'70s one-hit wonders, the first: catchy rhymin'

I am glad that our local NYC oldies station, WCBS-FM, returned a few months back, but man, oh man, is there ever a lack of Seventies one-hit wonders on the station. I revel in this kind of pure-pop Tin Pan tunesmithing for "the rock era," as it was when I first started indulging heavily in the drug that was then AM radio. Some of the most superb music of the '70s never made the Top 40 (including genius singer-songwriters and nearly all punk/new wave), but in amongst the stuff that did, there were some severely catchy, hook-ridden melodies, and those are what I bow in homage to for this short series of posts.

Some of the songs have very straightforward presentations on YT because the copyright owners of whatever TV-rockshow footage that exists have removed the best TV performances of the songs. Thus we have these poster-created vids for these two seminal one-hits:

Oh yes, the mellow rock sounds of the Sanford Townsend Band, and their catchy-as-fuck hook "Your Eyes Had a Mist/From the Smoke/of a Distant Fire" (1977). This video is just some random STB images and nature stuff, but it's the song that holds the attention (truly, YT can function like the radio we should be gettin' for free sometimes—just let it run as you do other things):


The KILLER "The Rapper" by The Jaggerz, 1970 one-hit bliss. The lead singer on this track went on to sing on "Play That Funky Music" by Wild Cherry. I have absolutely no interest in the visual here (from some stupid-ass horror teen comedy), but dig that chorus.

The limits of free speech: joking about Presidential assassination

YouTube has become a clearing house for just about every public statement people want to make — witness the ”YouTube divorce woman” who recently posted a video complaining about her mondo-rich husband kicking her out of their Park Avenue apartment.

There are limits, however, to free speech — ones that dwell somewhere in the “yelling fire in a crowded theater” area (or the “every single joke about the head of state is investigated, especially under a Republican presidency”). Some enterprising soul decided to do a video featuring a kid threatening to kill the President. The vid went down from YouTube, but can be found below. The kid makes his best bid to make the threat sound serious, and it is a particularly damaged bit of play-acting (one commenter in the comments field on the original website notes that the kid has “played too much Grand Theft Auto”). It also gets to be both creepy and boring, as the kid rambles on and on, saying he will kill himself after offing Bush, plus will take out the First Family.

It’s the most extreme form of political humor, and not funny, but interesting to note that it can indeed exist at least in one corner of the Internet. I can’t conceive of a single newspaper (and that includes the “alternative press”), radio station, or television paper that would let this kind of stuff through the filter.

In no way do I advocate what this kid is saying (okay, watchdogs?), but I am certainly interested to observe its appearance (and most likely imminent disappearance) in the public eye:



UPDATE: The video has indeed been taken down, and probably won't be posted anywhere soon, unless the videographer wants to put it on his own website. Here are some blog items about the video. They seem to take the opinion that Bush is generally an okay guy. I think he's an apathetic and genuinely repellent war criminal, but I think the kid's solution is rather grim: since the Pres seems to still be connected to his past drug/alcohol use (either by current "slips" or just the brain-damage they caused), maybe a nice straitjacket would fit the bill.

Marxist wisdom: Grouch rarities

This week’s show is a Consumer Guide episode that once again unites the sources of fascination for many a counterculturalist in the late ’60s and early ’70s, Marx and Lennon (yes, the Firesign album does make an appearance). To augment the former part of that equation, I offer up some clips from various You Bet Your Life episodes that didn’t make it onto the two wonderfully crafted boxes that were released by Shout! Factory.

First, Groucho doing his quizmaster shtick on the Jack Benny Program (one of Grouch’s own faves):


The most likeable of the pop-idol pop-rockers who followed in the wake of the first R’n’R revolution, Mr. Beach Party himself, Frankie Avalon, seen here in 1961:


Exercise master Jack La Lanne (did dig his old b&w show when I was kid, now that’s some minimalist television!). Here Jack is 44, but he’s currently still kicking (and pressing, and I’m sure sitting up and crunching) at ninety-friggin’-three! The most interesting thing besides Jack is that the duck was dispensed with for a while, and the “secret word” award is given by a babe in cage!


There are men who are big, and men who are giant. And then there was the mighty Tor!!!!

Chuckling, smoking & dominating the conversation: Tom Snyder's gender-bending guests

This week’s episode features my review of the DVD release John, Paul, Tom & Ringo, which features solo Beatle interviews from Tom Snyder’s Tomorrow Show. Instead of offering up Beatle links, though, I wanted to salute the boorish but thoroughly absorbing Mr. Snyder. So, let me send you flying into some vintage items from the Disco Era, the scary depths of the Seventies.

Here’s a show that’s a good kind of drag: the immortal Divine and living legend (still out there performing) Holly Woodlawn, and their stage director Ron Link in 1979:


A cheat here: not a Tomorrow clip, but Snyder hosting a segment on a newsmagazine show in the same year, ’79, talking about the Rocky Horror Picture Show cult, focusing on its showings at the Eighth Street Playhouse. That chick playing Frankie was adorable, I saw her do her shtick a few times back in prehistory.



And to continue the gender-bending with Tom (who was the straightest, most overwhelming conversation-dominator you ever did see), here’s Alice Cooper in one of his leaner moments (seriously lean) in his oddest stage outfit, a weird look that can only be summed up as “leather geisha.” Alice looks seriously ill, but he later chalked it all up to living exclusively on liquor.

And in local news: congestion pricing shot down, no money for the MTA :)

Regular viewers of the show will know that the one issue I never shy away from injecting into the flow of pop-culture and high-art bliss is the torture that comprises taking the NYC subway system on a daily basis. As a lifelong subway rider who knows all too well how wildly, incredibly corrupt the MTA is (and it will never ever change), I was delighted to see our billionaire mayor’s “congestion pricing plan” for Manhattan go down in flames yesterday. The focus on “quality of life” problems has been one that insipid-voiced businessman/rich fuck “Mayor Mike” took over from his evil predecessor, the petty, vendetta-minded wraith of evil that is Guliani. Some have praised Bloomie and his concern for NYCers’ health. Let’s be honest and just note that man is a billionaire, he doesn’t care about you, me, any of us (and is one of the single most-boring speakers on today’s political scene). His latest scam, this congestion-pricing business, was simply a way to generate more cash, make life easier (again) for his wealthier compadres, and play the “quality of life” card once more.

Thus I salute the dogmatic Sheldon Silver, head of the NY State Assembly, just as I saluted those who opposed Guiliani’s acts of petty tyranny. A few years ago Silver helped to shoot down Bloomberg’s nightmarish idea to erect a stadium on the Upper West Side which was, simply put, a billionaire’s wet dream, but a notion that would have utterly destroyed Manhattan’s traffic patterns (so much for Mike’s concern for traffic — doesn’t anyone remember these things?) and imposed upon every Manhattanite’s daily life. Congestion pricing was another rich man’s fantasy: charge folks more money to enter the city, so as to reduce traffic, so that life can become deliriously happy and everyone will just ride the subways and buses instead. They all run so well … and, hey, they’ll be getting some of that big government money we’ll grab!

Bloomberg pouted today when he found out that he wouldn’t be getting that million-dollar grab. He had noted that part of that money would be given to the MTA to better the service (which would now be filled with people who had to ditch their cars). NOTHING additional should ever be given to that corrupt organization, as they have a history of juggling the books (read HERE: http://www.osc.state.ny.us/press/releases/apr03/042303.htm) and just recently imposed a fare-hike on NYCers that was supposed to result in better service (that’s all we want, just have the trains RUN!), and oh-so-shortly thereafter claimed that the mortgage crisis in America means they can’t use the extra revenue to attend to service problems. Tough luck, New Yorkers, fuck the public, sez our beloved MTA yet again.

