This is a revived version of a Line Out post from 2013 (without any notice, The Stranger purged every single post from the internet some time after they pulled the plug on their music blog in 2014).
FILM/TVMar 3, 2013 at 12:03 pm
The Asshole Glory of Ginger BakerKATHY FENNESSY
BEWARE OF MR. BAKER (Jay Bulger, 2012, US, 92 minutes)
Instead of a hagiography filled with kind words from old chums, boxer-turned-filmmaker Jay Bulger's documentary, Beware of Mr. Baker, revels in opportunities to present drummer Ginger Baker in all his asshole glory.
It's a disrespectful, attention-generating approach that suits its cantankerous subject like one of his fashionable sheepskin coats from the 1960s. According to an IMDb user who caught the film at a London screening, the "fractious Q&A...ended with shouting, swearing, recriminations all round, and Jay Bulger seemingly storming off stage."
About Bond, Baker says, "He was a fat guy" (everyone was fat compared to Baker).
Unfortunately, Bulger films himself as if he were part of the profile—no wonder Baker, who now lives in South Africa, smacked him in the face with his cane in the instantly-infamous opening sequence. When you've got a larger-than-life subject at your disposal, get the fuck out of the way. Let the guy narrate, let his friends and enemies narrate oral history-style, or drop the narration altogether (the better documentaries don't need it).
After that unsteady start, Bulger rights the ship by stepping aside and letting the 73-year-old musician tell the story in his own nicotine-stained drawl, starting with his childhood in war-torn Britain. The minute he heard jazz drummer Max Roach, he says, he found something "I could relate to." When he wasn't getting into brawls, he was tapping out rhythms on his desk until he found his way to a drum kit, and that was the beginning of that.
Alongside the archival material, Bulger adds expressive, painterly animated sequences to bring the past to life. It's a wise move, since the semi-abstract look of the art aligns with Baker's interest in jazz and African music.
By 20, he was a husband, a father, a heroin addict, and the percussive anchor in a series of increasingly popular outfits, including Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated and the Graham Bond Organization. At this point, other speakers enter the fray, like singer-bassist Jack Bruce and Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts. While Baker praises Bruce as a "fucking brilliant player"—until he switched from stand-up bass to bass guitar—he dismisses strutting front man Mick Jagger as a "stupid little cunt."
Femi Kuti appears in the film to talk about Baker's association with his father.
From there, Baker talks about Cream, the power trio he formed with Bruce and guitarist Eric Clapton. The band made a significant impression on Neil Peart of Rush, Bill Ward of Black Sabbath, and Stewart Copeland of the Police, who are all effusive in their praise. Baker sums up Cream's appeal succinctly: "We were fucking good." (He's right; they were.)
Alas, the tension between Baker and Bruce, who amassed more writing royalties, would eventually reach a breaking point, after which he and Clapton segued to Blind Faith with singer-keyboard player Steve Winwood and bass player Ric Grech. Though that outfit had an even shorter run, Baker calls Clapton "the best friend I've got on this planet."
Bulger concludes by documenting Baker's drum battles with jazz legends Elvin Jones and Art Blakey, his work with Nigerian dynamo Fela Kuti, and his obsession with polo ponies, who appear to have received more attention than any of his wives and children. Yet there's something strangely endearing about the man. Though he insults Bulger throughout the film with pithy lines, like "For fuck's sake" and "Don't try to be an intellectual dickhead," his bone-deep respect for the drums always shines through.
Beware of Mr. Baker, which premiered in Seattle at SIFF in 2012, plays the Grand Illusion Cinema through Mar 7. Vivendi Entertainment releases the DVD on May 14. Image of Ginger Baker from Rotten Tomatoes.
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/TVMar 13, 2013 at 12:44 pm
The Music and Movies of the L.A. Rebellion
KATHY FENNESSY
The L.A. Rebellion, which Stranger staffer Charles Mudede wrote about here, was an African American film movement that took place primarily in the 1970s and 1980s (Mudede will also be participating in the Cinema Salon that takes place this Saturday at the Northwest Film Forum at 6pm).
It wasn't about music, but music was part of it. Unlike the funk-powered blaxploitation films of the era, these filmmakers turned to blues, jazz, and gospel to ground narratives about community and work—or lack thereof.
To describe funk as a more commercial genre wouldn't be quite fair, but the L.A. Rebellion directors weren't thinking about radio airplay, drive-ins, and soundtrack recordings in the same way. Curtis Mayfield's Superfly soundtrack, for instance, still remains better known than the 1972 drama for which he did some of his finest work (or maybe that's just me; I have the record—my Dad had the record—but I still haven't seen photographer-turned-filmmaker Gordon Parks, Jr.'s movie).
The L.A. Rebellion series, which runs March 1-24, began at the Northwest Film Forum with screenings of films I'd seen before, like Julie Dash's Daughters of the Dust and Charles Burnett’s My Brother’s Wedding, and films I couldn't work into my schedule, like Haile Gerima's Bush Mama, but I found time for Saturday's Cinema Salon and Billy Woodberry’s Bless Their Little Hearts, for which Burnett was in attendance (he was also at Friday's screening of My Brother's Wedding).
When an audience member asked about the music in 1984's Bless Their Little Hearts, on which he served as writer and cinematographer, Burnett admitted that he didn't know the details (I heard what sounded like a Nina Simone song at one point, but didn't recognize the rest of the uncredited material).
