06.09.06
Posted in Glögg Is Life. at 12:00 am by Gregory
It was my hope that, after being used and shot down by the very shitty people who now run Village Voice Media (boycott them, across the board — really — do not give them any of your custom whatsoever), that I would be able to continue provoking thought and feeling via the medium of cinema, and commentary theretoward, and thus the website, and eventually this supplementary web-journal, came into existence. A technically minor incident occurred this evening, however, regarding being shut out of a screening and press-junket for the latest Superman movie, and I have decided to take this as a Sign: When Superman himself — symbol of America, symbol of Hollywood, representative of all those sappy cliches about heroism and hope — shuts you out, that’s it; you know it’s time to quit, to relinquish any remaining faith. Kindly note: I went to school with the now world-renowned, multimillionaire director of the thing, and thus of course I am sad at being very unfairly made comparatively destitute (hell, actually destitute) by people who won’t evolve enough to wipe their own asses for many millennia — but he makes good movies and he clearly enjoys the position he has attained. That’s his deal, and that’s what you get when you have a support-system, which I do not. Drawing no further parallels, I can firmly state that my deal is to give up and leave. ALL elements — familial, friendly, domestic, romantic, professional, etc. etc. have let me down (and worse), and — although I have striven relentlessly to do good work and to open minds and hearts (including my own), I now see clearly that all of this was ENTIRELY for naught. No excessive self-importance (nor its flip-side, self-mockery) is intended here. Release is intended here. The field is becoming increasingly ugly, and I now know that I do not belong in it. There may be further writing, but for now the hideous people have finally won. And I am done. Comments will be deleted unread. Have A Nice Day. -Gregory
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06.04.06
Posted in Glögg Is Life. at 5:50 pm by Gregory
It’s not what you’re thinking.
Or perhaps it is.
(I’m sure at least a few people will be uncorking cheap champagne before they actually read the posting.)
The main gist is that I attended a screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show last night…or, rather, this morning.
Allow me to remind readers that I am the critic who officially calls The Rocky Horror Picture Show “one of the greatest motion pictures ever made.” The reason for this is simple:
It is.
Those who already know this to be true need little further elaboration, and those who will never believe this to be true don’t care, thus I’ll simply describe my experience.
First of all, kudos to the parade of freaks who call themselves Sins of the Flesh. Especially since they were transplanted from their regular haunt at the fabulous Nuart (which is presently being remodelled), they met the challenge of keeping this tradition alive with impressive zeal — particularly in terms of costumes and props. Rocky Horror may not be “cool” this year (it’s the thing’s thirty-first birthday — I generously think of this year as the phenomenon’s thirtieth birthday), but these people put pride into their work, and in so doing they genuinely alter reality a bit, for a couple of hours.
Not that the film needs any help, though; I can barely take my eyes (and ears) off it, each time.
Kind of fun this time, during the pre-show’s traditional “Virgin Sacrifice,” I got to sit down when they asked who has seen the film on the big screen with a live audience “more than twenty-five times.” I’m pretty sure I have.
Not that I’ve counted; I hate numbers. But that’s about right.
The pre-show consisted of the usual warnings (”If you are easily offended, GO HOME.”) and the usual rudenesses (”If you’re bisexual — you’re just fucking greedy!“) And then came the “Virgin Sacrifice,” wherein newbies — who comprised an alarming half of the audience — get…um…kind of humped by the cast. (Apart from constant killings on the streets of this nation, it’s one of the closest things I’ve seen to tribalism in the “civilised” world.)
There was also a “leg-spreading contest” for the two leading female “Virgins” (who, oddly and incongruously, came dressed in head-to-stiletto black vinyl dominatrix-wear; plants, perhaps?) and then a “package-displaying contest” for the two leading male “Virgins” (who both happened to be wearing skirts; the big black guy won; duh).
During all this, I scoped around and noticed that I was approximately fifteen years older than the average participant. Since this is L.A., these screenings have “security” people whose job is to march annoyingly up and down the aisle non-stop during the movie, looking at everybody. Most of these security people were young women. I decided that since: A. I was literally old enough to be almost anybody’s failed teenage dad; and B. I was alone and sitting nearer the back of the theatre, that I would smile and make it clear that my arms were spread comfortably on adjoining seats and nowhere near any region that would give “security” people reason to look at me any more than they were already.