Of course Bloomberg makes a public show most days of taking the subway to “work” — the secret (revealed in the NYT) that has not been spoken about enough is how he is driven to the next subway stop up from his (86th instead of 77th) so he can get an express downtown and put on his little daily show of being a “commoner.” God forbid the billionaire actually experience a real subway ride, replete with the lovely endless walk that comprises a journey from the “sides” of town over to trains-that-run-when-they-feel-like-it.

Last, related note: I think back for a second on how “Mayor Mike” ascended to power, and of course, I remember a confused and feuding Democratic party in NYC (most likely a harbinger of the upcoming Presidential election — we live in a Conservative, petty-minded country, while the left bickers and compromises). Bloomie’s entry into politics had the feel of Citizen Kane’s immortal line “I think it would be fun to run a newspaper,” and the office was handed to him on a silver platter by one Mark Green — who most recently bought and then sold a majority interest in Air America, though making sure his own newly-scheduled boring radio show would remain on the air (“I think it would be fun to run a radio network,” indeed). This is a supposedly “liberal” city that has been run by conservatives now for way too long, and thus I welcome any and all attempts to stopgap the “quality of life” moves that would actually cost average folk dough, and put money into the pockets of the evil bastids that have too much already.

[climbs off soapbox] Let’s go to the movies….

Farewell, Tommy Udo: Deceased Artiste Richard Widmark

There were two Richard Widmarks: the amazingly sleazy, completely unforgettable presence from film noir (best when he was a villain) and the fully capable and very talented but not entirely memorable actor from a slew of films after the noir cycle was over. Widmark did do excellent work later in his career, but it is his early roles in noir features that made him an icon that will last forever.

It’s kinda hard to imagine that the scene-stealing Widmark was making his big-screen debut as giggling, sadistic bastard Tommy Udo in Henry Hathaway’s otherwise procedural noir film Kiss of Death (1947). He had, by the way, had a healthy life as a stage actor and, most profitably, as a radio actor in the years before he scored Kiss (having appeared on many of the most popular shows, including — no surprise here — Gangbusters). It must’ve been evident to the cast and crew as they made the film that Widmark’s character was a helluva lot more interesting than that played by the extremely boring Victor Mature; Widmark wound up being nominated for the Oscar, and the film was promoted on his supporting turn. I was introduced to the great scumbag Tommy Udo through Vernon Zimmerman’s unjustly forgotten movie-buff horror film Fade to Black (1980), in which one of the different personas Dennis Christopher assumes is that of Widmark in Kiss. I had yet to fall completely into the filmgoing bug, and seeing the infamous and eternal scene of Udo pushing an old woman down the stairs in her wheelchair was a revelation to me.

Widmark played in a number of noirs, and always distinguished himself, even as he struggled to get out of his bad-guy parts — once he did, he scored terrific roles like the one of the prosecutor in Judgment at Nuremburg, but that kind of prestige “message” film isn’t anywhere nearly as rewatchable as the potboiler noirs he took part in. For instance, Road House (1948), in which he plays crazy club-owner “Jefty” who menaces the hell out of Celeste Holm, Cornel Wilde (another good-looking dull lead), and the great Ida Lupino. Here he does the Udo laugh and flips out entirely at the movie’s end, making him the one reason not to miss the movie. The other half-dozen noirs he did don’t have him playing outright scum like Udo and Jefty, but he still excelled when playing incredibly sleazy con artists. He’s a good guy in Panic in the Streets (1950) and Don’t Bother to Knock (1952), but he’s most interesting as a racist crook in No Way Out (1950) (making fledgling star Sidney Poitier seem all the more heroic) and as yet another underworld tough in The Street With No Name (1948).

He hit the heights of sympathetic sleaziness in Jules Dassin’s Night and the City (1950)(which I’ll post something from by next week, as Dassin’s death at 96 was just announced yesterday), and Sam Fuller’s wonderful Pickup on South Street (1953). In both films, he’s a sleazy crook antihero who isn’t a cutthroat killer like Tommy Udo, but is still hard to warm up to. Fuller particularly took pride in being able to sum Widmark’s character up in a single line of dialogue in Pickup, when he’s told that he’s not helping his country and responds, “Are you wavin’ the flag at me?”

Widmark did indeed keep acting until the 1990s, but it is as sadistic gangster Tommy Udo, or as sleazy operators Harry Fabian (Night and the City) or Skip McCoy (Pickup on South Street) we’ll always remember him.

NOTE: the quality of these clips is pre-cable TV broadcast. Thus, some are darker than others (much darker) and you might have to crank the sound. This is the way we used to watch ’em, though, kids, in the world before restoration. And they still packed a very solid punch….

Deceased Artiste Anthony Minghella, a true film fan

The news that director Anthony Minghella died last week brought one film and one film only to mind: his brilliantly written big-screen debut Truly Madly Deeply(1990). Minghella of course came out of British television, and had acquired quite a nice resume before making the film, and went on to do a series of big-budget prestige theatrical features that didn’t inspire me to see them, adaptations of period romances like his Oscar pic The English Patient and the Civil War “chick flick” (let’s be honest, that’s what the talented Mr. Minghella wound up making) Cold Mountain. He did a redo of Purple Noon (The Talented Mr. Ripley), which I will get around to some day, but since Truly Madly, he only made one film as a scripter-director that was not taken from a major novel, Breaking and Entering.

But let me get to the point here, and rhapsodize about Truly Madly Deeply. The film received a damning-by-faint-praise label as “the thinking man’s Ghost” because the plots of both films were based around the same premise (woman is visited by the ghost of her dead boyfriend). Putting it plainly, Ghost is a pathetic sentiment-grab (with hokey plot twists and a positively painful cast), whereas Truly Madly is a well-written character study that really does boast a brain and a heart. Its plot is simple: its ghost character, a cranky but charming left-winger (Alan Rickman), comes back to this mortal plane to visit his living girlfriend (Juliet Stevenson, who is perfect in the starring role); she then, in turn, must decide if she'll "continue," so to speak, nursing her love for the spirit of Rickman or move on to a new, seemingly nice and genuine (but I felt way too cutesy) guy. The film presents a beautifully three-dimensional portrait of romantic love (with a whimsical supernatural element informing the whole scenario, of course). It is mostly set indoors and does have the feel of a BBC teleplay, but its writing and acting are incredibly good, so who cares? And when lovers are depicted professing their affection through The Walker Brothers’ gorgeously evocative Spector-esque hit “The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore,” little more need be said.

Of course, there is one aspect of the film that demonstrated Mingehella’s fanboy love of the medium. Rickman’s character is primarily journeying back from the afterlife to love Stevenson once more (and complain, my man!), but he also returns to… watch movies with his pals! Minghella, who scripted and directed, came up with a filmfan’s worst nightmare: an afterlife that doesn’t have movies (or if it does, you can’t have a good old “video night” with friends up there). Thus, Rickman begins to bring his buddies back from the “other side” to check out his video collection… which his girlfriend has not been a perfect caretaker for (for shame!). When I saw the film, I was touched on a number of levels (and had been hoping to see a lot more of this kind of work from Minghella, but alas….). This inclusion of dudes journeying back from Heaven to check out their favorite movies was just too perfect, though, because I and most of my comrades all know we’d pass an astral plane or two to get back to some serious movie-watching.

