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Sometime in his mid teens Anton Yelchin was told he had cystic fibrosis, a lung disease that ensured he wouldn’t live past his early 40s and perhaps not even his late 30s. Yelchin understandably hid this information from everyone, but what a thing to live with…good God.
“Few of his costars were aware of his struggles, though dozens of them show up here to sing his praises. Kristen Stewart describes how he ‘kinda broke my heart’ when the two were teenagers. Simon Pegg warmly labels him ‘a little dirt bird’ for his nocturnal photo shoots at Van Nuys sex clubs. And Willem Dafoe recalls commiserating with Yelchin over his anxieties about losing his hair, which, in a profession that strives to project eternal youth, was more than a matter of simple vanity.” [HE interjection: Two or three trips to Prague — problem solved.]
“Directed by Garret Price, Love, Antosha [paints] a touching and surprising portrait of an actor who had much more going on in his life than was mentioned in his obituaries. The Yelchin we see here was a devoted son, an almost fanatically committed actor (he amassed a remarkable 69 acting credits), a blues guitarist, a photographer of lurid fetish clubs, and an intellectually adventurous budding artist who could well have added several more entries to that resume.” — from Andrew Barker’s 9.29.19 Variety review.
I was instantly impressed when I came upon this photo last night. The canary yellow sweater against the greenish tweed jacket, white pants, light blue shirt and black tie. I’m guessing that the shoes are brown with…what, black socks? Or blue-ish gray? It’s perfect. Was Stewart a beau brummell on his own steam or did he have a fashion consultant? I’m guessing this was taken sometime after Destry Rides Again but before The Philadelphia Story.
Michael Wolff six days ago: “I think it gets crazier and crazier…Donald Trump is more isolated, more alone…as we see this dominant personalty, I think this a story of a meltdown, one of the greatest political meltdowns of all time…it ends in tears, Donald Trump‘s tears. Let’s put it this way. I put it to Steve [Bannon]…I referred to the possibility of Trump getting another term and winning re-election, and Steve said ‘stop’.”
Every five years or so I remind everyone that idiosyncratic home-grown commercial storefronts from the old days are as much a vital part of Los Angeles culture as any standard tourist attraction (Hollywood Bowl, movie-star homes in Beverly Hills and Bel Air, Santa Monica Pier, Venice Beach). And that it’s important to keep them alive and visible.
I’m speaking of the gone-but-not-forgotten Tail of The Pup, which disappeared from its last location (San Vicente and Beverly Blvd.) in 2005. As well as Tower Records, the shuttered Formosa Cafe, the long-defunct Tiny Naylor’s and the permanently closed Irv’s Burgers of West Hollywood.
Tail O’ the Pup was an iconic fast-food stand that was actually shaped like a hot dog. Built in 1946, the small, walk-up stand was noted as a prime example of “mimetic”-type novelty architecture. It was one of the very last surviving mid-20th century buildings that were built in the shapes of the products they sold. The kids and I laughingly agreed in the mid ’90s that Tail of the Pup’s representation of a mustard-lathered dog on a bun looked (I’m sorry) like a bowel movement in progress.
A significant percentage of film critics didn’t realize that Sharon Stone‘s testimony in Martin Scorsese‘s Rolling Thunder Revue is fictional. I’ve personally spoken to a pair of top-tier critics who went “the fuck?” when I told them Stone was one of the four hoodwinkers. Notice the seemingly doctored photo of Stone getting Dylan’s autograph during the Rolling Thunder tour, which is used in the doc.
BTW: Indiewire‘s David Ehrlich, with whom I communicated last night, has so far declined to change a line in his review that clearly indicates he thought the Stone story was legit. Toward the end of paragraph #10, Ehrlich mentions “Dylan’s run-ins with a 19-year-old actress named Sharon Stone (sure to be an eyebrow-raising surprise for some viewers).”
Ehrlich didn’t even get the age right. Born on 3.10.58, Stone was 17 when the first leg of the tour was underway. Even if she ran into Dylan during the second leg in the spring of ’76 she would have been 18.
Jon Stewart to Fox News’ Shep Smith: “What we’re saying is, just renew the VCF Fund. There’s no fraud. It runs beautifully. It’s an incredible program. Look, this was war. These are the casualties of war. We can’t stop supporting them because they can no longer serve us. That is not an imaginable outcome for this.”
In King Vidor‘s Man Without A Star, Kirk Douglas‘s “Dempsey Rae” plays a tough, rugged cowboy who doesn’t join, follow or subscribe. Kind of like James Caan‘s character in Thief. Dempsey definitely doesn’t like barbed-wire fences, as scars on his chest suggest. But he’s also a showoff, as this scene with William Campbell confirms.
Dempsey says that fancy gunplay is silly and empty, and yet he’s taken the time to learn how to twirl guns like a Barnum & Bailey performer. That’s because Douglas the movie star didn’t have the character to play a man who truly disdains flashy gunplay and holds back — who values the fundamentals over tricks and technique. He had to dazzle the audience and then say “it’s all bullshit.” That’s how movie stars usually play their cards.
