CUD FOR THE CHEW....ACHOO WITH A THUD .....OVERLAPPING HUMOR, A HALF DECADE APART.....

 

"DIFFERENT FROM THE OTHERS" (1919)

 

FRANCIS WATLEY'S DOCUMENTARY FILM, FINDING FAME, ABOUT DAVID BOWIE....'The Man Who Fell to Earth'.... (Jan 8, 1947-Jan 10, 2016)

 

Originally titled David Bowie: The First Five Years, Francis Whately's final instalment in his Bowie trilogy, Finding Fame, focuses on Bowie's early years.

Among the people interviewed are lifelong friends and fellow Bromley boys, George Underwood and Geoff MacCormack, plus interviews with people such as mime artist Lindsay Kemp, and former band members and producers such as Tony Visconti, Tony Hatch, Phil Lancaster and Woody Woodmansey. What is quite a coup is getting an interview from ex-girlfriend and band member, Hermione Farthingale, as well as from Bowie's cousin, Kristina Amadeus.

In the trailer, alongside footage from the Ziggy era and from Stansfield Road in Brixton, eagle eyed viewers might be able to identify recent aerial footage of Plaistow Grove, Bromley, cleverly made to look retro by the editing team, and photos from half a century ago at Haddon Hall and the bandstand.

The title change might be to reflect how the film now also features Bowie's Ziggy period, rather than just covering five specific years. As we know, Bowie did not find fame immediately, for after joining the Konrads in 1962, he had 7 years of jumping from band to band and numerous flop singles before he made a breakthrough with Space Oddity. Yet, even that was a one-off hit and was followed by more years of failing to reach the charts before Starman, 3 years later.

That Bowie didn't give up in the face of adversity, and had the self belief to continue on his journey despite all the setbacks, and that he went on to make such incredible music, is arguably a greater story than the years when he was enjoying fame and success.

"AN EARLY FROST...1985" melted, as repressed and rejected truths emerged from corralling sublimation in the middle of the 1980's...

over two decades years earlier, John Erman directed "NIGHTMARE", an episode of The Outer Limits.... this screenshot...of a young Martin Sheen....anticipated the hushing denial that had been increasingly prevalent, until then.. as his Voice is taken away.....(by Aliens, of course). The episode also starred James Shigeta, who remained a closeted gay man during his entire lifetime.....

This Episode's anti-military subtext is that the 'inhuman' Ebonites (hmm....Vulcans?) actually represented Civility and Ethical Consciousness, as they protest the ubiquitous testing, brainwashing and Societal Control by a Rightist Government....... Take a last, deep breath, Andrew Beckett and Michael Pierson, and 'say the heartfelt words', not legalese, for this could be what we will remember.......

Hopeful Reconciliation requires collusive alltogetherness, even if that is within the containment perpetuated by a conforming, uniform Society, in which each member merely wants to 'be a part of the Team'.....like a centipede leg, of many, mimicing, in metachronal waves, a prescribed/designated path of mindless conformity that has evolved from the haunches of impetuous escapism to the front legs of willful survival....    

"lo que será, será"...Broken nails or long white gloves, shoulders dripping in dead minks, foxes, martins or ermines, hoisting a sign, on some sticht, saying "SUPPORT ANIMAL RIGHTS'' while on her 'Guilt Trip' of the 1970's...still apologizing to Billy Gray for that Thanksgiving Turkey Disaster Dinner......

 

                                               But...don't forget to forward my set of leather-trimmed snakeskin luggage... 

and I'll require a couple of Louis Vuitton Vertical Steamer Trunks, preferably 'on wheels', although I do like to 'tip a lot'......(maybe three...and a dozen matching hat boxes, two 'shoe' cases, and an extra-large Jewelry Box...with trays and drawers...... )      

