sunrise today finds us in mobile, alabama, the gulf city that is the home to the oldest mardi gras celebration in the united states. in 1703, french settlers held the new world's first mardi gras party at the old mobile site and the revelry has continued, disturbed only by the civil war, for more than three hundred years now. through the centuries, a firmly entrenched segregation has resulted in two separate, and unequal, mardi gras celebrations in the city - one for the black community and one for the white community. each faction have their own mystic societies, parades, royal courts and coronations. interaction between the two groups is minimal. the system is indicative of the city's complex racial history and its inability to shake the spectre of its slaveholding past. if you would like to delve further into the colorful/checkered history of the event and the economic and social stratification surrounding it, you should take a look at margaret brown's insightful documentary, the order of myths (2008).
brown, herself a product of mobile mardi gras royalty, turns her camera on these two closely orbiting worlds to illustrate this particularly southern answer to the perplexing, persistent questions we face in twenty-first century, "post-racial" america. through her examination of the these traditions in the heart of this "last stronghold of segregation", brown ultimately reveals connections that underline the gray, rather than the black and the white. if you would like to see it, pbs has it available for streaming as part of their independent lens series. to view the film, just go here and press play. there is also more information about the filmmakers and the process of assembling the film. i saw this at sxsw a couple of years ago and was quite impressed with both the film and margaret brown's sincerity, wit and sensitivity in fielding questions afterward. highly recommended.
ok, so it's wednesday. sorry about that. being on the road, it's easy to lose track of that sort of thing. we played a lovely poolside show this evening in greenville, south carolina with our friend, alexa woodward. the atmosphere was loose, the pool was inviting and inside, you couldn't make your way through the joint without stepping on someone's dancing shoes. this week's entry goes out to all the folks there this evening doing the official state dance of south carolina. ladies and gentlemen, zelda barron's shag (1989).
the july installment of our starlite cinema series in austin was an impossibility, what with all the moving and traveling. we don't give up that easily, though. we just moved our shindig fifteen hundred miles or so down the road and put up our screen in mclean, virginia. last night we held a post-music screening of one of my favorites, and an essential summertime classic, jacques tati's m. hulot's holiday (1953).
one of the few physical comedies that doubles as art film, this never fails to put a smile on my face. it's the first of four films that tati made with the hulot character and it remains my favorite. tati trains his gently observant eye on france's middle class as they begin to emerge from the shadows of world war II and go in search of leisure and relaxation. he gradually, gracefully introduces us to a number of vacationers, waiters and proprietors and the cheerful hurricane that is hulot. i love this film for a number of reasons. the physical comedy in it is brilliant. hulot lurches his way through the film like a giant bungling bird, alternately wreaking havoc on the more uptight travelers and completely endearing himself to everyone else who doesn't take themselves so seriously. it is a precise and subtle pantomime that opts to invest in the small joke that establishes character, rather than an ever-growing series of gags scrambling to keep your attention by making each punch line bigger than the last. it is a patient film that is as interested in the quizzical look on someone's face as they try to tune in a radio as it is a sight gag. it lingers on people strolling as long as it does a pratfall. my favorite aspect of the film is tati's generosity with his comedy. where other silent clowns, from keaton to atkinson, make themselves the center of the action almost constantly, tati willingly and regularly relinquishes the spotlight to these other minor characters. some of his best bits occur in the background of a scene and he is often not present at all. it typifies the gentleness and compassion with which he treats the objects of this sweet satire. he never adopts a mocking tone. it is obvious from the first frame to the last that he has a deep affection for these characters and he never treats them with disrespect. it is a film that could not be made today, it seems, as the comedy of awkwardness has become so inextricably linked with the comedy of cruelty. it's a wonderful tonic for those ills and a perfect film to share on a summer night with a group of new friends.
many thanks to my bandmates for making room in our tour schedule to allow me to do this and i want to extend my deepest gratitude to my friend eric and the kind community of folks at the mutated red barn for both hosting our band and allowing me to share my love of cinema with them. i hope we get to do it again some time soon.
starlite cinema returns to austin in mid to late august to celebrate alfred hitchcock's birthday so stay tuned for that. details coming soon. until then, i hope your summer is as full of good friends, music and film as mine has been.
