Thoughts Upon The Demise Of A Poker Princess-Jessica Chastain’s “Molly’s Game” (2017)-A Film Review-Of Sorts

Thoughts Upon The Demise Of A Poker Princess-Jessica Chastain’s “Molly’s Game” (2017)-A Film Review-Of Sorts

DVD Review

By Sam Lowell, former film editor of American Left History and of the American Film Gazette now emeritus at the latter and a contributing reviewer at the former if anybody needs my credential, my professional CV if you like

Molly’s Game, starring Jessica Chastain, Idris Elba, Kevin Costner but he is only window dressing on this one because the former two carry this film, 2017

I am mad as hell and I am not going to take it anymore. Yes, I know that these are famous words that Peter Finch uttered to a sullen world back in the 1970s as a newscaster in the definitive film Network. They fit the occasion however since whatever ailed Brother Finch in those times has got me is a serious snit. As I made sure that I mentioned after my by-line space, a by-line that I have labored in the vineyards of the film industry, book industry too, hell, the art industry when I needed fast money to pay back alimony or the parcel of kids, nice kids, that my three ex-wives and I raised needed college money and until recently, very recently that designation had not been challenged, had not been sullied by young upstarts trying to make a name for themselves now that I am no longer reviewing on a daily basis-praise be.   

      

If the kids want war, hell, I am more than willing to oblige since we seem to have gone down the slippery slope away from social cohesion and not just of account of the Bozo who is running the asylum in Washington at the moment. Over the past few weeks two young, up and coming journalists, reviewers I guess they would call themselves and from what I have read of their reviews they may in fact have promising futures-if they ever get their facts right and maybe stop hanging on my old friend Seth Garth’s every word like it had come down from the mountain-have flat out attempted to besmirch, yes, besmirch is the only word that comes readily to mind my reputation. Everyone knows, or should know, should be assumed to know, that this review business, film, books, music, culture is a tough racket, is as one of the youngsters wrote a “dog eat dog” environment and I will admit, admit freely that when I was young and hungry I was as apt to try to cut up my competitors, hell, my fellow writers wherever I landed as anybody else-as long as I got my facts right. Just ask Seth Garth who still carries the scars from our battles as I do his.         

What these two writers, hell, what Sarah Lemoyne and subsequently young Will Bradley have been running around erroneously trying to sell a distracted public is that back in the day, back after I got my coveted by-line I started “mailing it in,” started having stringers, mostly young fresh females from one of the Seven Sisters colleges that Allan loved to hire to give the place some swag and some eye candy when there were mostly older guys writing their brains out here write my reviews for me. Still worse have accused me of, when desperate, taking whatever press releases the studio public relations departments were putting out, clipping off the tops and sending the rest off as my review so that I could keep drinking and cavorting with women which I freely admit I liked, still like to do-with one woman anyway. Will picked up on these Sarah comments and extended it to his view that while I indeed was the master of the film noir genre in my time after my major definitive book on the subject came out, a book which one and all, even these pups continue to recognize as the “go to” book on film noir I didn’t have a blessed original idea. Had gone the college professor route (and me without even a college degree to my name) and lived off that one big idea through a fistful of conferences, lectures and speaking engagements.

That last comment was what pretty much broke the camel’s back, no, that and the snide insinuation by Will that the only reason that I still was being published on a regular basis and syndicated a few places was that I had been the key vote that ejected my old friend Allan Jackson from the site manager position at this publication and that new manager Greg Green “owed” his job to my decisive intervention. Needless to say with all of that in the basket I immediately went to Greg and asked for the next available review so that I could respond to these wild and wooly children. In the interest of fairness Greg agreed (and not as I am sure will become the “real” reason among certain youngsters that I had “bought” him) and so I got this freaking suck-ass review of Molly’s Game about some smarty-pants ex-jock, played by comely Jessica Chastain, who landed on her feet for a while running on the cuff poker games for rich and famous Alpha males until she got caught in the “feds” bind,” got caught holding the bag. Everybody knows my thing is film noir and other older stuff but I had to take this stinker, well, not stinker because the acting is good and the story line is kind of interesting but who could really care about the trials and tribulations of some over-the-hill jock who couldn’t make the cut, ice-skating, no, I think it was free-form skiing something like that.

