It's with a heavy heart I relay the news: Lux Interior, lead singer of the mighty Cramps, has died. Long one of my most beloved bands, a perennial favorite of punks of all stripes and generations, the Cramps walked it and talked it, performing like '50s rockabilly JD's hopped up on bop pills and strychnine, rioting in the streets after spilling out of a movie house playing all-night monster movies. Over two decades I saw them perform several times, never at anything less than full-tilt boogie and leveling anything in their path. The first time I saw them play I tried to look up Poison Ivy's skirt, then felt bad about it when she caught me, glaring down from on high while playing those bargain-basement swamp-riffs from beyond the grave. Lux put his head through the ceiling tiles of the club (the venerable City Gardens in Trenton, NJ) while I thought he was going to go into full lycanthrope mode.
The Cramps have too many great songs for me to link to all of them, but here's "Garbageman," from their first full album, Songs the Lord Taught Us in 1980, and it has everything that made the Cramps special: it's creepy, fun and sexy, goth without dork, bad-ass without macho, and the above-mentioned lyrics. Plus Lux's wondrous hair. Thanks for everything Lux! You will be missed.
With the tiniest hints of Hitchcock and, in one shocking moment, of the Italian giallosof Argento (see the broken glass over the title), The Silent Partner is a movie virtually unknown to, well, everyone. Set during Christmas 1977, the set-up is one we've seen before (which is fine with me): an everyday guy, Miles Cullen (Gould), who ends up in facing down a criminal mastermind. Cullen's a go-nowhere sorta fella working a boring job at a bank in a shopping mall with a little crush on his obnoxious boss's mistress, coworker Julie (a delectably bright-eyed Susannah York).
Cullen's other coworkers include an impossibly young John Candy and his improbably nubile girlfriend, a Suzanne Somers-type blonde who wears tight-fitting t-shirts that have cutesy bank-related phrases on them like "Early withdrawals penalized" and "Bankers do it with interest" (what, no "Night Deposits Welcome"?). Lonely evenings are spent playing chess and collecting exotic fish--until Cullen discovers that the mall Santa, Reikle, (a fey, sadistic Christopher Plummer) is planning on robbing the bank. Only then Miles does spin into action: when "Santa" robs him, Cullen defrauds the bank (and therefore also Reikle) by keeping a portion of the stolen till for himself, and then stashes the cash in one of the bank's safe deposit boxes.
Completely unrelated DVD cover
Of course, we movie fans know it's never that easy to escape the drudgery of everyday life, and while Miles attempts to woo Julie away from the boss, Reikle has seen him on TV being interviewed about the robbery. That cat-and-mouse game that follows resembles the chess games Cullen challenges himself with but turns far deadlier as he realizes he and Reikle are inextricably entwined in their criminal tête-à-tête.
This is a film made in Canada that, oddly enough, is actually set in Canada. Despite some stellar reviews on Amazon and in some blogs I ran across, it's hampered by its sometimes dull, dry delivery. Moments of black humor and morbidity crack the surface, as well as moments of almost Scorsesean violence, but director Daryl Duke, going by his IMDB entry, was a journeyman workhorse TV director and you can certainly tell that. The screenplay (based on some long-forgotten Danish novel), however, is by Curtis Hanson, he of the masterful L.A. Confidential. This is the second time in recent months Hanson's screenwriting credits have suprised me (at Halloween I learned he also adapted Lovecraft's "The Dunwich Horror" in 1968).
Plummer as Reikle, not dressed as Santa or woman
Gould has none of the smart-alecky, rubbery-faced charm and playful subversion he did so well in The Long Goodbye and the fantastic California Split, but that wouldn't fit Miles Cullen. In the couple scenes that he really shows emotion--panic in one and disgust in the other--the movie comes alive. A romantic evening between him and York is quite believable. The dreary daily grind of his life comes through, but I would've appreciated more of the Gould that was so prevalent in the '70s. But I suppose Cullen has to play it cool; he's got cops and Julie and his boss and a psycho-criminal and soon, the mysterious and exotic beauty Elaine, (Céline Lomez) sniffing around his every move.
