Month: June 2019

“On June 10, two nights before Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese dropped on Netflix, I attended an event for the movie following its premiere at Lincoln Center. At the party, I got to sample reactions to the revelation that roughly 10 minutes of Scorsese’s back-to-the-’70s rock doc consists of prankish fake-documentary footage, like something out of a Christopher Guest movie.

“It wasn’t hard to gauge the reaction. In just about every case, when I asked people what they thought about the fakery, that was the very first they’d heard of it. (Unless you have extra sensory perception, you’re going to buy what this movie shows you.) Most of the people I spoke to were wide-eyed with disbelief yet kind of bummed. Over and over, they said that they felt duped, suckered, maybe even a little betrayed.

“Of the 20 or so people I had conversations with, not one said, ‘Really? That’s kind of cool!’ The fakery left no one with that Andy Kaufman feeling of awe. And this was a crowd of people who were disposed to like the movie, many of them with two or three degrees of separation from Martin Scorsese.

“The question I kept getting was, ‘Why did he do it?’ — from Owen Gleiberman‘s “Why Did Martin Scorsese Prank His Audience in Rolling Thunder Revue? Even He May Not Know,” posted on 6.15.

I’ve long accepted a notion that Robert Reich, the respected Berkeley-based professor, economist (Bill Clinton‘s secretary of labor from ’93 to ’97), author, documentarian (Inequality For All and political commentator, is the 21st Century’s Howard Zinn — a brilliant, plain-spoken seer who really does seem to carry the whole equation around in his head, and who’s been explaining it all in concise YouTube videos (over 200 so far) for the last four or five years.

The below video is on the longish side, but it explains how the four basic narratives of the American experience have been used and re-used over the decades.

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There are probably millions who’ve never heard of Stuart Symington. Do a Google search — he was the Joe Biden figure of the 1960 Democratic selection and primary process. The difference is that the elder-statesman-like Symington was 59 in ’60, or 17 years younger than Biden is today. You know who Biden also resembles? Harold Stassen. Yeah, I know — nobody knows him either.

Starting around 9:05:

Bill Maher: If you had to bet your own money, who’s gonna win the nomination?
Charlie Sykes: My own money? That’s very unfair. I’m gonna say Biden because the Democrats will be too afraid to go with somebody who might lose to Donald Trump, and at a certain point the panic will set it.
Maher to George Will: Do you think it’s gonna be Biden?
Will: I think at this point people are in politics and active in the nominating [process] because politics is fun. I think the most “fun” candidate for Democrats is Elizabeth Warren.
Martin Short: And I think it’s Mayor Pete!
Maher: You think Mayor Pete’s gonna win the nomination?
Bari Weiss: I think it could be him.
Short: When you talk about the debates, he is incapable of anything coming out of his mouth that isn’t impressive. I think he’s going to be phenomenal on television, and I think he’ll do a lot of…he’ll be everywhere, and if the Millennials would actually vote…if you’re 18**, 37 seems pretty old.
Weiss to Short: You think he could beat Trump?
Maher: I think it’ll be the dirtiest election ever. I mean no matter who it is.
Short: Trump is like an old [TV] series that you liked the first half-season [of]. I’m telling you [that] people get bored. His schtick is wearing thin.
Maher: Well, it already has and he’s down in the polls so we’ll see.

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Director Franco Zeffirelli has passed in Rome at age 96. His films about great operatic passions and refined spiritual auras earned him…well, mostly praise for 35 years. From the Burton-Taylor Taming of the Shrew (’67) to Callas Forever (’02) A long illness finally brought things to a close. Hugs and condolences to friends, family, colleagues and fans.

Zeffirelli’s life was a fascinating study in strong currents and conflicts, especially when he got older. If it hadn’t been for the arch-conservative views and Catholic constipation, I could say something along the lines of “we should all enjoy lives as vast, industrious and passionate as his.”

