The Friday Article Roundup
Ripping the cord on the best pop culture writing of the week.
This week, you will stumble into:
Send your own submissions throughout the next week to magpiesfar [at] gmail, post articles from the past week in the comments for discussion, and have a Happy Friday!
For Letterboxd, Ella Kemp talks to Samy Burch about writing Coyote Vs. Acme and making sure to include classic Looney Tunes characters:
I think, like many kids of the last 80 years, I probably did process Peter Lorre in Looney Tunes first. I loved the ones in the Copacabana, and all the Hollywood clubs, and that had everybody characterized. But then he was also in a lot of episodes and shorts as Dr. Lorre, the scientist—which I don’t really know why or how they were able to do that. Maybe he was just under contract at Warner Bros…. In an earlier version of the script, the scientist’s character was actually a human. But at some point, [this way] felt like a really good idea. Because if you have Peter Lorre—Dr. Lorre—why put him on the bench?
At Scarborough Science, Chuka Ebuta looks back a decade after being gobsmacked by Frank Ocean’s Blonde:
On the night of August 20th, I laid in my bed and heard Blonde two more times. My soul flipped on that beat switch in “Nights”. I instantly recognized “White Ferrari’s” interpolation of The Beatles’ “Here, There and Everywhere”. Most importantly, I knew I left the tunnel that day even if it took weeks, months and years to actualize. I didn’t just hit play and ride into the expanse of the Don Valley. I found a light, an exit in my mind where one didn’t exist. Weeks after that day in 2016, I felt the drive to continue my musical skunkworks so I could stand to look at myself. I saw a psychiatrist because I suddenly imagined self-possession in my lifetime. I wanted to understand my depression and live with my anxiety because I wanted to reach others like me, I wanted to provide space for other young black men lost in their own darkness. A decade later, I’ve materialized these things in waves and it all started with Blonde.
James Marriott disembowels – no, eviscerates – a new podcast about language for The Times Of London:
As for their lexicographical observations… in a conversation with the novelist Elif Shafak, (co-host Benajamin) Aston comments that King Arthur “was a great mudlarker”, which he thinks is appropriate because mudlarking contains “the word ‘king’… I always thought that was so beautiful,” he says. I mean, maybe? But then isn’t the word “king” in many other words, such as “banking”, “ranking”… “wanking” and a whole host of other less glamorous present participles. Aston says another of his favourite words is “subliminal”. He explains that “my understanding is that sub is ‘beneath’, or ‘under’ and ‘liminal’ describes ‘liminality’”. I wouldn’t expect a call from the recruitment department at the OED any time soon.
Ian Wade looks at a new documentary about Wham!’s groundbreaking visit to China at The Quietus:
Each ticket holder had been given a cassette of Wham! songs ahead of the event, with one side featuring Wham!’s originals and the other redone by Chinese singer Cheng Fangyaun in Mandarin, and given a communist makeover, ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go’ becomes “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go / Men fight to be the first to reach the peak / Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go / Women are on the same journey and will not fall behind”, which lends it more of an early Manics or Stereolab vibe. The footage of fans going to listen to their tapes in an electrical store – many couldn’t afford a tape deck – is like something beamed in from a distant planet.
And Corey Atad mourns pop culture critic Soraya Roberts and her commitment to meaningful work — and to fighting the industry that degraded it:
Personal struggles and constant self-doubt plagued her, even in her work, though her obstinance effectively masked that in many people’s eyes. Her education in journalism was a North Star for her, even as the industry did all it could to beat back her confidence. She had a sense of what her work was supposed to mean, what writing and journalism meant to the world, and she was utterly committed to the processes by which good writing was birthed. She railed endlessly against the capitalist forces tearing her beloved industry and art form apart, urging those around her to take stronger stands, to form collectives, to have each other’s backs, to demand compensation that reflected the value of what it is we do.
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Department of
Conversation
I liked Roberts and had lost track of her work. Does anyone know what happened to her?
I am not intending this as speculation, but when someone dies young and no one is talking about the cause, it’s generally one of two things. I think the attitude of letting the family take the lead in disclosure is for the most part a good one.
