Maybe best known now as the mother of Rufus Wainwright, Kate McGarrigle (here's a good obit) and her sister Anna were instant favorites the first moment I heard them sing and perform their music.
The antidote to all the hype and glitz and giant egos of the music business then and now, these two women graced the world with their talent without ever displaying any of the hubris that so many talented "artists" seem to be cursed with, even those who have only a modicum of what the world generally recognizes as "success" (yours truly included).
I only wish we all, and me personally for sure, could not only share whatever talent we have as generously and naturally—truly humbly since humility is nothing but unblemished reality—and lovingly.
May her family find peace and solace from the musical legacy she leaves behind that will long outlast many more obvious examples of "success" in the world, musical or not.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
A SINGLE MAN
The novel A SINGLE MAN by Christopher Isherwood became one of my favorite books the first time I read it. I always loved Isherwood, one of the great stylists of 20th Century English. In fact, his way with the written word transformed my deep seated resentment toward most things upper-class Brit and made a fan of me.
I met him in Manhattan in the 1970s when he was visiting and had dinner at his home in Santa Monica Canyon shortly after I moved nearby in the early '80s. The other people there at the time were my then wife, a terrific actress who I had fallen for watching her in a play, not realizing I was falling for a character not the person playing the role, and Chris's...what?
How do we describe a person who Chris had first fallen in love with decades before and had lived with since then and would continue to live with until his death, who was the love of his life but happened to be a man? His pal? His buddy? His "partner" or "lifetime companion" or worse yet—boyfriend?
That is part of the point of A SINGLE MAN, both the book and the movie. The book was quietly revolutionary, appearing in 1964, five years before The Stonewall "riots" that sparked what became know for a while as "the gay revolution"—i.e. the movement to finally grant equality to "gays" and "lesbians" (also terms that don't seem to fit very well the reality that we're all human and "sexuality"—even "gender"—is found on a sliding scale that's not necessarily fixed, and even if individuals feel it is for them their place on that scale is not universal, no matter how much it may seem "the norm" to them).
The book is relatively short, some call it a novelette though I don't like those kind of limiting labels any more than I do the ones above. Short or not it is intense. The portrait of an aging "homosexual" English transplant professor to Southern California who has lost the love of his life, a younger "American" man.
It's passionate, romantic, yet full of irony, criticism of the larger culture including heterosexuals, even rage. It's so tightly packed the single day it covers in this man's life gives any good reader an entire life in that day. Told from his point of view it captures exactly what it meant to be alive in that man's body and consciousness at that time and place.
It was up to then the most honest depiction of what it meant to be "a single man"—a common euphemism at the time for homosexual—i.e. living alone, not married-with-kids at middle age. But also singular, not just in his outsiderness of preferring men romantically and sexually as partners, but as an Englishman in Southern California, a middle-aged man among young students at a time (1962) when "America" was waking up sensually in ways it never had before thanks to "the pill" and the influence of The Beats and what would morph into "the love generation" and its wide embrace of drugs and "free love" that only the rarest of bohemians and artists had experienced previously.
All that resonates in the book in subtle and not so subtle ways, because it was unfolding as Isherwood wrote it in those first years of the 1960s, but only the most perceptive observers were aware it was even happening.
The book is about loss as well, which is its most profound subject, and not just of a loved one. I don't like giving away plots so that's enough about the story.
The movie is something else. The main message still at the heart of it is loss of a loved one who, in this case, the world cannot acknowledge because of the restraints and prejudices against, and actual oppression of, those who love each other but were not allowed to do so openly back when the book and movie are set, and still can't do it legally in ways (marriage!) that grant the benefits others have (as has been pointed out by others, convicted murderers and predators and all kinds of repulsive characters locked up for life behind bars can legally marry as long as the couple are "a man and a woman"—whatever that means).
A lot of liberties have been taken in the movie. Don Bachardy, Chris's love—and a man I consider a friend, as I did Chris—had some input on the movie and gave the go ahead for Tom Ford, the fashion designer/movie director, and his co-writing partner, David Scearce, to do what they had to to make the book work as a movie. A lot of minor details have been changed, and some major ones, but the heart of the story remains the same.
