March

Two of my favorite artists of any era were born this month. Both left us too soon:

John Garfield would have been 97 on March 4. He died at 39 in 1952. Uber-fan Kim Morgan wrote one of her semi-regular paeans to Garfield here. Like Ms. Morgan, Garfield is consistently among my top 2 or 3 favorite actors.

Arthur Lee, leader of the great psych rock band Love, would have been 65 on March 7. He died at 61 in 2006. I was lucky enough to see Arthur perform Forever Changes in 2002 before he became ill with the leukemia that would take his life. In what has to be one of the coolest motions ever passed by a governing body anywhere, members of Parliament deemed Forever Changes "the greatest album of all time" in 2002. Of course, in its home country, Forever Changes is barely known amongst the general public, much to the chagrin of rock snobs like myself.

"A shadow shall fall over the universe and evil will grow in its path..."

As I continue to give my new printer / scanner / copier a workout, I bring you the front and back covers of Carl Macek's The Art of Heavy Metal. I searched high and low for this book for nearly five years in my quest to collect as much as I could from Heavy Metal: The Movie. I finally located a good condition soft cover edition of the 1981 book at a Chiller Theatre convention where I spent several minutes chatting with Heavy Metal publisher and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle co-creator Kevin Eastman about the magazine and the film and what he was doing to get it re-released in theaters and on legitimate home video. Our scintillating conversation was broken up by his wife, the truly statuesque and buxom pin-up model and actress Julie Strain, who insisted to Kevin that it was time to hit the road. Julie would later star in the Eastman-produced Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K.2, which I still have not seen, before divorcing Eastman several years later--a sad day for comic geeks everywhere.

The film was finally released to VHS and laserdisc in 1996, at which point most of the mystique around the film dissipated. A one-sheet from the '96 re-release makes an appearance in John C. Reilly's bedroom (or was it Will Ferrell's?) in Stepbrothers.

My love for this film has waned over the years as I've gotten older and more discerning, but it had a certain appeal for a teenaged cult movie enthusiast beyond the abundance of bare breasts and over-the-top early '80s hard rock (often of the "so bad it's good" quality). For me, one of the biggest draws was that it was unavailable on home video for so long. Macek's exhaustive book offered hundreds of high quality film stills and sketches allowing one to really appreciate the great artwork contained in the film, which was badly degraded on the second and third generation bootlegs tapes (from premium cable airings) sold at comic and sci-fi conventions around the country.

The Art of Heavy Metal was reprinted and expanded in 1996 by Kitchen Sink Press, but the quality of the images was much lower than in the original printing so if you must have one, eschew the extra chapter on the cult appeal of Heavy Metal and buy the 1981 version, which can be found easily and cheaply on ABE Books.

Beyond the striking original artwork, design, and stories by the likes of Richard Corben, Juan Gimenez, Bernie Wrightson, Jimmy Murakami, Chris Achilleos (whose artwork adorns the book cover and most other Heavy Metal paraphernilia), Dan O'Bannon, Angus McKie, Mike Ploog, Howard Chaykin, and Alex Tavoularis, perhaps the film's best virtue is the phenomenal score by maestro Elmer Bernstein...a monumental void was filled when Film Score Monthly released the complete score on CD in 2008:

Some of the best praise I've ever seen heaped on a film, credited on the back of the laserdisc to the Los Angeles Times (Kevin Thomas?). For some strange reason this quote wasn't reused for the DVD or VHS:

Gabba Gabba Hey!

From the time when I was a young lad who would still collect autographs at conventions like the Chiller Theatre and Fangoria Weekend of Horrors. Ms. Soles was very friendly from what I recall, this is going back 15 + years ago, and she added the great inscription without my prompting:

The pic comes from Danny Peary's Cult Movies. Autograph was obtained at the Chiller Theatre Expo in beautiful Secaucus, NJ.

I never was a big fan of the film Rock n' Roll High School even though I love the Ramones and P.J. Soles, particularly as Riff Randell.

Does anyone else immediately think of the Ramones when they hear the name of that Nickelodeon show Yo Gabba Gabba! ?

"That's our train. We gotta make it!"

One of the first things I recall about Pauline Kael's rave review of The Warriors, which may have been the first Kael piece I ever read, was her allusion to the then-recent Saturday Night Fever at the start of the article. I don't have a copy and it's not available online so far as I can tell, but the gist of Kael's review was that the working class young protagonists of Saturday Night Fever seemed quite rough-edged and downtrodden at the time of its release in 1977, but that The Warriors was eye-opening because its characters were even lower on the socioeconomic scale.

Watching Saturday Night Fever again for the first time in several years, I most enjoyed the invaluable mid-'70s Brooklyn footage contained throughout the film. Here's a New York movie that mostly stays out of Manhattan, although it does have several iconic shots of the lower Manhattan skyline, and shows audiences a part of the city rarely depicted on film. This focus on the outer boroughs is one of the things I also love about The Warriors, which confuses things somewhat by substituting Brooklyn and Manhattan locations in some scenes that are supposed to take place in the Bronx.

