Each Man Kills the Thing He Loves in Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Final Film, Querelle

QUERELLE 
(Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Germany, 1982, 108 minutes) 

Even by Rainer Werner Fassbinder's standards, Querelle is one odd film. 

Adapted from the 1947 novel, Querelle of Brest, by the brilliant Jean Genet--and featuring then-scandalous illustrations by the equally brilliant Jean Cocteau--it's a hothouse melodrama about queer desire and criminality. 

In Edmund White's monumental 1993 biography, Genet, he proclaims Querelle the French writer's "strongest book," explaining that, "Its themes are doubling, repressed homosexual desire, and violence." These themes in and of themselves were not unusual for either author or director, except Fassbinder renders every detail in an intentionally artificial manner. 

After 1978 psychological thriller Despair with Dirk Bogarde, an adaptation of Nabokov's 1934 novel, it was Fassbinder's second feature film in English (though 1981's Lili Marleen was shot in English, it was dubbed in German). 

Since he filmed in Europe with a European cast and crew, I wouldn't say he had gone Hollywood, but both films feature an English-speaking lead. In this case, American actor Brad Davis, best known for Alan Parker's Midnight Express, plays the title character, a French sailor, drug dealer--and murderer. Though Davis did not identify as gay, there's nothing shy or timid about his performance. The guy absolutely went for it. 

I'm certain that the filmmaker found Genet's novel meaningful, not least since his filmography is populated by sexually-repressed criminal types, but he uses every trick in the book to keep us at arm's length from these characters. From Querelle on down, none of them are asking audience members to love them, but it's a feature, not a bug.

As Fassbinder said of Sirk's 1956 Southern Gothic melodrama Written on the Wind, "The good, the 'normal,' the 'beautiful,' are always utterly revolting; the evil, the weak, the dissolute arouse one's compassion." 

In addition to the quotes that serve as chapter headings, most from Genet's novel, an uncredited American actor shares the narration with Franco Nero's Lieutenant Seblon. The Italian actor had costarred with Fassbinder in Wolf Gremm's cyberpunk thriller Kamikaze '89, they hit it off, and that's how the spaghetti western icon ended up in the film. Seblon is in love with Querelle, and spends most of it spying on him. He also keeps a tape recorder hidden in his coat to record their conversations, so he can play back the sound of his lust object's voice in the privacy of his own quarters. 

All of the action takes place in a set-bound recreation of the port town of Brest. 

A matte painting--or series of paintings--provides the backdrop, everything is bathed in a sulfurous golden glow, and instead of gargoyles, the brick wall separating land from sea features phallic buttresses, in addition to colorful graffiti.

It's as stylized, and as delightful, as Barbara Baum's costume design, from the jaunty red pom-poms topping the sailors' caps to the crystals adorning Jeanne Moreau's ears, neck, wrists, and hands as shot by frequent Fassbinder DP Xaver Schwarzenberger in the vein of Eduard van der Enden's work for Harry Kümel's Daughters of Darkness. In that 1971 erotic horror film, every candle and every sequin on Delphine Seyrig's show-stopping silver gown generates star-shaped sparkles (in a manner of speaking, Querelle qualifies as erotic horror, too). It's an in-camera effect you rarely see nowadays, and adds to the bleary, smeary, hyper-real atmosphere.    

Nouvelle vague icon Moreau (Elevator to the Gallows, Jules et Jim) plays Lysiane, madam and owner of the Hotel Feria bar with her husband Nono, played by Günther Kaufmann, a Black German actor—and sometime Fassbinder lover—who appeared in 14 of his films. 

Querelle has barely arrived when he reconnects with his brother Robert (Hanno Pöschl), a Feria regular, and offers to sell opium to Nono, who also tends bar. In the course of the transaction, he stabs his accomplice Vic (Dieter Schidor), a fellow sailor, to death--and licks the blood from the wound, thus confirming his nature as a sort of living vampire. Though he claims he's looking for "broads," he ends up having aggressive, sweaty sex with Nono, who uses it more as a means of control than pleasure. Though his every action suggests otherwise, Querelle insists, "I'm no fairy." 

Throughout the film, Lysiane sings a song that rests on one line, extracted from an 1898 poem by Oscar Wilde--who was almost as familiar with penitentiary life as Jean Genet--and set to music by composer Peer Raben: "Each man kills the thing he loves." It isn't great, but it's far from terrible. Nonetheless, the party poopers behind the Golden Raspberries nominated it for worst song. To add insult to injury, they nominated Raben for worst score, though the woozy chorus of male voices fits the theme perfectly. (The film lost in both categories to Pia Zadora bomb The Lonely Lady.)

Though Querelle literally gets away with murder, his friend Gil (Pöschl again), who stabs another sailor to death, does not. The fact that the same actor plays both brother and potential lover adds an element of incestuousness, which may or may not have been Fassbinder's invention. After his arrest, Querelle offers to help Gil escape by setting him up with a change of clothes and a ticket to Bordeaux.

Before Gil's departure, the two share a kiss, and Querelle confesses, "I never loved a boy before, and you're the first one." It's the only truly tender moment in the entire film, but as the omniscient narrator adds, "He didn't know how to fuck a guy. The gesture would have embarrassed him."

Up until that point, Querelle had never initiated queer sexual activity; his encounter with Nono was his first time with a man. As the film ends, he's still among the living and still free, but I wouldn't say it's a happy ending.

In the novel, Genet sums up Querelle as follows: "He had appeared among them with the suddenness and elegance of the Joker in a pack. He scrambled the pattern, yet gave it meaning." 

He could almost be describing the director. As Robert Horton wrote in 1983, "Fassbinder seemed to want nothing so much as to disturb us; in his films, when people start feeling comfortable, they start to fade away. Querelle may make you feel many things, but comfortable isn't one of them."

