Thoughts on Treasure Island and Factory Girl

Seemingly no connection on the surface, but, well, we’ll see about that. Since getting married, or, rather, slightly before, I’ve been on something of a nostalgia kick, perhaps exacerbated by the recent Transformers release and my subsequent discussions with my brothers about pop culture from our youth. Disney’s Treasure Island. This movie must have come out in 1950 or so, starring Bobby Driscoll as the young Jim Hawkins. This is the first movie I remember seeing, and it was captivating as a child, however campy it comes across now. There is still a genuine sense of danger as Hawkins is being chased around the soundstages and yells “one more step, Mr. Hands, and I’ll blow your brains out.” Beautiful stuff! The elements of good adventure stories are all there. The movie seems a little cliché now, the fight scenes don’t exactly stand the test of time, but I remember seeing the movie and reading the frayed leaflet book as a 12 year old. I wonder if the rum and the violence might be seen as a little too much for the Barney crowd these days. Don’t have a kid, so I don’t know. The unforgettable character from this version is, of course, Long John Silver, played by Robert Newton, who strikes the right balance between comforting and menacing. And he has huge eyes. “Them that dies’ll be the lucky ones” on close up. Classic. Not to get too heady, but there is also the substitute father figure thing going on in this movie, doctor on the one hand, Long John on the other, vying for the boy’s attention in some way? Vice and virtue? I don’t want to push this too far, but the father figure element is certainly there. (Is it just me or is the surrogate father/son thing all over these days? See any of the last few Scorsese movies? Maybe this is a recurring trope in all of Scorsese. What it is with artists and father issues?) Instrumental, of course, to the story, and to any children’s story is that the story turns on a crucial choice made by the child. The message has to be, for children to stay interested, that their choices matter, that choice is important, and that they can play a crucial role. This also lies at the heart of every Harry Potter movie: choice. I haven’t read the books, so I can’t speak there. In Treasure Island, Hawkins chooses to return to the ship and take it back from the pirates. He enters a dangerous situation for the greater good. Heroes are marked by courage, so when he does this, he gains the audience’s respect and sympathy. Potter is downright biblical in its repeated insistence on the responsibility of the individual to make moral choices through acts of self-sacrifice. I also noticed several rip-offs from this movie that would later find their way into Peter Pan, the map, the description of the map, some of the terminology, etc. What is perhaps less known is that Peter Pan was fully filmed with none other than Bobby Driscoll as Peter and then animators rotoscoped over the actors a la Ralph Bakshi. Here’s where is gets interesting, and begins to sound a little too Britney/Lohan. Already having an Academy Award fro Window before Treasure Island and Peter Pan, Driscoll made a few other films with Disney, hit puberty and then stopped getting roles. He got into speed and heroin, got married, had three kids, got divorced, ended up in New York in the mid 60’s, made one more movie in the factory or somewhere similar, and was finally found dead by two young girls alone in an abandoned tenement in Greenwich. Of Hollywood, he said, “they brought me in on a satin pillow and threw me out with the trash.” Or thereabouts. So what happened? Where was choice? Would things be different if only Bobby could go to Promises in Malibu? Did he, too, have father issues?
Edie Sedgwick most certainly did. At least that’s the argument the film advances the most. Perhaps molested by her father, taken advantage of by her substitute father/brother Andy Warhol, Sedgwick becomes a Holly Golightly-ish It girl in New York in the mid-60’s. The film is a little shallow in its portrayals, but serves as a starting point for people interested in the whole Factory/Chelsea Hotel scene of the 60’s.
I heard a lot growing up that “that’s what drugs do to you,” but of course the drugs are there for something else, to kill the pain, or postpone confronting the pain or internal spiritual lack. There’s always something else going on. At some point, you hope, an individual makes a choice, or recognizes that they live in community. While some truth needs to be confronted or acknowledged, it also needs to be moved past. What is the element that makes some people wiser and humbler through suffering, able to show compassion with others, while some are simply obliterated by it? If not Lindsay and Britney, then Judy Garland and Bobby Driscoll. What is that element that allows people to handle suffering in a mature way? Is it worse for child celebrities, cloaked as they are in a shallow, meaningless world, where everyone caters to them, but saps them as well? Are they unable to stay grounded? Sedgwick’s story is certainly tragic, and her father seemingly deserves much of the blame, but at what point do you make a choice? Interesting that both Driscoll from Treasure Island and Sedgwick didn’t survive the tumultuous 60’s. Both went to New York looking for a fresh start, both made their way through the eccentric circles of The Factory and experimental filmmaking. Both succumbed to their drug habits. Maybe the heroism lies in confrontation. Neither wanted to confront whatever it was that made them turn to drugs in the first place. Both wanted to forget, instead of confronting and somehow redeeming the suffering. Oh well, this is getting rambling and didactic. Two more movies left.

