Aesop, Orson, and a Sixties pop tune

The Internet is filled with misinformation, rumors, urban legends, and in-depth info about stuff of no meaning or consequence. On the other hand, it holds untold wonder, lots and lots (and lots) of quality free stuff, and, yes, it solves bar bets, arguments, debates, trivia contests, and that hunt for a specific dimly remembered song lyric. I was in the last-mentioned mode the other day, when I just had to sort out what song it was that included the lyric, “…sssssighed the snake…” Within a few clicks I had encountered this 1968 one-hit wonder by Al Wilson that is as catchy as hell:



Hadn’t heard it on the radio in a few decades now, but it was coursing around somewhere in the back of my mind. Of course, the song brought up a certain movie scene that also can’t be forgotten. The question arises, though: why is the same story told by Orson Welles in Mr. Arkadin about a frog and a scorpion? It appears that that is the more popular version of the story “often mis-attributed to Aesop” which has a variant known as “the farmer and the snake.” The songwriters obviously wanted to sex the tale up (a “tender woman” is a helluva lot more interesting than a farmer). As the frog and scorpion story (not to be confused with the “Frog and Peach” restaurant), it has had several dozen appearances in popular culture, the best of which has been and will forever be Orson’s telling in his very jumbled and uneven mystery pic Mr. Arkadin (aka Confidential Report,1955). Orson was god.



And totally off the topic of the fable and back onto the pop tune, turns out Al Wilson (who died back in 2008) was not a one-hit wonder by any means. He also gave us the indelible tune “Show and Tell”, and one I vividly remember from my childhood, “The La La Peace Song.” The song was also recorded around the same time by O.C. Smith, but the one I remember was the Wilson version. It’s gotta be the most upbeat song ever to mention racial injustice and skyjacking. Ah, the early Seventies…

FOOTNOTE: And who wrote "The Snake"? Oscar Brown, Jr., who had a very lively life as a singer, songwriter, playwright, poet, and civil rights activist. His Wiki bio can be found here. Nice pedigree for such a memorable tune.

“No rights, only duties”: new interviews with Uncle Jean

Since I wrote the blog post below, there has been more new Godard-info on the Net. The New York Times has published a review of Film Socialisme that indicates it is indeed the dense and brilliant work we’ve all been expecting it to be. Of course, reading the review my mind went off onto a Godardian tangent, wondering if Manohla Dargis has finally moved to NYC, or whether she’s still telecommuting her reviews in from L.A. (Who would have ever thought that the “paper of record” in a major U.S. capital of culture would make its chief film critic someone who wouldn’t deign to live in the city in which the paper was published? Ah, but then again, I’m so old-fashioned and analog, and her insights are really so invaluable a bi-coastal hookup was totally necessary….)

But, veering away from that missive from the shores of privilege and onto the latest classically contrarian statements by Uncle Jean, I point your attention to the invaluable translations of current Godard interviews being served up on the Cinemasparagus blog by Craig Keller. Craig recently provided translations of various Godard items, including an interview from the film’s press kit and two current magazine/website interviews. The first magazine interview is a chat between Uncle Jean and “child of ’68” turned mainstream politico Daniel Cohn-Bendit in Télérama. The article finds JLG probing his friendship with, and memories of, “Dany” while also noting that he engages in contradiction in his statements not for “fun,” but “to provoke an argument, in the sense of the Greeks.” Craig’s translation can be found here.

Another, even more quotable, interview with the Master can be found in the pages of the current issue of Les Inrockuptibles. Craig has provided a translation of this talk too, and there are plenty of interesting statements from Godard. His latest film took four years to create, and thus he wishes it was distributed in a rather unique way (this odd scenario is offered to both the Inrockuptibles interviewer and Cohn-Bendit). He also voices his support for the Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi and (gasp) Roman Polanski. The wonderful phrase from Film Socialisme, “what’s different these days is that the bastards are sincere” is explored; he reaffirms his disinterest in Truffaut’s more conventional later films (they were “not what we were dreaming of”); and he was the one who proposed YouTube as the site for his infamous trailers (which consist of the whole feature sped up to different commercial-style lengths). Find out his view of posterity, ownership of art, intellectual property (take a guess), and the words that might well wind up on his gravestone here.