Author, filmmaker and bad taste-booster, John Waters, is out making the rounds promoting his new book, Role Models. He’s also featured in this weekend’s NYT Magazine, “Questions For…” section. Some snips:
There’s a chapter on Leslie Van Houten, one of the so-called Manson girls, who was convicted of murder in 1971, when she was 21, and who you argue should be released.
I do believe that. Today she is the woman she would have become if she had never met Charles Manson. Leslie is a good friend and someone who has taken full responsibility for the terrible crime she participated in.
What about the families of her victims, who don’t want her released?
They can never be wrong in their arguments, and I would never criticize their viewpoint.
Where is she being held?
The California Institution for Women, in Corona, Calif., an hour east of Los Angeles. Every year I visit her on Oscar morning. I go from her prison to Elton John’s dinner party. I guess, oddly, that sort of sums up my life.
Is there anyone you would actually kill if you knew you could get away with it?
I find it repellent when people do yoga exercises at the gate in airports. I want to kill them.
That’s reasonable.
There are little things that get on my nerves, like people who have reading material in their powder room. When you go in someone’s house, and next to the toilet they have a huge basket of magazines, I find that repellent. I recommend against straining while reading.
A much younger Waters also showed up in ‘81 on Andy Warhol’s TV. Part I of it follows, with links to the other segments below:
Conservative activist—and Tea Partier—Pamela Geller runs an organization called Stop Islamization of America (and in a fun bit of synchronicity today, Google her name and the first site that pops up is AtlasShrugs).
Well, what better place to promote a potentially volatile idea like that than the side of a New York City bus?! The above “Leaving Islam?” ads are currently running on 30 MTA buses in all five of NYC’s boroughs.
While Geller asserts they’re “not meant to be offensive to Muslims,” and are more about “religious freedom,” Eugene Volokh, an expert of constitutional law at UCLA, thinks they “could leave some Muslims reluctant to ride the bus, and “there could also be a risk that some extremist groups might bomb the buses, although that possibility wouldn’t limit,” the free speech right that Geller’s exercising.
For nearly 20 years now, Ayn Rand’s mammoth ode to capitalism and self-interest, Atlas Shrugged, has labored to find its way to a place it probably doesn’t belong anyway: the movie screen. Why so long a journey? Well, while some people (Alan Greenspan! John Mackey!) consider it the intellectual equivalent to The Lord of The Rings, that trilogy’s success didn’t exactly wrap up with a 100-page speech to the masses.
But now, in a roll-the-dice move that would make John Galt proud (or Howard Roark laugh), the current option-holder of Shrugged, entrepreneur John Aglialoro, has set a, gulp, June 11th start date on the production.
And while that’s only weeks away, and he’s currently lacking a single cast member (no word yet on Angelina Jolie or Charlize Theron as Dagny Taggart), Aglialoro has at least selected a director: Stephen Polk. Okay, if not Aglialoro, is Polk worried about the film’s casting? Nope!
Polk said they are not intimidated to film a storied book even if stars don’t align. “For more than 15 years, this has been at studios and there has been a whole dance around who’ll play the iconic roles,” Polk said. “Making it an independent film was the game-changer. Everybody is saying, how can you shoot this movie without a star? We’re shooting it because it’s a good movie with great characters. We’ve been in pre-production for months, but kept it a mystery. Part of the reason is because there’s so much crap about how you need a great big budget and stars. We aren’t looking for big names to trigger press or financing.”
For those of you wondering how Polk, whose acting credits far outweigh those of his directing (29 to 1), landed such a gig, what follows is the trailer for his last (and first) film, ‘08’s Cherly Ladd and Barry Bostwick-starring, Baggage:
Okay, now, given the above, we still can’t be sure how the resulting Atlas Shrugged film is going to turn out. But here’s something I do know: it’s gonna have a hard time stopping critics from seizing upon one of the novel’s central images: the train wreck.
Following up from Bradley’s awesome Tom Waits and Bob Dylan post, here we have a Family Guy spoof of the two rock stars along with two of our other favorites, Muhammed Ali and Popeye! “Why didn’t you play Hurricane?” Thanks Britt!
Miles Davis’ birthday was yesterday but I still love him today, so I’m posting this absolutely staggeringly great series of clips comprising his 1970 performance at the Isle of Wight festival. After viewing this for the first time when it was released a few years ago it got under my skin to such an extent that I had dreams about it for the next few nights. There’s some sort of holy communion with the spirit of pure music going on here that I can’t begin to profess to understand, but the musicians here are obviously touched by the proceedings in a way that transcends mere “rocking out”. See if you don’t agree.
From “loincloth collector” SongdogMI, “I used to have a big explanation of why there are breechclouts and loincloths in my closet and why there are photos of them. For now, I’ll just say it’s partly an outgrowth of my interest in the American fur trade, and it’s partly just fun.”
Over at Salon today, Glenn Greenwald has posted a terrific, take no prisoners rebuttal (more a demolition) to an article published in the NY Times about how the citizens of Pakistan harbor dark and paranoiac thoughts about the United States, and of course, Israel (and India). It’s a well-established fact that some absolutely insane conspiracy theories are widely believed by the Arab man in the street. Even elite media types—people who travel a lot for work—fall prey to and propagate such memes—like the long discredited anti-Semitic text Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which was made into a TV mini-series in Egypt. Yes, it’s safe to conclude that utterly false, and quite unhelpful conspiracy theories about the USA are common currency in the Arab world… but… but what about the batshit crazy stuff Americans believe about the Middle East, Islam and Arabs?