Just two months before Querelle's premiere, and after making 40 films in 15 years, the hard-living director would pass away at the age of 37. Only nine years later, Brad Davis would pass away at 41, seven months before the premiere of Robert Altman's The Player. It would mark his final film role. 

Querelle is an odd film to be sure, but it's a beautiful one, too, filled with unforgettable imagery. Compared to more recent queer films, like  João Pedro Rodrigues' O Fantasma or Alain Guiraudie's 2014 Stranger by the Lake, it isn't especially explicit, but in every other way, it's among the most deliriously homoerotic films ever made--and I didn't even mention Marco (co-writer Burkhard Driest), the corrupt cop dressed as a Tom of Finland-style leather daddy with a cap spelling out the word P-O-L-I-C-E--a possible nod to the B-O-Y caps that were all the rage in the 1980s and 1990s. 

Rainer Werner Fassbinder may have died before his time, but there's no doubt he was having F-U-N right up until the very end.

 

Querelle opens at Northwest Film Forum on Aug 30. Fri and Sat screenings introduced by Navid Sinaki, author of queer Iranian noir romance Medusa of the Roses. Click here for tickets. Querelle is also available from Criterion Collection. The new release includes a behind-the-scenes documentary from Wolf Gremm and a video essay from Michael Koresky. (The film looks fantastic, though it could really use a commentary track.) Images from Janus Film (Brad Davis), Amazon (Genet: A Biography, Vintage, 1994), the IMDb (Franco Nero and Jeanne Moreau), and Cinema Delirium (Davis with Burkhard Driest and Günther Kaufmann and Davis with Hanno Pöschl). 

We Got That Attitude: Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains with a Fiery Diane Lane

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains went from a non-hit to a cult classic to a riot grrrl handbook, but is it all that? It is. And it isn't. Here's an extended version of a post I wrote for The Stranger's Line Out blog in 2011 before it disappeared from the internet.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THE FABULOUS STAINS
(Lou Adler, USA, 1982, 87 minutes) 

Girls can't be rock and rollers. It's the facts of life.
--Billy (Ray Winstone)

Cursed with too much attitude, a young soap star acts up and loses her job. Abandoned by her father and orphaned by her mother, Pennsylvania teenager Corinne "Third Degree" Burns (a fine and feisty Diane Lane), who lives with her exasperated Aunt Linda (an unrecognizable Christine Lahti), starts a punk band with her sister, Tracy (Marin Kanter, who had appeared in Kathryn Bigelow's directorial debut, The Loveless, the year before), and her cousin, Jessica "Dizzy Heights" McNeil (Laura Dern, also very good). 

Unlike many youth films of the 1970s and '80s, all three young women were real-deal teenagers, which added a verisimilitude that helps to compensate for other problems. Though Kanter, who would retire by the end of the decade, was 19 during filming in 1980, Lane and Dern were 15 and 13 respectively, and they hold their own with the seasoned actors in the cast.  

In Charlestown, people consider her a has-been, but Corinne's attitude proves a blessing to her music career. After she catches a gig by the Losers--a baby-faced Ray Winstone with members of the Clash and the Sex Pistols (Paul Cook, Steve Jones, and Paul Simonon)--she finds a way to join their US tour. And with that, Ladies and Gentleman, the Fabulous Stains is off to the races. 

A cult hit in the 1980s, the film has since become a how-to guide for female rockers, like the riot grrrls who have cited it as an inspiration, most recently Kathleen Hanna (Bikini Kill, Le Tigre) in her rollicking memoir, Rebel Girl.

Tobi's dad, Eldon, was into laser discs at the time, and Tobi [Wilcox] lobbied hard for him to rent a disc about an all-girl punk band called Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains, but it wasn't available. Luckily, her uncle taped it off TV and we watched it on a Betamax tape. The three of us lay on our stomachs with our chins in our palms, transfixed as Diane Lane, playing the lead singer of the band, yelled, "I'm perfect! But nobody in this shithole gets me because I don't put out.--Kathleen Hanna (HarperCollins, 2024)

While non-musician Winstone as Billy rocks out convincingly, Tubes front man Fee Waybill, who had appeared in Robert Greenwald's rock musical Xanadu two years before, leads the Metal Corpses, "old farts" in platform heels and face makeup coasting on an old--and not very good--glam-rock hit. The three mismatched bands end up on the same tour bus.

It doesn't seem completely plausible that an untested and unsigned band--only three rehearsals to their name--would land a national tour so quickly, but stranger things have happened, and it sets the scenario in motion. 

Suffice to say: the men do not welcome the women, and in a matter of speaking that was happening behind the scenes, as well, since the woman who wrote the script, Slapshot and Coming Home writer Nancy Dowd, was so unhappy with the finale that she gave herself the credit Rob Morton.

Then again, the Losers and the Corpses don't get along all that well either, and the girls only piss off the crowd at their first show, but Corinne's attitude does attract attention, along with her new bi-color hairstyle and skimpy outfit--she rejects the black pleather catsuit provided by Rasta promoter Lawnboy (Barry Ford) in favor of a pinup girl look with black panties and a see-through top that plays like Frederick's of Hollywood gone punk--though no one could have pulled that off quite like Lane, who would do much the same when she played a rock singer in Walter Hill's 1984 Streets of Fire.  

On the way to California, one of the Corpses becomes an actual corpse, but the tour pushes on without them. In a framing device, entertainment journalist Alicia Meeker (St. Elsewhere's Cynthia Sikes), who's been covering Corinne since her acting days, reports on the tour. Soon, Tracy and Jessica have dyed their hair blonde and black, and now the trio looks less like the Runaways and more like a weird Rocky Horror hybrid, which may not be completely coincidental, since Adler, a music and movie producer, was behind the 1975 screen version of Richard O'Brien's cult-classic musical.

