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Under-Stated Portrait of Genius and Loneliness

Mark Weston — Sun, 06 Oct 2019 15:26:03 +0000

Under-Stated Portrait of Genius and Loneliness Mark Weston October 6, 2019 - 11:26

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It could have been an over-the-top disaster. Or a cheeky send-up. It could have been a snooze. Instead, it is a devastatingly under-stated portrait of genius and loneliness.

What stays with you in Renee Zellweger's fearless embodiment of Judy Garland in "Judy" is the eyes - the fire that burns in them when she is on stage in front of an adoring (or at times not-so-adoring audience) and the weariness in them when she is not. What the film and that performance do is something quite unexpected, they peel away the star trappings and reveal the fragile person inside. And that is quite unlike most biopics that bounce off the glassy surface of their celebrity. Here, the camera is unmercifully close to the eyes of its subject, and lingers there. And we experience the emotional injuries, the terrible loneliness and the harrowing fear of what it is like to be an icon.

You will hear a lot about how this is an Oscar worthy performance by Zellweger. But what most critics won't tell you - focused too much on the horse-race handicapping of the award - is why. The why is in the bravery of a performance that is so vulnerable as to be an open wound. Yes there are moments of thrilling triumph in the London stage performances, but they are no match for the pain of watching Renee/Judy pluckishly trying to overcome a broken life in full view of a tabloid world.

Judy Garland was not a great singer, a great dancer, a great actor or a great beauty. What she had was a great big heart. And when she sang that big heart of hers was full to bursting with raw emotion -- thrilling and exhausting and completely devoid of artifice. And Zellweger uncannily captures this -- the raw genius that fueled Judy's stardom.

Other parts of the film are not as successful, falling into many of the traps of the celebrity biopic, with incomplete relationships, ancillary characters and too much pop psychology. But these are quibbles next to Renee Zellweger's career-defining performance. It's in those gorgeous eyes. Those haunting, gorgeous eyes.

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Battle of the Tepid!

Mark Weston — Thu, 05 Oct 2017 14:27:19 +0000

Battle of the Tepid! Mark Weston October 5, 2017 - 10:27

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There should be a disclaimer at the beginning of Battle of the Sexes: "This story is based -- loosely -- on real people and events."

Rather than telling the actual story of Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean King, and depicting their characters with something approaching authenticity and depth, the film is as two-dimensional as if it were Battle of the Sexes: The LEGGO Movie. It is like watching a top tennis player get an easy overhead smash and dump it in the net -- or swing wildly and miss it entirely.

It's a GREAT story that deserves a far better telling. 55 year-old former world #1 Bobby Riggs challenges 29 year-old and current world #1 Billie Jean King to a $100,000 tennis match, in a circus atmosphere hyped as pitting women's lib against male chauvinism. But of course its real purpose was to make money, and bundles of it, for ABC (which aired it live) for the Astrodome (where it was played) for the mob (which had a handsome payday from gamblers around the country) and, last but certainly not least, for tennis (and especially women's tennis) which saw an explosion in popularity that still echoes to this day.

Billie Jean King remains one of the greatest women athletes of all time. Not only did she have enormous physical gifts, but she was fierce and intimidating on the court, like a predatory animal. You don't win 39 Grand Slam titles, give the middle finger to the patriarchal tennis establishment and lead a revolution by being ordinary and mediocre. But, as portrayed by Emma Stone, this fictional version of the still-living Billie Jean King is ordinary -- fragile, submissive and unsure-of-herself. In this film, tennis is no more than a hobby for Billie Jean who spends most of her time mooning like a gawky, love-struck teenager over her hairdresser. Their breathless, sentimental lesbian affair is the center-piece of Battle of the Sexes and prompts some of the worst, most treacly movie dialogue this side of Love Story.

And then there's Bobby Riggs -- one of sports greatest hustlers -- who the filmmakers seem to take at clownish face value, making them (and us) dupes of his hustle. But Riggs (Steve Carell) was only a clown when it suited his con to be a clown. The film centers on a cartoony depiction of Riggs' marriage to his sterile heiress wife (Elizabeth Shue) while making no mention of the fact that Riggs (an addicted gambler) was into the mob for hundreds of thousands of dollars of gambling debts which could only be satisfied by throwing the match against King.

Great athletes are great for a reason -- talent, hard work, steely commitment to winning -- and Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs were the best in the world. But that's something this flaccid movie has no interest in showing. Neither ever plays tennis. It's the equivalent of making a movie about Michael Jordan that refuses to show him dominating on the basketball court.

The result is a slightly entertaining rom/com that cheapens the real lives of everyone involved, not just Billie Jean and Bobby, but Bill Tilden, Rosie Casals, Margaret Court, (fashion designer) Ted Tinling and tennis itself. In some ways it is more of a circus than the circus it chronicles. My recommendation? You're better off looking on eBay for the dusty old videocassette, microwaving some popcorn and watching the original ABC broadcast.

