WALTON FORD, TOM BURCKHARDT AND THE INFINITE POSSIBILITIES OF ART

My old friend Hubert Selby Jr. used to always remind me to “remember the infinite possibilities of life.” I was thinking of that last Thursday evening when I attended the openings of two art shows in Chelsea, as I passed galleries where other shows were going on and compared in my mind the two shows I was interested in, I thought of how great it is in these times that we can be exposed to the infinite possibilities of art.

I also thought of how much I hate the partisanship that this variety of approaches seems to produce, various "schools” of painting or poetry or musical styles etc. vying for attention and rewards by putting down rival schools of etc. And me, often being put down for digging almost all of it. But I don’t think I’m the only one, nor that it’s naïve, to dig this variety we are privileged to enjoy.

I mean through the internet and other media conduits we can experience and make use of just about any period in history and its styles, not just in the arts but in its politics and daily life, its spirit and ambitions, etc. I love variety, (obviously, take a look at my own creative output) and the Walton Ford and Tom Burckhardt shows exemplify why.

They are both artists who employ historic approaches to “painting” but in new and original ways

I have “painting” in quotes because actually Burckhardt is also a kind of sculptor, though his sculptures involve, or incorporate, or essentially are, paintings. I mean first and foremost, he’s a painter. Sort of. The easier designation is they’re both “artists.”

But that too requires at times quotes because the English language is so difficult. We use “artist” to describe rappers and “painters” was often used to describe family members and others who worked in my father’s home maintenance business primarily when houses needed painting.

But what Walton Ford does is exactly what we used to mostly mean by “artist” and “painter,” that is to say, he paints “pictures” on canvases. Not abstractions (like Burckhardt, though Burckhardt’s abstractions initially seem more ironic—and therefore contemporary—than heroic like the original abstract art did) or concepts (as in “conceptual art,” though in fact Ford’s paintings are of “concepts” in the broader and actually more specific original sense of the word), etc.

To keep it as simple as I can, Ford paints figures and scenes on canvas. In his latest show the canvases are very large, what is often called “heroic.” (What abstract painters in the 1940s and ‘50s did was called “heroic” for many reasons, including the originality of their approaches and the psychological depths they often had to probe to create, but just as often “heroic” was used because of the large size of some of their paintings.) As in the one used on the invitation to the show, a painting several feet high and even more wide, filling almost one whole wall of the gallery, in which the rhinoceros is probably life size.

The central figure in a typical Ford painting is an animal engaged in an act that seems as clinical and objectively rendered as Audubon’s paintings of birds or Henry Carter’s illustrations for Gray’s Anatomy.

But when you look closer, there is always something unusual, or unexpected. Sometimes it’s the inclusion of an historic reality that was left out of these kinds of paintings throughout history, like the prize bull's enormous testicles, or the black bears burned to death hanging from a tree, while in the corner of the painting is a tiny scene in the distance of human figures, who have treed several live black bears, setting fire to the tree to burn these bears alive too.

As in these examples from the current show, the reality Ford’s realistic renderings seem to celebrate, or at least illustrate, is often cruel and/or sexual, either overtly or indirectly. So his paintings engage the viewer in more ways than one.

Foremost among the several ways they catch the eye and hold it is simply as an expression of incredible artistic control. The figures are always perfectly rendered, down to the tiniest detail, and yet all placed on the canvas as on a page in a 19th-century illustrated encyclopedia.

But not your typical 19th-Century, or for that matter 20th- or 21st-Century, illustrations, but rather illustrations of rarely, if at all, officially illustrated animal realities. Which is another way Ford’s paintings impress, as historic truths revealed, ones we may not have known before or avoided, the knowledge of the natural world that has been kept hidden or ignored for centuries, or longer.

There is also the ambivalence of how ironic and/or didactic are these paintings meant to be? So see for yourself if you're anywhere near Manhattan before the show ends on July 3rd (at Paul Kasmin Gallery at 293 Tenth Avenue, on the Southwest corner of 27th Street, and here's a link to it, since I couldn't manage to upload the image from the invitation).

Tom Burckhardt’s show is an entirely different matter. I’ve known him since he was a teenager on the St. Mark’s Poetry Project scene, mostly through his father, the photographer (and painter) Rudy Burckhardt.

