Northern Gothic: The Beales of Grey Gardens

Edith Bouvier Beale, once a successful model and aspiring actress who later lived a gothic life in Grey Gardens, a dilapidated 28-room house in East Hampton, N.Y., with her mother and dozens of cats, raccoons and opossums, was found dead in her small apartment in Bal Harbour, Fla., on Jan. 14. She was 84. . . . . (Douglas Martin, "Edith Bouvier Beale, 84, 'Little Edie,' Dies," New York Times, 1/25/2002)

Flashback to 1975. The Maysles brothers' (Albert and David) Grey Gardens documentary.

"Listen, kid! I'm extremely organized. I know exactly where to look for this stuff. I've got it under control right here, but I can't find it. Get it?" (Little Edie)

"It's very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present. You know what I mean? It's awfully difficult." (Little Edie)

Fast forward to 2006. The Beales of Grey Gardens, a sort of alternate take on Grey Gardens from the same filmmakers (though David Maysles died in 1987).

Fast forward to April 18, 2009. Michael Sucsy and HBO present a biopic version of Grey Gardens starring Drew Barrymore as Little Edie and Jessica Lange as Big Edie.

For so much more, see Buster's Grey Gardens News at: http://greygardensnews.blogspot.com/

Pop music aficionados will probably have seen or at least know about the Maysles brothers' Gimme Shelter (1970), the documentary that follows the Rolling Stones to Altamont in 1969.* In Grey Gardens, see Little Edie perform "The VMI March," something close to my heart because I briefly served time in the Virginia Military Institute barracks in the late 1970s, at the time of the Guyana Tragedy at Jonestown.

*(with Charlotte Zwerin, of Detroit).

Today's Rune: Journey.

The Big Maw Says: Give Me All Your Money!

The Flying Lizards' version of "Money" (1979). Best when played at MAXIMUM VOLUME.

Today's Rune: Journey.

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

Sidney Lumet (now 84), has another winner with Before the Devil Knows Your Dead (2007). Based on Kelly Masterson's intelligent script, it features terrific performances by Marisa Tomei, Albert Finney, Ethan Hawk, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and the entire supporting cast (which includes Aleksa Palladino and Michael Shannon).

Brothers Andy (Hoffman) and Hank (Hawk) need money something bad, leading to a botched robbery of their own parents' jewelry store at a New York strip mall (Andy's drug-addled idea). In the hands of the Coen Brothers, this tale would be laced with mordant humor, but Lumet-Masterson unfold it like a Thomas Hardy tragedy. (Compare also with Woody Allen's Cassandra's Dream, as Roger Ebert did last year).


Also, quite before The Wrestler, Marisa Tomei appears in the flesh, a much more agreeable sight than Hoffman unclothed. Hawk is quite effective as the more conscience-plagued brother, making him more likable even if he's also more befuddled and inept (paralleled in Cassandra's Dream via Colin Farrell's Terry).

The cast goes full throttle throughout, and there are some very nice directing touches (all sorts of angles and subtle points of view, as well as nifty flourishes with time and space). Shot in high definition video, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead has a slightly washed out look that emphasizes the desperation and tragedy of its characters.



Today's Rune: Initiation.

American Fascists in Their Own Words

Well, they'd be figures of fun, except for the damage done by their "inspiration." Thank God for non-profits, like the Southern Poverty Law Center, that make it their business to keep an eye on gangs like the KKK, Neo-Nazis, Christian Taliban and various self-styled "militias."

Here's Pat Buchanan from his infamous speech at the 1992 GOP convention, after the Rodney King verdict riots in LA:

When the troopers arrived, M-16s at the ready, the mob threatened and cursed, but the mob retreated. It had met the one thing that could stop it: force, rooted in justice, backed by courage.

Greater love than this hath no man than that he lay down his life for his friend. Here were 19-year-old boys ready to lay down their lives to stop a mob from molesting old people they did not even know.

And as they took back the streets of LA, block by block, so we must take back our cities, and take back our culture, and take back our country. God bless you, and God bless America.

[Molly Ivins' response: Buchanan's speech "probably sounded better in the original German."]

Pat Robertson:

The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians. (1992 Iowa fundraising letter)

We're importing Hinduism into America. The whole thought of your karma, of meditation, of the fact that there's no end of life and there's this endless wheel of life, this is all Hinduism. Chanting too. Many of those chants are to Hindu Gods -- Vishnu, Hare Krishna. The origin of it is all demonic. We can't let that stuff come into America. We've got the best defense, if you will -- a good offense. (700 Club, 3/23/1995)

You say you're supposed to be nice to the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians and the Methodists and this, that, and the other thing. Nonsense, I don't have to be nice to the spirit of the Antichrist. (700 Club, 1/14/1991)

There is no such thing as separation of church and state in the Constitution. It is a lie of the Left and we are not going to take it anymore. (11/1993, American Center for Law and Justice)

Father Charles Coughlin, Shrine of the Little Flower, Royal Oak, Michigan:

Must the entire world go to war for 600,000 Jews in Germany who are neither American, nor French, nor English citizens, but citizens of Germany? (1/30/1939)

On this earth you must belong to the church militant or get the hell out of it. That's the right word. You're either with me or against me. There is no middle ground in this battle between Christ and the anti-Christ. If you step out . . . you're worse than those boys who ran off to Norway, Sweden, those boys who deserted the government [during the Vietnam War]. You're deserters, rotten deserters. (6/11/1973)

Ha!

Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune.

This Is Boston, Not L.A.

