Whit Stillman: 'The Last Days of Disco' (1998)

Whit Stillman's The Last Days of Disco (1998) features an ensemble cast that includes Chloë Sevigny and Kate Beckinsale. Set in Manhattan in the early 1980s with a smooth disco soundtrack, this is the other side, away from CBGB, punk and New Wave, none of which are mentioned. There are no Jim Jarmusch street characters anywhere in sight.

Whit Stillman's 1980s trilogy was shot in this order: Metropolitan (1990), Barcelona (1994) and The Last Days of Disco (1998), but the latter sequentially fits in the middle. The Criterion Collection set includes all three of them. Wry stuff.

Today's Rune: Possessions. 

Xan Cassavetes: 'Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession' (2004)

Xan Cassavetes: Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession (2004). 

This is an alluring documentary that dives back into the 1970s and 1980s, beginning as an origin story and ending with the collapse of Los Angeles-based Z Channel (1974-1989), after a murder-suicide perpetrated by its talented, mentally ill main programmer, Jerry Harvey (1949-1988).

Subscription TV (now streaming, too) began in earnest with the likes of Home Box Office (HBO) in 1972, The Green Channel in 1973 -- which morphed into The Movie Channel (TMC) in 1979 -- and Z Channel. The latter included an influential sampling of international movies with subtitles, director's cuts, B movies and independent films. 

Z Channel had a profound impact on its market, especially among directors, writers, and other "creatives." Xan Cassavetes gives us a taste of representatives from this class, ranging from Penelope Spheeris to Jim Jarmusch. 

When a cool movie or director was featured on Z Channel, this was an event that could be shared in "real time," not just recorded for later, or plucked out of the ethersphere at will, or binge-watched down the pike.  

We may well wonder about delivery and recording systems now vs. then, and now vs. in the future. In those years, battle was also joined globally in the videotaping field between Sony's Betamax (Beta) and JVC's Video Home System (VHS) tapes, with Beta starting in 1975, VHS in 1976, and both lines ceasing production only in 2016.

Digital services now available dwarf what was around in the 1970s. All you need is money, access and time!

In 1975, the global human population was about 4.079 billion, 38% of it urbanized. As of 2018, it has already jumped to 7.633 billion, with 55% urbanized. What do you suppose those numbers will be in 2060?  Imagine the delivery systems forty-two years from now, when handheld devices, streaming services, driverless cars and delivery drones are old hat?  

Today's Rune: Movement.  

Jim Jarmusch's 'Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai' (1999)

Jim Jarmusch's Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999), shot in New Jersey with Japanese dreams. Stars Forest Whitaker in the title role, as a retainer of low-level mobster Louie (John Tormey). 

The film is a most excellent fantasy piece revolving around Ghost Dog, the quiet assassin; aging gangsters; Raymond, a French-speaking Haitian ice cream truck man (Isaach De Bakolé); Pearline (Camille Winbush), a very young reader of books; and active carrier / messenger pigeons, also known as war pigeons.  

The character Ghost Dog filters the world through Yamamoto Tsunetomo's Hagakure / Hidden Leaves (from the early 1700s), which strictly and philosophically lays out the samurai way of life.  Many of its "leaves" are read aloud by Ghost Dog over intertitles that show the corresponding text, in English. 

Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai. Totally hip flick with a groovy soundtrack courtesy of RZA of the Wu-Tang Clan. Throughout the film, there are lots of allusions to books, other movies, mixed genres and alternate codes of naming and living. There may be a sequel forthcoming. 

Today's Rune: Protection. 

Jim Jarmusch: 'Permanent Vacation' (1980)

Permanent Vacation (1980): the first completed effort by Jim Jarmusch, a rudimentary one shot on a shoestring budget, telegraphs his future batch of films. 

I found it interesting and fun, whereas most "regular people" would probably find it aimless and pointless. Permanent Vacation serves partly as a semi-documentary tour of bits of the New York City cityscape in the late 1970s -- shabby and in disarray.

Ali (Chris Parker), the main character, would be quite comfortable in 2018 America as a millennial man-child: weird and awkward, without much ambition or drive other than to do whatever he wants without much cash on hand, slightly brain-damaged in his social interactions. He does muster up enough energy to steal a car for $800 in cash -- hardly something to write home about. 

He seems to drift away from his pseudo-girlfriend after examining the architectural ruins of an area "bombed" by "Chinese" in a some fantasy war where he also happened to stumble on a homeless veteran of the US-Vietnam War.

Ali considers seeing a hip film and interacts with a nodding junkie jazz hepcat, with the final scene from Sergio Leone's Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo / The Good, the Bad & the Ugly (1966) playing in the background, just barely audible (one of the strangest touches of the entire movie).

Earlier, Ali and his pseudo-girlfriend read from Les Chants de Maldoror / Maldorer's Lay (1868-1869) by Comte de Lautréamont.