For instance in the book the main character is 58 at a time when that would have looked and felt older for most folks than it does now, including the main character and yet in the film he's played by Colin Firth who appears, at least to me, to be barely in his forties if that. So some of the pain and insight of the book's version of this character has to be portrayed in other ways.
Ford does a pretty good job but, as some have already noted, there is a kind of fashion conscious gloss to some scenes that could undercut the emotional impact for some of what is a very moving movie. There were a few times when I felt like I was leafing through a fashion magazine, enjoying the beautiful models or innovative photography or just the styles displayed.
Like the Bidget Bardot look-alike who has no lines, at least none we can hear, but holds a cigarette like you might imagine a young Sophia Loren might (not to mix international beauties too much here). And the young men are all photographed as if for a spread in Vogue, so much so I figured they had to be models acting for the first time and doing a really good job despite the distraction of the impeccable style, but in fact they were actors who never looked so good because they never had a fashion designer for a director before I imagine.
Julianne Moore, who sometimes I find too cold in her film roles, as if she were acting with her mind more than her soul, is great as Charlotte, another English ex-pat in Santa Monica Canyon. She gives a performance that deserves praise for its courage in some scenes (but she's always been pretty fearless when it comes to the physicality of her characters, it's just their emotional depths that she sometimes seems to be holding back on, or maybe I mean identification with). It's a performance enhanced by Ford's eye for the flaws beneath the glamor (though I felt he wasn't as harsh on his male characters).
But it's Colin Firth who gives the tour-de-force performance, a completely compelling realization of a heartbroken man, but one who is a secretive, protective, upper-class-British-intellectual still able to maintain appearances but not what lies beneath them. It's an extraordinary performance that deserves an Oscar but I doubt will get it.
Jeff Bridges I suspect is the one this year, because he has consistently given Oscar-worthy performances and been overlooked for most of his career, at least as the amazing actor he has proven himself to be every time out. Firth will probably have to wait to get his belated compensation for earlier roles like this one in A SINGLE MAN. But I may be wrong.
A SINGLE MAN the movie is a very separate work from the novel, but you might say both are incredibly singular works of art, maybe not for "the masses" as they say, but definitely for the discerning book and movie lover.
[Just to update my brain surgery recovery now in the first week of my third month after, I had to retype "doubt" a few lines up there several times before I finally got it right because despite what my brain was telling my fingers they kept typing "boudt"—a dyslexic kind of thing which has given me insight into that condition—and last night in trying to close a bag of cookies, actually tiny biscottti squares called "Biscotti Babies" made by a friend of my older son and mine (at 955 South Main St. in Great Barrington Mass.) I couldn't remember how you close a bag with those two thin bendy tabs coming out the sides near the top, it just seemed unfathomable to me, until a friend took them from me and did it and then I thought, oh yeah, of course. Little stuff like that still happening, but over all feeling pretty lucky to be this far along and this close to what "normal" was for me before the surgery.]
Monday, January 18, 2010
AVATAR PS
I forgot the Golden Globes were last night (post brain surgery I forget a lot more than I used to, even when I write it down, I then forget where I wrote it, etc.). Looks like while we were out watching AVATAR, it was winning big. Well, in many ways it deserves it, as I wrote in yesterday's post.
Though I'm happy to see Jeff Bridges won for CRAZY HEART, Colin Firth in A SINGLE MAN may have given the more challenging performance (more about that soon).
But back to AVATAR. It's being accused, by rightwing fundamentalists, of being anti-Christian because it seems, according to these critics, to be advocating paganism, or more specifically: pantheism. This is because of the age old plot of the "natives" being invaded and exploited and displaced or annihilated by the greedhead imperialists and their troops, often mercenaries (shades of Blackwater) who destroy the natural environment to extract the local resources that can create instant wealth for those in control of the invading country (the French in Haiti, the colonizers in "The New World" etc.).
An old story that unfortunately has mostly ended in the defeat and sometimes genocide of the indigenous people and the success of the invading forces, with a few exceptions (the African-Haitians initially e.g. but only after the indigenous people had been totally wiped out by imperialism). Like most movies with this story line did too. Until the 1960s when the imperialist urge in the USA and the death and destruction it had wrought (and was still causing in Viet Nam at the time) was finally addressed by more than a handful of historians and media outlets and large segments of the population, and then most movies with this ancient story line began finally to favor the "natives".
