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J.D. Salinger wouldn’t let Jerry Lewis play Holden Caulfield
10.26.2013
01:39 pm
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Jerry Lewis, Holden Caulfield
 
The list of prominent Hollywood people who wooed J.D. Salinger for the rights to The Catcher in the Rye is long and impressive—Elia Kazan, Leonardo DiCaprio, Harvey Weinstein, Jack Nicholson, Steven Spielberg, Marlon Brando, and Billy Wilder, according to A Reader’s Companion to J. D. Salinger’s the Catcher in the Rye, by Peter G. Beidler. In 1960 Salinger told Newsweek’s Mel Eflin that he replied to one suitor, “I cannot give my permission. I fear Holden wouldn’t like it.”

One would-be Holden that stands out, partly because it’s so bizarre, is Jerry Lewis. In his 1971 book The Total Film-Maker—published, incidentally, right around the same time he was directing and starring in his legendary, seldom-seen movie project The Day the Clown Cried, to give you an idea of his state of mind—Lewis wrote:
 

I have been in the throes of trying to buy The Catcher in the Rye for a long time. What’s the problem? The author, J.D. Salinger! He doesn’t want more money. He just doesn’t even want to discuss it. I’m not the only Beverly Hills resident who’d like to purchase Salinger’s novel. Dozens have tried. This happens now and then. Authors usually turn their backs on Hollywood gold only because of the potential for destruction of their material. I respect them for it! Why do I want it? I think I’m the Jewish Holden Caulfield. I’d love to play it!

 
It’s a testament to Salinger’s writing powers that a figure like Lewis could even for a moment imagine himself in the role—perhaps his readerly identification was that strong. One wonders if Jerry really understood anything about The Catcher in the Rye. Jewish or not, the obvious problem with casting Lewis to play Holden is age. In the novel, Caulfield has been kicked out of Pencey Prep, and is thus too young for college. At the time The Total Film-Maker was published, Lewis, born 1926, was 45 years old! Compared to the age issue, even the clear tonal difficulties of representing Holden as a goggle-eyed, guffawing spaz like Lewis seem positively manageable.

Salinger’s lover and later memoirist, Joyce Maynard, wrote in her book At Home in the World that Salinger told her that “Jerry Lewis tried for years to get his hands on the part of Holden…. Wouldn’t let up.” In Maynard’s opinion, “The only person who might ever have played Holden Caulfield would have been Jerry Salinger.” It’s unclear whether this is a reference to something that almost happened: rather remarkably, at one point Salinger considered allowing a stage adaptation—“with the author himself playing Holden.”

In 1957, Salinger replied to a fan named “Mr. Howard” who had written him to inquire why the novelist had not granted permission for The Catcher in the Rye to be made into a movie. Salinger’s reply went as follows:
 

The Catcher in the Rye is a very novelistic novel. There are readymade “scenes”—only a fool would deny that—but, for me, the weight of the book is in the narrator’s voice, the non-stop peculiarities of it, his personal, extremely discriminating attitude to his reader-listener, his asides about gasoline rainbows in street puddles, his philosophy or way of looking at cowhide suitcases and empty toothpaste cartons—in a word, his thoughts. He can’t legitimately be separated from his own first-person technique. True, if the separation is forcibly made, there is enough material left over for something called an Exciting (or maybe just Interesting) Evening in the Theater. But I find that idea if not odious, at least odious enough to keep me from selling the rights…. And Holden Caulfield himself, in my undoubtedly super-biased opinion, is essentially unactable.

 
Now that Salinger is dead, the path is probably clear for the inevitable Catcher adaptation with … Michael Cera or Justin Bieber or someone.

But at least the role won’t go to Andy Dick…

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
J.D. Salinger Dead At 91
A Crapper in the Rye: Own J.D. Salinger’s toilet!
Holy shit holy grail: BTS footage from Jerry Lewis’ Nazis comedy ‘The Day the Clown Cried’ surfaces!

Posted by Martin Schneider
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10.26.2013
01:39 pm
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Allen Ginsberg frees himself from Catholic oppression by jacking-off in a church
10.26.2013
11:36 am
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The thing I enjoy most about reading published journals and diaries are those wee gems of anecdote and information that often fail to be included in biographies and memoirs.

