https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kPXw6YaCEY
A rare performance clip of John Coltrane performing his classic rendition of “My Favorite Things” from “The Sound of Music,” live in Belgium in 1965.
My 10-year old son watched an episode of the “The Goldbergs” this week where the lead child character watches “E.T.” in a movie theater for some untold multiple time. As a result, my son asked if we could watch this tonight. I watched it with him. Here are my thoughts …
1. This film still packs an emotional wallop. I still found myself tearing up on multiple occasions, even though I’ve seen “E.T.” several times over the years. Many people deride director Steven Spielberg as being “manipulative.” I cry “bulls–t” on that. Why is being called “manipulative” a bad thing for a film director? Because the filmmaker made you feel an actual emotion? Because you felt something in a film involving something fantastical instead of something “real”? I realize there’s enough rancid and depressing “real” s–t in this world to make you feel agony 50x over. But why is getting emotionally involved in something less than “real” a bad thing? This is what’s called “drama” and sometimes, it’s OK to be involved in a drama that has faint resemblance to reality. Especially when it’s done well.
2. The composer John Williams deserves at least 50 percent credit for the artistic success of the film. Not to deride Spielberg’s talent, but that score is one of the most emotional scores ever recorded. This is music that can raise your spirits to the highest highs and then completely devastate you at the drop of a hat. Williams has recorded many great and classic scores for filmmakers as diverse as Spielberg, George Lucas, Robert Altman, Brian De Palma and Oliver Stone. His score for “E.T.” is arguably his best because it’s such an integral part of the film’s power.
3. I realize I’m going to catch a lot of s–t from cinephiles for saying this … but the unspoken influence on “E.T” may be … Robert Altman. OK, I realize if Robert Altman directed this film, there would be 30 additional major characters and the extra-terrestrial part of the story would be reduced to a subplot … but stay with me here. During significant parts of this film (especially during the first half), there is an emphasis on naturalistic dialogue (helped by brilliant editing and sound design) that isn’t always in the foreground. You can hear what’s being said, but it’s way more subtle than a modern day filmmaker attacking similar material would allow. Assisting this are brilliant … extremely real … performances by Henry Thomas, Robert McNaughton, Drew Barrymore, Dee Wallace, and every other child actor in this film. Watching them interact together, you feel like you’re watching a real family interacting amongst each other and their friends.
4. For a special-effects central film from over 30 years ago, “E.T” holds up really well. Ignoring the obvious clothing and set design cues from 1981-82, the non-CGI effects hold up much better than many CGI-heavy films from the 1990s. Yes there are a few opticals that look out-of-date, but I’ll take those opticals over bad CGI any day. Why? Because you can do a lot with camera placement, editing, blocking, dialogue, set design, model building, and acting to make whatever limitations you have in special effects seem non-significant. Spielberg assembled a talented crew and the result is remarkable and believable.
5. Spielberg was a bit of closet hipster here. Not only can you here Jim Carroll’s “People Who Died” in the background while the boys are playing Dungeons & Dragons, Elliott’s brother Michael sings the lyrics from Elvis Costello’s “Accidents Will Happen” when he comes home from school and is looking through the fridge.
6.The final scene (shown above) is still amazing for its emotional intensity.
7. I realize hipsters claim “Jaws” and “Raiders of the Lost Ark” are Spielberg’s greatest films, but as great as those films are, “E.T.” is still the king.
I first heard this as a bonus track on Nine Inch Nails’ pulverizing 1992 EP “Broken.” I thought this was an original and found out much later it was actually a cover of an Adam & The Ants song. I checked out the Ants’ version, fully expecting it to be in the same mode of their other music: upbeat, percussion-heavy pop. All I can is that I was WAAAAY off-base in my assumption. Adam & The Ants must have been listening to Killing Joke and Public Image Ltd. back in the day, because this is really, really heavy and intense. In fact, it almost sounds like … you guessed it … Nine Inch Nails, but nearly 10 years before Nine Inch Nails.
Just discovered this incredible new band today, Spider Heart from San Francisco. They could best be described as a cross between early Wire, the Stooges, Jane’s Addiction, Black Sabbath, and the Nymphs. But even that description falls far short. There are few bands that can be described as true originals and Spider Heart is one of them. Lead singer May Black has been described as a cross between Iggy Pop and Janis Joplin and damn if that’s not an accurate assessment. Except I would also throw Inger Lorre, Courtney Love, and Darby Crash into that mix. This is authentically dangerous and thrilling music and if you like what you hear, do yourself a favor and check out their awesome EP “Dirt” available on iTunes and Google Play. And of course, you can also enjoy them on Dave’s Strange Radio!