But in reality, the imperialists usually have a long winning streak (see the Roman empire, the French empire, the British empire, etc.) before finally caving in on themselves from over extension, over reliance on "natives" for troops and mercenaries, deterioration of basic infrastructure and lines of communication, and factionalism and infighting leading to civil breakdown if not civil war etc.
But maybe even more importantly, the decline of empires, from my perspective, can often be attributed to loss of control of the story line. As long as Britain was able to maintain the fiction of the code of honor practiced by the stiff-upper-lip leaders and their minions, the actual underlying inhumanity and cruelty to its foreign subjects could be glossed over. But once it lost control of the story line (the native Irish, for instance, could no longer be compared to monkeys or pigs with impudence, as Princess Margaret found out in the famous incident caught on an open microphone back in the '70s was it?) defeat was inevitable.
That's to a large extent what the right wing nuts are all about, trying to control the story line of American imperialism. And a lot of them are really upset about AVATAR because it portrays the mostly white obviously "American" corporate greedheads and their mercenaries as the embodiment of evil, and the indigenous "people"—the Na'vi—as good and just and in balance with nature and ready to revolt and throw their invaders out.
There has even been rightwing talk of how the movie supports terrorism, and a good case could be made for that since the movie itself has the hero address "terrorism" only from the point of view of the natives being invaded and exploited and displaced and annihilated by the corporate imperialists and their mercenaries. I could see, actually, some "foreign" (to us, obviously "natives" in their own lands) angry young men taking solace and even being inspired by this flick to fight foreign troops (aka us) on their land.
And though it's true to some extent our troops are not fighting in their minds to promote and protect corporate greed and expansion, in the case of many Muslim "terrorists" they are fighting—as the Na-vi in AVATAR are also—to protect their "holy" places (when the US put troops in Saudi Arabia where Mecca is, that's when Al Queda made the USA its sworn enemy) and local resources (it was clearly stated by many in the last administration that one of the benefits of invading Iraq they believed would be access to Iraq's oil fields once again).
But I can also see, and hope for, this movie gaining a worldwide audience that might be inspired by its message of protecting the natural environment and the wealth it represents in the long term from those who would exploit and destroy it for short term gain (ala destroying the rain forests of Indonesia and Brazil etc.).
Which in the end is the true story line of the political turmoil of these times in this country: those who believe short term gains are all or mostly what matters (the continuing exploitation and destruction of the environment for gas to fill up badly designed cars or tearing off the tops of mountains for quick profits for mining companies that then move on leaving polluted streams and a devastated landscape etc. or destroying forests for quick lumber profits and more land for grazing cattle to supply beef for MacDonald's et. al.) versus those of us who believe in the long-term gains, represented by the richness rain forests and glaciers and Pacific reefs and other natural environments provide, and are willing to sacrifice some immediate oil or coal or precious-metal fueled windfalls for the long term rewards of a healthier and more peaceful approach to living in the natural world.
Go AVATAR! Etc.
Though I'm happy to see Jeff Bridges won for CRAZY HEART, Colin Firth in A SINGLE MAN may have given the more challenging performance (more about that soon).
But back to AVATAR. It's being accused, by rightwing fundamentalists, of being anti-Christian because it seems, according to these critics, to be advocating paganism, or more specifically: pantheism. This is because of the age old plot of the "natives" being invaded and exploited and displaced or annihilated by the greedhead imperialists and their troops, often mercenaries (shades of Blackwater) who destroy the natural environment to extract the local resources that can create instant wealth for those in control of the invading country (the French in Haiti, the colonizers in "The New World" etc.).
An old story that unfortunately has mostly ended in the defeat and sometimes genocide of the indigenous people and the success of the invading forces, with a few exceptions (the African-Haitians initially e.g. but only after the indigenous people had been totally wiped out by imperialism). Like most movies with this story line did too. Until the 1960s when the imperialist urge in the USA and the death and destruction it had wrought (and was still causing in Viet Nam at the time) was finally addressed by more than a handful of historians and media outlets and large segments of the population, and then most movies with this ancient story line began finally to favor the "natives".
