Please Kill Me: the Uncensored Oral History of Punk - Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain (1997)

I first read Please Kill Me about 9 or 10 years ago, right after I graduated college.  I decided to read it again when I finished my last couple books quickly and the newest one hadn't arrived at the library yet.  I am very glad I did this, and it seems really cliche at this point and non-prestigious, but I must anoint this yet another one of the Best Books reviewed on Flying Houses.  This book is not perfect--it's maybe 50-100 pages too long, but once you start to get wrapped up in the characters, you would probably go on another 200.  I mean, this book never got boring to me.  There were some parts that just aren't as well told as others, but there is so much detail and vulnerability in these pages that no reader can encounter this text without becoming unmoved.  Not everybody is into punk rock music, but everybody should read this book.  Most people like some kind of music, and this book hits on most genres anyways.

There are a lot of similarities to Lexicon Devil (also on the Best Books list), and perhaps one could accuse me of being a sucker for the oral history genre.  I mean, I also really liked Rant.  But it's more than the format, or the concept of a book devoid of exposition, operating purely on dialogue.  The genre just tends to elevate storytelling to a higher level, accentuating unique details from shared memories and sensory impressions.  More obviously, none of these books are PC.  They describe experiences that never should have been allowed to happen.  Please Kill Me positively revels in this material.

Still, it's not an endorsement of a dissolute lifestyle, and focuses a little bit more on the music than Lexicon Devil.  Now this may be because the Germs were a terrible band who seemed to actively avoid improving their chops.  But the other book this calls to mind is Our Band Could Be Your Life.  Where Please Kill Me leaves off (late 70's/early 80's), Our Band Could Be Your Life pretty much picks up.  The format is different, but the attitude is similar.  OBCBYL feels a little bit more academic, and is probably not as engaging a read because once you finish the story of each band, you're done.  I think ultimately what makes Please Kill Me so special is the power of its story.

The story starts in 1965 with Lou Reed and ends in 1992 with the death of Jerry Nolan.  The interviews that comprise this "oral history" seem to have started in the late 70's with Punk magazine and wrapped up with more comprehensive, authoritative, and "sober" interviews in 1994 and 1995.

Before moving on, I want to note that this book is ripe for a re-issue, with new material.  The final section of the book (the epilogue) is titled "Nevermind: 1980-1992."  Now, when this book was published in 1997, one of the most fucked up periods of popular music was ascendant, and few would anticipate the backlash to that era, or the revival of the so-called "CBGB scene."  Almost all of the artists in Please Kill Me made "comebacks" (to varying levels of success), and many others have died.  To recognize such occurrences, I would include a "post-epilogue" and title it "Cashing In: 2003-2015."  Apparently, a 20th anniversary edition will be released next year, so my predictions are not far off.

The book starts off on an impossibly high note with its material on the Velvet Underground.  Straight out of the gates, it is immediately apparent that nobody is trying to maintain a squeaky-clean PR image.  Lou Reed is basically at the center of the depravity.  There are PLENTY of juicy excerpts that I could include here, but I will leave them to be sought out by discerning readers.  Instead, I will try to focus on the historical import of the artists described.

Now, most people will say punk rock started with the Ramones.  Some say the Stooges.  Others say the Sex Pistols.  The authors contend that they invented the term themselves.  Sometimes I say that the Beatles' "Helter Skelter" is the real beginning of punk rock.  But truly, honestly, the Velvet Underground embodied everything that came to define the genre (except the faster tempos):

"Lou Reed: Andy Warhol told me that what we were doing with the music was the same thing he was doing with painting and movies and writing--i.e., not kidding around.  To my mind, nobody in music was doing anything that even approximated the real thing, with the exception of us.  We were doing a specific thing that was very, very real.  It wasn't slick or a lie in any conceivable way, which was the only way we could work with him.  Because the first thing I liked about Andy was that he was very real." (7)

Danny Fields makes his first appearance here, and describes how he convinced Lou Reed and John Cale to cut "the Exploding Plastic Inevitable" from their live show (which was a kind of S&M performance with lights and film projections) and to leave Andy Warhol for a better manager, to "make it" as a band.  Fields is practically a non-stop presence throughout the book and tells many of the best stories--though the reader tends to wonder if some of these stories are more "legend" than "fact."  Actually, there are several points in the book where the speaker (or interviewee) draws a distinction between the story everyone hears and the reality that happened.  One of them is the famed meeting of Jim Morrison with Nico and Andy Warhol, indelibly portrayed by Crispin Glover in The Doors:

