Wonderwall [1968)

When the whole world tells you you’re worthless.

You stupid insomniac.

In your room.

Samuel Beckett goes here.

Jack MacGowran.

Penny Lane played by Jane Birkin.

The object of your desire.

Gallagher brothers.

Holes.

Dug by little moles.

To fill the Albert Hall.

Rear Window.

Peeping tom.

Stop hoovering.

Frittering.

Vacuum cleaner solo.

Concerto.

Metropolis.

Squat house.

Low doors.

hygge

Psycho.

Lime green is actually apple green.

Corps.

cores.

Magritte.

mod lang.

Directed by Joe Massot.

Not bad.

Song Remains the Same.

Makes sense.

Surreal.

Strange career.

Pallenberg.

Keith and George.

This soundtrack long with me.

Through me.

Pakistani.

Bangladesh.

Only way to get deeper.

Remember what you saw.

Fixing a hole.

Where the rain gets in.

The Nutty Professor.

 

-PD

Twin Peaks “May the Giant Be With You” [1990)

For instance, I could tell you that George Hunter White

of the CIA

killed the first Secretary of Defense

James Forrestal

and I might be right.

Or I might be wrong.

Because the method was the same as for Dr. Frank Olson.

THrown from a high window.

Ruled a suicide.

Think about that for a second…

What kind of precedent would that set?

That the first SecDef was whacked.

They say Hobe Sound, but do they mean Jupiter Island?

This will all sound incredibly boring if you don’t know about Frank Olson.

Fort Detrick.

Slipped some acid.

Not very nice.  To experiment on a government employee.  And a medical doctor (to boot).

It is the ridiculous dance of death.

Staggering, staggering, walking like an Egyptian.

Boots and coke.

We don’t remember the label.

We just remember the Boni & Liveright colophon.

Propaganda.

Sophocles, tragedian.  Bernays.  Pure evil.

That’s the big question of Twin Peaks as season two kicks off.

Does evil exist?

Science doesn’t allow such.

But if anyone can convince us, it’s David Lynch.

Never a more awkward television episode than this.

A hulking oddity.

Beautiful!

As Ajax sits in the diner eating a piece of huckleberry pie.

Particularly fresh.  And particularly…  That’s classified.

Takes a long time to die from such a wound.

Dr. No says just a stupid cop.

With the stolen painting.

Hank Worden destroys television.

Turned on its head.

The most beautiful destruction.

Of the shallowest medium.

Montana.  Stanford.  White hair.

J. Geils?

And then Boban Marjanović makes his appearance.

Bohemian Club Moloch David Gergen.

Diane…

I would like to make love to a beautiful woman.

For whom I feel genuine tenderness.

tendresse

THe most longwinded rephrasing of “I am Spartacus” in the history of OSINT.

He was chopping wood INSIDE?

Wait a minute…

He was chopping wood INSIDE??

Miguel Ferrer is priceless 🙂

He is the dialectic.

A show having a conversation with itself.

Predicting the incredulous urban take on yokel homespun rerun.

Mask of Ivan IV’s comrade.

Dancing to await the unfolding of a plot.

Coy joy.

Spider bite at Paranormal Activity.

Slow news day?

Mairzy Doats comin’ thro’ the rye.

Tells Samuel Beckett to leave it in.  The interjection.  [offstage]

Same hair.  And Warhol.

The evil is grease.

And Donna’s all Double Indemnity.

Exploding genres à la James Monaco à la François Truffaut.

As bathetic as Wayne’s World.

Genre explodes.

And no author.

Just Army of God (thanks to FBI curation).

Curare cure air.  Volare.  Hugh Laurie?

Silence of the Lambs got in a little late with Buffalo Bill.

But right on the heels of BOB.

And the psyop B.o.B.

Felt good to burn.

But most touching is Mendelssohn.

SS.

Camera bobbing up and down like ROman Polanski’s buoy.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 2

Carol Reed would have been ruined with such attendance.