You really don't want to see what happens with that fish tank in the background.
There are some great '70s moments here: a tacky Christmas office party; dimly lit "affair" bars with tinkly jazz and pretzel bowls; Miles' bachelor apartment and Julie's "liberated woman" one. Oscar Peterson's score is dramatic and overt, adding much malevolence to scenes that, honestly, would have limped along without it. Plummer is his usual urbane bad-ass self, even in drag and a Santa suit, and Susannah York is classy and elegant as a woman frustrated by Gould's inexplicable behavior (uh, as in not fucking her when he gets the chance). Céline Lomez is quite sweet and yet tough as the beauty caught between Cullen and Reikle--to disastrous results. But, c'mon, you knew that right? Thrillers like this are, quite purposely, paint-by-numbers (or murder by numbers, if one is a Police fan).
The Silent Partner came at the end of Gould's briefly brilliant career of the '70s; emotional insecurities as an actor and celebrity led to lack of good work and virtual unemployment through the '80s and '90s (until he returned as Ross and Monica's dad!). But I find Gould one of the most interesting actors of his age, perhaps even more so than Nicholson, Pacino, and DeNiro, simply because he could not make the transition from the personal films of the 1970s to the anonymous blockbusters of the 1980s and beyond. Perhaps one would do well to recall his famous words from his best role, as Philip Marlowe in The Long Goodbye: “It’s okay with me.”
Johnny Thunders: man of taste, restraint, charm and good sense. (The New) Too Much Junkie Business contains some of what made Johnny good, some of what made Johnny bad, but little of what made him great. Originally released in 1983, this hodge-podge collection of songs--some live, some studio tracks--is too hit-and-miss and will really only appeal to full-fledged Thunders fans and completists. Even though it was co-produced by Stones' producer Jimmy Miller, it sounds like it was barely produced at all.
Sorry, it may be 1978, but it's not Aerosmith
The CD starts as Johnny greets all listeners with a personal message, delivered in his hilariously slurred, druggy Noo Yawk twang: "Hey all you kids this ain't none ah that bootleg shit, this is da real thing," and then blows a sloppy snotty kiss at you. The opening track, "Who Do Voodoo," is just all right; the vocals are unclear so who can know what the song's really about. Voodoo, one assumes, but one must never assume with Johnny; you can pretty much guess "voodoo" is slang for "heroin."
Next up is "In Cold Blood," just marginally better, with a tough riff and a low-rent swagger that makes it enjoyable. "Just Another Girl" is all right--which Johnny calls, in a moment of sensitivity, "Just Anudda Bitch"--but like many of Johnny's songs, it's under-produced with too much bass. Still the guitar-work is inventive which is what you expect when it comes to Johnny.
Johnny knew that looking cool wasted was at least half of rock'n'roll awesomeness
"Sad Vacation" is a live track from the Peppermint Lounge (not the original), a slow, bluesy lament for Sid Vicious (get the title? Johnny, what a cunning linguist) with some really absurd lyrics: "You're singing from your grave/It's so hard to do." What?! Did he say, "Singing from your grave"? What the heck does that mean?! I dunno, but it cracks me up every time I hear it. But Johnny's heart is in the right place, and it shows a real affection for that damned kid, so I'm going to let him slide.
Too much rock and/or roll
"Diary of a Lover" is a pretty acoustic tune, although in the midst of it he blurts out "Girls, they fuck up your head." Charming to the last. Things pick up with one of the L.A.M.F. classics, "Get Off the Phone." Then the title track, a live sloppy rave-up with a great riff, admittedly stolen from Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley. To wit:
Your life becomes as sickening as that mess you call your face/ That pig you call your girlfriend, she's been in there for days/ Climbing up the walls, shot some on my balls/ Wrap it up, call it art/ Now your record's in the charts
The sneer that launched a thousand punks
"King of the Gypsies" is '60s pop, sounds like it was recorded with a portable tape player, and features some kinda lame "gypsy"-like guitar wrangling. Johnny's self-pitying side comes out in "So Alone" and then we see once again what made Johnny good: a live version of "I Love You," a song I'm not crazy about but which is delivered here with passion and conviction. The CD wraps up with a couple of the New York Dolls' classics, "Jet Boy" and "Great Big Kiss." In the latter he duly insults both the audience and his female back-up singers.