I will get to the damn thing in my own good time and still I have probably already given you enough of the “skinny,” the theme if you don’t know what skinny is for you to judge right now whether you want to spend a couple of hours watching the drama unfold. My long-time companion Laura Perkins who writes here occasionally loved it, maybe because of the strong acting by Jessica somebody who played Molly Bloom (yeah, everybody who is anybody except maybe Will and Sarah will gladly steal whatever they can from James Joyce even names named) but I got drowsy about half way through. Like I said this is about setting the record straight about my now besmirched career as about reviewing this baffling film. In any case since Greg has again in the interest of fairness told me that I will have another review to tackle Will Bradley’s allegations I am on the scent of one Sarah Lemoyne today who claimed in her cherished review of the original Star Wars episode from 1977 that she had researched her allegations about my so-called “mailing it in” practices. (Jesus was Greg serious giving that old tattered episode and series to her-hell I rejected doing it out of hand back then when I worked for the legendary Cal Clark over at the Gazette as so much wasted soda and popcorn on Pa’s credit card.)        

       

I accuse, yeah, like Emil Zola in anti-Semite Dreyfus times who one can also fruitfully steal from in a pinch. From what I can gather, and she should be shame-faced but probably won’t be if it is true, Sarah’s source for her accusations was, is one Leslie Dumont who after years at Women Today where she had a big and deserved by-line came back here to do occasional writing in her retirement. Hell, I was the one, along with her then boyfriend Josh Breslin (who in the now obligatory interest of transparency also writes here now), who got her to apply for that Women Today job when Allan Jackson was only taking care of good old boys and she was wasting her time as a stringer. A stringer for me on occasion.

Here is what Sarah didn’t bother to ask about, didn’t even probably have a clue to ask about since they don’t teach this kind of thing in those vaunted Seven Sisters and journalism graduate schools she attended is that despite her boyfriend Josh Leslie was “making a play for me.” Truth, ask her, ask Josh. I admit I asked Leslie to write a few pieces, maybe half a dozen, not a million like Sarah implied before I realized that she was interested in me romantically. I will further admit that in those days I was in an alcoholic/drug daze half the time along with half the guys on the staff, not Josh though, not that I remember. But then I was going through the last phases of my first divorce, was playing around and had no desire to upset any more apple-carts. Sarah, anybody looking for truth check it out. I prided myself on my reviews, saw my by-line not as a privilege but an obligation to do the best I could even under those hazes.

As for the allegations that I would take studio public relations department press releases and sent them to Allan as Sam’s pure gold. Sure I did that for some, some turkeys like The Return Of Godzilla, Sandy Dee Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, Benny’s Beach Blanket Bingo, stuff that should never have seen the light of day, stuff that any self-respecting journalist would take a flyer on. What Sarah forgot to ask Leslie, or Leslie “neglected” to mention was that everybody did it, everybody who saw a turkey and would rather face Satan himself in all his fire than have to write two words of original material on the damn thing. And that included Leslie when she went to Women Today. Ask her.  If that isn’t enough egg on your face for one day then come at me again. Yeah, this is a cutthroat business, always has been and always will be. Tell your boy Will I am coming for him next.          

Oh yeah, the film. Like I said not my cup of tea and maybe a little long-winded going through the legal process which Molly Bloom, the notorious poker princess, the notorious real-life poker princess according to the cover blurbs and the front end film introduction although I admit although I love games of chance, like the horse too I didn’t know who she was, had to face before a little rough justice. Not film noir rough justice with some avenging angel private detective clearing the way for her taking some slugs if necessary but a good and capable lawyer who gave as good and he got. Charlie Jaffey, played by Idris Elba. He measured up to Molly’s expectations of what she would have been like as a Harvard Law School lawyer if she hadn’t been waylaid by that whole mock skiing jock stuff which went bust before she could hop on the gravy train. Unemployed and unemployable since who wants snow bunnies who have given up the ghost of Olympic gold, have failed one way or another, to sell their skis and sneakers Molly heads to sunny LA to thaw out for a while.

