This week we lost the cinematic master, Nicolas Roeg. The British auteur practically defined cinematic counterculture in the 1970s and his groundbreaking filmography includes David Bowie’s turned as a lonely alien in The Man Who Fell To Earth, Donald Sutherland’s searing, anguished performance in the unforgettable Don’t Look Now, and the mysterious parable of Walkabout. Variety had some words to share at Roeg’s passing…

Each film was a compelling, idiosyncratic tale with highly stylized performances — and beautiful, moody cinematography.

Roeg immediately hit again with his saga of the Australian outback, “Walkabout,” on which he again did double duty. As with “Performance,” the narrative was fractured, and it offered a certain mysticism that captivated arthouse audiences. The film starred Jenny Agutter and his son Luc as siblings abandoned in the desert by their father who are found by an Aboriginal boy (David Gulpilil) on his coming-of-age walkabout.

Two years later, in 1973, Roeg directed “Don’t Look Now,” with two major stars, Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland, in the leads. This occult story set in Venice was perhaps his most fully realized and moody thriller, though it never reached a mass audience as it was overshadowed by “The Exorcist” in the year of its release.

…Roeg used Bowie’s alien persona to good effect in “The Man Who Fell to Earth,” another odd but satisfying film about a visitor from another planet. Based on a 1963 science fiction novel about an extraterrestrial stranded on Earth, it co-starred Candy Clark, Buck Henry and Rip Torn and competed at the Berlin Film Festival. When Paramount’s Barry Diller saw the finished film, he reportedly refused to pay for it and it was released independently, later becoming a cult classic and staple of repertory cinema.

Here’s a review of Performance that I published in my newspaper column earlier this year…

With the recent passing of The Rolling Stones’ muse Anita Pallenberg, this week’s screening of the cult classic Performance at the Belcourt Theatre’s Music City Monday event couldn’t be more timely. Pallenberg, Mick Jagger and James Fox are all featured in this countercultural crime drama that finds a wounded mobster holing-up in the decaying mansion of a reclusive rock star and the ladies who share his bed. This scenario finds Performance delivering on all of its sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll promise, but the movie continues to find new viewers because of its dazzling photography and editing, its inventive use of sound and its deeper examining of the links between artistic performance, madness and identity.

Chas (James Fox) is an enforcer for an East London gang. Chas uses his penchant for cruelty and violence to intimidate and coerce anyone who threatens the business of his boss, Harry Flowers. But when Chas winds up on the wrong side of Flowers’ favor, he finds himself on the run from the gang he used to call his own. Chas colors his hair, assumes a new name and ends up hiding out in the decadent abode of a washed-up rock star named Turner (Mick Jagger). At first Chas is put-off by the perverse, bohemian lifestyle and free love values Turner shares with his bisexual housemates Pherber (Anita Pallenberg) and Lucy (Michelle Breton). But little by little, Turner and Chas start to influence and mirror one another in a surreal face-off, pitting Chas’ traditional tough guy masculinity against Turner’s androgynous, theatrical persona.

Lots of movies from the 1960s are still labeled “lurid” or “wild” because they caused scandals when they were released half a century ago during those days of cultural revolution. That said, many of those films – Blow Up comes to mind – now seem coyly charming with their peeks of nudity and hints at forbidden desires. Performance, on the other hand, seems thoroughly preoccupied with sex and violence, and the editing of the sights and sounds in the film’s famous opening sequence alone confuses every wince, groan, slap and caress into a montage of sensations that still seems as intense and skanky as the best Keith Richards solos.

In its original form, Donald Cammell wrote Performance as a comedic romp – a lighthearted look at London counterculture in the swinging ’60s. But under the influence of the work of Agentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges and the theatrical philosophies of Antonin Artaud, Cammell’s drafts of the screenplay grew increasingly darker. Warner Bros. was originally hoping to get The Rolling Stones version of The Beatles’ A Hard Days Night (1964), and one might argue that the milieu at Turner’s pad seems a lot like the one the British tabloid press captured during The Rolling Stones’ infamous “girl in the rug” drug bust at Keith Richards’ country estate in 1967 – the year before Performance was produced. When Warner Bros. got Cammell and cinematographer Nicolas Roeg’s (the pair are credited as co-directors) finished product, they demanded changes. A deft Cammell supervised edits to satisfy the studio while also making the overall feel of the film even more hallucinatory. After threatening to shelve the movie, Warner Bros. eventually released the film in 1970 when it quickly became a cult phenomenon. The movie is now regarded as one of the most influential and innovative British films of all time.