To the surprise of the Losers, audiences prefer the Stains. Their female fans, who call themselves Skunks, even start to dress like them. 

All of this might seem feminist, except The Fabulous Stains sends a decidedly mixed message. For one thing, cinematographer Bruce Surtees, a frequent Clint Eastwood collaborator for nearly 15 years, ogles the band and their fans, traveling up fishnet-covered legs and focusing in on the ladies' nether regions. The intention may have been empowering, except his upskirt-style camera work feels invasive and objectifying, not least because two band members were underage, though his celebration of the color red is hard to deny. I've seen worse, and you probably have, too, but I expected better.

Furthermore, there's a fine line between standing up for yourself and being a bitch. As was often the case with her juvenile performances, like Cherry Valance, the beautiful "Soc" she played in Francis Ford Coppola's adaptation of S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders, Lane sells the material like the pro she was, but the film has trouble distinguishing between the two, possibly because Adler saw punk more as a look or an attitude than an ethos; a rejection of the corporate mentality that characterized the music industry of the 1970s.  

The comments at The Stranger in response to my original post were mostly in praise of the film--readers were just happy I had called attention to it.

Few seemed to notice that I had given it something other than a rave. It's better than stirring them up, which wasn't my intention, but I was disappointed that no one had the same qualms. It's a fun film in a lot of ways, and I can easily recommend it, but it's troubling, too, and I'm not even certain what it was trying to say in the end. According to David Chiu in a fine piece for The Quietus, "Dowd's original ending for the script saw the Stains conquer America and tour the world as their fanbase grows." Adding insult to injury, a crew member even groped the Oscar-wining screenwriter.

By the epilogue, the band has morphed into something else--something popular, yes, but with all their original rough edges sanded away. Punk wasn't meant to last forever, and it didn't, but they come across as sellouts. 

Though Lou Adler, in the tacked-on ending, presents the new incarnation of the Stains as something good, it's a pyrrhic victory. Then again, maybe the ladies were never truly punk in the first place--they were just Rust Belt kids playing at something they didn't really understand. They tried, they failed, and what they were at the end is what they were always meant to be.

 

For more: Melissa Anderson ably captures the film's complexities.

As of 2022, Ladies and Gentleman, the Fabulous Stains was available on region-free Blu-ray from Imprint. Unfortunately, it's now sold out, but can be streamed from the usual pay operators. Special features include commentary tracks from Lou Adler, Diane Lane and Laura Dern, and the late cult-film critic Lee Gambin and Bratmobile singer Allison Wolfe. Images from Scopophilia (Lane), The Quietus (Lane, Kanter, and Dern), The Grindhouse Cinema Database (Skunks), and Imagine! Belfast (Kanter, Lane, and Dern).

In Praise of German Series Babylon Berlin's First Three Dazzling, Labyrinthian Seasons

Extended versions of my 2021 reviews for Video Librarian. Though this site exists primarily for film-related purposes, Babylon Berlin is as cinematic as TV can get. 

BABYLON BERLIN: SEASONS 1 & 2 [***1/2]

Take a seat, Berlin Alexanderplatz and Heimat: A Chronicle of Germany, the most expensive series in German history justifies its budget with intricate plotting, dazzling sets, and expertly choreographed crowd sequences.

Director and co-creator Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run) and collaborators pull out all the stops to recreate novelist Volker Kutscher's eight-volume take on Weimar-era Berlin. Hitler merits mention as a minor figure, but the politics in play are already fascistic in nature, much like Prohibition-era America in which law-breaking ran as rampant among the cops as the criminals. 

Two central figures anchor the sprawling cast and labyrinthian storyline, starting with Cologne-born Gereon Rath (Generation War's Volker Bruch), a morphine-addicted member of the vice squad, driven largely by the desire to destroy the negatives of an incriminating film involving a powerful relative. 

His female counterpart, Charlotte Ritter (The Wave's Liv Lisa Fries), who shares a crowded flat with her extended family, comes from humbler origins. By day, she reports to the same police headquarters as Rath, serving as a steno-typist in the homicide unit. By night, she lives the life of a jazz-age flapper, wearing borrowed finery, dancing at the Moka Efti cabaret, and supplying sexual favors on the side to supplement her overstretched income. 

Shared interests bring her in contact with Rath, who becomes a friend, though his shady partner, Bruno (A Heavy Heart's Peter Kurth), becomes an enemy when he blackmails her in a bid to limit Rath's investigative powers. Other characters include Russian violinist Kardakov (Ivan Shvedoff), an anti-Stalinist, and his partner, Svetlana (Severija Janusauskaite), a gold-obsessed drag performer whose greed will mark her associates for death. 

As these two seasons play out, most everyone crosses paths. When Rath rents Kardakov's old room, he starts to put the pieces together, roping Lotte in to solve the mystery of the musician's disappearance. It's valuable experience for Lotte, who would also like to work as a detective. 

Another case will come her way when she runs into Greta (The Teachers' Lounge's Leonie Benesch), who has fallen on hard times. 

Through Lotte, Greta will find employment with a powerful Jewish figure only to fall prey to unscrupulous opportunists. All the while, the city's left-wing faction increasingly finds themselves at odds with a police force that will stop at nothing to quell uprisings and eliminate key figures. 

If the show proves hard to follow at first, the elements snap into place quickly enough. For all the beauty of the period outfits--those stunning hats!--and snazzy, Art Deco interiors, the brutality can be equally baroque, making for a challenging watch at times. Hence, the occasional dance sequence provides a breather whenever things get too intense. 