"Danny Fields: I've never had any respect for Oliver Stone, but after seeing his version of the Morrison/Nico meeting in the Doors movie--'Hello, I am Nico, would you like to go to bed with me?'--the reality of it couldn't have been more different.
What really happened was that I met Morrison at the Elektra office in Los Angeles and he followed me back to the Castle in his rented car.  Morrison walked into the kitchen and Nico was there and they stood and circled each other.
Then they stared at the floor and didn't say a word to each other.  They were both too poetic to say anything.  It was a very boring, poetic, silent thing that was going on between them.  They formed a mystical bond immediately--I think Morrison pulled Nico's hair and then he proceeded to get extremely drunk and I fed him whatever was left of my drugs that Edie Sedgwick hadn't stolen." (29)

Right after this early section about the Velvet Underground with passing references to the Doors, the Stooges are introduced.  Now, the Stooges are one of the major elements of this book, and almost all of the anecdotes about them are mind-boggling.  I particularly appreciate the story of Iggy Pop's first experience with weed:

"Iggy Pop:...I realized that these guys were way over my head, and that what they were doing was so natural to them that it was ridiculous for me to make a studious copy of it, which is what most white blues bands did.
Then one night, I smoked a joint.  I'd always wanted to take drugs, but I'd never been able to because the only drug I knew about was marijuana and I was a really bad asthmatic.  Before that, I wasn't interested in drugs, or getting drunk, either.  I just wanted to play and get something going, that was all I cared about.  But this girl, Vivian, who had given me the ride to Chicago, left me with a little grass.
So one night I went down by the sewage treatment plant by the Loop, where the river is entirely industrialized.  It's all concrete banks and effluvia by the Marina Towers.  So I smoked this joint and then it hit me.
I thought, What you gotta do is play your own simple blues.  I could describe my experience based on the way those guys are describing theirs...
So that's what I did.  I appropriated a lot of their vocal forms, and also their turns of phrase--either heard or misheard or twisted from blues songs.  So 'I Wanna Be Your Dog' is probably my mishearing of 'Baby Please Don't Go.'" (38-39)

The MC5 are also introduced around this section.  Together, these two bands (along with the Dead Boys, who come along towards the end) comprise the entirety of bands based outside of New York City.  While this is a book about the origins of punk rock, it is also a vivid portrait of NYC in the 70's.  The material on MC5, I can take or leave.  I've tried listening to them, and just can't really get into it.  The music just sounds more dated to me, for some reason.

The New York Dolls come next.  Now, I actually saw the Stooges and the New York Dolls for the first time on the same day, at Little Steven's Underground Garage Festival on Randall's Island in August of 2003 (maybe '04, I can't remember).  Syl Sylvain had just died, and the New York Dolls were the third to last band.  They seemed a bit like a nostalgia act, but David Johansen was energetic and enthused and the crowd loved them.  The Strokes then played next, a very efficient, no-frills, solid set.  The Stooges closed, and to date remains one of the best performances I have seen.  Mike Watt was on bass, but both Asheton brothers were in, and Iggy (then in his mid-50's) seemed as potent as ever.

Really I'm skipping around though.  There's a section before the New York Dolls that introduces Patti Smith.  The material on Patti Smith in this book is essential.  It might as well be Patti Smith's book.  After I finished it again, I watched a performance from the Primavera Sound Festival in May 2015, and while I was slightly let down when I saw her at Lollapalooza in 2005, she seemed like she has tapped into a more powerful energy of late.  Her rendition of Lou Reed's "Perfect Day" (despite screwing up the words) is an emotionally devastating experience that should make you cry in the most beautiful way.

There are several "hearts" of this book, and Patti Smith is one of them (Iggy is another).  The success of her memoir Just Kids has fueled a late-career renaissance, and I hope to read and review that book in the near future on this site.

Jim Carroll, another one of the several characters in this story that recently passed away, is introduced near this point.  So is David Bowie:

"Cyrinda Foxe: David Bowie and his wife Angela had a very open marriage.  They were sleeping with anybody they felt like sleeping with.  David and Angela and I had a menage a trois for about five minutes, but then I made her leave because David and I were gonna play.  Angela was fucking David's black bodyguard, and David and I used to get down on all fours and peek in their keyhole and watch them fuck.  I was sort of like a new toy for David on the Ziggy Stardust tour.  But while we were in San Francisco, David asked me, 'Are you in love with me?'
I said, 'No.'  I wasn't about to say, 'Yes!' I was still tripping around.  I had no flies on me then.  No salt on my tail.  I didn't want to get tied down.  Besides, Tony DeFries wanted everybody to be this Bowie thing.  I didn't want to cut my hair like that.  So I wasn't impressed with them.  I mean, okay, I get to go on a plane and go somewhere, but that's all I thought it was.  So when David Bowie asked if I was in love with him, and I told him no, he left me there." (134)