Family Jewels

Dusty Wright — Tue, 17 Dec 2013 18:32:47 +0000

Family Jewels Dusty Wright December 17, 2013 - 13:32

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Saving Mr. Banks (Disney)

How many of you remember Walt Disney and Tinkerbell's opening every Sunday night on his primetime television show? That director John Lee Hancock (The Blind Side) recreates that magical moment is just one of the many small charms in this wonderful movie. Award-winning actors taking on American's greatest children's entertainment advocate seems a delicious proposition. And it is. This is the story of Walt's (Tom Hanks) -- he preferred that everyone refer to each other by their first names on his studio lot -- relentless pursuit (20 years!) of Mrs. P.L. Travers's (Emma Thompson) much-beloved literary classic Mary Poppins.

Director Hancock seamlessly threads two plots together: the trials and tribulations of the backstage Hollywood drama of creating the film version of Mary Poppins, and the Australian-based melodrama of Mrs. Travers's childhood with her loving but tragically alcoholic father "Ginty" Goth, portrayed by the charismatic Colin Farrell. When Hanks and Thompson spar with each other, we forget what is truly at stake and is really the tragic center. When the young Travers witnesses her inebriated father embarrass himself in front of his boss, family, and fellow countrymen, you'll feel the young girl's pain and humiliation.

Some of the more magical moments occur when Travers finally agrees to Disney's demands, as long as it's not a musical, and the real friction and backstage dramatic comedy comes to life, including her seemingly endless nitpicking and torture with the Disney songwriting team of Richard and Robert Sherman -- wonderfully portrayed by Jason Schwartzman and B. J. Novak -- and the screenwriter Don DaGardi (Bradley Whitford).

And stick around for the end credits as you'll get to hear some of the actual taped transcripts of the sparing sessions with Team Disney. I wanted to hear more!

This must-see movie is for Disney and non-Disney fans alike.

Angels Sing

The holidays can be extremely difficult for many of us. For protagonist Harry Connick, Jr.'s character Michael Walker, his emotional wound runs way deep, and the holidays only leave him exposed and vulnerable. He has purposely built a wall around his heart. A decent family man with a loving family around him, he tries but he can not shake the self-loathing contempt he feels for Christmas.

Certainly, many of us have felt a little irritated, or exposed to painful holiday memories that we care not relive. They can force us to examine ourselves and those family members we may hold in contempt, even when we care not hold ourselves accountable. And so it is with this indie holiday movie classic based on Austin's actor/writer/philanthropist Turk Pipkin's life-affirming novella When Angels Sing.

A top-notch cast shares the billing with Connick, including Kris Kristofferson as Connick's father, Willie Nelson as the wise ol' sage with just a hint of magic dust to sprinkle on the proceedings, his faithful but concerned wife, Susan, played by Connie Britton (ABC's Nashville, Friday Night Lights), and scene-stealing turns by the affable but eccentric neighbor Lyle Lovett in hideous holiday sweaters galore, plus cameos from musicians Marcia Ball, Ray Benson, Charlie Sexton, Dale Watson, et al.

Even if you are just a casual fan of the Austin music scene, you will be blown away by the performances of her favorite sons and daughters. I wasn't aware at the time of the screening that director Tim McCanlies decided to add musical performances to the narrative. A very wise choice as it lends so much charm to this tale of healing. And now you'll get to hear them share some of those holiday tunes digitally on the official soundtrack that was released today.

Add Angels Sing to your Christmas viewing pleasure this year. You and your family will be glad you did. (Purchase it on Amazon today.)

Blessings to you and yours during the Holidays.

A Warhol Knight Rises

Brandon Judell — Sun, 09 Sep 2012 10:57:46 +0000

A Warhol Knight Rises Brandon Judell September 9, 2012 - 06:57

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Taylor Mead, the love child of Bette Davis and Peter Lorre, is one of the truly great comic geniuses of underground films, theater, poetry, cabaret, and cable TV of the Sixties and beyond. He was and is still quite hilarious, even if just stumbling down an East Village Street by himself, his traipse being a sort of Danse Macabre as envisioned by Pee Wee Herman.

An Andy Warhol Superstar, possibly best known for his hysterical "gunslinger" in Lonesome Cowboys, Mead’s brilliance never shined brighter than when he took on the title role in Michael McClure’s outrageous off-off-Broadway play, Spider Rabbit, in which he essayed a bunny who adored eating human brains.

But Taylor didn't need a lead role to be unforgettable. In Rosa von Praunheim's documentary Tally Brown New York, the constantly morphing star stole his scenes from Ms. Brown, who was no slouch herself when it came to commanding attention.

Acting aside, Taylor's poetry is often wit to the nth degree -- or near-wit to the nth degree. His On Amphetamine and in Europe: Excerpts from the Anonymous Diary of a New York Youth (1968), includes such aphorisms as:

"Oh shit -- I'm a mistake."

"Let us take the horn by the bulls."

"Morons -- right!? What have they got to give me?"

he says to Jack Micheline -- "how come I never heard of you?"

Micheline said -- "with the politics in this world, how you gonna hear of many beautiful people?"

"Your swish is my command."

Then in his chapbook Son of Andy Warhol (1986), there's:

"In my field I'm the best!

And I don’t know what that field is!! ??"

"The world is not made up of Taylor Meads!"

"I prefer to be a dilettante than successful."

"I think

Fame is

Almost over."

And so forth.

Now the relentlessly surprising cultural institution Anthology Film Archives is honoring this mad thespian/poet with two programs featuring the cable TV episodes he starred in in the 1970s along with such lionesses of hipness as Candy Darling, Tinkerbelle, and Nancy North (Sept. 19, 2012). All were directed rather loosely by Anton Perich, who’s avowed in the program notes, "At that time TV was still the last taboo of the good taste, artists didn’t touch it yet, so we introduced dirty language and dirty pictures into the American living rooms."