There are no weak links among the cast, Bruch and Fries above all, who meet every challenge writers Tykwer, Achim von Borries, and Henk Handloegten throw at them. Through Netflix, Babylon Berlin has captivated international audiences, inspiring Sky Atlantic to renew it for two more seasons. This set comes complete with a detailed look at the production, including the disclosure that face powder is verboten, contributing to the look of a populace on edge at every level. Highly recommended.

BABYLON BERLIN: SEASON 3 [***1/2]

During Babylon Berlin's first two seasons, the Weimar-era drama played like a musical whenever characters gathered at the Moka Efti to dance. Set prior to the stock market crash of 1929, the third season ditches cabaret to embrace socio-political intrigue. 

Chilly Armenian gangster Kasabian (Exile's Mišel Matičević), husband of once-famous actress Esther (Munich's Meret Becker), abandons the club to focus on film production, but his plans run aground when the star of his latest film turns up dead. Though the film-within-a-film sequences involve Busby Berkeley-like choreography, movement takes precedence over music. 

Police inspector Gereon Rath (Volker Bruch, a slight man with wary eyes) joins forces with police clerk Lotte (Liv Lisa Freis) to catch the murderer, a mysterious figure in a black cloak. The production continues with another actress, but when she also turns up dead, the mystery deepens, especially when they find another cloaked figure haunting the Babelsberg set. 

Suspects include proto-Goth actor Tristan Rot (The Whistlers' Sabin Tambrea), Kasabian's partner Weintraub (Ronald Zehrfeld), who has eyes for his wife, and Esther, who believes she's the best actress for the part. 

Fortunately, Rath's head is clear. While a different show might have detailed his efforts to kick the morphine habit that held him in its grip in previous seasons, that process takes place off-camera here. It may have something to do with his rekindled romance with Helga (Hannah Herzsprung), who relocated from Cologne to be with him, except their plans quickly crumble. 

Alone and secretly pregnant, she enters into an arrangement with erratic industrialist Alfred (Irma Vep's Lars Eidinger), while her son, Moritz (Ivo Pietzcker), stays with his uncle. If the two enjoy a genial rapport, Rath worries about his nephew's involvement with the Hitler Youth. 

It becomes an even greater concern when Rath and his former landlady and part-time lover, Elisabeth (Fritzi Haberlandt), shield Jewish reporter Katelbach (Karl Markovics) from enemies, like ruthless police counselor Wendt (Benno Fürmann), who will do anything to become chief of police. 

Lotte, meanwhile, moves into a flat with her younger sister, Toni (The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes's Irene Böhm). When their hard-luck older sister needs an operation, she considers a return to the sex work of her past. Little does she know that Toni has been following in her footsteps. 

Babylon Berlin is nothing if not eventful, and other characters make their mark, including crime scene photographer Gräf (Christian Friedel), whose homosexuality is an open secret among his associates, police analyst Ullrich (Luc Felt), whose delusions of grandeur put the two inspectors at risk, and Greta (Leonie Benesch) a death row inmate seeking a last-chance appeal. 

Building the central mystery around a series of film-set murders allows the writers to explore the links between surrealism, hypnotism, the occult and other shadowy subcultures thriving in Berlin at a transitional time. 

The third season also witnesses Rath and Lotte becoming closer. Even as other characters come and go, they continue to anchor this compulsively watchable show, which can reach crazy heights, with the grounded strength of their performances. As highly recommended as the first two seasons.  

Babylon Berlin - Seasons 1 & 2 and 3 are available on DVD and Blu-ray from Kino Lorber. Click here for more information. Season 4 is currently streaming on MHz Choice; Kino will release home video editions on Sept 24. Images from Prime Video (Volker Bruch), Glamour Daze (Liv Lisa Fries), TV Tropes (Bruch and Peter Kurth), The Guardian (Photograph: Frédéric Batier/X Filme), and Babylon Berlin GIFs (Bruch and Fritzi Haberlandt).

Charles R. Cross (1957-2024): Seattle Music Writer and Art House Film Aficionado

Charles R. Cross, known informally as Charley, passed away peacefully, if unexpectedly, on Friday, August 9. Like many people, I found out on Sunday when Jim Emerson, a colleague from Charley's days at the UW Daily and The Rocket, posted the news on Facebook. It would be confirmed later that day by Charley's agent.

Here is an extended version of a remembrance I sent to Chase Hutchinson, when he reached out to me about Charley that evening for his Seattle Times obituary. Charley was also a contributor to the Times and to Crosscut, which was part of Cascade Public Media (formerly KCTS 9), where I've worked since 2008. 

Chase, a fellow Seattle Film Critics Society board member, knew I was friendly with Charley, because I had invited him to join me and a few other board members for a get-together at Saint John's last December, and that's when I introduced the two. I was on my way to an SFCS-sponsored Fantasy A Gets a Mattress screening at the Egyptian, and Charley was on his way to a launch party for a new book about Estrus Records at Fantagraphics.

Knowing I didn't drive, he said he would be happy to give me a ride, and it was on his way, so a win-win. In retrospect, I wish I'd accompanied him to the Estrus event--though I enjoyed Fantasy A--since I worked with Estrus founder Dave Crider at Cellophane Square in the late-1980s. In any case, Charley had time to kill, so I thought it would be fun to introduce someone I knew as a film fan--and not just a music writer--to some film writers. He later thanked me for introducing him to my "equally smart friends."

I first became aware of Charley when I was a student at Whitman College in Walla Walla. I visited Seattle whenever I could, where I discovered The Rocket, which he edited and for which he wrote--and wrote well. 

Over the years, I would meet, and in some cases, befriend several Rocket writers, even though I never contributed myself. I met Jeff Gilbert (host of metal show "Brain Pain") and Glen Boyd (co-host of hiphop show "Rap Attack") through KCMU, future No Depression writer Peter Blackstock through fellow Cellophaner Kels Koch, and Gillian Gaar, also known as The Rocket's Johnny Renton, though mutual friends, in addition to her Seattle International Film Festival coverage (over the years, we would also write for some of the same websites, including this one). I met Jim Emerson, one of the nation's finest film writers, through other mutuals. Fine writers all and, in some cases, fine broadcasters, too.