Two of my favorite moments from Saturday Night Fever and The Warriors are the long subway journeys that come near the end of each film. In each film, the subway serves as a venue for the characters to rest after a long, arduous evening and also reflect upon what came before.

I'm sure it was coincidental, but I was struck by the visual similarities between John Travolta's Tony and the surviving Warriors on the graffiti-filled subway, from their weary expressions to the eye bruises that Travolta and Michael Beck's Swan share.

Check out Jeremy's tribute to the opening credits of Saturday Night Fever at Moon in the Gutter, which inspired me to pull out my DVD.

"Nosferatu. Vampire! First I will save your soul, then I will destroy you."

What's most impressive about this "little" film in the Romero canon is the attention and care that the director gives to the blue collar milieu of the film. Braddock, PA, the main location of the film, is the most vital member of the cast, next to John Amplas' Martin. More than the horror aspects of this film, I am struck by the sensitivity with which Romero depicts the mundane, unrewarding lives of the working class supporting players, particularly the lonely wife who Martin briefly finds solace with. Romero's "living dead" films get most of the ink and I love a couple of them dearly, but Martin is probably his most mature and affecting film.

Braddock is the subject of several documentaries by frequent Romero collaborator and native son Tony Buba.

Pictured on the back: John Amplas, as Martin, gives one of the best lead performances in any Romero movie and Lincoln Maazel, father of noted conductor Lorin, is pitch perfect as Tata Cuda in his one and only film appearance.

We're talkin' apples and...cherries.

...Only the Rules Get Busted!

Why, oh why, isn't this back in print yet?

One of my greatest used bookstore finds ever was picking up the copy of Fast Times at Ridgemont High: A True Story that you see right here:

It was the very early '90s and I was a Fast Times-obsessed geek of 12 or 13 who had it made my mission to find the book upon which the movie was based. I went into many of the same used bookstores over and over again, as well as the local Waldenbooks and B. Dalton stores at the mall, in a vain search. So, I couldn't believe it when, for the umpteenth time, I went into my favorite bookstore then and now, Montclair Book Center, asked if they had Fast Times, and was told, "Why, yes, we just happened to get a copy in and it's up front." Nowadays, I could just go online, visit eBay or ABE Book Search and plunk down $50+ for a copy without ever leaving my apartment. Back then, it cost me $8 plus tax. On top of that, I still have the priceless experience of going into a shop and finding something I'd spent a long time looking for. It's one of those "holy grail" experiences that, as a collector, whether it be of books, records, or movies, you lose when shopping over the internet.

My copy's in a little rougher shape than when I first bought it because a year or so after I got it, a girl I had something of a crush on, sweet talked me into letting her borrow it. She took my speech about its rarity only half seriously and the book came with the corners more bent than they were before and one section of the cover separated from the spine. Did I mention I was a little OCD about this stuff?

Years later, I found a tattered copy of the book in a used bookstore at the airport in Milwaukee of all places. It was faded and the spine was broken, but because of how hard it is to come by a copy, any copy, of Fast Times, I grabbed it. The book was in such poor shape that the clerk just gave it to me. I put it away and forgot about for years until my buddy Rupert told me how much he'd always wanted to read the book. "Well," I said, "if you don't mind a having a copy that's beat to hell, this one's yours." It arrived at Rupe's last night and, if I know him, he'll have his nosed buried in it once his baby daughter's put to sleep. Enjoy it, pal!

"One of the few books I have been able to read in recent years." - W. S. Burroughs

Too bad "motorcycle boy" didn't appear in the film:

Son of De Niro

"Son of De Niro." Early in his career, a magazine laid that weight on Sean Penn. It was a moniker I'm sure he loathed, as much as he did admire Robert De Niro.

Penn backstage during the 1983 Broadway run of Slab Boys, which co-starred Kevin Bacon, Val Kilmer, and Jackie Earle Haley.

It was Penn who suggested to director Steven Zaillian that he look up his old Slab Boys co-star Jackie Earle Haley when the All the King's Men director was having trouble casting the role of Sugar Boy. Even though Haley hadn't acted in years and was completely off the Hollywood map, Penn recalled the actor's talents and had a hunch he still had what they were looking for. The rest is history, as they say, as Haley nailed the Sugar Boy part, picked up an Academy Award nomination for his heartbreaking work in Little Children, and is now, for better or for worse, Freddy Krueger.

Penn as Rupert Pupkin...I mean, Daulton Lee.

The real Andrew Daulton Lee who was paroled in 1998 and who was later employed as a personal assistant to Penn. Say what you will about Penn, but don't call him disloyal.

"Making love to you is like riding a horse."

My most guilty pleasure, certainly of the '80s thanks, in part, to lines of dialogue like the one I quoted for the title of this post. This "novelisation" was published in Australia by Horwitz Grahame Books and "adapted from the movie" by Carl Ruhen. Like a lot of movie tie-ins, this one differs in interesting ways from the film, most notably with regards to the conclusion, which is melancholy and introspective in contrast to the joyously upbeat ending of the film. I wonder if it came from an earlier version of Randal Kleiser's script or if Mr. Ruhen took some poetic license.

Sadly, flood damaged: