Ask The A.V. Club - February 15, 2008
The
Wide Divide
The
other day, my wife was watching a True Hollywood Story or something similar about
Elvis. I made a disgruntled grunt as I passed by. A lively debate ensued about
his quality as a musician. I normally have no problem with people disagreeing
with me on subjective matters, but I can't get over the combination of her
Elvis worship (we have an Elvis Christmas-tree ornament about five inches in
diameter) and her utter ambivalence toward The Beatles.
I
figure our diverging opinions on this result from our parents. Hers love Elvis.
Mine like The Beatles. Hers were born in the late '40s and raised in highly
religious homes. Mine were born in the early '50s and weren't quite so religious. Do
their tastes, and thus ours, spring from those environmental differences?
I
guess I just see Elvis as Britney Spears plus underwear. He was a performer, a
pop star. I know this was recently covered, but all his big hits were others'
creations. His music styles varied from gospel to country to rockabilly. Wow.
He called J. Edgar Hoover "the greatest living American." He volunteered his
"services" to Nixon and the FBI to combat the "evils" of drugs while on his way
toward pickling himself in prescription meds. He said The Beatles were largely
to blame for the wayward direction of American youth. Then he literally crapped
out at 42.
The
Beatles, on the other hand, were musicians. Even Ringo wrote a few songs. They
took risks, experimenting with their music (and LSD) to try and create
something unique. While The Beatles were preaching peace and tolerance and
trying to expand the limits of music and minds, Elvis was playing with loaded
guns and expanding only his pharmaceutical hoard and his waistline.
BB
The
suspicious-minded Keith Phipps has a response:
Did
you ever watch the deleted scenes on the Pulp Fiction DVD?
Take a couple of minutes and watch this one. You can skip past Tarantino's
yammering to about the 3:45 mark:
I could leave you with that as the answer, since
its dualistic way of looking at the world works better than you think. Or I
could just take apart the logic of your argument. Sure, Elvis' private life and
opinions could be embarrassing, especially in those later years. But if we
follow your logic, we'd have to say that "Penny Lane" sucks because Paul
McCartney lent his art to an insurance company. It just doesn't add up.
You lay out a pretty good explanation as to why
you and your wife might have the preferences you do. Me, I grew up with parents
old enough to consider both Elvis and The Beatles wild and ungodly. Maybe
coming into rock music as something of a blank slate is why I love them both.
But that's neither here nor there. I don't have to tell you why The Beatles
matter, and I'll probably never talk you into liking Elvis. You either feel it or you
don't. But the reasons you cite for not liking Elvis don't add up. "His music
styles varied from gospel to country to rockabilly." Well, sort of. But it's
the weird hybrid of country and R&B; called rock 'n' roll that he defined,
even though he didn't invent it. Elvis singing "Blue Moon Of Kentucky" in
Memphis' Sun Studios like it had never been sung before is something of a
musical miracle, a convergence of traditions that were floating around a singular
place, looking for the right man to give them voice. And doing so was as huge a
risk as anything The Beatles ever attempted. Elvis could have conformed to one
of the day's popular styles, but he didn't. And from that decision, a whole
style of music came to dominate popular culture.
Elvis' genius was interpretive. Most professional
singers at the time were interpreters, not originators. He didn't write his own
songs, but neither did Frank Sinatra. Pre-Beatles and Bob Dylan, there was a
much clearer division of labor in the music industry, and no one thought less
of a performer for not taking the pen in hand. Sometimes just giving life to
what's on the page is enough.
Like I said, I can't argue you into appreciating
Elvis. But I can leave you with a song. Here's The King covering "Hey Jude"
with passion and pathos that Paul McCartney probably never imagined:
The White Elephant Graveyard
It's that time of year where aspiring
filmmakers bring their movies to festivals like Sundance in hopes of getting
them picked up and released by studios, big and small. However, not all of
these films get picked up for distribution, even when they have major stars in
them. A recent example that stands out is Hounddog, which is best known as the
film with the Dakota Fanning rape scene. There was a fair amount of buzz when
this premièred at Sundance in 2007, but I haven't heard from it since. What
happens to these movies that weren't lucky enough to get scooped up in a major
distribution deal for millions of dollars? Are they destined to gather dust on
a disillusioned filmmaker's shelf forever, or are there other ways to get these
films out there for the public to see?
Steve
Nathan Rabin has a poetic response:
You ask a good question. What happens to the
theatrical dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester
like a sore and then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar
over—like a syrupy sweet? Is cable distribution somehow involved? How
about ancillary and foreign markets? And what does Langston Hughes have to do
with it anyway?
Obviously, a big, flashy theatrical release
augmented by a full-on advertising blitz is the goal of just about every plucky
filmmaker, independent or otherwise. But that's becoming a less realistic
option, giving the spiraling costs of theatrical distribution and marketing. So
more and more films and filmmakers are finding other ways to reach audiences.
Self-proclaimed "low-budg" specialist/grating
jackass Ed Burns recently made (very small) headlines when his 2007 directorial
effort Purple Violets became the first film to première exclusively via iTunes.
Other films are sold to cable channels or overseas distributors, or released
direct to DVD. For films that are skipped over at various film festivals while
the belles of the ball go home with those feisty Weinstein brothers and that
dashing James Schamus fella, niche cable
channels like IFC or Sundance can provide invaluable exposure. There's also On
Demand and Pay-Per-View.
There's still a bit of a stigma attached to films
that go direct-to-DVD, but it's growing weaker by the day, and studios learned
long that there are huge paydays in cranking out cheap direct-to-DVD sequels
and prequels to sturdy franchises like the Land Before Time and American Pie movies. At The A.V.
Club,
we've been offered a lot more interview opportunities in connection with DVD
releases as of late, a sign perhaps of the DVD market's ever-increasing power
and influence.
As you accurately surmised, some unsold
film-festival fare has to wait years for a theatrical or DVD release. I
recently reviewed Alan Rudolph's Investigating Sex, which was filmed in 2001
but was only released on DVD about a month and a half ago under the title Intimate
Affairs, even
though the cast includes Nick Nolte, Terrence Howard, Julie Delpy, Neve
Campbell, and Dermot Mulroney.
There are countless reasons worthy and unworthy
films go unseen for so long. Legal rights are often involved, and production
and distribution companies have an unfortunate way of going out of business,
sometimes sabotaging their films' theatrical dreams in the process.
Then there's the curious case of Crispin Glover,
who uses the big paychecks he picks up from soul-crushing gigs like Epic
Movie to
fund wildly personal, almost comically uncommercial films, which he then
travels the country with. David Lynch self-released his 2006 film Inland
Empire, while
cult filmmaker William Richert released his director's cut of the 1988 film A
Night In The Life Of Jimmy Reardon on his website, under the title Aren't You Even
Gonna Kiss Me Goodbye?
Some unreleased films border on legendary,
particularly Jerry Lewis' The Day The Clown Cried, a much-buzzed-about
Holocaust drama filmed in the early '70s but unreleased for legal reasons.
Other prominent fare that has never and perhaps will never receive a proper
domestic theatrical release includes Deadhead Miles, a Terrence Malick-written
'70s stoner comedy starring Alan Arkin, and The Brave, Johnny Depp's 1997
directorial debut.
So there are lots of different ways for films to
be seen without theatrical distribution. You might just end up seeing Hounddog on cable
or at a video store one magical afternoon, even if it skips the multiplexes
altogether.
From The Short-Lived Era Of 3-D-sploitation…
Sometime during the mid/early '80s, my cousin
and I were watching TV when a trailer for a movie came on. The only
thing I remember is that the trailer shows people sitting in a movie theater,
and all of the audience members are wearing 3D glasses. A member of the
audience says something, and, hearing him, one of the actors in the movie they
are watching reaches out from the screen and punches the guy the audience. I
remember my cousin and I thought this was hilarious and spent the rest of the
day quoting whatever the hell it was that the audience member had said. I know
I haven't given you much to work with, but do you have any idea what this movie
might be?
Adam Cocco
Noel Murray ducks and answers:
Adam, I remember this trailer myself. It's for Comin'
At Ya!,
an Italian-produced 1981 comic Western that helped revive 3D movies for a few
years in the early '80s. I never saw the movie—mainly because it was
rated R, and I was 11 at the time—but the general consensus is that it's
a crude, violent exploitation picture with decent 3D effects and nothing else
to recommend it. I couldn't find the trailer online, but please enjoy this
footage of the opening credits. (Glasses not included.)
The
Geek Squad Finds Love
There's
a lot of joking and carrying-on on The A.V. Club about all the writers being
geeks. And yet most if not all of you appear to be married or otherwise
attached. The question is, how did a bunch of nerds end up with someone to
cuddle/discuss the films of Robert Altman with on V-Day? Please feel free to include
any advice and erotic stories you have in your answer.
The AMOROUS Joe11
Tasha Robinson feels perfectly free to include
erotic stories in her answer, she just isn't going to:
Oh, Joe11. (Or are you one of the fake Joe11s?
Sorry, you all look alike from here.) In a world where Elvis Costello and Billy
Joel have both had a string of hot wives, isn't the whole "How could a geek
possibly end up in a relationship?" question pretty passé? You do know that
geeks come in both genders and all sexualities, right? That they don't all look
and act like the cartoony spazzes in Revenge Of The Nerds? And that it's possible
to be a geek—i.e. someone who knows and/or cares way more than average
about something, from indie-rock bands to comic books to Simpsons references—without
being the kind of socially repulsive geek who talks about nothing but that
interest, turns every conversation toward that interest, and displays
overwhelming contempt for people who don't share that interest? (And just as
often for those who do, but don't have the "right" opinions about things.)
The fact is, while we're all pop-culture
obsessives over here, and we wrote our inventory
of super-nerdy obsessions largely from experience and memory rather than from
Internet archeology, and we sit around the office cracking weird
jokes about obscure artists and arguing about all the places where our tastes
differ (I still say Knocked Up is overrated, Scott), we're also perfectly
capable of socializing and dating. We met our significant others in the usual
ways—in college, through friends, through mutual interests, in at least
one case through a dating website. In most cases, we're in relationships with
people who are also "geeky," and who share our fiddly little interests. (If
anything, my boyfriend is a bigger film buff than I am; while I'm at home
writing reviews, he's likely in the basement watching a movie.) But also in
most cases, we have, y'know, three-dimensional personalities, and we don't
necessarily need to talk music and film and books all day at work and then go
home and do it again, leaving no room in our lives for other things.
So do we have advice for geeks who want to be in
relationships? Sure, and it's the same advice we'd offer to anybody: Don't be
an asshole. Having strongly held, precisely detailed opinions on Yasujiro Ozu or Badly Drawn Boy or Brian Michael Bendis
isn't the problem. Forcing them on people who didn't ask, or sneering at those
who disagree or don't care, is a problem. Being able to hold forth for hours on
end about the ups and downs of the last five seasons of The Simpsons, but not having any idea who's running for president? Also
a problem. So develop diverse interests. Become comfortable discussing them in
non-strident ways, as though the fate of the earth does not actually ride on
who's right about whether The Big Lebowski is the Coen brothers' best film or their worst. Don't forget to bathe
regularly and brush your teeth once in a while. And stop thinking that being a
geek is a bad thing in and of itself. It isn't, and it certainly isn't a
relationship deal-killer. Being an unsocialized jerk is the problem.
Next week: A paucity of Welles, a
question of order, and another round of Stumped! Send your questions to
[email protected].