Here’s the infamous scene where Dean Stockwell’s whacked-out Ben character lip-syncs to Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams” while Dennis Hopper’s equally insane Frank Booth looks on in David Lynch’s “Blue Velvet.” Stockwell allegedly came up with Ben’s “look” by reading Lynch’s script and imagining what kind of person Frank would consistently praise as being “suave.” I love the way that the otherwise aggro Frank gets very emotional while watching Ben’s performance and then about 1:14 in, abruptly starts having a psychotic break. Two brilliantly weird performances in a masterpiece of a film. I’ll watch this scene 1,000 more times than have to endure one more scene of some movie character singing Motown tunes into a hairbrush. And would someone please send me that smoking jacket that Ben wears?
Here’s the infamous live version of “Sympathy for the Devil” from the December 1969 concert at Altamont where a Stones fan was stabbed to death (caught on camera for the documentary “Gimme Shelter”). However, contrary to popular belief, the stabbing took place during “Under My Thumb,” not “Devil.” However, one of the scariest scenes in any documentary comes in at about 4:10 into this clip when a certain Hells Angel (who has been hired to provide “security”) starts eyeballing Jagger. I can’t tell if he wants to f–k Mick Jagger or kill him … or both. In any case, that look he gives Jagger is really f–king scary.
In the early 1970s, legendary comic actor/director Jerry Lewis decided to make what he believed would be the film that would finally make critics take him seriously … and hopefully shower him with Oscars. The film was “The Day the Clown Cried” and the plot involved a clown (played by Lewis) who is sent to a concentration camp by the Nazis in World War II and the clown’s job is to entertain the children in the camp before they’re sent off to the gas chambers.
That’s a VERY … um … heavy and bizarre subject for a film … not to mention potentially tasteless. To be fair, I’m not saying that this concept would be impossible to bring off in a non-offensive manner. But it would take an artistic genius on the level of Orson Welles during the “Citizen Kane” era to do this and I’m not even sure he could pull it off.
Nobody’s entirely sure what happened next, but Lewis got into battles with his financiers and eventually, the film was never released. It’s allegedly locked in one of Lewis’s vaults somewhere and he has never shown it to anyone. The subject matter is verboten for any Lewis interview.
However, a few people have managed to see it, most notably comedian Harry Shearer who saw it in a surreptitious screening back in the 1970s. I’ve attached a clip from the Howard Stern Show from 2011 where he talked to Howard about seeing the film.
When Shearer was interviewed for a famous Spy magazine article about the film in 1992, he described it as like “if you flew down to Tijuana and suddenly saw a painting on black velvet of Auschwitz. You’d just think ‘My God, wait a minute! It’s not funny, and it’s not good, and somebody’s trying too hard in the wrong direction to convey this strongly-held feeling.” He also said “With most of these kinds of things, you find that the anticipation, or the concept, is better than the thing itself. But seeing this film was really awe-inspiring, in that you are rarely in the presence of a perfect object. This was a perfect object. This movie is so drastically wrong, its pathos and its comedy are so wildly misplaced, that you could not, in your fantasy of what it might be like, improve on what it really is. ‘Oh My God!’ – that’s all you can say.”
Some extremely rare and behind-the-scenes footage of the making of “The Day the Clown Cried” recently surfaced on YouTube, which can be seen here. It is so rare in fact, that the mere posting of this footage on YouTube was a major story:
A pretty good and detailed article by Justin Bozung can be found at the Mondo Film + Podcast website:
One of the most harrowing documentaries about drug abuse ever made is Michael Cain’s and Matt Redecki’s documentary “TV Junkie.” The film chronicles the downward spiral of former “Inside Edition” commentator Rick Kirkham. When Kirkham was 14 years old, he received a movie camera as a present. From 1978 through 2000, Kirkham filmed or taped everything in his life, culminating in over 5,000 hours of footage. This included everything from happy family events, sexcapades with various women (presumably filmed before he was married), and … most importantly, for the purposes of this documentary … his drug use.
The entire film is comprised of home video footage edited together with next-to-no narration. You see everything in Kirkham’s life, from his happy life with his wife and kids to his smoking crack and fretting about catching AIDS from using a dirty needle to shoot up. Kirkham is amazingly self-aware for an addict, which is arguably a big part of his problem. He just seems to think he’s too smart to let his life fall to pieces, but it does … graphically. What’s especially disturbing are the fights with his wife while his young children are watching … and crying. At several points, I seriously considered turning the film off because it was just too damn disturbing to watch. I started to get really angry, because I thought what kind of sick, narcissistic a–hole would mentally torture and manipulate his family during some of their most painful moments … and tape it? Oh, right … a crackhead. Kirkham may have been a sick narcissist for taping his (and by extension, his family’s) downward spiral. But he also has balls of steel for allowing this footage to be used to illustrate how bad addiction can get and the collateral damage such addiction has on loved ones. This is easily one of the ugliest self-portraits in movie history.