But I’ve been a fan of Tom’s art since I first saw it, and even more so a show he had in 2006 that grew out of his frustration over a lack of inspiration or new ideas until he got one to recreate an artist’s studio only using cardboard and black paint (I assume paint, but it was handled with such a variety of techniques that sometimes it seemed more like tar and at other times more like ink).

The faux studio was an environment you entered and experienced almost as you might the real thing, except everything was made of cardboard, down to the minutest detail, including used paint rags and brushes, cans and a potbelly stove, a messy single bed, bookshelves with books, a cluttered desk and the bulletin board hanging over it, with cardboard and black paint replicas of various postcards “tacked” (the “tacks” were painted) to it, including familiar shots of musical icons like Billy Holliday or reprints of paintings by various artists, including one by Philip Guston which I bought, figuring it’s as close as I’ll get to owning a real Guston or one of the vastly more expensive Tom Burckhardt paintings (the cardboard artist’s studio was sold piecemeal and the postcards were some of the cheapest things in it).

His new show (which I also couldn’t manage reproducing an image from, so here’s a link to the gallery) is called “slump” and consists of his past kinds of almost cartoony “abstract” paintings, only their frames have been designed to seemingly curl at the bottom (there’s actually just two bends towards the bottoms of the frames to create the illusion of a curve) and instead of hanging from the wall are propped up on paint cans and shipping crates etc. (which are meant to be part of the art) and lean against the walls.

It’s both funny and sad, as if the paintings were either very tired or a little depressed.

Burckhardt’s art often includes what appears to be ironic commenting on the art of “art” or of “the artist,” but his nature is un-ironic and therefore I suspect, as in most of the “products” of the creative imaginations I like, is actually meant to express a sincere attempt to engage the creative process and its inspirations, obstacles, rewards and pitfalls.

In the show he did after the cardboard studio one, he exhibited ink drawings meant to evoke classics of the genre, including Asian screen paintings, only a digital reproduction of himself before a canvas on an easel was inserted into them, making it self referential but also humorous and expressive of the challenge of artistic creation in the post-modern context.

You can find lots of images from Burckhardt’s various art shows, besides the one I have above, as well as images of Ford’s art (which is sometimes reproduced in The New Yorker, where some of you have probably already seen it). Check them out, let me know what you think.

(For full disclosure, I know Walton Ford too. He and I met a few years ago at a party at which, during a no-small-talk introductory conversation (I just don’t do small talk very well, a hindrance to the “networking” aspects of a “career”), we discovered we both knew “Indian Larry,” the motorcycle designer who died not long ago. Ford worked with Larry before either of them became famous (Larry mostly through his TV show, as an artist in his own right, only his canvas was motorcycles which he custom built or rebuilt into functional works of art). They worked together in a Brooklyn pipe factory. I knew Larry through our mutual friend Bobby Miller, when Larry was living in the city with Bobby and needed a place to store his motorcycle while he worked on rebuilding it. I lived in an illegal loft in “Tribeca” (a real estate term I hated, so usually called the neighborhood what it was known as before that horrible label, Washington Market) with my two older children when they were young and lots of space for only two hundred a month (oh the seventies in the city) so Larry stored his bike at my loft and came over most days to spend hours working on it while I rattled the keys in my old typewriter or went off on auditions in my new role, then, as a movie actor. But, as they say, that’s another story.)

THIS WEEK'S QUOTE

"People think it's easy to write simply. It is not. It is much easier to write in a way no one can understand." —Alaa Al Aswany

WHO IS RACHEL SCHUTZ?

Last night I went to a concert in Great Barrington, a beautiful New England town in the Berkshire Mountains of Western Massachusetts—one of my favorite places in the world. (Someday I’ll have to make a favorite places list.)

It was held in an old movie theater, one of those classic ones, with a raked balcony from which you can see the stage perfectly from any seat, and those mini-balcony box seats running along the sides between the balcony and the stage. The kind where in old movies royalty sat, or the politico bigwigs, or those two old coots on the old Muppets TV show who were constantly heckling the performers or making loud jokes at their expense.

Yeah, a classic old movie palace, and in this case one restored to something very close to its original glory, after being saved from the wrecking ball and some boxy modern building being put in its place.

I went to the concert because my oldest child, my daughter, is a singer in the Berkshire Bach Society’s choral group. I saw her perform last year with them, a terrific concert that made me very proud, as her singing, and just about everything else she’s ever done, always has.

