Fighting For The Brass Ring- Kate Hudson’s “Almost Famous” (2000)- A Film Review

Fighting For The Brass Ring- Kate Hudson’s “Almost Famous” (2000)- A Film Review

DVD Review

By Alden Riley

[As of December 1, 2017 under the new regime of Greg Green, formerly of the on-line American Film Gazette website, brought in to shake things up here a bit after a vote of no confidence in the previous site administrator Allan Jackman (using the moniker Peter Paul Markin in honor of fallen comrade from high school days) some organizational norms have changed. That vote was taken among all the writers at the request of some of the younger writers abetted by one key older writer, Sam Lowell, and in the aftermath the habit of previous site manager of assigning writers to specific topics like film,  books, political commentary, and culture is over. Also over is the designation of writers in this space, young or old, by job title like senior or associate. After a short-lived experiment designating everybody as “writer” seemingly in emulation of the French Revolution’s “citizen” or the Bolshevik Revolution’s “comrade” all posts will be “signed” with given names only. The Editorial Board]

Almost Famous, starring Kate Hudson, Billy Crudup, Patrick Fugit some of the story is based on real events in the young life of director Cameron Crowe, 2000  

[If any reader has read the announcement from the Editorial Board below my name above or has been following the developing situation around the change in leadership at this site they know that there has been a certain amount of fall-out around the question of whether the old site administrator, Peter Paul Markin (not his real name but a moniker he has used for the past decade of more of his leadership I will get to a bit later in this introduction) had retired or been purged. The “official” stance is that he has retired to parts unknown making that “purge” rumor only stick faster especially among the older writers, Markin’s contemporaries from the 1960s, their growing up and coming of age days which was, is, one of the issues which caused Markin’s tumble from grace. This “disappearance” a stinging remind to those guys who graphically remember the Cold War Stalinist habit of sending deposed opponents out to Siberia some place for “rest” or from their own personal experiences in the latter part of the 1960s, toward the ebb part, when among radicals the “politically incorrect” of that time were banished never to be heard from again although that was more shunning that sending them to outer Utah or someplace like that.

In an attempt to clear the air and give the readership a better understanding about what has happened over the past several months to cause the shake-up the new site administrator, Greg Green, who held a similar position at the American Film Gazette and who I knew there from the time I worked as a stringer, has allowed us free reign to tell our take on what has happened and why after Markin was deposed when he lost a vote of no confidence among the collection of writers who write for this site. In the interest of transparency I was among the “Young Turks” who led the revolt and was also a key person in bringing Greg into the fold. 

Others like my former “boss” Sandy Salmon whom I also knew at the Gazette and who brought me in to be his associate film critic after he replaced the now retired Sam Lowell another key “coup” member have given their take so I will not burden the reader with too much detail about the actual events which led up to Markin’s ouster except to broadly outline what triggered everything. (That “former boss” reference reflects as noted above the new policy of only using surnames to identify writers in an effort by Greg to break down the barriers between younger and older writers.) 

A few years ago Markin, in what at the time seemed like a good move to “pass the torch” according to the older writers who had been with him for a long time (and some whom he had known from his hometown growing up days or from his wild and wooly 1960s hippie days) and widen what was increasingly a nostalgia trip tied to the turbulent 1960s experiences which formed most of their worldviews brought in some younger writers. (Don’t make as much out of the “younger writers” designation since most of us are pushing fifty very gingerly and the only really younger writers, twenty somethings, were free-lance stringers.) That perspective was honored more in the breech that the observance as increasing the younger writers were assigned projects relating to that same period, that turbulent 1960s era,  which for the most part were not events that we were that familiar with or gave a fuck about. So some of this stuff had been simmering for a while, for a couple of years anyway.

This summer, the summer of 2017, everything came to a head when Markin after being coaxed by his old growing up neighborhood friends and a couple of the older writers whom I will not name since they have survived the tumult just as they had survived every regime change when they were younger and into radical politics he “force marched” everybody into writing about the Summer of Love, 1967 after an old friend Alex, Zack James’ brother, told him about how San Francisco was commemorating the 50^th anniversary of that experience. That started the mad rush. Someone called those older turncoat writers who should be handled in the same manner as deadly snakes as ready to change their principles with the new wind blowing as their shirts and that seems about right. They had no trouble leaving Markin in the lurch wherever he is and moving on without a ripple. Whatever they thought of the project everybody was forced to reference some aspect of the 1960s fun and foolishness whatever they were writing about even if it was not germane to their subject or whether they gave a damn about it.

I will give my personal “awakening” which led me to join the “Young Turks,” join with a vengeance if you must know. Sandy to appease Markin had taken it upon himself to write a film review of the well-known documentary by D.A. Pennebaker on the first Monterey Pops Festival also held in fateful 1967 which is where the big belting blues singer from Texas Janis Joplin made her big breakthrough to stardom. As was his wont during the few years I have known him (he worked at American Film Gazette when I was a stringer there but I did not know him since I was a stringer and would submit my articles via FedEx or later e-mail attachments) he mentioned how well the documentary had held up unlike many others from that time and how Janis “stole the show.” That is when I made what would be my fatal error and told him that I did not know who Janis Joplin was. He laughed and let it pass.

