Monday Minute
No. 235 | May 2, 2011

“Justice Has Been Done”

 
In my five decades and counting I’ve had the chance to witness quite a bit of history, but tonight I can say that I don’t remember a moment like this.  So often the most memorable events are the most tragic—the assassinations of the ’60s, the Oklahoma City bombing, and of course, 9/11.  There have been jubilant occasions, too—the Apollo 11 mission to the moon, the fall of the Berlin Wall—but as an occasion of justice and victory, today’s news, though on a smaller scale, feels like something we may not have experienced in the United States since the end of World War II.

Osama bin Laden is dead.  The news was shocking when it came—not because we’d given up the effort, but because we’d given up the thought that it would actually happen.  Yet now we get to think about it differently.  The effort to get bin Laden (not to be mistaken for our multiple missteps along the way) was not a lost cause, after all.  Suddenly, so it seems, we got it right. 

The past decade has been painful and troubling, filled with more futility and self-doubt than we ever would want to admit.  The demise of bin Laden puts an end to one chapter of our recent history.  Though time will tell what it means, for the moment it is reason to celebrate.

As I watched the news with my wife, who I met in the weeks following 9/11, and my son, who’s approximately the age that I was watching the events of November 1963, I felt a glimmer of hope that I have not felt in a long, long while.  Maybe we can move on now.  It’s about time.

“Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead”

Ding Dong!  The witch is dead. 
Which old witch? 
The Wicked Witch!
Ding Dong!  The Wicked Witch is dead.
Wake up, sleepy head,
Rub your eyes, get out of bed.
Wake up, the Wicked Witch is dead. 
She’s gone where the goblins go,
Below, below, below. 
Yo-ho, let’s open up and sing and ring the bells out.
Ding Dong the merry-oh,
Sing it high, sing it low.
Let them know
The Wicked Witch is dead!

The most fitting movie for the occasion, it seems to me, is the most American of movies, The Wizard of Oz.  The witch is dead!  The nightmare is over.  The time to leave the storm cellar has come.

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The Wizard of Oz (1939)
Victor Fleming, director
“Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead”
Harold Arlen, music; E.Y. “Yip” Harburg, lyrics
The Munchkinland Parade
Judy Garland, Billie Burke, and the Munchkins

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Quote of note
Mayor:  Then this is a day of independence for all the Munchkins and their descendants!
Barrister:  If any!
Mayor: Yes, let the joyous news be spread!  The Wicked Old Witch at last is dead!
—Mayor of Munchkin City (Charles Becker), Barrister (“Little Billy” Rhodes), The Wizard of Oz (1939)

…58…59…60.

Friday Minute
No. 230 | March 25, 2011

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Class of 2011

Our theme this week
Performers inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011

Featured this week
(See Monday post for theme introduction and program note)
Monday         —   Alice Cooper
Tuesday         —   Dr. John
Wednesday    —   Darlene Love
Thursday        —   Neil Diamond

Tom Waits

Waits is an American original.  Though never a huge commercial success, he’ll be remembered long after many of his more popular contemporaries are forgotten.  He’s a musician first, but he’s worth noting for his work in film as well.  He first had a hit with “Ol’ 55,” when the Eagles recorded it in 1974; his original is a song I can listen to a dozen times in a row and still want to hear again.  ”The Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me)” was nothing less than an anthem during my college years.  You had to love a guy who had the courage to mumble through his songs.  But most of all, there was a sense of feeling in his music that you couldn’t find anywhere else.  Francis Ford Coppola had him score One from the Heart, and the result is a work of beauty.  Waits continued working in film, often onscreen, and his performances in Down by Law and Short Cuts are, to my mind, especially memorable.  I can’t do justice to Waits in a short sketch like this, and I won’t try.  Suffice to say, he’s one of the greats.

