We at Premium Hollywood have been dating ourselves — insert your own “isn’t that against the law” joke here — with our love for bad ’70s commercials and the opening credits to zany TV shows that were only greenlit by mountains of coke, so we thought it was only fair to show some love for a TV commercial currently airing that looks like it was also the work of someone who has done mountains of coke. Sweet, hilarious, wonderful coke. Yaaaaaaaaaaaaay!
Month: November 2007 (Page 10 of 12)
I can still remember when I was first introduced to the music of Syd Barrett. I was hanging out with my buddy Bobby Fulford – he and I had been comrades in arms behind the grill at McDonald’s – and it wasn’t long after he’d begun to teach me the wonders of Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians when he said, “Well, if you like Robyn Hitchcock, you ought to love this guy, because he’s where Hitchcock got his sound from.” I’d never really been a big Pink Floyd fan (given how little album rock I’d listened to at the time, I probably didn’t know much more than “Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 2”), but, still, I was surprised at the sounds I heard when Bob spun me efforts from Barrett’s pair of solo efforts, The Madcap Laughs and Barrett. The first album I ever got by Syd, however, was Opel, a collection of outtakes and alternate versions of songs from those two albums; in theory, it shouldn’t have been the best indoctrination to the man’s work, given its disjointed nature and the rawness of some of the tracks, but all I know is that I fell love with it in a big, big way…like, to the point where I actually had a poster for it adorning the wall of my college dorm room.
Hmmm…now that I think about it, this could be why no-one ever believed me when I told them I’d never done drugs.
In the wake of Syd Barrett’s death in 2006, there proved to be a considerable renaissance of interest in his work, both in the Floyd and as a solo artist, but he’d always maintained a consistent cult following. DVD efforts like “Syd Barrett: Up Close and Personal” and “Syd Barrett: Under Review” tried and failed to serve as definitive efforts of his life, times, and musical legacy; with “The Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett Story,” however, we come pretty darned close…or, at least, far closer than we’ve ever come before. In addition to new interviews with the four other members of Pink Floyd – Roger Waters, David Gilmour, Rick Wright, and Nick Mason – we also receive insight from former Humble Pie drummer Jerry Shirley, who sat behind the kit for Barrett’s solo albums, and we get a tour of Barrett’s old apartment from former roommate Duggie Fields. (Fields has lived there for years; in fact, it’s the very same apartment where the cover shot for The Madcap Laughs was taken.)
Bill Hicks once observed that “the musicians that made all that great music that’s enhanced your lives throughout the years were rrreal fucking high on drugs,” and while the documentary takes us on a trip from Barrett’s birth through his musical career to his final years, it ultimately serves as a cautionary tale of the effects of L.S.D. on the human brain. But since Barrett’s abuse led to him offering up some of the most creative, inspired music of the 1960s, I sometime find myself of mixed emotions when listening to it. Given how much I love his work, does that mean that I’m secretly glad that he fried his brain? That’s a road best not traveled, I suspect.
If you’re a longtime Floyd and Barrett fan, you’ll have heard many of these stories before, but it doesn’t make them any less fascinating, amusing, or depressing, such as when Roger Waters tells the tale of Barrett’s maddening “composition” that changed every time Barrett tried to teach it to him. (Its title: “Have You Got It Yet?”) We about the damage the drugs did on Barrett’s mood and how it affected his actions, about the excruciating appearance the band made on Pat Boone’s show, where Syd just sat there and stared at Pat, and, most importantly, about the day that the other members of Pink Floyd made the group decision to kick Syd out of the band by, uh, just not going to pick him up for their next show. As ever, though, the most disconcerting story comes when the band discusses how, while they were in the midst of recording a song which had been inspired by Syd (“Wish You Were Here”), they turned to discover that the man himself was at the back of the studio; it was the first time any of them had seen him in years, and he’d gained weight and shaved both his head and his eyebrows.
It proved to be the last time most of them ever saw him.
In addition to the documentary proper, there are extended versions of interviews with Waters and Gilmour. In particular, there’s a brilliant moment where Gilmour is discussing “Wish You Were Here,” then looks around the room and mutters something like, “If I could find the guitar, I’d play it for you.” But it’s obvious that he’s not looking terribly hard for it, and you can all but hear the twitch in the interviewer’s voice as he sits there, trying to say outright, “Um…if you want to look for it, I can wait!” (Thankfully, Gilmour does succeed in finding the guitar and playing a bit of the song.) Also included amongst the special features are a trio of highly enjoyable acoustic performances of Barrett compositions from Robyn Hitchcock and Graham Coxon; Hitchcock’s takes on “Dominoes” and “It Is Obvious” only serve to emphasize how much of his sound was borrowed from Syd in the first place, but Coxon’s “Love You” proves downright revelatory, bringing to light how much Blur’s “Parklife” actually sounded like an early Pink Floyd track.