“TV Junkie” won a prize at the Sundance Film Festival in 2006, premiered on HBO in 2007, and then kind of dropped off the radar. However, it is now available to stream through iTunes, Amazon, VUDU, and other services. One of the most compelling films you’ll ever see. I guarantee you won’t forget it.
From the Marx Brothers’ best film “Duck Soup” comes the manifesto (set to music) of the fictional country Freedonia’s new dictator Rufus T. Firefly. Key lines: “The last man nearly ruined this place, he didn’t know what to with it. If you think this country’s bad off now, just wait ’til I get through with it!”
When it was released, “Duck Soup” wasn’t as successful as other Marx Brothers films. However, contrary to popular legend it wasn’t a bomb (it was the 6th highest grossing film that year). According to Groucho Marx’s son Arthur Marx, “[MGM studio head Irving Thalberg] said the trouble with ‘Duck Soup’ is you’ve got funny gags in it, but there’s no story and there’s nothing to root for. You can’t root for the Marx Brothers because they’re a bunch of zany kooks. [Thalberg] says, ‘You gotta put a love story in your movie so there’ll be something to root for, and you have to help the lovers get together.'” And I would argue this is EXACTLY why the movies the brothers made for Thalberg pale in comparison to the earlier, more anarchic ones they made for Paramount. And it’s probably why “Duck Soup” is widely regarded as their best movie these days.
Some other fun trivia about “Duck Soup”: The residents of Fredonia, NY were upset that the use of their name as the country in the film would hurt their town’s reputation. The Marx Brothers argued that they should change the name of their town, lest it hurt the reputation of their film.
From Zevon’s 1991 album “Mr. Bad Example” (LOVE that title!), comes “Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead,” a song that only Zevon could have written.
Unfortunately, most people nowadays think of the 1995 film of the same name when this song is mentioned. To be fair, it wasn’t a bad film. It had some good performances, especially Treat Williams as a psychotic hit man / scat-muncher. But it was one of the lesser Tarantino-inspired modern noirs that arose like Herpes sores in the few years after the success of “Pulp Fiction” in 1994.
Ah, but I digress. The song is one of Zevon’s best.
Korn’s Jonathan Davis does a pretty cool and transcendent cover of Neil Diamond’s “Love on the Rocks,” recorded for the “Wonderland” soundtrack in 2003. I call it transcendent because Davis sounds like he’s taking the lyrics VERY seriously and treating them with all the gravity and desperation they allude to.
I’ve talked about “Wonderland” before on Dave’s Strange World and it’s the James Cox-directed docudrama about the infamous Wonderland Murders of 1981, which involved down-on-his-luck porn star John Holmes. Imagine the “Sister Christian/Jessie’s Girl” sequence from “Boogie Nights” expanded to feature length and that will give you an idea of what an unremittingly intense experience “Wonderland” is.
The accompanying video is a montage of scenes from “Wonderland” set to the this Davis cover. Not safe for work.
For those who may not remember this exploitation landmark, “Faces of Death” is less a documentary than a compilation of authentic news footage too grisly for broadcast and reenacted (and faked) scenes of death and mayhem. The film didn’t make much of an impact in the United States until it was released on video during the mid-1980s. Due to its then wide release, it was the subject of news stories, editorials, and the kind of hysterical overreaction normally associated with so-called “moral panics.” To judge whether this film is “good” or “bad” is futile. It’s a freak show. And a freak show’s ultimate success is not based on your judgment, but whether or not the producers got your attention, and ultimately, your money.
Being a teenager and a film fanatic at the time of its stateside video debut (especially of “controversial” films), I was anxious to see it and finally did, when a friend of my brother’s rented the video. The film did everything it was intended to do: it shocked me, appalled me, and grossed me out. It especially helped that I was too dim to see that the film’s grisliest scenes were faked. Given the fact that I was on a speech team at school at the time the film was gaining notoriety, I saw an opportunity to use my viewing of the film as the subject of an indignant diatribe against sadistic violence in film that I hoped would win me some recognition.