She does a little of this and a little of that, cocktail waitress, the usual until she hits “pay-dirt” with a guy who has been running, implausibly given his dirt-bagging Molly, high stakes poker games with high profile entertainers and bankers with a taste for the wild side-and who can pay cash on the barrelhead for their table stakes losses. Things go along pretty well for a while and the bright and sharp Molly (she would have made a good lawyer no question one that most lawyers would not want to have to contest) learns the ins and out of the game. Too well for the grafter and he fired Molly but she lands on her feet starting her own LA operation which draws the old crowd in. Plus others recruited in various ways to keep a pool of players in stock, a smart move. Eventually Molly and her ringer top player known as Player X part ways and her operation sinks in LA. Some lessons learned, especially about keeping hands away from the pot, taking her cut which would have put her at legal risk.   

So far so good and Molly heads east to New York to start anew.

No question Molly is a beauty but already she had had  enough

sense to keep business and sex apart, didn’t get involved with the clientele which would do her no good. It is not clear since there is no romance in this thriller whether she cared about sex or was too consumed making the kale to give somebody a tumble. The clientele was probably driven more by beating high profile X, Y, or Z than sex so that could have been an angle. In New York she started to run her operation along the lines she set down in LA. But something changed, she made the biggest mistake of all in getting wrapped around a heavy drug regimen. Moreover her expansion plans went awry. Her judgement got clouded, for example, in New York City of all places, she let a guy named Boris, Yuli, Vladimir, or whatever show up with an off-hand Monet from off the wall if his “art gallery” in a plain brown wrapping paper as collateral and she lets him in.     

This is where she gets in way over her head-she is in the crossfire between the FBI, the federal courts in the city and every bad ass operation from the Russian mafia (you think maybe the Monet guy might have been “connected”) to the Italian who wanted in on the action-strong-arming the deadbeats who she was letting play on the cuff). The only good thing she did through this whole horror show of deceit, fraud, Ponzi schemes, and letting players ride on her credit line was to get Jaffey. Why? Well it is always best, just as when you are looking for a private investigator, when looking for a lawyer to get one who has worked the other side, been a prosecutor. She got off in the end although she didn’t make a very good play by turning down a deal to get her dough back for basically finking. That is to the good in the circles I grew up in. Still she is deep in debt, has a ton of back taxes and a felony rap on her sheet. In the end she really needed a corner boy to guide her through this craziness more than a lawyer but given the situation she at least had that good lawyer. Strong performances by Jessica and Idris but still not my kind of film-sorry     

In Honor Of The King Of The Folk-Singing Hard-Living Hobos The Late Utah Phillips -From The Archives- From "Boston IndyMedia"-The Man Who Never Died: The Life, Times, and Legacy of Joe Hill

The Man Who Never Died: The Life, Times, and Legacy of Joe Hill
by anonymous
(No verified email address) 05 Jul 2011

July 5, 2011

Review, The Man Who Never Died: The Life, Times, and Legacy of Joe Hill, American Labor Icon, by William M. Adler

Review by Richard Myers

Big Bill Haywood used to call revolutionary industrial unionism, the organizing philosophy of the Industrial Workers of the World, “socialism with its working clothes on.” Writing for the International Socialist Review from his prison cell, Joe Hill offered an example of such hands-on belief. Hill had recently arrived in Utah from the docks of California where many of the jobs were temporary. Therefore it was “to the interest of the workers ‘to make the job last’ as long as possible,” Hill wrote in his article, “How to Make Work for the Unemployed.”