Take for example this (possibly apocryphal) tale from the author of The Magus and The French Lieutenant’s Woman, John Fowles, which is included in volume one of his Journals:

”...[A]n amusing story about Allen Ginsberg, one of the new American literary clique—the Beat Generation—who came to Oxford to lecture to the Jesus College Literary Society. Ginsberg started his lecture by saying that he had landed in Ireland before coming on to England.

‘Soon as I landed, I felt a kind of weight pressing on the top of my head. And I knew what it was. I knew what it was. It was the Church. And you know what I did? I went straight into the first church, and I went straight up the aisle of that church, and I stood before the altar. I stood right there in front of the altar. And you know what I did? I masturbated, right there. And that was good. That was real.’

The Literary Society, said Podge, rose to a man and hurled him gently out of the room.”

The “Podge” who told Fowles this story was Fred Porter, a university friend and later a respected Marxist and teacher at Magdalen College School, Oxford.

I thought I’d check the veracity of this amusing anecdote against Bill Morgan’s biography I Celebrate Myself: The Somewhat Private Life of Allen Ginsberg, which recounts events very differently:

”...[Ginsberg] pushed on to Oxford University. There he gave a reading to a small group of about twenty enthusiastic students. Since he hadn’t read in quite a while he was a little hesitant, but once he began speaking it felt great to be in front of an audience again. He wept as he read Howl, and then recited some Creeley, Whalen, and Levertov poems to the students. Triumphant afterward, he walked along a quiet stream near the college towers and listened to the bells ringing peacefully as they had for hundreds of years.”

I prefer Podge’s version to Morgan’s, as it was possible that Ginsberg may have read his poetry before recounting his activities in Ireland, and then being ejected. Morgan’s version reads like the description to a closing scene from a cliched Hollywood biopic.

Anyway, for those who love Ginsberg, here he is talking about The Beats, Bob Dylan, Jack Kerouac and censorship. Alas, he makes no reference to his onanistic protest against the Catholic Church.
 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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10.26.2013
11:36 am
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Xerox Ferox and the Lost Art of the Horror Film Fanzine
10.26.2013
11:20 am
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Guest post by David Kerekes, co-author of Killing For Culture and See No Evil, and author of Mezzogiorno

In the introduction to a new book on the subject of horror film fanzines and the culture they spawned, author John Szpunar deliberates on the place of the zine next to mainstream media. There is a difference, he says, in that the zines had nothing to lose.

I can think of no better example to illustrate this point than a Myra Hindley cut out doll. It’s a pen and ink drawing gracing the back cover of Subhuman #4 (January 1987), which shows one half of the Moors Murderers wearing nothing but her fearsome peroxide bouffant and black panties. A change of dress includes a Nazi uniform along with a bloodstained kitchen knife as accessory.
 

 
Art: Jason Knight
 
The Myra doll isn’t trying to sell anything. It doesn’t relate to a film, nor bear any relation to the content of the zine in question. Its simple purpose is to glower with gentle contempt. In the town I once lived, a short bus ride from the moors of the Moors Murderers, this sort of jape could get you lynched. Who in their right mind would conjure up something as disturbing, disposable and quite as brilliant as a Myra Hindley cut out doll? Disposable is a clue, in deference to the type of horror fanzine one might find in John Szpunar’s book.

To paraphrase the jacket blurb, Xerox Ferox: The Wild World of the Horror Film Fanzine is a book that covers a scene that has influenced generations of writers, filmmakers and fans (myself included; I published it). Fanzines with lurid titles like Gore Gazette, Violent Leisure, Sleazoid Express and Subhuman expressed a sense of freak camaraderie at a time when technology was yet to arrive for its wholesale delivery of freak. Theirs was a literary DIY ethos, not dissimilar to that of punk rock a decade or so earlier (which incidentally often borrowed from film, particularly cult and horror film).
 

 
Psychoholic Slag. Issue 5 (USA). Argento! Argento? Editor: Dave Kosanke.
 
One zine usually opened the door to other zines. Writes John Szpunar of his own education in this respect:

Before long, I was a part of a network of zine and tape traders, and the goods kept rolling in […] I was coming of age with the help of a new generation, and I was having the time of my life.

Avoiding reference to literary content for the moment (irreverent… informed… typo laden), the thing most striking about the horror film zines is, of course, the visual aesthetic. Although some were designed to a comparatively high standard—i.e., pro-zines like CineFan, Little Shoppe of Horrors and Bizarre —many more were low key efforts of short runs that were perhaps given away for the price of postage. The layouts were urgent and witty, overloaded with elements seemingly vying for space before the page ran out. And defining these products was the photocopier, the Xerox of Xerox Ferox, creating an arresting visual dynamic of harsh black and white contrasts that robbed any image of superfluous detail.

