Dyed. Dead. Red.

Anita Pallenberg in Performance

Performance
Original soundtrack arranged and produced by Jack Nitzsche
Conducted by Randy Newman

1. Gone Dead Train (Vocal by Randy Newman) 2:55
2. Performance (Vocal by Merry Clayton) 1:47
3. Get away (Bottleneck guitar solo by Ry Cooder) 2:05
4. Powis Square (Bottleneck guitar solo by Ry Cooder) 2:23
5. Rolls Royce and Acid 1:47
6. Dyed, Dead, Red (Mouth bow solo and vocal by Buffy Sainte-Marie) 2:32
7. Harry Flowers 4:00
8. Memo from Turner (Vocal by Mick Jagger) 4:02
9. The Hashishin (Mouth bow solo by Buffy Sainte-Marie; Dulcimer solo by Ry Cooder) 3:35
10. Wake Up, Niggers (Vocal by the Last Poets) 2:43
11. Poor White Hound Dog (Vocal by Merry Clayton) 2:45
12. Natural Magic 1:37
13. Turner’s Murder (Vocal by the Merry Clayton Singers) 4:15

Flickhead on Performance

Colin MacCabe on Performance

Mick Brown on Performance

Olé Ogier!

Top: Bulle Ogier
Above: Dianne Wiest, Stanislas Merhar, Ogier, Jane Birkin

Apparently one of those Either-You-Love-It-Or-Hate-It movies, Merci Docteur Rey! (2002) perturbed a lot of people going in with expectations. Though based on that title and its fascinating cast (Dianne Wiest, Jane Birkin, Bulle Ogier, Jerry Hall and Vanessa Redgrave), I’m not really sure how or why anyone would choose to have an expectation to begin with. A murder mystery intertwined with dysfunctional familial drama and screwball comedy, the picture threatens to derail at any given moment. And first-time writer/director Andrew Litvak hardly possesses the acumen to hold it all together.

    Which is where that cast comes in. Not that Litvak is entirely deficient—several of his situations are understated and flavorful and work rather well. But because the film is deliberately low-key and dependent on nuance and timing, it would’ve surely suffered in the care of a less seasoned group of actors. Stanislas Merhar plays the twentysomething son of opera diva Wiest, in Paris for a performance of Turandot. The story follows him after he witnesses a murder, moves in with psychiatric patient Birkin (who’s suffering the delusion of being Vanessa Redgrave), and sets up meetings with strange men through the gay personals.

    The film is as convoluted as that brief synopsis implies—given the wild improbabilities and homosexual themes, call it the Almodovar Syndrome—but hand it to Litvak for allowing Birkin and Ogier free reign to work on their pratfalls and double-takes. Birkin has enjoyed cult celebrity, first for her stint in Swinging London in the mid-‘60s, and then her artistic and romantic partnership with Serge Gainsbourg. (She also appeared, somewhat ethereal, as the artist’s diffident wife in Jacques Rivette’s La Belle noiseuse [1991].)

    But Ogier has slipped through the cracks, at least in America. She had good leading roles in films for Barbet Schroeder—La Vallée (1972), Maîtresse (1976), and the woefully overlooked Tricheurs (1984)—but has generally been relegated to brief, even thankless supporting parts, especially in recent years: Vénus beauté (institut) (Tonie Marshall, 1999), Au coeur du mensonge (Claude Chabrol, 1999), Bord de mer (Julie Lopes-Curval, 2002). Playing Delphine Seyrig’s alcoholic younger sister in The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972), she brought an impish humor that complimented Buñuel’s sarcastic wit, one of the first hints of her comedic expertise.

    As comedies continue to stray further from convention, opting for the broadest possible humor in exaggerated situations, the pictures become less accessible to general tastes. For example, there were people who recommended the recent Dodgeball (2004), which struck me as utterly boring and worthless, until I hit the eject button on the DVD player after forty tortuous minutes. Fans of such things might have that same reaction to Merci Docteur Rey!, which I found to be one of the funnier and genuinely moving comedies to come out lately, even if many of its assets arrive by chance.