Soon after, Patti Smith and Television take center stage.  At this point, Richard Hell was still in the band, and perhaps because of his "literary" background tells some of the best stories.  This one explains the book's title:

"Richard Lloyd: Richard Hell had designed a T-shirt for himself that said Please Kill Me, but he wouldn't wear it.  I was like, 'I'll wear it.'  So I wore it when we played upstairs at Max's Kansas City, and afterwards these kids came up to me.  These fans gave me this really psychotic look--they looked as deep into my eyes as they possibly could--and said, 'Are you serious?'
Then they said, 'If that's what you want, we'll be glad to oblige because we're such big fans!' They were just looking at me, with that wild-eyed look, and I thought, I'm not wearing this shirt again." (173)

The Ramones come into the picture, and are introduced by their infamous song about street hustling, "53rd and 3rd," with background history supplied by Jim Carroll.  There is also an interesting story about the song "Chinese Rocks," which sheds light on one of the lines to the song ("Is Dee Dee home?"):

"Richard Hell: Dee Dee called me one day and said, 'I wrote a song that the Ramones won't do.'  He said, 'It's not finished.  How about I come over and show it to you and we can finish it if you like it?'  So I believe he brought an acoustic guitar over.  And I had my bass.  Basically the song was done, but he just didn't have another verse.  I wrote two lines.  That's all.  It was basically Dee Dee's song, though I think the lyrics, the verses I wrote, were good.
Dee Dee Ramone: The reason I wrote that song was out of spite for Richard Hell, because he told me he was gonna write a song better than Lou Reed's 'Heroin,' so I went home and wrote 'Chinese Rocks.'
I wrote it by myself, in Debbie Harry's apartment on First Avenue and First Street.  Then Richard Hell put that line in it, so I gave him some credit." (213-214)

After this, the story jumps over to England briefly and covers the Sex Pistols.  There is one story that made me smile (anybody that has run with a crew of "punks" should be able to relate):

"Bob Gruen:...I didn't see Johnny with a girl until the last night.  He left the last show with some girl who was backstage.  It was kind of a surprise, because from the first minute I met him, Johnny didn't seem to ever like anything.
He just seemed to be in a really bad mood from day one.  You know, everything sucked.  He was so cynical and sarcastic about everything that he would always point out the derogatory aspect of everything.  That's why I was so surprised when I saw him leave the Winterland gig with a girl on his arm and half a smile on his face.  It was the most human thing I ever saw, because it was something so out of character to see him enjoy a moment of life." (331)

The book ends with a few interesting stories: Phil Spector's production of the Ramones album End of the Century, the deaths of Sid & Nancy, Nico and Johnny Thunders, and a lot of stuff about the Dead Boys...I could quote more (obviously the Phil Spector anecdotes are priceless)--but I've gone on long enough in this review and it's time to wrap it up.  I want to include one final quote that I found very punk, and certainly pertinent one month after the blockbuster SCOTUS decision:

"Legs McNeil: Gay liberation had really exploded.  Homosexual culture had really taken over--Donna Summer, disco, it was so boring.  Suddenly in New York, it was cool to be gay, but it just seemed to be about suburbanites who sucked cock and went to discos.  I mean, come on, 'Disco, Disco Duck?' I don't think so.
So we said, 'No, being gay doesn't make you cool.  Being cool makes you cool, whether you're gay or straight.'  People didn't like that too much.  So they called us homophobic.  And of course, being the obnoxious people we were, we said, 'Fuck you, you faggots.'
Mass movements are always so un-hip  That's what was great about punk.  It was an antimovement, because there was knowledge there from the very beginning that with mass appeal comes all those tedious folks who need to be told what to think.  Hip can never be a mass movement.  And culturally, the gay liberation movement and all the rest of the movements were the beginning of political correctness, which was just fascism to us.  Real fascism, more rules.
But as far as being homophobic, that was ludicrous, because everyone we hung out with was gay.  No one had a problem with that, you know, fine, fuck whoever you want.  I mean Arturo would regale me with these great sex stories.  I'd be going, 'Wow, what happened then?'
What was great about the scene was that people's curiosity seemed stronger than their fear.  The time was rife with genuine exploration, but not in a trendy mass-movement way.  And I was always fascinated by how anyone made it through the day, what they really did when the lights were out, to keep their sanity, or lose it." (275)

In short, if you read this book, not only will you understand me better, but you will also understand yourself better.  How you react to some of the more salacious stuff can act as a barometer of the types of art you appreciate.  I always prefer the real, the raw, and the honest truth: psychological realism.  It seems that most all of the artists on display in this "bible" think along similar lines, and I can only state that they have been powerful influences.