Somehow though Markin got wind of the fact of my ignorance and “ordered” over Sandy’s head and without his knowledge me to “do penance” (Markin’s words) by reviewing a bio/pic on Janis entitled Little Girl Blues. If that sleigh-of-hand was not enough Markin almost went apoplectic when I mentioned in some detail that after my viewing of the Pennebaker documentary for my article that I thought that Otis Redding equally “stole the show” that year. Since this year is also the 50^th anniversary of his death and of his signature song Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay released shortly before his death I gave that perspective amble space in the piece. Markin red-pencilled most of it and in a rage told me (in front) of several senior writers that while he appreciated Redding’s contribution to soulful music the piece was supposed to be a homage to Joplin’s effect on he and his growing up hometown friends who went West partially to see the “acid” rock scene emerging in the Bay Area during that decisive year.

I nursed my “wounds” over that slight and frankly Markn’s misjudgment about not putting Redding in the picture as part of the turbulent and fateful 1960s mix from the perspective of a guy who was looking at the times from the outside, a guy who didn’t go weak-kneed any time the number 60 came up. Then Sandy, who was, is, roughly Markin’s, wherever he is, contemporary and who knew his close growing up hometown friend Sam Lowell from their Gazette days and who brought Sandy in when he, Sam, decided to retire, in early September assigned me the review below, Almost Famous. Like others have said the original intent of this site was to cover all aspects of the American political, social and cultural history through commentary about events, movements, books, films, music and the like.

But when Sandy went to check with Markin on assignment and told him I was expected to do this review he again went apoplectic not against me personally, I don’t think, but about the idea that a review of music and the trials and tribulations of bands getting a leg up not from the 1960s, the subject of the film, was being covered. That heavy-handed maneuver along with other smoldering grievances led to the “Young Turks” uprising. Led me to join in if for no other reason that while I appreciated what Markin and the others had done in the 1960s I didn’t want to be trapped in a time machine stuck in that era.  So until Markin was “deposed,” sent to Siberia, or whatever happened to him after that vote of no confidence this review was put on hold. Now it can see the light of day.

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I assume that director Cameron Crowe had a field day directing this little gem of a film Almost Famous about the coming of age of a teenage rock journalist based on his own rock journal experiences and the trials and tribulations of a band, a set of personalities and varying degrees of musical showmanship, trying to break out of the garage or wherever they hung out and practiced. This film had a special appeal to me since it featured an up and coming rock group that was situated in the thick of the 1970s and 1980s a time when I came of musical age, the Peter Frampton, Heart, David Bowie, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and the “heavy metal” rock scene.

Young musical beat writer whiz kid William Miller (the character based in part on director Crowe’s youthful experiences), played by Patrick Fugit, is adrift in the world, a world where he doesn’t fit in except he has an ear for music and a big steady hand to write with (in the days when a pencil and notebook of not blessed memory were the tools of the writing trade). He works his way, despite his over-bearing mother’s attempts to thwart him at every turn from beginning to end it seemed, into the scene, the 1970s music scene of blessed memory by getting a free-lance assignment to review a Black Sabbath concert for Rolling Stone magazine despite his tender age of fifteen. Although that famous rock group does not play into the story the fictional front group band, the Stillwaters, led by William Hammond, played by Bill Crudup, does as he latches onto the idea of promoting them as the next big thing in heavy metal rock.

Two things aid him in getting on the inside of this group’s network. First Hammond liked him, likes the young kid although that relationship would have its fair share of ups and downs when the mercurial Hammond questions William’s motives and what he expected to get out of the whole thing. Then William along the way meets what is inevitable in rock circles, maybe all musical circles, the lead “groupie” Penny Lane, played by Kate Hudson, who befriends him and gets him the inside track on the group. Gets him a seat on the touring bus with Stillwater as they claw their way to what they hope will be the brass ring-that coveted cover on Rolling Stone which in those days if not now signified that you had arrived. William was there at the creation to chronicle all of that. Naturally along the way he has all the coming of age experiences of friendship, betrayal, misunderstandings, fun and frolic, and losing that virginity his mother fretted about when he went on the road. Not the best story line on the emergence of a rock group but very well done, very well done indeed. (And now I can say not about a rock group emerging from the pack in the 1950s and early 1960s age of what is name classical rock, praise be.)                                                    

How The West Was Won-The Coen Brothers Remake Of “True Grit” (2010)-A Film Review

How The West Was Won-The Coen Brothers Remake Of “True Grit” (2010)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Sandy Salmon

[As of December 1, 2017 under the new regime of Greg Green, formerly of the on-line American Film Gazette website, brought in to shake things up here a bit after a vote of no confidence in the previous site administrator Allan Jackman (using the moniker Peter Paul Markin in honor of fallen comrade from high school days) some organizational norms have changed. That vote was taken among all the writers at the request of some of the younger writers abetted by one key older writer, Sam Lowell, and in the aftermath the habit of previous site manager of assigning writers to specific topics like film,  books, political commentary, and culture is over. Also over is the designation of writers in this space, young or old, by job title like senior or associate. After a short-lived experiment designating everybody as “writer” seemingly in emulation of the French Revolution’s “citizen” or the Bolshevik Revolution’s “comrade” all posts will be “signed” with given names only. The Editorial Board]