Waits on film
One from the Heart (1982)*
Rumble Fish (1983)
The Cotton Club (1984)
Down by Law (1986)
Dracula (1992)
Short Cuts (1993)
Night on Earth (1992)*
Coffee and Cigarettes (2003)
Wristcutters: A Love Story (2006)
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009)
The Book of Eli (2010)

* Original score.
Contributed songs to soundtracks of many films (too many to mention, but Waits did much of the music for the 1992 Jeff Bridges film American Heart).

Final note on the Class of 2011
In addition to the five performers featured this week, three others were inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame:  Leon Russell (as a “sideman” and not a “performer,” which seems like an arbitrary distinction to me), and non-performers Jac Holzman (record exec) and Art Rupe (pioneer of indie labels).  Congrats to all!

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Down by Law (1986)
Jim Jarmusch, director
Tom Waits, John Lurie

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One from the Heart (1982)
“This One’s from the Heart”
Tom Waits, Crystal Gayle, with Teddy Edwards on tenor sax / Soundtrack

 

Waits was nominated for an Academy Award for best original score.  The story behind Waits and the film here.

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Final Friday Five, the monthly mini-quiz

1.  Name the Rock and Roll Hall of Famers starring in each of these concert and documentary films.

Dont Look Back (1967)
I’m Going to Tell You a Secret (2005)
Live at Red Rocks (1984)
Shine a Light (2008)
Stop Making Sense (1984)
This Is It (2009)

2.  Name four of the seven Rock and Roll Hall of Famers to date who have won an Oscar for original song or original score. 

3.  Well more than 100 movies have opened since the beginning of 2011.  Before this weekend, how many of those films have grossed more than $100 million at the domestic box office?

4.  The baseball season usually brings with it another baseball movie or two.  This year’s most anticipated film about the sport is Moneyball, the adaptation of the book by Michael Lewis (The Blind Side), due to open in September.  The central character is Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland A’s, who used computer analysis and sabermetrics to field a competitive team.  Who plays Billy Beane onscreen?

5.  Match each of the following Elizabeth Taylor movies with the role that she played.

Father of the Bride (1950)
A Place in the Sun (1951)
Giant (1956)
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958)
Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)
BUtterfield 8 (1960)

Kay Banks
Leslie Benedict
Catherine Holly
Maggie Pollitt
Angela Vickers
Gloria Wandrous

Answers here.

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Quote of note
“The beauty of quitting is, now that I’ve quit, I can have one, ’cause I’ve quit.”
—Tom (Tom Waits), Coffee and Cigarettes (2003)

…58…59…60.

Thursday Minute
No. 229 | March 24, 2011

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Class of 2011

Our theme this week
Performers inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011

Featured this week
(See Monday post for theme introduction and program note)
Monday         —   Alice Cooper
Tuesday         —   Dr. John
Wednesday    —   Darlene Love

Neil Diamond

My five stages of Neil Diamond:

One) my preteen years:  best known as the guy who wrote songs for the Monkees (“I’m a Believer,” et al.), which meant something, and his solo stuff was catchy and very popular, in a good way (“Cherry, Cherry,” “Sweet Caroline”).

Two) my teen years:  it was not hip to be a Neil Diamond fan in high school (though I would never deny my fondness for ”Solitary Man,” a great song to defend and earn some contrarian cred).

Three) the looking-back years:  all in all, Diamond seemed better that I remembered at the time, someone who I could allow myself to like, even if it was in a campy, nostalgic sort of way.

Four) the not-so-young-anymore years:  recognition that Diamond was, without qualification, a major pop writer and singer.

Five) the current view:  not much different than Four, but surprise at the number of people of a certain age, many of them women, who regard Diamond as the pinnacle of pop, but unlike me, never went through stages Two or Three.

Diamond may have had a whole new career if The Jazz Singer had been a success.  We’ll never know what might have been, but we’ll always have that one shining example of a cast with Diamond, Laurence Olivier, and Lucie Arnaz.

Diamond on film
Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1973)*
The Last Waltz (1978)**
The Jazz Singer (1980)
Saving Silverman (2001)**

* Original score.
** As himself.
Contributed songs to soundtracks of many films, including Pulp Fiction (“Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon,” performed by Urge Overkill).