Permanent Vacation is a prototype of more "fully realized" Jarmusch films, more like Bohemian bits of flash fiction or poems loosely strung together than a longer work.  

Today's Rune: Warrior. 

Jim Jarmusch: 'Dead Man' (1995)

Jim Jarmusch, Dead Man (1995). Stars Johnny Depp and Gary Farmer with appearances by Iggy Pop, Billy Bob Thornton and Jared Harris, among several other notables. 

A frontier rite of passage in which the West is Truly Wild. Close attention is paid to period detail, and the setting is more Northwest than West, defamiliarizing the familiar. Jarmusch's use of fade to black fade-ins and fade-outs gives the film an episodic feel, like coming in and out of consciousness. 

William Blake, Depp's character, is a fish out of water everywhere he goes. When he goes West, young man, from Cleveland to Machine, a terrible place to which he's conveyed by coal-burning rail, the end seems nigh. Along the way, brutish fellows shoot at bison and anything else that moves outside the cars. In Machine, avaricious frontier capitalists forge deals with the Devil in a Hellish World. To quote William Blake the poet from "And did those feet in ancient time"  (circa 1804):

And did the Countenance Divine,

Shine forth upon our clouded hills?

And was Jerusalem builded here,

Among these dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my Bow of burning gold:
Bring me my arrows of desire:

Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!

Bring me my Chariot of fire!

The hero of Dead Man is "Nobody," played by Gary Farmer. Cast out of his own homeland and left to wander, he is Blake's spirit guide and moral compass. Blake, with a bullet lodged near his heart, is pursued by psychopathic bounty hunters to the Ends of the Earth. 

From Blake's "Auguries of Innocence" (circa 1803); 

Every night and every morn

Some to misery are born,

Every morn and every night

Some are born to sweet delight.

Some are born to sweet delight,

Some are born to endless night.

We are led to believe a lie

When we see not thro' the eye,

Which was born in a night to perish in a night,

When the soul slept in beams of light.

God appears, and God is light,

To those poor souls who dwell in night;

But does a human form display

To those who dwell in realms of day.

Nobody and William Blake arrive at the Makah village, on the edge of the Pacific Ocean, at the Edge of the World.   

Today's Rune: Initiation. 

Jim Jarmusch: 'Stranger Than Paradise' (1984)

Jim Jarmusch: Stranger Than Paradise (1984) -- same year as the Coen Brothers' first movie, Blood Simple.

Stranger Than Paradise, made on a shoestring budget, is all verve and imagination, a lovely film. 

There are really only four substantive characters in it, all related by Hungarian blood or American friendship: Willie (John Lurie), his cousin Eva (Eszter Balint), their aunt Lotte (Cecillia Stark) and Willie's pal Eddie (Richard Edson). And one key song: "You Put a Spell on Me" by Screamin' Jay Hawkins. All but Aunt Lotte are in movement -- New York City, Cleveland, Florida. Jarmusch employs fades between scenes, and it's shot entirely in black and white film -- elements that one will not forget. 

Stranger Than Paradise may very well be the "freshest" of all of Jim Jarmusch's films, though Gimme Danger (2016), his recent documentary on Iggy and the Stooges, is "fresh" in its own way. 

Can you dig? I love seeing such perspectives on things, what Russian theorist Viktor Shklovsky (1893-1984) dubbed --  -- one hundred and one years ago -- defamilarization. Seeing ordinary seeming people and things anew, those and that which we've become "used to" -- or tired of -- with "refreshed eyes" -- and a renewed magical sense of possibility.   

Today's Rune: Strength. 

Jim Jarmusch: 'Mystery Train' (1989)

We'll let The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, rest a bit, and turn to Jim Jarmusch's indie style film, Mystery Train (1989). Set in Memphis, Tennessee, Mystery Train is composed of three connected "fish out of water" stories. 

The pacing is deliberative, letting us hang out with the characters long enough to understand them, at least to a point of empathy -- how and why they arrived and where they may be going. Cleverly, Jarmusch helps us "defamiliarize" ourselves with the USA, looking at aspects of American culture with fresh perspectives.*

Two Japanese music fans arrive in Memphis via Amtrak, needling each other about their preferences and wandering around.

An Italian widow has a layover at the airport, so decides to explore the city. She has adventures along the way and even a little supernatural visitation.

A laid-off and jilted Englishman is drunk, angry, and carrying a loaded pistol in a bar. Buddies and a brother-in-law (who turns out to be only his would-be brother-in-law) try to calm him down and keep him out of trouble. Once outside of the bar, he asks to stop somewhere to get more bounce. What could go wrong? 

Strategic points in the urban landscape (like the patchy hotel and a particular view of the city skyline) combine with time and energy to lightly brush the stories together. 

