Category Archives: Just Sayin’

07.28.11
by

Endings and Beginnings

The one and only?

“When one door closes another opens.”  It’s taken me all of my life and then some (I’m counting the future) to accept the adage.  How does one take a disappointing or not hoped for outcome and not only accept it but actually revel in it because its very existence might be opening up a great opportunity yet to come?

On that note, how can you let go of a longtime dream, whether you’ve achieved it or not achieved it and make room for another (Remember — either outcome means you do have to go on).  How do you believe that CHANGE IS GOOD, or can be good –-because experience tells us that it is, or can be, if we make it so.

This is all essential in show business and in life (Side Note: Never, EVER, confuse the two).   I’ll resist saying anything about the latter because, well, I’m not that wise and certainly not old enough to philosophize.  But I do know something about surviving in show business because, well, I’m friends with a lot of people who have and, let’s face it, here I am still performing in our little/big/medium-sized three-ring circus (the size depends on your current standing in the biz).

The death of Amy Winehouse this week prompted all this reflection.  I was a rabid fan of the brilliant and troubled young singer and her demise felt to me like a door closing on one of the few contemporary musicians whose work I listen and relate to with any regularity.  There have been so many intelligent tributes, tweets, comments on this (and some not so smart) that I won’t go on about it.  You can read Russell Brand‘s or two writers at Salon (here and here) for some of my favorites.  There’s even a NY times article where iconoclastic (or at least he was) director John Waters talks about her style.

But best of all there’s the music. Listen to the “Back to Black” album and if for some reason it’s not your thing, it is likely you won’t deny the one-of-a-kindness of Winehouse’s talent.  Perhaps more interesting and less known was her pared down jazz/soul cover of the vintage Carole King song, “Will You Still Love me Tomorrow.” Watch it here. 

Why am I writing about this?  Because while part of Winehouse’s talent was just a grand gift from – not sure where, you decide – it was not just the inheritance of the “brilliant gene” that fostered her creativity.  She worked at it from a young age.  She grew up obsessed with Frank Sinatra, girl bands, played with her musician Dad and others for years on end as a kid on several instruments.  She listened incessantly to Billie Holiday, white British soul singer Mari Wilson, and American girl group icon Ronnie Spector for hundreds of hours on end.  Spector, a member of rock royalty whose classic “A Christmas Gift For You” album you hear in every mall across America in the holiday season (and yeah, she was married to THAT guy), knew Winehouse was inspired by her but the feeling was mutual.  So much so that at a concert six months ago, she sang a cover song of Winehouse’s signature song, “Back to Black.”  (Watch it here) while a shy Winehouse hid behind a man in the corner.  But Spector still spotted Winehouse’s signature beehive hairdo, the same hairdo she herself sported in the 60s.

The truism here is that like all great art, artists are not accidental and Amy Winehouse wasn’t.  It was a combination of study and hard work on the shoulders of those who came before her — Holiday, Spector, Nina Simone, Dinah Washington, the Shirelles and every girl group of the sixties, Aretha Franklin, Carole King (I was surprised but shouldn’t have been that a Carole King song, “So Far Away,” was noted by her father as one of her favorite songs at her funeral), and Lauryn Hill (the latter apparently being someone she listened to incessantly).  That her demise into the “27 club” even happened is awful and represents an ending of sorts.  Yet as final as her death is as an end to her new music, we can be sure her creative history marks the beginning of someone else – perhaps in a few years – in 10 years – or maybe a generation later.  That person will listen to Winehouse incessantly, be influenced by her and the handful of brilliant artists of all kinds before her, and create something just as raw, fresh and frankly, amazing, as she did.  But in a different way.  And we can also be sure that person would not have existed without Winehouse ending specifically when she did.   That sucks, and we wish it didn’t happen but it did and that’s the way of the creative world.  Work is sparked by nuance, by obsession, by circumstances, by innocence and by tragedy – of all kinds. *

 *For those who say we pay too much attention to Winehouse’s death in comparison to the massacre last weekend in Norway, I say – “uh, since when do tragedies have to compete in the “best” category, like Oscars,  and why does attention to one negate the other.  And I point you to this refutation in one of the two prior Salon posts.