Joe continued,

"The writer and three others got orders to load up five box cars with shingles. When we commenced the work we found, to our surprise, that every shingle bundle had been cut open. That is, the little strip of sheet iron that holds the shingles tightly together in a bundle, had been cut with a knife or a pair of shears, on every bundle in the pile—about three thousand bundles in all.

"When the boss came around we notified him about the accident and, after exhausting his supply of profanity, he ordered us to get the shingle press and re-bundle the whole batch. It took the four of us ten whole days to put that shingle pile into shape again. And our wages for that time, at the rate of 32c per hour, amounted to $134.00. By adding the loss on account of delay in shipment, the “holding money” for the five box cars, etc., we found that the company’s profit for that day had been reduced about $300.

"So there you are. In less than half an hour time somebody had created ten days’ work for four men who would have been otherwise unemployed, and at the same time cut a big chunk off the boss’s profit. No lives were lost, no property was destroyed, there were no law suits, nothing that would drain the resources of the organized workers. But there WERE results. That’s all."

Joe Hill didn’t mention how the “accident” occurred, nor who the “somebody” was that created all of this extra work. He simply observed that it was a practical means of redistributing capitalist profit among workers, and thereby recommended such circumstances to others. It is little wonder that capitalist interests in Utah saw merit in executing Hill when they had the opportunity.

Joe Hill was a writer, a musician, a song writer, and a cartoonist. His wit was sharp, his intelligence keen, and his working class life, if typical of his time, was also exemplary. Yet in some circles, Joe Hill’s legacy has been shadowed by some level of doubt. The popular union activist – arguably the best known union icon of all time – was, after all, convicted of murder, and was subsequently executed by the state of Utah in 1915.

Biographers researching Joe Hill list numerous ways in which his trial was flawed: the judge short-circuited the jury selection process, assigning hand-picked jurors to the case in spite of defense objections. Jury instructions delivered by the judge mis-characterized Utah’s laws of evidence. Any attempt to introduce evidence that might have exonerated Joe Hill was routinely ruled out of order. Evidence that didn’t fit the facts was made to fit by prosecution attorneys given leeway to lead witnesses.

Angered that his trial had become a farce, Hill fired his first set of attorneys. The judge essentially countermanded Hill’s decision, ordering those same attorneys to remain on the case. The inability to manage his own defense caused Joe Hill a considerable amount of consternation throughout the trial, which ultimately resulted in a guilty verdict.

Hill likewise faced a stacked deck on appeal. The appeals court judges made up the pardons board as well, in essence reviewing their own decisions. Irritated by widespread criticism of the trial (including two inquiries from the president of the United States), the pardons board itself became a source of “malicious and deceitful” falsehoods about the condemned prisoner.

William M. Adler’s excellent new book, The Man Who Never Died, recounts considerable new information about the life and legacy of Joe Hill. Adler spent five years walking the ground, poking into dark places, discovering long-hidden truths. He traveled to Sweden to meet Joe’s family and research his childhood. Adler then followed Joe to America, to California and Canada, through his brief role in the Mexican Revolution, and subsequently, to the bitter end in Utah.

Like much of North America at the time, Utah was experiencing labor discontent. The Industrial Workers of the World had won a strike by railroad construction workers in the summer of 1913, and business leaders vowed that it wouldn’t happen again. Joe Hill arrived a short time later, and within a year, the popular Wobbly troubadour would be condemned to death.

Joe Hill was convicted largely on the basis of a gunshot wound he sustained the same night that a Salt Lake City grocer and his son were murdered in their store. Joe’s off-the-record explanation attributed the gunshot to a dispute over a woman.

In the aftermath of the two murders, Utah authorities arrested a hard-bitten criminal, a consummate con artist and thug known to have been engaged in a notorious and violent crime wave throughout the region. Magnus Olson did time in Folsom State Prison in California, the Nevada State Penitentiary, and at least seven other lockups during his fifty year crime spree. While the Salt Lake City police took Olson into custody on suspicion related to the grocery store shootings, they were thrown off by his artful lying and his routine use of pseudonyms. In spite of some incriminating evidence, they failed to identify Olson as the notorious wanted criminal, and they let him go.