It is reassuring to discover that, in the age of the Internet, a small place still exists for the zine practitioner and the horror film culture of the printed page. Examples are out there, being transmitted through the postal network in a matter of days to defy the blogosphere (a term so abhorrent we are destined to use it). For now, however, a random collection of horror fanzine covers rescued from the mailboxes of old and made suitable for framing…

Get a special hardback edition of the remarkable Xerox Ferox here. 800 fully illustrated pages, about $72 plus a couple more to post. Pre-release paperback available here.
 

 
Killer Kung Fu Enema Nurses On Crack Issue 3 (NZ). A genuine Garbage Pail Kids sticker adorns the cover. Image depicts a police raid on the New Zealand home of editor/publisher Peter Hassall, confiscating books, zines and porn.
 

 
Subhuman Issue 5, March/April 1987 (USA). Design: Dawn Doyle. Editor: Cecil Doyle.
 

 
Trash Compactor Volume 2 Issue 4, Winter 1990 (CAN). Design: The Trash Compactor.

Posted by Thomas McGrath
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10.26.2013
11:20 am
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Guided by Voices: The Enigmatic Visionary Art of Madge Gill
10.26.2013
02:00 am
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This is a guest post by Nick Abrahams

Madge Gill (1882-1961) is finally being heralded as one of England’s premier visionary artists thanks to a major exhibition of her works taking place currently at the Orleans House Gallery in Richmond, London. Her work is also the subject of a major new catalog, filled with essays (including one by Roger Cardinal, the critic who first coined the term “outsider art,” to cover the wide range of artworks created by self taught and visionary artists) and - even better! - that includes many rare pictures by Gill, most reproduced for the first time.
 

 
Madge Gill produced all her work under the influence of a spirit guide named “Myrninerest,” whom she believed was responsible for her prolific output of work. Under Myrninerest’s influence, she would often draw 100 intricate postcard sized drawings at a single sitting! Gill believed she was channeling images from an alternate reality and that the work therefore belonged to her spirit guide. To this end, she did not sell her work during her lifetime, and upon her death hordes of work was found stacked under her bed and in cupboards.

Gill’s work invariably includes female faces, staring out at us , but who these women are (self portraits? Myrninerest?) is never clear. Occasional words and phrases appear. And often heavily repetitive abstract patterns fill the background, or become the subject in themselves. Although self taught, Gill had a draftsman’s eye for composition, and the hallucinatory nature of much of the work is exquisitely delicate. Here is an example of her purely abstract work:
 

 
Although Gill seemed to have little influence on the wider art world, the work carries an amazing psychic power, and seeing the work en masse gives a glimpse of Gill’s restlessly inquisitive inner world.  It is exciting to see these works in the flesh, many for the first time being exhibited in public, and to get a glimpse of the compulsive need this woman had to make art. There is something visionary in her work that often echos elements of psychedelic art, as well as Gustav Moreau or William Blake, but with a far more obsessive focus, and a feminine lightness of touch.
 

 
So if you are in London, scoot along to Richmond to see this epic show, including the colossal “Crucifixion of the Soul,” a brightly colored and heavily drawn upon 10 meter long work on calico, here on a rare public display, taking up one entire wall of the gallery, alongside a bewilderingly range of other works by Gill, as well as a carefully curated display of other artists who were themselves visionary or mediumistic in their approach. And its free!

Loosely inspired by Madge Gill and her work, David Tibet, best known for his musical output as Current 93, now has a new musical project under the name Myrninerest. Tibet has also collaborated with Henry Boxer, one of the curators of the Orleans House Gallery show, to publish a book of 108 reproductions of some of Gill’s postcard sized drawings, reproduced at their actual size, available here.

Below, Myrninerest’s recent soundtrack for filmmaker Derek Jarman’s magical Journey To Avebury film, all shot on Super-8 back in 1972.