...And we're back

So I got married, and yes, congratulations are in order. But first, I have been backlogged in blogs with planning, and honeymoon, and what not, sooo, below are three or four new ones. enjoy.

...didn't even know it...

By the by, I got a little poem published in a newer Journal I’ve had a link to off to the right here for some time: Relief Journal. So have a look at the journal and maybe even order a copy of Issue 4. Support the arts wherever you happen to live. That’s my Public Service Announcement for the day…the more you know…

Oh, yeah, Summer Blockbuster

Let’s pause for a second. Earlier, I said these albums were my Summer blockbuster. Right now, imdb.com and everywhere else has the current top films (we now evaluate our best films based on how much money they make, some of them sucker punches, because we go, not based on word of mouth or critics, but based on a trailer, a short, easily manipulated artifact – think of the Star Wars Prequels, good trailers, crappy movies). Presumably, the list includes I now pronounce you Chuck and Larry, a presumably unfunny film which is getting by on hype, marketing, driven mostly be the star power of Adam Sandler (our generation’s Jerry Lewis?), and the trailer. The list will also include Harry Potter 5 - a franchise sequel, and Transformers, a souped-up, Michael Bay nostalgia cash-in, now that the kids from the 80’s finally have some disposable income. I’m not interested in whether these movies were good or bad (according to many, Harry Potter 5 is quite good and Transformers is at least a guilty pleasure – at best the best film of all time, even better than Top Gun), their relative merits as high or low art, the visceral effect they have, whatever. What I am interested in is the machine surrounding these films. While we’re shelling out our 12 bucks plus popcorn and drink (the main profit for theaters), we’re subjected to ads for new films in the theater (posters, trailers) and outside the theater, bus stop placards, overhead billboards, online (Stardust already feels ubiquitous and it’s not even close to the release date) Now, the artifact is not the point, I myself have Summer blockbusters in the form of four albums I was eagerly awaiting. The point is…well, pointlessness, consumption. The merry-go-round of contemporary marketing, its salvation narrative. We place salvific properties on movies, books, music, projecting our desire for transcendence. The release date comes, we consume, but already our eye is on the next big thing, and we have the same conversations surrounding these things. I liked it, I didn’t like it as much as I thought I would. Really? I thought it was good. That actress just isn’t believable for me in that role. I thought it was really well edited. Some college professor writes a book of Jungian interpretation of the author’s work and we feel stupid for not having seen it all along. But mostly, the conversations stay at the level of subjective personal taste and go little further. Why did we like it? What part of us did it speak to? I was just at Blockbuster video, walking past several movies that spoke to me: Little Children, Children of Men, The Golden Child (kidding), what did these stories mean to me? Was it two hours in an air-conditioned place and nothing else? Mindless consumption? Indulgence? Did it stir my passions, change anything about my life, and by extension, the world? Having said all that, I just picked up three friggin movies at Blockbuster. Why? Habit? Temporary reprieve from loneliness? Learned passivity. I’ve decided I’ve got to reflect after each film to make the event a significant one. So, we have something to look forward to.
In no particular order:
1. Factory Girl
2. Prairie Home Companion
3. Zodiac
4. Treasure Island (I lied, I rented four)

Music follow up/Summer Blockbuster

A while back I commented on a few albums I was excited about at the time:
1. the new Wilco Album
2. the new Ryan Adams Album
3. the new Josh Rouse Album
4. The new album by Jesse Malin (would it be insulting to call him Ryan Adams’ protégé?)