85A - Kyle Thomas Smith (2010)

I have mixed feelings about 85A.  On the one hand I want to recommend it because it is about as vivid a portrait of Chicago circa 1989 as you will find in a book.  It's also a pretty good coming-of-age story and a decent primer on how to live a "punk rock lifestyle."  On the other hand I can't quite call it an undiscovered masterpiece because...I don't know...it just seems to be missing something.

My friend gave me 85A sometime in November of last year.  He had gotten it from Center on Halsted, which is a non-profit organization that has a community space in Lakeview.  They were doing a weekly reading series called "Read All about It" in one of the youth groups and he was offered a copy.

COH provides crisis management services for LGBTQ individuals and have a number of youth support groups.  It is not surprising that my friend got this book from there, because it seems like the sort of place at which the main character of the novel, Seamus O'Grady, should have been a regular visitor.  Unfortunately it opened about 18 years too late.

The story takes place on January 23, 1989, and begins with Seamus waiting for the eponymous CTA bus to take him from his home in Jarvis Park to the El to his Catholic high school on the south side of the city.  I can't quite figure out the route--since apparently he takes the Blue Line (then known as the O'Hare-Congress line) and it doesn't seem to go near Ashland Ave. and Blue Island Ave., which is an intersection near his school.  But I am getting wrapped up in travel details.  I have to say I really liked the description of the escalator at the Logan Square stop because it is my home stop.

He lives in an upper middle class community and his parents are religious.  He does not seem to have any friends at his school.  He really only seems to have two friends: Tressa and Dr. Strykeroth.  The former is an artsy biracial girl who rescues him from a group of skinheads that jump him at the corner of Belmont and Clark near the "Punkin' Donuts" (this is one of my favorite moments in the novel because that Dunkin' Donuts is still there and it may be one of the famous fast food branches ever because of it); he also later loses his virginity with her.  The latter is his psychiatrist with whom he apparently has a sexual relationship.

This is a slight problem for me--not because it's sick or whatever, but because it's teased out like the reader isn't supposed to be clear on what's going on.  Like, does Seamus just go to visit him and cry on his shoulder and ask to be held?  Or are they having various kinds of sex?  Of course, a graphic description might be off-putting, but the scene with Tressa is pretty graphic, so I don't understand why Seamus doesn't blatantly tell the reader what is happening in that office.  In a sense, this makes the novel like Try by Dennis Cooper.  I say that the because the main character is gay but also has sex with a girl in it.  But obviously, Try is going for something quite different than 85A.  Still, it just seems tame by comparison.  If you're going to write about transgressive subject matter, I don't think you should beat around the bush, basically.

This book also reminds me of Crossing California.  Together, these books paint a wonderful portrait of Chicago in the 1980's.  I like this better than Crossing California because it's more compact, and less of an "award-winning novel" (i.e. like those movies that are made to win Oscars), but I like it less because it's not as intricately constructed--or at least doesn't appear to be.

Still, I read this book not long after beginning my recent stint at the CTA, and I found it very entertaining for its topicality.  I daresay this may be the ultimate "CTA Novel" though it is certainly not a history of the transit system.  Certainly there cannot be many other books named after bus routes.  Many, many people ride the CTA everyday.  I am sure that many of them would find this book to be at least of passing interest.  At the very least it would be the most ironic book ever to read while on the bus.

But I also take issue with an early scene:

"Finally!  The 85A's rounding Touhy Avenue.  Just when my thighs are freezer burnt and my balls have turned to dry ice.
Last time I asked the driver, 'What took you so fuckin' long?' he ordered me off the bus.  Refused to move til I got off.  Everyone's screaming at me.  He threatened to call the cops, so I got off.  Had to wait for the next bus.  Ended up thirty-five minutes late for school.  Got JUG.  Had to write out the St. Xavier Norms of Conduct twice and the tardiness policy three times.  It's the same asshole bus driver every morning.  So now, no matter how late he is, I have to just suck it up, flash my Student ID, deposit my token and fifteen cents and take my seat like a good little cunt." (11)

Maybe things are different today than they were in 1989, but if Seamus had reported the bus driver for ordering him off the bus, I believe that bus driver would be disciplined.  Bus drivers, like cops, are essentially public servants that are expected to put up with their share of bad behavior.  I read a case about a bus driver who was fired because she pushed an older man who had confronted her physically and had also been loudly directing racial comments at her.  She said she was wrongfully discharged but the arbitrator said you can never have a bus driver hit a passenger.  Now, Seamus is not getting hit, but that sort of behavior (stopping the bus and ordering him off) is unacceptable and I don't believe it's realistic.