If you’re a fan of Pink Floyd’s album rock standards, like The Wall and Dark Side of the Moon, but you’re not familiar with how the band got their start, you owe it to yourself to get an education via “The Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett Story.” You might not enjoy the music from the Syd Barrett era as much as the stuff that’s gotten played ad nauseum for all these years, but it might surprise you how much the band’s changed since their original songwriter “retired.” (If you do enjoy it, however, you might want to hunt down the extended version of this film, which contains far more extended interviews.)
Last week I bemoaned sweeps; this week I am grateful for them. This was easily the best episode since the pilot. The entire mythology of the series cranked up about 3 notches.
In 1999 Dan saved the life of a man who was set to testify against a gang, and in the process made his 1999 self a target of the same gang. So instead of his typical bouncing around from time to time in an episode, he’s forced to stay in one night to save himself – and his future marriage and child – with Livia aiding him for the evening.
What struck me as most noteworthy about this episode was the notion that Dan and Livia are far more suited to each other at this point than Dan and Katie. They understand one another and their lives have far more in common at this point than his “real” life, which is progressively becoming harder and harder to maintain. Katie would like to get back into the TV News game, but how can she with a child and the knowledge that Dan might disappear in a flash? Dan’s weekly assignments are to right the wrongs the timeline has massed up; what if “Journeyman” as a concept is all about righting the biggest wrongs of all? The loss of Dan and Livia’s relationship and the loss of Jack and Katie’s? For the first time in the series, I really, really liked Livia and she truly seemed to have Dan’s best interest at heart, especially in the scene where she ended up in the present, in his bedroom closet next to the moneybag – all while Katie and Jack argue footsteps away. What if Katie and Jack are actually supposed to be together? As was even demonstrated at the beginning of the episode, Jack possesses the potential to be a much better father than Dan is even capable of being at the moment. Jack’s a good man who simply doesn’t know what’s going on (although he’s getting much closer with each passing episode).
There’s something in “Doctor Who” called the Blinovitch Limitation Effect that posits “a dangerous energy discharge will result if two temporal versions of the same person come into contact”. I thought about this immediately when Dan kicked his own ass in ’99. Had this happened in “Who”, the universe would’ve exploded. Not that “Journeyman” is under any obligation to play by other time travel rules, but it was interesting to note that he was able to beat the crap out of his drunken ’99 self without too much fallout – well, um – other than screwing up his timeline anyway. The rest of the story saw Dan being forced to take the place of his ’99 self in a card game and thus he falls back into a night of gambling and drinking, all set to The Verve’s “Lucky Man”. The entire sequence punctuated by the arrival of ’99 Katie was the episode highlight.
But the FBI are closing in and next week things will get even stickier. Yes, the promise of this series is being delivered. By the way, “Journeyman” supposedly has 13 episodes in the can or at least nearing completion. No more have been ordered at the moment, but we should be good through at least the end of the year, what with the writer’s strike and all. I’m sure at the moment, studios aren’t placing season orders for anything.
Heading into this “two-hour event,” I was wondering how the show was going to take off in a new direction once the boys escaped Sona. Would they join (or chase) Whistler and Susan as they looked for whatever it is they want on the bottom of the ocean? Would they try to find the money (from the first season) that’s sitting in a bag at the bottom of the cove as they dodge the Panamanian law? Would Michael discover that Sara was dead and seek vengeance on her murderers?
What we got was four more days in Sona. Oh, and the big twist – Susan’s real name is Gretchen and she knows Whistler. Apparently, he’s her boss. Yawn.
For someone who wants her boss out of Sona safely, I find Susan to be grouchy and unhelpful. First, she kills Michael’s girlfriend, which was a really risky move. She didn’t know that Linc wasn’t going to tell his brother about her death, and if/when Michael found out, he’s just as likely to freak out and stop planning the escape as he was to keep pushing forward to try to save LJ. The best she can do on the photo is give the brothers the same one she gave them before, which is pretty sketchy considering all the resources the Company is supposed to have. I don’t know if these plot holes are intentional or just a natural part of the series, but they sure are distracting.
Apparently, the purpose of Tyge’s arrival at Sona was so that he could be killed, creating suspense around whether or not Whistler would be available for the escape. This is also a very fishy plot point. Is Tyge really just this random guy that got thrown into Sona and just happened to recognize Whistler? Come on.
I’ve got to hand it to Linc. He went almost a whole season without making a boneheaded move then, on the day of the escape, he lets it slip that “something went wrong drugging the guard, but it’s OK now” when he could have said nothing and Susan wouldn’t have known about the daylight escape attempt. Way to go, Linc! I love how he told Michael that “she figured it out.” Yeah, right. She figured it out because you told her, you dolt!