Ironically, when they arrested Joe Hill (who resembled Olson) for the crime, Utah authorities suspected that Olson (under a different name) was the murderer. For a time they even believed Hill and Olson to be the same man. Having failed to sort out the real identities of their detainees, Utah authorities eventually settled on the union agitator as their trophy prisoner. After all, Hill’s gunshot wound seemed persuasive enough for a conviction, and they tailored their case to that one, unalterable fact.

Was the real Olson a more likely perpetrator of the grocery store murders than Joe Hill? Adler notes that during a career of some five decades, Olson “burglarized homes, retail stores, and boxcars; he blew safes, robbed banks, stole cars, committed assault and arson, and in all likelihood, had committed murder.” Adler’s painstaking research places Olson in the Salt Lake City area at the time of the murders, and most probably, in the very neighborhood where the murders occurred. The murdered grocer – a former police officer – had been attacked before, and believed that he was being targeted. Olson had a reputation for violent revenge against his adversaries, a probable motive which nicely dovetailed with the crime for which Joe Hill would die. Joe Hill was newly arrived in Utah, and no motive was established for Hill as perpetrator. In spite of uncertainty whether either of two assailants at the grocery store had been fired upon, let alone wounded, Hill’s gunshot injury was all the evidence necessary to convict him, in the view of prosecutors.

But what of Joe Hill’s alibi that he’d been shot over a woman, a person whose identity was never officially revealed to the court? Adler identifies Hilda Erickson, of Hill’s host family in Utah, as his secret love interest. Joe’s unofficial – yet far from unnoticed – sweetheart, Hilda must have been much on the minds of onlookers throughout Joe Hill’s trial. She visited Joe through the prison bars every Sunday, yet at Joe’s direction, they were careful to prevent anyone from overhearing their conversations. When Hill, facing death, was allowed a private meeting with associates, Hilda was among the few people he saw. Hilda later stood vigil at the prison when Joe was executed, and she was one of the pall bearers at his funeral.

Moving Joe Hill’s secret romantic saga from conjecture to historical record, Adler’s book includes a sensational discovery, a letter penned by Hilda Erickson describing what had happened many years before, and her account confirms Joe Hill’s ostensible alibi. She had been the sweetheart of Joe’s friend and fellow Swedish immigrant, Otto Appelquist (who had arrived in Utah before Joe). Hilda broke off that engagement after Joe arrived, leaving Otto and Joe to become rivals for her attention. One day Erickson returned to her family’s home (where the two men were boarding) to discover that Joe had a bullet wound, while Otto was making excuses for leaving – for good, as it turned out. Otto Appelquist had shot Joe in a fit of jealousy, then regretted the deed, immediately carrying Joe to a doctor. Perhaps fearful of arrest for the shooting and uncertain whether Joe would survive, Otto left at two in the morning (to find work, he had declared), and never returned. The doctor would later turn Joe in after hearing of the grocery store murders – and a sizeable reward.

Why didn’t Hilda voluntarily step forward when her testimony might have saved Joe Hill? She was just twenty years old, and there is some indication that Joe Hill advised her not to. He probably sought to shield her from publicity – an instinctive reaction for the Swede with roots in his family’s experiences in their homeland. Ever the idealist, Joe Hill may also have sought to avoid testimony that might endanger his friend, countryman, and fellow worker, Otto.

At first, Joe was convinced that Utah couldn’t convict him because he was innocent. Utah society had sought to throw off its reputation for frontier justice, and it was almost possible to believe that the rule of law meant something. Somewhat surprisingly, Joe Hill accepted implicitly the legal principle that a defendant would not be considered guilty for not testifying, and he overvalued the judicial aphorism of innocent until proven guilty.