There’s a brilliant and crucial, nearly 6-minute scene from “Boogie Nights” that was deleted before its theatrical release set to Fleetwood Mac’s “Tusk” that should be seen by any fan of the film. In it, Becky Barnett (played by Nicole Ari Parker), the porn actress that got married to a Pep Boys manager, finds her new life outside the industry to be a nightmare of domestic violence, a scene all-too-common when a porn star marries a “civilian.” The civilian, in question, is turned on by the notion of being with a porn star, but paradoxically, can’t handle that person’s past. It’s the Madonna-whore complex at its ugliest. Becky calls on Dirk Diggler (played by Mark Wahlberg) to rescue her, but he’s so far gone on cocaine to be an effective savior for Becky, wrecking his car on the way to saving her.
It’s likely Anderson deleted the scene from the final film because of the film’s overall length (already at over 2.5 hours), but he also mentioned (in the DVD commentary) he thought this was too depressing a scene for a film that has enough dark moments in its last third and that by deleting it, he wanted to give at least one of his characters a happy ending (Becky’s wedding earlier in the film). While I don’t think the scene’s deletion detracts from the film, its inclusion would have made the final third more powerful, albeit more depressing. Still, at the end of the scene, there’s no clue what happens to Becky after she confronts her husband. So … as much as I admire this scene … Anderson probably made the best choice in deleting it. Given that, it’s still worth seeing. Please note that this is a very unpleasant scene to watch and is not safe for work or delicate sensibilities.
Life in a Blender are an extremely cool band that could best be described as Camper Van Beethoven and Tom Waits getting Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers really, really drunk … though even that doesn’t do them justice. They may be quirky, but while I realize the adjective “quirky” can be a negative these days, trust me when I say they are quirky in the BEST way. They’re terrific musicians with unconventional skewed lyrics and I’m not quite sure my lame analogy above even remotely does them justice. The best thing I can say about them is that they are true originals and their style is next-to-impossible to copy or duplicate. My biggest surprise is that they’ve been around since the 1990s and I haven’t heard of them until this past week. In any case, you’re encouraged to check them out … specifically on Dave’s Strange Radio, where they have been generously thrown into rotation.
Great song … great scene … especially the way Wreckless Eric’s version climaxes the scene in all of its clunky glory.
One of my favorite pieces of rock criticism … as well as psychology about a certain type of “friend” many people have during their teens / early 20s … is Chuck Klosterman’s analysis of Ted Nugent from the book “Fargo Rock City”:
“My problem with Ted Nugent is that guys who aspire to be like him – or are just like him by default – make me feel ashamed for liking hard rock. They have no sense of of humor and they beat people up and they kill cats for no reasons. They get totally f–ked up on Budweiser anytime they’re in public; if they smoke pot, they only do so when they’re already drunk, so they never get mellow … Once you become friends with these people … you can never relax. If you get drunk with these guys, they will write on your face with a black Magic Marker. They will literally p–s all over you. They will steal your car and intentionally drive it into a ditch … If you’re not consciously being an a–hole to someone else, you will become a victim. And what can you do? Nothing. And why not? Because these are your goddamn friends.”
I have mixed feelings about Martin Scorsese’s classic “rockumentary” “The Last Waltz” which chronicles … at least at that point … the last concert of The Band at Winterland in 1976. But this moment from “Waltz” … for me … is the film’s finest moment and the best version of “The Weight” ever recorded in my opinion. I’ve always felt I was supposed to like this song more than I did, given its prominence on classic rock radio and in several seminal films from “Easy Rider” to “The Big Chill.” However, this version featured in “Waltz” is transcendent and beautiful. I love the interplay between the Band and the Staple Singers on this version.
There are many interpretations of what the lyrics of this song mean … some of them thoughtful, others not so much. I’m not sure what’s going on in this song, from the barely heard Robert Altman-esque dialogue in the background, to the lyrics which sound like someone having a mental breakdown, but I’m mainly focusing on the wall of noise that surges louder and louder as the song progresses to have the entire thing crash down into a million pieces at the end. This was the first Weezer song I remember hearing and when I found out Ric Ocasek from the Cars produced this, I thought “Of course.” Mainly because I thought Weezer (circa 1994) sounded like a more radio-friendly version of the Pixies in much the same way the Cars were a more radio-friendly (at least in America) version of Roxy Music. This is not meant a slam to either Weezer or the Pixies (or the Cars or Roxy Music), because that first Weezer album (the self-title “blue” album) takes everything that’s great about the Pixies and adds more hooks. It’s a classic pop album and it’s the one I most frequently return to, even though I love a lot of Weezer’s later albums. “Undone” is my favorite song off the “blue” album.
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