So like I said, Johnny Thunders: man of refinement and good taste. I know you died almost 20 years ago, but God love ya, Johnny, wherever you are.
One of the icons of sexual liberation and counter-cultural retro cool has died. Bettie Page needs no introduction, does she? I was introduced to Bettie's loveliness when I was a teenager frequenting comic books shops in the '80s. Yum. Thanks for everything, Bettie!
"I'd rather face a thousand crazy savages than one woman who's learned to shoot." Robert Fortier as Edgar Hart in 3 Women
Another 1970s masterpiece from director Robert Altman, 3 Women is an enigmatic story of fluid identity, displacement, and mythic concepts of womanhood. Sissy Spacek and Shelley Duvall are perfectly cast as women who continually mirror one another as they share a job and an apartment. Janice Rule as Willie Hart completes the title in a lesser role as an artist, but her paintings, nightmarishly erotic, hover at the blurry, watery edges of the entire film.
Duvall as Millie Lammoreaux gives us a voiceover narration that in its dissociation and lack of affect reminds me, in a good way, of DeNiro's in Taxi Driver. Bourgeois, petty, and given to yammering at the mouth long after folks have walked off, utterly ignored by her neighbors, men and coworkers, Duvall gives a career-best performance as a nearly painful-to-watch loser. Too bad it's in this underseen gem.
Coming off her Oscar-nominated leading role in Carrie (1976), Sissy Spacek stars here as another girl child, wide-eyed Pinky Rose (Freudian much?) who also seems to be repressing her raging id (yes). Eventually she will experience betrayal, trauma and rebirth, and reject her (impossibly old, impossibly still sexual) parents. Reborn, she threatens the now-unstable Millie in a whole new manner.
The only man of any significance is former stuntman/TV-cowboy stand-in (i.e., not a real man), Willie's husband Edgar Hart (Robert Fortier), who shoots blanks (ha-ha, get it?) with his old prop gun. Crude, leathery and macho, he insinutates himself into the women's lives... but at what price? I'll give you one hint. It seems he didn't always shoot blanks, for Willie is pregnant...
As always, Altman's camera slowly weaves across scenes, never quite settling in any one place, but giving us hints and allusions to characters' states of mind. Slows dissolves and flowing water, long takes of barren landscapes, flesh young and old, women with real guns and men with toy ones, life floating by as if a dream, Altman pictures a world of women dehumanized, and their imperfect struggle for power and selfhood, however fleeting or imagined. The haunting, slightly ghostly score by Gerald Busby seems fit more for a psychological horror movie--but then, perhaps it is perfectly suited.
The Criterion Collection DVD has a commentary by Altman, who is always eager to recount the genesis of his movies (3 Women was based on a dream of his, with input from Duvall for her character's diary entries and voiceover) and fun stuff that happened while shooting. I listened to a fair amount but shut it off for a reason I'm sure he'd appreciate: I wanted to keep my impressions of the film pure and intact; a film so firmly subjective demands a personal response.
The trailer perfectly captures the movie's tone:
I was utterly captivated and moved and disturbed by 3 Women, not expecting when I sat down to find a film so allusive (and elusive), so monstrously mythic, and yet firmly rooted in the arid Southwest in the mid'70s. Overall the movie is reminiscent of both Ingmar Bergman and Roman Polanski--Bergman for its thorough deconstruction of personality and measured pace (Persona); Polanski for its chilling dreamlike tone that portends doom at any moment and threat of insanity (Repulsion, Rosemary's Baby), and because, in the end, I'm not sure if this is a work of overt misogyny or heroic feminism. Oh well - it's all Altman in the end.