Zeffirelli’s most highly regarded film was Romeo and Juliet (’68), which resulted in a Best Director Oscar nomination and for which I always had a special thing (Olivia Hussey‘s Juliet was smooth and sweet and earnest beyond measure). But by today’s standards it feels a tiny bit precious, perhaps a little too poised.

Honestly? I have slightly fonder memories these days of Baz Luhrman‘s Romeo + Juliet (’96). I’m also a bit more enamored of Renato Castellani’s 1954 version of Shakespeare’s tragedy, in which Laurence Harvey played Romeo.

Right now my favorite Zeffirelli is Jesus of Nazareth (’77) with Robert Powell, and then Romeo and Juliet followed by Mel Gibson‘s Hamlet (’90).

I met Zeffirelli when he visited Cannon publicity in ’87 or thereabouts. He may have been there to discuss the video release of Otello, the Placido Domingo-starring filmed opera, or perhaps some future project — memory fails. He struck me as a kindly, gentle, elegant man in all respects.

It was common knowledge that Zeffirelli was gay, but he was too right-wing conservative (he served two terms in the Italian senate as a member of Silvio Berlusconi‘s right-wing Forza Italia party) and staunchly Catholic to be open about it. He finally came out in ’96 at age 73.

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This scene makes me feel so sad, and so curiously comfortable. Goes right through me. Of all the millions who’ve watched this scene over the last decade or so, maybe 2% had even a vague notion what Tommy Lee Jones was talking about. If that. All that dark and all that cold.

Obviously the second Democratic debate group, meeting in Miami on Thursday, 6.27, will be the one to watch. Pete Buttigieg vs. Uncle Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders (who hasn’t a prayer and can only spoil…face it), not to mention Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillbrand and Andrew Yang plus noteworthy second-stringers like Marianne Williamson, John Hickenlooper and Eric Swalwell. Michael Bennet, whom nobody knows or cares about, will also participate.

The first group, gathering the night before on Wednesday, 6.26, will include three serious candidates — Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar ad Beto O’Rourke. The rest haven’t a prayer and they know it — Cory Booker, Julian Castro, Bill de Blasio, John Delaney, Tulsi Gabbard, Jay Inslee and Tim Ryan.

Hollywood Elsewhere is hoping and praying for an Uncle Joe gaffe or two…any kind of mistake or misstatement….anything in that realm.

The real long-haul candidates are Biden, Bernie, Buttigieg and Warren. And maybe Harris and O’Rourke. Bernie, a tough guy and a principled visionary but at the same time a stubborn old goat, has to man up, face facts (he can’t possibly win the nomination) and stop trying to block the inevitable.

Both debates will happen at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County, 1300 Biscayne Blvd, Miami, FL 33132.

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I knew from the get-go that both Shaft and Men in Black: International would blow chunks. So did everyone else. So I didn’t even try to see their press screenings because life is short. MIB:I has a 25% Rotten Tomatoes rating, and Shaft has a not-much-better 34% score. Now comes word that Men in Black: International and Shaft are both underperforming as we speak. I don’t care. Good riddance.

HE to Danny Torrance: It happened in 1980 when you were…what, five or six years old and you’re still feeling wobbly and woozy and going “whoa, man, those memories are still eating away at me”? It was one thing that happened over a single winter in the Colorado mountains. A horrifying and traumatic nightmare, granted, but get over it. You’re 44 or 45 years old. Life is short. Turn the page. Shake it off. Oh, that’s right — you can’t. Because there’s a sequel to be made and you need the money.

I wrote a few days ago that Martin Scorsese‘s Rolling Thunder Revue is “all over the map in a splotchy, rambunctious sort of way, but it’s mostly a fun, relaxing ride — a 140-minute road journey with some very cool and confident people. Mish-mashy, whimsical, good-natured, sometimes deeply stirring and in four or five spots flat-out wonderful.”

It’s been on Netflix for two and a half days. Is it deeper, stronger, more pleasurable or less substantial than I suggested?

Here’s a very nicely written riff by WBGO’s Harlan Jacobson (which you can also listen to): “You have to be a little careful with Rolling Thunder: Scorsese has punctuated his extraordinary career as film’s Dostoevsky — from Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull all the way to The Age of Innocence and The Wolf of Wall Street — with music docs like The Last Waltz, George Harrison and No Direction Home, a PBS doc about the young Dylan.

“Rolling Thunder Revue adds into the mix of archival footage some witness testimony by recognizable people — Sharon Stone, for instance — who weren’t there but are playing fictional characters like The Beauty Queen, a high school groupie. If I go any further about Scorsese’s creative innovation — real people playing fictional roles in a documentary — we’ll all fall through Alice’s funhouse mirror and remain lost forever.

“In this terrible media age, it makes some critics nervous that it’s a blend of fact and fiction to arrive at ‘faction,’ a truth that relies on invention. It’s that kind of work. Creatively, it’s a beautiful cull of footage from when we thought we’d stay forever young.”

HE to Jacobson: Bullshit. Scorsese’s doc isn’t some fanciful, mask-wearing thing. 96% of it is just footage of Dylan’s ’75 Rolling Thunder tour throughout New England intercut with visual-aural references to what life was like back in the mid ’70s. The fact that it contains invented testimony from four fleeting fakers doesn’t dilute the basic composition.

Back to Jacobson: “Scorsese laces throughout the film these concert closeups of Dylan, the bard of late 20th Century America, earning his Nobel Prize by singing what was then assumed to be truth to power with utter clarity. The result is a kind of emotional truth about something larger than the tour, but about post WWII America that was truer than the official story would acknowledge.

“Taken together — Rocketman, David Crosby Remember My Name and Rolling Thunder — are more than about music men, and I say that because women are mostly sidemen in them. They are about Boomers, who are now, in Dylan’s much earlier phrasing, busy dying.

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In my 20s I worked as a tree surgeon. Shitty money but at least I was in great shape. I did it all — shaping, pruning, tree removal (or “takedowns”), cabling, spraying. As a former professional I laughed out loud at the idiots in these videos. I always removed trees in a careful, methodical fashion. I would always climb to the top of a tree, tie in with my rope, saddle, spikes and chain, and then take the leaders and branches off one at a time, until the tree became a telephone pole. And then I’d start chainsawing chunks of it, one by one from the top and slowly working my way down.

If there was the slightest chance of any falling pieces hitting a shed or a swimming pool or (God forbid) the main residence, I would tie a rope to the piece I was about to cut and loop the rope over a nearby leader and have the ground crew slowly lower it down. And when it came time to drop the “telephone pole”, we would always make sure it would fall upon a bouncy bed of cut branches. There would always be a rope tied to the top with a couple of guys maintaining tension, and then I would carefully cut a pie slice at the base of the tree. The tree would always land exactly where I planned.

The guys in these videos (i.e., no women) are morons.

I’ve never owned a pair of white bucks, but I can feel myself warming to the possibility. I generally steer clear of preppy apparel, but I’ve got this idea that wearing these things (remember when people used to call high-style shoes “kicks”?) will make me feel good about life — that I’ll feel like some kind of special-aroma Great Gatsby guy if I wear them to screenings and restaurants and…whatever, to the West Hollywood Pavillions.

I can imagine wearing a pair as I stroll into a nice open-air rooftop bar (the Waldorf Astoria, say) while listening to Eric Clapton‘s “Anyone For Tennis” on my Bowers & Wilkins P5 headphones.

I can foresee two problems. One, being snickered at or, you know, people calling me a clueless poseur. Two, the Robert Redford-as-Jay Gatsby thing only lasts for the first week or two, for once they get scuffed and beaten up the special aura evaporates.

I was looking online this morning and none of the white bucks I liked (like the ones for sale at the Brooks Brothers site) were in my size — i.e., 13. In the guy realm 13 isn’t all that unusual, but shoe sellers treat you like a carnival freak if your size is larger than 12. Plus a sales rep told me this morning that white bucks are regarded as seasonal accessories (in Southern California?), but summer is just beginning and they’re already running out. All right, forget it…a bad idea from the start.