True Grit, starring Jeff Bridges as Rooster Cogburn, Haillee Steinfeld as Mattie, Matt Damon as Texas Ranger LeBoeuf, from the novel by Charles Portis, directed and produced by the Coen Brothers as a remake of the 1969 version of the film which starred John Wayne, 2010

[Apparently the fall-out from the change of leadership of this site from the now seemingly disgraced and exiled Allan Jackson out  to the wilds of Utah where he is reportedly by rumor said to be hustling copy for the Mormons although that sounds improbable on its face since he went out of his way to skewer the most well-known Mormon Mitt Romney for disowning his great grandfather’s astounding feat of juggling five wives at one time back in the day Allan Jackson to Greg Green brought in from a similar position that he held at American Film Gazette is not over. The basic issue which the reader should know about was Jackson’s heavy-handed manner of assigning projects tilted heavily toward the turbulent times of the 1960s when he and a number of the older writers including a few he had known since high school had come of age. That emphasis despite the well-known proposition stated in the masthead that the whole of American history (albeit from a decidedly leftist perspective), culture, society, mores and all were within its purview. He had brought in a slew of younger writers, not kids out of journalism school or English dissertations but younger.

They, according to younger writer and “Young Turks” leader Lance Lawrence, were to broaden the outlook, widen the time frame and range of subjects. Instead Allan used them as “cannon fodder” (Eliot Francis’ term) for a continued expansion of that 1960s perspective. The whole thing came to a head this past summer when he unilaterally decided that everything of importance was to be thrown through the prism of the Summer of Love, 1967 which was being commemorated mainly in the Bay Area on its 50^th anniversary. The younger writers balked sensing that this was merely the first shot in another total immersion in various 50^th anniversary commemorations to come over the next few years. In a heated debate and contentious procedure in early fall the younger writers aided by the decisive vote of Sam Lowell one of Allan’s old high school friends who saw the writing on the wall he received a vote of no confidence.

Subsequently Jackson announced his retirement through a third party to the assembled audience. That so-called retirement versus what has been whispered about that he had been “purged” never to be heard from again like in the time of Stalin in Russia or among New Left fanatics in late 1960s radical circles seeking purity is what the fall-out is all about. Nobody quite has the whole story, or at least I have not heard anything that sounds like the whole story but younger writer Brad Fox in a recent review of Goya’s Ghosts went way out of his way to inform the reading public that something closer to being purged had been the previously missing Jackson’s fate. And Brad would know since he owes his job to his father’s friendship with Allan going back to their high school days.           

Here is some of what Brad mentioned with a little comment by me in places as we try to consolidate the new regime and provide a wider perspective for the reader to imbibe.

Brad thought it ironic, and I do too, that one of the first assignments that our new site administrator Greg Green has handed out, handed out to him especially knowing his father relationship with Allan, Goya’s Ghosts, dealt with the turmoil of the French Revolution through the prism of the Spanish occupation in Napoleon’s time by French troops aided by a bureaucracy of both imported French bureaucrats and Spaniards looking for the main chance. What Brad called guys who change their allegiances as easily as their shirts. 

Sometimes apparently, and this may have been Greg Green’s point in assigning the review life mirrors art. The staff at American Left History were, are as ardent as any Bolshevik was in his or her time to draw whatever lessons they can from the experiences of the French Revolution. Including many a hot “debate” over whiskeys at Jimmy Jake’s Tavern near the Seaport in Boston.     

Seemingly, at least to Brad and I buy some of his argument since I do believe that Green was trying to promote a literary cautionary tale in the guises of a harmless hapless film review a parallel example existed between rabid Inquisitor turned French Revolution devotee Lorenzo’s topsy-turvy career and fate and that of Jackson. I have already mentioned the main reason given but it bears repeating was Allan’s obsessive tilting of the coverage of subjects in this space toward events from the turbulent 1960s when most of the older writers came of age exemplified by the over-the-top coverage of the Summer of Love, 1967 he ordered the writers, young and old, familiar with the period or not to cover. There has been, and here the parallel with Francisco who would go to his execution under the Inquisition once the French were defeated and swept out of Spain by the British with the aid of Spanish guerillas, a persistent rumor that Allan was purged and that the retirement ploy was just that a cover for the more aggressive removal mainly through the efforts of the younger writers. On the heels of what Brad has said I will try to track this down as I get more information. Information that I believe will implicate Allan’s his old friend Sam Lowell who may have been used by the younger writers as a stalking horse once they knew he was anxious to show his old time “revolutionary turn the world upside down” credentials or maybe the mastermind behind a plan to ease Allan out for other reasons. For now if you heard that one Allan Jackson has fallen under the wheels of a modern day Inquisition don’t be surprised. Don’t be surprised at all.]

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Here is the real deal though:

For those more interested in old time Old West, Old Revisionist West than the internal struggle for a new direction at this site you are now home. Old Revisionist West meaning not the stuff that guys and gals like many of the older writers and me who grew in the 1950s had to swallow on television where the guys in white hats were pure good and fast on the trigger if they needed to be and black hats signifying pure evil and somehow very bad trigger action which makes one wonder today how they survived to be bad boys, but the dirt under the fingernails, didn’t wash for a week, put that trigger quick and ask questions later. For that desire here is a film, a remake of a classic Old West western, True Grit which won John Wayne an Oscar for his performance as lead character Rooster Cogburn by the bloody thirsty Coen Brothers last seen in this space as the producers of the remake of the bloody 1955 British film The Lady Killers where an old widowed woman held off a horde of ruffians ready to do her in praise the Lord.