From Comic-Con, a bootleg trailer for 2009's remake of The Wolfman, directed by Joe Johnston. With esteemed actors Benicio Del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, and Emily Blunt in leading roles, I think we can expect good things--certainly as long as no one tries to pull of an English accent with as disastrous results as Keanu Reeves in Bram Stoker's Dracula.
Some of my favorite horror flicks of the 2000s have been werewolf movies (Ginger Snaps and Dog Soldiers) but it's cool to see the filmmakers going back to the source, the 1941 movie with the immortal Lon Chaney Jr. as the doomed Lawrence Talbot and Claude Rains as his father. It doesn't bother me at all, another horror remake; this story is a mythology, reinvented for a new generation. And with Rick Baker along for that reinvention, you can count me in.
On a recent late August evening I visited the Charleston Old Jail in South Carolina as part of a package tour. The building is of course protected by a builders’ society and whatnot; its upkeep is limited to what will make it safe for tourists. It's billed as being haunted, and forms a cornerstone of the booming "haunted Charleston" tourist biz. Why haunted? Because it's old and creepy and lots of horrible things happened there. You know how it was, long before concepts like "human rights" and the outlawing of torture (although you'd be forgiven if you doubted the actuality of the latter) informed American society.
I don’t believe in the supernatural. In fact, such a thing is a flat contradiction in terms and cannot exist: if something exists, it is real and therefore natural. Nothing can be above or beyond the natural world.
Ultimately the supernatural does a disservice to reality and to the human imagination. Horrible things happened in this South Carolina jail and places like it (the Amityville murders being perhaps the most famous American "haunting"), but the only way to keep us interested in them is to slop on a coat of ghosts and creepies and flying bricks and bleeding doorways. The terrible warden, who tortured for fun and profit, is said to haunt the jail, smoking his pipe and leaving the scent of tobacco wafting about. So--what? Pipes and tobacco can be ghosts, too? (Although this warden went missing one day and was never found. Well done, fate!)
People will always want their ghost stories, but it seems that the exploitation of horror takes precedence over understanding what drove these people to do what they did, or to contemplate the finality and surety of their lives.
If ghosts exist, then one day they will be quantified by science. If they exist they are natural. But as it stands they are all hoaxes and misunderstandings, the results of the human mind’s many failings, its desire to impose structure, to see patterns, to see human faces, in the seeming randomness of nature. It bears repeating: we impose patterns over the terrible chaos that is life; we refocus and refocus so that our POV is of years and bodies and emotions, not of quarks and supernovas and misfiring synapses.
I can’t deny there was a creep factor to the jail, but you can find this in any old structure that drips with age and decay, with rusted iron fixtures and imposing steel doors. Shirley Jackson and H.P. Lovecraft, perhaps the two greatest horror writers of the 20th century, understood this; age and loneliness terrify us. As for me, the only chill I felt was within myself when hearing of the wretched crimes of both those who were imprisoned there, and of those supposedly in charge.
Why in the world would a person’s ghost haunt the place of its gravest and darkest days? It doesn't; I think it’s the psychic toll places like this take on our imaginations now, today, long after the deed is done. We need our ghosts to float these iron stairwells to let us know that once something terrible is done it cannot be undone. Does anyone ever hear of happy lovers haunting a romantic enclave at sunset on a tropical beach? No, because we need nothing there to expunge us of our guilt.
Two Friday nights ago I settled in with a nice bottle of Evan Williams, a lady friend and the DVD of Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye, his 1973 adaptation of Raymond Chandler's famous crime novel. Iconic gumshoe Philip Marlowe, once the purview of tough-guy actors like Bogart and Dick Powell, is here played by nebbishy Elliott Gould as a slovenly cat lover who is more likely to meander down the mean streets than saunter.
