70-plus years ago director Joseph Losey teamed with producer Dore Schary on a thoughtful antiwar drama called The Boy With Green Hair (’48). Which no one mentions today, not even in passing. But it was a touching little film about tolerance and nonconformity. Anyone who saw it as a kid was probably affected by its message about compassion, humanism, and resisting the mainstream.

11 year-old Dean Stockwell played a war orphan named Peter who lives with a kindly, gray-haired grandpa who’s adopted him (Pat O’Brien, who was only 49 when the film was shot — by today’s standards he looks like a guy in the mid 70s). One day Pete wakes up with shamrock green hair, which of course results in all kinds of hateful, fearful behavior on the part of school kids as well as their parents and everyone else.

Peter’s hair turns out to be a kind of metaphor for innocent victims of war carnage. Under considerable pressure Peter is persuaded to shave his head, but when he actually submits to the barber…well, it’s heartbreaking.

The Boy With Green Hair was a huge money loser — it cost just under a million to make, and would up $420,000 in the red. You can’t stream it. The only way to watch Losey’s film is to buy the DVD or watch the YouTube version, which looks atrocious.

Ben Barzman and Alfred Lewis Levitt‘s screenplay was based upon a same-titled 1946 short story by Betsy Beaton.

The costarring cast include Robert Ryan, Barbara Hale (Perry Mason‘s Della Street), Dwayne Hickman (Dobie Gillis) and the uncredited Dale Robertson and Russ Tamblyn.

Read more

Will someone please explain what it is that Mayor Pete did or failed to do in response to the recent South Bend police shooting of Eric Logan?

There have been so many seemingly racist shootings in this country that when a black guy is plugged by the bulls, it’s automatically presumed that racist attitudes and a failure of the cops to show proper restraint are the main reasons. There’s no other reaction that people are willing to entertain these days. Black dude = innocent. White cops = Satan’s spawn. White mayor = can’t be trusted.

And so Mayor Pete got yelled at by protestors earlier today because…this is what I don’t understand. Was it because he’s not African-American and therefore can’t understand or empathize? The South Bend protestors appeared to doubt Pete’s sincerity in trying to address and correct the situation. They suspected his main motive in returning to South Bend was because he’s running for President. But what is it that he failed to do exactly?

Mayor Pete’s “error”, apparently, was failing to immediately fire or suspend the police officers involved in the shooting.

According to a N.Y. Times report, Buttigieg “responded point by point to ten protestor demands, agreeing to some — such as requesting the Department of Justice appoint an outside prosecutor — and coolly explaining reasons for rejecting others. ‘The first demand concerns the firing of police officers,’ he said. ‘The laws of the state are…that’s decided by a board of safety.'”

N.Y. Times: “Logan, 54, was fatally shot by an officer responding to reports of a man breaking into cars downtown. The authorities said Logan flashed a knife and lunged at the officer, who shot him once in the abdomen. But the officer had not activated his body camera. [Plus] Logan’s family questioned why he was taken to the hospital in a police car rather than an ambulance.”

Low-information black voters were already cool to Pete, according to polls. Too measured, too cerebral for them. They also didn’t like Bernie in ’16. Just not their kind of candidate. They apparently only like Uncle Joe and Kamala.

Read more

For this Joni Mitchell excerpt alone (i.e., playing an early version of “Coyote” with Roger McGuinn looking on and accompaniment from a certain guy with a hat), Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese is more than worth the price.

Every moment in life is unique — happened precisely that way, that one time and only once. So great this was captured. Everything turns into mist.

Read more

I’m not sure how many dissolute or self-loathing rock-album covers I can name off the top of my head, but Neil Young‘s “American Stars and Bars” (’77) has to be near the top of anyone’s list. I think it may be more of a “self-loathing:” thing in quotes than in earnest. First Draft‘s Peter Adrastos Ahas called it “a parody of the rock-star pomposity that was so prevalent at the time.”