Stevenson’s character quizzes Rickman about this at one point, asking why he only brings men back from the other side for his post-mortem video nights, and if I remember correctly he doesn’t have a response. We all know the answer, though, don’t we? As much as women can truly, madly, deeply fall in love with a pop phenomenon, more guys per capita can keep that fixation up for the rest of their lives (I can point to no more moving phenom than seeing our Funhouse hero Uncle Forry Ackerman meet up with his old buds Rays Bradbury and Harryhausen to discuss science fiction and the Mighty Kong — never ever were three seniors as young at heart as this inspirational trio of octagenarians). Minghella tapped into something really beautiful about cinemaddiction in Truly Madly…, in addition to all his other conclusions about the eternal power of love, and the need to every so often move on. I salute him for his connection to the fanboy experience, and for the choices thrown out by his back-from-beyond cinephiles (Chaplin, Woody, Rafelson, Herzog, not bad; I’m not a David Lean fan myself, but guys do indeed watch romances, yes they do — esp. if they’re in black and white). I present the clips below with a few stray video-rolls — but that is entirely appropriate.

I can honestly say that Minghella’s depiction of the afterlife was scarier to me than Our Town. Sitting on a chair on a hill (I know, I know, they’re in their graves, symbolically) being bored out of your gourd is one thing, but an afterlife without movies? That truly is a horrifying prospect. I do trust that Anthony was only teasing us movie buffs, presenting a very smart and witty comment on male fandom. If not, I hope he’s prepping a bunch of lads to come back down and commandeer someone’s video collection. I’m up for it. I say Five Easy Pieces first, then Fitzcarraldo, whaddya think?

'70s/'80s talk shows rule! The inimitable teaming of NINA HAGEN and DON RICKLES!

I can't even begin to say anything about this clip. It's the single most mind-roasting thing I've found on YouTube since the amazing Dick Cavett-Cassavetes/Husbands show. SAVOR THIS.

Magic (Chris) Marker: some snippets from a career

This week’s episode of the Funhouse contains commentary and scenes from two political features by the brilliant Chris Marker, so I thought I’d refer folks to his works that are currently lurking on — where else? — the ’Tube. We thank the anonymous benefactor who posted these features a while back (plus others he’s promised to put back up at some future instant) and who has taken the time to re-upload them to YT. This is only the very tip of the iceberg of Marker’s films.

Of course, you have to be familiar with one of the greatest films ever made, Marker’s magnificent memory play La Jetee



Kudos to another poster who put up the version of the film that I first saw and fell in love with, an old scratchy 16mm print that is in French with English subs
.

One of his earliest works was the documentary Olympia ’52 which is a bit blurry and unsubbed in this transfer, but still enlightening.



A collaboration with his fellow “Left Bank” New Wave comrade, the great Alain Resnais (still making great movies in his 80s, like Marker). Les Statutes Meurent Aussi (Statues Also Die, 1953). Unsubbed, but visually gorgeous stuff.



Marker has made films all around the world, here’s one on Japan that mirrors his work in San Soleil. This dialogue-less video piece is called Tokyo Days.



A piece of computer animation by Marker, Les Theorie des Ensembles.


Marker studies the great Andrei Tarkovsky as he makes The Sacrifice in this feature:



For the very hardcore:
Actress Catherine Belkhodja (mother of Funhouse interview subject Isild Le Besco) is featured in the video installation Silent Movie.



Info on an “interactive, hyperactive” gallery installation by Chris that seems like a wet dream for Funhouse fans, the “Zapping Zone”



And a true head-trip: Marker’s very wild 2084, which has been posted in French, but with Spanish subs (providing an overload of sensory input, visual and aural, just the way he likes it).

Celebrate the Paschal holiday: Christ on a Mexican Candid Camera

I caught this one quite by accident, but it sorta sums up the "let's watch people get hurt" concept started by the late, great Alan Funt, and continued to this very day on shows too numerous to name. Here it's a guy in a passion play, and oh yeah... he just happens to be dressed up as the Lamb of God. Good thing the clip won first prize, I wouldn't want Jesus coming in second.


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The wonderful Christian world of Ron Ormond

When the great June Ormond died a few years back we did a nice tribute to her on the show. June was the "better half" of the "first filmmaking family of Nashville," the Ormonds. This week's Funhouse episode returns to the strangest and most extreme works they made, their Christian films spearheaded by preacher Estus Pirkle (apparently his real name).

This marvelous scene from the wonderfully titled If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?(1971) gives us the brilliant juxtaposition, Communism=bad/Xtianity=good (I never understood that candy part of the equation, I woulda done things differently back in Catholic school).



There are absolutely no limits in this kind of scare-tactic exploitation film. Here we see a kid get harmed, a definite no-no in mainstream moviemaking.



But when you need to frighten people to follow the Prince of Peace, it's perfectly fine to scare the shit out of the kiddies:



The Ormonds only made a handful of these suckers, but they are truly the furthest-out-there they ever went—and I'm talking about a filmmaking unit that created Please Don't Touch Me! and The Monster and the Stripper! This week on the show I present a few clips from The Burning Hell(1974), which is posted in its entirety on YouTube. The pic is only an hour, but I doubt that most of you will want to watch the whole thing, so I will just spotlight two clips:



Go to hell, man!


The greatest thing about this posting on YouTube is that the person who put it up labels it quite sincerely "The Everlasting Sorrows" and appears to take it very seriously, as do some of the commenters. I was quite interested, by the way, to see that my posts last year of Christsploitation and rapture thrillers got some great comments from YT viewers. Check them out:

The smoothest preacher ever

It's Easter time again, and in the Funhouse that means it's time to celebrate Xtian excess. Here's one of the finest discoveries to hit the 'Tube, the kindly "Rev. X," from the L.A. public access show "Spirit of Truth, One Man Show." You've probably seen the initial video that attracted so much attention, but I had no idea that people in Cali had been posting other episodes in which the backdrops are even more eye-catching, and the Rev. busts some moves, with or without his shirt on (but with pimp cane always at the ready).

The initial vid:



Wherein he reveals he's not just a vessel of god, he IS god, bee-yotch!


Wherein he chooses to pose while 'Pac plays, and then can't help but dancin'


More terpsichorean magic

YouTube find of the month: Cassavetes, Falk, and Gazzara guest on "The Dick Cavett Show"

If there is any further proof needed that network TV was a lot more engaging and intelligent way back when, I don't know what it is. This is the 9/21/70 edition of Cavett on which JC and friends discuss Husbands (or better yet, don't really discuss the film). It's amazing to see the three of them hanging out (the only footage that makes the rounds is from documentaries on the making of the film). Also being oddly, charmingly uncooperative with a talk show host (who happened to be one of the smarter, more simpatico talk show hosts of the time). He jokes in this segment that he thinks they're "smashed," and they firmly deny it, but it does seem like they've some fun *somewhere* before the show started rolling. I've linked to the third part of four, but this is well (!!!) worth your time. It's a 40 minute Cavett episode, as he had to do half-strength shows when "Monday Night Football" ran over.

This is like spun gold for fans of Cassavetes' movie work.

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A variety show no one remembers

...possibly even the man who starred in it, the great Dick Cavett. But check out the supporting cast: Chuck McCann, Bob Dishy, and Louise Lasser!


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Vintage Woody clips

The video-vault that is YouTube deserves a weekly perusal. Clips go up, clips go down, and among them are some of the rarest items I've ever seen. I'll be putting up a few today, check them out while they're around.

