TIME FOR ANOTHER ALPHABET LIST

Writing about the film ONCE brought to mind other one-syllable movie titles. So I thought I’d see if I could come up with another alphabet list.

ANTZ (any movie with Woody Allen and Sharon Stone, even if only voicing cartoon characters, is okay by me)
BURN (one of the great eccentric performances by Brando, in a 19th-Century story of colonialism meant to be a comment on the war in Viet Nam which was still actively being waged when this was made, fantastic soundtrack too)
CRUMB (the disturbing but great documentary on R. Crumb and his beyond dysfunctional family, in a tie with CRASH which still holds up for me)
DAVE (anything with Kevin Kline in it I can get into, he’s always so committed, but I also love these kinds of light romantic fantasies about “what if…”)
ELF (ditto)
FREUD (Just because it’s Montgomery Clift playing him, even if the film is heavy handed, it’s still unique, as is FREAKS, but that highly touted one-of-a-kind film is too dark for me and seems so exploitative, though I’m sure the cast was happy to have the work)
GHOST (another romantic fantasy that I can still watch anytime, which is my requirement for any movie to be a personal “classic”—just as I can’t really watch GREED anytime even though that truly is a film classic—I know others who find GHOST too much, especially Demi Moore, but I think everyone in it did a great job, as did everyone in GO, but that seems a little more dated now)
HELP (not the best movie, or Beatles effort, but enough fun stuff in it, and period nostalgia, let alone some great music, and though I love HUD, it’s just too sour for me to re-watch much)
If…. (actually lower case “if….” One of the few movies to really capture the most sensational aspect of the mood of the 1960s)
JAWS (not because I really like it that much, I didn’t even like it when it first came out, but because I can watch Robert Shaw in anything anytime, and this is one of his classic performances)
KIDS (photographer Larry Clark’s too realistic portrayal—some say exploitative and sensational—of “kids” on the streets of New York c. late 20th Century, as much of a downer as it is, it’s a unique work of art)
LOOT (not a great adaptation of the Joe Orton play, but it has Lee Remick in it, worth watching any film for)
M (the classic German flick that made Peter Lorre a star)
NUTS (If you hate Barbra Streisand, which most people seem to, you’ll hate this, but I can’t help admiring her enormous talent, no matter how much of a diva that has turned her into, and here, for my taste, she kicks ass with the rest of the cast, though I have to admit, I can’t really watch this one again and again)
ONCE
PI (which was actually the symbol for pi but I don’t have that on my keyboard—as murky and meandering as this movie is, it’s certainly original and well acted)
QUILLS (de Sade as played by Geoffrey Rush, almost a prelude to his role in PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN, only embedded in a more-or-less true story that’s pretty well done)
RAN (Kurosawa’s brilliant version of KING LEAR)
SHANE (even now knowing how short Alan Ladd really was, it doesn’t take anything away from the allegorical heroics of this classic Western, nor the sadness of Brandon de Wilde’s early demise when he was still in his teens)
TAPS (every time I stumble on this film on TV it grabs me, because the story is compelling and the acting superb, with tons of recognizable faces who later became giant stars, like Tom Cruise and Sean Penn, all obviously inspired by George C. Scott’s usual impressive performance—interestingly the most famous of the young actors at the time was Timothy Hutton, who was so good as a young man I wonder what happened)
U (couldn’t think of any)
V (ditto)
WINGS (very early Gary Cooper, his future stardom clinched with this role)
X (another loss)
YANKS (Richard Gere almost derails this movie in his starring role, not that he isn’t his usual endearing, at least to the women, self, but because his acting seems inappropriate for the period—WWII—but the flick is still worth it for Lisa Eichorn, another actor whose career never panned out the way her talent seemed to predict, and it has Vanessa Redgrave in it, one of my top three favorite actors, and Annie Ross, one of my top three favorite female vocalists of all time in one of her few acting roles)
Z (not as great a flick as it could have been, but a testament to the times and a reminder of the kinds of politically courageous films that should be being made today but aren’t)

ONCE

If I could choose two musical movies to frame my life as an “adult” (I’m making the assumption that the category of “adult”—in terms of age—is between twenty-one and sixty-five) it’d be A HARD DAY’S NIGHT and ONCE.

