Jon Reiss has been a pioneer of DIY film-making since the punk era and he shares what he’s learned in his new book, Think Outside the Box Office: The Ultimate Guide to Film Distribution and Marketing for the Digital Era
The glamorous Amanda Lear in her first TV commercial, circa 1967! The music is by François de Roubaix.
via Lady Bunny Blog
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
James “Bucks” Burnett is a “collector.” He used to write the Mr. Ed Fan Club newsletter and he managed the one and only Tiny Tim. Now he wants to open an eight-track museum.
From the WSJ:
“There are only two choices. A world with an eight-track museum and a world without an eight-track museum,” he says. “I choose with.”
Shortly after the show, the planners of a music conference in Denton, a music-loving college town about 40 miles north of Dallas, made Mr. Burnett an offer. They would find him a vacant space and pay $4,000 to build a temporary museum for a one-month run beginning Friday.
Mr. Burnett accepted and is readying his collection for another display, this time in a former lingerie factory in Denton. He plans to showcase and play a few hundred tapes, including a baby-blue copy of The Who’s “Tommy,” a copy of the “Easy Rider” soundtrack with sun-bleached cover art signed by Peter Fonda and a rare copy of Lou Reed’s 1975 avant-garde homage to noise called “Metal Machine Music.”
Play It Again: Promoter Has One-Track Mind About Eight Tracks (WSJ)
[Pleased to say I own a copy of Metal Machine Music on 8-track. Displayed proudly on my book shelf. I think it might be the first or second oldest possession I have, dating to when I was probably ten years old. I think it cost a dollar, still sealed, at a white trash department store my mother shopped at in Wheeling, WV.]
It never once occurred to me to do a search for any videos of The Fugs on YouTube. The reason being that I never expected to find any! What TV station would have allowed THEM on the screen? Answer: A Swedish one! (Perhaps one where no one spoke English?)
As you watch this clip from a show called Swiiisch—especially the part with Ed Sanders’ rap about being into “astral perversion” and getting sucked off by ring-tailed fruit bats—try to picture what sort of conniption fit Richard Nixon or J. Edgar Hoover would have had if this had run on American television.
The Fugs would have been put in jail, probably. Dig Tuli’s rad dance moves!
Part II is here.
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Xenorita Jardin of Boing Boing shares the musical spoils of her visit to Amoeba Records in Hollywood, probably the best record store I’ve ever been to. Believe me when I tell you, ‘cos I’ve shopped for records all over the world. Amoeba is a record collector’s heaven. I have spent many an afternoon (and paycheck!) there. (Dig the Alan Lomax in Haiti
I refer you to the comments thread of this week’s Dangerous Minds interview with Charles Johnson, of Little Green Footballs. This afternoon Charles linked to the interview from his popular blog and within a matter of minutes people were posting about the interview both there and here. Some pro, some con (I get compared to Sean Hannity for instance!), but some just nasty and fairly pointless, such as one item (since deleted by us and not at the request of Charles, either) which managed to slip in both a homophobic epithet and a not-so-veiled death threat!
Charming.
As Charles replied “Welcome to my world! These are exactly the people I was talking about in the interview.” I sent him the IP address and in a matter of minutes he tracked the guy down and found several instances of his email address posted online elsewhere.
Views were initially slow on this episode, but are trending upwards quickly. I’ll leave this up for another day before posting part 2.
There’s an interesting-looking art show at the ArcLight Cinemas multiplex opening tonight that caught my eye in David Ng’s post over at the LA Time’s Culture Monster blog. L.A. artist Rachel Schmeidler takes celebrity mug shots and renders them in a Warholian style. The results are simultaneously amusing, thought-provoking and chock-full of schadenfreude!
Included in the show are mug shots of Charlie Sheen, Paris Hilton, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Lenny Bruce, Jimi Hendrix, Jane Fonda, George Carlin and the Godfather of Soul himself, James Brown. Quite a (literal) rogues’ gallery.