But in reality, the imperialists usually have a long winning streak (see the Roman empire, the French empire, the British empire, etc.) before finally caving in on themselves from over extension, over reliance on "natives" for troops and mercenaries, deterioration of basic infrastructure and lines of communication, and factionalism and infighting leading to civil breakdown if not civil war etc.
But maybe even more importantly, the decline of empires, from my perspective, can often be attributed to loss of control of the story line. As long as Britain was able to maintain the fiction of the code of honor practiced by the stiff-upper-lip leaders and their minions, the actual underlying inhumanity and cruelty to its foreign subjects could be glossed over. But once it lost control of the story line (the native Irish, for instance, could no longer be compared to monkeys or pigs with impudence, as Princess Margaret found out in the famous incident caught on an open microphone back in the '70s was it?) defeat was inevitable.
That's to a large extent what the right wing nuts are all about, trying to control the story line of American imperialism. And a lot of them are really upset about AVATAR because it portrays the mostly white obviously "American" corporate greedheads and their mercenaries as the embodiment of evil, and the indigenous "people"—the Na'vi—as good and just and in balance with nature and ready to revolt and throw their invaders out.
There has even been rightwing talk of how the movie supports terrorism, and a good case could be made for that since the movie itself has the hero address "terrorism" only from the point of view of the natives being invaded and exploited and displaced and annihilated by the corporate imperialists and their mercenaries. I could see, actually, some "foreign" (to us, obviously "natives" in their own lands) angry young men taking solace and even being inspired by this flick to fight foreign troops (aka us) on their land.
And though it's true to some extent our troops are not fighting in their minds to promote and protect corporate greed and expansion, in the case of many Muslim "terrorists" they are fighting—as the Na-vi in AVATAR are also—to protect their "holy" places (when the US put troops in Saudi Arabia where Mecca is, that's when Al Queda made the USA its sworn enemy) and local resources (it was clearly stated by many in the last administration that one of the benefits of invading Iraq they believed would be access to Iraq's oil fields once again).
But I can also see, and hope for, this movie gaining a worldwide audience that might be inspired by its message of protecting the natural environment and the wealth it represents in the long term from those who would exploit and destroy it for short term gain (ala destroying the rain forests of Indonesia and Brazil etc.).
Which in the end is the true story line of the political turmoil of these times in this country: those who believe short term gains are all or mostly what matters (the continuing exploitation and destruction of the environment for gas to fill up badly designed cars or tearing off the tops of mountains for quick profits for mining companies that then move on leaving polluted streams and a devastated landscape etc. or destroying forests for quick lumber profits and more land for grazing cattle to supply beef for MacDonald's et. al.) versus those of us who believe in the long-term gains, represented by the richness rain forests and glaciers and Pacific reefs and other natural environments provide, and are willing to sacrifice some immediate oil or coal or precious-metal fueled windfalls for the long term rewards of a healthier and more peaceful approach to living in the natural world.
Go AVATAR! Etc.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
AVATAR
So I went out to the movies last night for the first time. Saw A SINGLE MAN, more of which in a later post, because before I got a chance to write about that, I took a chance on a cold rainy night (the only weather I don't like is rain when it's in the thirties, or even forties, it should be snowing, I don't mind snow on a cold day or Summer rain or even Spring showers or Fall, anyway) and went with my son and two friends to AVATAR.
I heard it was as seminal a technologically revolutionary leap forward for movies as THE JAZZ SINGER was (the first talkie to wow movie audiences). It's not. More like STAR WARS—derivative, simplistic and even cliched, BUT technologically a very clever leap forward that wowed audiences and influenced the making of movies ever after, at least ones that involved computer technology.
There were computer effects breakthroughs before STAR WARS but nothing as fun or innovative technically as I remember it. Anyway, I was expecting to find the story for AVATAR trite and obvious but to be impressed by the technology. But maybe because I had such low expectations for the traditional qualities of a good movie and nothing but a technology show, I was pleasantly surprised.
I enjoyed it enormously, though I got a little bored toward the end of the second act when a normal length movie would have been ending but we still had almost an hour to go. But the effects were so luscious and extravagant, and the story line, though simple and totally derivative, so actually engaging for me, I found myself thinking that this film maybe should win an Academy Award just for the impact it's obviously having and the movie-going pleasure it's giving to so many.
