I just don’t want to do much besides drink coffee and tell stories this week… it’s kinda brutal, really.
I don’t even want to go see James Brown’s body. (You have to give it to we Jews… close the frickin’ casket… please!)
Anyway… y’all know the drill… play nice… no eye-gouging, please. I’m sure I will find inspiration sometime today…
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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?
So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.
And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.
There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.
I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.
So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.
But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”
My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher
“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.
~ David Simon
Based on the NYT photo, looks like he’s got a shiny blue suit on with white shoes and gloves. Probably the same amount of make-up and hairspray as any other day for him.
Perhaps he has a string attached to his wrist so he flip the coffin open and closed midway.
B. B. King’s just announced that Brown will be replaced for the New Year’s Eve show by Chaka Kahn. I knew James Brown, and I’m here to tell you Chaka Kahn is no James Brown.
How come the brilliant people at CHUD.com are the only ones who realized that today is the 111th anniversary of the first movie projected for an audience?
Gerald Ford trying to upstage James Brown’s passing does nothing to restore peace in our nation.
111 isn’t exactly a round number.
I’m dying to know if anyone else loved LITTLE CHILDREN (the movie) as much as I did. I can’t quit thinking about it…I may have to go see it again.
“How come the brilliant people at CHUD.com are the only ones who realized that today is the 111th anniversary of the first movie projected for an audience?”
Because we all just watch movies at home now.
111 is cooler than a round number. Plus, for the truly nerdy among us, it was Bilbo’s age when he left the Shire for good.
According to the CHUD post, this isn’t the anniversary of movies _screening_ for an audience, but the anniversary of people _paying_ to see films. Who wants to celebrate that?
Petaluma, I’m going to see Little Children for the first time this afternoon. Hope I like it as much as you did.
jeffmcm, maybe a good time to revisit that famous Andrei Tarkovsky quote:
“The cinema, she is a whore. First she charge a nickel, now she charge five dollars. When she learns to give it away, she will be free!”
Am I the only one who’s creeped out by the skeezy James Brown Block Party in Harlem? Maybe it’s a cultural thing, I dunno.
Reportedly, Ford’s last words were, “I don’t want to live in a world without James Brown.”
And Brown’s last words were “Woman, don’t make me hit you.”
But if people didn’t pay to see films, there would be very few films. And you can bet your ass that even Andrei Tarkovsky wanted people to buy tickets to his films.
The scene in Little Children where the passive narrator switches to football color commentator (seemingly just for the hell of it) was to me the masterpiece moment of the year. Real, raw, to-hell-with-it-all cinema.
Young filmmakers these days forget how important it is to go for broke — Spielberg blowing the moon up 100 times its size when Elliott and ET soar by; Zemeckis having the Delorean fold into a jet and fly off on Marty’s cul-de-sac; DePalma reworking the Odessa Steps sequence into a bloodbath shootout in The Untouchables.
The best filmmakers are the ones who have that kitchen sink on standby, ready to throw… ready to catapult. And god bless Todd Field for understanding that.
Oh yeah, my favs:
1) United 93
2) The Queen
3) Little Children
4) Little Miss Sunshine
5) The Departed
6) The Prestige
7) Cars
8) Brick
9) Inside Man
10) Lunch With David Episode 5: Pass The Ammo, Bitches
Anybody else notice “Dreamgirls” is already experiencing pretty steep drops?
“The best filmmakers are the ones who have that kitchen sink on standby, ready to throw… ready to catapult.”
Very true, Crow. Which is why I love Magnolia. Never mind the frogs — the opening sequence let me know that, damn, here’s a movie that will spring anything on me. And when the characters suddenly started singing “Wise Up” — man, I admit, I was freakin’ thrilled.
Sooo many unforgettable moments in LITTLE CHILDREN. I wish more would see it so we could talk about it. I will say…that “pool scene” was scary and hillarious in equally excellent proportions.
Just got back, and I was blown away. This might wind up being my #1 for the year. And that football scene–at first I was like “What the hell is this doing in this film?” and then just couldn’t help smiling at the nerve of the whole thing (and that first bit of narration shocked me–the guy wasn’t even credited; does anyone know who it was?). A film varied so much in tone that still manages to hold together and prove insightful, funny, and moving.