Burnett then recounted his experience with his first film, 1977's Killer of Sheep, which was held up for 30 years due to music rights issues. For Seattle Film Blog, I wrote, "The use of Paul Robeson songs on the soundtrack, including 'The House I Live In' provides a link with the silent films of Oscar Micheaux." Once the film cleared those hurdles—after six years and $150,000—Milestone made it available for home-video and theatrical screenings (the DVD includes My Brother’s Wedding).
Given the chance to do it again, Burnett says he would've cleared the rights first, except both Killer of Sheep and Bless Their Little Hearts were student films, even if their quality belies those origins. It's not too surprising that young directors in the 1970s, even two associated with UCLA's prestigious film program, wouldn't know all the ins and outs of music licensing (or have the means to pay someone to sort it out for them). One way or the other: Burnett refused to remove even a single song.
At the Q&A on Saturday, Fantagraphics co-founder Gary Groth declared Killer of Sheep's living room scene, in which Stan (Henry Gayle Sanders) and his wife (Kaycee Moore from Bless Their Little Hearts and Daughters of the Dust) dance to Dinah Washington, as one of his favorites. He also praised the (more volatile) kitchen scene in Hearts, in which Moore proves she should've been a bigger star. Burnett acknowledged that he didn't know why some actors hit it big, while others didn't, concluding somewhat enigmatically, "She was an interesting woman..."
I haven't seen the other films in the series, so I can't speak to their use of music, but Larry Clark's Passing Through revolves around an ex-con saxophone player portrayed by Nathaniel Taylor (fresh off a run as as "Rollo" on Sanford and Son). The 1977 film, which screens this Friday in a new 35mm print, features a Horace Tapscott score, a performance from the Pan African People's Arkestra, and musical selections from Eric Dolphy, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, and Sun Ra.
Not to be confused with the Larry Clark who made Kids and Wassup Rockers, this Clark has another estimable music credit to his name: he helped to shoot Mel Stuart's utterly amazing Wattstax, which captured Richard Pryor, Isaac Hayes, and the Staple Singers at the height of their musical and comedic powers.
The music continues when author, musician, and A&R guy Pat Thomas (Listen, Whitey! The Sights and Sounds of Black Power 1965-1975) returns to Seattle for the final Cinema Salon on March 23. Pat is a friend who always has something of interest to say, and in this case, he'll be exploring the connections between the Black Power movement and the L.A. Rebellion. He's also been living in Los Angeles for the past year while working on a book project for Fantagraphics. Pat will be joined by Black Panther member Ron Johnson and Seattle University professor Gary Perry.
Here's the pre-obituary I wrote for Amazon's blog Armchair Commentary in 2009. I'm happy to say that Jewison outlived this piece by 15 years.
Along with genre-hoppers like Howard Hawks and Steven Soderbergh, director and producer Norman Jewison epitomized cinematic versatility. Like many of his peers, he apprenticed in live television in the 1950s and '60s before turning to film; first in London, then in his native Toronto, and later in New York, where he oversaw The Judy Garland Show.
In a 2009 interview with The Los Angeles Times, he credited the success of 1965's The Cincinatti Kid with Steve McQueen for allowing him to move away from light comedies, like Send Me No Flowers with Doris Day, to the big-screen dramas that were his true calling (Jewison inherited the formerafter producer Martin Ransohoff gave Sam Peckinpah the sack).
Jewison went on to direct best picture winner In the Heat of the Night with Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger, The Thomas Crown Affair with McQueen and Faye Dunaway, Rollerball with James Caan (which inspired an inferior 2002 remake), Jesus Christ Superstar, A Soldier's Story (with Denzel Washington, who would return for The Hurricane), and Moonstruck, which won Oscars for Cher, Olympia Dukakis, and writer John Patrick Shanley.
Unapologetically liberal, Jewison once said, "The movies that address civil rights and social justice are the ones that are dearest to me." Consequently, he had his detractors, like Andrew Sarris, who criticized his "strained seriousness," and David Thomson, who dismissed his work's "hollow prettiness," though Ephraim Katz praised his "superior craftsmanship," notwithstanding a career "that zigzagged between mediocrity and excellence" (and even Thomson found Moonstruck "charming"). The Hurricane (1999), a stirring account of wrongly-imprisoned boxer Rubin Carter, also took hits for some minor alterations to the historical record.
Despite his time in Southern California, Jewison never lost touch with his Northern roots, and founded the Canadian Centre for Advanced Film Studies in 1986. In 1999, he accepted the Irving G. Thalberg Award (nominated three times for best director, his movies won 12 Academy Awards). He also wrote a well received memoir, This Terrible Business Has Been Good to Me.
In addition to his many directorial and production efforts, Jewison deserves credit for mentoring Hal Ashby, who edited The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming, In the Heat of the Night, and The Thomas Crown Affair, winning an Oscar for the latter before making 1970's The Landlord, a film Jewison had intended to direct until Fiddler on the Roof came calling.
Norman Jewison was married to Margaret Ann Dixon for 51 years until her death in 2004 and to Lynne St. David for 14 years until his death on January 20. He leaves behind three children; Michael, an associate producer and location manager, Kevin, a camera operator, and Jennifer, an actress.