I guess Mr. Perich got a headstart on Robin Byrd by a year or two.

The results of this artistic rambunctiousness, at least the ones I've viewed, are rambling, improvisational comedies that feature an unrestrained Mead flaunting his deranged gay sexuality while portraying a wide range of genders, ethnicities, and mental states that seem to have been permanently impaired by too many drugs and too much firewater.

In The Aging Rock Star (1973, 30 minutes, B&W), a gaggle of “ladies” and one highly cute gent all try to seduce Mead's retired songster, who claims he only has $500,000 of the $6 million dollars he earned at the height of his career. Totally ad libbed, plot lines and facts keep getting confused as Candy Darling and others can't remember if they're one of Mead's wives or daughters. But it doesn’t matter when Mead intones, “I’m thinking of going back on speed . . ." and Darling responds, "Don't do that! It destroys all the vitamin C."

Some time passes and Darling notes for no reason at all that she was "the only blonde in darkest Africa," Mead, after sniffing a shoe, accuses her of murder, "You killed Wally Cox!"

Verbal mayhem ensues. For example, after being told he has varicose veins, Mead admits, "Drugs destroy your toenails." Then the game cast that also includes Darsea D'Wilde and Nancy North all break into song.

Washington Rasputin (1976, 38 minutes, washed-out color) is like a home movie about a family that isn’t your family, and you're ever so glad. Imagine these very kinfolk filming themselves staging a very bad play that runs ten times longer than it should, and just when you want to run out of the room to save your sanity, you discover you’re stuck to the sofa, you can’t shut your eyes, and your brain is seeping out of your ears. (Please note I’m only 18 minutes and two seconds into this feature so far.) The "plot" here revolves around Mead, who is still an aging rock star, one whose very wealthy relative, Washington Morgan Rasputin, has just died. Rasputin had changed his name to "Bobby Short" and apparently became a cult cabaret singer.

We first meet Mead and his gaggle of female cousins, including Tinkerbelle, as they are deciding how to break up the Rasputin fortune. In the midst of this chatter, our deranged Smurf keeps leaving the set and returning as various women in Rasputin’s life (e.g. Elsie, the black maid; Granny).

There are several moments that might come off as uncomfortably racist, but I suspect they are unintentional. When you were ad libbing in the 1970s and possibly imbibing drinks and drugs, you never knew what would be coming out of your mouth, other than an occasional vomit. Apparently, the brazen Mr. Perich doesn’t believe in either editing or much supervising. Just turn on the camera and let the "fun" begin. The resulting chatter includes Mead inheriting a rubber sheet that winds up in the hands of David Hockney, poppers are compared to little corncobs, and Sikhs are said to be very well-endowed. We also learn that in countries that become overpopulated, "dingdongs get smaller." As Rasputin continues, we learn Picasso was the family gardener and Elvis was a cousin. Shortly, Moses, Citizen Kane, Barry Manilow, and Albert Schweitzer will get their due, too. Then the game cast all break into song, sometimes in German.

In The Great American Silent Movie (1971, 7 minutes, color), Mead plays a masturbating pervert who’s trying to get his head under Candy Darling's dress as she dances about glamourously. Taylor eventually picks his nose and drools before square dancing with Darling while Tiger Morse runs about in a huge purple scarf, denim hot pants, and high boots. This silent film shot at Max’s Kansas City showcases Mead’s unique physical talents. Imagine Chaplin playing John Gacy.

The Monster Kit (1974, 15 minutes, B&W) is a hilarious romp for at least half of its running time. Hector of the New York Athletic Club is trying to get the pot-bellied, totally misshapen Mead into some sort of fine fettle for Playgirl Magazine. As Mead moans, "I need the centerfold because my career is going down hill." Our star, bare-assed, starts off rolling back and forth across two pushed-together mattresses before the nicely biceped Hector walks on his back.

When Hector plays it straight as the muscular instructor, the laughs come quite naturally. But when the Latino stud starts overacting, there are one too many hams on the screen.

Then there's the onerous, anti-establishment Nixon Cambodia (1973, 38 minutes, B&W), which might be quite bearable to watch if you haven’t watched the other offerings I've already denoted in one sitting. If you have, though, it’s quite unbearable. Mead here plays Nixon and the once notoriously out-of-her-mind Martha Mitchell. Surrounded by laid-back folks you no doubt had to be stoned to enjoy, Mead resigns the presidency with: "I'm tossing the good life goodbye, and I'm going to step out and do the tooty-tooty and the rooty-tooty-tooty." This is followed by a fake Timex commercial, and then the game cast all break into song.

