Posted on 11.6.12: “I always got a bigger charge out of Keith Moon‘s pounding and crashing than I did from Ginger Baker‘s, great as he was and is. Partly because Moon was crazier. But also because Moon’s snare-drum hits always struck me as metronomically, mathematically and microscopically more precise and highly charged than Baker’s…just by a tad. To me great drumming isn’t about being a wild man from Borneo…it’s about hitting the beat exactly dead center and exactly right according to universal law, over and over and over.”
In the view of N.Y. Times critic Glenn Kenny, Lili Fini Zanuck‘s Eric Clapton: A Life in 12 Bars “comes up short” as a musical biography, but “plays substantially better as a story of recovery and recovered integrity.” I wouldn’t know as I bailed on this 135-minute documentary sometime around…oh, the 35-minute mark. I departed over issues with the technical quality of what I’d seen up to that point. I tried to explain my complaints on 9.11.17, in a post from the Toronto Film Festival:
Zanuck’s doc opens today (11.24), and will air on Showtime starting on 2.10.18.
“Lili Fini Zanuck‘s Eric Clapton: A Life in 12 Bars illustrates a rule about documentaries and particularly talking-head footage that bears repeating,” my review began.
“If you have an ample supply of alluring, great-looking, non-grainy footage, you’re free to forego talking heads. Just hire a top-tier editor, overlay some wise, insightful narration and you’ll probably be fine. But if your footage is mainly composed of grainy, shitty-looking photos mixed with black-and-white TV footage, you definitely need to intercut with well-recorded, high-def color footage of this and that knowledgable, insightful authority.
“The reason, obviously, is that you’ll want to occasionally free the viewer from the prison of fuzzy, shitty-looking stills and black-and-white TV footage, and you’ll also want to heighten the impact of your vocal observations as a way of adding intellectual intrigue and fighting the general monotony.
Eric Clapton, 72, during Sunday’s visit to the Toronto Film Festival to promote Lili Fini Zanuck’s Eric Clapton: A Life in 12 Bars.
Lili Fini Zanuck‘s Eric Clapton: A Life in 12 Bars illustrates a rule about documentaries and particularly talking-head footage that bears repeating.
If you have an ample supply of alluring, great-looking, non-grainy footage, you’re free to forego talking heads. Just hire a top-tier editor, overlay some wise, insightful narration and you’ll probably be fine. But if your footage is mainly composed of grainy, shitty-looking photos mixed with black-and-white TV footage, you definitely need to intercut with well-recorded, high-def color footage of this and that knowledgable, insightful authority.
The reason, obviously, is that you’ll want to occasionally free the viewer from the prison of fuzzy, shitty-looking stills and black-and-white TV footage, and you’ll also want to heighten the impact of your vocal observations as a way of adding intellectual intrigue and fighting the general monotony.
Eric Clapton, 72, during Sunday’s visit to the Toronto Film Festival to promote Lili Fini Zanuck’s Eric Clapton: A Life in 12 Bars.
I’ve just walked out of a screening of Eric Clapton: A Life in 12 Bars because the portion I saw (a) was almost all grainy, shitty-looking photos and black-and-white TV footage (it really needs a roster of well-lighted talking heads) and because (b) the cutting felt uninspired and inelegant and (c) I began to feel hugely irritated and then angry from the generally sloppy, substandard feel of it.
Granted, I only lasted from the beginning of Clapton’s guitar-playing career to the dawn of musical psychedelia, or from late ’63 to early ’67 (Yardbirds, John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, Cream). But Zanuck didn’t even touch upon the musical influence of pot and LSD and particularly the mystical-psychedelic consciousness that began to spread all through the music industry starting in late 1965, and which flourished in ’66, ’67 and beyond.
Cream wasn’t just another band for Clapton (or Jack Bruce or Ginger Baker) — it represented a whole spiritual changeover, a new way of living and seeing…everything top to bottom. To quickly transition from being a hard-core blues purist to a psychedelic pioneer was huge for a guy like Clapton, and yet the doc just cuts from shitty-looking black and white stills and footage of Clapton hanging and playing with Mayall and the gang to shitty-looking black and white film of Clapton, Bruce and Baker playing “I Feel Free,” which was among the strongest cuts from Fresh Cream.
All of a sudden I said to myself, “Fuck this movie…Zanuck and her producers and editors are just going through the motions, running footage, hanging wallpaper.” I suddenly needed to feel free, and so I got up and left.
I may catch the rest of Eric Clapton: A Life in 12 Bars when it plays on Showtime. Maybe. If I feel like it. We’ll see how that goes.
Last June I posted a couple of shots taken during my brief stint as a mediocre drummer. Okay, a fair drummer but no Ginger Baker. Anyway, the original photographer (i.e., an old friend) sent me another shot today.
Jay Bulger‘s Beware of Mr. Baker may or may not screen in Los Angeles and other pulsing cities, but it’s definitely set for a run at Manhattan’s Film Forum (11.28 to 12.11). It’ll soon screen for NY press. LA screenings are still being figured out. I always got a bigger charge out of Keith Moon‘s pounding and crashing than I did from Ginger Baker‘s, great as he was and is. Partly because Moon was crazier. But also because Moon’s snare-drum hits always struck me as metronomically and microscopically more highly charged (and occasionally even more precise) than Baker’s…just by a tad. To me great drumming isn’t about being a wild man from Borneo…it’s about hitting the beat exactly dead center, exactly right.”
One thing you’ll never, ever see in an action film is a supporting player (bad or neutral guy) who stands up and is ready to fight or shoot it out with a lead guy, and then — very sensibly! — changes his mind when he realizes that beating or out-drawing the lead guy isn’t in the cards. It happened 52 years ago in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, but it hasn’t happened since.
If I’m wrong please remind me of another scene that works like this (i.e., “Uhhm, wait, hold on…I can’t win this one.”).
The card player’s name was Donnelly Rhodes, and he died three and a half years ago. He was 40 or so when he shot this scene with Robert Redford, Paul Newman and director George Roy Hill.
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