First is a survey of rare Woody Allen.
Doing one of his best routines on UK TV (known as "The Moose Mingles")


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Woody on the Dean Martin show (no interaction with Dean, just the monologue) doing hip '60s humor

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In an educational short for kids about how baseball gloves are made (don't ask me). Jon Winters has a great physical comedy bit at the beginning that pretty much outshines the laidback Woody.

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and, perhaps the most eye-opening rarity, an interview from the CBC wherein the young Woody discusses his judging of NYC women, the MOMA sculpture garden, his creation of jokes, and how his pool table (what a nice duplex he had on Fifth Avenue!) could be turned into a gag. Very un-p.c. (hey, this is 1967!).


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The real Tex and Edna Boil

My header refers to the sublime characters created by Andrea Martin and Dave Thomas on SCTV, local merchants doing their own low-budgeted ad. Their real-life equivalents, who in this case are video makers, can be found below. I wish 'em all the best in the world. Their partially animated trip through a Christmas craft-fair (follow the links) is particularly mind-warping.
Thanks to Rich Brown for discovering this nugget of joy.


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Supplement to this week's show: Larry David and Ricky Gervais discuss "Sgt. Bilko"

On the Funhouse this week I'll be doing a tribute to the great Phil Silvers Show (aka "You'll Never Get Rich" but best known as "Sgt. Bilko"). Here is a segment from a British TV program (that has never aired in the States) in which Ricky Gervais interviews Larry David, and the two discuss their love of the program. Gervais also offers his love for the sublime Laurel and Hardy (Larry grew up digging Abbott and Costello).


Click here if the above doesn't work.

Deceased Artistes: on the march!

(Well, actually February.) In the Deceased Artiste department, I’m always glad to shine the light on folks whose death merits “lesser” coverage in the media (read: a short mention on TV entertainment news, if at all, and an obit in Variety, the New York and L.A. Times). This compilation features four such individuals.

Lois Nettleton, who died at 80, was a hard-working actress who had started on the stage (she understudied “Maggie the Cat” in Hot Tin Roof on B’way), but is best remembered for her work on TV. Her sweaty turn as a woman in a world suffering from global warming on Twilight Zone, in the episode, “The Midnight Sun,” endeared her to countless fanboys, but I will also admit a fondness for the very cheesy TV movie Women in Chains (1972) which featured Lois being ruled over by nasty bitch warden Ida Lupino. Here I present a sliver of her in a strange role: as an Italian (with a very Russian-sounding accent) on the beloved Naked City TV series. Naked City was generally a top-notch show, with several absolutely classic episodes in its run (check out the DVDs currently available for several milestones, including the Rip Torn/Tuesday Weld “Case Study of Two Savages”). The episode “Debt of Honor” (1960), which features Lois’ Italian character, is a lesser show that is notable for two reasons (besides the reason EVERY Naked City episode is notable, amazing NYC locations): it was directed by Tay Garnett (The Postman Always Rings Twice) and written by the man who gave us the American gangster movie, W.R. Burnett (he wrote Little Caesar and worked on Scarface, and also wrote the perfect High Sierra and The Asphalt Jungle). Not one of his finer days, but Lois deserves a salute, if for no other reason than she put up with one of our heroes, the great humorist Jean Shepherd, in real-life.

Yes, she was Shep’s wife for seven years, and can be heard on at least one of the surviving shows, talking in a phone up to Shep’s ear (they couldn’t broadcast phone calls on the air back in those days). She was the “baby” he spoke to in a series of extremely hokey “couple argues” bits he did on the air (in which you only heard his side of the argument—always ending with him running out and getting her a pastrami sandwich). She was some kinda woman to stand the extremely cranky Shep for that long a time.

Barry Morse, who died at 89, was a British actor who also started on the stage, but was only known for his work on the tube. His best-known part was the “cop” role on The Fugitive TV series, but I also remember him well for the very dull Space: 1999 and the cool but extremely short-lived Zoo Gang series, where he costarred with Brian Keith, John Mills, and Lilli Palmer as former WWII allies who gather together to take on modern-day criminals. I offer Barry in a Naked City sliver (all the character folks did the show) from a 1962 episode called “Memory of a Red Trolly Car.” The single best scene in the ep is the opening, which doesn’t feature Barry, so I offer a classic proto-noir pursuit scene, set in a bus depot, which, given the terrific NYC locations in the show, was no doubt a very real NYC bus depot.

The odd gal out in this quartet is Eva Dahlbeck, but I include this gorgeous blonde Swede because she was very important in the work of Ingmar Bergman. She died a few weeks back at 87, having quit show biz back in the 1960s to write novels (but did have a costarring role in the very enigmatic and unusual sci-fi flick by Agnes Varda, Les Creatures). She was the most conventionally pretty of Bergman’s women, and is best known for her starring role in Smiles of a Summer Night, but I chose to include very disparate moments from two lesser known Bergmans, both currently unavailable in the U.S.: as a woman whose baby has just died in the maternity-ward meller Brink of Life (1958, some excellent Ingmar-style anguish in this pic), and in a farcical scene from the much lighter A Lesson in Love (1958), with the great Gunnar Bjornstrand. The subtitles on Brink are classic white-on-white rep-house terrible, but the scene is primarily about Eva's misery and how it plays out on her face (who would want it any other way in a Bergman film?).

As a capper for the montage, I couldn’t resist paying tribute to Roy Scheider’s finest performance, his shoulda-won-the-Oscar starring turn in Bob Fosse’s self-loathing but smart and sexy (in that wonderfully sleazy Fosse-kind of way) All That Jazz (1979). Both Scheider, who died in Feb at 75, and Peter Sellers lost out on the Oscar in 1979 because the idiots in the Academy were playing catch-up with Dustin Hoffman (who should’ve won at least two or three times over by that point). I had the feeling back then that Roy wouldn’t get another great shot at a major award, and wouldn’t get another juicy part like “Joe Gideon,” the Fosse surrogate. He will forver be remembered for his starring roles in two blockbusters (The French Connection and Jaws, obviously), but it seems like he put his heart and soul into Jazz (even warbling in the compelling finale). I debated including a scene from the underrated 52 Pickup or a bit from my fave, Paul Schrader’s Mishima (which he narrated), but sometimes the YouTube 10-minute limitation is a blessing in disguise. For trivia buffs, here’s a great Scheider double-bill that will never play at your local rep house: L’Attentat, Roy playing opposite Jean-Louis Trintignant and Jean Seberg in an international coproduction (I have a version of this dubbed in German or something) and the never-heard-of-this A Man is Dead, wherein hitman Trintignant is on the loose in L.A., meeting folks played by Scheider, Ann-Margret, Angie Dickinson, Georgia Engel (the Conformist meets “Georgette,” yes), and Jackie Earle Haley. They don’t cast ’em like that anymore.


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The worthy opponent: Deceased Artiste William F. Buckley Jr.

America has gotten much, much dumber over the years, especially since the "Reagan revolution" (hock ptooey) hit us in 1980. The interesting thing to consider, though, is that the original standard bearers for conservatism were indeed wildly smart individuals like the now-late William F. Buckley. A mass of ticks and pretension in his public appearance, Buckley was an intellectual of the first order whose beliefs I oppose entirely, but who was worthy of debate, unlike his Neocon successors, for whom the term knuckle-dragger is a compliment (to wit, the President Chimp anecdote about how he attended a Buckley National Review soiree when he was young, and got liquor on the carpet — tee hee hee, shut up!). I have strong memories of a televised debate on PBS in the late '70s about the Panama Canal (a major issue when the Repubs were refreshingly not in power during the Swinging Seventies), wherein Ronald Reagan was soundly trounced by Buckley. Reagan may have been a friendly old evil bastard, but Buckley was his superior in all things conservative.