The Beatles black-and-white flick—one of my all-time favorite films—I first saw when I was twenty-two and it had just come out over here. As I’ve written before, I went into it envious of not only the Beatles but of other British groups that were beginning to take music gigs away from me and my musician friends at the time. But I came out of it wanting to be a Beatle.

I just saw ONCE last night at the local theater, where I finally qualify for the “senior” discount. It didn’t necessarily make me want to be the Irish singer-songwriter Glen Hansard, or his collaborator singer/songwriter in the film (and in real life as I understand it) Marketa Irglora, but it did leave me with the same sensation I had with the earlier flick from my emerging manhood, that these songwriter/musicians are terrific and I can’t help loving them (Irglora is adorable), and that the movie is terrific and inspiring and made me want to rush out and buy the soundtrack.

Though filmed in two incredibly different periods—styles of music and clothes and life and etc.—both films are shot mostly documentary style, and neither is afraid to focus on the music and let it carry a scene. And in both cases the musicians and their movies make you feel like you can do this too, or at least like you’d certainly love to give it a go.

ONCE is an Irish movie, filmed in Dublin on a budget of supposedly only 130,000 dollars and in 17 days. Shot on digital, without permits as I heard it, gives it even more of a feel of a documentary (as did the black-and-white stock and occasional handheld camera in the Beatles’ flick). There are scenes as true to contemporary Irish life as I’ve seen (and a Best Supporting Actor Award from me to Bill Hodnet who plays Hansard’s character’s dad in the movie). Though some Irish fans have written that Dublin has become much more wealthy even for immigrants than the movie portrays.

But aside from the obvious Irish angles in parts of the story and some scenes, this is a film about artistic creation, the compulsion to do it, the tunnel vision necessary to carrying through with the process, and the exhilaration of achievement when you’ve got something you’re proud of, as well as the satisfaction of others digging it.

But don’t let me oversell it. It’s a small film, mostly music, so if you can dig that, you should enjoy it.

AND LEST WE FORGET

Giuliani wanted to use the 9/11 attacks to stop the scheduled mayoral election and thus allow him to continue being mayor beyond the legal limits of his term. Imagine what he might have done had he been president.

My mother always used to say, “There’s a little bit of good in the worst of us, and a little bit of bad in the best of us.” It was her way of keeping me right sized in my judgment of others.

This is equally true for politicians, Democratic or Republican. The thing that gets me isn’t that Republicans are all bad and Democrats all good, or that they attack each other.

What I hate is the hypocrisy and the lies. Attacking John Kerry for changing his vote in the Senate about the Iraq war is perfectly legit. But attacking his heroic rescue of one of his team, while under enemy fire, for which he was awarded a medal, when members of that team all testify to having witnessed his heroics, is just plain scumbag behavior.

Attacking Hilary Clinton for having done some financial shenanigans is okay, if she has done them, but painting her with the brush of financial crimes, such as the whole Whitewater fiasco, or whatever it was called, when the most expensive and longest running investigation in the history of executive investigations turned up absolutely no illegal activity (otherwise you know the Clinton haters would have had Bill impeached on those grounds and he and Hilary would still be in prison) is jive.

When you look at the limited political power and duties the governor of Texas actually wields, Obama has no less experience, and even more on the international level as a Senator, than Bush Junior did when he ran for president, let alone got awarded the office by the Supreme Court (or as The Bowery Boys used to call it: “The Extreme Court”).

John Edwards can legitimately be attacked for getting four-hundred-dollar haircuts. I understand any man’s compulsive obsession with his hair, it’s the one thing most men are vain about if they have any, but four-hundred-dollar haircuts when running for president, especially after the attacks on Bill Clinton for his even less expensive one on the L.A. tarmac that time when he was first in office, not very smart John.