The acting was good for this kind of action/fantasy flick (I especially dug Stephen Lang who is a terrific villain and Michelle Rodriquiez who livens up the movie in the renegade sidekick role and is the only actor in it who makes her lines resonate with the kind of classic movie wise guy/tough guy attitude I wish she'd been on screen more), but no Oscars should go to anyone here. And the writing is too obvious. But the overall effect of what the technology accomplishes and the ways it is integrated into the familiar story line is undeniably impressive.
It would certainly be a boost to the Oscars and to movies in general if it won.
[Oh yeah, I was also thinking while watching this how silly and racist it is that most movies (maybe all) about the future always have "white" guys (and some women) running everything. The screen is always majority "white"—except for the "natives" etc. (in this case blue). And also wanted to add that watching THE SINGLE MAN was pretty easy in that it's a small cast of characters and mostly confined sets etc., and was expecting AVATAR to present a different challenge for my post-brain surgery sense, but it turned out to be—once I adjusted to the glasses—a successful and satisfying movie experience, and maybe is contributing to my enthusiasm for it.]
I heard it was as seminal a technologically revolutionary leap forward for movies as THE JAZZ SINGER was (the first talkie to wow movie audiences). It's not. More like STAR WARS—derivative, simplistic and even cliched, BUT technologically a very clever leap forward that wowed audiences and influenced the making of movies ever after, at least ones that involved computer technology.
There were computer effects breakthroughs before STAR WARS but nothing as fun or innovative technically as I remember it. Anyway, I was expecting to find the story for AVATAR trite and obvious but to be impressed by the technology. But maybe because I had such low expectations for the traditional qualities of a good movie and nothing but a technology show, I was pleasantly surprised.
I enjoyed it enormously, though I got a little bored toward the end of the second act when a normal length movie would have been ending but we still had almost an hour to go. But the effects were so luscious and extravagant, and the story line, though simple and totally derivative, so actually engaging for me, I found myself thinking that this film maybe should win an Academy Award just for the impact it's obviously having and the movie-going pleasure it's giving to so many.
The acting was good for this kind of action/fantasy flick (I especially dug Stephen Lang who is a terrific villain and Michelle Rodriquiez who livens up the movie in the renegade sidekick role and is the only actor in it who makes her lines resonate with the kind of classic movie wise guy/tough guy attitude I wish she'd been on screen more), but no Oscars should go to anyone here. And the writing is too obvious. But the overall effect of what the technology accomplishes and the ways it is integrated into the familiar story line is undeniably impressive.
It would certainly be a boost to the Oscars and to movies in general if it won.
[Oh yeah, I was also thinking while watching this how silly and racist it is that most movies (maybe all) about the future always have "white" guys (and some women) running everything. The screen is always majority "white"—except for the "natives" etc. (in this case blue). And also wanted to add that watching THE SINGLE MAN was pretty easy in that it's a small cast of characters and mostly confined sets etc., and was expecting AVATAR to present a different challenge for my post-brain surgery sense, but it turned out to be—once I adjusted to the glasses—a successful and satisfying movie experience, and maybe is contributing to my enthusiasm for it.]
Saturday, January 16, 2010
DAVID FRANKS R.I.P.
Though I believe he was about my age and I remember him as a lot taller than me, and I'm six feet in my shoes, David Franks' personality and creative work was so impishly mischievous he seemed to me like a little kid.
He lived and worked in Baltimore when I knew him and was still operating in that area when he passed as far as I know. One of the greatest things about him was his enthusiasm. He always made me feel like he was my biggest fan, even using that as an excuse when he totally copped the last few lines of my best known poem of that time (the 1970s) "My Life" for one of his own that he then managed to get more widely circulated than mine for a while!
But it was almost impossible to get angry at him (though I did briefly anyway) because he was such a nebbish (as I understand that term, or do I mean mensch?). He was also handsome and well built, a real movie star type, especially because he had that special kind of charisma that enthusiasts have when they seem to have more going for themselves outwardly than those they're getting all enthusiastic about, if you get what I mean.
He was a conceptual or performance artist as well—or whatever the term is now for a poet who comes up with radically unique and individual ways of expressing their creativity visually and aurally other than just reading their poetry to an audience. And he was a kind of local monument in his dedication to poetry and art in the Baltimore area, which when I knew him best included DC as well.