Andrew Slater‘s Echo in the Canyon is a quaalude tablet ** — a mild-mannered, perfectly agreeable tribute to the seminal mid ’60s Laurel Canyon music scene. The focus is mainly upon ’65 (particularly the narrative advanced by Andrew Grant Jackson‘s “1965: The Most Revolutionary Year In Music“) and how The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, The Mamas and the Papas and The Beach Boys introduced spiritual depth and poetry to pop music playlists, which up until that moment had been mostly on the level of “Hang On, Sloopy.”
The film also follows the musical innovations and advancements of ’66, but stops before the onset of early ’67 flower power. Yes, Joni Mitchell is strongly identified with Laurel Canyon, but she didn’t move into her little house on Lookout Drive until the spring of ’68, and so she doesn’t fit into the timeline. I don’t know why Slater ignores Judy Collins but he does.
Slater doesn’t tell you anything you didn’t know (especially if you’ve read the Jackson book) but the film is fine. With Wallflowers frontman Jakob Dylan as a kind of host-guide, the doc glides and grooves along and gives the legend a nice neck massage. The ’65 and ’66 Laurel Canyon scene was the same kind of creative hotbed that Paris was for writers in the ’20s, New York City of the late ’40s and ’50s was for abstract impressionists and Australia was for native filmmakers in the late ’70s and ’80s. The critical reaction has been positive, and deservedly so.
Bob Strauss said last night that Dylan and his “youngster” bandmates “try” to play classic mid ’60s songs in the doc. To which I replied that “they do a bang-up job with the Mamas and Papas ‘Go Where You Wanna Go.'”
To my mind the only serious problem with Martin Scorsese‘s Rolling Thunder Revue doc is that he includes four phony talking heads among several real ones, and thereby violates the trustworthiness that we all associate with the documentary form, and for a reason that strikes me as fanciful and bogus.
The doc acquaints us with 22 or more talking-head veterans of the tour (Dylan included) but among this fraternity Scorsese inserts what Toronto Star critic Peter Howell is calling the “four fakers” — made-up characters portrayed by real, recognizable people:
Sharon Stone, who was 17 when the Rolling Thunder Tour was underway, seems to be speaking as herself but she’s actually “playing” The Beauty Queen. At first Michael Murphy seems to be speaking from his own perspective, but then you realize he’s playing The Politician. Actor-performer Martin von Haselberg (the husband of Bette Midler) plays The Filmmaker. And Paramount chairman and CEO Jim Gianopulos portrays The Promoter.
Some of what they say to the camera might be factually correct in this or that anecdotal way, but it’s all basically bullshit — made-up, written-out or improvised recollections that are performed for a chuckle, for the hell of it.
Scorsese explains his decision to include the four fakers in the press notes: “I wanted the picture to be a magic trick. Magic is the nature of film. There’s an element to the tour that has a sense of fun to it…doing something to the audience. You don’t make it predictable. There’s a great deal of sleight of hand.”
In response to which I said to myself “WHAT?” Who says RTR was driven by a sleight-of-hand, put-on mentality? I never heard that before. I thought it was about keeping it real, small-scale, people-level, driving around in a small tour bus, passing out pamphlets, etc.
Exasperated, I wrote an email to Howell, who actually attended an RTR concert in Canada at age 19 and reviewed the concert for a Toronto daily.
Wells to Howell: “Did you feel that the RTR show you witnessed was ‘a magic trick…[with] an element to the tour that has a sense of fun to it…doing something to the audience, unpredictable, sleight of hand,” etc.? What the fuck is Scorsese talking about, ‘sleight of hand’? What the fuck does that actually mean? Sounds like gibberish to me.”
Howell to Wells: “It’s total gibberish. What annoys me about this, actually depresses me, is that the Rolling Thunder Revue wasn’t some kind of scam or magical stunt by Dylan. I was there. I saw the show. I read all the reviews and interviews. It was seen at the time as a sincere attempt by Dylan to get back to his musical roots, as an antidote to the giant stadium tour of the year before. He seemed to believe this. Dylan says in the film the RTR wasn’t a moneymaker, just a great musical event with the sideshow altruism of trying to free Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter from an unjust jailing.
“That’s how I took it in at the time. Sad to think that Dylan and Scorsese are now making it out to be a colossal con job to show how cool they are and to keep the fans guessing. Remember when we thought of Dylan as the real deal, a guy who would speak truth to power? Now he seems determined to convince everybody that he never really meant or cared about most of what he did and sang about.
Martin Scorsese‘s Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story (Netflix, 6.12) is an episodic concert film with a roving attitude and a hodgepodge capturing of Bob Dylan‘s Rolling Thunder Revue through New England in the fall of ’75. Mish-mashy, whimsical, good-natured, sometimes deeply stirring and in four or five spots flat-out wonderful.