Recently Sam Lowell who use to do the film reviews here all by his lonesome before he retired and persuaded me to take over before I retire made some commentary about the 1961 film The Misfits, the film adaptation of playwright Arthur Miller’s story. He mentioned that the characters in that film, male and female alike, born in the West, born in the saddle really, or transported from other parts, were just then at the crossroads where the Old West and its individualistic values was fast fading in the modern industrial skyline. That the strip malls, suburban ranches, golf courses, and tourist traps were heading west. That is not the case in True Grit. Here we have all the bloodshed, the fast triggers, the fatal triggers the lawlessness needing to be tamed, the lost boys, the losers in the Civil War, the raw emotions and rawer whisky that made up a big part of the lifeblood of the Old West, the West that those who could not for one reason or another make it in the East headed for to start anew-or keep on doing the same thing in new quarters.

In a funny way, just like the plotlines from Zane Grey on, this one is simplicity itself “the age of vengeance is mine saith the Lord. Young Mattie, all of 14, played by Hailee Steinfeld, feisty as hell even if only 14, is out to avenge the death of her father by a no account bastard who just shot him down in cold blood named Tom Clancy. Little did he know his days were numbered with Mattie on the case no matter that he headed out to desolate Indian country (Native American or indigenous peoples now).

But even a feisty precocious 14 year old needs some help against a bad man desperado and so she hires for a bounty a U.S. Marshall to bring old Tom in to face justice, to face the big step-off which Mattie makes very plain is her goal-no anti-death penalty advocate she. So she hires the toughest of them all, the one with, hey, true grit, Reuben “Rooster” Cogburn played by Jeff Bridges like he was born for the role, and maybe he was. Mattie had a choice, could have and maybe should have picked Texas Ranger LaBouef, played by Matt Damon, who had been after bandito Clancy for crimes in Texas which would also require a hangman’s noose. But she took Rooster instead. 

Eventually after much banter they, all three, head out to that Indian country (remember think Native American) and before long all kind of calumny, false leads, a few confrontations and the like impede their progress. Also some internal bickering which would lead that LaBoeuf to head out on his own periodically. Not to worry though after a few rounds of rooty-toot-toot that Tom Clancy is gone to the great beyond-no one to mourn him. Along the way though Mattie and the Rooster bond, bond enough that when that Rooster went to his own great beyond he was buried in Mattie’s family plot. Yeah, wasn’t that a time boys, wasn’t that a time.

"Good Morning, Vietnam"-Indeed-The Trials And Tribulations Of One Adrian Cronauer

"Good Morning, Vietnam"-Indeed-The Trials And Tribulations Of One Adrian Cronauer

By Si Lannon     

I knew from the minute I picked up this guy Adrian Cronauer from the airport that no way was he going to last in our outfit. You can take it from me Eddie Garlick that he had a “misfit” target written all over him. Our outfit if you could call it that was producing, well, hell, producing propaganda and glad tidings to the increasing number of troops coming in-country and in need of some easy listening on the Armed Forces Radio Station-Vietnam edition. First of all Cronauer, nobody called him Adrian (and he told me once we got to know each other that nobody but his mother called him that and he would usually not answer to the name even from her. I wouldn’t answer to Edward either except to my own mother after she twisted my ear a few times when I faked not hearing her) came over from some good awful place, Crete, or some place like that and was Air Force whereas the rest of us were strictly Army, Regular Army. Second of all from minute one he had me both splitting a gut laughing and looking at him sideways like he was some guy from outer space.

But see the General, General Timothy Taylor, a tough guy street general as we would call a guy like him in the old neighborhood, back in Philly, back in the Acre housing project where I grew up and where we had our own General Baker and General Pratt although not with any stars on their shoulders, didn’t need them, had heard of him when he was in Europe. He was old school, bless his soul, who won his star going through the European Theater in World War II. He, the general, must have ruffled some feathers though, annoyed some General Staff guy because he had seen Cronhuaer as he was leaving some cushy job there and transfer to hellish Vietnam as the American troops on the ground expanded like crazy in 1965 once the shit hit the fan. The general though landed on his feet though since instead of throwing him out in the boonies with the 7^th Air Calvary they put him in charge of propaganda work, the radio station being one of his projects to supervise.    

The real reason though, and I proved right in the end even although I did everything in my power to try to save him including getting the grunts, you know the guys who were going in and out of the boonies looking for Mister Charlie to send fan mail to get him back on the air was Sergeant Major Dickerson, the “Dick” as we called him behind his back. (I didn’t do any fighting although I did face gun fire and bomb explosions in my tour of Vietnam like a lot of guys not on the line, it was that kind of war, but I had nothing but respect for the enemy and would not call him the derogatory Charlie but always prefaced it with the honorific Mister to show my respects). He was all spit and polish, all rules and regulations, all-lifer, the bad kind of lifer who lived to count the days until retirement but in the meantime raise seven kinds of hell, the only good commie is dead commie so you knew, I knew the minute I saw Cronauer half out of uniform, hair too long and with a laugh a minute that he wasn’t going to go the distance, would fuck up somehow and made hash out of everything. (Then I didn’t know I would wind-up being a lifer too but that was after I left the Army after my enlistment was up, seeing nothing around the Acre that I could do without winding up in stir so I re-upped. I just hope some of the guys that were under me don’t call be lifer the way I just did about the “Dick.”)