I'm so sorry to hear he is gone, though it seems for the best as people always say, since he had been suffering from the cancer that as I understand it was the ultimate cause of his passing. His presence was always so vibrant and energetic and positive—and from my perspective happy—that the universe feels a little heavier knowing he won't be around, at least his physical body won't be, to liven up the scene around Baltimore if and when I'm there again and for those who already, or still, are.
He lived and worked in Baltimore when I knew him and was still operating in that area when he passed as far as I know. One of the greatest things about him was his enthusiasm. He always made me feel like he was my biggest fan, even using that as an excuse when he totally copped the last few lines of my best known poem of that time (the 1970s) "My Life" for one of his own that he then managed to get more widely circulated than mine for a while!
But it was almost impossible to get angry at him (though I did briefly anyway) because he was such a nebbish (as I understand that term, or do I mean mensch?). He was also handsome and well built, a real movie star type, especially because he had that special kind of charisma that enthusiasts have when they seem to have more going for themselves outwardly than those they're getting all enthusiastic about, if you get what I mean.
He was a conceptual or performance artist as well—or whatever the term is now for a poet who comes up with radically unique and individual ways of expressing their creativity visually and aurally other than just reading their poetry to an audience. And he was a kind of local monument in his dedication to poetry and art in the Baltimore area, which when I knew him best included DC as well.
I'm so sorry to hear he is gone, though it seems for the best as people always say, since he had been suffering from the cancer that as I understand it was the ultimate cause of his passing. His presence was always so vibrant and energetic and positive—and from my perspective happy—that the universe feels a little heavier knowing he won't be around, at least his physical body won't be, to liven up the scene around Baltimore if and when I'm there again and for those who already, or still, are.
Friday, January 15, 2010
HAITI
There is nothing to say about this tragedy, which is why I haven't.
But there is something to say about preachers and politicians using it to further their agendas (I'm talking about Pat Robertson's dispicable comment about this being the result of the Haitians making a pact with the devil back when they got their freedom from France! or Rush or those other Republican politicians using it to criticize this administration or et-here-we-go-again-cetera).
And at the risk of provoking more ideological comments with no logic or factual basis, I might point out that Bill Clinton was already helping transform Haiti into a more peaceful and on the road to recovery place for the first time in its recent if not entire history, and that Jimmy Cater also contributed and contributes greatly to helping all kinds of devastated areas of the world and their peoples, and what again did Nixon or Reagan do in their retirement from their presidencies?
But there is something to say about preachers and politicians using it to further their agendas (I'm talking about Pat Robertson's dispicable comment about this being the result of the Haitians making a pact with the devil back when they got their freedom from France! or Rush or those other Republican politicians using it to criticize this administration or et-here-we-go-again-cetera).
And at the risk of provoking more ideological comments with no logic or factual basis, I might point out that Bill Clinton was already helping transform Haiti into a more peaceful and on the road to recovery place for the first time in its recent if not entire history, and that Jimmy Cater also contributed and contributes greatly to helping all kinds of devastated areas of the world and their peoples, and what again did Nixon or Reagan do in their retirement from their presidencies?
Thursday, January 14, 2010
GOOD MORNING SUNSHINE
Yesterday was a long day, but a good one.
I made my hopefully last visit to the NYC hospital where I had the brain surgery. They say everything's looking good.
This time my friend Sue and I took the New Jersey Transit train into the city and than three separate subway lines to get there and back. It was my first time on a train of any kind and surprisingly not anxiety inducing. There were a few moments of feeling disoriented when I got off a train and wasn't sure which way to go. If Sue hadn't been there I just would have taken more time than usual to recognize the signs and such. Nothing people who haven't had brain surgery don't experience as well I'm sure, though for me, so used to these routine actions after a lifetime of riding the New York subway system, it felt a little more serious than it actually was.
And last night I started back up a poetry workshop I teach in the living room of my apartment. It's an intimate space and there's usually ten people besides me so it's even more intimate. The poems were terrific, the conversation insightful and helpful and the thrill of this little group of passionate poetry lovers being together again priceless. I couldn't have been more pleased. Though it did leave me a little more tired than it used to. I expect that will become less true as the weeks proceed.