Warner Bros. was also hoping the Performance soundtrack would comprise a new album by The Rolling Stones, but rumors that Mick Jagger’s sex scenes with Anita Pallenberg were anything but play acting drove a wedge between the singer and Pallenberg’s then-boyfriend Keith Richards. However, this Music City Mondays pick comes along with a soundtrack full of nuggets featuring contributions by Randy Newman, Ry Cooder, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Lowell George and composer Jack Nitzche. Merry Clayton might be best known for her standout singing on The Rolling Stones “Gimme Shelter,” and her vibrant vocals adorn three tracks here alongside the lone Stones contribution, “Memo from Turner.”

Performance is a chestnut of psychedelic ’60s cinema, but unlike the usual exploitation fare of the era, it’s a sophisticated examination of self-perception and self-expression through the lens of sex and drugs. The movie hits high gear by the time Chas becomes part of the scene at Turner’s mansion, which is almost literally a house of mirrors where Chas lies about being a juggler before the influences of Turner, Pherber and Lucy slowly start pulling at the loose ends of the gangster’s identity.

Here’s Jarvis Cocker interviewing Roeg about The Man Who Fell to Earth back in 2013…

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I’m still bummed-out over the passing of Anthony Bourdain. There are some Tony-was-murdered-conspiracy-theories floating around, and even though I love conspiracy theories, I haven’t been able to even look into those because I’m still wrapping my head around his suicide. CNN has been airing the last episodes of Parts Unknown Bourdain completed before his death, and last night’s visit to Indonesia was a great episode for October even if it was pretty spooky to listen to Bourdain joking about being dead.

See, Indonesian culture is very mystical and nearly everyone regardless of religious background believes in the existence of an afterlife. Because of this the culture has a much more open and accepting relationship to death and the dead than we do in the West. In fact, we’d probably find it kind of scary.

Getting into some upcoming scary posts for October, here’s a great video about the a tradition among the Toraja — an ethnic minority living in southern Indonesia:

These people in Indonesia dig up their dead every year or so and redress them, bathe them and groom them and then on top of that they walk the dead through town back to the caskets to be reburied. Some say the bodies actually walk and stand due to black magic being preformed.

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Over the holiday I missed out on posting about the 14th anniversary of Joe Strummer’s death from an un-diagnosed congenital heart defect on December 22, 2002. I celebrated The Clash’s 30th birthday with a slew of posts this last summer and I wanted to revisit this Joe-centric notice to recognize his passing last week. Here’s a bit about the documentary Viva Joe Strummer – The Clash and Beyond followed by the film…

Here’s another post celebrating The Clash at 30: Viva Joe Strummer – The Clash and Beyond documents the British rocker’s childhood as as diplomat’s son, his rock ‘n’ roll initiation with The 101ers, his storied history with The Clash to Strummer’s overlooked later career music which was cut short by his untimely death in 2002. Here’s the word from Open Culture…

Viva Joe Strummer gives us loads of concert footage and interviews with band members and close friends like the Sex Pistols’ Glen Matlock. The focus remains on Strummer, a frontman with tremendous charisma but also, paradoxically, with a tremendous amount of humility. One reviewer of the film says as much:

Joe Strummer always projected himself as a humble man. Even at the height of The Clash‘s megalomania, when he fired guitarist Mick Jones, Strummer came across like a better read, more worldly Bruce Springsteen. The everyman image has made eulogizing the singer difficult.

This suggests that Strummer’s everyman persona may have been part of his showmanship, but even so, he was respected and admired by nearly everyone who knew him. And his proletarian politics were genuine. As one interviewee says above, “he always had a corner to fight in. He always had someone to stick up for.”