MP3: Puccini’s Nessun dorma by Luciano Pavarotti

Jane Birkin official site


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Who'll buy my yesterdays?

I made my first fanzine in 1968. It was a Xeroxed-and-stapled publication titled The Creature Journal, and dealt specifically with horror movies. Less than a decade later, I learned how to run a small printing press and began Magic Theater, which, a few years later, was professionally printed as Magick Theatre.

    I’m not sure if any copies of The Creature Journal still exist…I may have one copy each of three or four different editions packed away somewhere, and I recall that there were thirty or thirty-five editions in total (with an average “print run” of twenty-five copies apiece). And the first five Magic Theaters are rather scarce. (About ten years ago I saw the first issue selling at a convention for $125.00.) I printed about 500 copies of those, while issues six, seven and eight each had a print run of 5,000 copies. Before I moved away from New York, what stock I had left of these went to a fan/collector/dealer, leaving me with none to sell.

    If you want to see the covers of Magic(k) Theater(re) online, click here.

Chicken and vinegar

That’s Sandrine Bonnaire above, one of the dozens of excellent photo portraits by Patrick Aufauvre and Arnaud Baumann on display here.

A few weeks ago the book publisher sent me the galleys of Fan-Tan, the “new” novel by Marlon Brando and Donald Cammell. Due to hit the bookstores in early September, it’s under three hundred pages. Yet, I’m struggling. Brando was a fine actor. And Cammell, on the grounds of Performance alone, was a gifted filmmaker. But this novel…what a chore. Imagine sitting through a six-hour cut of The Appaloosa. I don’t know if I’ll ever get around to writing a review…

Finally out on DVD, Claude Chabrol’s Poulet au vinaigre (1985), under the title Cop au vin. Non-fans will probably be nonplussed, but I think that it’s a small treasure. Shot during one of his aesthetic dry spells, Chabrol collaborated with novelist Dominique Roulet to bring her detective character, Inspecteur Jean Lavardin, to the screen. Made in the era of Columbo and Murder, She Wrote, Poulet au vinaigre comes complete with a terrific cast (including Stéphane Audran, Michel Bouquet, the stunning Pauline Lafont, and Chabrol regulars Henri Attal and Dominique Zardi) and assorted movie references (Psycho and Ten Days’ Wonder especially). As usual, the director couldn’t care less about the story, the mystery or the MacGuffin. He just loves watching people consume food…and each other. Jean Poiret plays Lavardin, a vile response to Peter Falk and Angela Lansbury, a man with no regard for civil rights or search warrants, who believes that hostility will get him the answers he needs. Yes, this movie is a comedy…maybe.

Haight is love

Jack Nicholson, Susan Strasberg and Dean Stockwell

Music from
Psych-Out
By The Strawberry Alarm Clock

The Pretty Song
(via Mr. Barf)

Incense and Peppermints

Rainy Day Mushroom Pillow

Richard Rush’s Psych-Out (1968) was filmed partly on location in San Francisco’s Haight/Ashbury district in the midst of 1967’s Summer of Love, and producer Dick Clark (yes, that Dick Clark) anted up the purple haze by gathering such flower-power ensembles as the Strawberry Alarm Clock and Sky Saxon with the Seeds for the soundtrack. It was one of the handful of pictures churned out after Roger Corman’s The Trip (1967) opened a transitory market for psychedelic exploitation, Nehru jackets, groovy boots, beads, hash pipes and rolling papers.