I eulogized the last literary wildman Norman Mailer a few weeks ago on this blog and should note that Norm was properly respectful of Bill B. — in fact, it's interesting to note that at his most volatile (right after Armies of the Night), he appeared on Firing Line and never once got cross with his host. Buckley was certainly an equal of Mailer's as far as intelligence was concerned. But genius? Buckley was not a genius, and in fact — in case, anyone thinks I'm getting misty-eyed about the old gent. I'd like to remember him with two items (both referenced in a Buckley thread on www.ronfez.net).

First this quote:
“The central question that emerges…is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas where it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is Yes—the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race.”
—William F. Buckley, National Review, August 24, 1957

And then this gorgeous bit of smart-guy TV. Herein, the clip I had heard so much about, but finally saw thanks to YouTube: Buckley getting tongue-tied in a debate with Gore Vidal during the '68 convention, and coming out with a homophobic slur and a challenge to fisticuffs. Vidal, definitely the last genius standing these days, has always had the ability to really PISS PEOPLE OFF. Buckley was indeed an intellectual giant, but man, just hit him with the word "Nazi" and the veneer came down....


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Let us all bow down to Tony Powers

For those who weren't around NYC in the early '80s, I humbly recommend this awesome bit of music video, which has been burrowed into my brain since I saw it in the late 1980s on U68, a UHF music-video channel in the NYC area that had a helluva playlist (Ramones, Kate Bush, Jimmy Somerville).

Powers is a character actor — you might remember him as "Jimmy Two-Times" in a bit at the beginning of Goodfellas — who blew me outta the water with this song and video. It has the sense of humor I like, some catchy damned lyrics, and a great bizarre vocal performance. I thought Powers was simply doing this on the side, but was surprised to see on his website (www.tonypowersmusic.com) that he actually co-wrote two hits for Phil Spector ('Today I Met the Boy I'm Going to Marry," "Why Do Lovers Break Each Other's Hearts?"), the terrific doo-wop ditty "Remember When," the blissful "Lazy Day" by Spanky and Our Gang (damn, float me back to my childhood!), and one of my ALL-time fave one-hit wonder songs (dig those horns, man), "98.6" by Keith. Tony indeed is a multi-talented person whose face is familiar but whose name sadly isn't. He's got a new CD out (at www.cdbaby.com), and I eagerly await any and all film/video projects he may attempt in the future.

In the meantime, check out "Don't Nobody Move (This is a Heist)." The guest stars are all over the place (the oddest being a thin John Goodman, whose ass ends up in Powers' face), but the finale (Tony just sitting there, making mouth noises on the Square at night)... well, that's what NYC music is all about.


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Every Robert De Niro impersonator...

...should be in drag:


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Two things about the Oscars

It's a dull show, a mighty dull show, but here are two things they might as well consider:

-If you're going to show the awards that the bulk of the populace considers "boring" (sound editing, special fx, shorts, docus) in the main telecast and not the tech-awards ceremony, give the winners the dignity of making a full minute/minute-and-a-half speech. The musical fanfare and disappearing mic business is obnoxious shit. This is the winners' one and only moment in the spotlight, and it's rather doubtful they could be as pointless and rambling as the "stars" who have wasted minute upon minute of my life (Mira Sorvino, Gwyneth Paltrow, Hallie Berry, Julia Roberts, shall I go on?). I was glad that Jon Stewart spotlighted how ridiculously obnoxious this rule is by letting the Song award winner return to make her tiny little speech. If we are supposed to watch their award, let's see their speech also.

-First let me say that I am perennially amused at how New York Times critic A.O. Scott tells us constantly how this is the Golden Age of Movies, cinema has never been better. Yes it has, A.O., there were indeed periods when even the B pictures had a crackle to them (and I'm not just talking '30s/'40s, '60s/'70s also fits the bill). This is the era when a good movie is an exception, not at all the rule. (Unless the formulaic mainstream is what you're constantly watching—then a halfway-decent indie would indeed appear to be extraordinary.) That said, let's acknowledge that the Oscar is about MOVIES, no matter the level of quality. So... let's watch some freaking clips, folks. It's been rather evident for a few decades now that these folks can't do a variety show properly, or showcase songs or sketches (like the Tonys or Grammys can...because those are PERFORMANCE awards, straight up). Thus, the only thing that makes sense would be to show longer clips, since that is, indeed, the only thing these symps can actually do. Take a look at the AFI ceremonies that were broadcast in the '70s — yes indeed, they were full of the same self-congratulatory nonsense, but the montages were healthy, chunky affairs that truly did introduce us to the work of the participants. The Oscars will always be a drag of a evening's TV watching (the Alan Carr days are long since gone, and Billy Crystal really did suck, man did he suck). Let's watch some fuckin' movies, can we?

Deceased Artiste Alain Robbe-Grillet: plenty of clues, no solutions

Those familiar with the work of novelist-filmmaker Alain Robbe-Grillet were not very surprised by the announcement of his death this past week at the age of 85. For, in fact, as those who’ve moved through any of his works know, he most likely didn’t die. He probably never really existed. Or if it was indeed true that Robbe-Grillet drew breath for a number of years, it was merely because someone saw him do it. Or thought they did. The breaking of a wine glass could’ve easily woken them out of their reverie, and they would’ve discovered that ARG had been in their salon with an uncommonly attractive woman (missing one shoe and hiding a pair handcuffs around her wrists). The things he was overheard saying actually happened several months earlier, at a different party, with a different woman listening. Or, far more likely, haven’t happened yet….

On the clip I’ve uploaded to salute Monsieur RG, I can merely comment that any person who singlehandedly created his own literary genre, le nouveau roman, deserves our attention and admiration. Of the many mysteries he created – I regard his tales as puzzles to be assembled, mysteries that are composed strictly of clues — the one that most recently got a mainstream release on these shores was his dream-piece of kink, La Belle Captive(1983), from Koch Lorber (the first and only release of his film work outside of the repeated renditions of Marienbadthat we’ve had over here). I have uploaded my review of the DVD release of the film as it appeared on the Funhouse some months back, including my reading of a single paragraph that was included in the U.S. version of the book, a précis of the book’s rather loose-limbed “plot,” as it were. The fact that any thorough study of ARG would have to plumb both the intricacies of 20th-century fiction and also make mention of the kinky streak possessed by both he and his wife, makes the man worthy of our very strict attention. His films and literature never, ever settled for the “it was all just a dream” cop-out finale, but it is true that after reading or viewing his work, it was hard to look at the world in the same way again. And, having attended a screening of his L’Immortelle at the Alliance Francaise this week, where pissed-off viewers were eagerly leaving the salle de projection, I can say (as we did when talking about Bergman and Antonioni), that his work has true resonance in this rather empty new century.