The Rocket was one of the country's premiere alt-weeklies. It held its own with the more widely celebrated Village Voice--most recently chronicled in Tricia Romano's great oral history--and had an outsized influence on my taste in music and film. After I graduated, I returned to Anchorage to work for a year to pay off some debt and earn enough money to move to Seattle. 

All the while, I subscribed to The Rocket, so I would know what was going on in the city. That was how I became aware of Green River, the progenitor to Mudhoney and Pearl Jam, and other grunge and proto-grunge bands. I was already aware of pop bands, like the Young Fresh Fellows and Pure Joy, through my radio show at Whitman station KWCW, which had a selection of independent--mostly Popllama--records from the Pacific Northwest.

A few years later, once I had secured a job at Cellophane, Charley would often stop by to chat with manager Hugh Jones, with whom I worked at the University District store from 1989-1992. Hugh, publisher of the Led Zeppelin fanzine Proximity, would collaborate with Charley, as a researcher, for a now-collectible 1991 book about the band. I knew who Charley was, and I was a little intimidated, so I don't recall that we exchanged many words at the time, and to be frank, Charley had a cool demeanor. It always felt as if he was more warm and friendly, with me at least, through his writing. In 2021, he interviewed me for this Crosscut article about Cellophane vs. the "fresh and glossy" new Sub Pop store.  

All the while I was working at Cellophane on the Ave, after a year at the Bellevue Mall store, I was music director at KCMU (now KEXP), which he surely knew, since he would mention the station often in his writing, including in his acclaimed 2001 Kurt Cobain biography, Heavier Than Heaven, in which he recounts the time Kurt brought a demo tape to the station, returned to his car, and turned on the radio, expecting whoever was on the air at the time to play it right away. They didn't, of course, but Nirvana would end up getting a lot of play at the station--they still do--and Charley wrote that Kurt was thrilled the first time he heard his band, his voice, on KCMU. It was a dream come true for the kid from Aberdeen. 

I would love to say I had something to do with it, but Nirvana premiered on Audioasis, the local music show. If I'm not mistaken, Scotty Vanderpool was host at the time, so props to Scotty, a musician himself, for recognizing talent when he heard it. (When I first arrived at the station in 1988, Scotty co-hosted with Jonathan Poneman, who left when Sub Pop took off.)

The first substantial conversation I ever had with Charley was at the reopening party for the Crocodile in 2009 after a remodel (the venue has since moved four blocks away). It was a chance to chat, off the record, about his work. I'm pretty sure writer and publicist Chris Estey, a great connector of like-minded human beings, officially introduced us. 

I had a lot of questions, and Charley was very forthcoming. I think he figured out pretty quickly that I was, by this point, just as invested in film as music, and one of the things we talked about was the optioning of Heavier Than Heaven. At the time, it looked like Game of Thrones co-creator David Benioff would be working on an adaptation for Universal, but it never came to pass. Later, in a Facebook chat, he said it was up to Courtney Love, and not him, as to what happens with the book. He didn't seem too stressed--and I'm sure he got paid for the option.

More recently, we talked about actor and Sleater-Kinney member Carrie Brownstein's upcoming biopic about Heart, an adaptation of his 2012 biography, Kicking and Dreaming: A Story of Heart, Soul, and Rock and Roll. I regret that he won't get the chance to see what she does with it, and possibly even to serve as a consultant, if there was interest on his part.

Clearly, Hollywood was aware of Charley's work, and vice versa. I remember running into him after a preview screening of John Ridley's 2013 Jimi Hendrix biopic, All Is By My Side, and he was absolutely livid. In addition to Nirvana and Heart, Charley had written a bestselling 2005 biography, Hendrix, Room Full of Mirrors: A Biography of Jimi Hendrix, and he was justifiably upset that Jimi (played by André Benjamin) was depicted as a domestic abuser. Charley, known far and wide for his thorough research, insisted there was no evidence of such a thing. Though Ridley has done fine work over the years, particularly as a screenwriter, I'm inclined to side with Charley, who surely spoke with everyone about Jimi he possibly could.

I reconnected with him in more recent years over a shared love of film. In checking my Facebook messages--he was a steady presence there--I see that he first reached out through Messenger in 2017, some time after I had attended The Rocket's 25th anniversary bash at Jeff Gilbert's Feedback Lounge in West Seattle. 

A regular correspondence ensued. Around that time, his son, Ashland, started to follow me on Twitter (now X), though I'm not certain if there was any connection. I mentioned it to Charley, who was an infrequent presence on the platform, both before and after  Elon Musk, but he said it wasn't really his thing. As of this writing, I haven't met Ashland, who Charley mentioned often, always enthusiastically. He was truly devoted to that kid.

Charley was a social animal, and in reading through the remembrances of friends, it's clear that I was one of dozens of people he chatted with often, whether in-person, online, or both. He was always quick to reach out if he saw or heard anything he thought might interest me, or that I might not know about, quickly adding, "You probably already saw this, but..."

Like many music writers I've known, I suspect Charley was always interested in film, purely as a fan, but it seemed to me it had really become a passion. He would often message me about some film or film-related event, asking what I thought, and he would engage with most anything I posted about film to Facebook. Charley was a dedicated supporter of the Seattle International Film Festival, and he was also good friends with programmer Greg Olson, and attended as many of his film series as possible, first at the Seattle Art Museum and more recently at SIFF. 