Noticing a 'string' of Doris Day movies on TCM, yesterday, I recalled the derivatively overlapping plots of a few of these.....and some pesistent  plot/character similarities......In "By The Light Of The Silvery Moon, 1953"....Doris plays 'Marjorie Winfield',  who is familiar and comfortable with rather 'butch' activities..like car mechanics and 'changing the oil' on a crank-start T-Model vehicle.. while her   'boyfriend' looks on, admiring her....but keeping his own soft hands clean.....Her effeminate  'designated by her family' potential fiance',  her piano teacher, Chester Finley is  a  replicant of a few other of Doris' movie boyfriends...as I remember "Romance On The High Seas", wherein Oscar Levant plays the effeminate piano player/composer, while Doris eyes the more masculine Jack Carson, who is attracted by Doris' set of snakeskin luggage....  "Calamity Jane" was next up......another buckskin-clad Gal, wearing a holstered '6-gun' and carrying a whip.....singing 'Secret Love'...hmmm....another closeted crypto-lesbian innuendo?....or just another good, little kappelhoff girl, from the sticks, unwittingly..if willingly... poured into silk and satin bodices and glamourized by Movie Studio Big Shots.....Move Over Darling, there's plenty of room for all of you in this luxurious Tub....Don't worry, Rock....there'll be 'split screen'...not a 'split'.... to reckon with in a Doris Day Picture, you know....But a Young Man With A Horn will just about always locate your Tunnel Of Love...especially, when led by the Morman Norell Perfume scent and Blackgama pelts, chomping on one another's tails.....   Don't worry, Wesley, Doris wasn't roasting 'Gregory' in that oven...you 'know that'..... any more than she was leading Gordon by the nose, even without the promise of a 'ring'..... 

SEE WHAT YOU CAN GET FOR A THIN DIME....

IN ANTICIPATION OF THE UPCOMING "DEXTER RESURRECTION, SEASON 2" TWENTY YEARS AFTER THE ORIGINAL 'DEXTER' SERIES....

Watching the scramble that was "DEXTER-RESURRECTED"......{who would not have noted the lurid  amalgamation  of 'HANNIBAL', 'AMERICAN GODS'....EVEN 'BABETTE'S FEAST', 'CHOPPED', AND A DOZEN OTHER COOKING SHOWS.. especially, ALTON BROWN'S 'GOOD EATS' & 'CUTTHROAT KITCHEN'?}     .....DINNER AT LEON PRATER'S LAVISHLY SALACIOUS INNER SANCTUM WAS, OF COURSE, MADE 'HUMOROUS' BY HIS CONSIDERATION OF DEXTER'S HAVING POSTURED HIMSELF AS  'RED', A VEGAN, AS HE RELUCTANTLY  ATE HIS VEGGIES WHILE THE OTHER GUESTS TORE INTO RARE, BLOOD-DRIPPING ANIMAL FLESH......EVERY SCENE OF D/R WAS CUT AND PASTED FROM PRIOR TV SHOWS AND MOVIES; VIEWERS HAVE ALWAYS GRAVITATED TOWARD 'THE FAMILIAR'......AND....WHO DOESN'T LIKE A GOOD SERVING OF COMEUPPANCE, RIGHT?, LOWELL?   DIDN'T YOU ORDER THESE CREME-FILLED DONUTS, CHARLEY?

When I was 21......and was the World was taking Shape from the whirling vortex of my youthful incomprehensions....David Warner appeared on the small screen at the weekly Vanderbilt University Film Showings

I'm remembering "Morgan" (A Suitable Case For Treatment) another  stylishly '60's tale of yet another 'mad English artist', bucking bourgeoisie  Convention,   as I read the now 2 year-old obituary of David Warner this morning......having forgotten him, somehow...after "Little Malcolm and His Struggle Against the Eunuchs"  ....  "so long' to 'quirkies', David Warner and John Hurt....      (Applications are now being accepted for 'suitable replacements').......

https://ok.ru/video/1931139812020

50...or more.....Films and TV Series have been produced, that are based on Homer's Epic Sagas....The Illiad and The Odyssey.....

A boat, named   "Sound Bound Odyssey" ,  was even a feature of the most recent reincarnation of DEXTER....  wherein The Morgans' foes are sliced and diced into their demise......DEAR EVAN HANSEN     also portrayed a Saga about an isolated Soul, searching his 'way home'......and, how about the Series 6 Episode of HAPPINESS' musical story of Helen of Troy's goings on?  Vanessa Redgrave, Katherine Hepburn and Genevieve' Bujold, over a half century ago, had their 'feminist take' on the Saga, in THE TROJAN WOMEN.....Claudio Monteverdi wrote a 1640 Opera, based on the ancient Saga.... as did Gabriel Faure'....and dozens of other composers.....  Even the movie, COLD MOUNTAIN and OH BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU sourced THE ODYSSEY.... So, what's next?...Cirque du Soliel will, likely, mount a new Spectacular Spectacular, hoisting Ulysses, Persephone, Telemachus, Athena and the 'rest of the crew' up in the air, on trapezes, tightwires and other apparatus' for aerial combat.....Hmm, hasn't even that already been done?....and, lest we forget....even Prince had his go at the tale...in his 1993 production, GLAM SLAM ULYSSES ........ Artificial Intelligence Film-making could even bring Lady Diana back from The Dead, to play Helen of Troy, having escaped to Paris, where she is killed, only to be reincarnated in another  IMAX Feature Film....