    In a screenplay by the one-shot-wonder team of E. Hunter Willett and Betty Ulius, its tale of a deaf runaway (Susan Strasberg) searching for her spiritually-challenged brother, “The Seeker” (Bruce Dern), is chock-full of perceptive character silhouettes. From the coffee houses and galleries to crash pads and be-ins, we encounter the giggling burn-out (Max Julien, one toke over the line when proclaiming “Owsley is a saint!”), the beads-and-sandals realist (underrated b-movie player Adam Roarke), a capitalist-in-denial with control issues (pony-tailed Jack Nicholson as “Stoney”), a jittery poster artist (Henry Jaglom, taking a circular saw to his wrist during a lysergic meltdown), and the cosmic intellectual (an absolutely mesmerizing Dean Stockwell, one step ahead of “the plastic hassle”). Even the police, er, uh, pigs are represented, headed by a young Garry Marshall who sighs, “I can’t wait until this costume party is over!”

    Although it pokes fun at outmoded racist attitudes (“You sho’ do gots rhythm,” Nicholson winks at the black Julien), Psych-Out is sexually archaic, confusing “free love” with the Playboy philosophy. Its female characters are intrusive, helpless mannequins when not lusted after by Stoney’s trippy troupe. (They’re a rock band called Mumblin’ Jim aiming to get a gig at ‘the Ballroom.’) So aggravated by their games, Strasberg downs an oversized batch of STP and blows her mind while standing alone in the middle of traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge—a memorable slice of hippie noir.

Dean Stockwell not in Psych-Out (click to enlarge)

    In an interview in American Film magazine during the release of The Stunt Man (1980), Rush reflected on his years with American International Pictures (the distributor of Psych-Out and most of Corman’s work), observing the knack that Roger had for breathing life into genres, but gave himself credit for making better, or perhaps more coherent, pictures. (I haven’t read that interview in years, so please forgive my paraphrasing from memory.) While Psych-Out is competently made, it still lacks the ambition and drive which motivates The Trip, a noble, albeit flawed, attempt to recreate an hallucinatory acid experience. And it’s mostly out of nostalgia do I consider Psych-Out something of a necessity. I’ve fond memories of seeing it in the late ‘70s in San Francisco, at the Strand Theatre on Market Street, just a few miles from where it was shot, and a rare opportunity to experience those effervescent Lazslo Kovacs images in crisp 35mm on a big screen.

    Flash forward to the late ‘90s, and MGM Home Video pairs Psych-Out with The Trip on a double feature DVD, complete with interviews with Corman, Rush, Kovacs, and Dern, trailers, and a Corman commentary (on The Trip). In terms of print quality, Corman’s picture looks alright (the sound is slightly low), but Psych-Out is a shocking disappointment. The source material used for the DVD is not only scratched in the last reel, but it’s cut by nearly seven minutes. Among the missing items: Max Julien’s line about Owsley; Strasberg’s amusing thrift store fashion show; and at least half of Pandora’s (I.F. Jefferson) bead segment, a Kovacs hand-held tour-de-force. Luckily, I never scrapped my original VHS copy. It may not be widescreen, but it hasn’t been trimmed, either.


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Never mind the bollocks

Its title French slang for “balls” or testicles, Bertrand Blier’s Les Valseuses (1974) arrived in America as Going Places, and that image above was once an inescapable presence in magazines, newspapers, subways and urban streets, thanks to an aggressive ad campaign by Cinema V, its original distributor in the States.

    I’ve shown the film to several people over the years, and the common reaction has floated anywhere between null and void. Blier’s subversion of genre, the deliberate evasion of melodrama from situations such as rape, assault, suicide and vandalism, appears to dash most viewer expectations. In short, they just don’t know what to make of it.

    Blier reserves moralizing when handling violence and depression, and that disturbs people more than the unsavory acts unfolding on the surface. Morality is a slippery slope, and I’d like to think that Blier crafts his scenarios from a realistic understanding of attitudes and values. If anything, he consciously jabs and punctures the male ego and libido—something honed to raw perfection in Calmos (1976), Get Out Your Handkerchiefs (1978), and his creative spin on Lolita, Beau-père (1981). From the opening scenes in Going Places of Patrick Dewaere pushing Gérard Depardieu around in a shopping cart, chasing a woman out of lustful boredom; to their frustration in working Miou-Miou to her “rightful” orgasm, Blier interprets masculinity as a tediously high-maintenance façade, down to the matching threads they wear.