I was at a loss for the right word now and then, something that happens to plenty of people who didn't have brain surgery, but a little disappointing to me nonetheless since I once had an almost encyclopedic knowledge of 20th Century poetry so not being able to remember a name or to remember which of two or several names were coming to mind was a change I can accept but a change nonetheless.
Then, because even being tired there was still a bit of that restless energy you feel after doing a job or a performance or something that engages your mind and senses more than usual, I ended up catching THE USUAL SUSPECTS on TV, a film I dug when I first saw it, despite its overdone elements, because it seemed such a great update of the film noir classics of the '40s and '50s. I never bothered to watch it again because once the revelation of its ending is experienced I imagined it wouldn't give that much pleasure again. And it doesn't.
In fact I noticed more that I didn't care for about it, including Gabriel Byrnes performance interestingly. Who would have thought that Stephen Baldwin would come off more interesting as an actor than Byrnes? But that's the way I saw it last night, and full disclosure I knew both these guys in my Hollywood days, though the last time I saw Byrnes he seemed to have forgotten who I was, understandable since I've done the same, but the last time I saw Stephen he not only remembered but was as warm and friendly as he's always been since I first encountered him decades ago (could that be coloring my assessment of their acting chops in THE USUAL SUSPECTS, hmmmm...nope, I don't think so, see for yourself if you find this flick some night when you're looking for some movie action to slow down the rhythm of a day that's coming to an end).
Oh, and another movie I wouldn't want to bother viewing again that I also have a small personal connection to, DRESSED TO KILL (I once spent an evening with Brain DePalma and a few other Hollywood folks, actually more like a night, since a few of us stayed up talking into the early morning hours, but he ended up later characterizing what I experienced as great conversation as a ploy by a bunch of Hollywood types to exploit his fame and fortune to our benefit which he felt he avoided!), a movie in which I had a small bit, an extra kind of bit, and which I never noticed (I knew I was in it but missed my few seconds the only time I saw it) until in switching the channels last night (or was it the night before? I have some difficulty still remembering things and/or remembering them accurately) I realized the scene I had this little walk by in was about to unfold and so I stayed tuned for it and caught myself walking past Angie Dickenson's character as she seems to look at me as I walk away in a "great coat" as they used to call them that brought back fond memories of those c.1980 days.
I bought that coat in England and it was quite theatrical though at the time I wouldn't have seen it that way. It had big shoulders (with epaulets on them) and ridiculously wide lapels (and high collar) and was belted and reached down nearly to my ankles. I also noticed in that short scene a quarter-sized bald spot on the back of my head, which stood out even more because of that darkness of my hair then, at least the way it was photographed, a bald spot I didn't realize I had until I saw myself from behind in the first movie I had done professionally just months before this extra bit (that one I starred in as the hero, a pretty horrible horror movie called DRACULA'S LAST RITES!).
(Here's a shot of me in that coat, though the details are lost in the darkness of it, with composer Rain Worthington, who was also in DRACULA'S LAST RITES and in fact was hired first and turned the director and producer on to me after we, Rain and I, had decided to try acting in films as a way of making the rent since my poetry and her piano compositions weren't doing that, and my now oldest boy Miles when he was still wearing corrective glasses for a few years in grammar school and actually looked pretty cool in them but because of the cold is shrugging his shoulders inside his jacket as well as pulling his hands inside the sleeves and from his size I'd say this is more the late '70s.)
After I moved to L.A. initially for the acting work, make-up artists would put a little dark coloring on the bald patch so it never showed up again, or at least not for another decade or so. I suppose with the new High Definition TVs those painted or inked-in bald patches might look kind of obvious in close up now.
Ah, how interesting life can be, even if it's just watching an old movie on TV.
I made my hopefully last visit to the NYC hospital where I had the brain surgery. They say everything's looking good.
This time my friend Sue and I took the New Jersey Transit train into the city and than three separate subway lines to get there and back. It was my first time on a train of any kind and surprisingly not anxiety inducing. There were a few moments of feeling disoriented when I got off a train and wasn't sure which way to go. If Sue hadn't been there I just would have taken more time than usual to recognize the signs and such. Nothing people who haven't had brain surgery don't experience as well I'm sure, though for me, so used to these routine actions after a lifetime of riding the New York subway system, it felt a little more serious than it actually was.