Ulysses and the Phantom (1973, 38 minutes, B&W) is a few baby steps more entertaining than the Nixon epic. Here Mead plays an insane ghost who sniffs shoes, plays with his navel, and warns the populace about “Jujubes flying down from Mars” and taking over the world. He’s apparently haunting a house with Tinkerbelle and the brunette Susan Blond while a heterosexual couple make out on a couch. A high point is when Mead does a pull up on a ladder rung. Then the game cast all break into song. - Brandon Judell

Marie Antoinette and The King of the Pigs

Brandon Judell — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 19:39:04 +0000

Marie Antoinette and The King of the Pigs Brandon Judell July 17, 2012 - 15:39

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Farewell, My Queen

Benoit Jaquot directed this opulent imagining of Marie Antoinette's last days, based upon Chantal Thomas's recent novel, with Diane Kruger as the rather self-centered, "lesbian" queen; Virginie Ledoyen as her lover Gabrielle de Poligrac; and Lea Seydoux as the monarch's slavishly faithful reader, Sidonie Labode.

It's through Sidonie's eyes that we view the majestic world of rustling silks, shimmering jewels, and rapturous rooms. And just as the golden splendor of a church can make you believe in the power of Christ, these furnishings cloud the servant's eyes into viewing her mistress as a faultless goddess whom it's an honor to service. Who need bother with what the rabble rants?

But as the Queen's hours ebb in number, a conflict arises between Sidonie's vision of what's occurring and Jacquot's laying bare of the actualities. For example, there's the gritty, odorous living conditions of the cowardly court and the royal attendants. Sidonie certainly doesn't get to brush her teeth or bathe each morning. Instead, she gargles and dabs herself with rose water. And then there's the Queen little kindnesses, such as soothing the young girl's mosquito bites. Are these acts of concern, seduction, or just manipulation?

Always fascinating in detail, Farewell will entice you to seek out your nearest world history textbook so you'll be better able to connect the dots of one of the world's most epic, brutal eras.

The King of Pigs

Unlike the porkers in Orwell's Animal Farm, the swine in this hard-hitting animation from South Korea are the underclass. The downtrodden. The dogs are the oppressors. The one percenters.

Director Yeun Sang-Ho, in a work inspired by his own childhood, first introduces us to two of his main characters in a manner not meant to draw much empathy. Kyung-Min is an in-debt businessman who has just slaughtered his wife. She sits open-eyed at the kitchen table while he showers off her blood. Across town, Jong-Suk Jung is a failed novelist and freelance writer who beats up his girlfriend in a jealous rage a few hours after his own boss has demeaned him. What do the duo have in common? And why are they now meeting?

Flashback to their youth 15 years ago and we soon discover how youthful innocence can be corrupted by societally approved bullying. Kyung-min, then a slight boy from a wealthy family, was constantly slapped about by his peers. Jong-Suk, his only friend, one day accidentally wore a girl's pair of Guess jeans to class, and was called a fag. Who would dare defend these underdogs? Only Chul Kim, a loose cannon who was abandoned by his father and whose mother subsequently became little more than a prostitute. His philosophy: "You need to be a monster if you don't want to keep living like a loser." So how does he toughen up his pals? He gets them to knife a stray cat, for starters. Well, how do you follow up that first act?

A searing depiction of Korean society as a bully's utopia, where "money only follows the rich,"The King of the Pigs is animated fare definitely not meant for children. Instead, it's a hard-hitting, never-less-than-engrossing, film noirish exercise that was screened in the Director's Fortnight section at Cannes this year and was also a highlight of the recently acclaimed New York Asian Film Festival at Lincoln Center. - Brandon Judell

My Week with Marilyn: Needy, Needier, Neediest

Brandon Judell — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 00:34:23 +0000

My Week with Marilyn: Needy, Needier, Neediest Brandon Judell November 15, 2011 - 19:34

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My Week with Marilyn is one of the most innocent of love stories to hit the movie screens in recent years, and one of the most satisfying.

It also a rather astute tale of filmmaking, specifically the shooting of The Prince and the Showgirl in 1957, an adaptation of a Terrence Rattigan stage comedy. The movie starred Marilyn Monroe at the height of her fame and Sir Laurence Olivier, who at age 50, was the world's most acclaimed Shakespearean actor -- or should we say, "aging Shakespearian actor and former matinee idol." He was also its director.

Not surprisingly, the idea of an Olivier/Monroe product was highly anticipated by filmgoers at the time, who could not conceptualize such a pairing. In fact, Philip K. Sheuer wrote in the Los Angeles Times, "It is hard to imagine movie fans wider apart than the followers of Miss Marilyn Monroe and of Sir Laurence Olivier, who are ordinarily separated by more than an ocean."

The plot is a rather simple one: In London, the Grandduke Charles, the prince-regent of Carpatha, finds himself attracted to a seemingly lowbrow American actress and summons her to his embassy for what he intends to be a single night of seamless merrymaking. The designated damsel, Elsie Marina, believes she's been invited to a respectable royal party. Each gets less than what he/she first expected -- and also more. Additionally, there's a royal subplot, but if you are really curious, watch the film.

A backstage peek at the making of that film is what My Week with Marilyn purports to be, and it succeeds grandly. Adrian Hodges's delicious screenplay is based upon a memoir by the upper-class Colin Clark (Eddie Redmayne), who, at age 23, wound up as a sort of a gopher on the set, having just graduated from college. Thanks to his youthful moxie that refused to believe a dream could not come true, he found himself being an intermediary between the warring Olivier (Kenneth Branagh) and Monroe (Michelle Williams), who practiced very different work ethics. Olivier worked and, well, Monroe wanted to work, but often found herself unable to do so thanks to a mixture of drugs, alcohol, an off-kilter marriage to playwright Arthur Miller, a miscarriage, unbridled insecurity, and her love/hate relationship with fame.

