Following up on
all those “Hey Bills,” I’ve collected and posted all the “Ask Greils” of mine
that Greil Marcus answered between 2017 and 2025. (Unlike “Hey Bill,” “Ask
Greil” is still up and running--you can go ask him a question right now.)
I think I gave Scott Woods--who launched and edited Marcus’s website greilmarcus.net, and then continued on with
his Substack for the first few years--a nudge about taking the “Hey Bill” idea
and doing something similar with Marcus. Christgau soon followed with his
interactive forum for readers (“Christgau Sez”), one day there’ll be a “What
Does Chuck Think?” on Chuck Eddy’s Substack, and eventually everyone up to and
including the Pope will have their own variation. It’s the way of the
world right now.
I thought Marcus would be even pricklier than James, but
nothing of the sort--he's been, right from the start, gracious to a fault with readers. I can’t recall
him being brusque with anyone more than a couple of times in almost a decade
now. When he was really sick a while back, and hardly writing at all,
new “Ask Greil” columns were still appearing regularly; I’m guessing it was
rather important to him at the time.
Amusing footnote: all my “Ask Greils” are signed “Alan Vint," after a character actor from the early ‘70s--Two-Lane Blacktop, The Panic in Needle Park, Badlands--who I’m surprised never became a star. I was still a little put off that Marcus didn’t respond when I sent him a copy of Interrupting My Train of Thought in 2014; I made it a point not to send anything in the first year “Ask Greil” ran, but I couldn’t stay away, so I used the pseudonym as a compromise. By not writing in under my own name, I wanted him to know that I no longer cared what he thought about anything…or wanted him not to know…or something. That was back when I was still in my 50s and much more immature. I get along with everybody now.
-------------------
10/19/17
Greil - You mentioned Steph Curry recently, and I
vaguely remember you writing something about George Brett singing “Doo Wah
Diddy” after the Royals won the ’85 World Series somewhere. Do you have any
favourite sportswriters, or are there any who wrote things that influenced you?
I was thinking specifically of the baseball writer Bill James—who’s often named
as a major influence by a variety of unlikely people—but also earlier writers:
A.J. Liebling, Jim Murray, Roger Angell, etc.
– Alan Vint
I like the columnists I read in the San Francisco
Chronicle: Bruce Jenkins, who is a great moralist (and the son of Gordon
Jenkins, the great Capitol arranger behind so many Frank Sinatra recordings,
and the author of, along with Goodbye: In Search of Gordon Jenkins, the
delightful Shop Around: Growing Up Motown in a Sinatra Household [Music that
Changed My Life]), and Scott Ostler, who has a great touch with what songs
to use as sports metaphors and the best sense of humor in the business. I used
to love the Chronicle‘s Ray Ratto, who was a nails-for-breakfast writer
who thought everything was fixed—especially the first years of the NBA lottery,
something that was staring everyone in the face but no one else had the nerve
to mention.
-------------------
09/19/17
Greil - Have you ever written about Richard Berry’s
work with the Crowns, Cadets, Flairs, etc.? I especially love a couple of
songs: “The Big Break,” obviously a rewrite of “Riot in Cell Block #9” a year
later (and just as wild, I’d say—Berry’s on both, I think), and the Flairs’
“She Wants to Rock.” In ’56, Berry and the Pharaohs put out “Watusi,” which is
pretty much “Stranded in the Jungle” from the same year. It’s all a little
confusing.
– Alan Vint
I’ve written about Richard Berry here and there. For me,
it’s always been the prison trilogy: the Coasters’ “Riot in Cell Block #9” with
Berry doing the spoken parts, his own “The Big Break,” and his little known “Next Time.”
Legal-jeopardy discs were a big part of early Los Angeles R&B and rock
& roll, partly because everyone knew the LA police force was racist and
murderous to the core. In the fifties the likes of the Rodney King beating was
about as remarkable as a traffic stop.
In 1994, for an Oakland conference of the Center for
California Studies at the Oakland Museum called “Bright Lights, Mean Streets:
California as City,” I set up the panel “Bop City: LA’s ’50s Rhythm &
Blues” with Danyel Smith and Richard Berry himself. He was a complete charm,
though there because he wanted recognition as a pioneer and an artist. He
wasn’t scheduled to perform afterward, but he insisted on it. He was a powerful
physical presence, but a legend in the flesh: I AM SITTING NEXT TO THE MAN WHO
WROTE “LOUIE LOUIE”!
