For those who care, this was voted the 11th best New Zealand pop song of all time. (“Don’t Dream It’s Over” by Finn’s Crowded House was #2 … #1 is something called “Nature” by a band called Formylua from 1969).

“Normal Life” (1996) dir. John McNaughton

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In 1986, director John McNaughton was hired by a Chicago-based video company to make a quickie violent exploitation film inspired by the true story of serial killer Henry Lee Lucas.  McNaughton returned with a violent film all right, only it wasn’t the “fun” Freddy Krueger-style slasher film the producers were expecting.  The resulting film, “Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer,” was a true look into the void and an attempt to delve realistically into the mind of a monster, without sensationalism or cheap emotion.  It was immediately called one of the most disturbing and upsetting films ever made.  The film was eventually released in 1990 unrated (since the ratings board refused to give it an R) and was a success with critics, who lauded the film’s realistic tone and fine acting.

McNaughton’s 1996 film “Normal Life” was an equally  audacious attempt to drain the “criminal lovers on the run” genre (popularized by “Bonnie and Clyde”) of its sensationalism and tendency to portray its lead characters as romantic “beautiful losers.”  While McNaughton doesn’t seem to hate his lead characters in “Normal Life,” he doesn’t see them as misguided heroes either.

Luke Perry and Ashley Judd give, arguably, their finest performances as a troubled married couple who turn to armed robbery to fund their version of the American Dream.  Perry plays the decent, but painfully co-dependent cop with a romantic hero complex named Chris.  Judd plays an emotionally disturbed and grossly immature woman named Pam.  When Chris sees Pam for the first time in a bar, she has had a fight with her boyfriend and cuts her hand on a broken glass.  He brings bandages over and asks her to dance.  It goes downhill from there …  Eventually, Chris and Pam marry, but Pam’s mental instability and immaturity put them in a deep financial hole.  Chris eventually turns to crime to dig their way out and Pam, turned on by Chris’s recent path, eagerly joins in.  The result is a coldly brilliant portrayal of two criminals on a downward spiral.

Perry and Judd are two actors I’ve never had much affection for, but their performances in “Normal Life” are mesmerizing.  Judd brilliantly plays Pam’s emotional train-wreck of a character all too well.  With his droopy mustache and passive nature, Perry positively nails the type of co-dependent person who falls in love with someone like Judd’s character and desperately tries to make the relationship work at any cost, despite the fact that the Judd character continually proves she don’t deserve it.

“Normal Life” was dumped by its distributor Fine Line into home video hell.  I didn’t post the trailer, because frankly, it makes the film look like the cheesiest straight-to-video schlock that I’m sure the studio thought they had.  But trust me, the film is so much better than that and it deserves to be seen without being prejudiced by the atrocious trailer that I found online.  A true gem if there ever was one.

“Pictures at a Revolution” by Mark Harris

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Easily one of the Top 5 best books I’ve read about American film history is Mark Harris’s terrific 2008 tome “Pictures at a Revolution.”  “Pictures” focuses on the five films nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1967 and through chronicling the genesis, production, and release of these films, Harris makes a strong argument that this was the tipping point between the Hollywood of old and the “new Hollywood” that emerged in the 1970s.  If you enjoyed Peter Biskind’s seminal 1970s Hollywood chronicle “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls,” “Pictures” is a worthy prequel and, arguably, just as complex and readable as Biskind’s famous book.

However, please note that while Harris focuses extensively on the five Best Picture nominees of 1967 (“Bonnie and Clyde,” “Dr. Doolittle,” “The Graduate,” “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” and “In the Heat of the Night”), this isn’t the limit of the tale that “Pictures” tells.   Harris paints vivid portraits of the creative forces behind these films (Mike Nichols, Warren Beatty, Arthur Penn, Stanley Kramer, Sidney Poitier, Rod Steiger, Norman Jewison, Rex Harrison, Faye Dunaway, Francois Trauffaut, Buck Henry, Katherine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, Anne Bancroft, and Joseph E. Levine among several others) as well as other films from the era that were also making a huge impact (“Jules and Jim,” “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” “Blow Up,” “The Sound of Music,” “My Fair Lady,” “A Patch of Blue” among several others).   While “Pictures” may not be as gossipy as Biskind’s classic, it serves as a wonderfully entertaining social history of how 1960s Hollywood reflected (and in many cases, resisted) the cultural changes that swept the nation during that tumultuous decade.  If you have any interest at all in film or social/cultural history, Harris’s book is a must-read.

Favorite anecdote:  Warren Beatty is showing “Bonnie and Clyde” to Warner Brothers studio head Jack Warner.  Warner advised that if he has to get up to go to the bathroom, the picture will not work.  Warner excused himself three times to use the restroom.  At the end of the screening, Warner advised that the film was terrible because it was “a three-piss picture.” Beatty tried to flatter Warner by saying that “Bonnie and Clyde” was an homage to the gangster movies that made Warner Brothers a huge success in the 1930s.  Warner’s reply: “What the f–k’s an ‘homage’?”

“The ‘In’ Crowd” – Bryan Ferry

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Bryan Ferry’s transcendent 1974 cover of the Dobie Gray – Ramsey Lewis jazz-soul classic from the 1960s. Ferry can totally rock a white dinner jacket and still kick ass better than most leather-jacketed would-be “tough” guys. He also has the good taste to include some dissonant electric guitars on this cover as a wink and nod to the hip rockers in the audience. Yes, Ferry looks like every bad personal injury lawyer on TV, but he arguably gets better as he gets older.