Colin soon found himself the love toy of Monroe, and even though he suspected such a relationship would go nowhere, he was too inexperienced with life to guard his heart.

With astute direction by the Brit Simon Curtis and bravura performances by all of the leads and the superlative supporting cast (which includes the like of Dame Judi Dench, Emma Watson, Derek Jacobi, Julia Ormond and Zoe Wanamaker), My Week is readymade for the awards season. Williams, especially, is due every Best Actress nomination that is being proffered this year. She doesn't mime Monroe, she embodies Monroe: all of her frailties, her naiveties, her veiled strengths, and her flirtations. She is never less than breathlessly breathtaking. If Williams weren't already a star, she'd now become one.

Before the Days of Answered Prayers

Robert Cochrane — Tue, 25 May 2010 09:48:18 +0000

Before the Days of Answered Prayers Robert Cochrane May 25, 2010 - 05:48

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Worried About the Boy

Some people were born to be sold, and George O'Dowd always seemed to have a price on his head -- one of his own making. He was one of the children of the revolution in dark corners, the bastard spawn of Bowie, that distant father-figure of difference who deserted those he had inspired, then returned to their gaudy playground to use them in his next chameleon project, namely his Ashes to Ashes video. The late '70s and early '80s revealed a legacy, and a need to challenge that has all but expired. The New Romantic era was the baroque riposte to punk's safety pins, and Boy George became its ambassador to a startled world.

Boy George was of working class Irish immigrant stock. His self-obsession, and the need and desire to manifest his difference, were notorious before fame came a-calling. The former hat check boy/girl at the Blitz became for the masses the genderless curio whose preference for a cup of tea over sex told the little girls and grannies what they needed to know. The boy reaped just what he wanted, and more. His life burnt to the dust of answered prayers.

He was the biggest pop star of his era; his rise to fall is a parable of the moment, revisited now in Worried About the Boy in these more liberal, and more pasteurized, times. The film of those early days visits the obvious, without being so. It is a confetti of cameos. Marilyn, George's squat-dwelling partner in gender-bending crime (Freddie Fox) appears as a fabulous ambiguity, a beauty that couldn't or wouldn't be denied, whose wisp of the will nature, bestows a sense of intoxicating and elusive enigma.

Mark Gatiss manifests wonderfully the malevolent, demented camp of Malcolm McLaren (part caustic Quentin Crisp, part Victorian dowager), who utilizes George lazily by unsuccessfully installing him in the briefly popular Bow Wow Wow, then disinterestedly dismissing the bauble from his miscreant court.

Steve Strange becomes an imperious zealot, the selector and banisher of the queue glittering and snaking along the street outside his subterranean kingdom; he is part Nero, part Caligula, and an act of sublime egomania captured by Marc Warren.

The unknown, seventeen-year-old Douglas Booth gives spirit and edge to George, the kid who wants to be a star much to the exasperation of his father, who does a pretty understanding job of not understanding, but caring. Francis Magee brings a wonderfully benign exasperation to the role of a man struggling with his feelings for a son whose nature he fails to comprehend. What emerges is a plethora of incidents that would reach far beyond even George's expectant ambitions. His ability to bed straight boys (first Kirk Brandon, then John Moss), made easier by the ambiguity of his appearance, and to have his heart broken in the process, betrays a contradiction, and vulnerability, that seems certain to end in the disaster that it always does.

Marilyn delivers a killer line of insight when George bemoans his ability to ensnare but never keep these straight boys, by firing back, "it's because you're so physically unattractive to gay men," which hits the heart of the conundrum without really soothing it. Matthew Horne brings a certain intensity to the role of Culture Club drummer Jon Moss, but the part is sadly underwritten. The contradiction of a nice heterosexual Jewish boy having a secret gay affair is never properly explored in the way the relationship with Kirk Brandon more realistically is. Boy George could, however, look after himself physically, if not emotionally, a point proved by his slugging an early object of his disappointment after finding him screwing a girl at the party he'd invited him to.

The film deals primarily with the rise, and doesn't touch on the madness of the success, but features the first fall from grace when, fired from the band, Boy George is holed up in his mansion, a mass of heroin denial, with the press waiting for any glimpse of his broken dream. The way the story ends means there could easily be a series of sequels, since the man the boy became has had several further fandangos with disaster, which suggest that the contradictions that drove him to succeed remain with him in its aftermath. The problem with the piece is that the audience is left with little sympathy to spare for the self-obsession of the central character. It is fascinating to watch, but not to empathize with.

Now, when success is hot-housed on American Idol, Britain's Got Talent, and X Factor, where being Michael Buble is something to aspire to, the sheer driven nature of the spirits of Boy George, Steve Strange, and Marilyn holds a sense of fervor, an integrity to shine through, by riding against the grain, a facet sadly absent in these more informed times. The spectral nature of their present lives as fading tidemarks of their decade is almost Proustian in its sadness. We now do not wait to be shocked. It is hard to imagine what would provoke the internet age to horror and confusion of the kind that Boy George's first Top of the Pops appearance generated, and that was only over "is it a boy or a girl"?

