To borrow a line from Lloyd Cole, “Oh, my sentimental fool, have I got a tale for you…”
Say hello to the Drama Program of Long Island’s ANCHOR Organization…and before you ask, it stands for Answering the Needs of Citizens with Handicaps through Organized Recreation. The title’s a bit of a gimme, but in “Yellow Brick Road,” ANCHOR’s group of dramatists have embarked upon a four-month adventure which, at the end of their path, will hopefully find them putting on a rather fine production of “The Wizard of Oz.” Yes, each of the participants is handicapped in some fashion, but it hasn’t dampened their enthusiasm one bit. In fact, if anything, it serves to make them some of the least-jaded actors you’ve ever come across.
Let’s stop for a minute and consider what I’ve just written. Now, if you like documentaries at all, then based on this description, there are really only about three reactions you can have:
1. Oh, wow, that sounds like such a sweet story! 2. Yeah, I don’t know about that. Handicapped people make me feel kind of uncomfortable. 3. Hey, I don’t play this whole “politically correct” game, but does “handicapped” mean “retarded”? ‘Cause if it does, this is gonna be awesome!
Okay, if your reaction is closest to #3, then you’re a jackass and probably shouldn’t be watching this film. If your reaction is closest to #2, well, okay, I understand where you’re coming from, and, yes, it is sometimes can be little difficult to be around handicapped people when you’re not used to being around them, but we’re not tyrants here at Premium Hollywood. I mean, no-one’s forcing you to watch “Yellow Brick Road.” But for the record, let me assure those of you whose reaction echoed #1 that you’re right, this is a sweet story…and if there’s any question as to whether or not you’re going to find yourself caught up in it, it’s answered within the first few minutes, when the girl who gets the role of Miss Gulch literally bursts into tears of joy at the news of her casting, unable to even catch her breath. (“I have to call my mom,” she manages to get out between her sobs, clambering over her fellow cast members as she tries to leaves the aisle and make a mad dash to a pay phone.)
Oh, yeah. This is one mother of an uplifting flick.
Directors Keith Rondinelli and Matthew Makar offer a close look at several of the cast members and how they live decidedly full lives even with their handicaps. They also aren’t afraid to acknowledge the occasional frustration suffered by the director of the production, who – let’s face it – has a bit of a challenge on her hands with her thespians. Still, after much work, many practices, and occasional moments of panic (will the Scarecrow need to be replaced?), these individuals pull off a highly successful “Wizard of Oz,” providing an ending with enough heart to rival that of the Tin Man.
It’s taken a long, long time for me to finally realize that I enjoy a good Western, and, frankly, I blame “Star Wars.” When I was a kid, my world was one of people flying around the galaxy in starships and getting involved in laser battles…and when you’re a kid, you just can’t wrap your head around what the hell your dad’s talking about when he tries to explain how what you’re watching is just a hi-tech version of the cowboys he watched when he was a kid.
Yeah, okay, now I get it: my starships were his horses, my laser blasters were his six-shooters, and so on. But back then, I was just, like, “Okay, whatever, dad: that stuff is in black and white, and that means it’s old.” And to his credit, he was never one of those dads who’d try to assure me that if I’d really enjoy Westerns if I’d just sit down and give them a try…which is a little ironic, given that that’s pretty much my stock maneuver when I’m trying to sway people to check out unheralded stuff. But, y’know, if he’d force-fed me the stuff, I would’ve probably walked away never wanting to see another Western ever again, whereas having found them of my own accord at a time when I was actually able to appreciate them, I’m now finding that I really dig them.
Ironically, though, I think I probably would’ve found myself delving into Westerns several years earlier if I’d paid more attention to the stuff my uncle Charlie – my mom’s brother – was talking up when I was a kid. While Charlie and my dad were both of the same generation, with Charlie actually being a few years older, I distinctly remember that my uncle was a big fan of Clint Eastwood’s Westerns as well. These were the so-called “Spaghetti Westerns,” and they sounded vaguely intriguing even back in my youth… possibly just because I always thought my uncle Charlie was really cool, but, even so, the memory has stuck with me for all these years.
My dad, however, had always been a card-carrying member of the John Wayne / Gene Autry style of Western, and in the world of Westerns, that’s the equivalent of…well, I’m not sure in this case who would be Elvis and who would be The Beatles, but whatever the case, my dad’s allegiance to the kinder, gentler, and less graphic Western was clear. Obviously, there’s nothing wrong with this, especially since I’ve yet to see a John Wayne / John Ford collaboration that I didn’t enjoy, but after watching “The Spaghetti West,” an IFC original documentary on the genre, I can only say this:
Man, I have been missing out!
For years, I’d always thought that the term “Spaghetti Western” was intended as a disparaging term, to imply that the films that fell under this banner were nothing more than sub-par foreign rip-offs of the far superior American films which had inspired them. (U.S.A.! U.S.A.!) Gradually, though, I began to learn a little bit more about the genre, saw that these films were starring highly-respected actors like Eastwood, Henry Fonda, Charles Bronson, and Jack Palance, and began to realize that maybe I hadn’t been reading this thing quite right. If you enjoy Westerns but you’ve also spent time in this confused camp (and please say if you have, because I don’t want to believe I’m the only one who thought this), then “The Spaghetti West” will serve as a grand illumination for you.