But this wasn’t a choral concert. Instead it was a very early opera, by Christopher Willibald Gluck, based on the Orpheus legend, but in Italian—ORFEO ED EURIDICE.

There were three soloists who played the three leads—Orfeo, Eurdice, and Amor, the goddess of love. The chorus sang all the other parts—the shepherds and shepherdesses who lament Euridice’s death, the Furies who at first deny Orfeo entrance to the underworld but eventually give in to his pleading song, the blessed spirits dancing in the Elysian Fields, the Shades who bring Euridice to him, the friends who celebrate the return of Euridice and Orfeo from the underworld and death.

There was a small but instrumentally complete orchestra, and the first thing my older son and I responded to, giving each other looks of pleasant surprise, was how competent it was, as good as any I’ve heard anywhere else over the years.

The singer with the toughest job was Teresa Buchholz—not just because she has the most singing to do and has to convey the emotions of a grieving lover moving from sadness to anger to resolve to pleading to etc., but also because she’s a woman playing the part of Orfeo lamenting the death of his wife and his determination to bring her back from death.

The role was originally written for a castrati, but now has to be sung by a woman since they don’t castrate singers anymore to get men with that high a range. And Buchholz sang it well. As did Claire Weber in the part of Amor.

Along with the chorus, Buchholz and Weber sing all the music in the first act. During the intermission my son and I talked about how surprised we were by the level of excellence of all the musicians and singers. We were both having a great time, feeling completely impressed and entertained and captivated and moved by every aspect of the performances so far.

The chorus, made up of ten sopranos (of which my daughter is one), ten altos, nine tenors and eight basses, filled the theater with the richness and volume of their voices. And coupled with the amazingly full sound the orchestra was getting, with a handful of violins, one cello, one bass, a harp, two English horns, two trumpets, several flutes and oboes, and a percussionist, we felt we were actually experiencing the opera the way it was meant to be, at least musically.

I felt so happy for my daughter, and for me and my ancestors, that one of ours had achieved what one thread in our clan had always aspired to—to be a strong and accomplished part of this kind of classical creative intelligence manifested in one glorious performance. My son, who is an accomplished musician himself, and myself, a one time musician, and both lovers of music, had come to see his sister, my daughter, expecting talent and competence, but not necessarily at this level. It was seriously contending with the best of whatever we’ve both experienced in New York or L. A. and other centers of creative activity.

And even though the Berkshires is known for its culture, across the spectrum, from popular to the most esoteric, and this region is full of amazingly talented people, including many whose names are household words, and many more whose names are relatively unknown but shouldn’t be, still, this was an exceptional evening so far.

And then the second act began, and soon Euridice made her appearance. Played by the young Welsh-born soprano, Rachel Schutz, the entire evening was transformed from one of being delighted by the high level of artistry on display and the wonderful musical experience of all these competent performers coming together and doing work even they might have been surprised at, into one of those handful of most memorable nights of your life as part of an audience at plays and concerts and the performing arts in general.

Schutz not only sang brilliantly, looked beautiful, and fit the role of Euridce perfectly, she acted the role so incredibly well, beyond almost anything I’ve experienced on the opera stage or even in musical theater, or for that matter, nonmusical plays.

It was like one of those epiphanies, when you’re watching someone perform a feat that is beyond normal human capabilities, like a dancer taking regular rhythms and movements past what you would think any human could do, or a singer hitting a note higher or holding a note longer or executing an inhumanly difficult musical passage with seeming ease.

It was like that, only more. Even not understanding Italian, and I suspect even not knowing the story of Orpheus and Euridice, there was no missing her anguish at thinking Orfeo won’t look at her because death has robbed her of her beauty and he no longer loves her. Her voice quavering exactly the way it would were she truly feeling that kind of anguish, the depths of her despair was so real, I felt the wetness on my cheek before I realized I was crying.

And as often happens in moments like this, her amazing performance raised everyone else’s game. Suddenly the chorus sounded even more perfect, more rich, more dramatically engaged with the story, as did Buchholz as Orfeo and Weber as Amor when she returned.

When Buchholz and Schutz did their Third Act duet, the emotional current running between each of them and the other, as well as between both of them and the audience, was so electric, I wanted to stand up and shout.

I have no idea how the rest of the audience was experiencing all this, but I assume many if not most of them were sharing my reactions. I know my son and daughter-in-law were having an experience close to mine, and my daughter later told me how she and many in the chorus and even the stage manager or someone behind the scenes commented on how extraordinary the performance was.