Now, if you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’ll realize how patently ridiculous this stance is … and was. Like most moral crusaders, I went into explicit … and titillating … detail about the content of “Faces of Death” as well as other controversial epics of the day (“Silent Night, Deadly Night,” “Body Double”) to make a point about … I mean, I was trying to get people to … OK, for the life of me, I can’t remember what my conclusion was. I don’t think I called for banning the films and I don’t think I advocated broadcasting them on the Disney Channel. If memory serves … there was literally no point to the speech at all, except to describe in explicit detail the sexual and violent content of these films. The speech was as much of a freak show as the films I discussed and of course had a tone of “These movies didn’t warp me because I’m smart … but not-so-smart people may do harmful things if they see them, so look out!”
I remember practicing this speech in front of my older brother. He listened patiently and when I finished, he told me in the kind of tone reserved for a doctor telling a patient they have a terminal illness said “Dave, you need to get laid.” Needless to say, given the lack of point and the endless variety of atrocities I described, the judges saw through my ruse immediately and the speech was, alas, not a success.
Seeing the writing on the wall, I abandoned being a moral crusader. Not only was I not good at it and full of s–t, I realized that moral crusaders frequently don’t live up to their highfalutin’ pronouncements and often find themselves being referred to as “Client 9” in indictments. More importantly, my peers of the fairer sex generally don’t find uptight, strident, self-righteous prigs that attractive. Besides, in subsequent months, I had discovered an awesome way to simulate someone’s hand being blown apart (ala “Taxi Driver”) which I used in my own sleazy Paul Schrader-inspired short film that I made for an arts program the following summer. I should point out that the graphic hand mutilation was ABSOLUTELY essential to the plot.
I’ve included the ending of “Faces of Death IV”. As much as the narrator looks like Larry David, I don’t believe it’s him (though, God, I wish it were). Anyway, after the success of the first three “Faces of Death” films, it looks like they had enough money to finally compose a song based on the film series. The song has to be heard to be believed. I will warn you that the footage over the end credits is fairly gruesome and not safe for work, but if you’re a sicko like me, the theme song will have you dying in hysterics. Enjoy!
Here’s a very cool use of (arguably) Michael Jackson’s finest music moment (“ABC”) in a film where you wouldn’t necessarily expect such a cute scene. Don’t get me wrong. Despite the crude jokes and language, Kevin Smith movies always have a lot of heart. However, the comic highlight of this film does involve a donkey show that goes WAAAAY further than the one in “The Godfather Part II” or the Tom Hanks film “Bachelor Party” …. so take it for what it’s worth. Rest assured, dear lurkers, this is a sweet scene where the lead character Dante is nervous about his upcoming wedding and his good friend (and recent one-time lover) Becky is teaching him how to dance for his wedding … despite some misgivings that she’s having trouble admitting to herself. It’s not entirely safe for work due to some brief nudity of some large man’s ass who seems to be dancing and urinating at the same time (trust me, it’s not as bad as it sounds). And yes, I have a little crush on Rosario Dawson, the actress who plays Becky. Dawson always struck me as a more down-to-earth J-Lo. Why Dawson’s not a bigger star is God’s private mystery. Aside from “Dogma,” “Clerks 2” is Kevin Smith’s best movie.
One of the most sadly underrated films of the 1990s was the intense action film “The Long Kiss Goodnight.”
The premise is a damn intriguing one. A single-mom school teacher in her mid-30s with amnesia suddenly remembers her past life as a deadly assassin. Her past comes back to haunt her when former enemies seek her demise and come after her and her young daughter. A detective / ex-con assists her in determining her prior identity and to help protect her. Though once she remembers her old skills, she doesn’t need much help.
Geena Davis and Samuel L. Jackson play the schoolteacher and detective, respectively, and do a great job. According to Wikipedia, in 2012, Jackson said this was his favorite role of all-time. It’s a damn good and hard-edged action thriller, far grittier and violent than its premise would indicate. And while it got respectful (but not great) notices from critics and did OK at the box office, it was considered a flop, given its high budget.
The film was initially fairly notorious, because the original script, by “Lethal Weapon” and “The Last Boy Scout” scribe Shane Black, sold for $4 million (the highest amount ever paid for a spec script). New LIne Cinema (the studio that bought the script) was so enamored with Black’s words that … of course … had the script rewritten … and rewritten … and rewritten.
Fortunately, enough of Black’s original vision was in the final product to make it a very, very good film. Far better than the conventional Hollywood action film. However, the original script is far darker … and better, in my opinion. You can read it here:
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