Here’s Viva Joe Strummer…

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This past Friday afternoon I read an article reporting that Fidel Castro had bid the Cuban people adios as he felt he would be dying soon. Early Saturday morning I found out the former lawyer/revolutionary fighter/prime minister and president had indeed passed away. Castro was a complex man who lead a complex life in complex times, and neither the damning attacks or the blushing praise that’s fomented in his wake really does justice to this true survivor, his revolutionary days, and his impact upon them. Estela Bravo’s documentary Fidel Castro: The Untold Story offers a worthy window on Cuba, the revolution, and the man at the middle of each for more than half a century. Here are some words from Bravo’s website…

To some he is a champion of the poor and the powerless; to others he is a ruthless dictator. He is often dismissed as a relic, yet many revere him as a saviour. He is Cuban President, Fidel Castro.

FIDEL covers forty years of the Cuban Revolution and provides a unique opportunity to consider the life of one of the most influential and controversial figures of our time.

Director, Estela Bravo, has obtained original and unusual interviews with Castro and exclusive footage from Cuban State archives. For the first time on film, we see Fidel Castro in a more intimate light, swimming with his bodyguards, visiting his childhood home and school, joking with his friend Nelson Mandela, meeting with Elian Gonzalez, and celebrating his birthday with the Buena Vista Social Club.

Bravo allows the story to unfold through the words of Alice Walker, Sydney Pollack, Ted Turner, Muhammed Ali, Harry Belafonte, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Congressman Charles Rangel, Ramsey Clark, Wayne Smith, and others. Family and close friends, such as the Nobel Prize winning writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez, also offer a window into the largely unknown private life of Fidel Castro.

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A pic I edited in 2014 for a post celebrating Cohen’s birthday…

Antonia and I had been talking about Leonard Cohen tonight, eating a hotdog down the street, watching television screens displaying both Agnes Varda’s Cleo from 5 to 7 as well as the original Highlander film. With the sound off – Cleo had subtitles – it was interesting to see the parallel themes of the existential problem created by mortality playing out in vibrant, violent sword fights as well as quiet conversations in a black-and-white French park.

All those points came together when I got home and found out via social media that Leonard Cohen had died. Cohen is in my pantheon of great songwriters – Dylan, Williams, Waits, Berry, Robinson, Springsteen, MacGowan. I just tweeted this while writing this post:

#LeonardCohen’s death worse for #Canada than @realDonaldTrump election for America? Detroit connects to Windsor as tonight so does our grief

Earlier this year Marianne Ihlen – Cohen’s former lover and the muse behind the songwriter’s eponymous hit, “Marianne” – passed away, but not before receiving this lovely last letter from the poet…

“It said well Marianne it’s come to this time when we are really so old and our bodies are falling apart and I think I will follow you very soon. Know that I am so close behind you that if you stretch out your hand, I think you can reach mine”

“And you know that I’ve always loved you for your beauty and your wisdom, but I don’t need to say anything more about that because you know all about that.”

“But now, I just want to wish you a very good journey. Goodbye old friend. Endless love, see you down the road.”

I posted this video in 2014 when we celebrated his 80th birthday. Here’s a bit of that post…

I’ll finish up three days of Leonard Cohen posts with this last gem that reminds us that it’s Cohen’s dazzling songs and intensity as a performer that have won him almost five decades of attention from music listeners with ears to hear his erotic prayers and sensual meditations on love, sex, ecstasy, women, death and God.

Bird on A Wire captures Cohen’s triumphant 1972 tour of Europe and Israel with his band, The Army. Capturing candid scenes of Cohen and his musicians off stage and travelling on the road, this flick is also a repository of amazing live performances captured by the acclaimed British director Tony Palmer.