Joe Strummer (1952-2002) of The Clash plays the surly Englishman with charisma. His sidekicks include characters played by Steve Buscemi (The Sopranos, &c.), comedian Rick Aviles (1952-1995), and Detroit's own Vondie Curtis-Hall. 

Nicoletta Braschi (who is also featured in an earlier Jarmusch film, Down by Law) plays the Italian widow and Elizabeth Bracco (The Sopranos), her temporary roommate. 

Youki Kudoh (Snow Falling on Cedars) and Masatoshi Nagase (Funuke Show Some Love, You Losers!) play the needling Japanese visitants.

The hotel guys are played by Screamin' Jay Hawkins (1929-2000) -- "I Put a Spell on You" (1956) and Cinqué Lee (Spike Lee's younger brother).

Good stuff! More recently, Jarmusch directed Gimme Danger (2016), on Iggy & The Stooges. I posted on it here.

*See Russian Formalism for more on this groovy scrim.

Today's Rune: Joy. 

Jim Jarmusch: 'Gimme Danger' (2016)

I remember being at a mid-1990s house party for teachers and artists in Newport News, Virginia. It was during my first full-time gig as a librarian and I was serving informally as dj. With the idea of livening things up a little, I put on a vinyl copy of The Stooges’ Funhouse and cued up “Loose” and “TV Eye,” turning up the volume.

In the middle of this grand sonic gesture, a history instructor -- who was deaf in one ear -- turned his working ear into the nearest blasting speaker. Within the first minute, he was jumping back with amazement: “Oh my God! That’s the greatest thing I EVER heard in my WHOLE LIFE!!!!!” He was floored.

Though not everyone would have agreed at the time, this was a perfect response. 

And now, after the induction of The Stooges into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2010, after the deaths of several of the members of the band, out comes Gimme Danger (2016), “a film by Jim Jarmusch,” “story of the stooges,” Gimme Danger: La historia de The Stooges, Gimme Danger. История Игги и The Stooges, a highly entertaining documentary featuring Iggy Pop, the various (then-)surviving band members, and Michigan.

Some notes are in order. “There goes Iggy into the crowd.” 

Outside of Ann Arbor, he was living in a trailer with his parents (his father was a high school English teacher).

With parental support, he practiced on his drum kit for hours on end. “I was so lucky to live close to my parents.”

He picked up performance ideas from The Howdy Doody Show, Clarabell the Clown (played at one time by Captain Kangaroo), and Soupy Sales (who often had highly influential musicians perform live – including Billie Holiday and Miles Davis).

Soupy would invite fans to write letters, but asked that they keep them to twenty-five words or less each. This impressed Iggy (“real” name Jim Osterberg, Jr. -- born April 21, 1947). When he wrote or co-wrote Stooges songs, he kept them to twenty-five words or less. “I didn’t feel I was Bob Dylan.”

He was also impressed by the industrial sounds at Ford’s River Rouge plant, which he first visited on a school field trip. “I liked the mega-clang.” 

Iggy played drums and did various things, worked in a record store, attended the University of Michigan for a semester. Headed to Chicago for additional hands-on learning in the mid-1960s. “I saw a glimpse of a deeper life,” he notes on film, but also: “I realized I was not black.”

Back in Michigan, Iggy taught Scott Asheton how to pound out the drums. Some of the band members were sons of World War II vets and had that in common. The Asheton brothers took off for an adventure in London and immersed themselves into the Marquee Club until they ran out of money.

After the 1967 riots in Detroit, Iggy decided to move into the city. “I’m going to prepare a house where we can live” as “true communists.” He had very little idea of what he was doing, but somehow it worked (eventually). In Detroit, they gestated.

“Michigan was a key crossroads between San Francisco and New York.” The members of the band tried various altered states and listened to Harry Partch records that highlighted the sounds and noises of various handmade, found or modified instruments.

They became The Psychedelic Stooges, had a gig at the Grand Ballroom featuring Iggy playing a vacuum cleaner. They exhibited the energy and antics of “chimps and baboons.”

Iggy: “In the Asheton brothers I found primitive man.”

The MC5, Fred Sonic Smith and all, took them in. “We joined their circus in many ways.”

Iggy preferred not to become overtly political in the way John Sinclair wanted. He did somersaults and wiggled around as a protest.

The MC5 said to Elektra Records scouts, “Check out our little brother band.” Danny Fields loved them, first hearing their mesmerizing sounds coming from the University of Michigan Student Union. Both bands signed with Elktra on September 22, 1968. The Psychedelic Stooges became “The Stooges plain and simple.”

The droning simplicity of The Velvet Underground thrilled Iggy. John Cale came to help them record their first album, followed by Nico: “Morticia and Gomez.” 