Todd Field deserves much more acclaim for this film than he’s been getting, and I feel so bad for Winslet that she is losing everything to Mirren, who is frankly getting a bit of a free ride for using her decades of thespian craft to poke a few holes through the wall around a very public figure, whereas Winslet is a far superior actress who burns a great bright soul in every character she inhabits, in a way where you rarely see the mechanism working. Sure she’s still young, but she’s turned in more great performances than most actresses twice her age.
the one i’m a little surprised by is “We Are Marshall”. It seems like that kind of syrupy-schmaltzy Christmas thing that’d do huge business around the holidays. And lord knows they advertised the HELL out of it, I just thought it’d do bigger.
speaking of sinking, Apocalypto is about to hit the bottom of the lake. I thought it’d pull more than $50M, now that seems like a stretch. Not a bad movie, but nothing spectacular either.
Little Children and United 93 are my favorites this year. Granted there is a lot I haven’t seen (COM, Dreamgirls, Good Shepherd/German).
The narration is Will Lyman of PBS’ “Frontline.”
narrator
Just returned from Curse of the Golden Flower. I enjoyed it and was anxiously anticiating what would happen but it felt overdone. House of Flying Daggers is much better. The acting was good and the plot was complex but the action seemed a little flat. There was definitely an LOTR element but it just couldn’t match up. I read though some reviews after I got back and I can understand where both the raves and the flops came from. I guess that explains why I see the film as just OK.
Saw Dreamgirls over the Christmas holiday and have to say I couldn’t get on board with it. The truly middling 80’s-broadway-cheese songs did not help a bit (“Dreamgirls,” “Family” and “I Am Changing” stand out as the worst of the batch) nor did some of the flat staging/cinematography. By the twelfth shot of their choreographed hands rising into frame in unison, I felt like shouting “enough already!”
I have admired Condon’s work in the past, but what happened to his sense of stage convention? Four characters confront/console Effie with the putrid “Family” as one of the earliest breaks away from songs ‘performed’ onstage to songs as monolog/dialog, and then the f*cking thing turns up an hour later as a pop song they sing in concert? Effie sings her club audition with a piano player, but drums and horns appear in the soundtrack midway – the set-up for an onstage performance transition (one of three in the movie and stolen directly from Condon’s own work in CHICAGO) you see coming a mile away. But do horns ever appear onstage with her? No. Only a drummer and two guitarists. And as for Hudson’s show stopper (“And I am Telling You. . .”) I felt like it would never end. The constant swirling camera and cuts close and wide tried desperately to infuse the scene with electricity that just wasn’t there. Just hold the camera still, for Chrissakes! The girl is up there practically shitting emotion – let her do the work.
The response from the entire audience was pretty underwhelming (I counted two mild laughs, no applause at any point) Granted, I saw this in a flyover state (Iowa) but the house was full and at least 30% black, so this wasn’t just a handful of harumphing white folks. And the Martin Luther King comic bit? Stone-dead silence, not even a hint of giggle (while we uncomfortably watch the characters on-screen laugh it up). A truly watch-checking experience.
Yeah, execute Saddam. That’s going to fix the war. Yep.
thanks Cadavra & wrecktum for my only laughs of the week (one of my good friends died recently).
the block party thing is *partially* based on a tradition for some cultures from the Caribbean(and sometimes celebrated in Louisiana and other parts of the south–but this thing is much more tacky. (I think James Brown did enough PCP in his life to think this death party is way cool).
still seems like only yesterday that the only way a state trooper could get Mr Brown’s car to stop was to shoot out the tires.
I loved his music anyway.
Lota: My condolences.
For a good laugh locate and listen to “Rc’s Mom” by The Dead Milkmen.
Why would anyone be “skeeved” out by a celebration at a wake? Feels a little racist to me.
thanks Joe
i don;t think dave or anyone else meant to be racist DF, these days most people are used to more tame wakes and closed casket.
It is a very “old country” thing for many cultures, to have raucous or interactive celebrations around a corpse. The average Yankee isn’t used to it anymore.
“Why would anyone be “skeeved” out by a celebration at a wake? Feels a little racist to me.”
Wow, you’d think a journalist as fine as yourself wouldn’t toss around loaded words like that. Too bad.
Anyway, I thought it was skeezy after reading the Atl Journal-Constitution report:
“At 12:05 p.m., a hearse pulled up and a casket of glittering gold emerged as the crowd chanted ‘James Brown! James Brown!’ The crowd surged, arms stretched overhead with cameras and cellphones to get a snapshot.