Which is my main issue with this book.  My big criticism.  I just don't think it's realistic.  I'm sorry.  Some of it is absolutely wonderful and clearly drawn from true life.  But other details just seem too ridiculous to be taken seriously.  In particular, I do not believe that Seamus's father and brother would beat him as mercilessly as they do, and treat him with such cruelty.  It seems like everyone is a villain in Seamus's life and he has nobody on his side.

Now, I have to admit, I would be pretty mean to Seamus too, because he is kind of annoying.  He clearly is smart but he fails all of his classes anyways.  He doesn't want to have any kind of job but to write.  He has vague ideas about living in London and New York as a quasi-homeless artist who can get by on the kindness of others and he doesn't want to conform to any kind of "normal" life.  This is all well and good--I was like this too, and I am sometimes still like this.  But he does not have very many redeeming qualities apart from having a fair dose of artistic talent.  So that is another problem I have with the novel: cannot identify with the narrator.

Don't get me wrong.  I love the Sex Pistols and PiL.  I love Sid and Nancy.  I love all the musical references in this book.  But Seamus is just like Johnny Rotten in a way: a "fashion item."  He dresses and acts the part, but the book sort of highlights the vacuity of so-called "punk rockers."  Maybe this is just because Seamus doesn't hang out with a group of them, so you don't get the sense of the lifestyle like you might from reading Our Band Could Be Your Life or Lexicon Devil.  85A is basically a lot of posing done by Seamus.

Still, this book has a lot of heart, and would make a good movie.  It reads pretty nicely, though I think Seamus relies too heavily on the word "fuck."  The Wolf of Wall Street supposedly set a record with the number of f-bombs there are in it.  But that is a three-hour movie too.  This book might set a similar sort of record.  I understand he's a teenager but I couldn't help but feel the writing was sort of, I don't know, lazy because of it.

I don't understand the narrative "moment" either--I suppose it takes place at the final scene in the story.  But Seamus doesn't appear to be writing a memoir, or telling it to somebody.  I just don't get who the novel is addressing.  Clearly, the key referent for this book is The Catcher in the Rye.  This is basically the same novel, 50 years later, in Chicago instead of New York, and with a Catholic high school rather than a boarding school.  But Catcher is an adventure story of sorts--it's about 3 days in New York, and that's the plot.  My friend that gave me 85A said the problem with it is that it doesn't really have a plot.  At least until the end.

And the ending is great.  The last fifty pages are the best part of the book.  And the rest of the book isn't too bad, but it just feels random and sometimes (I hate to say this) cliched.  So I think I've adequately summed up my feelings at this point.  But a couple more passages:

"When I was a little kid, I used to go into a deep fuckin' freeze whenever I thought about death and being stuck in a casket some undertaker drops in the ground.  It scared the living shit out of me that buried dead might be the same as buried alive--and it'd be for-fuckin'-ever, just you and your lonely little corpse, stuck in one place under thick wood and mounds of immovable dirt, until the end of time, until the Second Coming--whenever that shit was supposed to happen.  Later, when I was about seven, I found out you could get cremated instead, so I went and told Mom I want to be cremated, have my ashes scattered to the four winds so I can at least get some elbow room when this trip is over.  She said Catholics can't.  Man, Catholics can't do shit, can they?  I think it's after she told me that that I first started checking apartment listings in the Sunday Trib, thinking I should move out.  Seven years after my cremation chat with Mom, I found myself right where I didn't want to be: flat on my fuckin' back in the afterlife, in a dark place, unable to move a muscle, probably for-fuckin'-ever." (37-38)

This is a nice example of Smith's ability to write very well, i.e. to explain a feeling that most of us have felt at one time or another and put it perfectly into words.

