Sunset Gun

Johnny Ace Died on Christmas--Dead Musicians Who Actually Make Me Sad

"Millions will watch you...as you sink right down to the ground."

Merry Christmas. What am I thinking about? Dead people. Or rather, dead musicians who actually make me sad. No Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin or Jimi Hendrix here. Instead, I’ve focused on those talents (my favorites) who are really, really, really tragic. Obviously no list is complete (like, Elvis and Hank Williams are not included; neither is Patsy Cline, Nick Drake, Bon Scott, Sam Cooke, Serge Gainsbourg or Chet Baker) but this is as depressed as I’m going to get.

Johnny Ace (June 9, 1929-December 25, 1954)—Murder or accidental death? Russian roulette was the fatality for this young, gorgeous pianist/singer. But how weird that Ace decided to play the deadly game during a five minute break in a concert? And on Christmas day? His posthumous hit is the one most have heard if they’ve seen Mean Streets, Bad Lieutenant and yes, Christine—the plaintive, haunting ballad “Pledging My Love”—but everything on the "Johnny Ace Memorial Album" is peerless. RIP ACE.

Otis Redding (September 9, 1941-December 10, 1967)—One of the most important, influential and heart stopping soul singers ever, Otis Redding gave us about four years of gorgeously gravely voiced/smoothly sexy/heartbreaking music. Recording on Stax, Redding’s output is near perfect with songs like “These Arms of Mine,” “I’ve Been Loving You,” “Try a Little Tenderness,” “Open the Door” (one of my favorites) and of course, [Sittin’ On] The Dock on the Bay” which only proved he was at his artistic peak. But fate is one f'ed up hitch and 26-year old Redding perished in a plane accident in 1967. The idea of what he would have furthered in his career is too maddening to ponder. Life is just too unfair to make sense of sometimes.

Marvin Gaye (April 2, 1939-April 1, 1984)—If you don’t think the loss of Marvin Gaye is tragic than I don’t consider you human. His credit, influence and scope is too numerous to list but briefly—he started as a crooner at Motown, moved on with the revolutionary “What’s Going On” (a record Berry Gordy claims to have never understood), worked it with his erotic bit of velvet “Let’s Get it On” and created one of music’s most brilliantly bitter accounts of divorce, the acid entitled “Here My Dear” (the royalties of this album all went to his ex-wife). There were the tax problems, the cocaine and then, the 1980’s hit “Sexual Healing.” But Gaye’s ups and downs hit a massive sink hole while arguing with his father in 1984. What happened? Gaye’s father shot and killed his son. Not sure if there’s too many acts to top the horror of murdering your own son. The tragedy is all the more terrible when thinking how Gaye Sr. must have felt.

Jackie Wilson (June 9, 1943-January 21, 1984)—if you look at the singer’s career at his shady label, Brunswick, Jackie Wilson’s entire life was tragic. The “Lonely Teardrops,” “(No Pity) in the Naked City” singer with the range of Mario Lanza (no one could touch his upper register) was one of music’s most brilliant talents, but his influential mixture of R&B and soul never crossed over to the extent it should have. Too many of his recordings were string-tied when they should have been raucous. If you’ve not been initiated into the magic and moves of Jackie Wilson, just rent his appearances on Shinding and you’ll become a believer. Shot in 1961 by a female fan (he was seriously wounded but recovered), a career slump, a hit in 1967 (“Higher and Higher”) and yet another downturn, in 1975 while singing “My heart is crying, crying…” he collapsed on stage from a heart attack. He lived for years in a vegetative state and died in 1982. It’s said that Al Green (he better not go anytime soon) was Jackie’s most generous supporter in the hospital.

Dennis Wilson (December 4, 1944-December 28, 1983)—I’m not into the Beach Boys all that much—though I do recognize their merit. And though I like the record, I’m just not one of those people who claim "Pet Sounds" to be the greatest musical achievement in the history of popular entertainment. Nevertheless, Dennis Wilson’s unfortunate death bums me out. Maybe it’s because he starred in one of my favorite films of all time, Two Lane Blacktop (he's high on my if-I-had- to-find-a-boyfriend-from-a-movie list). Maybe it’s because he actually knew how to work on cars. Maybe it’s for all that guilt he felt about the whole Charles Manson connection. I don’t really know for sure. I just get really sad. Worse, the ex-Beach Boy had to die in the water.

