The Value of Money

As excited as I was about going to see Tom Waits next month, I just couldn't stomach the $102/ticket before all the handling fees.

I just don't get it. Waits doesn't seem to be the type to gouge. He's never struck me as an inflated ego and certainly doesn't have a history of releasing garbage to make a quick buck. So what is going on?

There are very few performances that I'll shill out $25 for. Tom Waits is one that I would consider spending in the $60+ range for... but $102!? I could collect all of his works on vinyl for the cost of two tickets and still probably pick up a DVD of Coffee and Cigarettes.

Color me disappointed.

Here is a quick P.S. for you— Metrotix, not to be outdone by the notorious white collar criminal Ticketmaster, is charging a cool $15 per ticket handling charge. You read that correctly. $15 per ticket. So now we are nearing $250 for my wife and I to go see a show. Or I could turn up my $15 vinyl copy of Mule Variations and drink a $100 bottle of scotch, leaving me enough money to do it again the next night.

PEHDTSCKJMBA

Tom Waits in St. Louis?
PEHDTSCKJMBA indeed.

a bit more on Charlton Heston

Last night Jessica and I watched the TCM Private Screenings interview with Charlton Heston. To my astonishment Heston reiterated exactly the thing I had written yesterday afternoon about the air of the great men that he played clinging to him. He closed the interview with a passage of Prospero from The Tempest that was poignant, to say the least.

Dave Kehr of the New York Times has a terrific memorial statement about Heston on his blog.

Kehr also provides a quote from Michel Mourlet, which is worth reproducing here.

The full Mourlet quote, as reproduced in “Cahiers du Cinema: The 1960s”:

“Charlton Heston is an axiom. He constitutes a tragedy in himself, his presence in any film being enough to instill beauty. The pent-up violence expressed by the somber phosphorescence of his eyes, his eagle’s profile, the imperious arch of his eyebrows, the hard, bitter curve of his lips, the stupendous strength of his torso - this is what he has been given, and what not even the worst of directors can debase. It is in this sense that one can say that Charlton Heston, by his very existence and regardless of the film he is in, provides a more accurate definition of the cinema than films like “Hiroshima mon amour” or “Citizen Kane,” films whose aesthetic either ignores or repudiates Charlton Heston. Through him, mise en scène can confront the most intense of conflicts and settle them with the contempt of a god imprisoned, quivering with muted rage.”

on Charlton Heston

Charlton Heston's death came as kind of a blow to me. The reaction is different than hearing that Betty Hutton or even Katharine Hepburn has passed on; you see, neither of them are Moses. Heston played a few noble-yet-manly men over the course of his career, and there was always something iconic about those roles that followed him around, even when he wasn't acting. As a guy growing up thinking that this kind of character is worthy of admiration and aspiration, Heston's death is something akin to the day you see your own father in a wheelchair. It just breaks something inside of you.

There is a great deal of shame to be placed on press organizations who discuss his active involvement in the civil rights movement as entirely anathema to his work with the NRA, as if no one could possibly believe in private gun ownership and civil rights at the same time. It just goes to show how black and white our news organizations really see the world. Just because there are two political parties, they assume that there are only two kinds of people.

I tend to believe that Heston wasn't simply a black and white individual. Look no further than his legendary turn as Mike Vargas in Touch of Evil. Not only did Heston champion Welles as the director, he took on a character whose identity and motivations delve deeply into the metanarrative field of racial identity and social complacency.

Touch of Evil was no chump move by a party-line activist actor. You see, Charlton Heston was nobody's fool.

On Underestimating Cary Grant (1937-1940)

Smooth, Debonair, Charming.

It is a shame that Cary Grant, one of the indelible faces of classic Hollywood, will forever be remembered as Roger Thornhill, Nickie Ferrante, Dudley the Angel and C.K. Dexter Haven. To many, he was the dashing man who was sometimes in trouble, sometimes in love, but always mannered and charming.

I contend that if you want to see Cary Grant at his best, at the height of his powers of personality and talent, you need look no further than his film output from 1937-1940. Certainly The Philadelphia Story (1940) and Bringing Up Baby (1938) are familiar territory, and rightfully so; they are terrific films. But these don't tell the entire story. The Philadelphia Story is the solidification of smooth, in control Grant. Bringing Up Baby shows off Grant the comedian, but in slapstick mode only. Grant's other films from '37-'40 reveal another kind of brilliance, particularly that of an extremely subtle, extremely human comedian.

My Favorite Wife (1940) seems to be the last time that Grant really played one of us. He did comedy again, many times, but never with a character who is, at base, uncertain, vulnerable and very human. With My Favorite Wife, Holiday (1938), The Awful Truth (1937), Grant's character is funny because he is reacting like people do. Later comedies like Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948) present Grant in a character that is too much farce; that is, the character is funny because he is reacting like a silly Cary Grant. Even in a less everyman role like Walter Burns in His Girl Friday (1940) one can still see that Grant, like anyone else in that predicament, has something real at stake.

I think that his deftness at subtle humor was what allowed Cary Grant the star to fully materialize. He had mastered gesture, composure and manner quite brilliantly through playing comedy. Without these elements it is hard to imagine the full Cary Grant persona being as solidified as it was post-1940.

I'm not diminishing the rest of Grant's career. He remained versatile as hell a full 25 years after solidifying himself as the Cary Grant (in the role of C.K. Dexter Haven). He is still funny in That Touch of Mink (1962) and terrifying in Suspicion (1941) and sympathetic in North by Northwest (1959), but never as anyone but Cary Grant.

Friday at Blueberry Hill

So I usually just write about movies, but I can't help but mention the immaculate pairing of Smog frontman Bill Callahan and Shearwater frontman Jonathan Meiburg for a show at Blueberry Hill Friday night. For the record, Shearwater's Palo Santo for Matador last year was my pick for album of the year. Totally mesmerizing.

The brilliance of such a pairing has only seen its equal in that David Bazan/John Vanderslice tour in 2004 and maybe in that Bob Dylan/Paul Simon double bill, but they were both pretty crusty by then.

See you there.

Michel Gondry in The AVClub

Be Kind Rewind may look like an innocuous comedy at first. It is, after all, starring Jack Black and Mos Def. But add guru Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) as director and you've raised the film's potential by approx. 3,104%. Who knows if it'll be any good, but Gondry is, if nothing else, a guy with great ideas.

In the AV Club's recent interview with Gondry, he muses on some media consumption issues that are very near and dear to me:

Of course, [the film] is a comment on the idea that people fabricate what you are supposed to like, and to spend your spare time [caring about]. I find it particularly shocking that people work all week long, and then on the weekend they give their money to another big corporation. I remember reading an interview with Walt Disney, and he said how he got the idea to create Disney World. He saw his grandson playing in the sand in a little park, and he assumed he was bored. And he said he could provide him a better alternative...And I truly believe his grandson was having a great time when he was playing with the sand.

I wish there were more film directors with that attitude toward media literacy.

Read the rest of the article here.