 
This is a guest post by Nick Abrahams

Posted by Richard Metzger
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10.26.2013
02:00 am
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‘Stephen King without a conscience’: The only known TV interview with horror writer Richard Laymon
10.26.2013
12:52 am
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rallecnomyal.jpg
 
Ah, but doesn’t it always seem to be the quiet one who turns out to be the serial killer? You know, the quiet one with dead bodies in the attic, or with children chopped-up and archived in bubble-wrap under the floorboards? On the six o’clock news there’s the interview with the concerned neighbor who tells the world how the killer was, “Quiet and polite, always said ‘Good morning,’ and kept his yard neat.”  Yes, it’s those quiet ones—they’re the ones to watch.

Richard Laymon certainly was a quiet one, it was only his books that gave a clue to the mayhem going on in his mind. Laymon was a writer of horror fiction, specifically that genre known as “Splatterpunk”: brutal, disturbing, sadistic and violent tales of murder, sex and sadism.

Laymon was born in Chicago in 1947, and died of a heart attack on Valentine’s Day, 2001. He was the author of around 40 novels (one of which The Traveling Vampire Show won the Bram Stoker Award), and over 50 short stories, an output that saw him described as:

”Stephen King without a conscience.”

Laymon is certainly not to everyone’s taste. His books have been described as “sick,” “depraved,” “perverted,” “poorly written” and “disgusting.” All fair comment, but Laymon was an author of visceral horror, and one doesn’t get on a roller coaster to enjoy the scenery.

King was originally critical of Laymon’s work, and wrote in his book Danse Macabre:

There are haunted-house stories beyond numbering, most of them not very good (The Cellar, by Richard Laymon, is one example of the less successful breed).

King later changed his opinion, and became a “fan”:

“If you’ve missed Laymon, you’ve missed a treat.”

I’m not sure if “treat” is the right word, but America did miss out on Laymon during his lifetime, as few of his books were published in his homeland, and sales were almost non-existent. Laymon blamed this on a re-edit of his second book The Woods Are Dark, which saw the publisher cut 50-pages from the text. It basically finished his career in the States. But America’s lack of interest was in stark contrast to Europe, in particular the UK, where all of Laymon’s books were published, sold well, and received generally good reviews.

“In Laymon’s book, blood doesn’t so much drip drip as explode, splatter and coagulate. Its dynamic is described in salivating detail.” - The Independent (UK).

“A brilliant writer.” - Sunday Express (UK).

“This author knows how to sock it to the reader” - The Times (UK).

I can recall popping into bookshops in Glasgow and London during the 1990s and being able to find Laymon’s grisly tales displayed as prominently as King and Koontz. It may have helped that Laymon had a last name alphabetically close to the other two.

I started reading Laymon around the time of his death and devoured all of his books within a couple of months. They were compelling pulp horrors, but at the same time troubling because of Laymon’s often sleazy use of sex and torture as a device to create horror. Laymon argued he was reflecting the world as he saw it, and claimed:

”Horror writers are specialists in worst case scenarios.”

Laymon’s books are filled with such scenarios, which you could argue are little more than reflections of the writer’s own fear at being powerless to stop such terrors happening to himself or his family.

I can tie my own love of horror film and fiction to being scared shitless at a carnival when I was about five-years-old. I had dared to enter the “Ghost Tunnel,” which was basically an enclosed metal walkway consisting of a long, dark corridor, mirror-walled, with sliding panels, from inside of which two teenagers, dressed in rubber skeleton masks and gloves, attacked and pummeled anyone foolhardy enough to enter this nightmarish sideshow. I was terrified and (almost) loved every moment of it.

If this was the spark, then watching The Blob a few months later on TV, provided the fuel. The film’s all-consuming gelatinous goo (“Indestructible, indescribable, nothing can stop it alien!”) was responsible for recurring nightmares—one could argue this was some subconscious fear of my troll of a father’s attempts to destroy my nascent personality.

Horror fiction by its nature tends towards the conservative, the conformist, where the alien, the strange, and the abnormal are to be feared and ultimately defeated. This may explain why Laymon’s work is often denounced as “sick” and “depraved” because in his books the typical hero and heroine don’t win, but usually end up victims of the killer, the monster, or the sex mad beast in the cellar.

Around 2000, Richard Laymon was interviewed for Dark Dreamers, which seems to be the only interview he gave to TV. Laymon comes across as a quiet, rather mundane (if slightly creepy) high school teacher, but from his words you know there’s something dark and unsavory going on in his mind.
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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10.26.2013
12:52 am
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Get your Halloween on with Emily and the Strangers: ‘Calling All Guitars’ world video premiere
10.25.2013
03:19 pm
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Alt comics’ goth heroine Emily the Strange has formed her own band. Emily—who’s been a 13-year-old for twenty years now—and the Strangers are releasing their first single “Calling All Guitars” in time for Halloween, on October 29, 2013. The song and clip will be downloadable through iTunes, with a limited edition 7” 45rpm etched vinyl single available at the Emily the Strange online store.