Eddie Cochran (October 3, 1938-April 17, 1960)—Eddie Cochran isn’t talked about enough outside rockabilly circles. Most casual music listeners and even, Elvis fans, don’t even know who he is which is a shame given his innovative work with both the power cord and the overdub. If you’re not aware of him, he wrote that staple cover “Summertime Blues” (big for The Who) and the sexy, rough “Somethin’ Else” (which Sid Vicious covered and you saw done by Gary Oldman in Alex Cox's Sid and Nancy). He also gave us “Twenty Flight Rock,” “Weekend” and “Nervous Breakdown.” While touring with Gene Vincent, the boys got in a car accident leaving Cochran dead. Everyone talks about the youth of Jimi and Janis but no ones got it on Eddie Cochran—he was only 21.

Marc Bolan (September 30, 1947-September 16, 1977)—A guy who loved cars, sang about cars ("You're built like a car you’ve got a hub cap diamond star halo…”) but was terrified of actually driving a car has to DIE in a car. And with his wife, Gloria Jones, at the wheel. The Founder of the preeminent (and greatest) “glam” band T-Rex with classics like “Bang a Gong,” “Baby Strange,” “Ride a White Swan,” “Children of the Revolution” and “20th Century Boy,” the elfin creature who looked like Jimmy Page before Page did (but better) was on the verge of another breakout before his untimely death at 29. Spaceball Richochet.

Curtis Mayfield (June 3, 1942-December 26, 1999)—57 is too young if you ask me, even if you haven’t produced music that matches your output in the ‘60s and ‘70s. And if Julia Roberts can’t live in a world without Denzel Washington winning an Oscar (eyes rolling here) then I can’t live in a world where Curtis Mayfield is dead. Well, Julia got her stupid wish while I have to live the delusion of pretending Mayfield is still out there singing "They Don't Know." Responsible for a record I listen to at least once a week, The Impressions epic, genius, unmatched “This Is My Country” (it was finally just re-released on CD and vinyl—go enrich your life and musical taste and buy it) and “Superfly” as well as other standouts, the musical pioneer and one of the first outspoken black power movers had to go on and die in 1999. So, so, so wrong. I don’t even like writing about it. Especially since after a 1990 accident on stage (a lighting rig fell on him) he had been paralyzed from the neck down. The guy who famously sang the words “Every brother is a leader” and admitted to being a “Fool for You” does not deserve this. I’m a fool for him.

Gone Away.

Adam Sandler--A Defense

In November of 2000, I wrote a piece for The Oregonian that claimed the genius of Adam Sandler. It did not go over well with friends or I suspect, many readers. After all, this was before Punch-Drunk Love, a movie I predicted would make critics eat crow. Following is my four-year old defense of Sandler's misunderstood, frequent comic brilliance with added information about projects since then:

Critics hated Adam Sandler. They hated him in his breakthrough film Billy Madison and they hated him in Little Nicky. They are not alone. Even his fellow comedians, at one time hated him. I wonder if they still do.

Why such intense vitriol for the seemingly innocuous Cajun Man or Canteen Boy (two of his SNL characters)? A quick catalog of the many attacks lobbed against him:

He's dumbing down American culture. He's stuck in toilet-humor land. He's lazy and unoriginal. He's offensive. He's annoying. He's stupid. He's unlikable. He's unfunny. His picture's stink. He's mean spirited. He leads children to violence, bad manners and slackerdom.