Oh night, conceal my pain, caused by being nothing and being alive.
--epigram that opens the film
Ce que j'ai fait, ce soir-là
Ce qu'elle a dit, ce soir-là
Réalisant mon espoir
Je me lance vers la gloire... OK
--Talking Heads, "Psycho Killer"
As a boy, Émile, the central character of former Cahiers du cinéma critic Paul Vecchiali's fascinating and disturbing film, was a cute, blond kid. Perfectly normal-looking. But then, late one night during a trek to buy a copy of the funny pages, he witnesses an act of misogynistic violence. It could have destroyed him, but it doesn't—it makes him, and he will grow up to be much like the strange man he encountered on the picturesque streets of Paris.
Years later, a "killer of lonely women" stalks the city. The Jack the Ripper-like figure has killed five women by strangling them with a white child's scarf, exactly like the faceless man in the prologue. On TV, newspaper reporter Simon Dangret (Julien Guiomar) describes the victims, according to those who knew them, as "sad and lonely" and "desperate and suicidal." He asks the killer to reach out to him, and provides his contact information.
Anna (Eva Simonet), who watched the broadcast, just after being dumped by her boyfriend, approaches the reporter--who is actually a police inspector--and offers to act as bait. "I have nothing to lose," she says. He brushes her off.
Unbeknownst to Anna, 36-year-old Émile (Jacques Perrin, The Young Girls of Rochefort, Donkey Skin) witnessed the entire exchange, and proceeds to follow her. He doesn't do anything except observe, faithful German shepherd at his side. It's broad daylight after all--but she's now on his radar.
By day, Émile works at a produce stand in sequences that appear more documentary-like than the rest of this pastel-hued film. It seems likely that Perrin worked at an actual stand, interacting with actual customers.
Émile's true vocation, however, is killing, and since he feels no shame, no remorse, he calls the reporter to let him know he feels fine. "I'm happy," he states. He kills because it feels like the right thing to do, but just as Anna doesn't know he's watching her, Émile doesn't know someone is watching him, and it isn't the reporter, but Le Chacal (Paul Barge), a petty thief.
Since the film begins after he has already killed five women, Vecchiali depicts his encounters with victims six through eight, each a distinctly remarkable sequence. Émile kills one woman (Jacqueline Danno) after she has performed in a nightclub, singing a sad chanson about sailors while accompanied by dancers in navy-and-white striped tunics; a beautiful, once famous-now-forgotten actress (Hélène Surgère, Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom), who has made herself up as if she were expecting a gentleman caller, even though she isn't; and a stylishly-dressed ballet dancer practicing in an empty studio late at night. They don't deserve to die, of course, regardless as to their possible heartbreak, but Émile doesn't see it that way.
Much like Michael Powell's Peeping Tom, a possible influence, Vecchiali alternates between what we see of Émile and what he sees of the world (and whenever he drives anywhere, the action briefly shifts into hyper-drive).
This implicates us, but not necessarily as voyeurs. Except for the dreamlike opening sequence, the Corsican filmmaker--who produced Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles--doesn't linger over any of the killings, and nor is there any sex or nudity. None of this makes Émile sympathetic, though Vecchiali depicts Le Chacal as a colder character, since he could have tried to prevent the killings he witnessed or shared his findings with the police, but doesn't. Further, pawing through the still-warm victims' effects has no discernible effect on his psyche.
As the film continues, Vecchiali spends less time with Émile and more with his followers as Anna continues to pester Simon, while he continues to brush her off. Until he doesn't. They're all obsessed in different ways, and the four--including Émile--will come increasingly close to colliding with each other.
Though Émile insists to Simon that he's happy, and that he's "doing these poor women a favor," the way he reaches out to the reporter suggests otherwise, since he now has someone to talk to, and he seems to relish that, even as it jeopardizes his ability to kill indefinitely. In other words, he's lonely, too--but he's more sociopathic than suicidal. The situation grows even more complicated when the enchanted Chacal reaches out to the attractive Anna.
By this point, Simon knows enough to act, but doesn't, and Émile knows enough to stop, but doesn't. All of the actors are very good, and each brings a different color or flavor to the film. Throughout, Émile remains the most enigmatic, even as we catch glimpses of his memories and fantasies.
Though he sleeps next to a portrait of a white-haired woman who appears to be his mother, we never learn anything about their relationship (tellingly, the portrait is situated next to a copy of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince). Other than his trusty canine sidekick, he's completely alone, and it appears that he always has been. Perrin doesn't play him as a sad sack or an incel, but as an introvert who has a set way of looking at the world, and lacks the ability to grow or to change out of his immature worldview.
For most of its running time, The Strangler didn't strike me as misogynist--or feminist--but a series of incidents towards the end shifted my thinking, one of which involves a group of street walkers who spend as much time strolling the boulevards of Paris as Émile (they look after each other in a way that felt Varda-esque).
Émile also gets careless, as single-minded serial killers are wont to do, but no matter how you think the film is going to end, you're likely to be surprised, since not one of the four players is exactly who or what they appear to be; the bad characters have good sides and the good characters have bad sides, and all of those sides will eventually--and eventfully--converge.