so, as we sit here in the van and debate the relative merits of playing a show to absolutely no one in the depressed industrial hamlet of lowell, i thought i would take a moment to tell you about another group who are far more dedicated than we are to bringing art into the lives of the denizens of this little mill town - the lowell film collaborative.
it's a labor of love from brett and suzz cromwell. they are doing a lot of great things on a grassroots level to promote film production and appreciation in the greater lowell area and i applaud them for it, because it seems like it might be a hard sell in this community. it's their third anniversary next month, and in that time they have offered screenings at venues all over town, organized their own film festival, reported on other regional festivals, brought in filmmakers for discussion and coordinated with other like-minded community organizations and businesses to present special events all with one goal in mind - opening lowell's first truly independent movie house. they are doing really great work and making lowell a nicer place for area film lovers. my hat is off to them. check out their site and if you have friends up here make sure they find out about it and support them. i'd like to see them get their theater.
we're about halfway into things now and that finds us in boston, one of my favorite cities in the world, and you can file today's entry under "life imitating art imitating life". in january of 1950, a group of eleven men pulled off what was, at the time, the single largest armed robbery in the history of the united states. they hit the brink's armored car company for a grand total of 2.7 million dollars in cash, checks and securities. things unraveled, as they are wont to do, and the gang disintegrated under mounting pressure from authorities, one even attempting to kill another one via paid hit. six members of the gang were arrested just five days before the statute of limitations ran out and, eventually, all eleven were either dead or imprisoned. it was hardly a total victory for the law, though, as the majority of them were paroled after fifteen years and only 58,000 of the 2.7 million was recovered. a few years later william friedkin adapted the story in the brink's job (1978).
it's one of my favorite heist films and the cast can't be beat - peter falk, peter boyle, warren oates, and gena rowlands, just to name a few. it plays down the more desperate circumstances surrounding the job but is a first rate bit of entertainment. and as a period piece, it is top notch, evoking a sense of eisenhower-era boston that is completely immersive. funnily enough, during production, one of the area residents was paid to remove an air conditioner from his window so that they could film on the street without sacrificing accuracy in the period details. when they showed up to continue filming the next day, every house on the street had a window unit in it. so you can see how they might celebrate a bunch of neighborhood guys pulling off the crime of the century, lovable mugs that botched the finish but still managed to keep the lion's share of the take. north end robin hoods.
enter another real-life group of bunglers. in august of 1978, fifteen unedited reels of the film were stolen at gunpoint. there was a 600,000 dollar ransom demand, but they had stolen nothing but outtakes and dailies. positive prints of the negatives were safely housed, hundreds of miles away, in technicolor's labs in new york city, so all these shenanigans were hardly a bump in the road for post-production and distribution. the ransom demand initiated an fbi investigation and a subsequent ransom call was placed during which friedkin told the thieves to "get a projector and enjoy the film, it is all yours". the ransom was never paid, therefore the reels were never recovered, so as i sit here right now, somewhere in a basement or attic in this town, someone has these things, possibly not even knowing what they are at this point. i like to imagine them sitting up in their attic running them over and over, taking minor consolation that they have the only copy in the world of a brink's job blooper reel.
today finds us in brooklyn and it would be remiss of me to spend a summer day in brooklyn and not give a nod to one of my all time favorites, spike lee's do the right thing (1989). i had always liked spike. she's gotta have it (1986) and school daze (1988) had a ragged charm that i loved, even if they weren't the greatest films ever made. then this thing arrived in the summer of 1989 and went off like a bomb in my brain. small town oklahoma is pretty much the polar opposite of bed-stuy and i had never felt so unmoored and agitated by a movie in my whole life, up to that point - a feeling i have been chasing to varying degrees of success ever since. i am not going to go on at length about it today because, eventually, this one is going to get a vital-graph entry all its own. i just wanted to take a brief moment to say thanks, spike, for giving me one of the most profoundly transformative cinematic experiences i have ever had. there is only one story we are all always trying to tell and that is the story of right hand, left hand. turn it up for radio raheem.
we are moving down the west virginia highway today, spreading our particular brand of rock and roll delinquency, so i thought i would give you this, ben parker's teen-age strangler (1964).