While I'd seen the movie once many years ago and liked it all right, watching it this time I found it stunning and captivating. Instantly it vaulted near the top of my favorite '70s movies (hallowed ground for me). It’s damn near a masterpiece. As with most Altman movies, critics love to toss out the word "revisionist," since the movie reimagines the classic noir stylings in daytime and with a "sensitive liberal" type as the no-nonsense Marlowe.
Upon first release it was a bomb, so after a few months United Artists went back and redid the ad campaign, highlighting its absurdist and iconoclastic take on the Chandler hero, best illustrated by this new poster, by MAD magazine's Jack Davis.
What of the plot, you say? Apparently Altman and co. jettisoned a good chunk of the novel and reimagined Marlowe as a "Rip Van Winkle" who falls asleep in the '40s and awakens in the '70s. So the movie begins (after the odd fanfare of "Hooray for Hollywood") with Gould stretched out in bed fully clothed, awakened by his cat, and then goes on the search for cat food. Later Marlowe's friend Terry Lennox pops in at 3 a.m. with bloody knuckles and asks for a ride to Mexico. Marlowe obliges, and this sets off an immediate interest in him from cops and crooks. Did said friend kill his wife? Abscond with a goon's money? Have something to do with the disappearance of a famous writer, a bearded, larger-than-life Sterling Hayden (Capt. MacCluskey in The Godfather, Spielberg's first choice for Quint in Jaws)?
A few of my favorite things: listen for the theme song (music by John Williams, lyric by Johnny Mercer, who of course wrote "Hooray for Hollywood") again and again, replicated throughout the movie as muzak in a supermarket, performed by a mariachi band in Mexico, tinkled in ivory by a desultory pianist in the bar where Marlowe gets his messages ("Why can't I get my messages in a bar?" I exclaimed to the lady watching with me. Forthcoming answer was unsatisfactory.) Watch for deceptively unthreatening gangster Marty Augustine, who wields a mean Coke bottle. Check out the beachfront party scene in which diminutive Henry Gibson (one of the Illinois Nazis from Blue Brothers that Belushi hated so much) terrifies the blustery Jack Daniel's-brandishing Hayden into paying him the $4,000 Hayden owes.
These might be the movie's best scenes, Hayden's character's home (Altman's own). Behind them the ocean beats an endless surf beyond the machinations of men and women. It literally traps Marlowe in it at one point; our mortal problems nothing to the might of the sea. A dog comes running with a cane, a sad postscript to suicide. One of Gould's best scenes is a convincing drunken diatribe against the useless cops that hound him. But this Marlowe is a chump, cut off at every turn, going with the flow ("It's okay with me," he cheerfully mutters over and over). We will come full circle, of course; the film's climax is welcome and satisfying. Hooray for Hollywood indeed!
In one of those nice little coincidences, there's an Elliott Gould film retrospective being held in NYC right now; the New York Times had an interview with him the other day, and he's doing his Q&A after Goodbye. Cool. Too bad many of the movies being shown are not on DVD. Not on DVD?! They still have that?
After the breakup of the New York Dolls in the mid-70s, singer David Johansen released his first solo album in 1978. It's been out of print for ages, and I've been waiting for somebody to re-release it, and lo and behold this year that's what happened. Let me tell you what: this is one rockin' album, maybe even better than the Dolls' second, Too Much Too Soon. It's rife with all that smart-ass charm and Noo Yawk attitude Johansen wielded so well, plus some classic '70s production--you know, lead guitars squealing out of your speakers over chugging rhythm tracks, thanks to Johnny Rao and guest appearances from ex-Dolls guitarist Syl Sylvain and Aerosmith's Joe Perry.
The David Johansen Group
But there's also some serious girl-group and '60s soul going on here, from the Stonesy ballad "Donna" to the West Side Story-esque, the rather epic "Lonely Tenement." Vocally, I think the singer's in top form; he's rife with sass and humor and pathos and yearning. Johansen's voice always reminded me of Louis Armstrong, crossed with a Hanna-Barbera cartoon character whose name I can't remember, am I right?