Nah, I get it, less trying to speculate and feeling sad and wanting to understand.
What did we watch?
Babylon 5, Season Five, Episode Ten, “A Tragedy of Telepaths”
This is actually a pretty good episode, one that calls back to season one in its tone; the G’Kar and Londo plot is magnificent, with Londo pulling off one more political scheme and even seeming in high spirits because of it. I even kind of like the telepath plot, though admittedly that’s mostly because Bester shows up in it. Admittedly, though, it does have escalation and plot movement as the telepaths and government stand off.
Damn, it had gone off TUBI at this point for me so I missed Bester fucking up telepaths? NOOOOOOOOOO
Oh, I thought Tubi got it back and you finished it.
Elementary, “Turn It Upside Down” – When Joan’s mole in Morland’s company is assassinated, first Joan has to tell Sherlock she had a man inside, and then all eyes are on Morland as the suspect. Soon enough, the pieces come together and the man’s death is related to the death of a researcher whose survey about criminal justice turns out to be an excellent way to find sociopaths. And also that this is part of a bigger scheme to manipulate the oil market. By, it seems, Moriarty. Oh, and Sherlock tells Joan he only recently learned his mother was a drug addict. Hard to judge this one since it’s basically part one of three. But the scene with Sherlock’s painful conversation with Joan is very well acted, and a confrontation between Gregson and Morland is also great. Aidan Quinn is the show’s glue guy, not a showy actor bur a constant and steady one.
Barney Miller, “Heat Wave” – NYC bakes and the muggers and rapists come out, so teams of female detectives and men in women’s clothes are sent to be decoys. Wojo complains a bit too much about this, and about being partnered with Wentworth, only this being TV there is actually unresolves sexual tension. Meanwhile, a woman files a complaint about an abusive husband, and is thisclose to not pressing charges because she loves the man, but decides better. This one stumbles a bit in trying to present female characters and in presenting male insecurities, and how Fish treats the abused wife is pretty awful. The most interesting things here are the brief appearance of a Black woman cop commiserating with Wentworth, and Harris trying to avoid shaving his mustache (and soul patch) for undercover work. (There are zero photos online of Ron Glass clean shaved.)
People’s Emergency Briefing – a 50 minute documentary / public information film that attempts to summarise the key points from a recent emergency meeting about climate change. This is currently available in the UK for group to screen wherever they want, so there have been screenings in libraries, town halls etc. but the one I saw was at an actual cinema. I joked that it would be funny to load up on popcorn and soft drinks to watch a film of this severity only to find that many other people in attendance had done just that! So, huh. Anyway, this is pretty effective – it gives the key points from each speech and also has some slightly randomly chosen people discussing their thoughts on the speeches, I guess the idea is to make it feel more like an open discussion that can then continue with the viewers after watching (which definitely worked on our group). Not all of the info provided is doom and gloom, there are some major positives to take from it, but only if people (and, vitally, the government) actually take decisive action. Instead, we’ll probably vote in a load of bigots at the next general election and sign our own death warrant, hooray.
The Sisters Of Mercy — a short film made up of behind-the-scenes /test footage of Parker Posey and Sabrina Lloyd working out a scene for the feature Iris, with director (of Iris and this) Hal Hartley figuring out how to shoot everything. Some of this is familiar from any rehearsal depictions, emphasizing different parts of the line and so forth, but it’s amusingly revealing in its tediousness, poor Lloyd at one point makes the decision to lean over a radiator (not on, at least) while delivering dialogue and Hartley likes it, so she’s stuck in this posture (and ever so slightly adjusted) for minutes on end. It’s clear that Lloyd and Posey are the angels being merciful to their director here, this is sort of an apology and tribute to work being done. On Criterion for a few more days.