Seeing a Fellini film on the big screen was Charley's idea of heaven. He once estimated that he had seen 8 1/2 10 times. Like Charley, I appreciated Olson's film programming at SAM, which included appearances from such cinematic legends as John Woo, Werner Herzog, and Claire Denis. The late filmmaker Lynn Shelton often cited Denis's 2002 appearance at SAM with Friday Night for inspiring her to make the move from shorts to features. 

More recently, I had secured extra passes, through my work, to last year's Noir City series at the Egyptian. Charley was quick to take them from my hands--he was also the recipient of the hefty box set I received from Netflix last year in support of Bradley Cooper's Maestro (and wasn't exactly bowled over by the film).

Though he was interested in new films, Charley was mostly a classic film buff. As author and former Stranger editor David Schmader wrote on Facebook, he was "a totally approachable figurehead, an inexhaustible fan of the work of others, and an invaluable writer and editor." Added David: "Also, an A+ conversationalist, who once met me at a Queen Anne coffeehouse for an hour-long discussion of our mutual love for Joan Blondell." 

In looking through our Facebook chats and text messages, I found threads about Howard Hawks, Éric Rohmer, Agnès Varda, Jane Campion, Wong Kar-wai, Kelly Reichardt, Todd Haynes, Terrence Malick, Alfred Hitchcock, and Japanese noir (A Colt Is My Passport knocked him out). About Hitch's Rope, he wrote, "Do yourself a favor: Never Google 'rope screening seattle' as you will get stuff you can't unsee," adding, "I'm sure I've seen more of his films than any other director." He felt they were perfect for family viewing when Ashland was a teenager. About Reichardt, he enthused, "Kelly's my favorite Northwest filmmaker." He was also fond of Lynn Shelton, both as a person and as a filmmaker. As he noted, during the height of the pandemic, "Movies are the only thing that have kept me going in this time (and music)."

Last summer, he even introduced a screening of the Coen brothers' The Big Lebowski at the Egyptian. I wouldn't say he was nervous, but he really wanted it to be good. It isn't exactly a music film, but I'm sorry I missed his introduction, because it gave him the chance to talk about Jeff Dowd--the inspiration behind Jeff Bridges' robe-sporting character the Dude--and his connection to Seattle. So many "if only's..."

All that said, the only film Charley and I ever saw together was Greta Gerwig's 2023 Barbie, which we both enjoyed. "You always have the best taste," he said in a message from 2022. I was flattered and humbled, and I'll miss chatting with him about music and film. And everything else, really. 

I'll also miss Charley for his big heart, and for his concern for others. He was always sympathetic whenever something wasn't going right in my life--though I tried to keep complaints to a minimum--and even offered to help if needed. I never took him up on the offer. His sudden, shocking passing is a huge loss for his many friends, for the Pacific Northwest as a whole--​a region he knew intimately and loved dearly--​​and for anyone who loves music, film, literature, and life even half as much as he did. 

Images: 1) Charley's Facebook ("I shot my own senior photo in black and white"), 2) A favorite Rocket cover from the archives (Charles Burns, Jan 1, 1983), 3) Internet Archive (Led Zeppelin: Heaven and Hell, Harmony Books, 1991), 4) Charley's Facebook ("I still think one of the best covers we ever did at The Rocket was shooting Mudhoney in our 'Nevermind' parody in March 1992), 5) Amazon (Room Full of Mirrors: A Biography of Jimi Hendrix, Hachette paperback, 2006), 6) The Criterion Collection (8 1/2, Federico Fellini, 1963), 7) Rio Theater (Jeff Bridges in The Big Lebowski, Joel and Ethan Coen, 1998), and 8) Charley's Facebook (father and son, Mar 1, 2024).

Georgian-Swedish Filmmaker Levan Akin's Crossing: A Procedural With a Few Twists

CROSSING 

(Levan Akin, Sweden, 2024, 106 minutes) 

Lia (actress and composer Mzia Arabuli) is a woman on a mission in Crossing, the fourth feature from Georgian-Swedish filmmaker Levan Akin (And Then We Danced, Sweden's official Oscar submission for 2020). She isn't a police officer or a detective, but rather a retired history teacher dedicated to finding her trans niece (Tako Kurdovanidze) and bringing her home. It was her late sister's dying wish. 

She starts by visiting the cottages where Tekla was last seen. A former student who lives in Batumi suggests she was a prostitute, but Lia doesn't raise an eyebrow, indicating that she knew or suspected as much. Achi (Lucas Kankava), his younger half brother, provides an address for Tekla, claims he knows a little Turkish--she doesn't know any--and offers to accompany Lia to Istanbul. Mostly, he wants to get away from Georgia. 

To Achi's older brother, this serious-looking, deep-voiced woman is "classy and refined." Achi, who appears to be in his late-teens, is the exact opposite. He smokes too much, drives too fast, and likes to mouth off, but he isn't a bigot; he considered fellow smoker Tekla a friend. Lia agrees to take him on as a travel partner if he promises to avoid booze and drugs. She claims she has no desire to take care of him--but she just can't help herself. 

 

The unlikely duo travels by train, bus, ferry, and walks up and down cobblestone streets, finally arriving at a red light district populated by trans sex workers, but there's no Tekla to be found. Lia resolves to knock on every door until she finds her. In the meantime, they crash at a hostel with paper-thin walls.

Not far from the hostel, a stylish, outgoing trans woman named Evrim (Deniz Dumanli) sets out to secure her female identification card. There's no indication that she's Tekla under a different name, not least since she's five years older, and speaks fluent Turkish. One night, she ends up at the same party as Achi, but they don't connect, though she will connect, in a manner of speaking, with a handsome college student who drives a cab on the side. 