The song and video were supported by a Kickstarter campaign that raised almost $65,000 from over 700 Emily the Strange fans. The people you see in the audience shots are folks who donated over $250.

“Calling All Guitars” was written by her creator Rob Reger, “Dust Brother” John King (Beastie Boys, Beck), Money Mark, and Morningwood’s Chantel Claret. Speaking of guitars, Emily is the only non-human to have her very own custom Epiphone guitar.

An Emily the Strange feature film is currently in development at Universal Pictures with Chloe Grace Moretz attached to star as the outcast icon. Rob Reger promises an eventual Emily album and even a live show, where Emily would be a hologram. How massive of a hit would that be? Both the movie—Chloe Grace Moretz would be perfect casting—and the live show, I mean. Kids would love them, it would be like printing money.
 

 
Thank you kindly Susan von Seggern!

Posted by Richard Metzger
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10.25.2013
03:19 pm
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19th century emoticons
10.25.2013
02:49 pm
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Keppler Emoticons
 
The newspaper Puck, founded in 1876 by Joseph Keppler, represented a significant turning point in the history of printed media in America. The son of a Viennese baker, Keppler arrived in St. Louis in 1867 at the age of 29—at that time St. Louis was the third-largest city in the country and had a great many German speakers. Keppler can be thought of as a counterpart to legendary caricaturist Thomas Nast (himself from German-speaking Bavaria), but whereas Nast tended to bludgeon his opponents, Keppler was possessed of a lighter touch.
 
Keppler self-portrait
A self-caricature by Joseph Keppler, in which the subjects of his political cartoons repaint their pictures while Keppler dozes.

Puck, of course, was named after Shakespeare’s playful sprite in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. At first Puck existed as a German-language journal only, with an English edition following in early 1877. The English version of Puck lasted all the way until 1918. Puck was the first magazine to carry illustrated advertising and the first to successfully adopt full-color lithography printing for a weekly publication.

In 1881 Keppler published a brief item about “Typographical Art” that appears to be a version of proto-emoticons well over a hundred years before they became a widespread mode of expression in the 1990s.

We wish it to be distinctly understood that the letter-press department of this paper is not going to be trampled on by any tyranical crowd of artists in existence. We mean to let the public see that we can lay out, in our own typographical line, all the cartoonists that ever walked. For fear of startling the public we will give only a small specimen of the artistic achievements within our grasp, by way of a first instalment. The following are from Studies in Passions and Emotions. No copyright.

Joy. Melancholy. Indifference. Astonishment.

(Sources for this post include American Political Cartoons: The Evolution of a National Identity, 1754-2010 by Stephen Hess and Sandy Northrop and the Comics Should Be Good! blog.)

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Smileys from 1881

Posted by Martin Schneider
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10.25.2013
02:49 pm
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Famous Beastie Boys sample revealed!
10.25.2013
11:47 am
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Goggle-eyed comedian Mantan Moreland is most famous for being chauffeur “Birmingham Brown” in the Charlie Chan movies, for his supporting role as one of Lucifer Jr.’s “idea men” in Vincente Minnelli’s all-black musical Cabin in the Sky, and for playing the hapless mailman in the “sick humor” cult favorite, Spider Baby. You know how some people are just so naturally funny that the minute you see them, you’re primed for laughter? Mantan Moreland has always had that kind of effect on me.

I can’t tell you the number of times I have inflicted King of the Zombies on unsuspecting friends in the 1980s. It’s a terrible, terrible film, but his scenes are hilarious. I’ve watched it a lot. Too many times!

The Beastie Boys must’ve been Mantan Moreland fans, too, as there is a particular punch-line from one of his rude-n-crude “party records” of the 1970s sampled in a song called “B-Boys makin’ with the Freak Freak” from 1994’s Ill Communication album. The line—“Shit, if this is gonna be that kind of party, I’m gonna stick my dick in the mashed potatoes!”—is (inexplicably) hilarious on its own, but here’s the entire routine from Mantan Moreland’s album “That ain’t my finger!”
 

 
It starts a bit slow, but stay with it.
 