The casket was loaded into a horse-drawn hearse, which made its way down Lenox Avenue, surrounded by onlookers. Residents came out of apartment buildings onto rooftops, balconies and sidewalks. His music seemed to be coming from everywhere. Vendors offered hastily made T-shirts and homemade CDs for $5 each.”
As I said, it may be cultural, but this scene (vendors? really?) struck me as odd.
the vendor’s thing, the solid gold, the MCs, all seem to fit James Brown like his hair–tacky and too much spray.
in purgatory there’s thousands of women waiitng to slap him around, then fix him with an apron to do chores around the house. “papa’s got a brand new bag”–James Brown in the afterlife.
Since there was some talk about Little Children, I have to say that I saw it and it fell pretty flat for me. I liked that the narrator wasn’t your standard-issue guy, but the fact that he does so much Frontline and A&E work made me think he was being used for added dramatic intensity, which didn’t work for me, and was therefore pretentious. Plus the movie’s two storylines never meshed, and while Jackie Earle and Kate Winslet were both fine, Patrick Wilson was out of his league, acting-wise. I felt bad for him, watching him flail around and try to keep up. Overall, I would call the movie American Beauty light with a side of Happiness.
No way, jeff! Damn man, I think you missed the point.
I also think LITTLE CHILDREN is the blackest of comedies…hence the narrator…hence the tragi-comi scenes. I also was really, really impressed by Wilson.
In my review I called the film a less clunky Todd Solondz film with more heart mixed with a less forgettable American Beauty so we tend to agree in principle…sorta…
Charlotte’s Web having it’s 2nd best business day yesterday was pretty surprising.
Well, I liked American Beauty and most Todd Solondz and it sounded like you didn’t, Petaluma…so what was the point I missed? I’m open – another movie I’m don’t have my full-blown hate on for.
Nah, I liked AMERICAN BEAUTY, but it’s like the Giants throwing all that money at Barry Zito. People get worked up in the moment and maybe don’t feel as strongly later. I haven’t thought about AMERICAN BEAUTY in well over 2 years. I can’t STOP thinking about L.C.
I also dig Solondz alot too…but I’m getting tired of his shock value aspect. It’s wearing as thin as Chuck Palahniuk’s shocking schtick.
I just think the point you missed was LITTLE CHILDREN was every bit as shocking as a Solondz movie, but Field doesn’t like…whack you over the ehad with audaciousness. It’s such a smooth movie, I think people miss alot of the subtle humor…or maybe I’m just a sicko who finds some inappropriate things simply hillarious.
I also love the way Field takes the smaller, more mundane moments, focuses on them and allows his actors to focus on them. It speaks so much louder than say…a kid jacking off onto a hand rail and having a dog lick it off.
Also-I’m not dissing your like/dislike of the film. That was a “No way, jeff!” as if we were sitting in a bar…as I wish I were right now…
“How come the brilliant people at CHUD.com are the only ones who realized that today is the 111th anniversary of the first movie projected for an audience?”
2006 (Boxing Day, to be exact) is also the 100 year anniversary for the first feature length film ever made. But that film was Australian so nobody really noticed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_of_the_Kelly_Gang
Where the heck is “Little Children” playing anyway? It’s nowhere near Charlotte, North Carolina. I’d even drive to Atlanta, but it’s not playing there either. Atlanta does have one theater playing “Children of Men,” but that’s about it. “Little Children’s” slow, slow rollout strategy doesn’t make a lot of sense at this point. Didn’t it debut in October? Even Norway already has it. At least we’ll get it before Estonia (maybe), where it’s not due until February. And I don’t even know where Estonia is.
I don’t know, I feel like the end of Little Children is whacking you over the head with audaciousness, except that unlike Solondz, Field wants you to feel that it’s a big tragedy – in one storyline at least. In the other storyline it seemed like the two characters just sort of came to their senses for no particular reason and went along happily ever after.
I was more disturbed by Al Sharpton gladhanding next to the casket.
I have no problem with a wake or a celebration. I am not a fan of open caskets, however. And to be clear, Jews don’t do open caskets. (I assume the race thing was meant as a Jeff Wells joke of some kind.)
That said, there is a remarkable book of dead bodies made up and dressed in their Sunday best in the deep south, mostly black, that I found amazing. I am not disturbed by dead bodies out of context. But something about looking as someone I knew or someone famous all made up to appear virtually alive… doesn’t comfort me. It feels false to me.