I’m glad to see that my favorite celebrity mug shot, that of David Bowie (above), has made it into Schmeidler’s show. Have you ever seen a more elegant and sophisticated mug shot in all your life? If it were not for the intrusion of the Rochester Police Department placard he’s holding, this particular mug shot might be mistaken for an outtake from his “Station to Station” album cover art! Most mug shots, even those of big Hollywood celebrities, tend to look like Nick Nolte’s “portrait,” right? Not the Thin White Duke’s, baby!
What’s fun to consider is how these pieces will acquire greater and greater “camp” value over the years. Charlie Sheen’s mug shot (shots?) as seen on TMZ and Perez Hilton today will gain, in time, the same sort of arch, kitschy excess as, for instance, a mug shot of disgraced silent era comedian Fatty Arbuckle has.
Stated differently, a mug shot of Twiggy, say, would have a higher kitsch quotient than one of Naomi Campbell, although the Campbell mug shot might well surpass it in the camp sweepstakes at a later date. What would Susan Sontag make of this post-camp fare, I wonder?
—Richard Metzger
Cross posting this from Brand X
Dangerous Minds pal Michael Simmons reviews When You’re Strange, the new documentary about The Doors from director Tom DiCillo (Johnny Suede, Living in Oblivion) on the Mojo blog:
DiCillo’s hardest task has been to do justice to the charisma of Mr. Mojo Risin’ (one of Jim Morrison’s many handles, in this case an anagram of his name); I saw The Doors live in January 1969 and can attest that Morrison glowed, generating tangible heat. And yet, 39 years since his death, the Morrison magic comes through loud and clear, as the film traces the transformation of 1965’s callow California kids into the jaded, burnt-out rock stars of 1971. Along the way, we witness every over-told incident in Doors history: Light My Fire and the subsequent string of hits, the adoration of trendsetters du jour like Andy Warhol, Morrison’s refusal to sell out - whether it be changing a controversial lyric for Ed Sullivan or selling a song for a car commercial - his increasingly self-destructive behaviour, the two books of poems published in his lifetime, the penis-flashing in Miami that never happened, and the poète maudit’s Parisian finale.
The musical contributions of the other Doors are emphasized, from drummer John Densmore’s deft swing to guitarist Robbie Krieger’s flamenco fingering and organist Ray Manzarek’s Bach mastery, serving to remind that there would’ve been no Doors without the other Doors. Morrison’s excellence as a singer is also noted, a fact often overlooked in the accounts of his antics. When he was younger, his vocal role model was Elvis; as he got older it was Sinatra and one can clearly hear Ol’ Blues Eyes’ in Jim’s caress of a note.
The footage feels fresh and intimate. There are clips of Morrison’s underground movie from his university days, a sweet Jim playing with children, fly-on-the-wall recording studio scenes, as well as the familiar live concerts where we witness Jim the consummate performer and Jimbo the inebriated clown. But it’s the shots lifted from Morrison’s own experimental films HWY and Feast Of Friends (the former the source of that Ford Mustang footage) that allow us entry into the omnivorous, risky, arty mind of the front Door.
So, the Guardian did an article on “pop tribes” and the sway they have on youth and mass culture:
There was a time when our perceptions of pop were defined not just by the records we listened to, but by the many and varied tribes of young people who followed each of the particular kinds of music, by their clothes, their behaviour – or at least how their behaviour was reported in the press or portrayed on film. Mods would peer coolly over their scooters, braking off for the occasional fight with passing rockers. Punks would spit at gigs and terrorise grannies. Ravers with ski masks and bottles of Vicks would cruise the M25 looking for a soundsystem set up in a field. That seems to be fading: when was a new kind of music spawned by and indelibly associated with a particular youth cult? Does the lack of hugely visible new teenage tribes matter for the health of pop culture?
Not if you talk to the “scene girls”. In a brightly-lit living room in Borstal, Kent, Eve O’Brien, Louisa Burnes and Victoria Gibson, 15, jump up and down in front of the Kerrang! channel on TV. Each of them wears one item of neon blue and has a choppy, layered haircut. They talk excitedly for an hour about bands they all worship, including Paramore, 3OH!3, and All Time Low.
You can read that article here.
However, there is something more important we need to talk about, oh Dangerous Minds group mind. Specifically, this:
Grebos
Golden years: 1989-92
Music: Midlands rock bands such as Pop Will Eat Itself, the Wonder Stuff, Gaye Bikers On Acid and Crazyhead. PWEI are said to have popularised the word with their song Oh Grebo I Think I Love You.