-------------------
08/28/17
Greil - Charles Pierce wrote this after Trump’s
Arizona speech last week: “I have no more patience, and I had very little to
start with. I don’t care why you’re anxious. I don’t care for anybody’s
interpretation of why you voted for this abomination of a politician, and why
you cheer him now, because any explanation not rooted in the nastier bits of
basic human spleen is worthless.” So, a much trickier question, I think: What
do you think about Trump voters? Is it unfair to treat them as a monolithic
block, or, like Pierce, are you past the point of trying to understand
motivation (if you ever thought that worth understanding in the first place)?
– Alan Vint
I don’t think it’s unfair to treat Trump voters as a
block. I thought so when he was elected and I think so even more strongly now,
after Charlottesville and Trump’s promotion of it as ordinary, historic
American discourse. He ran an inescapably racist campaign, yes, against
Hispanics and Muslims and even Jews, but at bedrock against black people.
Research is beginning to show that the real determinant for Trump voters was
what’s being called “racial resentment,” as opposed to, you know, racism, as
opposed to economic distress, and that Trump voters had no trouble translating
Make America Great Again to Make America White Again, but I don’t think
research was necessary to understand that: it was the motor of his campaign and
he made no secret of it. So every Trump voter, even if he or she did not vote
for Trump because of his racist campaign, had to say, Well, there are other
things more important, or He’s not serious, or Nothing will happen anyway: in
sum, It’s not a problem for me. Trump voters either directly or objectively
affirmed racism, and now the vultures are coming home to roost.
-------------------
08/18/17
Greil - Have you seen Adventureland or The
Perks of Being a Wallflower, and if so, any thoughts on either? They’re my
two favourite movies the past decade for pop music (or at least tied with Carlos).
– Alan Vint
I haven’t and don’t know anything about them, assuming
the second isn’t about how cool it is to be in the Wallflowers.
-------------------
07/26/17
Greil - Any thoughts on the NPR list of 150
Greatest Albums Made by Women? Lists are mostly useful for arguing
about, right? I thought it was pretty good—my personal omissions would include
Dionne Warwick, the Jefferson Airplane, Yo La Tengo, and LiLiPUT. [See
introduction to piece here.]
– Alan Vint
The point of a list is selection: ruthlessly, unfairly,
perversely, both to start a conversation and to mock the whole idea of boiling
anything in life down to a list. Dave Marsh’s The Heart of Rock & Soul:
The 1001 Greatest Singles Ever Made is not really a list: it’s a long walk
through one person’s taste, sense of history, idiosyncrasy, love and hate.
With a list of 150 albums—as if the great moments are
there—all kinds of factors come into play that deforms any sense of what is and
what isn’t. Considerations of balance and fairness—the opposite of what a list
should be—in terms of eras, race, ethnicity, genre, and on and on make
decisions, not what do I love, what would distort the story if it were left out
(or included). And there’s too much—when there’s room for anything and
everyone, who cares?
I could say that any top list that puts Joni Mitchell’s Blue
over Aretha’s I Never Loved a Man or X-ray Spex’s Germfree
Adolescents is a travesty, but really, you have to dive into the depths of
130-150 to grapple with the thing, and who will? The truth is, when you run
through the whole thing, it’s dispiriting. The need to play fair has led to a
pile of records, many of which are not really very good, and some of which
aren’t good at all.
-------------------
06/20/17
Greil - Is “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35” the most
polarizing Dylan song ever? I’ve seen more than one person name it as one of
Dylan’s worst, a blight on Blonde on Blonde, and in a recent
commemoration of BoB’s 50th anniversary, Rob Sheffield called it “one
profoundly annoying novelty song.” I don’t get it. For me, it’s Dylan at his
wildest, funniest, and most brilliant—and I can’t believe they somehow snuck it
onto Top 40 and turned it into a hit single.
– Alan Vint
When I first heard it it terrified me. It sounded like
unleashed junkie madness. About two days later, with the radio playing it
nonstop, I fell in love with it. It was completely unpredictably musically, so
that it sounded different every time. There was no way to know who these people
were. I listened for the shouting in the background. Everyone is having a
fabulous time. But after the Blonde on Blonde sessions were over and
Dylan had left, producer Bob Johnston kept the party going, and he and the
musicians apparently took as much time as it takes to listen to it to record Moldy
Goldies: Col. Jubilation B. Johnston and His Mystic Knights Band and Street
Singers Attack the Hits, which Columbia snuck out at the same time. “Secret
Agent Man” is my favorite musically, though philosophically “The Name Game” has
it beat. Either or anything else on the album makes “Rainy Day Women” sounds
like “She Belongs to Me.”