 

“There is a time for many words, 

and there is also a time for sleep.”     HOMER

THE PRESSURES OF CONFORMITY......WANT TO BE 'ONE OF US'?.....THEN, FOLLOW 'OUR RULES'...OR "ELSE"....

SO MUCH FOR BEING A DOG, POSING AS A HUMAN...AND WANTING TO BE LIKE 'OTHER HUMANS'       A CODED MESSAGE FROM MAX  AND  DAVE  FLEISCHER, ALMOST A CENTURY AGO......

obsession, revenge, pathos and regret from "three quarters of a million light years distant".....Before Technicolor brought the Rainbow, closer.....say...."2000 Light Years From Home" in 1967.......

 Missing in this late 1930's Fantasy Sci-Fi Flick....the Radium Girls, in a chorus line, singing praises to glow-in-the-dark hands, numerals and markers of fashionable watches and many other 'products' of Commercial Forlays into Mass Marketing to The Public,  before the current era of persistent onscreen time/elapsed time indications.....of the wonders of magical healing via the new chemical....Radium.... A whack on his head by Karloff's onscreen Mama ends his four mad personality derangement compulsivities as he leaps from a roof.....dematerializing into a cloud of smoke...into Nothingness....Leaving the still invisible seeds of Plutonium destruction to follow, shortly thereafter, in the desert of Los Alamos, in July of 1945.....  Welding helmets, and lead-mesh capes.... 'on', general public....and there'll be Nothing(ness) to fear....right??   Don't forget to 'clip that coupon' from your D.C. Comics, kids, there's a deep discount on Plasmatic Generators and Ion Storm Globes, with not one, but four free sample vials of genuine Uranium dust.......soon to be included in  GILBERT'S  fifty buck U-238 ATOMIC ENERGY LABORATORY....to be delivered by Santa, via reindeer sled, piloted by Rudolph's 'glow in the dark radioactive nose',   on X'mas of 1950.....

"It's A Rainbow, folks.....not just a Cloud Of Smoke".....Just take off those protective classes and you'll see that!  Well, at least, from the windows of Brixton Prison.......If you can break a butterfly on a wheel, you can disorient a Nation of Believers with a puff of Smoke!  Don't bogart that joint, lest the Circle  be broken.....

the still frames from Knife In The Water....that I remember.....from so long ago......the dialogue may as well have been in Martian, then.......

 

 I made 'the connection' between Krzysztof Komeda and Roman Polanski, while watching Knife In The Water, for the first time...since I viewed/heard it, during a trip to New York, in 1962 or 3....Polish Jazz set a trend for Film Soundtracks during the "Art Film" craze of the early 1960's........a sourcing for Nina Rota's soundtracks in Fellini's movies.......Then, came Miles Davis and the Americans.......The soundtrack of Knife In The Water and Davis' Kind Of Blue were directional arrows for me in my teens......with Spike Jones' madness and whimsy via his City Slickers...far from the Norman Luboff Choir performances that I slept through, just a year before.........I'm ready to move some furniture! Antique furniture! It always helps to have a good soundtrack, unless you're playing chess with Ingmar Bergman...in perfect silence.

Chalamet, his spirits uplifted... to get the call, informing him of his Academy Award Nomination for Marty Supreme.....

 

He recalled his disappointment at the end of "Call Me By Your Name"

        that he bore in mind, during his last scene in Marty Supreme

The Lugubrious Soundtrack, not totally dissociated from the Moral Question

I suppose this is why people watch 8 pm sitcoms.......to deny the shadows that block the lunacy of the Moon's rays, late at night...