At the time I wrote this, it was hard to find any comic actor who had aroused this sort of reaction. Maybe early Jim Carrey and of course, Jerry Lewis (though not so anymore--that  genius has finally deserved his due). Sandler resembles (especially in his most obnoxious roles--The Waterboy comes to mind) the legendary Lewis so beloved by the French that he represents, in part, the ugly American. So perhaps it will take the French, so expert at applying intellectual categories to the Hey-lady-isms of Lewis to provide philosophical sheen for Adam Sandler. With a few more films, I predict Sandler could become the next cause celebre in Paris.

Meanwhile (in 2000 anyway) the invective continued here in the States. Comic legend Albert Brooks actually compared Sandler to "cancer" in the "Words into Pictures" comedy panel discussion held in Los Angeles. Said Brooks of the multiplication of movies by the likes of Sandler: "By the way, let's do what else America likes. How about cancer? They all seem to get that. Must be good! People keep getting it!"

Brooks, curmudgeonly and maybe a bit jealous, clearly didn't (and maybe still does not) fancy Sandler. And he didn't trust audiences who like him. Continuing with his unpleasantness, the creator of such elevated comic fare as Modern Romance and Defending Your Life observed, "Audiences can only know what they're given. If you get up ont he stage and do an hour and a half of fart jokes, people laugh and they go home. But maybe one day, if you did 20 minutes of, maybe, I don't know, talking about God, then maybe the fart jokes in ten years won't go over as well."

Wait a second...Adam Sandler doesn't talk about God? Hadn't Brooks heard "The Hanukkah Song?"

"Put on your yarmulke/It's time for Hanukkah/Two-time Oscar winning Dustin Hoffmanaka/celebrates Hanukkah."

I do understand Brooks' frustration with terrible pictures reaping huge box office and I understand his annoyance with the lowest common denominator. I also see Brooks' belief that many of Sandler's pictures are sub-par (even after his comments Sandler made the disapointing Mr. Deeds, Little Nicky and 50 First Dates though Anger Management proved highly amusing at times) and that a lot of idiots frequented Sandler movies--they do.

Ten sat behind me as I tried to watch Big Daddy (but that's not Sandler's fault). Some of their "clever" witticisms? "Oh my God, gross! A gay guy!" (in response to Sandler's more daring decision in making one of the characters gay as no big deal--these mouth breathers didn't get it). With that, I had to re-evaluate just why I was sitting there. How can I, a person who worships early screwballs, Mel Brooks, Bob Newhart, Don Rickles, Richard Pryor, Andy Kaufman and Bill Murray actually love Sandler?

Because he's right up there with the best of them.

The man/child makes me laugh. Opera Man was so stupid it was funny. The recurring penguin in Billy Madison was an absurdist delight. Sandler screaming obscenities at a golf ball in the great Happy Gilmore makes me chuckle uncrontrollably (another favorite part--when he responds to Christopher MacDonald's threat of "I eat pieces of shit like you for breakfast" with, "You eat pieces of shit for breakfast?"). Listening to him sing/yell "whooop-a-dee-doo!" with manic intensity in The Wedding Singer (a movie that should have clued naysayers into his talent with vulnerable characters) fills me with hearty satisfaction. His frequent displays of violence more than amuse me. I like chicken humor. I think he's charming, even attractive. I like his voice. Why? Because he works on a primal, gut level that's much more smarter than it appears.

Case in point, the verge-of-a-nervous-breakdown, off-kilter, romantic and brilliant Punch-Drunk Love. As Barry Egan the put upon brother to seven overbearing sisters while employed as an administrator to one of those vague California companies that sell lines of novelty products , Sandler was peerless. So alien yet incredibly human is he in the movie, that he and director Paul Thomas Anderson frequently put the viewer into a state of Barry-phobia. We have no idea what will happen next (but with delight and sometimes heartbreak). Sandler, who has displayed talent before this, has never been so fantastically abstract, utilizing his scared-yet-angry-but-violent-little-boy persona with a sublime darkness. Anderson's use of Sandler is akin to Alfred Hitchcock's use of Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo, pulling the dusky and misunderstood out of a popular American icon and layering him with wounded depth. But perhaps even more surprsing was the result, a film that manages to subvert and showcase the Sandler persona beautifully while simultaneously maintaining that particular Anderson eclat and being wholly unique.