For Cohenphiles, the gem here is the famous, final concert in Jerusalem when Cohen and the band all take acid before taking the stage. A well documented event in Cohen’s biographies, this performance comes to a sudden halt when Cohen quotes the Kabbalah and explains that the band can’t seem to transcend and “get off the ground.” He informs the throng that they will return to the dressing room to meditate and see if they are capable of continuing. After a shave and a cigarette, Cohen and band regroup once the entire audience sings to them, encouraging the ensenble to re-take the stage. The show ends with an intense rendition of “So Long, Marianne” that finds Cohen and the rest of the group breaking into tears before ending the show.

Here is Bird on A Wire…

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Today we remember the death of the late, great Orson Welles who exited this stage on October 10, 1985. The date of Welles’ death makes October a great time for looking back at the genius, but an even better reason is his War of the Worlds broadcast from October 30, 1938 — probably the greatest Halloween trick of all time. Remembering that unprecedented, and unequaled public prank here’s a bit from the War of the Worlds site about a 1957 television movie that recreated the panic surrounding Welles’ radio show…

Like the later 1975 telefilm The Night That Panicked America, this is a dramatisation of the events of October 30th 1938, when Orson Welles scared a nation witless with his adaptation of The War of the Worlds. However, this is a virtually unknown gem of a production dating back to 1957. Made for the renowned weekly anthology series “Studio One”, it is a really extraordinary 50 minutes of live television, featuring an incredible cast of soon to be major movie and television stars and a very accurate re-enactment of the broadcast…

Confusing or not, the actual script is extremely faithful to the original broadcast, right down to the use of the original orchestral arrangements. You get the impression that someone on this production had some first hand experience either of the actual War of the Worlds broadcast, or at the very least, of this period in broadcasting history. It’s a great piece of work, and captures the infectious air of mischief that is said to have permeated the studio that night. Alas, we do only get the first half of the broadcast re-enacted, and much of the material that would have been read by Welles is missing or only hinted at, but this does not really detract from the performances and the authentic feeling of realism…

Be sure to keep your eyes peeled for appearances by James Coburn, Edward R. Murrow, Warren Oates and even a young Warren Beatty as a college student playing a card game. Here’s The Night America Trembled…

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45 years ago, October 4, 1970, Janis Joplin died of an overdose in a Hollywood hotel. On May 2, 20016 I published a review of the then-new Janis: Little Girl Blue DVD in The Contributor. On the anniversary of Joplin’s death, here’s another look at that review. The film is currently streaming on Netflix…

Academy Award-nominated documentary filmmaker Amy Berg has made hard-hitting exposés about the Catholic Church’s child sex abuse scandal (Deliver Us From Evil, 2006), Warren Jeffs and the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints’ child sex abuse scandal (Prophet’s Prey, 2015) as well as the struggles of the wrongly imprisoned West Memphis Three (West of Memphis, 2012). Janis: Little Girl Blue (2015) is about a less-traumatic subject, but this story about the life and legacy of 1960s icon Janis Joplin paints a more intimate portrait than most rock docs, telling more about the girl Joplin was and the woman she became than about the star we still know. The acclaimed movie debuted at the Venice Film Festival in 2015 and a new DVD will be released Friday, May 6.

In the film’s introduction Joplin hams it up for the camera: she rolls on the floor laughing; she stops to have her picture taken wearing a fur coat and a matching hat; she leads her band through an incendiary reading of “Tell Mama” which astute students of music films will recognize from the 2003 Canadian-rock-festival-on-rails-documentary, Festival Express. When the soundtrack isn’t shuttering through the frenzy of Joplin’s distinctive, scratchy soul wailing, it hums with the heartfelt narration of contemporary singer/songwriter Cat Power reading from Joplin’s letters, relating the singer’s thoughts about talent and ambition:

“I’ve been looking around and I’ve noticed something. After you reach a certain level of talent – and quite a few have that talent – the deciding factor is ambition or, as I see it, how much you really need, need to be loved and need to be proud of yourself. And I guess that’s what ambition is. It’s not all a depraved quest for position or money. Maybe it’s for love? Lots of love, ha, Janis.”