The opening track is perhaps his most famous solo song, "Funky But Chic," and sets the tone and 'tude for the rest of the album in the same way "Personality Crisis" introduced the first Dolls album in '73. "Funky funky but--oh chic!" Hilarious. If you'll recall, chic was a big word in the '70s. So was funky. Great choruses on "Pain in My Heart" and "Not That Much" ("She said, 'I'm in love with you daddy/But not that much'"). "Cool Retro" is good but a bit diminished somehow; Joe Perry's guitar seems mixed down--on purpose?! I'm sure it was a rave-up live, maybe down at Max's Kansas City or the Bottom Line.
Girls, he likes 'em hangin' around
If you're DJing some dingy bar you could throw any track on and skip nary a beat; sitch a track between some vintage Cheap Trick or that solo album from Ace Frehley. Perhaps some Ronettes and Shangri-Las along with old-school Aerosmith, or follow up the Johnny Thunders solo masterpiece "You Can't Put Your Arms Around a Memory" with the equally awesome "Frenchette." Syl Sylvain co-wrote this last song, which starts off as a pretty piano ballad but turns into a tough rocker with a real girl-group vibe. Love the lyrics: "You call that lovin' French but it's just Frenchette/I been to France... It's just like all your leathers baby/They don't scare me, I know it's only leatherette." As a suffix, -ette was big in the '70s too, if you'll recall, and David Jo scores off all of 'em, using the pretenses of a suitor as an excuse to not get serious--"I can't get the kind of love that I want, that I need... so let's just dance." Really. Always good advice.
And here's a gorgeous and blistering "Frenchette" from MTV's 1982 New Year's Eve Party.
"Oh half drunk all the time and I'm drunk all the rest..."
The Tom Waits album that completes my collection (pretty much besides some B-sides collections). Foreign Affairs, the fifth from the his late-nightness, occupies the same dingy romantic crossroads that earlier masterpieces like Small Change and Heart of Saturday Night did, a five-alarm pile-up of Raymond Chandler, Jack Kerouac, Louis Armstrong and Bernard Herrmann (I'm not linking to any of those guys; Jesus, people, if you need me to, yr readin the wrong blog). You got your upbeat-beatnik spoken-word hopscotch (titled "Jack & Neal," natch), your film noir track ("Potter's Field," complete with movie soundtrack-style orchestral backup), your melancholy last-call lament ("Foreign Affair"), your nostalgic tearjerker lullabye ("Sight for Sore Eyes"), and the Bukowski bar-narrative "I Never Talk to Strangers," probably the album's best track. Bette Midler (remember, she had some weird street cred in the '70s!?) stops by for a drink in this charming tune, one of my favorites of his songs--in short you get everything that Tom Waits did so well in the '70s.
But in all honesty, there's nothing here as iconic as "The Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me)," "I Hope I Don't Fall in Love with You," "On the Nickel," "Better Off without a Wife," or "New Coat of Paint", either melodically or lyrically. I'm not surprised he bailed on this style an album or two later; the Hoagy Carmichael-style piano tipplings and drunken-pun couplets were beginning to wear a little thin. There--I said it!
Soon he'd run off and join the circus sideshow band for the rest of his career. Everybody's got their own tastes, but I guess I like drinking to songs about drunks and diners and dives and dames and the vista of an America long gone than the kaleidoscopic dark carnival he's been doing since. Now don't get all huffy; I love Swordfishtrombones as much as the next hipster at the bar... it's just that I'm more likely to stumble out from it into the night singing "Wasted and wounded/It ain't what the moon did/Got what I paid for now..."
It's been said that the message boards at IMDB are where film criticism goes to die—and it’s largely true—but I think this little comment I left for some guy who “didn’t get” The Godfather is not so bad; and maybe, just maybe, this dude who insists that “Star Wars, Die Hard, Fight Club and Rocky are great movies,” will have a change of heart. I dashed it off at about 2 a.m. Sober, even!