Invaders From Mars — the 1986 Tobe Hooper remake, which I saw and got fucked up by in one of those classic “this is about aliens but PG so we’ll rent it for you damn wiener kids” video store situations. It was funny to see what I had remembered (a wonderfully game and evil Louise Fletcher eating a frog, the business with copper and lasers at the end) and what I had not, namely that child lead Hunter Carson looks and more hilariously runs like a 10-year-old Joe Don Baker, but does not have any of Baker’s acting talent. Hooper is not at the top of his game here and the movie’s structure is very similar to and unfavorably compared to The Stuff, Larry Cohen has much less money but far more vim in his direction. But the money is on screen (and Hooper of course is not a slouch, this is a model “we used to make things in this country” movie to club 2020s filming standards with) with some great sets and even better aliens, courtesy of the great Stan Winston — these were guys I remembered of course but I forgot how insanely rad they are, worth sitting through any amount of Carson ambulating around like a drugged ape. On TUBI, of course.
The Light In The Piazza – the Live At The Lincoln Center PBS recording and damn if I wish they didn’t do more of this. At least the thing is on YouTube and now that I’m older, I appreciate more than ever the era when PBS did pro-shots of musicals and plays. Doesn’t have Kelli O’Hara and Matthew Morrison, part of the original cast. Nevertheless it is a recording of a great Broadway musical, something that can be vital to archival work. The viewer can see Victoria Clark’s devastating Tony-winning performance and Bartlett Sher’s towering sets that evoke the size and romance of Florence and the journey Margaret and Clara go through. Interestingly, I think watching the whole thing that Guettel reinterprets the story for his purposes. The book is more explicitly about Margaret’s cleverness and motivations and is a tight novella; this is a bigger musical of course and incorporates more points of view, bringing out Spencer’s subtext that Clara is not truly independent and love gives her a sense of agency and passion she has never had before. It’s more explicit as well about Margaret recognizing in Act 2 that Clara could be loved in the way she never was; the daughter she understandably coddled and assumed could never leave her will do just that.* All of this drama is set to gorgeous arias and melodies that often go into dissonance.
*Margaret observes to Roy that the doctors may have been flat out wrong about Clara never growing beyond age 12.
PBS and the rest of public media really should do this as much as possible, but I think even if it’s cheaper than sending nature film crews to Africa, it’s less likely to draw donors.
Hercules
Probably the best Disney movie of its whole era from a design standpoint. Shame about everything else.
On the plus side, it clarified what makes a spectacle like this work. It’s nice if the script to have substance, but those are rare. Whatg you need is a script that shuts up and lets the pictures do the talking. Instead, we get 90 minutes of characters hanging around, telling bad jokes, and describing the plot out loud (the studio’s best movies respect their audience, even the little ones. Like I said, this isn’t one of those). Everything about it plays down the crew’s strengths and plays up the crew’s weaknesses. Almost every time we get a stunning image on screen, it’s gone in the time it takes to blink: you have to keep your finger on the pause button to appreciate the designs for the Greek gods or the gorgeous paintings of Hades’ underworld. The most striking image in the whole thing, a split-screen shot of Hercules fighting an awesome, angular harpy, last about a second. When it’s finally time for an honest-to-god Clash of the Titans, the filmmakers speed through it as fast as possible so they can spend about 5-10 times as long on a parade of characters making inexplicable decisions so they can maneuver them in place for a Tragic Sacrifice that doesn’t land at all. Compare this to something like The Nightmare Before Christmas; every time I watch it, it becomes more obvious the script has all the same problems but I never get bored because there’s always some new detail to drink in.
Trying to make a movie that’s all comic relief all the time, but doing hardly any of it with the stuff they’re good at — character animation, sight gags — was Disney’s biggest mistake. The one laugh in the whole thing is almost silent, just a brilliant caricature of the classic Dark, Troubled Artist type.
As for the self-aware schtick, it works better in outright parody; you can’t have the characters read off Jeffrey Katzenberg’s studio notes about how stupid this all is and still expect us to care. You could chalk all the dull expository dialogue to too many producers demanding the writers explain everything. But any halfway decent editor would have noticed, for instance, that instead of having the love interest keep insisting she doesn’t need help, it’d be cleaner to just have her get away on her own and leave Herc to deal with the monster he’s enraged for no reason. And it probably says something about Disney’s treatment of women t hat their idea of course correction was a Heartless Seductress Who Just Needs to Learn to Love [men] Again. (Okay, I lied. The biggest laugh is how Hercules’ seduction technique involves saying #notallmen in almost those exact words.)