The other part of the novel I really like is Seamus's obsession with a boy named Colby that he met on the El.  There is a passage that was very similar to one part of my second novel S/M, and made me feel like a similar feeling was at work, i.e. writing about somebody and hoping they would one day read it and know they were the character and find you years later:

"It's been well over a year now.  Colby still hasn't called.  Not that I'm waiting by the phone anymore.  And I haven't seen him around since that night either, not even at the fuckin' Murphy's Law concert, where my eyes were peeled out of their fuckin' sockets for him.  And I've been back to the video room time and again and he never turned up.  He wasn't even at Medusa's when Ministry played.  Fuckin' everyone who's anyone was there!  Not him, though.  Who knows, maybe he moved.  God, I fuckin' hope not.  I so want to see him again.
I never told Tressa about the night I met Colby.  Never told her what happened with Narc.  Never told her about my attempts at a cockney accent and a new story.  But I did ask her if the name Colby rang a bell.  She said it didn't and asked me why I asked.  I said somebody told me some story about somebody on Belmont named Colby but I couldn't remember how it went.  I could tell she could tell I was lying.  I remembered the story.  Knew it fuckin' chapter and verse.  I was its author.  'Colby's coming with me to London': I nursed the story all last year.  I nurse it now, but not so much now that a year has gone by and the phone hasn't rung.  Yet my London Plans still stand if he ever wants to hear my pitch, if I ever see him on the L again, if we ever become friends.  I'll keep watching out for him at Irving Park station.  But I won't do a cockney accent next time.  That was just fuckin' stupid." (104-105)

In summary, 85A is a bumpy ride, but it is one that you may be glad you took.  This is a really good book for young adults, even though the language is very vulgar.  I know things are different in 2014 than they were in 1989, but there are still kids out there like Seamus who feel like nobody could ever understand them.  This book will show them that everything they're feeling is totally normal, and that they shouldn't give up hope that their lives will get better.  It's not a perfect book by any means, but it's a pretty good debut for Smith, and I would be interested to read his other books if and when they are published.

The Dark Knight - Dir. Christopher Nolan

Due to my moroseness over the fact that I was not able to attend the 4th Annual Pitchfork Festival in Chicago for the 4th straight year this weekend, I am going to attempt to assuage the pain from not being able to blog about it to blogging about the only vaguely sociable thing I did this weekend, which was to see the Dark Knight, a movie that was filming in Chicago around this time last year, which was wrapped in mystery and with good cause. This is one of the few movies that doesn't give away that much in the trailers, at least up until now. Who knows if that will change as the marketing strategy changes after opening weekend, if such things as trailer editing for television spots does change after a film opens, the whole business of this industry mystifies me, but up until now the marketing strategy was not to give too much away, and I will attempt not to do that in this review. However, I have to say this marketing strategy is also in your face everywhere, at least here in L.A. Practically every single page of the Calendar section of the L.A. Times is plastered with an ad for the movie. I went to IMDB.com on Friday and it was plastered with a "Dark Knight" template. Also, the movie earned a 9.6 out of 10 rating, and was currently rated as the #3 film of all time.

Is that accurate? Is it a 4-star, 9.6 out of 10, Best Picture nominated, all-time classic film? I hate to overhype anything, but I have to say I found it immediately better than the original Batman directed by Tim Burton, and that is a film that I grew up with and have loved for ages. So yes, I think Nolan's re-imagining is more relevant for our times, and never seemed to drag in any segments the way Burton's original did and does. Unfortunately, there are no Prince songs, but they would have seemed uncommonly out of place in this film. It is a very dark, nearly solemn film, though not without its sense of comic relief. There is a very large cast, and every actor does exactly what they need to with their role, and in several cases, more. The screenplay is a rather extraordinarily balanced thing, with this thought in mind. The action sequences, a few notably filmed in IMAX, are as good as any that have come before. Ultimately the Dark Knight should get its share of nominations. It would be ridiculous at this point to say it would win Best Picture, but I do not think it would be wrong to say it should get nominated for it. It is an excellent achievment on every level.

It bears mentioning how one views the movie, because if it is possible to see it in IMAX, that is what I would do. We went to see it at the Universal Studios CityWalk, and were duped by a non-informational website into buying regular tickets, so not only do we pay $10 for parking, but we also just get to see it in a regular theater. In any case it was fun to see Universal Studios for the first time, though of course we weren't going to the theme park. CityWalk was interesting enough, with its outdoor-bar-atmosphere and notably, the machine that simulated skydiving, where people get inside with some weird suit on and fly up like fifty feet inside this tube powered by wind. It was pretty sweet--I may do it sometime, but also it seems kind of scary now that I think about it. We went inside to the movie and waited in a line maybe thirty feet long roughly forty minutes before the film was to start. They were nice enough to let us into the theater about a half hour before it started, but most of that time was spent voicing our disappointment that we weren't in an IMAX theater. However, this is mostly a personal anecdote and not really relevant for regular would-be viewers of the film, except to say, if you want to see it in IMAX, be careful about which ticket you buy if you do it online, because at least during opening weekend, most of the shows were sold out.