Utah courts routinely disregarded both of these principles in the Joe Hill case. Throughout the trial it became increasingly apparent that the Utah system of justice concerned itself more with expunging a perceived evil than with justice. A prominent union man had been accused of a heinous crime, and evidence to the contrary simply wasn’t to be considered. Joe Hill realized too late the danger he was in.

The circumstances of Joe Hill’s trial in Utah – a union man accused of murder, and fighting for his life – may be put into perspective by briefly examining another murder which occurred during, and as a direct result of the trial. Inveighing against injustice, twenty-five year old Ray Horton – president of Salt Lake City’s IWW branch – publicly cursed the imperative that causes some men to wear a badge. For his vocal audacity, Horton was abruptly shot by an onlooker, and then received two more bullets in the back as he staggered away. The killer, a retired lawman, was initially jailed for first degree murder, but was held for only one day. Upon his release, the killer was hailed as a hero at the Salt Lake City Elks Club, with a luncheon in his honor. Newspapers editorialized that this cold blooded murder was justified because Horton – a union man exercising free speech – was asking for it.

That a union man in Utah may be killed with impunity for his attitude seemed to likewise play a role in Hill’s pardons board hearing. One cannot say that Joe Hill had no chance whatsoever to save his own life. His pride and his contempt for a flawed process played a significant role in his fate. As implacable as Utah justice seemed for a union man, one has the sense from the recorded pardons board discussion that even at that late date, Joe Hill might have derailed his imminent execution if he threw himself upon the mercy of the court, explaining at long last how he had been wounded by a gunshot. The board dangled a pardon or a commutation before him, but Hill insisted that wasn’t good enough, calling such a possibility “humiliating.” In response to entreaties to testify, Hill promised the pardons board that he would offer them the full story, if he was granted a new trial. The pardons board declared it had no authority to order a new trial. Having embraced the slogan “New Trial or Bust” before his many supporters, Hill told the pardons board, “If I can’t have a new trial, I don’t want anything.”

Equally stubborn in its own way, the pardons board determined that Hill would either “eat crow” (as Hill described it) in the manner that they demanded – tell all with contrition before the pardons board, with no guarantees that it would make any difference – or die.

Adler explains why Joe Hill may have seen martyrdom as a noble and worthwhile cause. Joe Hill was too idealistic, too stubborn, too proud to give them the satisfaction of breaking him. Joe Hill told the pardons board, “Gentlemen, the cause I stand for, that of a fair and honest trial, is worth more than human life – much more than mine.” In his estimation they hadn’t proved him guilty; why should he be required to prove himself innocent?

The Joe Hill that shines through this work is idealistic, unselfish, proud, impulsive, principled, protective, stubborn, and at times, a little naïve in the face of implacable authority. That the governments and courts of Salt Lake City and the state of Utah should prove themselves as intransigent and unprincipled as the captains of industry about whom he’d so often sloganeered, may have caught Joe by surprise. Having discovered the truth of the matter, he dedicated his very being to the principle that justice must prevail, that sacrifice for such a cause was a worthwhile endeavor. In spite of incarceration and a capital sentence, Joe Hill managed to the very end to exercise some measure of control over his own life. And, to the extent he was able, over his death.

Adler’s prose is first rate, his analysis of history impeccable. He draws conclusions where appropriate, and presents an honest account, yet allows the reader to put together the final pieces of the puzzle.

At the end, do we know for certain who committed the grocery store murders? No. But we have a narrative which clearly demonstrates: Joe Hill never fit the profile of a cold blooded killer, while another man detained momentarily for the same crime did fit such a profile, in spades. The other man was released to continue his life of crime. Olsen later became a henchman of the notorious Al Capone in Chicago, while Joe Hill, the union man who left a rich legacy in song and wrote articles for socialist publications, was sent to his death. Hill’s funeral in that same city, attended by some thirty thousand, would help to launch the legend that is Joe Hill.

As Joe told his supporters at the last, they weren’t to mourn in his name. They were to organize.