This is a production with minimal stage props and movement and set design, with the chorus having rehearsed only with a piano up until days before the concert, and only a few times with the three lead singers. It had nerve-racking last minute cuts and putting the show up without it ever having totally clicked perfectly and then Bam! A night to remember.

The key for me was Rachel Schutz. Like I said, I have rarely been moved so completely and impressed so greatly by any stage performance of any kind. It ranks right up there with the greatest I’ve seen (another list for the future) and is the reason the creative arts have so often saved my life.

If human beings are capable of creating something as beautiful as what I experienced last night, then there will always be hope for us. And if Rachel Shutz doesn’t get the fame her talent warrants, like many amazingly talented people I’ve been exposed to in my life never did, at least after last night she will forever be one of the greatest revelations of the capacity for human greatness I’ve ever known.

[PS: Now I know how Maria Callas opera fanatics felt. I have only seen a few operas in my life, and this wasn't a full production, and Rachel Schutz may have had the best night she'll ever have (though I doubt that) but I am a fan for life (as I already was of my daughter's). I would attend more operas if I knew Schutz was singing in them. But rereading this post after having written it at the end of an exhausting day made me realize I missed what I'm sure a lot of the audience (including my son) felt was the most dramatic and singular aspect of this concert. Not only did Buchholz have to play a man, and she did her best to move and posture and emote like one, though that didn't work as well as it might (my daughter-in-law found it distracting and I found it not totally successful, until the arrival of Rachel Schutz who, like I said, elevated everyone's game), Buchholz also, as the climactic moment of the production, had to kiss Schutz on the mouth. Certainly nothing we haven't seen in popular culture, but I suspect a rarity in "high" culture. I didn't find it surprising or distracting, but like I said, others did and I can see why. The singing had effected me so strongly I accepted the unconventional way of fulfilling this romantic ending convention, and I also was expecting it, surprised it didn't happen earlier, when Orfeo turns to finally gaze upon Euridice and they embrace and in most productions kiss before she dies again. At that point in this production they embraced and kissed each others cheeks, so I thought maybe they didn't want to stir up any controversy, though in the Berkshires, they're not kissing may have stirred up more. But in the end we did get to see these two powerful women not only embrace like lovers, but kiss like ones too, and it seemed at once both not surprising and unexpected, a pretty clever way to end a show. And, I also forgot to mention James Bagwell, the man who not only runs and rehearses and conducts the Berkshire Bach Singers, but conducted the orchestra as well as the chorus in this production and directed the whole show. Not to mention he's married to the lead singer, Teresa Buchholz. He's responsible for bringing it all together and obviously made a lot of right choices leading up to the performance, so kudos to him as well, and if you see him conducting anywhere near you, check him out. But above all, keep your eye out for Rachel Schutz.]

AH HA

It turns out, as my old friends just emailed me, that "In God We Trust" is on the new dollar coins, just smaller and in a different spot.

So this whole right wing campaign, touting another new example of how our government is trying to "remove God from the public life of our nation" is bogus! (I don't have any of the coins so wasn't able to verify either of these things.)

And yet there will be plenty of people who got the original e mail—which was pretty sophisticated in terms of graphics and size and momentum and how widely it has spread—who will continue to believe the original lie and go to the polls this Fall believing it. That's how "the big lie" technique works. Usually it appears in front page stories, or on Fox News or other right wing venues, and then is picked up by the mass media in general even if just to comment on it's happening, and whether sides are taken or not it snowballs into becoming general "knowledge" even though it isn't true.

Like Obama's not being patriotic because he supposedly doesn't wear a flag lapel pin. When the truth is he sometimes wears one and sometimes doesn't. exactly what McCain does. But McCain gets away with it, and Obama doesn't, because the Democrats and their supporters don't make an issue out of it, because they know it isn't an issue. The powers that be on the right know this too, but they also know a lot of people will believe it's an issue if they use the big lie on it.

Like I've said before, Lee Atwater, who perfected this kind of big lie campaign for the right wing of the Republican Party, before it totally took over the party, admitted his responsibility for introducing a lot of these tactics into Republican campaigns and on his death bed expressed his regret and sorrow over what he had done and pleaded that future generations not follow his path but instead take the high road and make campaigns about real issues and the truth.