Mitt Romney can be legitimately attacked for changing his positions on just about everything, and for claiming to be a “lifelong hunter” when he’s only hunted three times in his life and all those times were recent. He can even be attacked for his religion, if you think that the beliefs in that religion are a little farfetched for any reasonable person who happens to have the power to wage war. Just like it’s legit to attack candidates who don’t believe in evolution, like those three Republicans.

And by the way, if there’s “not a dime’s worth of difference” between the parties, how come there’re no Democrats who don’t believe in evolution? But we could go on all day about that one.

John McCain can be attacked as well for changing his positions on fundamental issues. And especially on his kissing up to Bush Junior and hiring the same people who worked for Junior when they attacked McCain in the primaries for taking positions (i.e. abortion etc.) he never took and for doing things he never did (i.e. have a child with a black woman, or as in one of the lies these people propagated against him, with a black prostitute!—rumors that were spread in pockets of South Carolina where the Klan still holds sway). McCain should be attacked for not being ashamed of himself for sacrificing his reputation as a stand-up guy to garner favor with the same rightwing Republicans who spread these kinds of lies about him in his run against Bush for the nomination almost eight years ago.

The point is, wouldn’t it be great if all the political ads we’re about to start seeing on TV every second addressed the aspects of a candidate’s record that are true and can be legitimately attacked and not made up shit or distorted shit that’s based on lies and prejudice and the worst in us.

Ma, I wish you were still with us. We could use your help.

GIULIANI LASHES OUT AT BILL CLINTON’S FAILURE TO STOP TERRORISM!

As mayor he was lucky to have a few exceptional people in his administration that helped turn the city around, especially in terms of crime. But in terms of race, it went backwards, as well as in other things, including civility.

For him to now be slamming Clinton (a cry I am sure the rest of the Republicans and right wing talk hosts will take up) for being “weak on terrorism” when it was Bush who ignored the Clinton administration’s warnings about Bin Laden (and don’t forget Bush took his more-than-a-month-long summer vacation—the longest of any modern president—just before 9/11 disregarding even members of his own administration who noted the Clinton administration’s warnings, not to mention he continued taking those long vacations even as everything went to shit around him) and Giuliani who didn’t get the radio frequency problem fixed so that all those firemen and cops died unnecessary deaths on 9/11, let alone some of the civilians, caused by Giuliani’s fuck up.

Are there any Democrats out there tough enough to throw this shit back at Miss Thing (his love of dressing in drag should be reassuring to transvestites, but how does it make him a strong hero type again? Just more confusing hypocrisy and double standards from the right).

New York City firemen sure don’t endorse him. But if it ends up being a race between him and Hilary, even though she could obviously kick his ass in everything from arm wrestling to fisticuffs—and certainly intellectually, no matter what else you think of her—he might just fucking win because they are so good at branding their people heroes!

I mean, they turned a silver spoon rich spoiled DUI collecting Yale frat boy FUCKING CHEERLEADER into a Reganesque cowboy (as if Regan himself was ever a real cowboy, but at least he loved to ride his horse)!

And where’s Obama in all this. I’m almost wondering if the death threats and racist attacks—that caused him to be the first candidate to get Secret Service protection (besides Hilary who got them because she was first lady)—didn’t also cause him to deliberately damp down his speeches and pull back his charisma and seemingly take calculated steps to lower his poll ratings.

But every Democrat, not just the candidates, should be rushing to kick Giuliani’s ass or at least set the record straight. The guy grabbed credit from those who actually turned the city around and then kicked them out because they were crowding him out of the spotlight. Beware a “hero” who needs the spotlight and situations that make him look heroic when not in drag. He was, and I assume still is, a mean spirited little repressed altar boy getting even with the really tough guys.

But the right loves these kinds of Christian hypocrites, don’t they? Like Gingrich who told his first wife he was divorcing her for a younger woman while she was lying in a hospital bed recovering from a serious illness (cancer if I remember right) and Giuliani who told his wife he was divorcing her and marrying another woman at a press conference so she could learn about it on TV or in the paper.