For anyone living in or traveling to the Boston USA area, there's a beautiful cultural complex, the Coolidge Corner Theatre, at 290 Harvard Street, Brookline, MA 02446. The Coolidge is celebrating its 75th anniversary (and remember it's also the 75th anniversary of Baker's Keyboard Lounge in Detroit!). Part of the festivities include an airing of one of the frankest and most enlightening films I've ever seen (despite some horrible dubbing, but featuring Ennio Morricone's eerie cool soundtrack), a parable of colonialism and post-colonialism, as valid for the US role in Vietnam and Iraq as it is about the European sugar plantations and slave/worker uprisings of the Caribbean -- Gillo Pontecorvo's Queimada / Burn! (1969), with Marlon Brando and Evaristo Márquez. It's brilliant on a large screen -- first got to see it that way in Philadelphia in 1992 at the Rittenhouse Square branch of the Free Library.



The Coolidge began operations during The Great Depression -- and it's still going strong. The Coolidge, in a wonderful setting that showcases intelligent and often cutting edge films, has a milieu comparable to the various Angelika Film Centers and also The IFC Center (323 Sixth Avenue at West 3rd Street, New York, NY 10014).

For more, please see the official Coolidge website: http://www.coolidge.org/

From the Coolidge website: "Best-selling historian Howard Zinn introduces his favorite film as part of our 75th anniversary celebration."

That's right -- the influential historian Howard Zinn, 86-year old author of A People's History of the United States (1980+), You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times (1994), and many more, would be worth hearing in his own right.

When? March 9, 2009 at 7:00 p.m.



Finally, today's post title comes from this 1982 compilation, which I bought at the time in vinyl in Chapel Hill. For hardcore/post-punk enthusiasts, you can't go wrong with bands like Jerry's Kids, The Proletariat and Gang Green. You betcha . . .

Today's Rune: Partnership.

When You Go Your Way and I Go Mine

Just how many Rush Limbaugh fans are there? Listeners to his radio show number somewhere between fourteen and twenty million daily (why not confirm these statistics yourself if you're dubious?). That would be about 4.5-6% of the American public, right? A listener doesn't make one necessarily a fan, of course.

The Limbaugh listeners I've met over the years were/are fans, however. They form a disparate group, united -- apparently -- only by their delight in Limbaugh's spewings. Otherwise, they'd probably spit on each other before sharing a meal together.

One, a guy Marxians might call a bourgeois specialist (a group that also includes teachers), worked for years as a corporate lawyer for one of the Big Three auto companies in the Detroit area. In his late sixties now, he was the son of a guy from Downriver who worked in manufacturing, of Polish Catholic background. He married a woman from Downriver in the 1960s and they had three kids together. After he become a lawyer, the family came to have a lot more money, and they moved up to Rochester Hills in the 1980s, into one of those McMansions with a menacing garage out front, plopped in the middle of a development near Adams High School (Madonna's old school) with no sidewalks and not much sense of community. By the time I knew him (through his daughter, an ex- since 2000), Bill Clinton was in office, and this guy was full throttle for Rush Limbaugh. We argued quite a bit about politics and culture. He then owned a small yacht (and eventually a large motorboat) with a berth in the Grosse Ille Yacht Club, and also a second home in a gated community in Florida, and a rental lot "Up North." He was a Republican, having switched parties during the "Reagan Revolution."

But there was more than this socio-economic backdrop. His wife was a terrifying tyrant (i.e. like Grendel's mother), and he feared her -- not without reason. Not able to get mad at her directly, he turned to Rush, and channeled much of his frustration and anger that way. Rush's enemies became his enemies. Sitting fat and secure, ruling the Home Front roost, his wife approved.

For the sake of brevity, end of story. Other Rush fans I know (and they are all white, mostly men), range from Lumpenproletariat to Fodderstompf, from Yobbo to Chav, but more on them at a later time.

Today's Rune: Movement.

Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Happiness

Well, I read the text of Limbaugh's CPAC address. He's all for the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, he says. Loud cheers from the audience. He's all for the USA. More cheers.

President Obama stands for certain things. I don't care, he could be a Martian. He could be from Michigan, I don't know -- just kidding. Doesn't matter to me what his race is. It doesn't matter. He's liberal is what matters to me. And his articulated -- his articulated plans scare me. Now, I understand we can't say we want the President to fail, Mr. Limbaugh. That's like saying -- this is the voice of the New Castrati, by the way, guys who have lost their guts. You can't say Mr. Limbaugh that you want the President to fail because that's like saying you want the country to fail. It's the opposite. I want the country to survive. I want the country to succeed. [Cheers and Applause]

[Crowd Chanting "USA" ] I want the country to survive as we have known it, as you and I were raised in it, is what I mean. Now, I have been called -- and I can take it. Pioneers take the arrows, I don't mind what anybody says about me, any time ever. I don't have time for it. I don't give other people the power to offend me. And you shouldn't either, by the wasted time being offended. [Applause]

Ah, the crux of the matter for this $30 million/year windbag with some fourteen million per day listeners is this: "I want the country to survive as we have known it, as you and I were raised in it, is what I mean."

The entire speech rambles all over the place, uses childish terms like "Drive-By Media" and "Democrat party," but Limbaugh's basic premise is built on quicksand, or limited to older conservatives -- because the country that Limbaugh was raised in was a segregated society, but the country I was raised in is an integrated one, and that segregated society will continue to recede into the past.

Implicitly, what this douchebag millionaire really wants is to go back to the days of the late 1700s when

1) slavery was legal and widely practiced in the USA;

2) only white men of property (and not one single woman) could vote;

3) an abundance of tribal lands remained to be overrun, plundered, and doled out to white settlers.

This, I believe, is what Rush and many of his moronic minions romanticize as the Golden Years of Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Happiness. There's an organization for people of this backward-looking ilk. It's called the Ku Klux Klan.

p.s. I know a few Limbaugh fans and will give a brief profile soon. Thanks, you all, for your comments, some of which inspired this follow up.

Today's Rune: Defense.