Worried About the Boy covers the same territory of the musical Taboo, George O' Dowd's own take on his youthful excesses. Tony Basgallop's script is powerful and affectionate, and has an energy and verve that covers its minor flaws. A trip down memory lane for those who were fans of the boy in his unusual finery, and also an education for those who only know of George from his recent media indiscretions and subsequent incarceration. It reminds one of a fading Polaroid sent to the digital era, and won't turn George O'Dowd into the Quentin Crisp of his time. Crisp was emerging from the shadows, and subsequently arrived without the trappings of stardom. This portrayal gives O'Dowd a youthful humanity that his older, more brazen self has seemingly lost, and is a timely reminder that although we are all more worldly wise, it not so long ago was not so, and therein lies an advance and a loss we all should ponder.

A Crippled Lyricism

Robert Cochrane — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 22:03:15 +0000

A Crippled Lyricism Robert Cochrane March 19, 2010 - 18:03

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Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll

By the time of his death in 2000, illness had once more had a transfigurative affect on the life of Ian Dury. Cancer, and the public knowledge of his impending absence from the world, turned him into a national treasure, the much-beloved rogue who had a magical turn of phrase. Mat Whitecross is no stranger to touchy subjects -- he proved that with Road to Guantanamo -- but Dury, notoriously cantankerous and volatile, is presented here in a warts-and-all cavalcade of chaos. He remains strangely lovable when many of his actions are not. The pace of the movie is as jagged and frenetic as one of Dury's frequent rages, but once it settles into a semi-narrative, the spirit of the man emerges. It is a white-knuckle ride of pathos and monstrosity.

What holds the proceedings together is Andy Serkis. His performance is never an impression, more a strange act of demonic possession. He veers from a socket-popping lunatic to a man of intense refinement and extreme vulnerability. That he is surrounded by an equally brilliant supporting cast allows the jagged flashback nature of the story to never derail.

The film is almost stolen by Bill Milner as Dury's son Baxter. Having Dury as an absent, unreliable father plays havoc with the boy's feelings. The pair had a chaotic relationship, and the films draws heavily on the repercussions of his father's fecklessness, and that of his supporting cast of miscreants and cronies. Naomie Harris is excellent as Denise, the composite girlfriend, a symbolic simplicity employed because there were so many, and Dury's inability to step away from his marriage is also drawn with sublime insight, aided by Olivia Williams in an achingly majestic performance as his wife Betty.

One of the major flaws of the film is its reliance on the myth Ian Dury made of himself. His middle-class roots are never dwelt upon, and his Art School background doesn't get a look in. His relationship with his posh mother, and her equally refined sisters, doesn't figure. although Ray Winstone makes an excellent cameo appearance as his father, Bill. Dury was as much of a construct as Tom Waits or Quentin Crisp, a man playing a part that eventually consumes the original person. The differences of class and intellect between his parents go a long way towards explaining his slavishly downward-mobile persona. Sadly this insight is never explored. What emerges from this juggling and omitting of certain truths is a strong sense of an angry, often spiteful man who played his friends and collaborators like a vengeful monarch, but whose gains were mostly short-lived, and to the detriment of his career.

When he flies into a rage over the mealy-mouthed objections of some flunky to his single "Spasticus Autisticus," made to promote the year of the disabled, he nails the disapproval by seething, "I didn't write it for walkie talkies!" The humiliations heaped upon Dury at school, his defiance over adversity, and his manic determination to succeed as an act of revenge, brought forth a man who was never at peace with himself or others.

This film is a bit of a glorious shambles, just like the man it so obviously, and justly, seeks to celebrate.

A Waif Astray

Robert Cochrane — Fri, 09 May 2008 17:31:11 +0000

A Waif Astray Robert Cochrane May 9, 2008 - 13:31

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Factory Girl Directed by George Hickenlooper (Weinstein Co. DVD)

The court of the silver-haired pied piper of the Factory has proved a substantial source of inspiration for movie-makers, through which Andy Warhol and his dubious darlings are reaping far more than his promised fifteen minutes of fame. Valerie Solanas and her SCUM gun, Basquiat and his designer dreads, Capote and his mewling mannerisms, and the long-promised story of the divinely beautiful Candy Darling are perfect examples of the lingering allure of trash and tragedy. It is no surprise that the latest trawl through the silver memories of the largely departed Warhol cavalcade is Factory Girl. Edie Sedgwick was the Massachusetts heiress with beguiling beauty and downwardly mobile aspirations who became Warhol's muse, and his only superstar to briefly deserve such a title.

A competent artist in her own right, after her move to New York in 1964 she gravitated towards the Warhol coterie like a trembling moth to his icy flame. A history of mental instability, the suicide of her beloved gay brother Minty, the bike-smash death of another, and her sexual abuse at the hands of her powerful, handsome, manic-depressive father meant Edie had enough emotional baggage to fit in.

She became an actress in Warhol's cheap movies, a constant bauble on his arm who mirrored his silver-haired exaggerated appearance, and he became her father, brother, and platonic companion.

Truman Capote once observed in Jean Stein's Edie, "Andy Warhol would like to have been Edie Sedgwick. He would like to have been a charming, well-born debutante from Boston. He would have liked to have been anybody except Andy Warhol."