Many people I’ve known have gone through self-loathing stages in their lives; you could almost call it a necessary chapter on the path to spiritual clarity and fulfillment. But you have to live through your self-loathing phase while you’re still experimenting (in your mid to late 20s, early 30s at the latest). Being “tired of yourself and all of your creations” doesn’t work so well after 40.

What I somehow missed until this morning that the drunk-on-the-floor art was designed by Dean Stockwell (Blue Velvet, Married To The Mob, The Boy With Green Hair).

Read more

Tina: I know where we are! These are the flatlands. My husband’s friends used to dump bodies here.
Danny: Great — I’m sure you can show me all the points of cultural interest.

Read more

I didn’t know Elliot Roberts, Neil Young‘s longtime manager for over 50 years plus a career-guider and consultant for Joni Mitchell (i.e., her manager from the late ’60s to ’85), Tom Petty, Bob Dylan, Devo, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, et. al. And I only dealt with him personally once. But I’m sorry about his passing at age 76. Hugs and condolences to all those who knew, admired and cared for the guy.

Young has posted a tribute on his website. “My friend for over 50 years, Elliot Roberts, has passed away. We are all heartbroken, but want to share what a great human being Elliot has been. Never one to think about himself, he put everyone else first. That’s what he did for me for over fifty years of friendship love and laughter, managing my life, protecting our art in the business of music. That’s what he did.”

My one and only run-in with Roberts happened at a party in Los Angeles. (Or was it Toronto?) It might have happened nine or ten years ago, but it could have been more like 15 years. It might have been around the time of Young’s Greendale, which popped in ’04.

Anyway, I saw Young standing in a corner of the gathering and noticed he was more or less alone, and so I walked over to say hi. I was just about to offer a greeting when all of a sudden the stern-faced Roberts (who was about my height) was right in my face, eyeballing me like a security guard and saying “Can I help you?”

HE: “Can you ‘help’ me? Well, I’m a journalist and not an assassin, and we’re all at a party and I just wanted to chat with Neil for a second. What’s the big deal?” Roberts: “Neil isn’t doing interviews tonight.” HE: “Okay, cool but I’m not looking to ‘interview’ him…just, you know, some friendly, inconsequential small talk.” Roberts: “Not tonight.” HE: “Why is Neil at a press party with guys like me all around if he doesn’t want to talk to anyone?” And yaddah yaddah.

Roberts refused to back off. He was playing the security goon, determined to protect Neil from any and all comers. During this idiotic back-and-forth I snuck a look at Young, and he was staring at the rug and wearing a shit-eating grin…totally amused by Roberts playing the flinty hardass and blocking me like a linebacker.

The night before last Tatyana and I visited Robata Jinya, a well-liked Japanese noodle restaurant on West Third Street near Crescent Heights. We walked in without a reservation, but it was nine-something and there were open tables here and there. I sidled up to the hostess but she was entirely focused on a 20something Asian guy who was yapping and yapping and yapping. She was determined to meet his needs before dealing with me…fine. So I waited. And waited. And waited.

The Asian guy, apparently a “me, me, me” type, wouldn’t stop talking about whatever. I was eyeballing this sociopath and telepathically conveying the following: “What are you doing, talking about your childhood or something? Or about your car payments or a Dodger game you attended a few days ago? There are other people here besides you, asshole…people who want to sit down and eat…right? If you want a table, say so and maybe the hostess can help you out.”

But he kept on going. Yap, yap, yappity-yap, yap…what is this guy’s basic malfunction?

After two or three minutes of watching him go on and on, the hostess finally led The Yapper and his date to the rear of the restaurant, but she didn’t return for another two or three minutes. How long does it take to lead a couple to a table, hand them a couple of menus and say ‘here you are…enjoy!” Presumably the Asian guy had made a reservation but wasn’t satisfied with this or that table and/or was complaining that none of them were quite right.

