Phil Spector, the once-great music producer and guilty-as-charged murderer of Lana Clarkson, is dead of Covid at age 81. In a prison hospital, but basically in prison. Convicted of Clarkson’s ’03 murder in ’09, Spector would have been eligible for parole in 2024.

Most of the obits are going to repeat the standard line about Spector having been a brute and a fiend — an appropriate description, yes, for anyone who maliciously ends the life of another human being outside of armed combat.

But we’re all a blend of good and not-so-good elements, angels and goblins and all kinds of in-between, and I’m sorry but Spector wasn’t all fiend. (Just ask Greta Gerwig, who once told me she’s a big fan of Spector’s classic-era music.) Because for a certain period in his life, despite the fact that he was regarded as a bizarre permutation and an aloof prick by nearly everyone for decades…for a certain period he was touched by God. Or was God’s conduit…whichever.

Spector was the first maestro-level rock music producer, the creator of the famous “wall of sound” jukebox signature that peaked between 1960 and ’64, and was occasionally imitated by Brian Wilson and several others (Spector co–produced George Harrison‘s All Things Must Pass) for years following — “Be My Baby”, “Chapel of Love”, “Just Once in My Life”, “There’s No Other (Like My Baby)”, “Then He Kissed Me”, “Talk to Me”, “Why Don’t They Let Us Fall in Love”, “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin'”, “Da Doo Ron Ron”, “I Can Hear Music”, and “This Could Be the Night”.

Please, please watch Vikram Jayanti‘s The Agony and Ecstasy of Phil Spector, which has been on YouTube for nearly a decade. I wish it could be seen in HD. I would buy a copy if it was. It’s one of the best documentaries about a music industry superstar ever made — perhaps the best ever.

Here’s a piece I wrote about it on 6.28.10 — “Dark Star“:

I’m into Spector more than most people in my realm. Jayanti’s doc is what got me there. I’ve known Spector’s musical signature all my life — that “wall of sound” thing that gave such ecstatic echo-phonic oomph to all those early to mid ’60s hits (“Be My Baby”, “Walkin In The Rain“, “River Deep, Mountain High”) and Beatle songs he produced a few years later. But I’d never heard Spector speak or gotten to “know” him until I saw Jayanti’s doc.

Spector is a fascinating man — there’s no getting around that. A brilliant, oddball X-factor “character” of the first order. I’ve known a few guys like Spector. They’re egotists and half-crazy and it’s always about them, but they’re a trip to talk to and share stories with. If you love show business, you can’t help but love how these guys are always sharp as a tack and don’t miss a trick and are always blah-blahing about their genius and their importance.

Except Spector’s blah is backed up by truth. He really did shape and inspire rock ‘n’ roll in its infancy, and touched heaven a few times in the process.

Yes, he probably shot Clarkson, a 40 year-old, financially struggling actress, on 2.3.03 when she was visiting his home. Or maybe he threatened to shoot her and the gun accidentally went off. Or whatever. And maybe Spector telling a Daily Telegraph reporter two months before the shooting that “he had bipolar disorder and that he considered himself ‘relatively insane'” was a factor. And maybe he deserves to be in jail for 19 years. The guy is obviously immodest and intemperate with demons galore.

But you can tell from listening to Spector that he’s some kind of bent genius — that he’s brilliant, exceptional, perceptive — and that it’s a monumental tragedy that these qualities co-exist alongside so much weirdness inside the man — all kinds of strutting-egoist behavior and his having threatened women with guns and all of that “leave me alone because I’m very special” hiding-behind-bodyguards crap. Because life is short and the kind of vision and talent that Spector has (or at least had) is incredibly rare and world-class.

That’s why Jayanti’s film is so absorbing, and why the title is exactly right. Why do so many gifted people always seem to be susceptible to baser impulses? Why do they allow bizarre psychological currents to influence their lives? What kind of a malignant asshole waves guns around in the first place?

I’ll tell you what kind of guy does that. A guy who never got over hurtful traumatic stuff that happened in his childhood (like his father committing suicide), and who decided early on that he wouldn’t deal with it, and so it metastasized.

It’s another tragedy that this BBC doc, originally aired in England in 2008, is only viewable on YouTube, and in such cruddy (480p) condition.

Spector’s story encompasses so much and connects to so many musical echoes and currents that people (okay, older people) carry around inside, and the way this history keeps colliding with what Spector probably did (despite his earnest claims to Jayanti that he’s innocent) and the Court TV footage and the evidence against him and the thought of a woman’s life being snuffed out…it’s just shattering.

Phil Spector and the Ronettes during a 1963 Gold Star recording session in Los Angeles.

I’ve seen Jayanti’s doc twice now and I could probably go another couple of times. Anyone who cares about ’60s pop music and understands Spector’s importance in the scheme of that decade needs to see this thing. It’s a touchstone trip and an extreme lesson about how good and evil things can exist in people at the same time.