Anyway, the release dates for these have come and gone, and I am reminded of the cycle of consumption these days. Now, none of these albums are bad. None of them blow you out of the water, not exactly era-defining. Well, maybe, only time will tell. The Jesse Malin album is not bad, some rockable tracks here, some memorable lead guitar lines, about on par with his last album, maybe half a star less, if only for some of the re-tread. The new Wilco, I’ve heard bits and pieces, but haven’t gotten around to buying. This may or may not have to do with the fact that the bits and pieces didn’t blow me away enough to buy from itunes, or it may have to do with the fact that I wanted these albums on cd because my iradio hisses in the car and the local record store shut down (thanks a lot, downloaders), and I have to go way out of my way to buy CD’s, unless I want to shell out like 6 extra bucks at Borders, once I push and shove my way past all the Harry Potter types (more on that later). Things are complicated, as you can see.
First, as I listen to the singer-songwriter collection in itunes at the moment, I must say, it’s more fun to listen to this kind of music in a colder climate, something about soft acoustic music alleviates the bitter winter, or allows you to feel it more fully. But in spite of the prevalence of writers and musicians in this town, this sunshiney, happy-go-lucky, girls-in-Hollister, my-Bentley-is-bigger-than-yours-and-oh-my-God-the-Beaujolais-at-The-Little-Door-is-to-die-for crowd isn’t the most conducive to enjoying it. For example, I live in Pasadena. I love the album Say I am You by The Weepies. It takes me away to that special place. For some reason, when I listened to it at first, I thought of Seattle, or Portland, definitely the Pacific Northwest, nature, greenery, mountains, poetry, early sunsets, keeping warm against the cold, soft pink and gold sunsets, that sort of thing, only to find out they wrote they whole damn thing in, you guessed it, Pasadena. Oh well, that’ll teach me to be rooted in the here and now. (Ironically, today marks the release of Mandy Moore’s new album, which would otherwise be completely uninteresting news, if The Weepies hadn’t co-written 5 songs of the album with Mandy. I’m not sure how I feel about this yet. Does that make Mandy cool or The Weepies sell-outs? Hm, I’ll have to come back to this. Here’s hoping Dylan doesn’t co-write his next album with Ashlee Simpson. Maybe the Weepies were applying the John Ford moviemaking logic: one for them, one for me, one for them, one for me…or maybe they just really liked her in Saved. I’m sorry I can’t get over this.) Where was I?
Oh yeah, so anyway, these albums were to be my Summer blockbusters. Adams’ album gets a solid 4 out of 5, with two overly twangy, countrified, and frankly unlistenable songs knocking off one star. But besides those a strong album, maybe my favorite hangover album of the year. Not that I get hangovers. Ahem. Moving on. Jesse Malin gets a solid 3 and a half. Some good energy on the album. Obviously, I’ll have to go with an N/A on the Wilco album, somehow the vocals on the tracks I’ve heard don’t do it for me, not scratchy enough? I guess I’m still stuck on Summer Teeth and don’t want to let go. Which brings me to Josh Rouse. Josh, Josh, Josh. What happened? We can only infer. Like Ben Folds before him (Australia), Josh finds enlightenment on foreign shores. What happened exactly? These are the known facts. In 2003, little known indie musician drops what may have been the album of the decade (one guy’s opinion) called 1972. Taken with the previous Under The Cold Blue Stars and the successive Nashville, Joshy crafted a mini-oeuvre that could be in desert island top ten status. Really, they’re that good. What happens next? Allow me some conjecture here. Josh is a working musician, traveling the world, bringing British radio hosts to tears with his beautiful live renditions of his heart-rending songs, hobnobbing with celebs in Australia, yukking it up in Nashville. At some point, he tours Spain. The temperature’s right, the weed is good, the beer is cheap, maybe he loves “The Sun Also Rises” and fancies himself a Hemingway man, maybe he gets suckered into a time share talk, maybe he finds a local philly (Paz Suey?), maybe he thinks it’s neat how they lisp their ‘s’ sounds, as in “grathias, amigoth.” Whatever the case, he ditches Nashville for Spain. What follow is the lazily breathey offering “She’s Spanish, I’m American” and the subpar “Subtitulo,” which we should lovingly refer to as “Subparulo.” Not that either of them were bad, just not that great. And finally, Country Mouse, City House comes out. What’s a lazy introvert with most of this artist’s back catalog to do? Maybe it’s a timing thing, maybe I’ve come with unrealistic expectations, maybe I haven’t given the album a fair shake. I’m tempted to buy it on general principle, hey, it’s a Josh Rouse album. Then again, this might be strike three.