And last night I started back up a poetry workshop I teach in the living room of my apartment. It's an intimate space and there's usually ten people besides me so it's even more intimate. The poems were terrific, the conversation insightful and helpful and the thrill of this little group of passionate poetry lovers being together again priceless. I couldn't have been more pleased. Though it did leave me a little more tired than it used to. I expect that will become less true as the weeks proceed.
I was at a loss for the right word now and then, something that happens to plenty of people who didn't have brain surgery, but a little disappointing to me nonetheless since I once had an almost encyclopedic knowledge of 20th Century poetry so not being able to remember a name or to remember which of two or several names were coming to mind was a change I can accept but a change nonetheless.
Then, because even being tired there was still a bit of that restless energy you feel after doing a job or a performance or something that engages your mind and senses more than usual, I ended up catching THE USUAL SUSPECTS on TV, a film I dug when I first saw it, despite its overdone elements, because it seemed such a great update of the film noir classics of the '40s and '50s. I never bothered to watch it again because once the revelation of its ending is experienced I imagined it wouldn't give that much pleasure again. And it doesn't.
In fact I noticed more that I didn't care for about it, including Gabriel Byrnes performance interestingly. Who would have thought that Stephen Baldwin would come off more interesting as an actor than Byrnes? But that's the way I saw it last night, and full disclosure I knew both these guys in my Hollywood days, though the last time I saw Byrnes he seemed to have forgotten who I was, understandable since I've done the same, but the last time I saw Stephen he not only remembered but was as warm and friendly as he's always been since I first encountered him decades ago (could that be coloring my assessment of their acting chops in THE USUAL SUSPECTS, hmmmm...nope, I don't think so, see for yourself if you find this flick some night when you're looking for some movie action to slow down the rhythm of a day that's coming to an end).
Oh, and another movie I wouldn't want to bother viewing again that I also have a small personal connection to, DRESSED TO KILL (I once spent an evening with Brain DePalma and a few other Hollywood folks, actually more like a night, since a few of us stayed up talking into the early morning hours, but he ended up later characterizing what I experienced as great conversation as a ploy by a bunch of Hollywood types to exploit his fame and fortune to our benefit which he felt he avoided!), a movie in which I had a small bit, an extra kind of bit, and which I never noticed (I knew I was in it but missed my few seconds the only time I saw it) until in switching the channels last night (or was it the night before? I have some difficulty still remembering things and/or remembering them accurately) I realized the scene I had this little walk by in was about to unfold and so I stayed tuned for it and caught myself walking past Angie Dickenson's character as she seems to look at me as I walk away in a "great coat" as they used to call them that brought back fond memories of those c.1980 days.
I bought that coat in England and it was quite theatrical though at the time I wouldn't have seen it that way. It had big shoulders (with epaulets on them) and ridiculously wide lapels (and high collar) and was belted and reached down nearly to my ankles. I also noticed in that short scene a quarter-sized bald spot on the back of my head, which stood out even more because of that darkness of my hair then, at least the way it was photographed, a bald spot I didn't realize I had until I saw myself from behind in the first movie I had done professionally just months before this extra bit (that one I starred in as the hero, a pretty horrible horror movie called DRACULA'S LAST RITES!).
(Here's a shot of me in that coat, though the details are lost in the darkness of it, with composer Rain Worthington, who was also in DRACULA'S LAST RITES and in fact was hired first and turned the director and producer on to me after we, Rain and I, had decided to try acting in films as a way of making the rent since my poetry and her piano compositions weren't doing that, and my now oldest boy Miles when he was still wearing corrective glasses for a few years in grammar school and actually looked pretty cool in them but because of the cold is shrugging his shoulders inside his jacket as well as pulling his hands inside the sleeves and from his size I'd say this is more the late '70s.)
After I moved to L.A. initially for the acting work, make-up artists would put a little dark coloring on the bald patch so it never showed up again, or at least not for another decade or so. I suppose with the new High Definition TVs those painted or inked-in bald patches might look kind of obvious in close up now.
Ah, how interesting life can be, even if it's just watching an old movie on TV.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