An opening night show at 9:10 was something of a spectacle, with many teenagers wearing newly minted Heath Ledger t-shirts, which at first I mistook for merely being a Sex Pistols t-shirt or something like that, but then I realized more than a few were wearing the same one. I found this rather offensive, that a t-shirt company is opportunistic enough to capitalize on the tragedy and to mass-market it to teenagers in a "punk rock" styling. I remarked that I wondered if the profits went to his family. Who knows, in any case, the culture of death that surrounded this film was singularly remarkable. The nearest comparison I could make would be when The Crow opened like fifteen years ago or whatever. Except Brandon Lee was not quite as popular a figure, and his manner of death was so bizarre as to simply confound. Also, The Crow kind of sucks and The Dark Knight is really awesome. It is without question the best Batman movie that has been made. However, one has to admit that the tragedy which befell its most consummate performance has cast an entirely different shadow over the film, and has given the film a weight unlike the vast majority of films are ever capable of bearing. The separation between fiction and reality is blurred and skewed just vaguely enough so that the film becomes a document of the psychology of our times.

The only annoying thing about the movie was the kid sitting next to me who was audibly moaning in pleasure after the first three or so of Ledger's scenes. He would say quietly, "Oh my God, that's so scary," or "That was the creepiest thing I've ever seen in my life" or "Jesus Christ that was so amazing," and I wasn't quite sure if he was saying it for the benefit of his friend on the other side, or for our general five foot radius. In hindsight, I almost wish I had joined in with him, and been like, "Oh my God, I know, I'm like creaming in my pants now." Regardless, this was only a minor inconvenience (of a similar variety and less burdensome than the one when I went to see There Will be Blood, when an elderly man gave his own running commentary of the film for the whole 150 minutes), and there were many true moments of solemnity in the sold-out theater, a rather amazing thing. Though when the Warner Brothers logo came up at the beginning, some kid shouted, "Finally!" and some guy shouted, "Shut up!"

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the film, beyond Ledger's performance, is the metaphor for our current national situation--that is, Gotham as a symbol of America. True, it does not seem anywhere near as corrupt, however this government has certainly given us our doubts as to whether the "good guys" are really on our side or not, an element that is echoed in the film by the seemingly untrustable nature of the police force. To be honest, that is one element I did not understand. However, when Morgan Freeman sets up the cell phone signal surveillance system, and Christian Bale sets it up so you can see around the immediate vicinity of every cell phone that is on in the city, and Morgan Freeman sees this, and becomes upset by this method of spying on people, a political message emerges. Of course the technology in this scene and the year-long current-event the FISA Bill are not all that unrelated. One might be going too far, however, to suggest that Aaron Eckhart's performance is representative of this current regime's notion of right-versus-wrong when it comes to pursuing and capturing evil-doers. Nevertheless, the manifold associations one draws, the emotions stirred up, and the plain mastery of the storytelling all establish The Dark Knight as the most outstanding feature of the year thus far. The only problem with blogging about it is that it seems kind of redundant. It's not exactly like I'm saying anything different from everyone else.

Control - Dir. Anton Corbijn

“Control”
3 ½ out of 4 Stars.

“Control,” Anton Corbijn’s much talked about biopic of Joy Division singer Ian Curtis, is only playing at one theater in L.A. (at the early date on which I saw it, ed.). The first time I tried to see it, twenty minutes before show time, a line snaked around two blocks of the movie house—Nu Art Cinema—and I gave up before even trying to enter the box office. This time I came two hours before the show to ensure a ticket, and returned twenty minutes before the show to stand behind fifty more people in line. This is probably one of the most anticipated movies playing in this town right now (was, in October 2007). Ian Curtis and Joy Division and Factory Records and Tony Wilson and Manchester and the legendary Sex Pistols show and all the rest from the post-punk mythology dated 1977 to 1980 have been given their proper documentation and celebration in the iconic 24 Hour Party People in 2002. Five years later, the same material, with an emphasis on the Joy Division side of things, springs up, and while it cannot claim to cast as wide a net as its predecessor, in time it will coast alongside it as the two most essential movies made about the period.