It's hard to say if The Strangler, which also saw release in 1970, was as much of a comment on women's lib as Rudolf Thome's Red Sun, in which women act as killers of men. Vecchiali's film is more of a character piece--and not a full-fledged giallo as some have claimed--and the central character is more obviously villainous, yet somehow not a complete monster. At Screen Anarchy, Olga Artemyeva compared the film to Jerzy Skolimowski's Deep End, with its dangerously naïve protagonist, and she's not wrong.
Émile proves capable of empathy, sorrow, and even love. In a way, that's the scariest idea of all: that such a seemingly decent person--the cute guy at the fruit stand with the dog and the shy smile--could also be the worst.
The 2K restoration of The Strangler, which made its US theatrical debut in 2023, is out now on Blu-ray through Altered Innocence. Roland Vincent's fabulous score has never been available on any format, which is a shame as it hews towards light and charming during the day and dark and jazzy at night--with generous helpings of organ, accordion, and reverb. Images: Mubi (Jacques Perrin), Film at Lincoln Center (Émile as a boy, Eva Simonet, and Julien Guiomar), Film Inquiry (Jacqueline Danno), and IMDb (poster).
Red Sun, a film primarily concerned with women, opens with a man. It will close with that same man--after his life has been irrevocably changed by the four women at its center.
With his shaggy hair and foppish cravat, Thomas (Marquard Bohm, Deadlock, Kings of the Road) looks like a cross between Mick Jagger and frequent Fassbinder player Gottfried John (The Marriage of Maria Braun, Berlin Alexanderplatz); handsome from some angles, less so from others.
In the opening sequence, Thomas hitchhikes from Hamburg to Munich to reconnect with Peggy (model Uschi Obermaier), a bartender with whom he once had a dalliance. This isn't about love; he may be attracted to Peggy, who looks like Twilight-era Kristen Stewart with her classic features and curtain of thick, dark hair, but it's mostly about finding a woman who will support him, since he has no desire to work, explaining rather hilariously, if accidentally poetically, "Work contradicts the rhythms of my life; it causes the body to waste away." Presumably, he's been doing this for awhile, bouncing from woman to woman, moving on after each one kicks him out.
It's the kind of thing a young person, like Patricia Highsmith's Tom Ripley, can do for awhile if they're pretty, charming, and/or persuasive enough.
Thomas has no other goals or aspirations, but the clock is ticking, and it's unlikely he can do this indefinitely, not least because he isn't especially charming. Amusing, perhaps, and the actor invests him with "a certain rotten charm," as Thomas puts it, but the guy doesn't otherwise have much going for him. It doesn't make him a villain, though. Plus, he knows Peggy is a soft touch. As her friends put it, "She mothers the layabout types."
After switching out his cravat with a tie, Thomas drops by Take Five, the high-end nightclub where Peggy tends bar. She seems neither thrilled nor disappointed to see him; but rather takes it in stride. Though she offers some light teasing, it doesn't dissuade him from embedding himself in her life. After a visit to the lake in her VW Bug, a sequence Thome will repeat at the end, they return to the flat Peggy shares with three other women.
Everything seems pretty normal so far, especially for 1970--whether in Germany or any other western country during the height of the sexual revolution--with one significant exception. At Take Five that night, Thomas passes middle-aged businessman Howard (Don Wahl) on his way down the steps to the club. Unbeknownst to him, the other women (Diana Körner, Sylvia Kekulé, and Gaby Go) lured Howard to the flat before he and Peggy arrived. Now he's bound, gagged, and hidden behind a closed door. Before the night is over, one of the four women will shoot him in the head.
The next day, they ask Thomas to help them move a large, covered basket--white like most of Peggy's outfits--from the flat to the street and into the Bug. It's obviously heavy, and he may be a layabout by trade, but he doesn't hesitate to lend a hand. It's a funny scene, because the audience knows exactly what's inside the basket, but the incurious Thomas doesn't, and nor does he care. So, he makes himself useful in the moment, but after Peggy decides she's had her fill--"You're lazy!"--she asks him to leave. He doesn't, and nor do they fight about it, but it's clear that he has signed his death warrant, because if he stays, he too could end up in a large, covered basket.
Oddly, Thomas sticks around, even after he starts to put two and two together. In fact, he joins forces with a local man whose brother went missing, vowing to remain until he catches the women in the act, at which point he'll alert the authorities and claim the reward. Sensing that the timid Isolde is the quartet's weak link, he attempts to gain her confidence. "We kill men," she states flatly, adding, "We thought it was right--they deserved it." Once again, as dark clouds continue to gather, Peggy asks Thomas to leave, even offering him money to go away, but he just won't take the hint.
Over the course of the film, four other men will die at the quartet's hands, which isn't a lot, but it's certainly enough, and Thome plays none of this for horror or suspense. Instead, he takes a matter-of-fact approach, largely free of violence or gore. If Thomas, a standard-issue layabout, isn't a villain per se, nor are the women. They're murderers, to be sure, and the director, by way of screenwriter Max Zihlmann, doesn't make light of that fact, but they aren't mean, nasty, or sadistic. If anything, they're just honoring a pact they made to kill any man with whom they find themselves involved after five days in order to sever any attachment that might develop, since that can only lead to dependency. They also believe they're doing society a favor by dispatching men who cheat, make sexist remarks, and the like.