I really was there for the movie anyway. I love the movie. I don’t need anybody shouting over it in order to enjoy it. It is, hands down, the best comedy-satire-horror-sci-fi-fantasy-musical in existence.
Sins of the Flesh, though — they don’t start this Midnite Movie at midight. No, sir. After the introduction come the rules (”Up and back! Up and back!” — of course, nobody with a roll of toilet paper paid any attention to that, and one of the more-obviously-in-need-of-anger-management-therapy “security”-girls felt obliged to demonstrate, long after Dr. Scott’s moment had come and gone; she immediately flung a mostly full roll overhand and hit a guy in front of me hard in the face, following up with the customary, “I’m so sorry!” that never really sounds convincing…but I digress). And then the “Virgin” business and all that. They also have a John Waters “No”-smoking “PSA” they all know by heart and recite with him (”Smoke anyway! It gives ushers jobs…”) and then, being somewhat delirious (it was either Rocky Horror or sleep, and I chose Rocky Horror), I can’t recall the order, but they do that pseudo-fascist song from The Wall (”So ya! Thought ya! Might like ta! Go to the show!” BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! — Alan Parker really is a much more talented director than, say, Robert “Run-On” Altman, incidentally), and they also did a very strange thing indeed:
There’s a Tex Avery cartoon — called “Rock-A-Bye Bear” or somesuch. They ran that, too, and acted it out. (The plot involves one dog causing another dog to make any amount of noise in the cabin of a hibernating bear who slumbers in a cave in the back, who then rises and assaults the second dog multiple times as the tale’s primary source of humour.) Best audience-response line: “BUTT-CHEEKS!” (You’d have to see it.) Why Sins O’ the Flesh feel compelled to act out this cartoon is puzzling, however one cannot say that the spectacle wasn’t surprising.
Then — finally — came The Lips.
Goodness gracious, I love this movie.
Here’s a little bit of personal backstory:
I had a girlfriend in high school who first suggested seeing Rocky Horror. This was in 1985. A lot about that relationship did not work, however I cannot slight the girl’s taste in cult-cinema (she had seen it before; why is it that they’ve always already seen it before?) Back then (which, frankly, seems about ten minutes ago, or less — except that I have much less hope now), The Rocky Horror Picture Show was “only” ten years old. A decade! That’s nothing in the great scheme of popular culture! And yet clearly it seemed like a big deal to the marketing execs at Fox, for we were given button-badges that evening, featuring Patricia Quinn’s scarlet kisser, reading: “TEN YEARS! AND THEY SAID IT WOULDN’T LAST!”
Cool.
Now, exactly who said “it wouldn’t last” is unclear, but great is great. Here we are, thirty-one years after the movie bombed at the box-office (Up yours, box-office!), and college kids are still indoctrinating themselves into un-hang-up-ed-ness via this treatise, and I’ll tell ya somethin’:
One of the main reasons I like The Rocky Horror Picture Show is because it is charming — almost quaint. This may fit well into the wrong side of the argument for those total idiots who think that the Harry Potter juggernaut introduces impressionable children into Satanism (How the hell did America end up with these people???), but it must be said: You won’t find any other movie around that handles transvestism, swinging, pre-marital sex, murder, cannibalism and outrageously bad water-ballet with such undeniable sweetness. For all of its “gratuitous” bits (whcih really are remarkably tame by today’s unfortunate “standards”), The Rocky Horror Picture Show is basically a great big Valentine: to youth, to imagination, to unmentionable feelings, to having a big, therapeutic LARF.
To say that scribe Richard O’Brien and director Jim Sharman essentially created their own genre here isn’t much off the mark.
(Plus, with a crowd, I must admit I laugh at a lot of the skewers. It’s a shame that so much of the audeince participation has become turbo-charged vulgarity — not even those shouting it seem to find it funny — but when idiots from Cheney to Madonna take savage blows, I laugh. Oh, and “Only! Assholes! Write on doors!” may be one of the funniest — and truest — lines ever sung-shouted in a movie-house.)
As the film rolled along, I never once found myself bored, however I did perceive some new and not entirely refreshing elements in the experience. For one, “when I was a kid,” it was not considered outrageously dangerous for audience members to lift up their actual butane lighters during “There’s a Light…” (Now people in the audience flip open their cellular communication devices — not only lighting up way too much of the room, but completely ruining the whole premise of why Brad and Janet are walking toward the castle in the rain in the first place!