While he was riding high one Airman Cronauer was beautiful was like a breath of fresh air in the Black Hole of Calcutta. Would make a lot of guys who are making a good living doing comedy routines take up another profession, maybe lawyering or something, maybe learn to crochet. Yes, Cronauer was the avenging angel and the worst nightmare for guys like the Dick, a loose cannon. The only thing I didn’t like in the few months that Cronauer was around was that he would always kid me about my turning the key to start the engine of the jeep that I used to transport him around to his various doings when it was already running. Being around him made me nervous and forgetful. I admit I was trying to protect my stripes, maybe grab another one if I could control this force of nature. See General Taylor had personally assigned me to “look after” Cronauer since even the General knew he was loosely put together. I guess the general didn’t know in the end how big a can of worms Cronauer would be after the Dick got through with him. 

You have to know something about Armed Forces Radio back in ’65, maybe any time but mostly the thing was about presenting “happy” news, maybe cover a press conference of some important figure who was in-country to see what was really going on (and never taking the blinders off to find out, never leaving MAC-V headquarters and definitely never asking the soldiers, the grunts, what the hell was going on while they were doing their whirlwind tours) and play music like Ray Conniff, Percy Faith, I don’t know Guy Lombardo stuff our parents would dig, would find appealing. And the guys, good guys really, who took their shifts, usually four hours unless they were covering for somebody, and gave what the Dick and Army regulations dictated to him to read and play. They even had two donkeys, two brothers who must have been orphans because no mother could love them (or have carried them in her womb) who red-penciled everything especially the number of KIAs, and the lack of progress against Mister Charlie that was apparent to anybody except those idiot VIPs who had come in-country for more than five minutes. The worst lie though was the body count. The number of VC killed. The numbers just didn’t add up. Some guy during my second tour of Vietnam figured it out one time in 1968 I think that if you added all the numbers together from the body counts then to you would have more dead than were in the whole freaking country.

From day one, no, minute one, Cronauer blew all of that away. Started off at six o’clock in the morning with his signature call-“Good Morning, Vietnam” but he would stretch those three words out for what seemed like an hour. Guys would imitate him, guys on in the boonies too. Then he would do “mock” news reports, total bullshit of total bullshit, and then play something like James Brown, can you believe it, Brother James Brown. Needless to say the Dick blew his top, complained to General Taylor who told him to “fuck off” then because the men liked hearing Cronauer, and he did have a big breath of fresh air following. Like I said the General was what you would call a soldiers’ General if you know what I mean (unlike those General Staff guys who never came out of the bunker over at MAC-V).          

What did Cronauer in, what did a lot of guys stuck in Vietnam then before there were too many guys hanging around in Saigon and everything got to be a whorish merry-go-round was a girl, a beautiful Vietnamese girl who I told him was off-limits, was a no go. But Cronauer wouldn’t listen, spent every waking hour trying to figure out how to get next to this beauty, this Trinh. Including getting close to her brother Tran something I forget his full name, and it doesn’t matter since that was not his real name, his real Mister Charlie name as it turned out. Although Cronauer didn’t see it that way he was basically asking this Tran to pimp for his sister. Nothing good could come of that, and nothing did despite the extensive wooing that Cronauer did.

When push came to shove though nothing could save Cronauer. He had been too friendly with the natives as they say and the natives had bitten him, had used his as a cover to blow up a famous Saigon gin mill where GIs hung out. Not good, not good at all. Got me mixed up in it and almost ruined my career except the General had the Dick’s number and it was him that was hung out to dry not me. Cronauer, well, bad boy Cronauer got kicked out of the service for the good of the service as they say. Never did get too far with that Trinh before he became persona non grata in-country. Sent his young ass back to the States quick as a jack rabbit. End of story.   

Not quite. Some nights I still wake up thinking about some antic that mad clown did on the air or out in the streets of Saigon. Always think even though I am a Sergeant Major myself here at Fort Meade about that last gift he left me. His farewell tape to the troops which I delivered. Got to do my own version of Good Morning, Vietnam, and got to feel for just one moment what it was like to have the world in your hands. Yeah, Cronauer was one hell of a guy, was a piece of work no question.

“Shoot Pools ‘Fast Eddie,’ Shoot Pools”-With Paul Newman’s “The Hustler” In Mind

“Shoot Pools ‘Fast Eddie,’ Shoot Pools”-With Paul Newman’s “The Hustler” In Mind

By Lance Lawrence

“Fast Eddie” Felson was the greatest pool player to ever chalk up a stick and you had better believe that because I know from where I speak because in most quarters, among the serious followers of the game, I, Jackie “Big Man” Gleason think that title belongs to me. Maybe you never heard of “Fast Eddie,” never knew the story behind the story of how for a couple of years anyhow, maybe three he ruled the roost, he was the king of the hill. All I know is from the first moment Eddie entered Sharkey’s Pool Hall, the place where my manager, Bart, and I hustled all comers at the sport of kings, down on 12^th Avenue in the teeming city of New York I was afraid to play him. Afraid he would damage my reputation as the king of the hill. I had never played game one against him but still I sensed something in his swagger, in his bravado that made my hands shake. Shaking hands the kiss of death in our profession.               