The plain and simple fact is Disney can bring in the most talented animators and designers in the world, but the best screenwriters have plenty of better gigs open to them. And they seem to have known this; when it works, it’s because the best talent money can buy is riffing on millennia of art based on the Greek myths. And they bought some good-ass talent; this looks like nothing else the studio has done, thanks mostly to the influence of Gerald Scarfe. You may know him from Pink Floyd’s The Wall, and as much of a pop-culture juggernaut as that was, his style is so uncommercial and anti-Disney — dark, jagged, and ugly — I have to imagine his involvement was a real “dump truck full o’ money” situation.
The Sopranos: Pine Barrens
The Simpsons: Lemon of Troy
Real “why have hamburgers when you can have steak?” hours here. The people behind these episodes do everything right that Disney did wrong; the dialogue’s hilarious, it’s written by people who understand they’re working in a visual medium, and the drama works too. It’s a little unfair to compare a mid-tier Disney movie to two of the greatest TV shows of all time; especially The Simpsons, which Hercules wants desperately to be, but without the best crew of writers and voice artists in the history of the medium. (Animation or television? Up to you.) Of course, The Simpsons had to lean on this side of these guys because they couldn’t afford the spectacle Disney has on offer. But I can’t help but notice they shut the hell up a lot more. You’d completely miss some of the best gags here if you weren’t facing the TV (see: Homer’s doppelganger sucking on a lemon, Ned losing the lemon tree and slowly backing up to get it back).
As for Pine Barrens, it’s the first Sopranos episode I’ve watched a second time, and it deserves it. Director Steve Buscemi obviously learned a lot working with the Coen Brothers, and he understands how much of the best comedy comes from the tension of characters being total assholes to the people they care about most. I never really got why fans at the time were so mad the Russian never came back, but Tony’s final words to Paulie — “It’ll be your problem, not mine” — made me realize that would have been one hell of a story. And Gloria’s house looks incredible, especially next to the tacky-ass McMansions the rest of the cast lives in.
What did we read?
Lenin: A Biography, Chapter Six, Robert Service
Lenin’s preference for theory over people finds a practical application at this point in his life; he becomes involved with the local Marxist scene, and already he’s becoming known for stubbornness and a desire for action. Service lays out the mixture of Old and New Russia in St Petersberg – very much reminding me both of how slaves and rich walked by each other in the uprisings of Rome, and the fact that rich and poor intermingle online and in pop culture today – as well as confident and enthusiastic intellectuals that drew Lenin specifically. What emerges for Lenin here is an enthusiasm for action, and this leads to what little interest he has in human beings as human beings developing; his connections to other Marxists, in which his reputation as the Old Man first solidifies, never to leave him again.
Libby, Milt Machlin
There are two stories in this book. The first is the one advertised on the cover of the book: the specific incident of torch singer Libby Holman and the untimely death of her husband Smith Reynolds, which dogged her life and affected her career; there was much controversy over whether or not she murdered him and tried to cover it up. It quickly becomes apparent, long before Machlin ‘reveals’ himself in the narrative with his personal theory, that this was horseshit and that Reynolds killed himself. Even outside the fact that the evidence as given doesn’t match up and the prosecuting lawyer is essentially pushing a theory purely to win, Reynolds as presented in the book is emotionally unstable and prone to impulsive actions.
The second story – one far more interesting, and which does take up the majority of the book – is that of a white artist who becomes popular through her sincere appreciation for Black culture. Her influences – both through music and in personal relationships – were largely Black, and she found a way to channel that into popular acclaim, making her not much different from Elvis, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, or Amy Winehouse later; very funny to read that kind of thing happening in the Thirties, along with the controversies that come with this (by which I mean racist bullshit – no talk of appropriation that you’d get today).
(Also funny from a modern context: Holman’s cheerful bisexuality, where she even mentions late in life that she was attracted to men but loved women)
Tied into this is the role anti-semitism played in her life; she was Jewish, and Machlin suggests anti-semitism played the biggest role in the public reaction to her husband’s suicide, particularly from small-town bigots who resented New York Jews, and was largely responsible for the continued damage to her career. Her particular heritage also gave her darker skin and a huskier voice, to add to the general racism. The second half of her life is marred by tragedy after tragedy; the deaths of her friends, second husband, and even her child in a mountaineering accident. It’s a shame because she definitely comes off in the book as someone at worst sardonic and abrasive.