By the time the hostess returned we had decided that Robata Jinya was an unpleasant place due to the combination of loudly conversing diners plus pounding EDM playing on the speakers. This is a trait of under-35 bars and restaurants and more precisely their patrons. Under-35s enjoy aural oppression….they like having to shout their thoughts to each other despite sitting only 30 inches apart. On top of which the air conditioning was aggressively pumping cold air despite the fact that it wasn’t even warm outside, much less hot.

So we said “thanks anyway” and went next door to the quieter, less expensive, much less crowded Tasty Noodle House. It seemed cool at first, but then the waitress, whose English was a bit labored and hard to understand, started making trouble by pointing to my orange valet ticket, which I’d been given by the Robata Jinya valet guy. She seemed to be saying that I had the wrong ticket, or that I’d given my car to the wrong people or something in that realm.

“Are you saying we can’t eat here because of the valet ticket?” No, she said, smiling but pointing again to the ticket and saying something about chicken wings. The basic message, I later discerned, was that if we had parked in the Tasty Noodles lot we could have eaten free chicken wings. But I didn’t want any fucking chicken wings. HE to waitress: “Okay but could you possibly drop the subject and just, you know, let us order?”

I found the conversation so frustrating that I got up and left. Tatyana stayed and talked with her a bit. Then she came out and explained the chicken wings thing. “But I didn’t want any chicken wings,” I protested. “I hate chicken wings. Why did she keep harping on that? Chicken wings, chicken wings, parking lot, parking lot.”

You were being rude to her, Tatyana said. “Excuse me but the waitress wouldn’t stop beating me over the head with this,” I replied. “She was like a travelling salesman selling vacuum cleaners.”

We eventually went back inside and started over. Once the chicken wings had been forgotten, everything was fine. Well, almost. When I ordered some dumplings the waitress said “crispy or soft?” Crispy? There are no crispy dumplings, I said. It turned out she meant pan-fried.

Yeah, I know — Larry David. But the combination of the “me, me, me” guy and the chicken wings was awfully rough.

I twice saw William Friedkin‘s Cruising, a loose, ironed-out adaptation of Gerald Walker’s crime thriller — once at an early press screening, later with ticket buyers. Both times my reaction was “reasonably well-handled and exotically interesting from time to time (I liked the nocturnal Central Park scene between Al Pacino and Richard Cox), but who was Pacino’s character deep down, and what was the thing with Cox’s disapproving father because the voices aren’t the same?”

Something was missing. It never felt solid. More of an odd detour flick than anything else. And I didn’t get the final scene at all (Karen Allen trying on leather gear, tugboat chug-chugging up the Hudson River).

But this morning I thought to myself, “Okay, it’s been 39 years and re-watching it will only set me back $2.99…maybe I’ll have another look.”

Read more

“The challenge in a series like BBC One’s Years and Years (HBO, 6.24) is not kicking out at the predictable backlash from Trumpers, climate deniers, racists and fascists — for numerous reasons they are not the target audience — but in taking what everybody else has been feeling in the past few years and turning it into compelling drama rather than a soap-box lecture.

“And that’s what producer-writer Russell T. Davies gets most right most of the time, even when his rage — and it’s his and everybody else’s sense of outrage that he’s tapping into — necessitates that he lean into themes that validate progressive, rational and empathetic concerns.

“He’s preaching to the choir here — Years and Years very clearly being a WTF? reaction to Trump and the American drift. But Davies has managed to package it in a wildly entertaining, moving and, yes, sometimes funny look at a world gone mad.” — from a 6.21 review by The Hollywood Reporter‘s Tim Goodman.

Herewith a Bergdorf Goodman encounter with Donald Trump, sometime in late ’95 or early ’96 when the future President was 49 or 50. Written by advice columnist E. Jean Carroll and currently in the 6.24.19 issue of New York magazine and also in “What Do We Need Men For?: A Modest Proposal” (St. Martin’s Press, 7.2.19):

Read more