But there’s one aspect, I regret to add, that’s vaguely bothersome in a half-assed sideshow kind of way.
Boomers will naturally enjoy it more than GenXers, Millennials and GenZ, but what do you expect from a doc about the late Gerald Ford era (with a little Jimmy Carter thrown in)?
Scorsese delivers ample concert footage, road footage, backstage footage and rural atmosphere footage, plus several present-tense talking heads (including Dylan himself) providing explanation and commentary. And then he throws in some red-leaf lettuce, salad dressing, chopped radishes, carrots, celery and kale and tosses it all around.
The doc 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. There’s one aspect that isn’t fun, as mentioned, and that has to do with what Toronto Star film critic (and former music critic) Peter Howell calls “the four fakers.” But I’ll address that in the next post.
The idea behind the RTR was for Dylan and a troupe of musician performers (Joan Baez, Roger McGuinn, Mick Ronson, Joni Mitchell, Ronee Blakely, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Scarlet Rivera, Rob Stoner, Howie Wyeth) to become (i.e., pretend to be) roving troubadours in the tradition of Italy’s comedia delle’arte (Dylan performed in white face a la Gene Simmons), and thereby achieve a certain casual, give-and-take intimacy with the crowds by playing smaller venues.
That’s all it was — an opportunity to keep things modest and funky by avoiding the usual huge stadiums. It wasn’t about tricks, games, jugglers, clowns or sleight-of-hand. It was just a straight proposition about playing music on the down-low and keeping it real.
The doc actually unfolded in two phases — the first in New England/Canada in the fall of 1975, and the second in the American south and southwest in the spring of ’76. The January ’76 release of Dylan’s Desire fell between the two with many of the songs performed in the first leg taken from that yet-to-be released album.
I think Scorsese’s doc might have better been titled Rambling Thunder Revue. It’s kind of a mess, but not a bothersome one. It’s patchy and spotty but mostly cheerful, friendly and spirit-lifting. As salad-tossed concert docs go it’s wholly agreeable.
There are three musical highlights — Dylan’s performing of “Isis” (a hard-charging song off Desire) and a rock version of “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall”, and a portion of Joni Mitchell performing an early acoustic version of “Coyote” with Dylan playing along. I also loved an excerpt of a conversation between Dylan and Baez about how their romance fell apart and…oh, hell, 20 or 30 other little things. The doc never bores — I can tell you that.
If Scorsese’s film is any one thing, it’s a kind of cinematic love letter to a bygone culture of 43 and 1/2 years ago — a tribute to a long-ago era (long hair, Kiss, flared jeans, Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, coal eye makeup, the last classic-rock gasp before the punk explosion, face-paint, Frye boots, pre-computers, pre-iPhone, pre-twitter, pre-everything)…to that whole raggedy-ass mid ‘70s vibe and attitude and way of being and living…hell, call it a valentine to bygone youth.
Overall a cool, enjoyable, fascinating visitation…diverting and pleasing as far as it goes and occasionally wowser. (At least by my musical yardstick.) But it’s all over the fucking map.
I “liked” Nisha Gantra and Mindy Kaling‘s Late Night (Amazon, 6.7) as far as it went. It’s a chuckly, congenial consciousness-raiser for the most part — a feminist relationship story about a bitchy, flinty talk-show host of a certain age (Emma Thompson‘s Katherine Newbury) who’s panicking about being cancelled, and a newly hired comedy writer (Kaling’s Molly Patel) who seems more interested in workplace sensitivity and considerate behavior than in being “funny”, at least as I define the term.
Why is it a struggle to believe that Molly (who has never before written professional-grade comedy and has mostly been hired because she’s a woman as well as a POC) is a comedy writer worth her salt? Because most jokes that “land” and actually make people laugh are always a little cutting and sometimes flirt with cruelty. A certain pointed irreverence is essential.
The bottom line with Molly is that she seems to value being respected and treated courteously by Katherine and her comedy-writer colleagues above everything else, and that she’d rather swallow her tongue than wound the feelings of her fellow writers (all white guys) or anyone else for that matter. She’s more woke than joke.
But once you get past the hurdle of Kaling being more of a p.c. Miss Manners type than a comedy writer of any recognizable stamp, the film more or less works. It didn’t piss me off or rub me the wrong way, and I felt reasonably sated by the end. I went along with it, and that ain’t hay.
I’m sorry but I love the following A.O. Scott riff: “Rather than scourging the complacency and hypocrisy of television, it subjects the medium to a vigorous exfoliating scrub in the name of feminism and inclusiveness. Kaling’s view of the landscape and its inhabitants — the imperious star, the neurotic writers, the beleaguered producer (Denis O’Hare) — is critical without cynicism or even much anger.”
I personally prefer comedies with random bursts of anger, frustration and bile. and occasional short tempers all around. But that’s me.