Reflections on Easy Riders, Raging Bulls

I confess, the other day I rented other films from Videotheque, the beautiful, amazing, slightly pretentious video shop (it’s the part of town, not the shop itself, perhaps, that’s pretentious). Movies are sorted by decade, or star, or director, and of course, new stuff. Extensive foreign and arthouse and indie selections. I got the entire Wire series up to this point from there. Good stuff. This time, I rented a film from the Great Writers collection: on Dostoevsky, distributed by Kultur, an educational company, from whom I purchased films on the Augustan, Romantic, and Victorian poets. Not a bad collection, readings, biographies, scholars discussing both the work and historical context. Informative, insightful. Buuuut, the Dostoevsky video, which has been on my amazon.com wishlist for some time, was little more than a shallow biographical overview with no insight from scholars, and a confusing timeline. Not worth the cellophane it was printed on. I also rented Burden of Dreams, after sitting at a pretentious gathering, during which someone kept yelling “Fitzcarraldo!” and asking if anyone had seen Rescue Dawn, responding a little too quickly and mysteriously that “He’s pretty much the only one doing much these days” (italics mine) “Fassbinder’s dead, Wim’s not doing much these days.” We can infer in between cigarette puffs that HE is Werner Herzog, even if we haven’t seen Fitzcarraldo or Rescue Dawn, we at least have heard of the silly commentary on Grizzly Man, or heard about how Joaquin Phoenix was pulled to safety after driving off the road in The Hills (the Hollywood Hills to you, that is). Sooo, slightly annoyed with the smug pretentiousness of the conversation, and slightly genuinely interested in a supposed classic of documentary filmmaking, I rented the film, which had overtones of Hearts of Darkness, but ultimately was a little annoying, although, like the other jungle filmmaking doc, Herzog sounds like Coppola when discussing the moviemaking process as a kind of ontological act, an existential one, without which these men might as well not exist, one that gives them not just meaning, but being. Maybe I’m a shallow person, but I lost interest as soon as the electrifying Jason Robards and quirky 80’s Mick Jagger dropped out of the project and were replaced by the extremely unattractive Klaus Kinski. The name Fitzcarraldo (derived from Fitzgerald), pronounced by the strong German guttural accent was like fingernails on a chalk board. I know I am skipping the trials of the filming process, the singular genius and determination of an obsessive-romantic and his artistic process and the metaphoric parallels between Fitzcarraldo and Herzog, but I just wasn’t into it. Not to mention it was getting later in the day and I had an appointment, and had to drop off the movies. But earlier I had watched the real gem of the bunch: Easy Riders – Raging Bulls. This was a great film, insightful into the shift from Big Studio Hollywood through the brief Auteur Era of the late 60’s early 70’s to the contemporary Blockbuster/Corporation-driven era, ushered in, ironically, by members of the auteur group – Steven Spielberg with Jaws and George Lucas with Star Wars. For those of us born in the late 70’s or early 80’s, we don’t really know any different. Anyway, hip to social change and representing the cream of new talent and in defiance of social conventions, a group of young directors took Hollywood by storm in the early seventies, Bogdanovich, Hopper, Scorsese, Lucas, Spielberg, Coppola, Peckinpah, Ashby. Most of these succumbed to their own excesses, either artistically or chemically. The ones that made it were the ones who stayed away from the rampant substance abuse of the era. But one impression I was left with was the mythologizing of previous eras, the sexual liberation, the drugs, the parties, the incestuous relationships, and sometimes, the tragedies, the camaraderie. It didn’t sound that much different from my experience going to a private High School. But we somehow imagine these people had crazy experiences untouched before or since. What was once revolutionary now seems commonplace. Anyway, Ashby and Peckinpah succumbed to their own “inner demons,” read immaturity and inability to stay away from drugs, which first was “fuel, then a crutch, then their addiction.” Ain’t that the way. I must say, I love Ashby’s humor. Bogdanovich seemed like a good guy who had a sense of entitlement and an immaturity when it came to relationship, always falling in love with his leading lady. Roman Polanski seemed like an opportunistic, self-important asshole. Scorsese seemed like a likable guy who’s a little too obsessive compulsive and liked cocaine a little too much, but thankfully had a good career. Hopper is Hopper, and could have made a lot of good films, I think, if he had been able to tone it down. The film is vague about Coppolla’s drug use, but hints that he burned out. Seriously, has he made anything worthwhile since the 70’s? Spielberg and Lucas were the film geeks who were more about the movies than the lifestyle. What happened to Lucas that he felt the need to Disney-fy his first trilogy in the re-releases, (note: Sy Snootles, if a little weird, was cool, understated, acceptable, while the CGI and over-the-top Joh Yowza (Joh freakin Yowza?!?) sucked and dragged the movie into Saturday morning cartoon-land...we should have known then the prequels would suck...but the trailers looked to so good. agh!) make them more ridiculous and kiddy, and then withdraw all the funds he had deposited in the culture’s bank account in three short strokes. With the prequels, you feel he has lost touch, the performances are wooden, the stories are clichés instead of fresh, you feel its more about trying out new filmmaking technologies than about making good films. Jar Jar? Dex’s Diner? The Vader-as-whiny-Wuss/Frankenstein scene? Say it ain’t so. Lucas himself said it best in the 80s – a special effect without a story is pretty boring thing. The tragic thing is that he could have had the pick of the litter in terms of screenwriters or directors for the whole thing. He went it alone, no one in his camp had the balls to tell him it sucked, and the ship sinks. The only ones in the whole group still making fresh, relevant material are Spielberg and Scorsese. Anyway, not a bad documentary.