Thome doesn't side with the men or the women. In interviews, he has stressed that Red Sun isn't intended as a feminist film, and I take his point, though he has cited Valerie Solanis's infamous 1967 S.C.U.M. Manifesto as an influence. Marleen Gorris's A Question of Silence, in which three women who had never met before spontaneously kill a male shopkeeper, is a feminist film, because years of patriarchal belittling and bullying leads the women to snap at the same time, but there is no snapping in Red Sun. This isn't Thelma and Louise either, and none of these women will be taking desperate measures to avoid persecution. It's just not that kind of film.
Canadian programmer and historian Kier-La Janisse wrote about Red Sun in her essential guide to films about women on the verge, House of Psychotic Women, a 2012 title that FAB Press reissued in 2022. Then, in 2023, Radiance Films released a beautifully-designed Blu-ray with abundant extras, including a 52-page booklet (Margaret Deriaz's 50-minute visual essay about the New German Cinema is particularly enlightening). These are only two examples, but I believe the film has remained relevant, though not exactly widely known, because it isn't a clear-cut polemic or a standard-issue exploitation item, but something slipperier and more ambiguous.
Nor is Red Sun the kind of cult item that made no impact upon release, only to become better known over time. Due to the participation of Obermaier and Bohm, it received a fair amount of attention in Germany, but it wasn't a hit like Detektive--and the model-actress never made another film.
In his commentary on the Blu-ray, which comes from an interview with Obermaier's then-boyfriend Rainer Langhans, Thome explains that his funders wouldn't back the film unless he secured the services of the two performers, a feat made easier by the fact that both appeared in his 1969 directorial debut, Detektive. This time, however, Obermaier played hard to get, asking for more money each time he asked her. Though not exactly a great actress--she's good enough--her status as a countercultural icon gave her clout, and she used it. In the end, Thome met her asking price.
Wim Wenders, for one, was a fan, and reviewed Red Sun enthusiastically in 1970—the same year his own directorial debut, Summer in the City, first made the rounds. At the time, Wenders was more arts journalist than filmmaker, so I'm not sure how much sway his words had, but he described the film as "intentionally superficial" and compared it, favorably, to a comic strip, possibly because of the way Thome uses vibrant shades of red, blue, and gold; in that sense, it also recalls Godard's 1966 Made in U.S.A.
If Red Sun isn't heavy-handed in its politics, Thome's initial interest in Obermaier may have been intensified by her association--largely through radical writer and filmmaker Langhans--with the West Berlin-based Kommune 1, which would, in turn, inspire the formation of the infamous Red Army Faction/Baader-Meinhof Group.
The way the director concentrates his attentions on Bohm also confirms that Red Sun isn't a feminist film--not intentionally, at any rate--no matter how poorly Thomas comes across, though Thome may have also found it easier to work with the experienced actor. The less-experienced women are fine, but there's the sense that he hired them primarily for their looks, which is hardly a crime. It was the braless era, so even though nudity is kept to a minimum--Obermaier has a brief topless scene--the women's hip outfits don't leave much to the imagination, but nor are they overly revealing.
A more cynical viewer might dismiss the whole thing as a not-exactly-flattering satire about women's lib, not simply because the women kill men, but because the men just aren't that bad. They have their flaws, but they don't deserve to die. As author and podcaster Samm Deighan notes in her excellent essay for the Radiance release ("Guerilla Girls: Radical Politics in Rudolf Thome's Red Sun"), "While it was likely Thome's intention to present a parody of issues like feminism, commune life, and radical politics, Red Sun transcends these aims to become something stranger and more surreal."
If anything, the women are like praying mantises in that they fuck their victims before killing them (but do not eat their heads!)--a less cynical viewer might conclude that that's a pretty sweet way to meet one's maker.
About the music: Uschi Obermaier was an associate of krautrock pioneers Amon Düül II--a pretty cool credential--while the soundtrack combines rock and classical music (in her illuminating Psychotic Women review, Kier-La Janisse describes Obermaier as a groupie, which may be true, but I have some issues with that word).
Notably, most of the songs don't appear in the credits, possibly so that the low-budget production could avoid paying royalties. The acts/composers/ tracks include Jean Sibelius, the Small Faces, the Nice (Keith Emerson's pre-Emerson, Lake and Palmer outfit), and Remo Giazotto's "Adagio in G Minor," which Norman Jewison would later use in Rollerball and Gerry and Sylvia Anderson in Space: 1999, according to the fine folks at B&S at the Movies.
Radiance's restored, 2K version of Red Sun is out in the United States for the first time ever in a limited edition of 2,000. Though sold out at their UK site, it's available in the US through MVD. Images: IMDb (Uschi Obermaier), DVD Beaver (Obermaier and Marquand Bohm), McBastard's Mausoleum (Obermaier, Gaby Go, and Don Wahl), eBay (first edition of the S.C.U.M. Manifesto), Close-Up Film Centre (Anna Karina in Made in U.S.A.), and Retentional Finitude (Obermaier, Go, and Diana Körner).
As an admirer of Alan Warner's 1995 novel Morvern Callar, which centers on a coolheaded Scottish drifter, I was pleased to see that he's preparing a 33 1/3 entry on Can's 1971 opus Tago Mago. That's an album—a double album, no less—that could benefit from literary exploration (though Ege Bamyasi remains my favorite Can record).