But still the theme.

The credits are worse.

No late-period Godard waterfall slow-motion on Boyle and Fenn names.

The most terrifying moment in U.S. television history.

 

-PD

SNL Season 1 Episode 24 [1976)

Good God…I made it to the end!

Of Season 1…

Why?

Why do we have this completist urge?

I could proffer myself as a communications historian.

A sociologist.

The anthropology of television.

But really the truth is that I needed something to watch…to take my mind off things.

And so it’s been a good ride.  Season 1 in the bag.

And it ends on a high note.

Kris Kristofferson.

I had seen him in a dismal picture called Chelsea Walls.

Good God…Ethan Hawke really bungled that offering.

And so for the longest time I thought Kristofferson was merely a hack “character actor”.

I knew his history.

Brownsville boy…Rhodes Scholar.

I’d even heard some of his music.

Always struck me as third-rate outlaw country.

But this episode of Saturday Night Lives changes my opinion of him forever.

The show starts with a song/skit.

Kristofferson sings “Help Me Make It Through the Night”.

As Chevy Chase fumbles with the ribbon in the hair of his lover, Kris just keeps on singing right through.

I’ve rarely heard a more soulful rendition of a song.

Later, Kristofferson sings “I’ve Got a Life of My Own”.

It is a revelation!

Looking for a way to lose these lonesome blues now that Neil Young quit Spotify?

Well, look no further than ol’ Kris.

The band…(not The Band, but close)…  Kris’ band here.  So good!!!

“I’ve Got a Life of My Own” is a glory cry.  I may not have a great life, but I have a life.

I have a beard and long hair.  Or I have a mustache and a buzz cut.

Life ain’t glamorous down on the Rio Grande border.  Nor in San Antonio.

Doug Sahm is dead.

But Kris lives on.

What a great injection of American music here.  You think you don’t like country music?

Give this chap a try.  And when I say he was a Rhodes Scholar, I am dead serious.

This, of course, gives him an intellect to pair with his easiness at being on stage (from his performing career).

What I mean to say is that Kris Kristofferson is a better host than just about anybody on the first season of Saturday Night Live.

You need him to be a gynecologist opposite Jane Curtin?  No problem.

Need him to be John Belushi’s foil in “Samurai General Practitioner”?  Done!

[That skit, by the way, is the comedic highlight of the show.  Belushi was beginning to approach godlike stature with his samurai character.]

Rita Coolidge is generally stiff on her one solo number (“Hula Hoop”), but having Kristofferson’s band makes the song persuasive.  And the closing surprise is indescribably cute (thanks to Gilda Radner and Laraine Newman).

Chevy Chase is great as always as Gerald Ford.

And Dan Aykroyd was starting to come along by this point as Jimmy Carter.

Though Garrett Morris only gets a few spots, he’s awesome as Jesse Owens and Andrew Young.

Don Pardo (the announcer of the show) gets a more “visible” role in this episode by way of the Samuel Beckett spoof “Waiting for Pardo”.  It is a masterpiece!  [And it makes me wonder whether Kristofferson was allowed to do some writing…perhaps this skit?]

Immanuel Kant, watchmaker.  Spinoza luggage.  All of the Price Is Right interjections by Pardo are for products ostensibly produced by famous philosophers.  Pretty witty stuff!

So there you have it…

I highly recommend this episode!

 

-PD

SNL Season 1 Episode 16 [1976)

I started writing about TV ostensibly as reportage on this medium relative to cinema.

With this particular episode of Saturday Night Live, the two converge in a unique way.

The host is Anthony Perkins.

Cinephiles will probably know him as Norman Bates from Hitchcock’s indispensable Psycho (1960).

Really, this is a remarkable installment of SNL.

Perkins actually delivers a sort of anti-monologue.

In another unnamed scene, he acts as a psychologist who relies on the power of show tunes (specifically “Hello, Dolly!”) to cure a hopeless case (Jane Curtin).