Janis Joplin was born in 1943 in Port Arthur, Texas. The film portrays the Lone Star version of an idyllic small town upbringing, but makes it clear that Janis never fit in and never really wanted to. She gained weight and her skin broke out as she grew into a young woman. When she saw that she could get attention for acting out and rocking the boat in conservative Port Arthur she couldn’t resist – Janis wore tight skirts and got a “beatnik” haircut, she picked fights and started singing along with records by folk blues muse Odetta. Joplin briefly attended the University of Texas in Austin where she dumbfounded the folk music community with her amazing voice, but still found herself ridiculed by fraternity bullies for her odd clothes and bad skin. It wasn’t until she lit out for San Francisco that Janis found a community of freaks that recognized her as one of their own.

Most of the interviews here are with family and friends that knew the singer well, and most of the insights reflect that intimacy. Likewise, the narrating of Joplin’s letters tell us how much she valued those closest to her, and how much she needed their support and encouragement. The device of narrated letters might have become distracting, but Berg sprinkles the readings deliberately and effectively throughout, and while Cat Power’s Southeastern drawl isn’t exactly Texan, her careful, thoughtful readings bring notes of grace and warmth to the story of Joplin’s often painful, lonely and chaotic life.

Of course, Little Girl is hazy with weed, soaked in alcohol, and tripping on batches of vintage LSD. The singer died from a heroin overdose on Oct. 4, 1970, and this documentary reveals that, for Joplin, drinks and drugs were a means of fitting-in with her new friends as well as a means to numb the sense of alienation that followed her despite her celebrated singing and subsequent fame. It’s also clear that fame – especially the adulation received at her concert performances – was just as powerful for Joplin as her Southern Comfort and her syringe.

Fans of Joplin’s music might feel short-changed here – outside of detailing Joplin’s experiences at The Monterey International Pop Music Festival in 1967 there’s very little examination of Joplin’s songs or her records. Berg is thoroughly focused on Joplin’s personal experience of her life, her talent, and her fame, and perhaps it’s fitting that this fascinating film – like its furious subject – seems to end too soon.

Here’s Janis months before her death…

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Over the weekend Open Culture pointed back to one of its own posts to remember Jimi Hendrix’ death in London on September 17, 1970.

Here are a couple of great acoustic performances with some words from Open Culture…

Solo acoustic recordings of Hendrix—film and audio—are incredibly rare. In fact, the only other footage may be the short clip above of Hendrix at a party playing a partial blues rendition of “Hound Dog.” If like me you’re a fan of Hendrix, acoustic blues, or both, these videos will make you hunger for more Jimi unplugged. While Hendrix did more than anyone before him to turn guitar amps into instruments with his squalls of electric feedback and distorted wah-wah squeals, when you strip his playing down to basics, he’s still pretty much as good as it gets.

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I was bummed to find out that Gene Wilder died on Monday. Wilder hasn’t been on our screens in years, but I grew up during the actor’s run with Mel Brooks, and I’ll never forget watching Stir Crazy on my uncle’s Betamax machine. I watched Wilder’s iconic turn as Willy Wonka continuously as a preteen, and back in 2005 I got obsessed with Young Frankenstein which I consider to be his greatest performance. Wilder could sing and dance, he could play goofy and tender. But most of all Gene Wilder could do over-the-top crazy better than most because he knew how to nail that balance between comedy, dramatic outrage, and pure mania.

Here’s a compilation of Wilder’s wildest. Bless you, strange prince…

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I was taken by surprise over the weekend by the news of the death of Jim Harrison. Harrison was a Michigan literary legend whose poetry and championing of the novella form won him wide, high praise. Harrison’s Legends of the Fall was his best known work, earning big screen treatment with a script by Harrison and a cast that included Anthony Hopkins, Brad Pitt, Aidan Quinn and Henry Thomas.

Harrison’s poems, short stories, novellas, novels and essays were full of sensual observations about animals and the wild, food and eating, sex and love, smoking and drinking. He lived large but also long, passing away this past Saturday night at 78 at his winter home in Patagonia, AZ.

Here is Between A Dog And A Wolf, a French documentary that captures Harrison in his Michigan home and haunts in 1993.

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