My favorite film of 1994 (aside from “Ed Wood” and “Pulp Fiction”) is Robert Benton’s comedy-drama “Nobody’s Fool,” based on Pulitzer Prize winning author Richard Russo’s 1993 novel. Paul Newman plays Donald Sullivan, a sometime-construction worker who has a lifetime of mistakes and screw-ups in his history. When his son and grandson come back into his life, he has a chance at redemption. Despite the sitcom-like nature of the trailer, the movie is actually much deeper and more resonant, without being heavy. It’s a movie I always put on when I’m in a foul or depressed mood, because all of the characters (with one or two exceptions) are fundamentally decent people, deeply flawed as they are. This is one of Newman’s five best performances and the supporting cast, from Bruce Willis to Melanie Griffith to Jessica Tandy to even Philip Seymour Hoffman in an early role, are terrific.
I loved this movie when I saw it in January of 1995, but “Nobody’s Fool” has gained special resonance for me over the years, because I wound up living in the village where this movie took place (renamed North Bath for the film) for 8 years. I didn’t even realize this until a year after I moved there, but everything about the look of this film and town positively nails the quirky, but memorable upstate NY place I once called home.
Another great track from R.E.M.’s superior 1992 album “Automatic for the People.” This was a minor hit back in the early 1990s, but isn’t played that much these days. Apparently, R.E.M. didn’t like the mix on the album and … well … ignored playing this for several tours, until 2008, when they played it in Vancouver, BC on their “Accelerate” tour. R.E.M. is entitled to their opinion, but I always loved this song.
Before Dr. John hit the pop charts with “Right Place, Wrong Time” and started lovin’ that chicken from Popeye’s, he was the Night Tripper. This song, from his 1968 debut album “Gris-Gris” has a deceptively mellow vibe, but don’t toke up or take anything stronger while listening to this… this will send you on a seriously bad paranoid trip. Amazing, sinister jazz/blues from hell.
Tarantino promotes his upcoming film “Django Unchained” on the Howard Stern Show. Like most of Tarantino’s films, the 74-minute interview is shocking, hilarious, profane, politically incorrect, and most of all, fun. Not only is Tarantino a great guest, but Stern proves once again he’s one of the best interviewers around. As you can imagine, not safe for work or little ones.
Of all the high school movies I’ve seen (good and bad), “Dazed and Confused” is the closest approximation to what I actually experienced. No, not because of the smokin’ and tokin’ or ritualized hazing. But more because the film is arguably the least sensational film ever made about teenagers.
Think about it, half the movies about teenagers are either leaden with doom and gloom (“Rebel Without a Cause,” “Kids,” “River’s Edge”). The other half portray teen life to be a non-stop hedonistic Bacchanalia of sex, drugs, booze, etc. While the characters in “Dazed” certainly party, the party in question is just a simple beer bash with one keg where the usual things happen: some people get into fights, some people hook up, some people act like fools, though most of the partygoers don’t do any of these things. At the end of the party (when the booze runs out), most people go their separate ways and that’s that. Nothing life changing happens, no character dies to show us that “partying is bad,” nobody gets laid and becomes a different person, and interestingly, no sense that this party changed any lives, good or bad. It’s just … over … and on to the next day.
The next time you watch “Dazed,” carefully look at the way it’s edited and shot. While the film has a lot of comedic moments, there’s an odd sense of dread permeating the entire film. Canadian film critic Robin Wood was the only person to describe it as a horror film and Linklater apparently wrote him a personal “thank you” note for noticing this. The dread that I get from “Dazed” has more to do with the sense that what lies ahead may not be as cool as the characters think it will be. There’s a lot of sequences that are shot in slow motion with sound mixing that doesn’t look anything like you’d see in a comedy. In my mind, the sense that nothing ever changes and/or necessarily gets much better is horrific enough for Linklater, that showcasing a death or OD or some other traumatic event would be overkill.
The other interesting thing (and why it reminds me so much of my youth), is the distinct lack of rigid divisions between cliques. Certainly, cliques exist in both “Dazed” and the high school I went to. But most people I knew may have belonged to a certain group, but most mingled freely with others. A lot of high school films, from “Mean Girls” to “Heathers” to most of John Hughes’s oeuvre portray a caste system worse than India’s and maybe that’s true for some schools, but it wasn’t my high school experience. Maybe I’m seeing a rosier past that I actually experienced, but I remember seeing “The Breakfast Club” and “Pretty in Pink” when I was a teenager, and while I could identify with certain things, a lot of it seemed like alien territory to me.