Directed by George Hickenlooper (Dogtown), Factory Girl opens with Edie in the mental hospital looking back on the supposed halcyon days. As her story explodes like a million flash bulbs, she is all the legend maintains: sweet, intelligent, beautiful, and rich. The tale grows darker as Warhol becomes more distant. As Edie's doomed affair with a singer-songwriter (a composite character based on Bob Dylan) blossoms, it fuels Warhol's bitchy, insecure jealousy.

Sienna Miller brings a vivaciously vulnerable aspect to her portrayal of this doomed waif. Both her appearance and that of Guy Pearce as Warhol are wonderful studies, not in impersonation, but in becoming their subjects.

Pearce plays Warhol with a steely, diffident air of cold distraction. He has the faltering voice, the blotchy complexion, and the bitchy cattiness of a man who is not at home with himself, or with anybody else. He replaced Edie in the Factory with a poor look-alike, the sadly stupid Ingrid Superstar, who was never anything other than a joke whom Warhol mocked behind her back. This rebuttal crops up in the film. Ingrid von Scherven was to vanish off the face of the earth, after years of weight gain, mental illness, drug dealing, and prostitution.

As Ultra Violet relates in her fabulously gassy, missed opportunity autobiography Famous for Fifteen Minutes: "On December 7, 1986, she went to buy a pack of cigarettes and a newspaper, leaving her fur coat behind in the closet and her false teeth in the sink. She was never seen again."

A rather fitting end for a Warhol superstar. Edie spiral towards doom was more immediate. Her father, deploring her New York lifestyle, switched off the flow of dollars, while Andy, disapproving of her attempts at independence, cut her loose emotionally and then froze her out.

The movie deals well with Edie's implosion. The ultimate little lost rich girl is touchingly portrayed by Miller, who brings a rawness and intensity to the messy meltdown of her character. Warhol emerges as a voyeuristic user, and if his supposed autism is true, it is the only thing that would exonerate his clinical detachment.

Gore Vidal once called him "a born loser -- a window decorator type."

The film is really a series of vignettes, spliced and merged in the way that Warhol made his films. At times it can seem trite and superficial, but the strength of the two central roles leaves the audience with a sense of unease about Warhol, who was abusing a young woman who had been abused all her life. It makes you want to shake the deranged Valerie Solanas by the hand; even though what she did was wrong, one can't help feeling that she was justified in her actions.

The afore-mentioned Dylan composite, played with edgy verve by Hayden Christensen, neatly illuminates Warhol's vacuous blandishments. Although he always claimed to be superficial, it didn't stop him from feeling threatened when confronted with someone who wasn't. The film alludes to Warhol's jealousy over Edie's new, brief squeeze with a more credible talent as the reason for her expulsion from his cavalcade of trash.

Edie is now iconic: A touchstone for dissolute chic, a tragic figure that this film doesn't glamorize, a short, sad, fucked up miserable life that lasted only twenty-eight years. She deserves to be remembered, and will crop up more and more as the book and film industries rehash the Warhol myth.

There will be other Edie Sedgwick portrayals, and a confetti of Warhol cameos on film, but for now Sienna Miller has proved hers will be a hard act to follow. Poor little Edie, it could all have been so different, but you come away from this film with the sad realization that it was never, ever going to be.

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The Division of Joy Equals Control

Robert Cochrane — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 23:42:52 +0000

The Division of Joy Equals Control Robert Cochrane October 21, 2007 - 19:42

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Control by Anton Corbijn

A talk with Peter Hook, Mark Greenhalgh and John Robb at the Cornerhouse, Manchester on Friday, October 19, followed by a screening of the Ian Curtis biopic. It could have been three guys locked in music-related conversation in the Gay Traitor, the Hacienda's basement bar named after the spy Anthony Blunt (now seriously expensive apartments). It was, however, the tiny stage of Screen Two of Manchester's premiere arts cinema, the Cornerhouse, and these three had an audience.

One was an unlikely pop star, the second wanted to be one but became a writer, while the third should have been huge, had the perfect look, but never found the success of the first. Ladies and gentlemen, for one night only we are in the presence of Mr. Peter Hook, late of Joy Division and New Order, Mr. Matt Greenhalgh, screenwriter of Control, and Mr. John Robb, the face of Goldblade, and notable scribe on all things that rock and pop.

Peter Hook is the one member of Joy Division who seems most at home in discussing his now legendary past. He already had it dissected in Twenty Four Hour Party People, which Robb refers to as Carry On Manchester. He confesses that the Hacienda flick has left him with a sense of trepidation when entering foreign taxis. It played well across the world, and haunts him just for being from Manchester.

Greenhalgh's screenplay focuses attention on Hook's friend, the late Ian Curtis, his screenplay brought to flickering whites and grays by the respected Dutch rock photographer Anton Corbijn, a life-long fan, who moved primarily to England to photograph the band. It is a more involved and serious treatment of Hook's part in Manchester's rock pantheon, and in particular the short and turbulent life of their singer and lyricist. The three are here to discuss the past and the film, meandering down whatever turns the conversation takes.

Hook admits, "Joy Division was so easy. We were all in it together. An underestimation of the band is similar to an underestimation of Tony Wilson. With New Order, everything was more difficult, long and drawn out, because Ian wasn't there. He made writing lyrics seem like he'd had a lifetime of suffering and pain. It was all so short-lived, it didn't really leave a trace on our lives, and then we chose to ignore Joy Division and stand on our own two feet. We still carried on as if he was still there, not physically, but around. We were too young to address Ian's suicide."