Obama and McCain have both promised to do that, but I suspect the same rightwing groups that backed things like the swift boat ads will be at it again as soon as the general campaign starts in earnest.

RENDER ONTO CAESAR

I recently received an e mail pass-along-message from old friends who are not right wingers nor fundamentalists, but nonetheless thought it worthwhile to pass on to their friends a circular about how we should all refuse the new dollar coins because they don’t have the words “In God We Trust” on them.

The message implies, or actually outright says, that this is part of the whole ongoing attempt to remove God from public life in “America” and concluded that if America turns its back on God, then God will turn His back on America. It totally bugged me.

I love my friends and know they only mean well. But I felt compelled to respond anyway.

This is an edited version of what I wrote back to them:

If God turns God’s back on a people for not putting God’s name on their coins, than that isn't the God I learned about in school and the Gospels.

Jesus made his famous statement about rendering onto Caesar what is Caesar's and God what is God's, using a Roman coin as an example. He didn’t say Caesar should put my father’s name on his coins.

My God is interested in me helping people who need help, in loving others as myself, and in fact the Jesus I dig says in the Gospels he came to replace the old laws with one new one: love your neighbor as yourself.

This campaign to refuse to accept or use the dollar coin is one of those divisive issues that distract people from the real political issues that truly affect their lives, and to distract them from the true message of the Gospels.

It also helps the fundamentalist preachers earn millions by stoking people's fears that this country—which has a higher percentage of citizens who believe in God than anywhere outside of some Arab nations—is somehow forgetting about God.

I always wonder why these same fundamentalist preachers, whose version of Christianity has only been around for little more than a century, always insist on following the ten commandments and having them inscribed on walls in government buildings, but never ask to have the beatitudes put up in public, which are their spiritual leader’s own words, who they profess to follow.

They sure do love that Old Testament religion. I think it's called Judaism. Except in the Jewish religion there is no set-in-stone text, or interpretation of the text, unless you're one of their fundamentalists, which have also only been around for little more than a century, though there have been different versions of that kind of thing in the past in all religions.

Jesus confronted that literal, fundamentalist, follow-the-rules-and-add-more mentality that has been the cause of so much death and destruction in the world and continues to be.

That’s about all I said in my email response. But I’d like to add that this idea many Christians have that they are a victimized minority in this country, and that the government and other public entities are out to destroy them, or at least suppress and marginalize them, is mind bogglingly absurd.

I understand that the culture at large is full of elements that either seem willfully sinful or at least contrary to the Old Testament rules. Like rap videos that are all about bling and objectifying women and their body parts to the point of being more sexist than the good old days many fundamentalists often seem to be nostalgic for (even if those days included racism and sexism and poverty etc. on a scale young people wouldn’t even recognize if they encountered any of it).

But the elements in popular culture that really go against the spiritual leader they profess to follow are the wanton violence and the violation of people’s basic humanity, and the exploitation of children and the poor and bewildered and uneducated and fearful and stressed out, and so much more.

And to think that the government deliberately removed “in God we trust” from the coins because there’s some kind of governmental conspiracy to remove God from public life, when this administration is headed by an avowed born again Christian who has filled the government with fellow born agains, including all those graduates of evangelical colleges like the ones in the Justice department who graduated from that new fundamentalist evangelical college and had no experience in the law or in government nor even a very good education. Or the armed services where Christian fundamentalism has become part and parcel of military life, and where troops who don’t join in prayer circles and prayer meetings are ostracized and held back from advancing in rank and even discharged!

There’s certainly more Christianity in public life at anytime in my lifetime. When I was in the service it was still like the old Hollywood movies where the guys represented every faith and ethnicity that makes up what they used to wishfully call our “melting-pot” of a nation, but now, we have commanders in all the services professing that ours is a Christian nation and that this war is a crusade and that anyone who doesn’t believe in their God the way they do is not saved and is not to be respected and worse.

The Supreme Court justices who dominate with their conservative opinions and handed Junior an election he lost and continue to be “activists” for conservative causes and issues are all Chirstians, the cabinet is mostly Christians, and the few exceptions still believe in a God.

Can these frightened people who think their religion is being somehow suppressed in this country name one atheist in government in any prominent or important or authoritative or decision making position?

Give me a break. Atheists are the ones whose perspective is suppressed in the public life of this country. And if the culture is polluted with values that Christians see as against their religion, blame that on corporate greed, not some government conspiracy.