Jac Holzman (who also worked with The Doors) was there and helped make it happen. There weren’t enough songs for an album to begin with, so Iggy and the rest of the band went to the Hotel Chelsea and hurriedly came up with additional songs – twenty-five worlds or less.

Skipping forward a little, The Stooges are sent to Los Angeles to record 1970. Iggy, being interviewed, notes that much of the “California sound” that came out in the 1970s was manufactured under the guidance of record executives. “It still smells,” he notes, true to his Michigan-style phrasing. “Cultural treason” is what it was.

For 1970, Iggy brings in Steve Mackay to lay down some saxophone. He had in mind Miles Davis and James Brown. “Play like Maceo Parker on acid!” Big aural space is there.

Iggy walks by a pet store and notices a beautiful dog collar. He buys it and adds it to his persona.

The Stooges play the Whiskey a Go Go and blow the mellow minds of Californians. “Theatre of the moment.” The band plays deadpan and still in Bill Wyman style while Iggy prances around, dives into the crowd and acts like James Brown and Mick Jagger on speed. Inspired by the Egyptian pharaohs, he performs shirtless.

I could go on, but why?  You can dig it for yourself! Gimme Danger. Raw Power. 

“All we cared about was what we liked!” 

Iggy gets the final say: “I just wanna be.” Amen, brother.

Today's Rune: Wholeness. 

Jean-Pierre Melville: Le Samouraï (Take I)

Watch carefully and you may be blown away by Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samouraï (1967). In the memorable dreamscape of this noir masterpiece, Alain Delon rocks the house stealthily. 

As with several of Melville's movies, you can "see" the continuity in filmmaking history, from American gangster sagas and crime dramas before and offerings by, say, David Lynch, the Coen Brothers, Jim Jarmusch and Quentin Tarantino afterward. And in keeping with Melville's experience in the underground during World War II, again there's only a matter of degree in differentiating the types of operational tactics used by police and criminal, organized or otherwise. 

In Le Samouraï, the police employ all sorts of surveillance and interrogation techniques, while criminals use evasive maneuvers and stonewalling to avoid lockup or death. This near-equivalency comes by direct comparison: while Costello (the hitman played by Delon) uses a large set of special keys to steal cars, police use a large set of special keys to break into and enter Costello's apartment to plant a bug. 

As is often the case with Melville, Le Samouraï showcases a dazzling effort that works the mind and senses subliminally as well as superficially.

Today's Rune: Signals.     

More Coffee?

One morning while visiting my friend Evan Farris in Virginia many many years ago, I woke up and drank some coffee and all seemed well. Several hours later, though, my head started pounding. What was going on? Mercifully, I rarely get headaches, and not since high school finals have I experienced full-blown migraines; by noon on the first full day of my visit with Evan, though, it felt like my brain was headed back in that direction. It finally dawned on me: "Evan," I asked after drinking half a pot to no effect, "is this decaf?"

Sure enough -- the Devil's blend, decaf coffee. Sends you straight to hell if you're a full-leaded coffee addict, as I am. We immediately went out to the nearest coffee-serving joint, which happened to be a McDonalds, and within an hour of guzzling a couple cups of the real stuff, my splitting headache disappeared.

Here's my truth: since seventeen years old, I've never missed at least one cup of coffee every single day.

Sure, it's clearly a phsyical and psychological addiction, but at least I rarely get headaches.

I like virtually any kind of coffee, black or with creamer makes little difference. Black is best if it's top shelf and well-ground: my ideal is perfectly concocted (someone else doing the work) Italian roast, or French roast. Doesn't really matter, ultimately, whether it's Italian roast in Italy or French roast in France or just plain old 7-11 DARK in a paper cup, as long as it's coffee. A coffee a day keeps the headaches away. In fact, coming from a family that's part Swedish, part French, part German, part Walloon, and parts God knows what else European or otherwise, many of us are big coffee drinkers, especially me and my sister Vickie and my Dad, at least before his major heart surgery last year. Some people prefer tea, but not me. I tried a tea phase along with vegetarian phases, but coffee cannot (for me) be replaced by anything. Soda (or Pop as Midwesterners say) is a poor substitute and has too much sugar anyway.


Who likes coffee? The photo above is from the droll Jim Jarmusch film, Coffee and Cigarettes (2003), with Iggy Pop and Tom Waits (not exactly looking their Sunday finest, but very them). It's an uneven but sometimes fun look at people babbling over coffee and smokes. Worth checking out in small doses.

In addition to the top shelf la-de-da stuff, I like Chock full o' Nuts and am drinking some during writing pauses -- like now!

Chock full o' Nuts used to have eateries all around the New York City area; in diminished numbers, they still exist, but mostly in outlying areas from Manhattan. Relatively inexpensive cans of the stuff made for home coffee makers are widely available, even in Detroit.

Bon appetit!