In case you don’t know, and maybe some readers might not having decided to read my homage to “Fast Eddie” based on the “hook” that this was about Paul Newman the movie actor shooting big-time pool, hustling pool in the old days before Vegas, Atlantic City, Carson City started putting up money to have high dollar championships was about more that learning technique, having a vision of where the fucking balls would enter the pockets like your mother’s womb. A lot more. It was about having heart, about something that they would call Zen today but which we called “from hunger” in my day. Eddie’s too. That’s what Eddie had, that is what I sensed, what brought me to cold sweats when that swaggering son of a bitch came looking for me like I was somebody’s crippled up grandfather. It took a while, Eddie took his beatings before he understood what drove his art but he got it, got it so good that I left the game for a couple of years and went out West to hustler wealthy Hollywood moguls who loved the idea of “beating” “Big Man” Gleason at ten thousand a showing.             

But forget about me and my troubles once Fast Eddie came through that long ago door after all this is about how the best man who ever handled a stick got to earn that title in my book. Like a lot of guys after the war, after World War II, after seeing the world in one way Eddie was ready to ditch his old life, was ready to take some chances and say “fuck you” to the nine to five world that would be death to a free spirit like him (that “free spirit” would put a few daggers in his heart before he was done but that is for later). Eddie, against my doughty frame, my big man languid frame, was a rangy kid, kind of tall, wiry, good built and Hollywood bedroom eyes like, well, like Paul Newman when he was a matinee idol making all the women, girls too, wet. Strictly “from hunger” just like in my time, the Great Depression, I had been the same before I left Minnesota for the great big lights of the city and “action.” Like I said raw and untamed but I could tell that very first time he put the stick to the green clothe he had the magic, had that something that cannot be learned but only come to the saints and those headed for the sky.           

So Eddie came in with a few thousand ready to take on the “Big Man.” While I feared this young pup I sensed that I could teach him a lesson, maybe a lesson that would hold him in good stead, maybe not, but which would at least give me enough breathing room to figure out what I would do when Eddie claimed his crown. His first mistake, a rookie error that I myself had committed was not having a partner, a manager to rein him in, to hold him back in tough times. He had some old rum dum, Charley, Billy, something like that, who cares except this rum dum was a timid bastard who couldn’t hold up his end. His end being strictly to estimate his opponent and rein the kid in when he was off his game like we all get sometimes. Me, like I said after I wised up, teamed up with Bart, Bart who knew exactly who and who was not a “loser” and who didn’t lose my money by making bad matches or bad side bets (those side bets were the cushion money that got us through hard times and many times were more than whatever we won at straight up games).      

All I am saying is that this kid’s manager did Fast Eddie wrong, let him go wild that first night when he was all gassed up to beat the Big Man. You already know that I whipped his ass or you haven’t been paying close enough attention. But that was all a ruse like I said, all kid bravado and swagger added in so it was like taking candy from a baby that first night. But I knew I was beat, beat bad in a straight up contest. What saved me that night was two things, no three. First, Fast Eddie like lots of kids figured that he could beat an old man with his hands tied behind his back and so he started his “victory lap” drinking, drinking hard high-end scotch even before the match had started. Second, he was cocky enough to declare that the only way to determine the winner was who cried “uncle” first (Bart smiled and whispered “loser” in my ear at hearing that). Third and last he had picked up this broad, some boozer and maybe a hooker named, Sandy, Susie, no, Sarah whom he was trying to impress somehow. She looked like a lost kitten but I didn’t give a damn about that just that Fast Eddie’s mind would be half on getting her down under the sheets, maybe had dreams of getting a blow job for his efforts she looked the type who was into some kinky stuff just for kicks. At least that was the way it looked at the time. As I will tell you later it was very different and I was totally wrong about the dame.          

It took almost twenty-eight hours in that dark dank smelly booze-strewn Sharkey pool hall which looked like something out of the movies’ idea of what a low rent pool hall should look like complete with low-lifes but eventually between the booze, the bravado, and the broad I took Eddie down, left him about two hundred bucks “walking around” money. Left him to cry “uncle.” Cry it for the last time. Between grabbing Fast Eddie’s money and the side bets Bart made I, we were able to lay off for a couple of months (usually after a big score that was standard practice since the one-time suckers who want to brag to the hometown folks that they played hard and fast with the Big Man and almost won scatter to the winds for a while before they inevitably come back for their well-deserved beatings). Bart said, no crowed, that he had had Fast Eddie’s number, a “loser.” Was another gone guy, forget him.  But I had seen some moves, some moves especially before the booze got the better of the kid that I could only dream of trying without looking like a rube.         

This part of the story coming up I pieced together from what Bart told me, what Sharkey had heard, and what little Fast Eddie let on when he came back at me in earnest, in that Zen state or whatever the fuck you want to call it when a guy is “walking with the king.” Eddie went into “hiding,” went licking his wounds, which in the pool world meant that he was trying to put a stake together hustling at pool halls in bowling alleys, places like that where the rubes are dying to lose a fin or double sawbuck and not cry about it. A player at the kid’s level though would have a hard time of making much scratch with the carnival-wheelers so unbeknownst to me Eddie got in touch with Bart who staked him to some dough for a big cut of the proceedings. They made money, a fair amount, but Bart, at least this is what he told me later after I pistol-whipped him before I left for Hollywood and the big beautiful suckers there figured that would just come back to me in the end because Bart still had the kid down as a loser, a big bad loser.         