φλώρος ....... aka: THE WIMPS (JUST DON'T MAKE THEMSELVES 'TOO EASY TO READ', OF COURSE)

 

WOODY  ALLEN,,   GILBERT GODFRIED,   ELIJAH WOOD,  ROWAN ATKINSON,  STEVE BUSCEMI,  TIMOTHEE CHALAMET ,  AND "THE  COWARDLY  LION SOCIETY "  HAVE FOUNDED  A  NEW  MEN'S SOCIAL  FRATERNITY......LIMP-WRISTEDLY HOLDING HANDS AS THEY MOCKINGLY DANCE AROUND THE MAYPOLE OF BUTCHNESS WORSHIP.    THEIR ALMOST-NOTICED REPARAMETERIZATION IS SPREADING ACROSS THE CONTINENTS' INTERNETS... LIKE THE RISING POPULARITY OF 'PINK PANTS', EARRINGS,  LIP MOISTURIZERS, AND HEAVY, DIAMOND-STUDDED GOLD CHAINS  ON BUTCH ATHELETES.....

''GUNS AKIMBO" WAS TOO GRATITUOUSLY VIOLENT FOR ME TO ENDURE.....EVEN WITH ONE OF MY FAVORITE ACTORS, DANIEL RADCLIFFE!

 

 

  I HAD TO REACH FOR MY RESCUE INHALER!, the 'pause' button...then, the 'power button' to reduce, then abandon some intense Anxiety.......

KEEP 'EM GAZING AT THOSE SCREENS!

As a As a youthful fan of quirkier "movie stars" such as Gerald Mohr or Ralph Meeker, I sought out more "psychological" movie fare........Audiences were amazed, if unaware of the deeper implications of these "experimental" films.......So....jump forward a half century or so.........Practically EVERY film....and certainly every big-budget advertisement.......is screwing into our subconsious....the opening sequence in Bergman's PERSONA is a good example of Psychorama.......A TV ad for...well...just about anything....is a good example of the machinations of Big Business.......Same device.....different motive.............during a 2 hour documentary about 'serial killers'....i clocked 47 minutes of advertising.....mainly for 'mind-altering' anti-depressants and 'mood-stabilizing' drugs that viewers should 'ask their doctors about'......[Don't think 'weird' thoughts......take the fu(&^^g pills, America! ] I'm in the mood to re-watch SHOCK CORRIDOR....especially after yesterday's viewing of THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT...... Did you 'catch' the 'repeat'? Say it twice...or even more....to ensure the 'stick' into the corridors of memory and that part of our brains that 'wants the candy....and, not 'tomorrow', but 'right now'! Where's that 'Odorama' plug-in? America will watch the cop, kneeing that man......over and over and over.....then, move on to the next thrilling stimulant from the World of PsychoRAMA......(3-d glasses available, for an extra charge + shipping and handling 'fee'....)... O.K. Elon....press the button, already...and get our collective minds off all that broken glass, batons and tasers......get ready to take all this Mess to another planet!

THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU........FEATURING MANY 'other' GREAT ACTORS.....YET, WHAT I REMEMBER IS:

"What a delicious surprise it was.... to see THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU.......and to see the ever-remarkable Emily Blunt dance some splendid choreography by Benoit-Swan Pouffer..... It's practically unbelievable that Emily Blunt had no previous dance experience and learned to dance...just for this performance! " She's on the edge of tomorrow, whether in Prada or carrying an assault rifle while singing a duet with her Ex, Michael Buble'....cooking with Stanley Tucci....or, as Queen Victoria, helping Rupert Friend with his 'stuttering'.....or as Mary Poppins, adding just a spoonful of sugar to help the more serious 'medicine' go down. What's 'next', Ms. Krasinski, your singing in an Opera, while accompanying yourself on cello, based on the Life of Kitty Oppenheimer, just to show your 'green thumbs'?

WHEN ONE'S OFFSPRING BEGIN THEIR OPPOSITIONAL DEFIANCE, EVEN WHEN THEY HAVE LIBERAL PARENTS....

 

  THE VIEWER ANTICIPATES THE FATHER, WIPING THE CAKE FROM HIS OWN BUTT....AND SMEARING IT ON HIS SON'S BLURTING MOUTH......    EVENTUALLY,  MICHAEL CHAPLIN, STILL IN REBELLION,  DECLARED THAT  HE 'Couldn't Smoke The Grass On My Father's Lawn'...THEN,  'SOLD OUT' TO PEPSI-COLA....ONE YEAR....AND TO 'MILK MARKETING'....THE NEXT......  (AREN'T ALL THE DOGS BARKING AT THE SAME SKY, AFTER ALL?     LIFE IS, IN RETROSPECT,  AN UDDER-FEEDING OF THE PAST TO THE PRESENT, ISN'T IT ?)