Can plays a part in Morvern's story just as they do on the soundtrack to Lynne Ramsay's 2002 adaptation. Her first feature, 1999's Ratcatcher,
knocked me out to the extent that I immediately grabbed a copy of
Warner's debut novel when I found out that she would be adapting it.
After catching the film, in which Samantha Morton
plays the title character, I picked up the soundtrack. Naturally, it
includes Can, but also two solo selections from singer and bassist Holger Czukay (Ramsay has since adapted a second novel, Lionel Shriver's We Need to Talk About Kevin).
Here's a mini-cut of Can references from Morvern Callar (exactly as written):
Though alone I climbed to the circular folly
above the port. I put Can: Delay 1968 in my ears while I used the
goldish lighter on Silk Cuts and bolted the wine... I held my arms out
for a while to let the mud just dry on the skin then I climbed on up
swinging the trowel to I'm So Green till I came to the big gathering of
tons boulders with soil and mosses capping the tops... Near their feet I
cooried down in front the CD and put on Unlimited Edition by The Can...
From her late boyfriend, Morvern inherits a mixtape, the unpublished novel he dedicated to her, and copies of Magazine's Secondhand Daylight, Last Exit's Iron Path, Bill Nelson's Red Noise, PM Dawn's Of the Heart, of the Soul and of the Cross: The Utopian Experience, the Golden Palominos' This Is How It Feels, Material's Hallucination Engine, and Lee "Scratch" Perry's De Devil Dead.
According to the publisher's announcement
regarding Warner's upcoming Can book, "Publication date is unconfirmed at this
point but look for further announcements on this blog." It's been years
since I've read a 33 1/3 title, due more to a lack of time than
interest, but I predict that his contribution will be among the finest
in this enduring album-exploration series.
Fun fact: Alan Warner dedicated Morvern Callar to Czukay and saxophone great Peter Brötzmann. Dec 29, 2023 update: I read Warner's book in 2017 during a summer trip through Eastern Europe. It wasn't quite what I was expecting, i.e. he took a memoir approach, so there's more Warner/Scotland and less Can/Germany than I anticipated. Still worth a read, though. Images from the IMDb (the movie poster) and Amazon (the book cover).
"Now, we all know Kerry's my favorite, then Kev, then David, then Mike. But the rankings can always change."--Fritz Von Erich (Holt McCallany) to his sons
Part One: The Story of a Face
It's hard to talk about writer-directorSean Durkin's fact-based melodrama The Iron Claw without talking about Zac Efron, and not just because he plays the central character, former wrestling champion Kevin Adkisson, aka Kevin Von Erich, but because it isn't the kind of role he could've played, say, 10 years ago when he appeared in the hit frat-vs-dad comedy Neighbors.
Zac just doesn't look like that fresh-faced guy anymore, and not because he's 36 rather than 26--in The Iron Claw, he plays Kevin from his late-teens through his late-thirties--but because he looks like a different person.
When Zac first came to fame by way of The Disney Channel's 2006 millennial sensation High School Musical, he was about as pretty as a young man could get. It made him an instant teen idol. Zac capitalized on his success by appearing in two sequels, in addition to the 2007 version of the Broadway musical adaptation of John Waters' 1988 film Hairspray.
He could've kept going as a song and dance man, but decided to try other things instead; some worked, some didn't, but he was honing his chops.
In retrospect, it's too bad the coming-of-age dramas he made with Richard Linklater (Me and Orson Welles), Ramin Bahrani (At Any Price), and Lee Daniels (The Paperboy) didn't make more of an impact, or he might have continued in that vein, but instead, he gravitated toward mainstream comedies and romantic dramas. It's only in more recent years that he's appeared in slightly edgier material, like Harmony Korine's The Beach Bum.
Though Zac has worked steadily since 2002, when he was only 15, he was involved in an accident in 2013 that would change the course of his life. After a bad fall that, by his own account, left his chin literally hanging from his face, he had his jaw wired shut. The experience didn't alter his appearance at first. Through regular rehab, he could keep the damaged muscles in his face in alignment, but when he took an extended break in 2021, his jawline widened, permanently altering the shape of his face, and leading to speculation that he had had plastic surgery. He swears he hasn't, and I believe him, but he looks different. He's still a handsome man, but the prettiness is gone.
While watching The Iron Claw, it occurred to me that he's entered the post-1956 Montgomery Clift stage of his career. After the horrific accident in which Monty's famous face took the brunt of the impact, he had surgery that subtly, but significantly altered his appearance. Though plastic surgery wasn't as advanced in the 1950s, he appears to have had the very best.
It's often said that the accident robbed Monty of his looks, but this is cruel overstatement.
Even the Clash got in on the act with "The Right Profile" when Joe Strummer sang, "And everybody say, 'He sure looks funny--that's Montgomery Clift, honey'." Monty still looked good, but his matinee idol days came to a crashing halt, and though the films and roles grew smaller, he continued to do finework. Eventually though, after years with a debilitating case of chronic colitis combined with the suffocations of the celluloid closet, the damage from self-medicating with alcohol and barbiturates took its toll.
Zac, on the other hand, may also look subtly, but significantly different, but he isn't going anywhere--not least because he's been sober since 2013, possibly as a result of the fall. It's just that there aren't likely to be as many pretty-boy roles in his future, which brings us to The Iron Claw in which he takes on his darkest, most devastating role to date.