And my experience with family members who were not made up to within an inch of their former lives is that the dead face is almost unrecognizably different that the person I knew.
But traditions are traditions…
It’s nice to see Americans complaining about the state of film distribution and that it’s not just me and my foreign arse constantly whingeing.
Careful, Poland. Devin will call you racist with comments like that.
I watched the James Brown body viewing live feed out of the corner of my eye at work for a few hours yesterday. Mostly to see Al Sharpton schmooze everyone in a nice suit. My eye got drawn to one of the few white people to show up, and weirdly enough it was Rachel Weisz, toting her kid. The photog seemed to wake up around then too.
THAT’S RACIST! Or an astute observation about a culture different than one’s own.
I forget.
Yeah, you know when my beloved (very Jewish) grandmother died a couple of years ago she had an open casket at Mount Sinai (where all the Jews are buried in LA, near Warner Bros., Griffith Park, and not too far from where the Hillside Stranglers used to dump their victims…) really, it wasn’t so bad. It was a way to say goodbye. It made it more difficult to say goodbye. Death is hard to accept, no matter how you dress it up. Frozen hands, makeup, and a serene expression – there is a kind of peace to it. We humans need our rituals because we’re too smart to not think about the tragedy of life. We need our religion because our questions have no answers. And we need our open caskets because we need a lasting image.
Er, excuse me, but have any of you folks ever been to an Irish wake? Now there you’re talking raucous!
I gotta say that I wasn’t all that taken with Little Children, either. I don’t hate it, but I certainly don’t love it.
-Spoilers-
It seemed like the movie was making fun of the characters and their world for so much of it, that it was hard to feel involved in the tragedy of the ending. The pedophile was never sympathetic enough to feel bad for at the end. The ex-cop was always too psycho to earn his ending. Both Winslett and Wilson seemed to take stupid pills at the end (though neither character was that bright to begin with). They completely wasted Jennifer Connolly. And it seemed like it was trying to be shocking with no clear purpose – like a kid shouting, “TAKE ME SERIOUSLY OR I’LL KILL MYSELF!!!”
If you want to talk about the movie beyond like it/don’t like it, I am curious for an opinion on how did the Kate Winslet character ever end up married to her husband? What do the two storylines have to do with one another other than the overarching theme of we’re all little children? Those are areas I’d like to get someone else’s take on, because it just never added up for me.
The James Brown thing befuddles me.
Sure, he was a talented musician, but he was a pretty awful human being. A drunk, drug addicted wife beater who left his most recent wife and child penniless, bequeathing them nothing in the will.
And people just continue to say “it’s the art, not the artist.”
Well, it’d be nicer if the artists lived a life worth celebrating. Just another ignorant moron who is celebrating for excelling on stage, even though he seemed to be an utter failure in every other aspect of his life.
But hey, he wrote “I Feel Good”, so lets mourn his loss. What a stupid world we live in.
Uhh…James Brown never hit me or abused drugs in front of me. I’m not making excuses for the guy, but he had a brutal childhood and being an African America in the 30’s-hell, now can’t be easy.
I also challenge you, anghus, to name some “great guys” who were also innovators and geniuses in the field of film and music. They all, like we all, gots some issues.
Petaluma, that’s exactly my point.
Most memorable artists do have some kind of shady past, which provides countless material for redundant musical biopics.
Everyone’s got a sob story. I’m sure he went through some shit that will be put to screen by Spike Lee, and it will try and rationalize his behavior, but personally, i’m kind of tired of the spoiled celebrity behavior and the whole tortured artist cliche.
Anghus: Two of the women who divorced Cary Grant accused him of physical abuse. That doesn’t seem to have tarnished his image. Indeed, even though this info is readily available in bios, it’s been my experience that most people either don’t know or don’t want to know about it.
Well, Cary Grant also wasn’t black.
Just sayin’….
Also, Spike Lee didn’t glamourize Malcom X’s early days, back when he was only Malcom W.
“it’s been my experience that most people either don’t know or don’t want to know about it.”
i always say that when you scratch beneath the surface of most people, you wont like what you find.
so maybe it’s best that we don’t know about the lives of celebrities, but that’s not the world we live in now, is it?
and Petaluma, my opinion of James Brown has nothing to do with him being black. I never heard a thing about Cary Grant, though i doubt i would because he wasn’t really getting in any trouble in my lifetime.