William Adler photo by Randy Nelson

William M. Adler has written for many national and regional magazines, including Esquire, Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, and the Texas Observer. In addition to The Man Who Never Died, he has authored two other books of narrative nonfiction: Land of Opportunity (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1995), an intimate look at the rise and fall of a crack cocaine empire, and Mollie’s Job (Scribner, 2000), which follows the flight of a single factory job from the U.S. to Mexico over the course of fifty years. His work explores the intersection of individual lives and the larger forces of their times, and it describes the gap between American ideals and American realities. Adler lives with his wife and son in Denver, Colorado.

The book The Man Who Never Died by William M. Adler will be available August 30, 2011, for $30. For tour dates, music samples, and a photo gallery, please see http://themanwhoneverdied.com .

Richard Myers is a writer, author, and union activist in Denver, Colorado.

This work is in the public domain

When The Blues Was Dues-Dan Ackleroyd’s “Blues Brothers-2000” (1998 ) With “Blues Brothers” In Mind -A Film Review

When The Blues Was Dues-Dan Ackleroyd’s “Blues Brothers-2000” (1998  ) With “Blues Brothers” In Mind  -A Film Review

DVD Review

By Zack James

Blues

It is not often that I, or anybody else at this publication has to “fight” over an assignment from Greg Green but in the case of the film under review Blues Brothers-2000 we were begging to be picked. (Usually reviewers are “running away from assignments like when Greg had his big idea that to “expand” our audience, to reach out to the youth we should start running reviews of Marvel/DC Comics film productions of their cohort of super-heroes and most of the older writers bucked before some buckled under or when he thought it would be a good idea to write book reviews of Harlequin-type romance novels. You get my drift.) Starting with older writers like Seth Garth, Josh Breslin and Sam Lowell who cut their teeth on the blues, country and urban, back in the early 1960s when what is now called classic rock and roll ran out of steam for a while and they were looking for something that spoke to their teen angst and alienation, what now would be called in the age of identity politics their oppression. Not only had they cut their teeth on the blues but when former site manager, then called administrator, Allan Jackson, several years ago put together a huge reflection series on the roots of rock and roll and such they were lined up overtime to work the project. A project that new site manager Greg had the sense to do an encore presentation of having the banished Jackson do the new introductions.

Of course no one from the older set, the 1960s cut their teeth set, picked up the blues on their own but had been guided along that path, as usual by Peter Paul Markin, the mad monk of their corner boy crowd in growing up poor Acre section of North Adamsville and something in the sound spoke to them. (In the interest of transparency which seems to be the watchword these days in all kinds of situations where before your word was your bond Markin always called Scribe was a very close friend of my oldest brother Alex but I was just too young being ten years younger to really remember much less be influenced by him like Alex and his crowd were.) That was the present at the creation tribe, the tribe that looked elsewhere when their foundation rock music crumbled for a while. Moving along to guys like me, not many of them here at this publication  whatever reason Allan had to keep the older guys around him especially a couple of years ago when he went over the deep-end with 50^th anniversary commemorations of every odd-ball event of their youth we grabbed onto the blues in the early 1980s when rock took another hiatus and we were scrambling from outlaw country music to Cajun-Zydeco and Western Swing to have a sound that spoke to us. A final grouping would include gals like Leslie Dumont and Laura Perkins, maybe Minnie Moore when she worked here, who didn’t live or die by the blues but who came to appreciate the sound second hand from their respective associations, their companionships is I think the word they use, with Josh Breslin and Sam Lowell. I won the “prize” for the very simple fact that I had recently written a review of the Neville Brothers and how Cajun-Zydeco music has been an important, if temporary, waystation in my own teen alienation and angst moments.                    