It should also be noted the ENDING of Winehouse’s music will somewhere spark the BEGINNING of someone else’s voice not only in music but in film, print, television and/or yes, perhaps the internet.  It’s part of the elusive cycle of art in this new world we live in.  No one does it alone, really.  Nor could they  (And who would want to?).  We don’t live in isolated caves anymore, no matter how much the reflection of our current events on cable news makes it seem.

If you want to create new work it helps to have a “gift.”  But more people than you might realize have the “gift.”  Ask anyone over 40 you know who is an actor, writer, musician or director to recite some of the more talented friends with sparks of brilliance much brighter than their own who were never heard from and I guarantee you will soon get a list a mile long.  The legacy of Amy Winehouse, aside from her music and her brilliance, was that she worked at it her whole life.  So much so that it will in turn give life to much more wonderful art than we can ever know.  Endings and beginnings, indeed.

***

On a more personal basis – today marks another exciting beginning of sorts for someone very special to the chair and to this blog.   My colleague Holly Van Buren, who fills in for my lack of tech savvy and is the best blog editor any guy (or gal) could ever have, is leaving Ithaca College Los Angeles and relocating to our home campus in Ithaca , NY where she will be teaching freshman film, among other life lessons. (Lucky them – and that’s not me being sarcastic!).

Holly’s exit from our offices is an ending – and is sad for us – but is such an exciting beginning for her that we can’t be sad unless we were the most selfish, egocentric, only obsessed with our own needs people in the entire world.  And I, for one, stopped being that last week because I didn’t want to make Holly feel any worse for abandoning/leaving me and the blog, (okay, not to mention the rest of the office) to our own devices.  She’s not, of course, because that’s not her way.  She’ll be editing it and posting cool videos for us from Ithaca.  It might not be different for you but it’s different for me.  She was the one who encouraged me to do this in the first place and laughs at my jokes, compliments my observations and tells me when I make absolutely no sense at all or am being as clear in print as a smoggy Los Angeles day (which happens more often than I like in my first draft).

Everyone should be lucky enough to have a Holly.  But our loss here, is Ithaca College’s gain.  Endings and beginnings.  Again.

Stay tuned for more.

Dream Team

07.07.11
by

Taste Free

After a hiatus from performing in the seventies, Bette Midler was asked by a reporter whether her new live act would contain her usual tasteless material. “Actually, no,” quipped the diva, “The new show will be taste free.”

I’ve thought of this comment periodically over the years, especially when family, friends or the general public tell me they find one of my jokes or comments “tasteless.”  What the heck is tasteless, anyway?  And I’m not talking offensive, as in disparaging a specific ethnicity.  I’m talking tasteless as in….well, you decide.

The argument surfaced this week all over the blogosphere when Casey Anthony was found not guilty for killing her two year old daughter Caylee (Oh, you haven’t heard about it?  Lucky you, who lives under a rock like the caveman in the Geico commercial).  Anyway, I casually glance on Facebook and Twitter later that day and am immediately bombarded with witticisms like: “Casey Anthony, meet Dexter Morgan.” “Don’t worry, Dexter will take care of her.”  “Dexter’s headed to Orlando with knives sharpened,” etc. etc.  (For those who don’t know Dexter, he’s our larger than life TV serial killer hero who only kills particularly heinous killers who have managed to avoid justice).  Lately (meaning today), the comments have gotten even more taste challenged — “Is Casey Anthony available for birthday parties now,” “Would that jury let Casey babysit for them?” and my favorite from the Borowitz Report: “Casey Anthony got off light – the Judge had considered sentencing her to one hour with Nancy Grace.”

I cop to laughing, to varying degrees, at all of these.   Are they in bad taste? Well, they don’t tar any particular group of people.  But they do rag on a person who has been in jail for three years and was just found NOT guilty by a jury of her peers and is now INNOCENT under our justice system.   HASN’T SHE SUFFERED ENOUGH?

Do you find this last statement tasteless despite the fact that this woman has been declared innocent under our justice system?  Hmm.  Now we’re getting into murky waters.