The look: Hair shaved at the sides and long on top – somtimes dreadlocked, rarely clean. Big stripy jumpers, with baggy jeans or shorts.
Deadly rivals: None: most other youth cults considered them beneath contempt.
Public profile: Extinct. Greboes came and went, leaving little trace of their existence.
What. The. Hell.
What the hell.
I have been to the Midlands. I didn’t see any of these things. OK, it was about twelve years after the death of this alleged “Grebo” creature. I guess I’m the wrong generation and wrong nationality to be clued in. But this is really wigging me out. I can’t even find pictures or videos of them through Google. Please, Dangerous Minds readers, tell me… WHAT THE HELL IS A GREBO???
Doctor Who continues its steamroller assault on all fandom with the new announcement that Neil Gaiman has been contracted to write an episode next year for the new Doctor (aka “the Encyclopedia Britannica kid”). Apparently Michael Moorcock is writing a Dr. Who novel, too.
Neil Gaiman has been picking up literary prizes left, right and centre over the last year, but the fantasy author announced this weekend what could be the biggest honour yet for a long-time fan of Doctor Who: writing an episode of the television series detailing the adventures of the Time Lord.
Creator of the Sandman series of comics and author of novels including Anansi Boys and Coraline, Gaiman said in his acceptance speech for winning best comic at the SFX awards on Saturday that he had been a fan of Doctor Who since he was three years old, when he would watch the show from behind the sofa. “And while I know it’s cruel to make you wait for things, in about 14 months from now, which is to say, NOT in the upcoming season but early in the one after that, it’s quite possible that I might have written an episode. And if I had, it would originally have been called The House of Nothing. But it definitely isn’t called that anymore,” revealed the author, who won the best comic prize for his Batman story Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader.
Gaiman, whose latest novel The Graveyard Book won many awards last year, including best novel at the Hugos, the Newbery medal and the UK’s Booktrust teenage prize, is not the first fantasy author to have been tapped by the Doctor Who machine. Last year, Michael Moorcock revealed he had been approached to write a new Doctor Who novel for publication next Christmas.
From the New York Times, a rather odd article about karaoke killings in the Philippines. Sing a SInatra song poorly and it may be your last…
“I used to like ‘My Way,’ but after all the trouble, I stopped singing it,” he said. “You can get killed.”
The authorities do not know exactly how many people have been killed warbling “My Way” in karaoke bars over the years in the Philippines, or how many fatal fights it has fueled. But the news media have recorded at least half a dozen victims in the past decade and includes them in a subcategory of crime dubbed the “My Way Killings.”
The killings have produced urban legends about the song and left Filipinos groping for answers. Are the killings the natural byproduct of the country’s culture of violence, drinking and machismo? Or is there something inherently sinister in the song?
Sinatra Song Often Strikes Deadly Chord (New York Times)
I read about the beta-launch of something called Chatroulette this morning on a German blog I frequent called Nerdcore and something tells me this thing is gonna be HUGE. As in huge, huge. Facebook huge.
First off, it’s super easy to use—hit the “start” button, and you’re off. The people you’ll meet are from all over the world and Chatroulette works in real time (like Skype) and there’s audio, too.
What makes this thing so exciting/addicting/cringeworthy all at the same time is easy to summarize: You never know WHO you’re going to get when you click that button. My friend and I tested it out today. Our first interaction was with a male in his mid-20s. He said he was from China. Fifth go around we got the Jonas Brothers. No shit, it was the real Jonas Brothers. “Are you guys the Jonas Brothers?” They said they were in New Jersey. It looked like they were in an airport. There was a lot of starring and smiling going on. They asked if I was a fan of theirs. I said nothing. Awkward moment. Screen went black, we lost contact.