And I love that PDL alienated much of the Sandler fan-base (particularly when he and his object of amour, Emily Watson, pillow talk about how they'd like to chew each others eyeballs or hit ones face with a hammer, which I find sweet).

With James L. Brooks' Spanglish, he'll bring in a new audience (and maybe some old Sandler stragglers seeking a Rush song) though critics, will no doubt, give him the well-he-couldn't-hack-it attacks. But with Spanglish, you might be amazed to hear that the best thing about the picture is Sandler. Flawed as the film is, it is Sandler who creates a romantic figure that's offbeat, sweet and meaningful. And the old Sandler rage (which really should be taken more seriously as a cry for the everyman--much like Paul Giamatti in Sideways) is wonderfully displayed in relation to his wife (played by Tea Leoni). Wanting to "set my hair on fire and punch myself in the face" works powerfully and hilariously here. More than anyone (even Paz Vega) Sandler injects the picture with its substance--the struggles of a regular guy who's not so regular after all. And get this; Sandler's been doing this for a long time. Just with lesser directors.

Sandler's ability is evident in all his pictures. He has a simultaneous assuredness and neurosis that even, when broadly comedic, never feels strained. His lean years as the young stand-up, confidently braving Manhattan clubs to work his way through New York University, shows in his self-possessed work. Switching from self-effacing to cocky to mentally deficient, he is able to make the Everyman recognizable, interesting and just plain bizarre (as so many people, secretly, are). And he rarely misses a beat. He's got the timing down.

So if PTA gets him, Brooks (James L.) gets him and even, Martin Scorsese (who had rightfully considered Sandler to play Joey Bishop in the never made Dino project) gets him what the hell is wrong with all those stick-in-the-muds?

Reviewers can be so easily snobby that I often think they're simply being lazy. They are certainly overdoing it. Think of Roger Ebert. His vehement antipathy toward Sandler is just flat-out unfair. Pre Punch-Drunk, Ebert absolutely refused to give a Sandler picture anything above a one star. How can this be? The Wedding Singer is clearly better than Billy Madison, and yet, Ebert did not budge. Here's how he started his film review for Happy Gilmore: "Happy Gilmore tells the story of a violent sociopath." What? Is this a film about Ted Bundy or an angry, orphaned struggling hockey player knocking golf balls into tin cups? And if the film were about a violent sociopath, would that possibly make it more interesting--especially a sociopath who loves his grandmother as much as Happy Gilmore does? Again, I've always been perplexed by such extreme vexation.

So, will it really take the French to proclaim Sandler the sometimes genius he is?

It could happen. The French have appreciated physical, slapstick humor for centuries. Seventeeth-century French playwright Moliere used it liberally in such popular plays  as Tartuffe and The Misanthrope, plays in which plot is less important than wild buffoonery. Moliere was even considered a careless writer, but his sense of comedy was so rich that the flaws seemed part of his comedic process.

Though some academics may cringe at the very thought of comparing Sandler to Moliere, both understand the No. 1 rule of comedy: Make people laugh. French critics are hep to it--they were quick to embrace Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Jerry Lewis. Why do they get us?

Still, I think Sandler is showing up his previous critics. And one fine day, they will have to accept his talent. He's too funny, textured and perfectly psycho. He's not a "cancer," he is, like so many underrated comedians, a hell of an actor. And he should have won the Academy Award for Punch-Drunk Love. But give him time.

Kim Morgan on Screen Savers plus--California Split, Scarlet Street and Conway Twitty

Again on Tuesday, I appeared on The Screen Savers discussing new DVD releases. The show's on hiatus for two weeks, but will pick up in January.  You can watch my "report" every Tuesday at 4 PM thereafter.