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Tuneful Rivette: Haut Bas Fragile

The brilliant Jacques Rivette's latest film, The Duchess of Langeais, opens next weekend in NYC. The film is a period romance, adapted from a story by Balzac, about a doomed relationship. Rivette is one of the most underrated of French filmmakers — despite having started as part of the inner core of the New Wave, his work is incredibly hard to see in America, with all of his films up through the early '80s unavailable at the current time on DVD. Thus, I offer up a sequence from one of the MIA features, his "musical," Haut bas fragile(1995). The film is a joyfully self-conscious affair that continues in the lineage of Godard's Une Femme Est Une Femme, offering stars who can only mildly carry a tune acting out the most blissful of movie-musical cliches as they sashay around the set. In this scene, Marianne Denicourt (who had "the Audrey Tautou look" when Tautou herself was still a schoolgirl) and Natalie Richard break into a song and dance. For further info on the great Rivette, I refer you to this terrific web resource:
The Order of the Exile: Jacques Rivette


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Uncle Jean makes the scene

I bow to no one in my slavish ardor for the man who gives us God-art, the one and only JLG. A new box set of four of his “late period” works has been released by Lionsgate (“late” only in that they were made after his “comeback” to fiction film in the 1980s). The box has a few small drawbacks: the two best films in the set were put on the same disc; the cover has an anachronistic 1960s pic of Uncle Jean; and the video-essay he made about Passion is not included in the package (that is the perfect supplement for the film; no trailers are included either). What is there to celebrate about the set? Well, it does present gorgeously restored copies of two of his post-comeback masterpieces, films that are as tightly structured and, yes, accessible as the work he did in his “golden period” in the Sixties, Passion (1982) and First Name Carmen (1983). The other two features in the set, Detective (1985) and Helas Pour Moi (the English translation title, Oh, Woe is Me is rather stilted), contain some of the biggest stars in French cinema (Johnny Hallyday, Nathalie Baye, Jean-Pierre Leaud, Emmanuelle Seigner, and Julie Delpy in the first; Gerard Depardieu in the second), but they are films that, while entertaining (some scenes in Detective are wonderfully funny), do seem like they were produced in an improvisatory fashion that favored dialogue over character and plot. Passion and Carmen, on the other hand, are underrated gems that deserve multiple viewings. In celebration of the set, I offer a glimpse at Godard playing his cinematic alter-ego, crazy “Uncle Jean,” a role he debuted in Carmen and then reprised in a few of his 1980s and ’90s features. The character was clearly based on what the public perception of JLG was: a slightly batty older man who spoke in epigrams and wasn’t quite conscious of the world around him.


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Soupy Sales: the pieman speaks!

Another wonderful moment in the Funhouse, speaking to the Soup in the Friars Club back in 2002. He had had some health problems in the years before the interview, but was very eager to chat about some topics I hadn't heard him talk about that often and, yes, the topic he was always asked about, the throwing of cream pies on his classic Sixties daytime show.


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Still can't believe I met him: the Funhouse interview with Peter Ustinov

I first encountered the multi-talented Peter Ustinov on a show Steve Allen did in the late '70s called Laugh Back, where he showed clips from his 1950s series. I became obsessed with the gent's work, as he embodied something I've always been fascinated with: intelligence tempered with extreme silliness. He was a renaissance man who is now sadly sort of forgotten, although he wrote several hit plays, was a magnificent character actor, directed at least one classic movie (Billy Budd), wrote scads of books, and was an exceptionally funny raconteur (how many raconteurs do we really have these days?).

I was very pleased to meet the gent back in 1999 when he was in NYC promoting the Merchant-Ivory send-up, Stiff Upper Lips. We went off in all kinds of directions in our conversation, which shouldn't've surprised me, but still did.


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The Fashion Plate, Classy Mr. Freddie Blassie

An interview conducted long ago by yrs truly with the legendary manager and champeen Fred Blassie. Here he holds forth on the WWF and its then-competitor the WCW, as well as his one-time wrestler Hulk Hogan. They don't make 'em like Fred anymore.


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Sam is a lineman for the county

Media Funhouse viewers are treated to all kinds of rarities that just aren't being shown anyplace else on television. They aren't necessarily available on the Net either. And thus I present the swinging, groovy Mr. Sammy Davis, rockin' out Jimmy Webb's classic "Witchita Lineman" on The Dean Martin Show. Shake that tambourine, man!


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And, for those who are curious what else Sam did on that episode, I present another YT poster's upload of his dynamite medley with his old friend Dino. A whole lotta fun, and the disparity between their outfits is gorgeous:

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Advertisements for Norman (on his way out)

As my final farewell to the big Mailer, I herewith offer some clips from our recent survey on the program of Norman, filmmaker. These clips will warp your mind, change your perception of film, and most likely amuse the hell out of you. Let it never be said that, even if Mailer was missing the mark in one or another (and damn was he a great writer, I'm in the process of reading his last hybrid historical novel The Castle in the Forest as I write this), he certainly was never, ever boring.

Norman as a gangster, with a boxer's mouth guard in his face to sorta make him sound, tough, ya know?


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Norman, seducer extraordinaire!

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The famous Norman-Rip Torn fight that closes out Maidstone (not uploaded by me):

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I thought it was VERY important for all those interested to see the bizarre discussion that follows the physical encounter above. This is actually the more intense of the two exchanges, since both the Pulitzer Prize winner and the great actor are truly sparring on a mental level here, as well as comparing notes on the aesthetics of filmmaking and assassination, and also acting like kids in the schoolyard.


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The "Deceased Artiste" tributes for January 2008

I love paying tribute to the dearly departed on the Funhouse, and have taken particular pleasure in focusing on the more obscure entertainers who merit a few ’graphs for their obituary in the daily paper, a stray minute or two on Entertainment Tonight and the like, and then never be talked about again… except by the true fans. Regular viewers have asked if I planned to do any more tributes to the “smaller folk,” since recently I’ve been caught up in the careers of the bigger names that kicked off in 2007 (Bergman, Mailer, and still to come, Antonioni). And so I offer a montage tribute to the following folks who shuffled off this mortal coil in the first month of this new year.

Maila Nurmi, aka “Vampira.” Most likely the majority of folks reading this blog have seen the seminal Plan 9 From Outer Space, so I thought I’d just show a bit of Ms. Nurmi when she was older speaking about her friend James Dean, in what is in my opinion the best of all the Dean documentaries (and yes, I have seen too many of them), James Dean: The First American Teenager(1975). Funhouse cameraman Bob Schaffer (aka 3D Gorilla Bob) has posted a great vintage pic of Maila out of her Vampira outfit and in a far freakier look (that is truly a precursor to both punk and goth) on his Flickr page.

Allan Melvin is a thoroughly familiar face to those of us who grew up with sitcoms. He was a semi-regular on both the cursed Brady Bunch (as Sam the Butcher) and All in the Family and its shambling-wreck sequel Archie Bunker’s Place. He also did a large amount of voice-talent work on cartoons, but I decided to remember him for his role as Cpl. Henshaw (aka “stooge no. 2”) on The Phil Silvers Show, better known to classic-TV fans as Sgt. Bilko. The show truly should be airing on a rerun network somewhere, but since only three ’50s b&w shows are seemingly allowed to run forever in syndication (recite it with me now: Lucy, Honeymooners, Twilight Zone….), we shall have to content ourself with the one and only DVD box that has been put out. From it comes this skit from a Silvers variety special shot at the Ed Sullivan Theater in 1959. Here Melvin actually gets something to say besides “why’s that, Sarge?” and “right away!”