90% of the doc alternates between interviews with the hermetic Spector, taped between his first and second murder trials, and the Court TV footage. But the arguments and testimony are often pushed aside on the soundtrack by the hits that Spector produced with the Ronettes, the Righteous Brothers, Ike and Tina Turner, the Crystals, Darlene Love, John Lennon, George Harrison, Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans (that rendition they and Spector recorded of “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah” in ’63). It’s the constant back and forth of beauty and darkness, beauty and rage, beauty and warped emotion — repeated over and over and over.

I never knew that the title of Spector’s “To Know Him Is To Love Him” (which he wrote and performed with the Teddy Bears in ’58) was taken from his father’s gravestone. I’d forgottten that he wrote “Spanish Harlem” — an exceptionally soulful ballad for the 1960 pop market. I never gave much thought to what “Da Doo Ron Ron” meant — I never thought it meant anything in particular — but Spector says it’s a metaphor for slurpy kisses and handjobs and fingerings at the end of a teenage date. Spector also had a good deal to do, he says, with the writing of Lennon’s “Woman Is Nigger of the World.”

There are two curious wrongos. Spector mentions that his father committed suicide when he was “five or six” — he was actually nine when that happened. (How could he not be clear on that?) Spector also mentions that line about John Lennon having thanked him for “keeping rock ‘n’ roll alive for the two years when Elvis went into the Army” when in fact Spector’s big period began just after Elvis got out of the Army, starting around ’60 or thereabouts.

Spector mentions that if people like you they don’t say bad things about you, but it’s clear that if he hadn’t been such a hermit and hadn’t acted like a dick for so many years, and if he hadn’t been photographed with that ridiculous finger-in-the-wall-socket electric hairdo, and if he’d just gotten out and charmed people the way he does in the interview footage with Jayanti then…well, who knows? Maybe things might have turned out differently.

Historians will certainly note the obvious — three earth-shaking or at least peak-passion political events, three Wednesdays in a row over 15 days — 1.6, 1.13 and 1.20. Two weeks and a day that sealed Trump’s ignominy & place in history. Beast ignites physical attack upon Capitol, is resultantly impeached (for the second time) 7 days later, leaves in withered disgrace for Mar a Lago 7 days after that. Wretched, wicked, deranged.

Ape legs are fairly short — everyone knows this. Their arms are long, thick and brawny but their legs are almost stubby. From the hips up this guy looks like a big CG fantasy ape but his legs belong to an NFL linebacker…definitely human-shaped.

Elizabeth Lo‘s Stray “shines a piercing light on what it means to be an outcast in a teeming metropolis. Though they do find attentive people with whom to pass an hour or two, it’s remarkable how often the dogs go unnoted by pedestrians; luckily, drivers heed them.

“Through a finely calibrated ebb and flow of insight and emotion, Lo offers a fresh perspective on life in the shadows — the freedom as well as the neglect — building toward an end-credits coda, a song from the heart that’s not to be missed.” — THR‘s Sheri Linden, posted on 4.15.20, Tribeca Film Festival.

Travel Beans: “Another reason you may not want to visit Positano…if you’re one of those people who cannot stand Instagram culture with so many tourists taking loads of photos every time you look around…if this is something that really grinds your gears and winds you up, best to avoid it.” — gently phrased by Travel Beans on 10.24.20.

“Amalfi Coast,” HE-posted on 11.18.09: “Positano has been overtaken by schmuck tourists…degraded by the tour buses and hee-haw Americans who keep the local economy going. I remember being in a Positano internet cafe and overhearing a guy with some kind of Kentucky or Tennessee accent using the international land line and speaking or bellowing too loudly (‘Great Italian fewd!’), and immediately flinching and saying to myself, ‘Uh-oh, the Cancun crowd is here.’

“But it’s such a beautiful place anyway. The feeling of being cut off from the world is so special and serene. The magnificent Moorish architecture, the 45- or 50-degree incline, the view from a cheap hilltop restaurant that Jett and I visited during magic hour, etc. Even with the Clem Kadiddlehoopers, I’d go there again in a heartbeat.”

Snapped in June 2007.

I’m still grinning about Trump getting kicked off Twitter and other social-media platforms, including YouTube. If anyone in the history of this planet deserves to be muzzled (at least temporarily), it’s Donald J. Fuckface. I realize it’s wrong to celebrate this toxic sociopath having been permanently de-Twitterized. I recognize, obviously, that it’s a bad idea to choke off free speech. Even the free speech of proven liars, delusionals and demagogues.

Then again Germany wiped Naziism off the map in the wake of World War II — zero tolerance, no quarter, no remnants except for concentration camp memorials. And that was certainly a good thing. Nobody whined about Hitler followers being deprived of free speech. With ample justification an evil regime was suffocated and so why, I’m asking myself, is it so terrible to shut down a delusional leader of the looney-tune, QAnon-embracing, armed-militia right? There’s no such thing as pure goodness or pure evil, but if anyone personifies a very real and toxic social poison, it’s Trump. It may sound extreme to call him an embodiment of obsessive, neurotically generated, fact-averse Satanism. But he really is a living beast.

If Trump were to somehow fall off some swanky yacht in the Caribbean and get eaten by sharks…what reasonable person would be truly sorry about that? Be honest.