For now, watch my Tuesday appearance HERE: http://www.dvdtalk.com/video/ssavers121504.asx

Also--My three current obsessions:

1. California Split. Very hard to see before its release on DVD (I went to the New Beverly theater several months back to get my big screen fix before the disc arrival). One of the greatest gambling movies next to George Stevens The Only Game in Town starring Warren Beatty and Liz Taylor (not on DVD) and a film that would not be made today, this is pure '70s character driven cinema. Director Robert Altman granted the "ordinary" guy or maybe even, the "loser" (though I would not classify them as such) a shaggy dignity and a subtle humor that's touching and hilarious. Elliot Gould and a fantastically nuanced, borderline heartbreaking George Segal inhabit their roles so naturally you really feel like you're hanging out with these guys. And again, Elliot Gould, my GOD you were so cool once!

2. Scarlet Street. Fritz Lang's 1945 noir stars a very fragile Edward G. Robinson, a steely Joan Bennett and the sleazy character actor extraordinaire, Dan Duryea who falls into my long list of odd object of lust. The slithery bad boy of The Little Foxes (in which he memorably mocks a mourner as just "showing off your grief") The Woman in the Window, The Great Flamarion, Dark Angel and Criss Cross is so bad and so sexy that I could close my eyes and simply listen to him talk. Especially when he elongates his call to Bennett with "Hello lazylegs."

3. Conway Twitty. Yes Conway Twitty, or rather, early Twitty--his late '50s stuff that owed more to Elvis than those women in "their tight fittin' jeans (I do, however, like his early '70s tunes, his work with Loretta Lynn and have a soft spot for that guy-looking-through-your-screen-door-after-he-hit-you ballad "Hello Darlin,' nice to see you..."). Though he briefly recorded with Sam Phillips at Sun Records (real name: Harold Lloyd Jenkins), his breakthrough 1958 hit was the song of my obsession, "It's Only Make Believe." As I listen and listen to the romantic, haunting and beautifully creepy tune, I picture how the music and sentiment would fit perfectly in a David Lynch film. When I learned the song was co-written by Jack Nance, it furthered the Lynchian mood. Though Twitty's Nance was not Lynch's (of Eraserhead and all the others) it works just the same. How many famous people claim the name Jack Nance?

Hello Lazylegs...

ON TV, Jack Webb, Ike and Peter

Tuesday I appeared on TechTV's The Screen Savers show discussing DVD releases.

I'll be on next Tuesday at 4 PM so check it out.

You can watch it HERE: http://www.dvdtalk.com/video/screensavers120704.asx

Also--My three current obsessions:

1. Dragnet and Especially Jack Webb. Am I crazy, or is he insanely sexy? He has his own rhythm of staccato speech that borders on Mametian invention. No one can touch him. He's a genius.

2. Ike Turner's Blues Roots. Only on LP, this 1972 solo record boasts Ike singing and doing instrumentals by the likes of Chuck Willis, Lloyd Price and Willie Dixon. And we all know how I feel about Ike.

3. The Stranger on the Third Floor. 1940 film noir starring one of my favorite actors, Peter Lorre. Of course not available on DVD. Directed by Borgis Ingster, the picture features a lovingly creepy performance by Lorre as an escapee from a mental institution and some gorgeous cinematography by the brilliant Gregg Toland. Just watch on VHS--DVD snobs be dammed.

That's all.

I love you Jack.

One of my Favorite Movies--The Third Man

"Harry never grew up. The world grew up around him."

In 1948, British novelist Graham Greene wrote this bit of character description for a movie treatment on which he was working: "Don't picture Harry Lime as a smooth scoundrel. He wasn't that. The picture I have of him...is an excellent one: he is caught by a street photographer with his stocky legs apart, big shoulders a little hunched, a belly that has known too much good food for too long, on his face a look of cheerful rascality, a geniality, a recognition that his happiness will make the world's day." A year later, that rascal later turned out to be a gorgeous Orson Welles, and the movie became The Third Man, a film that in spirit matches the lilting recklessness of Greene's character.

