Scolded by Brian Wilson

by

I did a sitdown interview with Brian Wilson and then-fiance Melinda Ledbetter during the 1995 Sundance Film Festival. We were supposed to talk about Don Was‘s documentary about Wilson, I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times, which was having its big premiere up there, but we went all over.

I remember telling Wilson that I always loved the reverb guitar-and-keyboard intro for ““The Little Girl I Once Once Knew,” and he quickly agreed. (That same year he told a British interviewer that “the intro is the only good part of it.”) I then told Wilson how I once tried to learn to play the intro on keyboard but I couldn’t “hear” the separate harmonized notes in my head.

Wilson responded with disappointment and even a lack of patience — “You couldn’t figure that out?” That’s how geniuses are. When the stars are aligned they can swoop right in and solve any riddle, and if they’re in any kind of mood people who lack their gift can seem…I don’t know, tedious?

After seeing Love & Mercy I decided to buy a few songs from The Beach Boys Today!, which was recorded a little more than a year before Pet Sounds.

Today! is occasionally experimental and in some ways a kind of Pet Sounds forerunner. It contains similar elements — sophisticated off-rhythms and swirling harmonies, a feeling of sadness and vulnerability in the lyrics, that symphonic white soul thing — that Wilson built upon and made into something extra with Pet Sounds.

The track that knocked me out was “Kiss Me Baby.” It’s not so much a love song as a “we almost broke up last night so let’s not get that close to Armageddon again!” song.

The melody is a bit on the plain and familiar side, but the lyrics are so child-like and emotionally arrested…an immature boy-lover recovering from nearly losing his mommy-lover: “Please don’t let me argue any more…I won’t make you worried like before…can’t remember what we fought about…late, late last night we said it was over,” etc.

But when the chorus kicks in the harmonies and the general meltdown sound of this song are just amazing. This was Wilson’s unique realm — he made it sound just so, and with such exquisite balance and texture.

This instrumental track for “Let Him Run Wild” is also interesting for its resemblance to the instrumental Pet Sounds Sessions tracks.

Read more

Scorsese-Sinatra Project Sounds Nuts…Really, C’mon, Come Up For Oxygen

by

On 11.23.11 or 12 and 1/2 years ago I wrote that Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio (then 37) were apparently seriously interested in a Frank Sinatra biopic with Leo playing the relatively short-statured Hoboken crooner.

I was relieved when this idea fell by the wayside as DiCaprio’s physical characteristics don’t even vaguely echo Sinatra’s (zero facial resemblance, Leo is way too tall and not skinny enough, the timbre of their speaking voices couldn’t be further apart).

But now this crazy idea is back again with Variety’s Tatiana Siegel filling in some of the details.

The focus will be on the volatile early ‘50s chapter of Sinatra’s career (seriously slumping as a singer and an actor, embroiled in a torrential marriage to Ava Gardner) and how he was finally rescued and restored by his Pvt. Maggio performance in From Here to Eternity (‘53).

Except the about-to-turn-50 Leo (DOB: 11.11.74) is too old to play Sinatra in his late 30s, plus he’s still the wrong size and shape and everything else.

Plus Jennifer Lawrence can’t possibly pull off an Ava Gardner performance…not in the cards.

Read more

Anemic, All-But-Dead Sundance — The Festival That Truly Mattered for Over 25 Years (Early ’90s to 2018)

by

What’s the actual, no-bullshit reason for the Sundance Film Festival reportedly mulling the idea of pulling up stakes in Park City and relocating someplace else as of 2027?

Festival honcho Eugene Hernandez has offered a word-salad explanation that totally dodges whatever the actual situation might be.

Here’s the first half of Hernandez’s blah-dee-blah bullshit statement, as quoted by The Hollywood Reporter‘s Chris Gardner: “We are in a unique moment for our festival and our global film community, and with the contract up for renewal, this exploration allows us to responsibly consider how we [can] best continue [to] sustainably serve our community bullshit bullshit while maintaining the essence of the festival experience blah blah blah-dee-blah.”

Hernandez #2: “We are looking forward to conversations that center supporting artists and serving audiences as part of our mission and work at Sundance Institute blah blah blah blah blah, and are motivated by our commitment to ensure that the festival continues to thrive culturally, operationally, and financially as it has for four decades blah blah word-salad bullshit.”

HE admission: Hernandez’s statement didn’t actually include the “blah-dee-blah bullshit” stuff, but it may as well have.

Hey, Sundance Film Festival, are you listening? I’m shedding tears of joy over the news of your slow and inevitable demise. You’re essentially dead and nobody cares….in the words of the legendary J.J. Hunsecker, you’re a cookie filled with woke arsenic so get yourselves buried.

Okay, that’s a little too harsh. Let me try again. How about “you’re Frankie Pentangeli before he opened his veins and bled to death in a bathtub”? Does that work better?

Sundance will remain in Park City next January and in ’26, but they’re sniffing around for a new home. The festival isn’t decisively leaving Park City but something is prompting Hernandez and others to say “blah blah blah we’re happier and healthier than ever but we might leave,” etc.

If Sundance wants to extend its contract with Park City beyond ’26, the deadline is October 2024 — six months hence.

“Yes, Virginia…Sensitive Gargoyles Have Ruined Sundance,” posted on 12.27.21:

Never A Huge Seger Fan Before — Now I’m In

by

I thought he was too macho-growly in the ’70s and ’80s. These days I’m sensing more a wistful, melancholy poet thing. The lonely, put-upon Midwestern guy, having a bit of a tough time.

The section between 3:06 and 3:22 …heaven….”ooohh”

Eff That 24-Hour Jazz

by

What are the best films in which the action occurs within two hours or less? (Which basically means movies told in real time.) HE picks are as follows:

1. Sidney Lumet‘s 12 Angry Men (’57) — 96 minutes
2. Stanley Kubrick‘s Dr. Strangelove (’64) — 94 minutes
3. Robert Wise‘s The Set-Up (’49) — 72 minutes
4. Richard Linklater‘s Before Sunset (’04) — 80 minutes
5. Fred Zinnemann‘s High Noon (’52) — 85 minutes
6. Steven Knight‘s Locke (’13) — 85 minutes
7. Joel Schumacher‘s Phone Booth (’02) — 81 minutes
8. Tom Tykwer‘s Run Lola Run (’98) — 81 minutes
9. Alfred Hitchcock‘s Rope (’48) — 80 minutes
10. Louis Malle‘s My Dinner with Andre (’81) — 110 minutes

Left Coast Only?

by

Warner Bros. and Martin Scorsese’s The Film Foundation have produced a 4K digital restoration of John Ford’s The Searchers, and in the process created a new 70mm print.

The latter will be screened five days hence — Sunday, 4.21, 3:15 pm — at Hollywood’s Egyptian, as a closing-day presentation from the TCM Classic Film Festival. Alexander Payne will offer a few thoughts.

No screenings for NYC film cognoscenti? Nothing planned for MoMA or FSLC’s Walter Reade? Or at the Film Forum or at Pleasantville’s Jacob Burns? Odd.

There’s just one problem. The Searchers is rife with problematic depictions of Native Americans. Wokesters certainly won’t approve. Don’t even speculate what Lily Gladstone might say.