Pop continues to eat itself with scant respect for the feelings of the living. But then, neither has Hook much such respect; in response to a reverential mention of Liam Gallagher by an audience member, Hook deadpans that you'd find a bus load of wankers like that in most parts of Manchester. He also decries the celebrity, make-it-big aspect of our current pop culture. "It makes it all seem easy. Too easy." You know that with Ian Curtis it wasn't easy, and came from a place most wannabes wouldn't care, nor have the capacity, to recognize.

The crowd is the usual mix of nostalgics. Those who were there and those who would have liked to have been present, the curious, the film buffs, and the inevitable guy at the front with questions that reveal more about his own pseudo-pretensions than any coherent response which they might elicit. Hook treats him with bemused contempt, but this merely proves to be petroleum to his folly. His questions are long-winded and annoying. He even answers his mobile phone as one question is being responded to. He is the one in every crowd.

Hook possesses a wry sense of irony concerning the film, especial disdain being reserved for the American film executive who suggested excitedly that Joy Division reform for the premiere. He also reflects that no matter how iconic things may appear with hindsight of three decades vintage, Joy Division played several gigs at which nobody showed.

He laments that Corbijn stripped Greenhalgh's original script of much of its Englishness, which "made it more international, giving it a wider, but more watered down appeal." He does, however, concede, "You can't play down the emotional impact of the film. He grabbed it by the short and curlies and got it done." It is easy to gauge from such responses that he feels the film is something of a mixed blessing.

He has sympathy for Deborah Curtis, on whose memoir of her husband Greenhalgh and Corbijn based Control. "Anton's perspective is an overview, whilst Debbie's is more personal and involved." He sardonically acknowledges that the film isn't called Control for nothing, and that the only way to be entirely satisfied with it would involve the making of your own.

Matt Greenhalgh reveals that he only really got to grips with Curtis when Anouk, Ian's Belgian lover, gracefully lent him the letters Curtis had written to her. These were haunting and from the heart. Two film treatments were in circulation at one time, but finally Greenhalgh's version made it through to production. He is fair and unassuming about the project and seems genuinely motivated by a desire to grasp whatever truths can be excised from what remains of past moments.

The evening was rambling and a little inconclusive. As soon as the discussion ended, Peter Hook grabbed his coat and exited before the final formalities could be observed. It was billed as a conversation with Matt Greehalgh, but it was more about Peter Hook. He had, after all, been there. Greenhalgh admitted that he hoped this would be his final event relating to the late Ian Curtis, but ghosts tend to linger in the lives of those that reanimate them, especially if that specter is of a fellow Mancunian.

Control is a strange collision between a European filmic sensibility and the dour kitchen sink dramas British cinema specialized in during the 1960s. It gives an evocative, if rather stylized, take on the grubbiness that was Manchester and Macclesfield as punk began to roar. The fact that it is shot exquisitely in black and white almost makes you believe that the past occurred in monochrome. This was the generation that lived in dead men's overcoats. The Seventies may have begun in glitter, but they staggered out in gray.

Ian Curtis comes across as an intense teenager, obsessed with Bowie and poetry. He is a contradiction of contrasts, a working class boy who voted for Thatcher and held down a job in the local benefits office. In this seemingly conventional life, there lurked an intense desire to stand out from the rest. His diagnosis with epilepsy, and the somewhat random efforts of the medical profession to secure the correct combination of pills, steered him further into darkness. Control was rapidly absenting itself from his life.

Corbijn's decision to cast the unknown Sam Riley in the lead role is as brave as it is understandable. He brings a brooding intensity to his portrayal. He looks like Curtis, he can sing like him, and has got his maniacal dancing down to a disturbingly fine art. It is to be commended that the actors portraying the band perform all the songs themselves. It removes that strange sense of air guitar from the proceedings, which normally destroys many rock movies. It also sounds flawlessly authentic. This is a film about music which transcends that particular genre.

As the performance develops, the strands that are unraveling around Curtis conspire and collude. He married young, and though Deborah obviously loved him (she is beautifully underplayed by Samanta Morton), his feelings appear to have fallen to a level of guilt and obligation. As his life became more successful and removed from her existence of motherhood in Macclesfield, it was inevitable that he would find a more alluring shoulder for his many sorrows. This came in the form of a Belgian rock journalist. The two women operate perfectly as externalized symbols of the conflict within Ian Curtis.

Deborah Curtis is not your average rock and roll widow, because she is precisely a perfectly ordinary person whose husband either always was, or gradually became, extraordinary. As Curtis flew between his wife and lover, this unstable individual rendered himself even more so. In the end his solution was suicide at home on the eve of the band's debut American tour. The strange and sad reality of films like this means they re-edit the past and become the current version. Corbijn has in some respects claimed her memories.

The usual cast of Manchester characters translates well beyond their geographical comfort zone. In that respect Corbijn shares something with Curtis. They could both take something rather ordinary and turn it into a statement that reaches out to a wider world. Sadly Ian Curtis, like the late-lamented Kurt Cobain, wasn't one for the pressures of fame, and fans can now refashion their expectations on photographs, pictures and songs. Corbijn has made a romantic film that doesn't avoid reality. Rarely has one sad souls anguish been so beautifully or sympathetically rendered.