Lonesome Dove – So great that I didn’t enter a StoryGraph review and am merely letting sit with me; something that does strike me is how the big, epic trip that kicks the story off might have been a terrible mistake. Hell, all the characters’ journeys aren’t good ideas. They get other people killed or take them to unexpected places, and McMurtry implies that life is indeed “what happens when you’re making other plans.” A lot of loss and desolation here especially at the end.
More Better Deals – Joe R. Lansdale seemingly doing a pure genre exercise, his take on Double Indemnity or The Postman Rings Twice. He does bring a decent twist with the guilty noir protagonist being a mixed-race man passing for white in the Fifties, giving him a motivation for the money, but buries the darker incestuous undertones of the novel. Strange for a guy who has written some truly grisly and great shit; nevertheless we get near the end a grave containing THREE bodies, one buried alive, and the classic “dead body will not stay dead.” Some things never get old.
First level of Lonesome Dove: Fuck yeah epic journey!
Second level: This epic journey was a horrible, destructive mistake
Third level: But what else is there?
That’s the flip side of “life is what happens while you’re making other plans,” any plans are other plans. What a book.
My only other experience with McMurtry is through movies, namely Last Picture Show and Brokeback Mountain, and they have a similar approach to plot that I dig. Life goes on with or without a plan.
Razorblade Tears, by S.A. Crosby — two men, one black and one white and both ex-cons, team up to avenge the murder of their sons. Who were married to each other, and neither man had accepted that or their homosexuality, so there is a lot of regret and especially on the part of Ike, the black dad, bigotry that he can’t get over. There is a very funny and mean short scene where the dads fuck up some dumb wokesters but the actual villains here are much grimmer biker types with rich backers, Crosby’s skill at laying out the criminal landscape of Virginia is fantastic, and his depiction of violence is brutal and satisfying. But he also sends his leads into a gay bar to get more information and Ike’s reactions there are also brutal, someone who cannot get over himself despite what other people need (or just how other people are existing), if Crosby’s reach occasionally exceeds his grasp for some characters he grabs something hard here. The book resolves perhaps a bit too neatly, although if it doesn’t resolve in this way then the carnage throughout becomes simplistic vengeance, and Crosby has an awkward habit of constantly attributing dialogue in the text (“X said” after every utterance) but he’s still two for two so far.
Fuck yeah, Razorblade Tears. This and Blacktop Wasteland are my favorites of his thus far. (That dialogue tagging always bugs me too, although in my case it’s not so much the frequency as him always putting it at the end of the statement, even when it’s several sentences long. But I can live with it.) He’s also a terrific speaker if you ever get the chance to see a literary event he’s attending.
Love in the Time of Cholera
Looks kind of shabby next to One Hundred Years of Solitude, but hey, what doesn’t? (I have to wonder how much of that is because the great Gregory Rabassa didn’t translate this one.) Light on the magic realism, but still heavy on memorable and memorably sexy images. This fits easier into genre expectations than whatever the hell Gabo was doing in his earlier books, but he’s still experimenting, just in a more understated way. You could call this non-linear storytelling, but it lines up perfectly with the way people remember and tell their life stories.
Year of the Month updates:
This September, you can write about any of these movies, albums, books, etc. from 1937.
Sept. 4th: Gillian Nelson: Moose Hunters
Sept. 6th: Tristan J. Nankervis: Lenin in October
Sept. 18th: Gillian Nelson: Pluto’s Quin-pup-lets
Sept. 20th: Tristan J. Nankervis: The Hobbit
Sept. 22nd: Lauren James: Stage Door
Sept. 25th: Gillian Nelson: Donald’s Ostrich
Here’s how we’re wrapping up August:
Aug. 28th: Gillian Nelson: Walt Disney Treasures
And here’s all the movies, albums, books from 1998 you can sign up for this October!