But seriously, there is lots of WEIRD shit going on here. Lonely guys jacking off in front of their computers, couples having sex and waving at you, monster mask pole dancing, obese women masturbating, lesbian orgies, guys eating pizza watching football, folks wearing clown masks, wholesome families waving at you, people smoking joints, teenagers yelling “show me your tits!’... it’s endless. I was truly shocked by what I was seeing, but that’s not to say we weren’t laughing so hard we were crying for several hours. Aside from teen pop star siblings—I mean, what are the chances?—we also encountered a hillbilly mom and her son who looked at us on her screen and murmured “They must be ‘hipsters.’ I’ve heard all about them” as well as a man… and his dog, let’s just say, and leave it at that…
This isn’t going to end well. Not at all.
UPDATE: I was punked! Chat Roulette With The Jonas Brothers
If you want to know more about Chatroulette, read The Human Shuffle: Is ChatRoulette the future of the Internet or its distant past?
Chatroulette (NSFW)
BBC is holding a mega Doctor Who auction: If you ever wanted a Dalek of your very own, now’s your chance, fanboy! Plus costumes worn by Kylie Minogue, Billie Piper and David Tennant going under the hammer. (Bonhams)
If you find yourself looking for unusual Valentine’s Day cards, look no further, because pop culture-obsessed artist Brandon Bird has come up with what are probably the most unusual valentines you are likely to find—ever! Yup, the kitschmeister supreme responsible for the classic painting No One Wants to Play Sega with Harrison Ford has done it again with: SVU Valentine’s Day cards, or, as Brandon prefers, “Saint Victims Unit” cards.
Nuthin’ says lovin’ like a DNA specimen jar or a spiteful Fred Thompson scowl, are you with me? And what’s more, there are high-res versions you can download and print out yourself that are 100% free on his blog.
P.S.: When you visit his website, do not miss the Letters to Walken section documenting an art project of Bird’s that saw schoolchildren writing their annual Christmas letters to ... Christopher Walken.
Cross posting this from Brand X
He may have just secured his fifth Academy Award nomination for playing Nelson Mandela in Invictus, but Morgan Freeman will always be Easy Reader to me! Will educational television ever be this groovy again? As one YouTube commenter notes, the irony here is that in the span of 20-plus years, Freeman went from playing the hippest reader on TV to the illiterate Hoke of Driving Miss Daisy.
(via YBNBY)
Have you been keeping up with Scott Timberg’s excellent multi-part article about Philip K. Dick’s time spent in the most conservative county—that would be the O.C.—in America? From part 3:
Orange County, he wrote, was far to the south of us, an area so reactionary to us that in Berkeley it seemed like a phantom land, made of the mists of dire nightmare Orange County, which no one in Berkeley had ever actually seen, was the fantasy at the other end of the world, Berkeley opposite.
Kidding aside, there were certainly times when suburban SoCal, and life as a married father, didn’t satisfy him. I hadn’t realized before how [expletive] dumb and dull and futile and empty middle-class life is, he wrote in a 1975 letter. I have gone from the gutter (circa 1971) to the plastic container.
Dick’s supposed paranoia didn’t wane during these years: As often happened, the culture and American history caught up with him. Dick was fond of pointing out that the Watergate trials validated his obsession with conspiracy. Tessa, who is hoping to run for Congress as a Libertarian, says that his distrust of the government and fear of the police state increased during his decade in Southern California.
Lethem, editor of Dick’s Library of America volumes, called this a period where he seems less grounded in place. From the evidence of Dick’s work, Lethem said, it’s a time of very strong alienation from any real environment it’s about Disneyland, about condos where you park your car under the building, where you barely get to know your neighbors. It was about Nixon. It’s almost like Dick was a spy in Orange County a mole within the culture.
Philip K. Dick, an uneasy spy inside 1970s suburbia (Hero Complex/Los Angeles Times)
Just when you think there are no new surprises coming out of the underground, something like the Taqwacore movement arrives, a fictional Islamic punk rock subculture that has become a REAL Islamic punk rock movement. Melissa Henderson writes at Brand X:
Originally imagined as a fictional world of living on the edge, Muslim punk rockers in Michael Muhammad Knight’s 2003 novel, “The Taqwacores”, Taqwacore has since evolved into an honest-to-goodness, real-life, fight-the-power scene, replete with young and charismatic activists, artists and Punk the only appropriate soundtrack to any decent rebellion.