The Third Man is an exquisite work of discordant power crammed full of shifting moods. An expressionist film noir, it reveals a dark, unsettling pessimism in its ravaged night atmosphere. A jaunty, bittersweet comedy, it conveys a soulful playfulness among its likable characters. A stylistic achievement, it is a baroque composition of the absurd, a tilted wonder of visual anxiety. It is dreamlike and sensible, seamless and jagged, heartbreaking and hilarious and oddly, mockingly wistful, despite its sad ending. Greene's words that Lime's happiness "will make the world's day" are key. It isn't simply that Greene wrote a likable villain; he wrote a lovable story--even though it revealed the paranoia and unease that would later characterize the Cold War.

Directed by Carol Reed (who also directed Greene's masterful The Fallen Idol), photographed by Robert Krasker and scored by Anton Karas (all three Englishmen), The Third Man is a rare work of art that tickles as much as it torments. The story takes place in Allied-occupied Vienna. During the film's opening moments, a narrator (voiced by director Reed) states it's "the classic period of the black market when the city is divided into four zones, each occupied by a power--the American, the British, the Russian, and the French. But the center of the city--that's international, policed by an International Patrol. What a hope they had, all strangers to the place and none of them could speak the same language. Vienna doesn't really look any worse than a lot of other European cities, bombed about a bit." Enter an American into this rubble of sadness and crooked opportunity: American hack novelist Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten), a jobless "poor chap, happy as a lark and without a cent," seeking out his old friend Harry Lime (Welles), who has promised him a job. Unfortunately, Holly learns that his school chum was run over by a truck, a death that seems increasingly unlikely to the American.

A conspiracy emerges--that of the mysterious "third man," who supposedly helped carry Harry's dead body out of view--and the naive Holly is impassioned (or stupid) enough to become entrenched in it. In an odd, unconventional teaming, Holly develops a relationship with both Harry's lover, Anna (Alida Valli), to whom he's sexually drawn, and a British investigating officer named Calloway (Trevor Howard), who wishes the hayseed American would mind his own business. Holly also meets an assortment of exotic characters--friends of Harry's--and they aid in developing the film's humorous predicament of Western writer Holly attempting to work with such bizarre Kafkaesque visions. Crooked, gargoyle-like and most certainly not American, these multilingual characters further exemplify how ridiculous Holly's American optimism is. Externally and internally there is a cynicism presented to Holly, who, like the characters in his pulp novels, attempts to work on basic levels of good and evil. However, the complexities that Holly faces are neither black nor white.

The film makes sure to display both character and situation with a jaunty and jaundiced flavor. There is no such thing as simplicity in The Third Man, a concept that's continually underscored by the film's style. Visually, it is an off-kilter intersection of vertical and horizontal lines (some scenes feel framed by the tilt of a man's hat) and a textured variety of high-contrast, low-key lighting techniques. Characters emerge from and duck back into shadows, a visual device Reed uses metaphorically to represent moral complexity. Karas' score is also wonderfully unpredictable. Bouncy, beautiful, ugly and panicky, the music follows and responds to the action like an id let loose. The score also conveys the irresistible, crooked charm of Harry Lime--a figure so prominent that you forget he is in just a half-hour of the film.

Reed gave Orson Welles one of the most famous entrances in film history: A cat walks down the street, spies a man's shoes in a darkened doorway, curls up at his feet and meows loudly enough for Holly to notice from across a street. A window opens, and light flickers on Lime, and the camera holds a mysterious, mischievous and disarmingly smiling face. Welles as Lime looks back at Holly with eyes that silently return the two men back to childhood. Seductive, playful and enigmatic, this moment is suspended with an overwhelming sense of rapture (I get chills every time I watch it) and makes you understand what Anna later says about Lime: "Harry never grew up. The world grew up around him." You forget about the terrible things he's done. You just want to follow him, anywhere, no matter what the repercussions.

These complicated emotions might cause anxiety and hardship, but they may result in delight, which is what makes The Third Man so unique among movies. The film is about expressing the inexpressible feelings that are gnarled in our psyches as fantasies or nightmares. It gets to the heart of that "obscure object of desire" without ever delineating just what it is we yearn for. A timeless masterpiece, The Third Man both restores your hope and breaks your heart.