"It wasn't until the third time I watched The Godfather that I finally, really and truly, got it. It touches on major themes that Americans love: that lowly immigrants can rise up and become powerful; they can stand up for their families and defend them the way they choose; they revere honor and duty and loyalty. But in the end, it's a complete scam. Oh, bitter irony! It's also about fathers and sons, and the expectations they have of one another--how can one not be touched, watching poor hapless Fredo weep in the gutter next to his father's bullet-riddled body?
"I love the little detailed moments: how upset Brando is when he's home from the hospital and Sonny and Tom are afraid to tell him what happened to Michael; the way the camera imperceptibly moves toward Michael as he tells the guys what his plan is for Barzini and MacLuskie; the tension that builds when he's in the men's room looking for the gun as the train roars outside; the banter between Tom and the producer Woltz ("Let me tell you something, my Kraut-Mick friend"); the way Sonny bites his hand when he finds out Carlo is beating up Connie; Appolonia's gorgeous breasts; the black humor of the assassins: "Leave the gun... take the cannoli." And the entire wedding scene that opens the movie, and how innocent and above it all Michael seems when he's with Kay... and how he too will soon be as rotten as the rest of the family, giving lie to his words: "That's my family, Kay, that's not me."
"I love the stately manner of the burnished color scheme, the browns and yellows, the darkened rooms, hinting at behind-the-scenes machinations; the mournful Godfather theme song that weaves its way throughout the picture; the editing that reveals Don Corleone's visage behind every act of criminality (the slow fade-in to his implacable face as Woltz's screams from his bed fade away). Everything is in its right place, logical, precise, yet not overbearing or obvious.
"No, I didn't get this all on first, or second viewing. I've seen the movie a dozen times and each time something different pops out at me, something that was always there, something rich and true about not just gangsters' lives, but about people, families, lovers, enemies. And that final scene, showing Michael shutting off his heart forever, betraying the man he once was--as Moe Syzlack put it, 'And then Michael closes the door on Annie Hall.'
"But then, that's just my .02 on one of the greatest movies ever made."
According to many reports, director Zack Snyder (he of the not-too-shabby Dawn of the Dead remake and the I-have-no-interest-at-all-in 300) has attempted a faithful adaptation. The trailer looks phenomenal and easily gave me an anticipatory thrill. And it includes my favorite bit of dialogue from the comic: Rorschach (longest-comeback-ever nominee Jackie Earle Haley!) intoning, "The world will look up and shout 'Save us!" and I'll whisper, 'No.'" To put not too fine a point on it, oh man oh man oh man!
I collect vintage horror paperbacks. Co-author, with Grady Hendrix, of the Bram Stoker Award-winning PAPERBACKS FROM HELL: THE TWISTED HISTORY OF '70s AND '80s HORROR FICTION (2017) from Quirk Books
It's with a heavy heart I relay the news: Lux Interior, lead singer of the mighty Cramps, has died. Long one of my most beloved bands, a perennial favorite of punks of all stripes and generations, the Cramps walked it and talked it, performing like '50s rockabilly JD's hopped up on bop pills and strychnine, rioting in the streets after spilling out of a movie house playing all-night monster movies. Over two decades I saw them perform several times, never at anything less than full-tilt boogie and leveling anything in their path. The first time I saw them play I tried to look up Poison Ivy's skirt, then felt bad about it when she caught me, glaring down from on high while playing those bargain-basement swamp-riffs from beyond the grave. Lux put his head through the ceiling tiles of the club (the venerable City Gardens in Trenton, NJ) while I thought he was going to go into full lycanthrope mode.
The Cramps have too many great songs for me to link to all of them, but here's "Garbageman," from their first full album, Songs the Lord Taught Us in 1980, and it has everything that made the Cramps special: it's creepy, fun and sexy, goth without dork, bad-ass without macho, and the above-mentioned lyrics. Plus Lux's wondrous hair. Thanks for everything Lux! You will be missed.
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