There’s nothing “wrong” with silent opening-credit sequences. Silence can put the hook in, build anticipation levels, etc. But there’s a limit. We all prefer some kind of aural current, something telling us that someone understands the frustration that some of us are feeling — music, ambient atmosphere sounds, an off-screen conversation, etc. The HE handbook (2019 edition) states that the usual distributor and production company logos + above-the-line credit sequence shouldn’t generate total dead-mouse silence for more than 15 or 20 seconds. Obviously there are exceptions. The opening credits for Steven Spielberg‘s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (’17) kept the silence going and the audience hooked for roughly 45 seconds, but that was pushing it. Most filmmakers realize that too much prolonged silence has a way of sucking up energy, especially in a theatre. (Remember theatres?) They know audiences will cut them a certain amount of slack, but not too much. HE to pretentious silence-loving directors: Don’t overplay this card — people like me are out there in force.

During last night’s “New Rules” finale, Bill Maher discussed the sad saga of QAnon fruitcake Ashli Babbitt, who was in a financially precarious position before she was killed inside the Capitol building on 1.6.21.

Maher passed along information from a 12.7.21 N.Y. Times story about Babbitt (“Woman Killed in Capitol Embraced Trump and QAnon“). The article reported that Babbitt, who ran a pool-cleaning business, took out a “costly” short-term business loan for $65K in in 2017, and that it required Babbit to pay back 169 percent above and beyond the principal, or $140K and change.

Is that roughly correct? A total debt load of $140K, I mean. Math has never been my strong point.

What kind of predatory scumbag pirate outfit charges 169% interest?

Variety‘s Rebecca Rubin is reporting that Adam Wingard‘s Godzilla vs. Kong will now open on 3.26 rather than 5.21. Nobody cares why. What matters to most of us is “whose ass ultimately gets kicked?” How can King Kong possibly fight a 150-foot tall reptile that spews flames? Especially since Kong started out as a 25-foot-tall ape. The producers of Kong: Skull Island decided to make him 90 or 100 feet tall…something like that. It’s all so stupid, but to me Fatzilla seems like the dominant beast.

Note: The usual no-fat-shaming rules don’t apply when it comes to monster reptiles. The fact is that Godzilla became Fatzilla back in 2014, and things have never been the same since.

Great gushing cloudbursts are few and far between in my neck of the woods. I’m not talking about simple drenchings, which happen every so often — I’m talking cats and dogs, the wild Parasite rainstorm, monsoon-level, The Rains of Ranchipur and how this never happens in WeHo.

When you get right down to it I’ve experienced only five or six gully washers over the last 20 or 30 years, and almost all of them overseas. There was one serious soaking in Manhattan in the spring of ’81, when I was living on Bank Street. And a major cloudburst in Las Vegas back in the ’90s. But I wouldn’t describe either as super-exceptional.

The greatest urban rainstorm happened in Paris in the summer of ’03. Dylan I were living on a hilly street in southwest Montmartre — 23 rue Tourlaque. It was coming down so hard that the gutters were swamped with charging rapids. And the cacophony (trillions of water bullets clattering on hundreds of clay-tile rooftops) was magnificent. And the crackling thunder before it started. The wrath of an angry Old Testament God from a Cecil B. DeMille film.

The most exciting deluge in a forest primeval setting happened about 10 years later, in Vietnam. In a jungle-like area not far from the Mausoleum of Emperor Minh Mang, just south of Hue. We took shelter inside a kind of makeshift cafe — open air, plastic tables and chairs, a slanted wood-frame roof covered with palm fronds and banana leaves. The sheer energy of the downpour plus the overwhelming symphony of sound (half raging waterfall, half Noah’s Ark flood waters)…must have lasted a good 15 or 20 minutes.

23 rue Tourlaque, Paris.

I’m one of the unfortunate few who hasn’t received that $600 pandemic assistance payment, which was approved by Congress two-plus weeks ago. And yes, I’ve checked all my accounts. Now I’m worried about missing out on Biden’s $1400 follow-up pandemic assistance check. I’m told the $600 snafu is partly my fault because I didn’t pay my 2019 taxes via direct deposit, but via snail mail. At least I can deduct $600 on my 2020 taxes.

The obviously eccentric Jake Angeli, “the guy with the buffalo horns”, is asking Trump to pardon him. The would-be actor’s defense is that he just painted his face, put on his outfit, strolled into the Capitol building and posed for some photos. He didn’t break any windows, didn’t relieve himself in the hallways or on the floor of the Senate, didn’t hit any cops, etc.

I don’t know what kind of time Angeli is facing, but if I was the presiding judge I’d sentence him to a bare minimum of two years. I might cut the sentence down to 18 months if he agrees to serve on an old-fashioned, Cool Hand Luke-styled Southern chain gang.

The “QAnon Shaman” has become the best-known symbol of the 1.6 Capitol insurrection. He belongs to history now — 50 or 100 years now people will still be looking at his get-up and shaking their heads and muttering “wow, what an asshole.” Naturally he’s going to try and monetize his newfound celebrity.

Angeli is only 32 — born the same year as Jett.