With Achi out partying, Lia grudgingly looks for Tekla on her own, except she can't understand what anyone is saying, so the trans women in the area do what they can to communicate that they don't know Tekla. One woman even sings her a song. Meanwhile, her odd-couple relationship with Achi waxes and wanes. There's a sense that there's more to their collective journey than meets the eye. Achi, for instance, told Lia that his mother lives in Istanbul, and yet he never mentions her after they arrive, even though he has no money (she pays for everything). Nor does he speak any Turkish. 

Their fortunes change when they meet Ramaz (Levan Gabrichidze), an avuncular Georgian business owner. With some raki, a potent Turkish brandy, in her, Lia becomes a completely different person; frisky and flirtatious, but also quick to anger. Their fortunes change yet again when they finally meet Evrim, who works as a lawyer for an LGBTQ non-profit. She knows who to ask about Tekla, and where to go to find her--assuming she wants to be found. 

 

I won't say if they find her, if they solve the mystery of Achi's mother, and whether or not any of the Georgian individuals in the film return to their home country, but Akin's previous film, And Then We Danced, also involved an individual, a gay ballet dancer, struggling to live as his authentic self in a country with little tolerance for that kind of thing. If Akin, an openly gay filmmaker whose parents emigrated from Georgia, hadn't grown up in Sweden, it's possible he wouldn't have been able to make it at all. 

What I will say is that Crossing isn't about being trans. If it was, we would learn more about Tekla, who left Georgia, because she didn't feel welcome. After exploring Istanbul's red light district, Lia laments that she "chose this life." Achi counters that she probably didn't have much of a choice.

 

Though Kanjav and Dumanli are newcomers, they hold their own against the stern, watchful Arabuli, who lights up the screen whenever she lets her guard down. 

Lia isn't the most expressive character, but that's kind of the point. She's keeping a lot inside, like the fact that she's incredibly lonely, especially without her sister. If the purpose of the trip was to find Tekla, her last living relative, it's also about understanding why her niece would leave the only home she ever knew--and how Lia may have played a part in her departure.

I could have done without the cute street urchins that Evrim takes under her wing, and it's also clear, possibly too clear, that she's meant to stand in opposition to Tekla as a trans woman who feels at home in the world--even if that world isn't as welcoming as it could be. Akin reveals the microaggressions she deals with on a daily basis, and how blithely she ignores them, but it must get tiring. I've seen friends go through something similar, and it's hard to watch. Death by a thousand paper cuts is real.  

As for Crossing overall, there are false starts and dead ends, and not everything works, but Lia and Achi make for a very compelling team, and Akin never plays their differences for easy laughs. There are also a lot of cats, and though I doubt it was the director's intention, they're the one species in the film that never judges. When Evrim meets with a doctor in the process of getting her new ID, he gives her the evil eye for no reason other than prejudice, and yet while she's waiting in the lobby before her appointment, two cute cats amble over to show her love. Cats just get it.

For a deeper dive, please see Michael Wood's spoiler-filled piece in London Review of Books. You may have to register to read, but LRB is worth it.  

Crossing opens at the Uptown on Fri, Aug 9. Images from Rotten Tomatoes and The Los Angeles Times (Lucas Kankava and Mzia Arabuli / Ozan Acidere), Gay Times (Deniz Dumanli and friends), and Variety (Arabuli). 

Stranger Flashback: Last Fast Ride: The Life, Love and Death of a Punk Goddess

This is a revived version of a Line Out post (The Stranger purged them from the internet some time after they pulled the plug on their music blog in 2014).

Film/TV     Feb 13, 2012 at 10:52 am

Marian Anderson's Last Fast Ride

Kathy Fennessy

LAST FAST RIDE: THE LIFE, LOVE AND DEATH OF A PUNK GODDESS

Lilly Scourtis Ayers makes her feature film debut with Last Fast Ride, just as Andrea Blaugrund Nevins made hers with The Other F Word. 

The former, however, is a scrappier, more downbeat affair. Depending on your perspective, that makes it even more punk, both in terms of content and presentation, though three of the same bands have connections to the two indie documentaries (and I don't mean "scrappy" as in amateurish; the film is just less polished, in keeping with the brash subject matter).

In this case, the Los Angeles-based filmmaker turned to Rancid's Tim Armstrong for commentary and Black Flag's Henry Rollins for narration, while the other film features Rancid's Lars Frederiksen and Black Flag's Ron Reyes. The Other F Word also features U.S. Bombs' Duane Peters. Though he doesn't appear in Last Fast Ride, Peters released a 2004 collection of Anderson's work with Bay Area band the Insaints.

If you've never heard of the Insaints, join the club. If you were living in San Francisco from 1990-94, though, I don't see how you could have missed them. Anderson's then-boyfriend, Tim Yohannan, founded 924 Gilman Street, the Berkeley Mecca where her group played gigs with Armstrong after his segue from Operation Ivy to Rancid. 

He became a fan and issued a single on his Hellcat label, one of their few releases, which is unfortunate, but better than nothing (on the evidence of this film, the Five Fingers material should probably stay buried).

If most of the men in The Other F Word came from broken homes, Anderson, who grew up in Monterey, CA suffered sexual abuse at the hands of her father, followed by a blur of suicide attempts and stays in psych wards and group homes. Diagnosed with bipolar disorder, she found a sanctuary of sorts with her supportive grandparents in Modesto, CA where she formed the Insaints. The pretty high school student became an imposing punk rocker with towering blond spikes before trying a Mohawk on for size. 

After they relocated to San Francisco in 1990, though, she seemed to take more style cues from Bettie Page than Nina Hagen or Wendy O. Williams (in an archival interview, she also cites GG Allin as an influence).

Anderson then took up with a man named Kal, became pregnant and had a child, which her grandparents would eventually adopt. Though the relationship didn't last, she and her daughter, Hannah, would remain close.