(I’m not entirely convinced that I like the future.)
The other primary shift that I noticed was more personal: In terms of human life-spans, 1975 was kind of a long time ago. The movie is pretty close to timeless, however I could not help but realize that those spirits frolicking up there on the screen are significantly older people now — and, having not lived enough personally and having slim chances of living enough due to the greed of scumbag Baby Boomers — that makes me feel a bit sad. (This may also be one of the reasons that the shitbags at my former company fired me — notably TWO WEEKS after my thirty-sixth birthday, meaning TWO WEEKS after I departed the Money Demographic for mainstream movies.)
I’ll tell ya, too: If I ever meet (fill in the pointless little overmarketed actress-bitch here), I’m going to flush her down a toilet. Just to make a point.
(Those with absolutely no senses of humour and/or those who are dumb-shits, kindly note: The previous statement is not to be taken literally, fuck you very much.)
Anyway, what is the legacy of Rocky Horror? I’m no expert, but I have seen some things. In 1995, when I worked at The Golden Apple comic-shop on rather-filthy-and-disgusting-actually Melrose Avenue, I had some happy and entertaining times (thank you, O Family Liebowitz). Sometimes I hated being in there, or even feared for my life, wondering which little gang-shit would stroll in at night with a gun and act out his feelings about the cheapness of life in his own graphic manner. But much of the time I didn’t hate it in there (even when Gary Glitter played way too many times), and one of the times I really liked it in there was when some cool Japanese guys came in to say hello to us. They were in town from Tokyo specifically to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of The Rocky Horror Picture Show over at the Pantages Theatre — with Richard and Patricia and Meat Loaf and (I think) Nell as well. Who knows — maybe Barry was there. I don’t think Tim was, and Susan definitely wasn’t (It’s the best work of your career, honey! Embrace it already!) I also wasn’t, because I was exhausted from working at The Golden Apple and wondering why everything in L.A. is utterly insane all of the time — plus the event sold out before I even knew about it…and I think I even had to work (and wonder if I ‘d be killed) that night.
But those Japanese guys really made me smile. Rocky Horror had nothing to do with their culture, not really (Frankenstein, to name but one element, certainly wasn’t of The East), and yet they got it and they liked it and sharing it (they had a band to perform Rocky Horror songs) made ‘em feel good, to feel a connection, a bridge.
It’s also a pleasure to chart the career of O’Brien himself. Universal are being total pigs about re-releasing the utterly-brilliant 1980 Mike Hodges version of Flash Gordon — but there’s Richard (if obscured by some prosthetics). Shock Treatment (the sequel to Rocky Horror) gets a terrible rap — but I happen to think it’s also a fabulous work of musical satire, and I honestly really like it a lot.
And then there’s a film that carries a special significance this month. It’s directed by someone I know and like, and it involves a fallen superhero who must dredge himself up from the dirt and get “Into the Blue!” in order to save the world from evil. But it’s not the new one (which I haven’t seen yet…maybe this week). It’s a sensational movie which is as fresh and fun today as it was when it was made (mumble-mumble) years ago — and, naturally, Richard O’Brien contributed some fine songs to it.
I’ll be writing more about it on the site soon.
Meanwhile, I’d love to conclude this post on an enthusiastic note…but I can’t. The truth is, I would LOVE to “say hello…TO OBLIVION!” Everything else in my life has sucked shit for so many years now it’s not even funny in the bleakest sense anymore. Friends are dropping like flies (some literally), “family” is useless, “professionals” in my field have PROVEN that employers are shit and “superiors” cannot be trusted. It’s not pretty.
But, you know, it is said that every Crisis is really an Opportunity in disguise. If this is true, I’m just about drowning in Opportunity — but then I always have rather fancied drowning.
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06.03.06
Posted in Glögg Is Life. at 3:33 pm by Gregory
Okay, the pleasant weather vanished quickly, and it’s hot and ugly out there again. This climate also seems to affect flirtation levels among adult female humans — which are way up above average again.
Far weirder, I note here
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060602/wl_sthasia_afp/afplifestyleindiasocietysnakemarriageoffbeat_060602114353
that a poor woman in India has officially married a cobra.