This part is murkier still. Along the way on this trip that Bart and Fast Eddie took to fleece the rubes this Sarah started to get religion, started wanted to settle down with Eddie, make Eddie settle down. After I had beaten him when he was laying low he moved in with her, they got along okay until Eddie connected with Bart whom Sarah definitely did not like, I guess she was off the bottle for a while but started in again once she saw that Eddie wouldn’t give up his dream, his dream of beating the Big Man. This part is even murkier but one night Eddie was hustling some Bourbon king and Bart and Sarah were left behind to drink the night away. Somehow Bart, who except when negotiating bets and matches was a pretty smooth talker, conned Sarah who was miffed at Eddie like I said into bed. Got her to either take him around the world or let him take her anally (or he forced the issue figuring she was just a bent whore anyway he had odd sexual desires from what I was able to figure out after a few years with him). The boozy haze, the rough sex, being unfaithful to Eddie, maybe her whole fucking life marching before her left her with who knows what angry feelings. In any case that night before Eddie got home she had slit her wrists.     

This last part is not murky, not murky at all. After beating the hell out of Bart he took the bus back to New York and one night he came through Sharkey’s door and I knew I was roasted (Bart had telegrammed about what had happened and told me that he would put up fifty thousand dollars against Fast Eddie’s luck). I had no choice but to play the play out. After Fast Eddie took that fifty thousand and another twenty-five that I had put up I cried “uncle.” Cried uncle and left for Hollywood and the bright lights. Left Fast Eddie to play out his string, left Eddie to “shoot pools, ‘Fast Eddie’, shoot pools.”     

Present At The Creation-The French Revolution Comes To Spain-Natasha Portman’s “Goya’s Ghosts” (2006)-A Film Review

Present At The Creation-The French Revolution Comes To Spain-Natasha Portman’s “Goya’s Ghosts” (2006)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Bradley Fox, Junior

[As of this post under the new regime of Greg Green, formerly of the on-line American Film Gazette website brought in to shake things up a bit after a vote of no confidence in the previous site administrator Peter Markin was taken among all the writers at the request of some of the younger writers abetted by one key older writer, Sam Lowell, the habit of assigning writers to specific topics like film, books, political commentary, and culture is over. Also over is the designation of writers in this space, young or old, by job title like senior or associate. After a short-lived experiment designating everybody as “writer” seemingly in emulation of the French Revolution’s “citizen” or the Bolshevik Revolution’s “comrade all posts will be “signed” with given names only. The Editorial Board]

Goya’s Ghosts, starring Natasha Portman as Inez and Alicia, Javier Bardem as Lorenzo, Stellan Skargard as Goya, a Spanish production done in English, 2006)

[I find it ironic that one of the first assignments that new site administrator Greg Green has handed out deals with the turmoil of the French Revolution through the prism of the famous Spanish artist Francisco Goya which roiled through Spain during the height of the revolution in France and later during various Napoleonic conquests including Spain. Sometimes apparently, and this may have been Greg Green’s point in assigning the review life mirrors art as in the case of Lorenzo, the Spanish priest turned exiled partisan of the French Revolution and Napoleonic agent during the French occupation in the early 1800s before his downfall at Waterloo.

Seemingly a parallel example exists between Lorenzo’s topsy-turvy career and fate and that of the previous site administrator Peter Markin, who not so coincidentally was a good friend of my father Bradley, Senior and who has recently retired from that position after a vote of “no confidence” by the writers. The main reason given was Peter’s obsessive tilting of the coverage of subjects in this space toward events from the turbulent 1960s when most of the older writers came of age exemplified by the over-the-top coverage of the Summer of Love, 1967 he ordered the writers, young and old, familiar with the period or not, to cover. There has been, and here the parallel with Francisco who would go to his execution under the Inquisition once the French were defeated and swept out of Spain by the British with the aid of Spanish guerillas, a persistent rumor that Peter was purged and that the retirement ploy was just that a cover for the more aggressive removal mainly through the efforts of the younger writers which in the interest of transparency included me. So maybe Greg Green is trying to make a cautionary tale out of using this film plot as a review. I will try to track this down as I get more information by if you heard that one Peter Paul Markin has fallen under the wheels of a modern day Inquisition don’t be surprised. Don’t be surprised at all.]

*******

Artists, artist like the title’s Goya sometimes have the uncanny sense to be at the right place at the right time-at least the plot of this little gem of Spanish production film would indicate that. He lived and worked in the time of the French Revolution which was bringing a serious breathe of fresh air to feudal remnant Europe with the overthrown of the monarchy and of the attempt to bring the new democratic forms to the rest of the continent-including Spain which is where that revolution intersects with what Goya was observing and painting. In a sense Goya is all over the place in his work from the court painter to the royal family to the painter of the horrific effects of war on civilians and soldiers alike to the famous, or infamous if you like, painting of the Maja, the naked Maja which may or may not have scandalized European sensibilities. That is the subtext to the plot here where a Spanish priest, played by Javier Bardem, and Goya, played by Stellem Skargard, intersect through a rich merchant’s daughter model, played by Natalie Portman, whom Goya used and who inflamed the priest to lustful and criminal desire.  