that's pretty much how the shows have gone so far - soda jerks love us. this dusty jewel out of west virginia's cinematic past is a wonder to behold. most of the cast and crew were friends and relatives of parker, which is painfully obvious from the very first frame. as an added bonus today, here are some choice moments, courtesy of mst3k.
today finds us in thomas, west virginia. it is a beautiful little mountain town on the edge of the blackwater river. as we are now locked into this pattern of travel, music and taking rest wherever we can find it, i give you a fitting lullaby tonight from my favorite west virginia film, charles laughton's the night of the hunter (1955). just outside my window tonight the river is drifting lazily along and i drift with it, music still playing in my head...
some say leland has hit the road and day one finds us in hot springs, arkansas. the restorative waters of the springs have been drawing visitors from the world over and from every economic class for well over two centuries. old hickory himself made the springs the first federal reservation in 1832 and since then the famous and infamous, including babe ruth and al capone, have availed themselves of the luxurious bathhouses that line the main drag. in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the american bathing experience was a booming business. prior to the advent of modern antibiotics, the spas that blossomed all over hot springs were celebrated for their medicinal properties and were constantly busy. that has tailed off in the modern era, but it still maintains a couple of bathhouses and remains a bustling tourist destination. and you can still get a rousing workout with a medicine ball at the fordyce bathhouse museum.
on the film front, hot springs is a linchpin of the documentary community. housed in the historic malco theater, the hot springs documentary film institute has been toiling away quietly here in this corner of arkansas for twenty years to build a wonderful legacy devoted to promoting, showcasing and teaching people about non-fiction film. this october, the twentieth annual hot springs documentary festival is going to screen over one hundred documentaries from all over the world, both feature and short subject, both experimental and more traditional. for ten days, it will be the mecca of the documentary community. throughout the rest of the year the institute offers a soundstage, film and audio editing suites for community use, living space for visiting filmmakers and educators and does a ton of educational outreach work with arkansas schools. they are working to restore the malco theater and they have a documentary library of over 17,000 titles. the gentleman who did sound for us tonight is actually on the selection committee and, as part of the winnowing process, has watched over three hundred films that are eligible for selection since february. they are a devoted group and do mighty work in the name of non-fiction film. i go to bed tonight in the documentary capital of the world. pretty neat.
our band, some say leland, will once again take to the highway this summer. in the last two weeks in july we will be headed to new hampshire and back again, playing sixteen shows along the way. last year this required the suspension of our starlite cinema series for a month. this year, i am taking it on the road!
in addition to playing shows, i will be screening films chosen to go with each particular location, given the time and the space to hang a screen. here is the rundown:
7.15.11 - dallas, texas; tender mercies (1983) 7.16.11 - memphis, tennessee: mystery train (1989) 7.17.11 - likely knoxville, tennessee: cat on a hot tin roof (1958), tennessee williams, see what i did there? 7.18.11 - thomas, west virginia: the night of the hunter (1955) 7.19.11 - mills point, west virginia: matewan (1987) 7.20.11 - long island, new york: jaws (1975) 7.21.11 - likely new york city: manhattan (1979) 7.22.11 - boston, ma: gone, baby, gone (2007) 7.23.11 - burlington, vermont: the trouble with harry (1955) 7.24.11 - lowell, ma: the friends of eddie coyle (1973) 7.25.11 - portsmouth, new hampshire: the devil and daniel webster (1941) 7.26.11 - likely washington, d.c.: mr. smith goes to washington (1939) 7.27.11 - greenville, south carolina: slither (2006) 7.28.11 - macon, georgia: the general (1926) 7.29.11 - lafayette, louisiana: hush...hush, sweet charlotte (1964) 7.30.11 - likely houston, texas: blood simple (1984)
fair warning: this is an extremely tentative schedule, at least as far as the movies go. some of these towns we'll only be in for a few hours at a time, so i am sure some of these will go by the wayside. that's just how it works out. i will try to do as many as i can, though, so if you're going to be in any of these places, come out and see us. if you've never heard what we do, here is a nice clip our friend, robert steel, shot for us a little while back.
looking forward to seeing your faces out there this summer.
there seems to be no more frontier, a fact i lament often. as we have crisscrossed the western united states these last two weeks, there were few places that didn't have cell phone service. you can imagine how few truly open spaces are left - no fences, no powerlines, nothing but starlight at night. while there may be nowhere to find the genuine article, the eaves movie ranch is at least devoted to maintaining a beautiful illusion of the old west.