Anghus- I wasn’t implying you had some race issue, sorry for seeming that way. I just think the public is much, much more aware of the issues black artists have rather than those of whites.
So Anghus, hopefully without being too contentious, what is your point? Are you saying that the millions of people who were touched by Brown’s art but unaffected by his personal flaws should turn their back on him now?
Petaluma
Petaluma
i don’t know about that. These days it seems like all our focus is on rich white chicks. I mean, the celebrities who get the most coverage now are
Tom Cruise & Katie Holmes, Brad Pitt & Angelina Jolie, Nicole Richie, Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, and Jennifer Aniston.
And a LOT of that coverage is skewed negative.
When’s the last time you remember reading a positive story about any of those guys (Especially Hilton, Lohan, Britney, and Richie). It’s all skewed negative.
jeff
what i’m saying is that we accept brilliance on stage and screen and allow mediocrity everywhere else. hell, right now we even celebrate mediocrity everywhere (the aforementioned Lohan, Richie, Hilton, Spears). all this outpouring of “grief” when a celebrity dies… its so fake, and so pointless. The man has this great gift which he uses, but it does little to improve his life, other than financially. the script for the tortured artist is such a fucking cliche at this point. Boo hoo, you had talent and money, and you couldn’t even translate that into a happy life. It’s so tiring. Congratulations on writing some influential music, sorry you couldn’t enjoy it because you were a miserable hard partying moron.
It’s not about turning their back on him now jeff. It’s about looking deeper into the type of people that the world puts on a pedestal.
I always go back to that quote “It’s the art, not the artist”. I get it. But as time passes, the artists are getting less talented, and the celebrities that people are obsessed with aren’t even worth celebrating. We’re a celebrity obsessed culture swimming in mediocrity. I’m not stupid enough to think that people will actually start pointing cameras at anything other than Britney’s vagina, but i’ll be damned if i think we should spend any time with fake sentiments trying to sum up their lives as if they contributed anything other than boorish behavior and a handful of catchy tunes.
Well, I understand your basic point. At the same time, we have to remember that ultimately, it was the art: that Brown created works that spoke to millions, made their lives better in some way, and it’s appropriate to honor that, while remaining aware of the flaws of the man.
jeff,
his music will be remembered by those who didn’t know him. but i’d like to think that life is more about making a difference to those who did, and that’s where many of these people end up failing: spending so much time being the star, vying for the attention of those you’ll never meet, rather than caring for the people they interact with every day.
What good are songs to the wife and kid he left penniless?
Yeah, sucks for them. What do you want me to do about it?
Plus, a hundred years from now, his wife and kids will be dead, but his music will still exist. It’s an odd paradox that you’re right to point out.
you’re right. there’s not a damn thing you can do. it’s just a constant in this world that always kind of bugs me.
Perhaps the Spike Lee movie will speak to this contradiction. Here’s hoping.
it’s the one thing i haven’t seen in a biopic in quite some time. Usually, the lead character’s family is an afterthought to the hard partying and the mistresses, until finally at the very end of the movie you just see an older version of the character say ‘it was always you’ and it manages to wash away 30 years of bad behavior.
I’d like to see more about the guy who has all the talent, pisses it all away, and in the end doesn’t get any of it back. Instead, he leaves a broken legacy and an extended family haunted by his lack of concern and support, constantly reminded of his failings by the songs that continue to play on the radio to the delight of people who never even knew him.
Who can play James Brown in a bio pic?
Prince has the looks but not the voice to play JB.
To Jonj: “Little Children” added theaters in the NYC area for Xmas and may (finally) expand next weekend. A Philadelphia-area arthouse is promoting the movie for next week per the theater’s website.
maybe Charlie Murphy can play James Brown.
white or black, famous or non, I don;t think much of people who knock around loved ones, strangers etc.
I think it’s best to praise the Arts that people have to offer, but NOT make them celebrities. It is the celebrity, not the talent that makes them worse monsters.
Like my man Will Smith says, if a person is an asshole in their “real” former life, give him (or her) money and fame, he just becomes a bigger asshole.
I would be happy if the entire celebrity thing and all the stupid waste-of-trees celebrity gossip rags went belly-up tomorrow.
I have a feeling that Tim Burton’s ‘Ed Wood’ is about as close as we’re ever going to get to what you suggest, Anghus.
Oh, and they do always come in threes: just as James Brown was upstaged by Gerald Ford, so now has Ford been upstaged by Saddam Hussein.