But I suspect this email some folks are passing around the internet is one of many indirect ways of making this election about “values” again instead of issues, and creating an “us and them” mentality with I’m sure the avowed Christian Obama being cast as the anti-Christian, if not the anti-Christ (have you noticed that Hagee, the fundamentalist preacher who endorsed McCain, has not had the youtube loops repeatedly shown on TV of him professing far worse beliefs than Rev. Wright including his onw version of "the chickens coming home to roost" when he claimed Katrina was God damning New Orelans for its sins, or that journalists have let McCain get away with accepting his endorsement and appearing in public with him, even though this same preacher has called the Catholic church “the whore of Babylon” and the popes, not just this one, the anti-Christ and has already implied that Obama may be the new anti-Crhist).

Thank God there are Christian preachers in the USA today who are beginning to preach Jesus’s words and teachings about feeding the poor, sheltering the homeless, visiting those in prison, taking care of the earth, and rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.

TEEN GANG FILM LIST

I think I may have done a list like this before, but after I watched THE YOUNG SAVAGES the other night, it got me thinking. So here’s a list of my favorite movies about teenage gangs (I couldn’t remember enough titles for too many letters to make another alphabet list, so I did my second favorite listing device, triplets):

THREE FROM THE PERIOD I EXPERIENCED MOST CLOSELY:

THE COOL WORLD (Shirley Clark’s 1961 masterpiece and my all time favorite flick, worth it for the jazz soundtrack alone or the lingering shots of real street scenes in Harlem c. 1960, though I still can’t find it on DVD)
THE YOUNG SAVAGES
BLACKBOARD JUNGLE (worth it just for the young Sidney Poitier; overdone in some scenes but a mostly realistic period and location feel)

OLD HOLLYWOOD CLASSICS:

DEAD END (as old Hollywood as it is, it’s still one of the best)
ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES (the Dead End kids with Cagney, how swell)
KNOCK ON ANY DOOR (old-style Hollywoodized adaptation of the great Willard Motley novel which introduced the line “Live fast, die young and have a good-looking corpse”)

FANTASIZED VERSIONS BUT STILL GREAT:

WEST SIDE STORY (the white gang was mostly miscast, but even so it’s a great adaptation of Shakespeare to 1950s New York gangs)
THE WARRIORS (from the Sol Yurick novel, a fantasy but with some very realistic scenes and location shooting around New York)
THE WANDERERS (mostly realistic, e.g. there really was a Bronx gang known as the “Baldies,” but Richard Price must have been beaten up by one or more Irish kids when he was growing up because his fantasy gang of zombie-like, soulless midget “Danny Boys” is a pretty mean spirited take on the Irish, if he’d done a similarly offensive take on the African-American gang or the Asian-American one, or even Italian or Latino ones, there would have been an uproar, but still worth it for a lot of the acting, including Karen Allen in one of her earliest film roles)

EARLY TAKES ON WHAT WE HAVE NOW:

BASTARDS OF THE PARTY (great HBO documentary about the origins of the Crips and Bloods)
MENACE II SOCIETY (stone brilliant)
BOYZ ‘N THE HOOD

HISPANIC VERSIONS:

LOS OLVIDADOS (Bunuel’s most realistic flick—though with surreal dream sequences—was shot in Mexico in the 1950s)
MI VIDA LOCA (from the Latina perspective)
AMERICAN ME (the gang starts out as teens but then they grow older and so does the gang, though still including teens and those even younger—it’s one of the most realistic of Hollywood “gang” movies)

NOT QUITE TEEN GANG FLICKS BUT CLOSE ENOUGH:

ON THE WATERFRONT (though a very small part of the film, the gang Brando’s character started plays a pivotal role, and the kid who leads them is more real than any other white movie gang kid because he wasn’t an actor, but a local kid from Hoboken)
QUADROPHENIA (the great Brit flick about the whole Mod thing actually has some of the most realistic “gang” fight scenes, pre semi-automatic times, ever filmed)
KING CREOLE (Elvis’ most realistic flick, with elements of “teen gang” culture)

HONORARY MENTION:

GANGS OF NEW YORK (it has flaws, especially in the casting, and the gangs aren’t exactly “teens”—but a passionate attempt to tell the story of the original gangs in the USA)

ANOTHER INTERESTING STATISTIC

According to TIME magazine:

""About six people die in shark attacks annually."

"26 million
Number of sharks killed annually by humans."