If 2017's superfluous Baywatch introduced a super-fit, male model version of the svelte figure he had been before--much like Ryan Gosling's beach-ready body in Barbie--Zac is all muscle here, just as young Kevin Von Erich was all muscle (in 2020, Zac claimed he never wanted to work out like that again--"It's just stupid and it's not real"--and yet here we are). As far as I can tell, it's 100% Zac; no makeup effects, no prosthetics. It's a startling transformation. In combination with his changed face and shaggy hair, he's virtually unrecognizable, other than by those unmistakable blue eyes.
Part Two: The Family That Prays Together
In the prologue, a trim and effectively intimidating Holt McCallany (Mindhunter) plays Jack, patriarch of the Dallas-based Von Erich clan. He's a variant of the absolute beast Robert Duvall played in The Great Santini or maybe even Robert De Niro's "Shut your pie hole!" stepfather in A Boy's Life. Better known by his heel name, Fritz, he and his wife, Doris (Maura Tierney), have two boys, Kevin and David. From their father, they learn his signature move, The Iron Claw, which is every bit as injurious as it sounds.
The next time they appear, the family has expanded by two more sons, Mike and Kerry (Durkin omitted Chris, the youngest Von Erich). Fritz now works behind the scenes of World Class Championship Wrestling as owner and promoter, while Kevin and David (Scrapper's Harris Dickinson) have taken his place in the ring.
Except for the fact that their world revolves around wrestling, they're a typical Texas family in the 1970s: they own a ranch, their house is filled with guns, and their stay-at-home mom is a devout Christian. It isn't clear if the Von Erich menfolk share Doris's fervor, though it seems unlikely. When something goes wrong--like the accidental death of firstborn son Jack Jr. in 1959--she claims it was God's will, and when the boys seek her advice, she tells them to sort things out for themselves. It's the most downbeat performance I've seen the one-time Newsradio player give, and it will grow more downbeat over the course of the film.
A bright spot arrives in the form of Pam (Lily James, last seen playing Pamela Anderson in Pam & Tommy), who forthrightly and flirtatiously approaches Kevin after a match. The expectation: she's a groupie looking for a roll in the hay. Not exactly. Pam does everything in her power to get the sweet, if rather clueless grappler to ask her out. One date later, and they become inseparable. Durkin suggests that the Von Erich boys have been so indoctrinated by Fritz's macho bluster that they don't know how to have a normal conversation with a woman, especially one as outspoken as Pam. She's everything Doris isn't. (Even in the prologue, Doris comes across as a scold, chastising Fritz for buying a fancy car when their funds are tight.)
Durkin introduces the third brother, Mike (Angelfish's Stanley Simons), early on. To his father's chagrin, the rangy kid would prefer to make music than to wrestle, but he supports his brothers, and the feeling is mutual. At least 30 minutes pass before Durkin introduces the fourth brother, explaining that Kerry (The Bear's Jeremy Allen White, shorter than the rest, but just as buff), aka the future Texas Tornado, has been away at his father's alma mater, Southern Methodist University, where his expertise at discus-throwing lands him a berth on the Olympic team, but when the US boycotts the 1980 Moscow Olympics, Fritz talks him into joining Kevin and David in the ring where they become a formidable tag team, wrestling three opponents at the same time, bringing even more fame--if not always fortune--their way.
So far, so good, but then, after Durkin has fully defined the contours of the family's life and work, everything starts to go wrong, and no one has the power--or uses what power they have--to try to stem the tide. The idea of a Von Erich Curse takes hold, but not one of these tragedies was preordained.
In brief: David develops enteritis before a major Japanese match. Though Kevin urges him to see a specialist, David tells him he plans to wait until afterward. The boys have been taught to suck it up, and so David does what he has been told. We won't see him again.
With a second son down, Fritz convinces Mike to trade music for the mat; from his business-minded perspective, the boys are virtually interchangeable, but it works for awhile. Until it doesn't.
One injury later, and Mike is no longer able to wrestle. More critically, he isn't able to do much of anything, and though he shows signs of improvement, it isn't enough. He doesn't want to live like this, and so he finds a way out. Though Kerry, not Kevin, will bring home the American Heavyweight Champion belt Fritz was never able to secure himself, yet another injury will take him out of the ring. Against all odds, he finds a way to return. All the while, though, he's in excruciating pain, and turns to painkillers to cope. Soon he, too, will take himself out of the picture, leaving Kevin the last Von Erich male--next to his indestructible father, of course.
After the film ended, it occurred to me that this is a deeply odd motion picture to release during the holidays. The entire thing serves as a cautionary tale about masculinity and its discontents. Though Durkin concludes with an idyllic sequence, and though the inter-titles indicate the better times to come, I left with the overwhelming feeling that the Von Erich Curse was due more to poor parenting than to fate. Notably, Durkin didn't call on the real-life Kevin, now a 66-year-old grandfather, until well into production, but he's been supportive of the film, so it would appear that he doesn't dispute the representation of his parents. If anything, he says he was moved by the depiction of the closeness he and his brothers shared.