 
Below, Moreland is basically the star of King of The Zombies, but he’s not given top billing, the white actors are. My favorite scenes are when he gets hypnotized into believing that he’s a zombie and the scene where he leads the zombies into the kitchen to be fed. He says a line in the scene that begins at the 54:00 minute mark that I have used as a “catchphrase” for decades: “As I member, I has privileges.” No one ever knows what I mean when I say that, but I laugh.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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10.25.2013
11:47 am
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Of beer, blood, badasses and reservoir dogs: The poetry of Mr. Blonde
10.25.2013
11:28 am
Topics:
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Well-known character actor Michael Madsen, who most memorably played Mr. Blonde in Quentin Tarantino’s 1992 movie Reservoir Dogs, is a published poet, and he’s way more serious about it than, say, Ally Sheedy (just a single volume of poetry: Yesterday I Saw the Sun).

Contrariwise, Madsen has published a whole shelf of ‘em: Beer, Blood and Ashes, Eat the Worm, Burning in Paradise, A Blessing of the Hounds, 46 Down: A Book of Dreams and Other Ramblings, American Badass, and Expecting Rain. Madsen’s poetry fits squarely (ahem) into the Beat tradition, unrhymed, discursive sentence-like verse à la Allen Ginsberg. Sometimes he ventures into shape poetry in the manner of E.E. Cummings.

In 2005, 13 Hands published The Complete Poetic Works of Michael Madsen. 13 Hands is also running a blog dedicated to Madsen’s poetry.

Here’s a poem from Madsen’s 1995 collection Eat the Worm:
 

“Clint Eastwood”

One night in Arizona:
I was just out of jail and
walking across a parking lot
with a guy named Mike.
We both got released
at the same time.
There were some Mexicans in a car
and they wanted us to come over.
They had bad intentions, so
we kept walking.
Then Mike turned
back and said,
“Fuck you, stupid spics.”
and the—shit—hit—the—fan.
I got one in a headlock
and got a few good shots to his face.
Mike ran off and the others
made themselves happy
jumping on my back
and kicking the living—shit—out—of—me.
I held me own for as long as I could;
even walking up the street while they
kept kicking
and punching me,
yelling for me
to run,
but I thought about it
and didn’t want to give them
the satisfaction,
so I just walked and took the hits
until they gave up.
When I got to the corner
Mike was crying, “I’m sorry man…
I pussied out.”
over and over again.
My face was puffed up and
one eye I couldn’t open.
Right before we were let out of jail
I had thought Mike looked like Clint Eastwood…
all I could think of
at that moment, was that
he sure didn’t act like him.

 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
‘Reservoir Dogs’: Dick dick, dick, dick remix

Posted by Martin Schneider
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10.25.2013
11:28 am
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Tell me your nightmares: ‘The Asylum For Shut-Ins: Video Psychotherapy’ 80s cable access insanity
10.25.2013
11:08 am
Topics:
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thedoctor
 
When cable TV was first introduced, it was something of a free-for-all of programming. An America accustomed to having three and only three national channels for decades was suddenly confronted with dozens to hundreds of cable stations that had to fill 24 hours a day with anything, so there was a lot of throwing shit at the wall to see what would stick. Much of it was worthless of course, because it was TV, but some seemed like nothing less than the trailblazing cultural produce of visionary mavericks. While New Yorkers had the infamously bizarre Channel J and L.A. had pretty much anything you could dream up and some shit you never could, even we flyover rubes could at least enjoy the unpredictable weekly freakouts of the USA Network’s Night Flight and other overnight oddities.


And then there was public access.

I have no idea what’s up on public access cable nowadays, but I suspect it’s primarily churchy stuff. The emergence of phone cameras and YouTube made public access instantly quaint, but in its day, the situation was that in order to be granted a contractual monopoly to serve an area with cable TV, a provider was required by the FCC to set aside at least one commercial-free channel for any members of the public who walked through the doors to do their own shows. Free training in videography was part of the deal as well, so the only barrier to entry the cable companies could erect was to schedule public training for difficult hours of the day, which some did, and which only served to ensure that the most motivated (which often meant the most bonkers) people showed up. It could be a bastion of admirable idiosyncrasy or a fucking garbage can, but for much of the 1980s, some of the weirdest and most fearlessly inventive TV in the world could be found in those little regional treasure troves.

And in the cable access of late ‘80s Cleveland, OH, The Doctor was the king.