productions took place here as early as 1962 but really began to hit their stride with the cheyenne social club (1970). ranch owner j.w. eaves struck a deal with gene kelly to split the cost of construction of a full scale western town for that movie and it has been a hub of western film activity ever since. it has a main street (either bustling or inhabited only by tumbleweeds, as need be), a hotel, a saloon, a jail, homesteads, a church and a good deal more. everything a cowboy might need.
it is a fully functioning film set but is also open to the public for tours or to book events and provides an amazing backdrop for the thirsty ear festival every year. so, if you pine for the 1860s like i do, and you're ever in santa fe, you can take a look back in time thanks to the fine work these folks do.
this is our last stop before we're back in texas. it has been great fun and we have met some truly wonderful people along the way. thanks, everyone!
this week's entry is from my favorite product of fort collins, colorado, herk harvey. harvey was a prolific filmmaker in the documentary/educational/industrial film field, turning out countless films while serving in various capacities for the centron corporation in lawrence, kansas. today, though, we are here to celebrate his one and only feature film, carnival of souls (1962).
short on budget but long on atmosphere, this $33,000 wonder has managed to dig into the consciousness of midnight moviegoers for over four decades now and has influenced everyone from george a. romero to david lynch. the oddly unsympathetic candace hilligoss icily navigating her way through this maddening limbo is one of the great B-movie performances of all time. and, in keeping with our travelogue theme, it provides a nice segue from salt lake city, where we were yesterday, as key scenes were also shot in the magnificent decay of the crumbling saltair pavilion on the shores of the great salt lake. the pavilion was later razed by arsonists in november of 1970. fortunately, harvey and company had the good sense/luck to take advantage of the stately old beauty before she tumbled into the lake for good.
i am not sure how much time i will have for more tour entries. we are making the turn for home now and time will be tight in most places. hope you have enjoyed being on the road with us for a little while. texas, we'll see you soon.
my favorite film shot in portland is gus van sant's elephant (2003). i was going to write a more extensive piece about it. in fact, i did and deleted it. in retrospect, it seemed contrary to the film, certainly contrary to how i am feeling. today, what i am taking from it is to take long looks. don't be fooled by what seems mundane. the last time you might see a face.
the road has been pretty kind to us so far. today finds us in sausalito, california. a lovely harbor community, it was here where otis redding wrote "dock of the bay" while staying at a houseboat in 1967. sterling hayden made his home here for the latter part of his life. and it was here that orson welles stylishly shot himself in the foot with the lady from shanghai (1948).
for everything in this film's favor, welles sets up an equal and opposite force. he had rita hayworth cut and dye her trademark tresses. at times, it is unnecessarily complicated and rambling. on the other hand, there is that dazzling hall of mirrors finale and there is an uncomfortable tension that is well maintained throughout. harry cohn ultimately offered one thousand dollars to anyone who could explain the plot of the film. even welles couldn't cash in on the offer. you should see it. it is a fine muddle.
we now turn to make our way up the pacific coast. talk to you again soon.
today we hit sedona, arizona. in the golden age of the hollywood western, sedona was a favorite location for film crews and i can see why. the vistas are incredible, the topography has just about every feature you could want, and the weather is beautiful. dozens of anonymous cowboys (and hundreds of horses) have passed through here over the years but there are two women that cast a couple of awfully long shadows over the landscape. the precarious mental states of both the characters and the women who portrayed them are among my favorite cases of madness that the big screen couldn't quite contain.
the first, gene tierney, starred in leave her to heaven (1945). while not a western (and just this side of an exploitation film), the scene they shot here where she gallops furiously across the landscape casting her father's ashes to the four winds is precisely the kind of scene filled with tumultuous emotion that you can only shoot with the wide, western sky as a backdrop.
the movie, as a whole, is average melodrama but this scene is a real high point for me. tierney is at her best here when she is wordless, reckless, driven by her electra complex. and i believe it works so well because this is tierney relinquishing a little control to her own demons. her battles with mental illness are well documented, sometimes so severe she was unable to work. but when she was able to harness some of that darkness and put it behind those green eyes it could be astounding.