If a Republican wins in ’08, the Democrats deserve it, and so do the voters, just like they deserved Bush and all the failure he brought to what was an amazingly successful society when Clinton turned it over to him. The problem is, it won’t be the Democratic politicians or mainly the voters who suffer, it’s usually kids who aren’t even old enough to vote yet who get sent to the next fiasco “war” and people too poor to have much of a stake in the system who end up on rooftops wondering when their government will rescue them, if ever.

God bless “America.”

QUOTE UNQUOTE

"A painter like Pollack for instance was gambling everything on the fact the he was the greatest painter in America, for if he wasn't, he was nothing, and the drips would turn out to be random splashes from the brush of a careless housepainter. It must often have occurred to Pollock that there was just a possibility that he wasn't an artist at all, that he had spent his life "toiling up the wrong road to art" as Flaubert said of Zola. But this very real possibility is paradoxically just what makes the tremendous excitement in his work. It is a gamble against terrific odds. Most reckless things are beautiful in some way, and recklessness is what makes experimental art beautiful, just as religions are beautiful because of the strong possibility that they are founded on nothing. We would all believe in God if we knew He existed, but would this be much fun?" —John Ashbery "The Invisible Avant-Garde"

SEE WHAT I MEAN ABOUT THE INTERNET BEING OVERRATED?

At least as a research tool.

It’s fantastic, in terms of having access to so much information and facts. But.

Yesterday I picked my oldest brother the priest up at the facility he’s lived in for over a year—after spending most of his life in Japan. It’s in upstate New Jersey, near the New York border. I drove him down the Jersey shore. The final leg of the trip was via 18th Avenue in Belmar. I stopped briefly at Snyder Avenue, where our maternal grandmother had a bungalow when we were kids.

The little cottage had a couple of small bedrooms on the first floor, and two even smaller ones upstairs, with ceilings I could touch even as a kid. The interior walls marking off the bedrooms were made of single planks of wood, with knotholes I could peek through at the girls changing into their bathing suits.

The shower was a wooden stall behind the house with only cold water.

The “ice box” was still an actual ice box, when I was a kid.

It was a relatively primitive place compared to a winter home then.

And not only my grandmother and mother and me and my five other still living siblings spent summers there, but cousins and friends of all of ours, including my parents and grandmother.

The place was always full of people. Lots of noise and fun, cooking and music, card games and wrestling on the little front lawn or running around in the sand of the little back yard, or the sand on the wooden floors inside, sand we dragged in on our feet and clothes.

So we stopped to take a look. But where our grandmother’s old place had been for the years of our youth, sold after she died, now stood a new, three story, giant monstrosity, twice the size, or more, of the old bungalow we remembered.

Next, all along Ocean Avenue, where there had been giant Victorian hotels several stories high, like McCann’s—with bars in their basements where many of us first got drunk—cheaper versions of the giant Victorian hotels in nearby Spring Lake, now there were two story brick condos.

At least in Spring Lake, the next town down—which as kids we always thought of as the rich peoples’ resort—the big hotels were still there, though most were remodeled and turned into condos.

It was a beautiful day, my brother thanking God for every aspect of it, as is his habit, even for his failing eyesight, a lesson my friend Selby taught me—be grateful for whatever the circumstances of your life are in the moment, and you will be happy.

He was. So was I to be with him, sharing time that I seem to have less and less of, and memories, and jokes, and laughs over the troubles of aging, him way ahead of me as he has been all his life, sixteen years my senior.

We had a great lunch with our old family friend Mary—who was like another sister to me growing up—in one of those remodeled old hotels now condos, and it was in fact more comfortable, more convenient for my brother and his walker, more stylish in many ways in fact, than the old Victorians, to my surprise.

Then I dropped him off in another nearby shore town with friends who were having a family party, a big Irish clan like our own, reminding me of those old days we were reminiscing about in the car.