Suzanne Pleshette was a comely young thing when her career began, thus we see her as a demure ingénue in this scene from her film debut, the Jerry Lewis vehicle The Geisha Boy(1958), directed by the inimitable Frank Tashlin (he made Jerry loveable — I know you won’t believe it, but believe it!). Her career last almost five decades, through numerous movies, TV-movies, sitcoms, and the like, but her best beloved role to folks of my age is, of course, Emily Hartley, the supportive and wisecrackin’ wife on The Bob Newhart Show. My friend M. Faust has pointed out how one of the most interesting things about the dynamic between Bob and Emily on that show was the fact that they related honestly, and the producers never felt the need to “jump the shark” and give them children (which would’ve surely ruined the mix entirely). Interesting to think that it's a "radical" and exceptional thought in the sitcom world that a couple could love each other and never have kids! Her final “act” in show biz included marrying the great Tom Poston (one Newhart costar married another Newhart costar, from a different series — yes, the dream life of TV is a vital living organism!), who passed away last year. My tribute to him is located here.

And it’s always best to close off with a song, so the final Deceased Artiste is John Stewart, best known to anyone with an ear for ’70s pop for his hit “Gold.” (“There’s people out there/turnin’ music into gold, into gold…) Stewart began as a member of the Kingston Trio. He replaced the leader after they had had their biggest hit “Tom Dooley” but continued with the band until the late ’60s. Here he is seen on Playboy After Dark with a sheerly insane upswept hairdo, as he chats with Hef and Barbie and sings one of his first solo tunes. It’s a nice piece of pop, but sounds like a lot of other gents around at that time (you can hear the Bob Lind in there somewhere…). He needed a few more years before he could turn his music into gold.


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Russ Meyer on Tom Wolfe and how he *didn't* write "Cherry, Harry & Raquel!"

I am currently "burning" to DVD-r some of my older interviews for the show, so I will be posting clips from them in the next few weeks. Here's a bit from my interview with the great Russ denying that Tom Wolfe had anything to do with the great 1970 pic Cherry, Harry & Raquel!. What was the truth of the situation, and why is the name "Tom Wolfe" part of the film's credits? Russ's friend Thomas McGowan co-scripted the film, and apparently wanted to hide under a pseudonym (his work on Disney productions might explain this), so he took the nom du cinema "Tom Wolfe," which of course led everyone to believe the Kandy-Kolored Tangarine-Flake Streamline guy collaborated on the film. Mr. McGowan, by the way, deserves our devoted worship for having directed one of the most memorable bad movies of all time, Night Train to Terror, which I wrote about here.

Check out Russ:

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"A giant death orgy with lotsa maniacs": More Mailer!

I have got to share two pieces of info I found in the all-Norman, all-the-time journal The Mailer Review, which has a web presence here. The two bits of trivia that just rocked my little mind are below. Thanks to Funhouse foundin' guy Patrick Fusco for helping me uncover this trove of Norman lore.

His literary executor/assistant fellow elaborates the many, many, many things to be found in the Mailer Archive which was deposited at the University of Texas. He goes on to include this gem: "At different moments in his life he has done impersonations of Brendan Behan, Marlon Brando, Broderick Crawford, Lord Beaverbrook, Truman Capote, Ernest Hemingway, LBJ, and Tony Soprano." Tapes, Mr. Lennon, do we have any audio on this??? Please!

And at two points in the magazine it is pointed out that Norman did reconcile with his former "nemesis" Gore Vidal. Lennon notes in the Review that the genius ex-"sparring partners" appeared in a staging of Don Juan in Hell, along with Susan Sontag and Kurt Vonnegut. Again, we'd love to see some video of this. If the discussion of Mailer's obsession to catalogue every single thing he ever did is any indication, he must've had a video copy of that play.

Since I can only offer what I've got on hand (although the Funhouse itself does sorta resemble the Mailer Archive, except I can't get the U of T to buy up my collection and free up some space in the apartment), I offer up this gem that I showed on the Funhouse last week. It's Mailer's own trailer for his amazing fusion of '50s melodrama, film noir, Tennessee Williams "hothouse" fables, and Norman's own wildly over-the-top sensibility, Tough Guys Don't Dance:


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The best storyteller you've never heard of

It’s not every day that a new obsession comes along in the Funhouse, but when one does my first order of business is to share it with yez all. In this case, I direct your attention to an absolutely brilliant Podcast — or, as I’d rather call it, an Internet radio show — called Atoms, Motion and the Void.

The show presents the collected adventures and memories of one Sherwin Sleeves, an aged New England man with a distinctly Anglo accent who initially hauls us in with charming tales of his younger years, and then slowly travels into different realms of imagination and emotion. This is a pure radio experience — even though Sleeves’ exploits are highly literate, extremely well written, and at points blissfully cinematic, it’s Sleeves’ smoky, craggy voice that will drag you in. The man himself has described his tones as audio Ambien, but he’s wrong (although there is a weird relaxation that accompanies the listening experience): this is the kind of “theater of the mind” that was embodied by all the best programs in the Golden Age of radio, except that Sleeves’ stories offer a curious mixture of Jean Shepherd’s small-town American roguishness (and longing for the simplicities of the past) crossed with the trippiness of the best fiction of the 1960s.

There is indeed a literary side to what’s going on with Atoms, Motion…. Sleeves’ delivery may make the strangest things seem perfectly natural, but for me the show synchs up beautifully with a lot of the finest way-out storytelling of the second half of the 20th century. There’s surely some of Borges’ labyrinthine weirdness (how that’s overlaid over the Stephen Leacock-like homespun old-wordliness is the neatest trick of all), Pynchon’s secret societies with odd agendas, the identity slip-and-slides common in Philip K. Dick’s work, and most importantly for me, a connection to the extremely psychedelic and mind-expanding work of genius comics writer Alan Moore.

Sleeves’ stories are cut from the same cloth as Moore’s wild journey through religion, the occult, and the imagination in Promethea. The 18th episode of Atoms, wherein our hero truly transcends it all, is an amazing adventure that is akin to the final issue of Moore's comic. (The 32nd issue which folded out so that the character’s final odyssey formed a whole that looked like a psychedelic wall poster).

Sounds too way out for ya, is that what’s troublin’ you bunky? Well, the show isn’t some oddball artistic construct, it’s damned entertaining, and in a few episodes it’s also profoundly touching (and I’m one who immediately clicks off at any inkling of Spielberg hearttugs). I guess the most laudable thing about the whole enterprise is that the show is the product of a gent in New Hampshire named Sean Hurley who has had no fiction published to date, has appeared only on local radio in very short snatches (and that since Atoms, Motion has attracted attention), and is giving the show away as a Podcast to get his stories out to the greater public. Given that I’m now in the 15th year of giving my own labor of love away to the public (and trying to spread the material further through this blog), I have to salute brother traveler “Sleeves” for his talent and dedication.

My own encounter with Sean’s highly addictive creation came through the Ron and Fez show, a radio show (not heard in NYC anymore on free radio, satellite only) that gets lumped in with the “shock jock” phenomenon, but has had some great moments where one of our fave commodities, nostalgia, has reared its misshapen head (when host Ron Bennington did a Ted Lewis “Is everybody happy?" one day, I knew the show had a lot more going for it than was immediately apparent). Sean first appeared on that program submitting novelty tunes as Sleeves, the most memorable of which is a pulse-poundingly weird ditty about graffiti, "Mighty Horse,” that did have me wondering, who the hell is this fucking guy?

Sean’s Sleeves voice is fascinating — in pictures he resembles a dandified Mick Fleetwood, but he sounds like a cross between Long John Baldry and the aforementioned Mr. Moore. (when he ain’t writin’ comics, Alan does occasional spoken-word performances that incorporate music, are quite poetic, and completely tripped out). When doing his own, more serious tunes, Sean has the sound of the great barfly/absurdist heartbreaker, Tom Waits.