the other woman i had in mind was joan crawford. we all have heard the stories by now but when they set up camp here to make johnny guitar (1954) i don't think the locals (and some of her fellow cast members) were aware of her reputation. the film itself is another of nicholas ray's brilliant, twisted efforts full of psycho-sexual landmines we are still unearthing today. it is notable in the western genre for having not one, but two, towering female figures who, in a welcome reversal, reduce all the men in the film (including sterling hayden, no slouch) to second-class citizens. obsession, guilt, guns and costume changes galore. the production itself suffered from no shortage of drama either. crawford scattered mercedes mccambridge's costume all along the arizona highway in a fit of jealousy and both mccambridge and hayden called her out, mccambridge going as far as to describe crawford as a "mean, tipsy, powerful, rotten-egg lady". this is the old west. you better look a woman in the eye when you say that.
i'll talk to you next from los angeles. in the meantime, check these out and see these ladies in all their unhinged glory and take in some lovely arizona scenery.
while the band is on tour i thought i would send out a dispatch here and there pertaining to some of the places we are stopping. i was excited about albuquerque because a theater i have some awfully fond memories of, the lobo, was going to be near the venue where we are performing. i thought it would be a great opportunity to stop in and take a look around the place again.
unfortunately, it was not to be. the lobo closed its doors as a movie theater in 2001. it is now a church. a fitting end, i suppose. for me, it was always a church.
the lobo sat out here in the desert and waited for me for a long time. built in 1939, it is the oldest standing movie theater along the mother road, route 66. many a wandering okie before me must have passed by the old girl as they made their way west. i started making the regular trek back and forth between albuquerque and stillwater, oklahoma a little over a decade ago for work. there wasn't much here for me to do in my down time until i discovered the lobo. it programmed mostly arthouse/classic fare and was just a few blocks away from where i was working at the time. i spent a fair amount of afternoons there, including the first time i was able to see dr. strangelove or: how i learned to stop worrying and love the bomb (1964) on the big screen. it was certainly a sanctuary, if not a true temple. albuquerque was just a big, empty city for me. it really held nothing for me once the job was finished. i was lucky to find one place where i could could ensconce myself in the lovely cold and dark. it was a humble little building, not the best screen nor the best sound system i had ever experienced. it didn't have a marquee as extravagant as you might expect for the oldest theater on route 66. it was friendly, though. it was inviting. it was providing a great service to a city and a student body (it sat right on the edge of the university of new mexico) and did it the way that appeals to me the most - straightforward, no fanfare, with a focus on quality and variety that belied what had to be a modest operating budget. it's certainly a shame that it is gone. fortunately for new mexico cinephiles, the guild is still in operation, but the lobo occupies a place in my heart like only a first love can. maybe one of these days someone will restore to it to its former function/glory. that would be nice. they have plenty of time until my next once-a-decade visit.
talk to you again soon from somewhere west of here.
sunrise today finds us in mobile, alabama, the gulf city that is the home to the oldest mardi gras celebration in the united states. in 1703, french settlers held the new world's first mardi gras party at the old mobile site and the revelry has continued, disturbed only by the civil war, for more than three hundred years now. through the centuries, a firmly entrenched segregation has resulted in two separate, and unequal, mardi gras celebrations in the city - one for the black community and one for the white community. each faction have their own mystic societies, parades, royal courts and coronations. interaction between the two groups is minimal. the system is indicative of the city's complex racial history and its inability to shake the spectre of its slaveholding past. if you would like to delve further into the colorful/checkered history of the event and the economic and social stratification surrounding it, you should take a look at margaret brown's insightful documentary, the order of myths (2008).
brown, herself a product of mobile mardi gras royalty, turns her camera on these two closely orbiting worlds to illustrate this particularly southern answer to the perplexing, persistent questions we face in twenty-first century, "post-racial" america. through her examination of the these traditions in the heart of this "last stronghold of segregation", brown ultimately reveals connections that underline the gray, rather than the black and the white. if you would like to see it, pbs has it available for streaming as part of their independent lens series. to view the film, just go here and press play. there is also more information about the filmmakers and the process of assembling the film. i saw this at sxsw a couple of years ago and was quite impressed with both the film and margaret brown's sincerity, wit and sensitivity in fielding questions afterward. highly recommended.
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