The attached trailer gives a decent flavor for the film, but it’s regretful that it’s played up like a Cheech and Chong comedy. Granted, I wouldn’t know how to market this thing either (complex works of art usually are), but I think the advertising campaign gave a false idea of what this movie was and I think this is why it took a LOOOOONG time to find an audience. Thankfully, it did.
One of the best and creepiest films of the year is Craig Zobel’s indie drama “Compliance.” Based on a stranger-than-fiction true story, the film is about a manager at a fast food restaurant who receives a call from someone who says they’re a police officer. The caller says that one of the employees has stolen from a restaurant patron and that the manger needs to detain the employee until the police arrive. Through verbal manipulation, the caller has the manager (and others) perform an increasingly bizarre, disturbing, and illegal series of activities on the employee.
“Compliance” has garnered a lot of praise … and a lot of walkouts. Many people can’t believe that others would be so stupid, that they would commit heinous acts because someone who sounds like they’re an authority figure told them to. But they do. And it happens more frequently than you would think. “Compliance” is based on a real case that happened in 2004 in Kentucky, and what happened is actually not an isolated occurrence. It’s called the “strip search prank call scam,” and there’s loads more details at this Wikipedia article:
As for the film, Zobel has done a solid job showing how this sordid series of events went down. Actress Ann Dowd, who plays the manager, has already won Best Supporting Actress from the National Board of Review for her performance. This was also one of director John Waters Ten Best Films of 2012.
“Frankenchrist” was the Dead Kennedy’s 1985 long-awaited follow-up to their 1982 album “Plastic Surgery Disasters.” Nearly 30 years later, I can’t say it’s a better album, but it’s a lot better than I remember it. Of course, much of this reassessment has to do with all of the trouble that “Frankenchrist” whipped up back in the day.
A big part of the problem was the inclusion of a poster, a reproduction of Swiss surrealist artist H.R. Giger’s “Penis Landscape,” that was included with the album. If you want to see this painting, you can type in “H.R. Giger” and “Penis Landscape” into a Google image search and see what all the fuss was about. Please note that the artwork is not safe for work or little ones. Anyway, it caused the DK’s lead singer Jello Biafra to be arrested, along with other folks, and charged with “distributing harmful matter to minors” because the warning label on the album allegedly wasn’t big enough … or something like that. The reason why they were targeted (as opposed to a more high profile artist like Prince) was because the DKs were a smaller band on an independent label. As such, they were more financially vulnerable, more likely to plead guilty, which would then set a legal precedent so then, prosecutors could go after bigger artists. To Biafra’s enormous credit and foresight, he saw the big picture, decided to fight the suit and much to his financial detriment (and his band’s ultimate demise), wound up getting the case dismissed after a long and costly trial.
Biafra’s tale is most brilliantly told in his “High Priest of Harmful Matter” spoken word album, the track labelled “Tales from the Trial” that really needs to be heard by any person who appreciates free speech. Biafra’s speech on this album briefly inspired me to want to become a First Amendment lawyer back in college, a notion that was eventually disabused by my lack of public speaking skills. However, I do cherish the memory of dropping this career plan on my ultra-conservative attorney uncle back in the day and seeing him first turn white … then red … in fear and anger. His reaction was so extreme that even my conservative Dad chuckled and gave me a thumbs up for getting under my uncle’s skin so effectively. I gotta hand it to my Dad … he always went for the cheap (and funny) joke over principles. To paraphrase Ray Bolger in “The Wizard of Oz,” “If I’d only had a pair …”
The most bizarre footnote of this case was that Gene Simmons of KISS wanted to buy Biafra’s life rights to this story so he could produce a movie about the trial with Billy Crystal playing Biafra. As Ace Ventura would say, “Alllllrighty then!”
One of my favorite December rituals is looking to see what films irreverent, but legendary filmmaker John Waters has selected for his 10-best films of the year in Artforum magazine. Below is the list, but his commentary at the Artforum website (located at the link) above is a must-read.
The Deep Blue Sea – Terence Davies
Paradise: Faith – Ulrich Seidl
Paradise: Love – Ulrich Seidl
Amour – Michael Haneke
Killer Joe – William Friedkin
Beasts of the Southern Wild – Benh Zeitlin
Compliance – Craig Zobel
Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present – Matthew Akers
Garbage’s best song. I love the retro John Barry-style wall of noise on this one, with the horn section rocking just hard as the guitars. Fitting, I first heard this on Kim Fowley’s Underground Garage radio show.
Dave's Strange World 