Groups like the Chicago doom-crust band Al-Thawra and Boston-based ska-punkers the Kominas are rapidly gaining attention, as evidenced by August’s Los Angeles Times feature. Omar Majeed’s documentary about the subculture, Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam, made Spin magazine’s Best Music Documentary list of 2009, and “The Taqwacores”, Eyad Zahra’s feature film adaptation of the novel, premiered this week as an official competitor at the Sundance Film Festival. (For more on that, check out the post at the LA Times 24 Frames blog).
Knight, a Rochester, N.Y., native who converted to Islam in his teens and then struggled with an inability to reconcile his faith with his inner Punk, coined the book’s title from the Arabic word “Taqwa,” which means piety or God-fearing, and hardcore, a subgenre of late-70s punk rock. The novel, which he handed out for free in parking lots before finding a publisher in 2004, resonated so strongly with young Muslims dissatisfied with traditionalists in their own communities and cliches foisted on them by outsiders that it became something of a manifesto.
READ MORE: The rise of Taqwacore: from parking lots to Park City (Brand X)
The first round of child sexual abuse allegations were leveled against Michael Jackson in ‘93. Amid all the “avalanches of dirt,” Jackson found an unlikely ally in the Academy Award-winning actor, Maximilian Schell (Judgment At Nuremberg, The Black Hole), who wrote the King Of Pop a gushy fan letter that appeared on the back page of the Hollywood Reporter:
MAXIMILIAN SCHELL
NOV, 19 1993
TO: MICHAEL JACKSON
(SOMEWHERE ON THIS PLANET)DEAR MICHAEL,
I AM DEEPLY ASHAMED—FOR THE PRESS, FOR THE MEDIA, FOR THE WORLD - I don’t know you - we met only ONCE on one of those Award-Dinners (“ENTERTAINER of the DECADE”) - We shook hands - you were kind and polite - I don’t think you knew who I was - HOW SHOULD YOU? OUR WORLDS ARE TOO FAR APART - (I am more, “CLASSICAL” - minded -) but I looked into your eyes—THEY WERE KIND—
You are a great artist and I admire you - my little daughter (she is 9?Ǭ?) LOVES YOU! DEEPLY - SHE EVEN WANTS TO MARRY YOU! (-“BUT HE NEVER CALLS ME!”) SHE IMITATES YOU ALL THE TIME - and quite well -
WE ALL LOVE YOU
I would like her more to listen to MOZART - but she loves YOU! AND I RESPECT HER TASTE!—
THAT YOU SURVIVE THIS AVALANCHE OF DIRT THROWN AT YOU - I ADMIRE TREMENDOUSLY -
THANK YOU FOR WHAT YOU ARE!
GOD BLESS YOU
Maximilian Schell
P.S. “ONE CAN ONLY SEE GOOD WITH THE HEART - THE ESSENTIAL IS INVISIBLE FOR THE EYES - (“THE LITTLE PRINCE”)
To see a copy of Schell’s actual missive, check out Letters Of Note
Although it may come as a surprise to some readers of this blog, I’m a huge Ugly Betty fan and have been from the beginning. It’s got one of the best casts of any TV show on any network today and I look forward to seeing all of them going on to new projects. America Ferrera is one of the most charismatic young actresses out there, I’ve enjoyed her performances immensely in everything I’ve seen her in and I hope the dynamic comedic pairing of real life best friends Michael Urie and Becki Newton lives on in future projects. (And if no one will pay them to do something together, they should do it themselves, like a talk show. All they need is a camera and someone to talk to and it will be great). Such memorable characters, all of them.
And Ugly Betty had some of the best writers, directors, stylists, art directors and set designers in the business. Each and every episode was a meticulously crafted, deeply moving gem. It was creative down to the transitions between scenes. It upped the ante for TV comedy in some many different ways. In its entire run there were very, very few “eh” episodes. Maybe only one.
ABC say that fans of the show will be satisfied at how the series is resolved—there will be eight more episodes—and I hope that’s true, but it was a sad day in our household when we heard that Ugly Betty would be no more.
Karin Dreijer of the Swedish sibling duo The Knife, also known professionally as Fever Ray, shows Gaga how it’s done.
Via Bob Lefsetz