Part Three: Suicide is Painless (Not Really)
There are plenty of adults who grow up with shitty parents, and manage to survive and thrive. There are others who have the most loving parents imaginable, but it isn't enough when life feels like it's no longer worth living. There's no one reason people commit suicide any more than there is no one kind of person who sees death as the only solution to their ills. In the case of the three Von Erich brothers who took their lives--including the unseen Chris--they made their own decisions, but the film strongly suggests that they didn't have the means to cope when adversity came their way. Dad taught them to suck it up, Mom taught them that everything is God's will, and they grew up in an environment where therapy was for the weak. If The Iron Claw isn't an overtly political film, it's certainly not pro-gun. The principle of Chekhov's gun is in full effect: two brothers would die by self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Though it's beyond the scope of the film to explore copycat suicides--a real-world phenomenon that rattled Japan in the 1980s--it's hard not to imagine that the first Von Erich suicide in some awful way made the second and third possible. It's almost as if The Iron Claw is an uber-macho precursor to Jeffrey Eugenides' hyper-feminine novel The Virgin Suicides--the inspiration behind Sofia Coppola's directorial debut--in which every one of the beautiful, blonde Lisbon sisters takes her own life. Except that this all really happened.
Part Five: The Last Man Standing
In the end, Kevin escapes--and ostensibly ends--the so-called curse. He would follow his father as a behind-the-scenes wrestling magnate, while his sons would follow in their father and grandfather's footsteps as pro wrestlers. The film posits Pam as the primary factor that helped him to weather adversity, though it also presents him as the most stable Von Erich right from the jump. True or no, he's like a surrogate father in the film, since he settles down first and doesn't judge his brothers the way his parents do when things go wrong.
Though the idea that the love of a good woman saving a man's life seems simplistic--and even conservative in ways that the rest of the film isn't--Kevin and Pam have now been married for 43 years, run a business together, and have managed to avoid the scandals that plagued his father's career, so it's hard to completely discount her influence.
Part Six: The Aftermath
Last week, Zac Efron was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and members of The Iron Claw cast came out to support him with Sean Durkin and Jeremy Allen White saying a few heartfelt words on his behalf.
Hollywood is powered by hot air, so I don't always know what to believe--as much as I like to think I'm pretty perceptive--but the person they described sounds a lot like film's Kevin Von Erich.
Zac, too, is a survivor, and reportedly a kind and decent person. He's also ridiculously privileged, but when a young, inexperienced kid finds themselves with boatloads of money: bad things can happen. Zac slipped and broke his face because he was running around in socks and collided with the granite fountain in his home. But he got sober with help from his friend and mentor Matthew Perry, who succumbed to drug addiction this October after years of trying to get clean (sadly, the ketamine overdose that claimed Perry's life was part of a therapy treatment gone wrong).
I watched Zac's Walk of Fame ceremony on YouTube because I wanted to see what he looks like now, long after filming has wrapped. His appearance in The Iron Claw is so unsettling--and frankly disturbing--that I worried he might still look like a Hulk-come-to-life. He doesn't. He's de-bulked, and he looks good. In fact, no one could stop talking about how good he looks.
I'm not sure whether he gives a great performance in the film, because Kevin is so recessive compared to his more extroverted brothers--David especially--but it's definitely a good one, and I feel certain that he's never brought more of himself to a role. So far, the film's biggest award has been for best ensemble, and despite Zac's shocking physical transformation, an Oscar nomination isn't guaranteed, but at least he's got a real shot.
At the press screening, my colleague, Silas Lindenstein, noted that The Iron Claw isn't really a wrestling movie, and he's right (he also complained that the film's Ric Flair doesn't begin to capture the actual flamboyant heel's charisma, and he's right there, too).
As Sean Durkin explains in the production notes, he grew up as a fan of the Von Erich brothers, so he brought that knowledge and enthusiasm to the project, and the wrestling scenes look sufficiently authentic--and viscerally painful in ways that recall Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler--but I believe it's the second half of the film, when things fall apart, that really drew him to the project.
Durkin's 2011 directorial debut, Martha Marcy May Marlene, which stars a very good, pre-MCU Elizabeth Olsen in her breakout role, also revolves around a survivor; in that case, a former cult member learning to function as an autonomous individual. The link between the two is clear: having to perform masculinity at all times in all situations and never showing any physical or emotional vulnerability is like being in a cult. It's also a curse that can infect--and in some cases destroy--most everyone that it touches.
For a more upbeat wrestling film, I recommend 2018's Fighting With My Family with Florence Pugh and Jack Lowden. The Iron Claw opens on Dec 21 at the Uptown and wide on Dec 22. Images from TV Guide (Zac Efron in The Iron Claw), Teen Vogue/Walt Disney Co./Courtesy Everett Collection (Zac in High School Musical), Men's Health (Zac in Baywatch), The Hollywood Reporter (Zac with Harris Dickinson, Stanley Simons, and Jeremy Allen White), WrestleTalk (the Von Erich menfolk), Common Sense Media (Zac and Lily James), ABC7 Chicago/KABC (Zac with star), and Yahoo /Gilbert Flores/Variety via Getty Images (Kevin and Pam at Zac's ceremony).
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Kathy Fennessy is former president of Seattle Film Critics Society, a Northwest Film Forum board member, and a Tomatometer-approved critic. She writes or has written for Amazon, Minneapolis's City Pages, Resonance, Rock and Roll Globe, Seattle Sound, and The Stranger.