Spain was, and maybe still is, a tough dollar place to be a dissenter, dissenter mainly being anything but a Roman Catholic and a hardened monarchist (and possibly a closet Francoist fascist if the recent struggle for the legitimate right to independent statehood of the Catalan peoples is any indication). Spain after all was the land of Inquisition which did not take kindly to any dissenters and had the means (torture and the rack, ultimately the auto de fe and the stake) That is where the action in this film starts (so the faint-hearted should push the stop button now). Lorenzo is the main prosecutor for the tribunals always looking for victims via his extensive stoolie spy network and he finds one in the person of the lusted after Inez. She goes into the dock after being tortured for her confession and before long Lorenzo has had his way with her. That way with her leading to her bearing his child. Eventually Inez get out of the slammer but the place took a lot out of her, left her mentally damaged.

Meanwhile the Church has no place for Lorenzo who is now considered an albatross around its neck and he gets out of Spain by hook or by crook landing in France. The scene then shifts back to Spain some fifteen years later. Like a lot of hard-boiled men who seek the main chance he became a senior bureaucrat in Napoleon’s administration of Spain after its conquest. Such men changing allegiance as easily as changing their shirts. Inez has seen better days but Lorenzo is still interested in finding his daughter. That search is interrupted by the British invasion which finds Lorenzo unsuccessfully fleeing but being caught and once the old order is reestablished the Inquisition in reinstated as well. Live by the sword die by the sword Lorenzo is condemned and in a defiant and honorable finish refuses to recant before he is executed.

What about Goya who after all is the hook for anybody with artistic sensibilities to have even bothered to watch this rather dragged out epic. He hovers over the scene doing his sketches and plotting his painting while trying to help Inez as best he could. But this film is mainly about Lorenzo and that is really the problem for me since we all know every revolutionary period brings certain figures from the old regime with them-after the masses have brought the changes and have fallen back exhausted. The French and Russian revolutions were full of such men who landed on their feet- for a time. Not enough Goya here to make this one move off dead center.

History In The Making-In The Unmaking Too-Audrey Tautou’s “Coco before Chanel” (2009)-A Film Review

History In The Making-In The Unmaking Too-Audrey Tautou’s “Coco before Chanel” (2009)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Leslie Dumont

Coco Before Chanel, starring Audrey Tautou, 2009   

Apparently Greg Green who hands out the assignment here, all the assignments here unlike before he came over to manage this sit and headed the film department at American Film Gazette where I was a stinger for a while early in his tenure has decided that I am to be the “women’s film” reviewer in residence since with the film under review Coco before Chanel marks the fourth straight women-oriented film I have reviewed. I don’t like, don’t like that implication at all, since if I had wanted to shell myself into a cozy non-threatening spot I could have kept my by-line at Women Today where I reviewed many things including films which were only marginally about women, one about a couple of gay men where there were no women at all.

The real thing that bothers me about this assignment from Greg who although he had posted in public that he reviews every film before assignment seemingly could not have done so here though is the subject matter on two counts. First dealing with famed Parisian haute couture fashion designer Coco Chanel when I do not give a damn about high fashion or low and resent that I have to blather on about fashionable hats and dresses like that meant anything in the real world. Fellow writer here Josh Breslin who was my companion for some years before I went to my by-line at Women Today can testify that I threw the bottle of Chanel No. 5 perfume he gave me one Christmas  across the room one time later when we having a drawn out, drag down fight about something. So much for fashion, high or low. The more egregious point though is that this is basically a dishonest film, a film which very conveniently cuts away before the German occupation of Paris when Ms. Chanel according to now disclosed documents worked hand and hand with the occupiers of what could have been burning Paris if Hitler had had his way and never was held truly accountable for her collaboration and her convenient grabbing fortunes when the Jews were rounded up. Thus this vehicle portrays yet another rags to riches by the bootstraps by a poor trodden down orphan who falls in love and is disappointed. Damn another two-bit love story.          

Holding my nose, officially holding my nose if anybody including Greg Green is asking, I will do what is expected ever since Sam Lowell’s days as film editor and tell a few details about the plot-line. Coco and her sister were treated as wayward orphans at the hellish Catholic orphanage they grew up in after their mother died. When they came of age (after learning how to sew at the orphanage) they hit the road as a sister singing act and drew the attentions of some high society patrons of the saloon where they worked (and where Coco got her moniker). These upscale relationships gained them, and eventually Coco alone, some important connections with high society, with the world of money where women as “pet poodles” were as conscious about fashion as they were about having their sullen little side affairs.     

Coco’s relationship with one such high society male got her entrée into the provincial country elite and then off to gay Paree where her hats first and later high end dresses gave her a certain cache. The film’s tension is between her overweening ambition, not a bad thing in and of itself especially for a single woman of limited means, and a love affair with a British businessman that cannot go anywhere since he, seeking his main chance, is engaged to be married to some daughter of the England nobility. Before that happens though the beast died in a car accident and that was that. Although Coco never married she was at least a mistress to some high ranking German when the Nazis tried to devour Europe, including Paris. I am still holding my nose. No mas.