I don’t know about you, but sometimes I don’t know what else to do but laugh or crack my own joke when faced with an awful subject or uncomfortable situation over which I feel as if I have no say or power.  And the more outrageous the joke or reaction from the audience, the bigger the release seems to be.   George Carlin first said it best for me when I was in high school with his classic comedy routine about the seven dirty words you can’t say on television.

This was, of course, before cable television – which regularly features any of those words nightly on a given series, movie or special event program.  My, how times have changed.

Carlin was greatly inspired by comedians before him such as Lenny Bruce and Dick Gregory, who dared to venture into uncharted territory of language and race.  There were also a whole slew of female Jewish comedians, often performing in Florida or the Borscht Belt, who made people laugh with “taste free” jokes.  Goggle names like Rusty Warren (hint: one of her record albums was called “Knockers Up!” – yes, those knockers!) and Belle Barth, who used to sing to packed houses in Miami Beach, “I lined 100 men up against the wall, and bet $100 I could…“ well, you listen and you’ll see what inspired some of Bette Midler’s seventies antics.

None of those acts are particularly shocking today, though some are still probably considered tasteless.  But are they funny? Hell yes!  Are there people who don’t find them funny and find it/me tasteless? Hell yes again!  Do I want to be friends with those people? Hell, no!!!  Many times!!!

Consider this – there was some degree of hoopla when the fabulously terrific late actress Jill Clayburgh, Oscar-nominated for her performance in Paul Mazursky’s “An Unmarried Woman,” visibly upchucked onscreen when her husband of many years blurted out he was in love with another woman.  I think at the time more people were disgusted by having to look at vomit than the sexual politics of the moment.  Imagine if they were around now (some of them still could be!) and had to look at the tour de force food poisoning scene of the four gals in “Bridesmaids?”

I'd lay off the Brazilian food, ladies

One of my proudest moments as a screenwriter and taste-free, soap box standing liberal was when I was late for a meeting at Disney in the nineties, got lost in the animation building and ran smack into a tall man carrying an attaché case and wearing a plain suit.  I profusely and hurriedly apologized and as I looked into his eyes and rushed away I realized, “Holy sh-t, That’s John Waters!”  Who could have imagined when I clandestinely watched that bootleg copy of “Pink Flamingos” with my friends (where drag queen star Divine ate dog excrement), that one day its director would be rubbing shoulders with Mickey Mouse.   How subversively taste free of all of us!!!

I’d like to also add to this that several years after watching “Pink Flamingos,” when I was still in college, the student film society SPONSORED a midnight showing ON CAMPUS, of the popular X-rated porn film, “The Devil in Miss Jones.”  I went to see it, my first exposure to big screen movie porn, and I’ve managed to live a relatively moral life (depending on your morals) since.  How many college campuses across the country do you think would allow that now?

There’s no sense arguing for a mass acceptance of porn (unless it would increase tax revenues and solve the debt crisis, which it might, so we could) but I will go out on the line for 85 year-old Mel Brooks.  (Note:  I saw him six months ago at LA Chinese restaurant Mandarette and he was still sharp and hilarious).  He mainstreamed tastelessness in 1974’s “Blazing Saddles” and it’s famous bean eating scene.   Was that crass, stupid and tasteless?  You bet your sweet derriere it was/is!

It should be noted that Mr. Brooks hasn’t stopped.  His Broadway juggernaut musical of his movie from the sixties, “The Producers,” featured a homosexual Adolph Hitler sitting at the footlights of a New York theatre eight performances and six nights a week imitating Judy Garland.  I mean, if that’s not taste free, I don’t know what is.

I’m going to try to remember all of this the next time I blanch (not Blanche as in DuBois, but as in repelled by) when someone tries to get me to watch one of the “Hostel” movies all the way through or tells me I have to rewatch the original “Last House on the Left,” one of the only movies that has ever given me nightmares.   I might even try to remember it when I’m watching Sarah Bachman or Michelle Palin (oops!) giving a speech, though for me that will be a lot tougher. It is then you can come to my door (or blog) and shout me down with the inimitable words Oscar nominated and Emmy, Grammy and special Tony winner Bette Midler has shouted numerous times from stages all across the world,   “F—k ‘em, if they can’t take a joke!”