    The quaint acoustic styling of jazz violinist Stéphane Grapelli used to score the film provides a perfect counterbalance. It’s a brief, quiet and lovely soundtrack, reflecting the humanity and tenderness habitually rejected by Dewaere’s and Depardieu’s characters. You can hear it below:

Gérard Depardieu, Miou-Miou and Patrick Dewaere (click to enlarge)

Les Valseuses
Music by Stéphane Grapelli

1. Ballade (Thème Principal) 4:11
2. Jeanne 1:48
3. Rolls 2:51
4. Jeanne [Version 2] 1:58
5. Poursuite 2:33
6. Rolls [Version 2] 1:18
7. Ballade (Générique de Fin) 3:49

Stéphane Grapelli (violin)
Maurice Vander (piano, organ)
Philippe Catherine (guitar)
Marc Hemmeler (piano)
Guy Pedersen (bass)
Daniel Humair (drums)
(Tracks will no longer be available seven days after posting)


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Buy the soundtrack at Amazon

“Julie Andrews!”

Many moons ago, when Flickhead was knee-high to a psilocybin mushroom, an ounce of decent boo went for under forty dollars and speedy, jaw-chattering acid was there for the taking. We spent a lot of time smoking and tripping at the Uniondale Mini-Cinema, a Long Island haven for bored and spoiled bourgeois brats “experimenting” on a paisley and patchouli plateau. You could smoke weed and drink beer or wine inside the theatre, a public service to keep us off of the streets. They showed a steady diet of revivals, foreign films, eight-hour marathons starting at midnight…and we referred to the bearded, pony-tailed societal dropout ticket-taker as “the face that launched a thousand trips.”

    Bills changed twice a week: on Wednesdays (rock concert movies, “head” and cult stuff like El Topo or The Harder They Come) and Sundays (imports, “art” movies like Tropic of Cancer, or “serious” revivals like a block of James Dean). Back then, all of the theatres changed their programs on Wednesdays. That way they could generate some word of mouth for the weekend trade. When the movies turned to shit, they began opening on Friday to avoid word of mouth, and hoped that the public would fall for those costly promotional campaigns that continue to hypnotize the lemmings to this day.

Raquel Welch as Lillian Lust (click to enlarge)

    On one weekend afternoon in 1974 or ‘75, we took in a matinee of Stanley Donen’s Bedazzled (1967)…it may have been playing with Polanski’s Repulsion for all I know. The Mini-Cinema programming ran in that direction. My friend Nelhydrea was eager to see Bedazzled—I’d never heard of it. I’d never heard of Stanley Donen or Peter Cook or Dudley Moore. Nor was I cognizant of its creative spin on Faust among short order cooks and waitresses toiling on the fringe of Swinging London, and the hipster Mephistopheles in tea-shades. Nelhydrea had been going on about the outrageous soundtrack by Moore, then a few years shy of his mainstream breakthrough via Arthur and 10. It’s strange to recall a time—when was it? three hundred years ago?—when every third or fourth month brought with it a new Dudley Moore movie.

    Today I’ve hardly an ounce of objectivity when it comes to Bedazzled. Yes, I know that it’s dated…not too terribly, though. And a lot of it really isn’t all that funny. Well, maybe it’s a little funny. But I still have a fond memory of that screening thirty years ago, of cracking up when George couldn’t raspberry through his little fly lips, of my throbbing astonishment over Raquel Welch, and my respect for this movie that had the chops to hire Eleanor Bron, the woefully neglected comedic actress who was “a dead-eye shot, shooting” in Help!