In addition to exploring the work of the legendary Sergio Leone, who all but invented the genre with “A Fistful of Dollars” (and its subsequent sequels, “For A Few Dollars More” and “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly”), the documentary explores other key figures in the movement, including Sergio Corbucci and Sergio Sollima. That’s right: they’re the Three Sergios, and if you included nothing but their films, you’d still have a pretty damned effective look at the best of the Spaghetti Westerns. Corbucci proved to be a tremendous influence on Quentin Tarantino, if only for a particularly notorious scene in Corbucci’s “Django,” where this poor bastard gets his ear cut off. (When Tarantino saw the film for the first time, I wonder if his fellow theatergoers were distracted by the lightbulb that must’ve immediately appeared above his head.) We get a good exploration of the three ages of the Spaghetti Western: the straight films which originated the genre, the political-themed versions which came about as things began to get too predictable (a.k.a. the Zapata Westerns), and the comedy or parody takes on the genre – like, say, the “Trinity,” starring Terrence Hill – which prove so inevitable when a genre becomes embraced by the mainstream. Leone, it should be noted, hated the third age (he didn’t think they were funny), but he still ended up providing a post-script to the movement as a whole with “My Name Is Nobody,” which teamed Hill with Henry Fonda and served the final Western of Fonda’s career.
Even those who are well versed in the world of Spaghetti Westerns will love this documentary, which interviews many of the major players, all the way up to Eastwood himself, including several of the directors and actors, as well as Leone’s go-to guy for music, Ennio Morricone. Don’t be surprised if you walk away from this thing with a checklist of new movies for your Netflix queue.
Unfortunately, there’s no trailer for “The Spaghetti West” available, so, in lieu of that, I present the trailer for the film that left me the most curious: Sergio Corbucci’s “Django.” Damn, screw renting; I may just have to buy this thing outright…
Post-Script: I called my dad and told him about having just finished watching this documentary, and his exact quote – following a laugh – was, “Well, I don’t think you’ve just gotten finished watching anything that I care much about!” I mentioned to him how I’d remembered how Charlie had been a fan of some of the Spaghetti Westerns, and he backed me up on that, but then he admitted that half the reason that he’d never liked Spaghetti Westerns himself lay in his rail fandom. (Translated, that means he’s a retired railroad man who’s loved trains all his life.) “I’d see the trains in those movies that were so clearly Italian, with their big ol’ cowcatchers, but they’d’ve painted ‘Santa Fe’ on them or whatever, and I’d just be, like, ‘Give me a break.'” He added, though, that the dubbing from Italian into English always drove him up the wall, too. “I don’t think I ever saw one where they didn’t seem to be at least a syllable behind!” I hereby declare these both to be highly valid reasons.
I didn’t have to know anything about this movie to give it a chance; all I needed to do was see the words “narrated by John Waters” emblazoned on the front. I’m not really a huge fan of Waters’ films – although I don’t by any means hate them – but I’ve always thought the guy came off as a real hoot when doing interviews, and his appearances on episodes of “The Simpsons” and “My Name Is Earl” have done nothing but cement that impression. (One of these days, I really should check out the Court TV series, “‘Til Death Do Us Part,” if only because he plays a character called the Groom Reaper.)
Waters doesn’t have a hand in “Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea” beyond offering the narration, but you can see what attracted him to contribute to the film; there are some definite eccentrics living ’round California’s Salton Sea, and lWaters is always the first to appreciate a good kook.
You may well be familiar with the name “Salton Sea” from the Val Kilmer film, but this is a completely different entity…to say the least. The Salton Sea is an inland salt lake in Southern California, an area which more or less arose as a result of an ecological disaster in the early years of the 20th century, then evolved into a tourist attractions in the 1920s; now, however, it’s falling apart at the seams, having suffered a steady decline over the last several years due to such fun events as massive fish and bird die-offs.
“Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea” is co-directed by Jeff Springer and Chris Metzler, who an in-depth history of the area and its highs and lows while introducing us to the area’s current residents, some of whom have lived there for years upon years. It’s a motley crue, to be sure, living in a land where palm trees surround trailers, golf carts are the preferred method of transportation, and the whole place could pass for a ghost town if you didn’t know better…and, yet, we meet a bunch of folks who seem quite happy to be living where they do.
Some of my favorites were Harold Gaston, the 90+ year old owner of Gaston’s Cafe, Hunky Daddy, the unofficial mayor of the city (who has leapt to the top of my list of Hungarians I’d Like To Have A Beer With), and the Landman, who’s always trying to sell folks a lot in the area, but the place is filled with low-key, upbeat people who always seem to be ready with a smile and a story: Norm Niver, Les Marty, and Aunt Marney, Bobbie Todhunter, Paul Clement, and…oh, geez, I can’t forget Donald Scheidler, the town’s resident nudist, or mountain artist Leonard Knight!
Most of the folks who live in Bombay Beach don’t come nearly as well, unfortunately; it’s admirable that they want to raise their kids in a safer environment than can be found in the bigger cities of Southern California, but when the parents are seen strutting down the street, tossing back big-ass glasses of beer, you begin to wonder exactly how much better off the kids are going to end up.
There are moments of amusement in the film, as you can tell from the above description, but for the most part, “Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea” is actually pretty serious…and pretty depressing, actually. The residents are amazingly upbeat, given everything their area has suffered through over the years; in fact, while this may be a travelogue about a place you’d probably never want to visit yourself, by the end, you’ll find that you wouldn’t actually mind meeting some of the people who live there.
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.)
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.