The punchline, of course, is that marryin’ poisonous snakes ’round these parts ain’t nothin’ new!
Why has it been made so incredibly difficult to like this world?
Oh, to be fair, a pretty woman whom I haven’t seen in years and her mother both greeted me warmly today — and rather than being offended, I felt pleased. Why? They’re smart!
And the hideous local POWER-SAWING continues to ruin the remains of the day.
That’s the only movie reference this time.
Oh, except for this: A very cool friend of mine who has done well for himself in the movie business once appeared — in his dewy youth — in a parody I find absolutely hilarious: He plays the killer, attempting to tear-ass through the foliage, in “The Texas Table-Saw Massacre.”
(Incidentally, I finally saw the original movie upon which that parody was based — and I really didn’t like it at all, nor even appreciate it. I know this will rile his fans, but Tobe Hooper is a yucky hack.)
Changing the subject, I’ll bet a lot of babies will be conceived tonight. And one specific Indian woman may be found dead soon. Shocker!
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06.01.06
Posted in Glögg Is Life. at 11:37 pm by Gregory
“There is more difference within the sexes than between them.”
-Ivy Compton-Burnett
Hey! I believe what Ivy wisely said (above). However, I also believe in mermaids, leprechauns and Freddie Mercury — and while none of them are fighting over parking spaces (this evening, a young woman shouted “Get out of my way, YOU FUCKER!” at me when I was rightfully halfway into a parking place and she swooped in to try to steal the other half — hell of a diplomat for her gender!), actual adult human females and males are not being enchanting at all, and it’s ugly out there. Even though I know it’s bad for me (see example above), I am partial to the females, and thus I note their general behavioral patterns. Here is my latest discovery:
It’s Mating Season!
Something went topsy-turvy over the past few days. Suddenly — outside of territorial parking wars — women young and old, slim and potato-shaped, stupid and less stupid, have begun flirting with me in earnest.
Heads turning. Eyelashes batting. Coy ice-breakers being blurted. Really!
Where the hell were you over the past couple of wretchedly terrible winters? Or — for that matter — since I began giving a damn?
Who knows. Perhaps these women are going around flirting with everybody and everybody’s dog. This is most likely the case. I haven’t changed much in the sexiness department, so this must be some sort of bottom-drawer biological Event:
It’s Babymakin’ Time! Get yourself the ultimate accessory! Better than a Kompressor stuffed with Versace gift-certificates! Quick! Conceive! Join the In-Crowd!
Well, forget it.
I have incredible nieces and nephews, and that’ll do.
Of course I’m cynical now (and I apologise in advance to my future partner, if such a person actually exists and she is willing — which is very, very, very unlikely). Actually — truly — after much more effort than you’ll observe in all that shit rom-com television and movie programming you suck down — after nearly suicidal effort — I have only ever known three women in my life thus far who gave more than they took (and some of them really make me regret that I didn’t demand a receipt). In terms of giving, I’m not talking gestures or presents or junk; I’m talking love, listening, kindness, respect, creativity, openness, joie de vivre. It wasn’t about becoming some part of their trip, or enabling their various insanities, or (egad) dealing with frivolous cosmetic issues around the clock. (Incidentally, if anyone reading this ever happens to think I’m talking about you specifically, frankly I’m probably not, and besides, some things merit forgetting entirely — even though Eternal Sunshine really wasn’t a particularly good movie, no it wasn’t, no it wasn’t, you are wrong, goodbye.)
Those three though, bless them, were about love. They don’t know each other, they inhabit different worlds and different times, they most likely will never meet, and they probably only vaguely remember me if I’m in their thoughts at all, but amidst endless storms, they — individually, and in a sort of distant harmony — sang out a beacon for me, toward what Success really is. I failed each time, of course — but in my defense I’d like to note that the deck was always stacked and nobody ever told me a single rule (nor slid me a single Ace). Plus these Three were and are People, thus they didn’t make anything easy. I simply reflect upon these living facets of the Feminine with appreciation: They showed me that Joy is possible, and I shall never forget that — even if I never experience it again.
Thank you.
For all these other stupid bitches, though, they may as well slap on the greasepaint and don huge red shoes, because to me they are clowns. I have a simple response to their thuddingly dull “romantic” motivation and uninspired reproductive timing:
Unfuck you.
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