Perkins is magnificent throughout this odd marriage of the disposable and the timeless.

But we must also mention Chevy Chase.

By this time, Chase was becoming the star of the show.

I almost feel bad for John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd (not to mention all the other talented players), but Chase lived up to the opportunity.

What is apparent in this particular show is that Chevy Chase was/is as talented an actor as Anthony Perkins.

I know that statement reeks of provocateuring, but I believe it to be true in several ways.

Namely, Chase was able to keep a straight face during some hilarious bits.  Put another way, it’s hard to be serious while evoking laughter.

We see Perkins have more trouble with it.  It’s not easy.  And so Chevy Chase has probably been unjustly maligned as a mediocre actor when the opposite is true.

Witness, for instance, the opening sequence of this March 13th airing.  It is highly-intelligent humor.  I could see Samuel Beckett getting a kick out of it.

And so the writers would get credit.  Yes, it is a brilliant concept.  The show had been toying with more-and-more self-referential humor.  Not to give too much away, but the first skit is the equivalent of writing music ABOUT MUSIC!

I’ve done it.  Truly, it takes a damaged soul to end up at such a twisted place.

And so thank God for Saturday Night Live…these outcasts and miscreants who gave the world a laugh starting in 1975.

They were always surprising.  That’s the key.  Even with the trademark “fall” at the beginning of the show.  Something in each episode is astounding.  Cutting-edge.  Leading-edge.  Bleeding-edge.

This show is no different.  What a masterstroke to pair Anthony Perkins with Betty Carter.

At first, I was thinking Betty Davis.  I mean, come on:  this was 1976!

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Betty Carter is magical here (particularly on her first number).

I’ve never been into jazz vocalists.  I know the big names.  Ella Fitzgerald.  Sarah Vaughan.

They never did anything for me.

I hate to admit that.

I can listen to instrumental jazz all day.  It is divine!

Indeed, the only jazz vocalist who mattered to me was Billie Holiday.  Particularly her last album Lady in Satin.

But Betty Carter is something different.

It’s real.  Bebop VOCALS.  Not a bunch of showoff scat singing.

Betty Carter sang like a horn player.

Saxophone…Coltrane.

When she locked down on a note she held it…like it was keyed in her blood.

What breath control!

It’s real stuff.

If you want to hear a little bit of New York in the 70s, here’s a bit of jazz to do any place proud.

Carter was from Flint, Michigan, but she sounds right at home broadcasting from the biggest stage in the world.

There’s TV, and then there’s SNL.

 

-PD

The Party [1968)

This is the holy grail of awkward.  For all us misfits, all us loners, all us wallflowers:  this is the glory of being a loser.  Sellers may have been better in Being There, but this is his most perfect film.

The name Hrundi V. Bakshi is to outcasts what Humbert Humbert is to perverts.  Sellers plays Bakshi in such a painfully ill-at-ease way that we just wanna give the guy a hug.  If you are looking for the fount from which sprang Napoleon Dynamite, this is it.

Hrundi says the wrong thing…at the wrong time…always.  Except for this one night when a beautiful starlet (ill-suited to such a vacuous profession) sees in him the spark which makes life worth living.

Bakshi may be a man of impeccable manners, but he is honest to the core.  However, he is prodigious when it comes to “stepping in it.”  From the very outset of the party, he must extricate himself from the first of many delicate situations.  It’s not easy being Hrundi.

Yes, Mr. Bakshi just wasn’t meant for this world.  He is like the dodo bird.  His heart is too pure and he is green in all but the Hindustani language.  Some might yell “racism” at Sellers in brown face, but it is really a very respectable portrait of an Indian man with great humility through and through.

There are few movies I enjoy watching more than this one.  Samuel Beckett never concocted a situation equal to the artful absurdity which Blake Edwards here captured on screen.

And so three cheers for Hrundi…and may all of us Bakshis find our Claudine Longets.  Birdie num num!

 

-PD