Initially, it’s worth asking how these “conspiracy theories” compare to this: from the front page of The New York Times, September 8, 2002:
More than a decade after Saddam Hussein agreed to give up weapons of mass destruction, Iraq has stepped up its quest for nuclear weapons and has embarked on a worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb, Bush administration officials said today. . . . In the last 14 months, Iraq has sought to buy thousands of specially designed aluminum tubes, which American officials believe were intended as components of centrifuges to enrich uranium. . . . An Iraqi defector said Mr. Hussein had also heightened his efforts to develop new types of chemical weapons. An Iraqi opposition leader also gave American officials a paper from Iranian intelligence indicating that Mr. Hussein has authorized regional commanders to use chemical and biological weapons to put down any Shiite Muslim resistance that might occur if the United States attacks.
*Ahem*
He goes on to give example after example of mind-numbing misstatements of fact, fear of the other—and just plain awful reporting—all courtesy of America’s chattering classes, i.e. the folks who are supposed to be better informed than the public, the media elites.
It’s not hard to conclude that there are extreme misconceptions on both sides of the equation. If you watch, say, Al Jazeera in English (which is all we really have access to) it’s a pretty measured news organization, much more BBC than Fox News, that’s for sure. But look at our media here and the flouting of woefully misinformed—just fucking stupid—people like Sarah Palin as opinion makers. There was an article I came across just today about how the CIA was planning to make a phonied up video of Saddam Hussein screwing a little boy (before abandoning the idea because they realized it wouldn’t have the same taboo shock value over there as it would here!). I mean, this is the shit the CIA admits to! Is there any wonder at why the average Pakistani citizen would feel that the United States is the Great Satan and not trust us?
Paranoia? Or rational fear?
I highly suggest reading Glenn Greenwald’s entire piece, this is just a teaser for it.
Those irrational, misled, conspiratorial Muslims (Salon)
In conclusion, here’s a lovely bit of homegrown convoluted thinking… the maker of this video actually seems to believe in his heart that this man is a liberal plant at a Tea party! The Democrats sent him! Blame Obama! (To be clear, the guy is right to fuck with the idiot, but to call him a Democrat plant is quite a leap, I think you’ll agree! Can’t just be a conservative idiot, can he, he’s got to be a liberal plant? Or ACORN! WTF?)
In a further sign that our world’s galloping toward a Cronenbergian future, University of Reading professor, Mark Gasson, “contaminated” a computer chip which was then inserted into his hand. Gasson’s pre-viral hand allowed him exclusive access to his lab and cellphone.
Once infected, though, his hand could pass along the virus to whatever device that next scanned the chip. If other chips had been wired into, or tapping, Gasson’s system, they too would have been corrupted. A conversation with Gasson follows below:
Some lovely time-lapse footage of a Los Angeles that’s been erased of both man and automobile. The moments where you can enjoy our city like this are certainly few and far between! To read about how Ross Ching made this Radiohead-accompanied video, click here.
Damn you, Zachary Oberzan—I was just days away from filming my own one man Schindler’s List! Well, I’ve never seen the Rambo films starring Sylvester Stallone, but something tells me they’re not gonna pack half the charm of Oberzan’s adaptation of David Morell’s ‘72 First Blood novel.
Beyond adapting, though—and to further simplify the callsheets—Oberzan plays every character to boot, including John Rambo. He also served as his own director, editor, stylist, caterer, etc. Working with the exceptionally low budget of 96 bucks, Oberzan shot the whole thing in his 220-square-foot NYC apartment. Here’s what the fine folks at Cinefamily say of the film (where it screens in L.A. this Saturday):
Eschewing Stallone-style spectacle for a YouTube-esque zen, this feature-length no-fi epic ambitiously re-imagines the novel as a ludicrous, exhibitionist fever dream. Imagine if a Max Fischer play from Rushmore was imbued with Jean-Luc Godard’s penchant for sardonic realism, only to be filtered through a grade-schooler’s “Let’s build a fort!” sincerity. Sound crazy? It is—wonderfully so. Yet, the impressive, good-humored gusto with which Oberzan presents himself surprisingly makes the film gel into an affecting, emotional whole.
The Flooding With Love For The Kid trailer follows below, but you can purchase a copy of the entire film here.
Oy vey ! From the looks of things this kid is also consuming more than his share of processed junk food or sody pop. I’d like to personally smack the shit out of his awful parents.
It’s hard to overstate the effect upon our psyches of things we’re exposed to when we are young and impressionable. For better or worse, these things stay with us forever and if we’re lucky these things are also of enduring quality and mystery. Such is the case with myself and the little known band Monitor, whose sole 7” single I chanced upon at Slipped Disc record store in Sepulveda, CA around 1980. I was already at this time quite the ardent Devo fan and I could tell they too had vaguely similar aesthetics, especially in Steve Thompsen’s virtuoso synth manglings. So enchanted was I with this lil’ slab o’ vinyl that I tracked them down and started hanging around with them and sneaking into all of their shows. That I soon found out they attended the same high school as I, 10 years earlier, only deepened my affection for them. As it happened they were just preparing to release their one and only self-titled LP which while retaining its electronic foundations revealed a darker, more psychedelic sound. And then, rather suddenly it was over. Drummer Keith Mitchell went on to fame with Mazzy Star, guitarist Michael Uhlenkott formed The Romans, Steve Thompsen eventually joined LAFMS improv trio Solid Eye and bassist (and major early crush object for yours truly) Laurie O’Connell disappeared into Northern Californian suburban family life. There are periodic rumors of re-issues and even a book documenting their fleeting existence, but for now all that remains are the handful of recordings and this one live clip from New Wave Theatre, which as far as I can tell was their very last performance together.