To compare it to Last Days, Gus van Sant’s “fictional exploration” of Kurt Cobain’s demise, would be instructional. In fact, these two films taken together demonstrate the division between success and failure in the musical biopic genre, and in this case, the incredibly influential musician who killed themselves genre. First of all, the film must reflect the attitude of its subject and his music. Last Days was more interested in the depressing side of Kurt Cobain—the drug-addled, lazy, moping, messy house, hangers-on-housing, meditative, anti-social, tortured artist. This was one side of the persona, but not the one that should be documented, which apparently it will be now that Courtney Love wants one to be made. But no multiple versions of Ian Curtis’s life need appear: Control is not going to disappoint anyone.

The enormous pressure of the film rests on Sam Riley’s shoulders. Riley’s most notable film role previous to this was playing Mark E. Smith in 24 Hour Party People. While he couldn’t have had more than a line or two in that film, his performance here is designed to be scrutinized. For two hours, Riley is Curtis, and is only off-screen for brief moments throughout the film. This is a huge task, and knowing how many admirers there are of Joy Division’s music, a lot of criticism could be leveled at the attempt. There may be one or two moments that fans may scoff at, thinking Ian Curtis would never act like that (like crying in the middle of sex or something), but overwhelmingly the performance is incredibly nuanced and believable and never feels awkward when going to its extremes. There will be no Oscar for Riley knowing the establishment of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, but he is just as deserving of recognition as Jamie Foxx or Joaquin Phoenix or Reese Witherspoon. Michael Pitt was rather unlovable in Last Days, but Sam Riley legitimately and warmly humanizes Ian Curtis.

Worth noting especially is the role of music in this film. This is the one quality in which it outshines 24 Hour Party People. That film utilized classic songs from the era brilliantly into its catalog of bands, but they were always the same versions you would hear on the records themselves. Control should also be nominated for Best Song (“Love Will Tear Us Apart” being the obvious choice), but probably won’t. What sets this music biopic apart from others is that the music is recreated by the actors themselves. Ray used lip-synching, and while Walk the Line used real singing, Control uses a real band playing. I can’t be sure whether The Doors did that or not, but I’m not sure—I think Val Kilmer did do his own singing though. Sam Riley does an admirable job of recreating Curtis’s doomed baritone, and the actors who play Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook, and Stephen Morris (James Anthony Pearson, Joe Anderson, and Harry Treadaway) should all tour together because their Joy Division cover movie soundtrack is so spot-on. Their acting performances are underutilized—the emphasis of this film is clearly on Curtis—but they make a movie about New Order seem like not such a bad idea.

The plot of the film should be predictable to anyone even vaguely familiar with the Joy Division legend: Ian Curtis starts becoming obsessed with Bowie as a teen, goes to first Sex Pistols show in Manchester with future Warsaw/Joy Division bandmates, calls Tony Wilson the c-word, gets signed to Factory Records, experiences epileptic seizures while playing live, records two albums with Martin Hannett, becomes popular, gets ready to tour America, listens to Iggy Pop’s The Idiot, and hangs himself. This is all pretty much documented in 24 Hour Party People, and on many points the two films are incredibly similar in their depictions and sometimes even in their dialogue. Craig Parkinson must have studied Steve Coogan’s performance because his Tony Wilson is almost exactly the same, albeit with far less relevance in the story. Don’t expect many new revelations on the history of the band—just expect a quality recreation of the Joy Division experience by some very talented actors and the equivalent of a greatest hits session—including “She’s Lost Control,” “Transmission,” “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” “Digital,” “New Dawn Fades,” “Isolation,” “Dead Souls,” and several others as well.

Does the film shed light on why Curtis committed suicide? Yes, another point on which it differs from Last Days, and another point on which it should be taken as a model. The epilepsy is directly and sometimes jarringly displayed. Curtis’s troubled relationship with wife Debbie (Samantha Morton in the film’s other Oscar-worthy performance) is given nearly as much focus as the music of the band. This is only point on which I would say the film weakens. It is a slow and contemplative film—it is black and white, and certainly a work of art in terms of its photographic beauty—but the story only becomes boring when centering on what is at the end a rather mundane and common domestic dispute. Note: it is almost impossible to think Ian Curtis is not an asshole after seeing this movie. He is given the “dressing down,” as it were. The plot is positively TV-movie-of-the-week quality at certain points, but the consequences following up these points, and the performances driving them are nevertheless compelling. At the end of the day you don’t want to blame anyone for anything that happens, the only mistake that anybody can be said to have made is that they made a commitment when they were probably too young to know what they were doing. It is a shame that things had to end the way they did, but few can match the body of work that Curtis left behind, and for dying as young as he did, few exert a stronger influence, shorn of new material, 27 years and counting.