    (Just for the record, Bedazzled—the real one, not the counterfeit with Brendon Fraser—is criminally unavailable on DVD.)

Music from Bedazzled (mp3):

Bedazzled (Vocal by Peter Cook)

Love Me (Vocal by Dudley Moore)

These two songs were downloaded from The Peter Cook Appreciation Society. If anyone can send Flickhead the rest of the soundtrack (which is no longer for sale), we’d be forever in your debt!

When the blitzkrieg raged and the bodies stank

Made for television in 1968, shelved and then released on video twenty-eight years later in 1996, The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus finally found its way to DVD in 2004. I’ve held off on watching it, as rumors of its mediocrity have been regrettably persuasive. Clocking in at a brisk, viewer-friendly sixty-three minutes, it’s a joyfully compelling document of the acid generation—that dark patch of drugged youth so completely beyond Hollywood’s manufacture and the media’s stunted hippie fantasy—back when trim, frail bodies and glassy eyes were de rigueur, and the music tried valiantly to evade the status quo.

    Staged before a live studio audience costumed in capes and hats recalling the wardrobe of Jacques Demy’s Pied Piper, Mick Jagger appears with his hair dyed black for Donald Cammell & Nicolas Roeg’s Performance. He and Keith Richards (donning an eye patch and puffing on a stogie) introduce a handful of attractions: fire eaters, high-wire acrobats, and an eclectic assortment of musical acts, including Taj Mahal, Jethro Tull, The Who, Marianne Faithfull, and John Lennon’s Dirty Mac, complete with Yoko Ono caterwauling her way into some private apocalypse.

    Set on a tiny stage just barely sufficient to accommodate the bands, the songs are a varied bunch, ranging from Taj Mahal’s R&B rendition of “Ain’t That a Lot of Love” to Faithfull’s short but eloquent “Something Better.” Flanked by Richards and Eric Clapton, Lennon does “Yer Blues” in a version fairly faithful to the Beatles original. Never one for Jethro Tull (their appeal eluded me back in the day), I was pleasantly surprised by “Song for Jeffrey,” both for the tune and Ian Anderson’s schizzy charisma, as well as its extended close-ups of an obviously trashed Jesse Ed Davis. (Once a renowned session guitarist, Davis died at the age of forty-four of a “suspected” drug overdose).

    Jeff Stein’s film on The Who, The Kids Are Alright (1979), featured their unedited performance of “A Quick One While He’s Away” from Rock and Roll Circus, and it was always a highpoint of that excellent documentary. The song’s power and raw vitality hasn’t diminished at all. Fans and critics have expressed their lack of enthusiasm for Roger Daltry as the band’s front man, but here he’s mostly in the shadow of guitarist Pete Townshend and drummer Keith Moon. Moon is an especially compelling presence, tossing drums over his shoulder once they’ve outlived their usefulness, or drilling away in a heavy mist of sweat, his merry dark eyes forever embroiled in mischief.

    For years there were rumors that the Stones shelved Rock and Roll Circus because of The Who’s domineering tour-de-force, but this seems like a fannish exaggeration. The five Stones numbers are good (“Jumpin’ Jack Flash”) or better (“You Can’t Always Get What You Want”), with “Sympathy for the Devil” affording a chance to savor the potent lyrics, and “No Expectations” a glimpse of a beautiful moment shared between Keith Richards and Brian Jones. The latter overdosed shortly after filming, one of the first larger-than-life casualties of the so-called counterculture.

    Despite the wonderful set by The Who, John Lennon’s comical bits between numbers, and the overall spirit of collectivism, Rock and Roll Circus is clearly Mick Jagger’s show. His small but commanding frame takes charge of the evening, especially when he’s singing directly to the camera. The grin and the penetrating stare are alarming, inviting, threatening, seductive and all-knowing—qualities befitting a truly great performer. If anyone under the age of thirty-five gets it, however, I’d be stunned.

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