In 1987, the East suburbs’ Cablevision company began airing a strange program called The Asylum For Shut-Ins: Video Psychotherapy. It made no pretense to being edifying, it showed no local bands’ cheapshit music videos, it wouldn’t tell you when the PTA rummage sale was being held. It was there to disturb, and goddamn, at its best, it was magnificent.. The aforesaid Doctor was the titular psychotherapist and host - a cheap, sunglasses-sporting ventriloquist dummy whose persona was half Peter Ivers manic cool, half Reverend Jim Jones mass-homicidal, and he’d deliver insanely malevolent monologues/scoldings in between rapid-fire clips of B-movie violence. From the show’s FB page:

The Doctor is a sadistic, power-mad ventriloquist dummy who administers doses of mind bending video ultra-violence and savage social commentary. He delivers his demented therapy with machinegun-like collages of horror movie clips… audio and video samples fused together in a musical tapestry of terror, madness, and destruction… coming attractions for the end of sanity.

 

 
But check out the rhythms of all those jump cuts - they have an undeniable musicality to them. This obviously wasn’t some busted-ass Cleveland Heights freakshow who just wandered in one day, the man behind this curtain had skill. We’ve gotten used to a world where a feature film can be quickly cut on a laptop computer, but in Asylum’s day, uzi-edits were tedious and cumbersome work involving multiple tape decks, mixers, and extraordinary timing and patience. This was the work of an experienced hand, and that hand was Ted Zbozien’s. Then and still a video editor in Cleveland, he took some time out of his work day to tell DM about Asylum’s beginnings. What follows was heavily edited down for brevity and clarity from a lengthy and animated telephone conversation with Zbozien.

I started doing a lot of manipulation with found footage in the early ‘80s, cutting TV commercials, doing a lot of sampling and looping. I made one video with Ernest Angley, the crazy TV preacher, and that in particular was a big hit at the Athens (OH) Video Festival like in ’85 or so. That was sort of the beginning.

Coincidentally, my buddy Jeff Adam, who became The Doctor, he was a really wacky, funny guy. We made some videos, short films, and he was always the main character because he was such a flamboyant and funny improviser with a great camera presence. He picked up a Danny O’Day ventriloquist dummy that he started pulling out at parties, and it was an excuse to vent. You could say the craziest things, insult people, expose harsh truths - as long as you were saying it through the dummy. Those things kind of came together when we decided to do videos with the dummy. I was collecting a lot of horror clips, and I was a fan of the old Ghoulardi show, and I thought it would be fun to do that sort of wraparound style show with the dummy as the host.


The glasses came from shooting the dummy and realizing the eyes were dead, just painted on, they were nothing, just dead eyes that don’t move. But if you put the sunglasses on, you could imagine his eyes darting around behind there. I cut them out of a piece of mat board and used electrical tape for lenses, and it just KILLED us, and Jeff went crazy with it.

So the first two shows were in the straight wraparound style while I started to develop the “Video Psychotherapy” method of splintering up shots and making montages. For the second show, we used the 1940s British movie Dead of Night, it was an anthology movie, with five stories that were linked together. The one we really liked starred Michael Redgrave as a ventriloquist, and his dummy became the model for The Doctor’s personality. Then we decided that the diced-up material was more entertaining than the movies, so we chucked the movies and added more of The Doctor. And then we just poured it on. We created about 10 shows, about 6 or so of which were the really hardcore ones.

With The Doctor, we wanted to satirize Morton Downey Jr, Ernest Angley, Ronald Reagan, anybody who wielded power and had a big mouth and liked to rule over others. When we had him say things like “KILL THE CHILDREN, TAKE THE MONEY,” that’s not funny, but it IS funny, and it’s the truth. It seems reckless and insane. That’s fine.

The show became the talk of the town’s weirdo art and music scenes around the turn of the ‘90s. Punk singers started mimicking the Doctor’s misanthropic rants as between-songs patter. A sculptor designed and exhibited a viewing booth made expressly for watching the show. Around 1988-1991, Asylum really was, more than any band one could name, THE Cleveland underground phenomenon that kept things interesting in the downtime between the waning of the ‘80s music scene and the grunge dam-burst. It’s not hard to see why, so please, enjoy some more clips.
 

 


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Ted Zbozien recently crowdfunded a feature length all-montage film called Worst Movie Ever.

Posted by Ron Kretsch
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10.25.2013
11:08 am
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