Maybe I should dig down a little deeper to explain how a retro-review of this film came about. Somebody mentioned that they had decided to watch the now ancient Saturday Night Live in order to check out Alex Baldwin’s rabid impersonation of one Donald J. Trump, allegedly the President of the United States or POTUS in tweet speak. Discussing that sent-up around the office water cooler one morning brought up, I think by Bart Webber, the start of the show back in the early 1970s with such now iconic comedians as Bill Murray, Steve Martin, Dan Ackleroyd and of course the late, lamented John Belushi. And that of course led to a discussion of the original Blues Brothers film where under the guile of an off-the-wall comic script John and Dan paid homage to the blues influences that had formed parts of their respective personas. The madcap adventures of the pair and a supporting cast of such blues, rhythm and blues, and classic rock and roll greats as Cab Calloway, James, please, please, please Brown, the recently passed on Matt “Guitar” Murphy and show-stopper Aretha Franklin (who came to the genre via her deep gospel roots) drove most of the action. Since that film had already been reviewed (by Seth Garth) the sequel was up for grabs once somebody checked the archives and found that former site manager Allan Jackson had not assigned anybody to do the film.               

Now a sequel, especially of an iconic film like Blues Brothers is a tough nut to follow although Hollywood seldom misses a chance to cash in on a blockbuster, and the producers Dan and John Landis (who co-wrote and directed both productions and again in the interest of transparency the latter who I worked with in the old Boston days at places like The Real Paper and the Phoenix) don’t really try to expand on the original concept. Part of the problem being, as dramatically pointed out in the front-piece dedication, that given the eighteen year interval between productions John Belushi, Cab Calloway and John Candy had all passed away.

That problem aside a certain context has to be provided and some continuity so naturally Dan, Elwood Blues, had to take a beating once he got out of stir in front of the old witch nun who gave the brothers hell when they were growing up in her orphanage. And a runt tagalong whom Elwood was supposed to “mentor.” Jesus was she totally crazy by then.

As the film opens once Elwood got out of that big house, got out of stir for whatever scam he got caught red-handed at, he automatically thought about starting up the band again. That gathering of the old crowd will drive the action for a while as these guys have grown long in the tooth and have “settled” down. But Elwood is persuasive, or maybe he was preaching to an already willing choir. With the addition of an out of work bartender at a strip club owned by one of the former band members played by John Goodman things are on the move. Almost. We need a short, well maybe not so short, diversion to put up a “brother,” a long lost son of old long gone Cab Calloway from his youth before he chained himself to that fateful orphanage and played “father” to the those two reprobates. Problem is this son is total Illinois state cop, a commander, and has no known DNA from papa on the blues scene. But he got “religion” at an out of doors revival stocked with plenty of well-known gospel singers- and James please, please, please Brown so before the end we have four men in black, the order of the day “uniform” for blues guys from a certain period. Well maybe three and one half, with the runt on that number thing.

Getting back on top though in the music game no matter the genre is a tough game and Elwood and mob slogged through the usual backwoods stops before hitting some pay-dirt in a battle of the bands down in the swamps presided over by some voodoo mama. A truly scary woman to set the heart beating. This is really what the film is all about-the homage to then still standing blues greats. The competition, a motley crew called the Louisiana Gator Boys just happens to be made up of B.B. King, Eric Clapton, Taj Majal, Junior Wells, Bo Diddley, Charles Musselwhite, Gary “U.S” Bonds, and a number of other lesser blues lights all first come to light for this reviewer via that blues records collection of my brother Alex cobbled together by the Scribe’s intelligence. In short, the last serious aggregation of blues greats still standing-then. Needless to say, Elwood and crowd who have their own not inconsiderable list of known blues greats like the late Matt Murphy lose to the “pros.”

The sad part of viewing this film at this remove is that many of the players seen in this sequel have also subsequently passed on headlined by B.B. King, Bo Diddley, Koko Taylor, and James Brown. My question, one which I intent to ask Alex when next we meet, is who will continue the tradition once that small coterie of white, mainly British blues artists like Eric Clapton from his youth fade from the scene as well. See this one to see what it was like when women and men played the blues for keeps. For when the saying “the blues was dues” meant everything.