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The Jazz Singer (1980)
Richard Fleischer, director
Neil Diamond, Lucie Arnaz, Laurence Olivier
“Love on the Rocks”
Neil Diamond

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Saving Silverman (1992)
Dennis Dugan, director
Jason Biggs, Steve Zahn, Jack Black, Neil Diamond
“Holly Holy”
Neil Diamond

 

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Quote of note
Yussel:  He’s just kidding around, right?
Molly:  No, they’re doing it for real.
Yussel:  This song’s supposed to be a ballad.
Paul:  That’s his style, mister.  Made him a millionaire.
Yussel:  Yeah, but the thing is it’s too fast.  You can’t hear the words.
—Yussel Rabinovitch/Jess Robin (Neil Diamond), Molly Bell (Lucie Arnaz), Paul Rossini (James Booth), The Jazz Singer (1980)

…58…59…60.

Friday Minute
No. 151 | August 20, 2010

Hoofing It

Our theme this week
The incomparable Fred Astaire

 

Featured this week (theme introduction)
Monday         —   “Cheek to Cheek” / Top Hat (1935)
Tuesday         —   “Begin the Beguine” / Broadway Melody of 1940 (1940)
Wednesday    —   “One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)” / The Sky’s the Limit (1942)
Thursday        —   “You’re All the World to Me” / Royal Wedding (1951)

“Puttin’ on the Ritz”

Fred Astaire was neither the first nor the last to record Irving Berlin’s “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” but he’s the performer most closely associated with the tune.  His performance comes in Blue Skies, the Paramount musical that was billed as “Astaire’s last picture.”  After performing for the public for forty years, the actor-singer-dancer had had enough.  At the age of 47, he called it quits.  “Puttin’ on the Ritz” was his “last dance.”

It didn’t work out very well.  Retirement, that is.  Fred Astaire continued to make movies into the 1980s.

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Blue Skies (1946)
Stuart Heisler, director
Irving Berlin (story), Allan Scott (adaptation), Arthur Sheekman (writer)
“Puttin’ on the Ritz”
Irving Berlin, music and lyrics
Fred Astaire, Hermes Pan, Dave Robel, choreographers
Fred Astaire

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Quote of note
“No dancer can watch Fred Astaire and not know that we all should have been in another business.”
—Mikhail Baryshnikov

…58…59…60.

Thursday Minute
No. 150 | August 19, 2010

Hoofing It

Our theme this week
The incomparable Fred Astaire

Featured this week (theme introduction)
Monday         —   “Cheek to Cheek” / Top Hat (1935)
Tuesday         —   “Begin the Beguine” / Broadway Melody of 1940 (1940)
Wednesday    —   “One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)” / The Sky’s the Limit (1942)

“You’re All the World to Me”

The story borrows from Fred Astaire’s real life.  He and his sister, Adele, were dance partners before she went to England and married a duke.  In Royal Wedding, Astaire and Joan Powell play a brother-and-sister dance duo who take their show to London, where he meets another dancer (Sarah Churchill) and she meets an aristocrat (Peter Lawford).  Love is all around, as the town is buzzing with preparations for a royal wedding.

The film has a memorable sequence with Astaire dancing solo with a hat rack to “Sunday Jumps.”  A dancer like Astaire makes any partner look good.  The showstopper is “You’re All the World to Me,” seen in the clip below.  I showed it to my four-year-old son and asked him what he thought of Astaire’s dancing.  He said, “It looks hard—super hard.”  Indeed.

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Royal Wedding (1951)
Stanley Donen, director
Alan Jay Lerner, writer
“You’re All the World to Me”
Burton Lane, music; Alan Jay Lerner, lyrics
Fred Astaire, Nick Castle, choreographers
Fred Astaire

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Quote of note
“Your paltry, unconscionable commercials are the antithesis of everything my lovely, gentle father represented.”
—Ava Astaire, criticizing the company that made Dirt Devil, for digitally replacing a hat rack with a vacuum cleaner in a TV ad campaign in 1997

…58…59…60.