The writers are being a little heavy-handed trying to humanize Bellick. First, Tyge embarrasses him in line and then he’s devastated by the news of Sara’s death. Suddenly, he’s this compassionate, misunderstood guy. Did anyone else suspect that he was in fact Tyge’s murderer? I know Michael found the knife in Mahone’s cell, but that could have been planted. I wonder if that’s going to come up again.
Speaking of Tyge’s death, what does the betrayal of Luchero’s man (discovered via the cigar stub) have to do with Whister? In other words, why did Luchero let Whistler go after killing his man? I don’t know what one has to do with the other, especially when Luchero goes on and on about whatever justice he thinks exists in Sona. I think that the writers sometimes use shocking moments like that as misdirection so that we don’t notice them shoving a bunch of shit under the rug.
How about that brutal fistfight between Michael and Whistler where each guy lands like 10 punches yet neither guy gets a bloody lip or a black eye? I’m sure this had something to do with not wanting to give pretty boy Michael a black eye for the next five episodes, but it’s just too silly to ignore.
As you can probably tell, I wasn’t a big fan of these two episodes. Once Michael sent Whistler back up the ladder, I knew we were in for several more episodes in Sona, and it’s starting to feel a little tedious. This part of “Prison Break” is starting to drag out, and the show feels like one big tease. They tried to kick things up a notch by having Luchero’s power taken away from him, meaning that he now wants to escape, and by revealing that Susan/Gretchen really works for Whistler, but after almost two hours of teasing, it just feels like too little, too late.
It’s hard to wrap your head around the idea of a woman in her 90s who, after deciding that she’s fed up with the current political climate, makes the decision to run for office. It just doesn’t sound…real. In fact, at best, it sounds like a TV movie that’d star Ann Guilbert and air on Lifetime, probably nestled between reruns of “The Nanny.” But the story of Doris “Granny D” Haddock is one that’s 100% true…and if you live in her home state of New Hampshire, you’re probably already way more familiar with her than I am, given how much media attention was given to her 2004 senate run.
Granny D – who sounds exactly like I always imagined the character of Lacey Davenport, the long-running character in “Doonesbury” would sound (possibly because they look remarkably similar) – famously walked across the continental United States in 1999 to advocate campaign finance reform (yes, really), but it wasn’t until a few years later that she finally decided to do something a bit more proactive and actually jump into the New Hampshire Senate race.
The film opens with Granny D working a local street corner, asking passersby if they’re registered to vote…and, man, if you’re not going to stop and talk to a sweet-looking 94-year-old woman when she asks you an innocuous question like that, you’ve clearly got a heart of stone. Maybe that’s why her campaign proved more successful than anyone ever would’ve imagined, including Granny herself…but, more likely, it was because she actually talked sense and avoided doublespeak.
Hey, just sounding like a human being and not a rhetoric-spewing machine means you’ve got a shot at earning my vote.
History has already revealed that Granny D didn’t end up winning her Senate race, but as with so many documentaries, the story is less about the ending and more about the path to get there. She wins our hearts when, after being asked her position on gay marriage, simply responds, “I’m for love.” Later, when it’s determined that there aren’t sufficient campaign finances to pay for any television commercials, Granny offers to pay for them by taking out another mortgage, a plan which her campaign manager wisely steers her away from doing, but the mere gesture makes us swoon. Of course, there are also some painful moments within the film as well, including the scene where Granny was shafted Howard Dean when she requested and was granted a photo opportunity with him, only to have him depart from the speaking engagement without so much as a “sorry, can’t do it.” And it might just be my personal connection to the disease, but a tremendous wave of sadness swept over me when she spoke of her husband having suffered from and subsequently passed away as a result of the effects of Alzheimer’s, then followed it with the revelation that she’s had to watch her daughter develop it as well. There’s also a sadly sweet moment at the end of film, immediately after the election, where she kneels at her bedside and prays to God, asking him how she might repay those who got behind her and cared enough to give her their votes.
Okay, okay, dry your eyes…and don’t worry: there are moments of levity, too. (My personal favorite comes when Granny D tells the story of how Woody Harrelson once got her high. It’s classic.)
“Run Granny Run” occasionally gets bogged down in political discussion…which, given its topic, isn’t surprising…but in addition to providing a lovely character study of a woman who’s found a new lease on life simply by doing what she can to help save the country that she loves from those who would steer it in the wrong direction, it reminds the viewer that anyone can change the world if they put their mind to it. Given how close Granny D came to winning her Senate race – she got 34% of the vote – despite a tremendously limited budget and with a campaign that involved little more than being a nice person with a strong opinion, maybe more of us should remember her actions the next time we start to get frustrated with the Democratic process.
After all, if she can give it a shot, there’s no reason we can’t.
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