I had to get back to pick up my little boy, but before I left, one of the younger members of that clan asked if I was “Michael Lally the poet” and I said yes. He started telling his aunt and others standing near us that he Googled me to discover I started out in Hollywood as a director in the 1930s, then became an actor, then a poet!

He saw the look on my face and realized that I couldn’t have been a director in the 1930s, before I was even born.

I explained that Michael Lally the director also acted in movies and on TV and was the reason I had to add my middle name “David” when I started acting professionally in movies, other than underground or alternative or whatever we called truly independent movies back in the 1960s when I first appeared in flicks.

I almost never Google myself, because I find it embarrassingly self-obsessed even just to me, and after doing it the first time and discovering there were many Michael Lallys often being mixed up with each other, it was just too silly.

Here’s one beautifully obvious example. On a site called MATCHFLICK, they have a listing for “Michael Lally” that gives his birth as June 1, 1902 in New York City. That’s the guy who became a director in the 1930s, or actually an assistant and second director.

The entry under his birth in MATCHFLICK gives only two films as his credits.

The first is THE SECRET OF ROAN INISH. But the Michael Lally in that is yet another one, from Ireland (he plays the grandfather in that great John Sayles flick).

The second is COOL WORLD (RALPH BAKSHI’S COOL WORLD as opposed to the original by Shirley Clark). I was the voice of “Sparks”—a white-haired cool cat in shades that Brad Pitt’s human character gets to throw around—the cartoon boyfriend of Kim Bassinger’s cartoon character, “Holly Wood.”

One research entry, with only three facts, AND ALL THREE FACTS ARE INCORRECT WHEN COMBINED WITH EITHER OF THE OTHER TWO!

This is just one blatant example of the amount of misinformation on the web—not counting all the blogs and comments and opinions that are full of misinformation—but just sites that are meant for FACTUAL RESEARCH!

You can say, well this is a more obscure site, but even on the main movie research sites, like Yahoo’s and the one that most critics and many people I know in the movie business use, IMDb, they have me and the other Michael Lallys credits mixed up (including the son of the older Michael Lally, who after his father died inherited the plain Michael Lally name for any credits he accrued).

And you can say I should let them know, but I tried with the IMDb one and they still left many credits mixed up, and with the others, it’s like trying to break into Fort Knox to get any message to anyone who can do anything on those sites.

So, don’t believe everything you read on an internet research site. Just on my blog.

SIMON PETTET

Went to The Bowery Poetry Club last night to see my friend Simon Pettet read his poetry.

If you have never seen and heard Simon read his poems, you’ve missed not only one of the most unique poetic experiences of our times, but one of the most unique performance ones as well.

It’s not that he’s a “performance” or “spoken word” style poet who has his work memorized and declaims it like it’s rap or a rant or an ironic monologue, or whatever.

He just reads it with the kind of English accent that only adds to his "elfin charm" (as I've heard it described, which to my mind—coupled with his female-attracting boyish good looks—proves there has to be Irish in his ancestry, one of those “wild geese” in his famliy’s woodpile, so to speak), and along with the repetition of each poem in a slightly different rhythm and with some variety in how he emphasizes the words and which ones, make for a kind of one man illustration of why poets write in the first place, their intense, though tender, even sensual and intellectual, relationship with words, as though they were actual physical objects of their devotion and sometime obsession.

Something like that.

At any rate, if you ever see that Simon is reading anywhere near where you are, be there.

Meanwhile, here’s a typically untitled Simon Pettet poem (he would read it very slowly, distinguishing every word, and then read it again starting the second time swiftly after ending the first time, as though ruminating out loud over the meaning of what he had just read, trying to get it right, eventually slowing down, but with a different emphasis on certain words to make it resonate with a startlingly newer meaning and intention) from back when our fiasco in Iraq was new (I may have quoted it before, since it is one of my favorites):

“There is a cruel, messianic, dim, tribal intransigence

That gains you nothing

There’s a bull-headed childish baby-tantrum

That can unleash untold consequences

I am appalled by the darkening of the sky

I watch my love

It is always my love that I watch”