I do hope that Sherwin/Sean reaches a larger audience very soon, as his work deserves it. In the meantime, folks on the Ron and Fez msg board that discusses his work have suggested that he try to get the Sleeves narratives published (he offers what looks to be an independently published version of the play on the AMV site; also sampler CDs). I’m sure the stories would indeed work on paper, but the true way to experience them is to hear them “told” to you by the 79-year-old inhabitant of some place called “Marked Mountain” (pronounced “mar-ked”).

Sean intersperses a wide range of music in the episodes from the Ink Spots to Rammstein, Danny Kaye to Harold Budd and Brian Eno, and Beethoven to Sigur Ros (one of my fave what-the-fuck juxtapositions being a show that includes tunes by both the Velvet Underground and Eddie Cantor). The latest development in the Atoms, Motion… saga was a one-man play that Sean performed in N.H. over the Xmas/New Year’s holidays. I couldn’t get around to doing a road trip up there, but the reviews made it sound like the most appropriate visualization of his imminently imaginative flights of fancy: just “Sleeves” there at a keyboard, telling his curious tales straight to his audience.

The fact that there are well over two dozen episodes may seem daunting to newcomers, but I suggest these shows: episode 2 as an amusing intro to the character and his ramblings, episodes 4 or 6 as door-openers to the larger tapestry that Sleeves winds up telling; 5 or 7 for uniquely touching tales (and I am not into the sloppy sentiment that ordinarily surrounds the telling of stories involving kids), and episode 18 if you just want to jump the gun, and experience Hurley’s mindwarpingly good writing.


Go ahead. Listen to Atoms, Motion and the Void

Norman Mailer on the triumph of the mediocre

As a supplement to this week’s episode-length tribute to Deceased Artiste Norman Mailer, I offer this clip from a French TV documentary that I couldn’t fit into the show. It’s a classic bit of Mailer philosophy: on the surface it sounds a bit crackpotty, as if he’s fixated on something that is rather obvious. Underneath most of Mailer’s stranger or more extreme comments, though — as when he ran for Mayor of NYC, and among his platforms was a pitch to rid the city of bad architecture and “tissue-box buildings” — was an attention to conceptual thinking. This sort of thing is passé in this day and age, and is fact thought of as too intellectual and haughty for our really dumb-ass culture, but Norman was a feisty and cantankerous individual (even when young), so his tying in the numbing of the American society through plastic products with our immense thirst for violence is the kind of “colorful” conceptual connection that did allow him to be a guest on both the “smart” television programs (from Dick Cavett, Susskind, and William Buckley to the more dimwitted and ponderous Charlie Rose) and the pop-entertainment set (Carson, Mike Douglas, Merv, the fledgling Oprah). This kind of writer still exists, but just you try and catch them on the tube outside of CSPAN’s “Book Talk” or a fun but “guided” segment on The Daily Show or The Colbert Report.


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The words of the poets are written on the subway walls

The act of riding the subway in NYC is a de-personalizing, de-humanizing, alienating, fucking drag. However, there is one small thing I’ve taken solace in over the past 15 years, and that is the “Poetry in Motion” entries which reside in amongst crappy ads for local dermatologists, awful pitches to Estudiar Ingles, and various and sundry other patent rip-offs. For those who don’t live around these parts, I should explain that the “Poetry in Motion” program selects verses from classic and not-so-familiar poems, and puts them up in amongst the horrible ads, making for some little glimmer of aesthetic trekking as we all go to and from work during rush hour.

The entries have ranged from Shakespeare to Stephen Crane, Emily Dickinson to Kenneth Koch, and Robert Frost to mine own childhood fave, Ogden Nash. At points the verses are simply pleasant diversions, at others they are downright touching and timely. For examples of the deeply moving, I have to point to a rather sad bit by the otherwise glib-and-brilliant Mr. Nash that certainly woke me up one day when I was returning from some dismal office I inhabited: “People expect old men to die/They do not really mourn old men. Old men are different. People look/at them with eyes that wonder when…/People watch with unshocked eyes;/But the old men know when an old man dies.” For the timely, I have to note that when Kerry was running against the Chimp in Charge in 2004, these words by Yeats never sounded more topical: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity.” (Let’s hope that won’t be the case this year.)

“Poetry in Motion” is a gorgeous bit of art in the middle of the worst, most dismal rides you can get in the city. The web page for the program (which for some reason hasn’t been updated to include the 2007 choices, and the page does need a proofreader to check the names….) can be found below the image.


Poetry in Motion

DVR/TiVO/VCR/View-it-dammit alert: Skidoo!

I don't know how the deal was struck, but tomorrow night Turner Classic Movies will present the first showing in god-knows-how-many-years of Otto Preminger's mind-blowingly odd Skidoo (1968). An absolute must-see for fans of '60s cult cinema, camp pics, drug movies, and the Batman TV series, Skidoo is just about impossible to summarize without rhapsodizing about its inherent ridiculousness. Suffice it to say, you should watch it, it will alternately hurt and please your mind. It airs at 2:00AM, late Friday night.

Tomfoolery on YouTube: the great Mr. Lehrer

I am always thrilled to discover new rarities on YouTube and, in line with my earlier posts on Allan Sherman and the immaculately hip Lord Buckley, I was delighted to see that some helpful folks (pre-eminently a Swedish Lehrer-head) have put up a bucketload of clips featuring the elusive Tom Lehrer in his prime performing his warped little ditties and timeless political tunes.

Let me first introduce a song that never, ever ages, “National Brotherhood Week” (dig the lyric about Cassius Clay and “Mrs. Wallace”):

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Maybe a little “Send the Marines.” Again, these comments on U.S. foreign policy may date in their particulars, but their message — much like that of Dr. Strangleove and other lampoons of American stupidity and militarism — never, ever age:

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One last political chanson, another item that has remained pungent as we still confront the question of which nations we can invade without impunity, occupy, take over, overthrow the government, etc. The ones with the nuclear arms, those ones we avoid…. Thus, “Who’s Next?”

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Oh yeah, so everybody’s “green” these days. Well, Lehrer put his ideas about pollution into song:

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And, on the non-political side of things, I must acknowledge that one of the foremost advocates of the genius that is Lehrer was and is Funhouse favorite Doctor Demento. When I was able to catch the dear doctor on a regular basis back in the 1970s, he often gave a spin to Lehrer’s wonderful 45 recording of “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park”:

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and its even more romantic flip-side, “The Masochism Tango”:

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Another helpful British gentleman has uploaded his own, homemade documentary on Lehrer music and his career as a math professor. Included are some clips from the Man himself (this segment starts out with a valid comment on the art of satire from the god that was Peter Cook):

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It’s good to know that Lehrer’s inspiration didn’t end with the ‘60s. Here’s a clip that is from the UK talk show Parkinson in 1970, some color footage of Tom singing a song about VD:

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To blow my mind even further, some other helpful soul put up Lehrer in what seems to be the late 1990s performing at some academic gathering a collection of his brainer ditties. Here is the first segment, in which he performs two math songs (the only thing that could draw me to this dreaded subject is the work of the great TL).

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And I would not be the proud ex-Catholic that I am (stress that ex, willya folks?) if I did not close out with this live TV performance of the pristinely perfect “Vatican Rag.” Tom, we will never forget you! (and thanks so much to “6funswede”)

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