Thich Nhat Hanh and Mindfulness

I believe it was Graham Ward who said something like “all contemporary experiences are based on economic exchange.” This is a kind of fatalistic (realistic?) appraisal of the totalizing effects of the market in contemporary society. As a sometime pseudo-Christian-monastic-Zen-Luddite myself, I sometimes imagine it is possible to escape from this reality, to exercise meditation, to take a small bath with a cold glass of water, a few candles, making sure I breathe diaphragmatically, embracing the here and now, cultivating imagination and compassion and what not, and then it occurs to me that the directions for meditation were given me in classes that cost $919 apiece per quarter, in a slew of books that, taken together, cost roughly $500, the odd freely downloaded podcast, the water costs money to run in the bath tub, the candles cost money, the bic lighter I used to light them with and fall into a brief despair, before thinking: screw it, I feel better and more connected to myself and the world after my breathing and smiling activates a few beta waves (a trivialized version of what takes place). I’m left thinking – is there anything wrong with that? Is it only wrong when the mind begins reducing everything to price tags for personal gain. Is the corporate profit motive, the military industrial complex the devil? (By the way, watched Sicko the other night, great movie, and made me nostalgic about my Frankfurt days) On marketplace today, they rattled off some figures, Texas Instruments’ numbers are down, a few other tech stocks are down, people are wary, only there were some big winners, guess who? Defense stocks and Drug stocks. Hm. Here I am reminded of my older brother becoming an evangelist for medication in the nineties, convinced that half of society had treatable, brain-chemistry based illnesses. Maybe society since Francis Bacon has a treatable, brainless-based illness. Or maybe since Adam. Where was I? Oh yeah, so, I remember hearing Thich Nhat Hanh’s voice on the Ethan Hawke Hamlet (not the best version, but some good moments, and hey, it’s Hamlet). I remember being transfixed by the voice. It’s played during the to be or not to be speech, and Thich Nhat Hanh added, “we also have ‘interbe,’ we are interconnected. We have mother father, brother, sister, but also earth, air, water, forests” or something like that. On a hunch I went to podcasts on itunes and looked up Thich Nhat Hanh, only to find yes, it is his voice, and yes, it is still transfixing, and he has wonderful truths to remind us about. His message is fairly simple, yet profound: a police chief from Wisconsin and an African American Baptist Minister from Ohio (?) were giving stories about how his teachings helped them. Essentially, he teaches mindfulness, bringing body and mind together through breathing and walking meditation. He teaches mindfulness workshops, speaking to all manner of groups. He’ll be at UCLA coming up for a Psychotherapy and Mindfulness Seminar, which I would love to afford. I also just went to Vroman’s, where there is always some display with Zen books and some purchasable doo-dads, like a portable zen garden or something. Coming back down the stairs from a bathroom break while studying, I saw a display on the very thing I spent a half hour researching online yesterday: A book with a CD and DVD for a mere $25, which I was very tempted to buy. Mind you, I have several books on meditation, but none by Thich Nhat Hanh, and none on walking meditation. This is something of a separate issue and one for which my wife recently gave me a half hour lecture over Shabu Shabu, I need to put into practice what I know. This is not new information, but somehow application comes difficult to me. I am simply full of excuses and perhaps lazier than most. Anyway, After spending $500 on fillings (the same day I watched Sicko, ironically), $140 on the GRE General and $130 on the GRE subject test, not to mention the $3.50 on a mocha, I chose not to purchase the item. Which brings us back to Graham Ward, if you follow me. Although I have decided to be more proactive in my relationship with the outside world. At no time did I feel more disconnected from society as grad school and college. Maybe it’s the transience of place in the academic experience, maybe my emotional life was always rooted in a different place, but now I listen to local radio, pay taxes, root for the local team. Pay some attention to local and national politics. I’m a citizen. As a citizen, I’m looking up poetry readings to go to for some mutual inspiration. There’s a local group that gets together for mindful meditation every Wednesday evening, cleverly called PasaDharma group. Now, in times past, these things seemed so esoteric, new age, sort of ‘out there’ as my parents might say. But in listening to Thich Nhat Hanh, in listening to Roshi Wendy Nakao (head abbot of the Los Angeles Zen Center), they have the ring of truth, they strike that balance between joyful expression and honesty, and humility, something I’m missing in my Christian communities these days. I also know of those who claim their turn toward zen helped them become more committed to their Christian walk. Of course, I also know those who left everything to move into the zen center, and drop acid to find all the lost heroes from past lives that still inhabit their soul. Sooo, we could go either way, it looks like.