Somewhere along the way, she became a dominatrix, a vocation that found its way into the Insaints' stage act as she would disrobe, make out with other women, and engage in a variety of Karen Finley-type sex acts with bananas, prompting the attention of the State of California and inspiring puntastic headlines like The San Francisco Chronicle's 1993 "PERFORMER ON TRIAL: Slippery Rights Issue In Berkeley Banana Case."

After a protracted court battle, Anderson won, and the show went on. 

In the process, though, she broke up with Yohannon, who had also launched the infamous punk zine Maximum Rocknroll in 1982. Yohannan succumbed to non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in 1998, and Anderson stuck by him until the end.

Later, she moved to Los Angeles, took up with Danielle Bernal Santos, and joined the Thrillkillers. On the side, she worked as a stripper, which may be how--or at least when--she got involved with heroin, since none of her friends were users. In fact, they claim they didn't know about her habit until it was too late. And that's where the story ends. It isn't a happy one, but I might never have heard of Marian Anderson otherwise.

As far as I can tell, she could sing and she could write, and if she had had a greater interest in a conventional recording career, she might have become a bigger star—she certainly had the charisma—but that doesn't seem to have been her intention. Friends believe she performed because she felt she had no choice, but I don't know whether she found it cathartic or not. 

Based on the drugs, the alcohol, the cutting, and the 20 suicide attempts, I can only conclude that it wasn't cathartic enough, but maybe she wouldn't have lasted as long without it. Marian Anderson was 33 when she died.

*Yes, she shared a name with the opera singer. This Anderson was born Marian Holloway.

According to SF Weekly, Anderson was "an admirer of the Avengers' Penelope Houston."

Virgil Films releases the Last Fast Ride DVD on Feb 21, 2012. Images from KQED, The Daily Bruin (courtesy of Lilly Scourtis Ayers), and the IMDb.

Stranger Flashback: The Other F Word

This is a revived version of a Line Out post (The Stranger purged them from the internet some time after they pulled the plug on their music blog in 2014).

Film/TV     Feb 10, 2012 at 2:50 pm

Two New Punk Docs Ponder Authority

Kathy Fennessy

THE OTHER F WORD

This week, I watched two new punk-rock documentaries, both available on home video, which offer an interesting study in contrasts. 

The Other F Word revolves around punk-rock fathers, while Last Fast Ride centers on a punk-rock provocateur…who also happened to be a mother. Women directed both films, which are set primarily in Southern California in the 1990s, but the similarities start to fall away at that point.

I didn't expect to enjoy Andrea Blaugrund Nevins' feature-film debut, The Other F Word, because I have no interest in bands like NOFX and Blink-182, and nor do I have a vested interested in parenthood.* 

Granted, I've always found the parent-child relationship fascinating, but too many filmmakers have a hard time illuminating the complexities. That isn't a problem for this director, who's gathered up a particularly forthcoming combination of subjects, including bass player Flea (Fear, Red Hot Chili Peppers), singer Ron Reyes (Black Flag), and singer/author Jim Lindberg (Pennywise), whose memoir, Punk Rock Dad, inspired the project.

First things first: I've always had a soft spot for Flea, and I always will. 

I've never met him, but I've read enough interviews and seen enough of his on- and off-screen work, including Penelope Spheeris's Suburbia and Bruce Weber's Let's Get Lost, to know that he has a lot of heart and a lot of charisma. Hate his slap bass-playing all you want, but it's fun to watch him play, and I've never seen anyone move quite like he does. 

His buoyancy, however, stems--or emerges--from a dark place. Like many of the fathers in The Other F Word, he had a crappy childhood, and ran away from home at 12. The character he plays in Suburbia is, essentially, himself.

So, he's gone out of his way to be the father to his piano-playing daughter he never had. It's hard for him to talk about that trajectory, and he almost breaks down a time or two, but once you meet Clara, who comes across as a poised, no nonsense 24-year-old, you can tell he means every word.

Reyes and Lindberg also seem like great dads, but they took different routes to get there. Reyes, who was known as Chavo when he appeared in Spheeris's The Decline of Western Civilization, dropped out of Black Flag when the violence at gigs--something Spheeris depicts in Suburbia--became too much to bear. Since then, he's been running a print shop in Vancouver and raising three teens with whom he enjoys a close relationship.

Lindberg, on the other hand, was an active member of Pennywise while DP Geoffrey Franklin's camera was rolling. 

The father of three, who admits he dyes his hair black to maintain the punk-rock image, had spent a significant portion of the past 20 years on the road, but after the band's last world tour, he packed it in. Though he's since formed a new outfit, he makes it clear that the annual 219-day tours are a thing of the past.

Others speaker-fathers in the film include Art Alexakis (Everclear), Lars Fredrickson (Rancid), Jack Grisham (TSOL), pro skateboarder Tony Hawk, Mark Hoppus (Blink-182), and Tim McIlrath (Rise Against). From the audio commentary with Nevins, Lindberg, and Alexakis, it's clear that the filmmaker, a mother of three, genuinely enjoys these bands.

From her film, I didn't gain a new appreciation for their music, but I do have a new appreciation for the participants as parents. That said, NOFX's Fat Mike, who isn't all that fat, might want to stop indulging his little lady's every whim lest she winds up the most insufferable punk-rock princess.

Also, Blaugrund Nevins, who released the film through Adam Yauch's environmentally-conscious Oscilloscope Laboratories, doesn't censor these gents, so "father" isn't the only "f word" in play—just the way I like it.

*Not counting my own parents, who took a vested interest in me.

Next: Last Fast Ride - The Life, Love and Death of a Punk Goddess, a film about Marian Anderson featuring Tim Armstrong and Henry Rollins. Images from Oscilloscope Laboratories: Michael, aka "Flea," and Clara Balzary, Ron and Jasmine Reyes, and Michael ("Fat Mike") and Darla Burkett.