-------------------
10/2/18
Greil - In a recent “Ask Greil” [1/8/18] you wrote
there was something “too Big Star” about the Replacements. I take that to mean
you’re also indifferent about Big Star—could you maybe expand on that? I held
them at arm’s length for a long time too, but the last couple of years I’ve
really started to love a few songs on their first album, “In the Street,”
“Thirteen,” and “When My Baby’s Beside Me” especially. Do you find they share
the same kind of self-consciousness you find in the Replacements? Also, did you
see Nothing Can Hurt Me, the Big Star documentary from a few years ago?
– Alan Vint
The best I can say is that I find the music of both Big
Star and the Replacements small. Self-contained. The world isn’t in it. There
isn’t room for the world in it.
-------------------
9/6/18
Greil - You’ve obviously written a lot about Pauline
Kael, and I think you’ve expressed admiration for Manny Farber, too. I remember
a Rolling Stone piece on Andrew Sarris that—correct me if I’m wrong—was
fairly negative.
I was wondering if you have any thoughts on three
other film critics from the ’60s (well, two film critics and a third who was
primarily a political writer): Stanley Kauffmann, John Simon, and Dwight
Macdonald.
– Alan Vint
-------------------
Stanley Kauffmann was one of the great bores. I recall
him fulminating about the use of the word movies, rather than film—saying if
you’re going to call films movies, why not call books printies? Well, why not?
John Simon was on the same wavelength: a collection of
his pieces was titled Movies into Film, implying that some who made mere
movies might indeed, somehow, aspire to making films. To call him a snob
degrades the word—as someone else described him, he was the sort of person who
if he weren’t being paid to review movies he’d probably be embarrassed to be
seen entering a movie theatre—or anyway, a screening. His judgment of actresses
by their looks, or rather insulting and savaging actresses for not conforming
to his taste, was, I’m sure, meant to provoke outrage, and thus raise his
profile and make him more money, and also completely sincere.
He could be relied on to play those numbers on The
Dick Cavett Show, and in
that capacity he did provide me with an opening into a piece that
eventually turned into the beginning of my book Mystery Train, and for
that I’ll always love him.
I never read Dwight MacDonald on movies. I liked a lot of
Against the American Grain.
-------------------
8/2/18
Greil - Any thoughts on 20th Century Women, the Annette Bening film from
a couple of years ago? Among other things, Greta Gerwig explains the Raincoats
to Bening, and Bening and Billy Crudup dance to Black Flag.
– Alan Vint
I loved the movie long before I read Jen Pelly’s interview with the
director Mike Mills in Pitchfork, especially the way none of the
characters dominated or displaced any other. But I treasure this story, which
is also in her 33 1/3 book The Raincoats:
Pelly: The Raincoats scene—and the whole film, it
turns out—were inspired by critic Greil Marcus’ 1983 essay “Disorderly
Naturalism,” which served as liner notes to the Raincoats’ live ROIR cassette The
Kitchen Tapes. In it, Marcus unpacks how the music of the Raincoats
captures “the process of punk,” defined as “the move from enormous feeling
combined with very limited technique—more to the point, enormous feeling
unleashed by the first stirrings of very limited technique.”
Mills is himself a Berkeley-born, matriarchy-raised,
art-schooled punk who’s done graphic design for the Beastie Boys and Sonic
Youth (including the cover of Washing Machine) and made videos for the
likes of Yoko Ono and Air, not to mention wrote and directed the films Thumbsucker
and Beginners. Mills spoke to me about his film’s Raincoats scene, its
definition of punk, and more.
Pitchfork: Why were the Raincoats an appropriate
band to anchor that moment?
Mike Mills: There are a bunch of reasons. That song came out in ’79, so
it’s totally perfect. As a movie called 20th Century Women, it’s great
to have a female punk band in there. And another is the way Greta talked about
the Raincoats: I showed her the Greil Marcus piece and she spun out her own
version of it. What Greta says in the movie is a processing of Greil’s
process-of-punk piece. Greta, in real life, also loved the Raincoats. We both
have a lot of respect for them. So it was a big honor for us. They’re actually
holding the 7” label in the scene; we got the record from [the band]. We felt
like we were on hallowed ground.
What Greta’s saying—about how, if their band was based on
virtuosity, it would detract from the rawness of the expression—it really
actually spoke to Dorothea, and her problem of not being able to say her inner
life. Being born in the ’20s, she didn’t have a culture that supported that.
These ’70s kids have a culture that supports it. So in a way, the Raincoats
weren’t just this cool cultural-musical reference. I was able to use it to
speak really directly to the problem of my characters. The theme of the movie
is expressed. Greta is going on and on about the Raincoats’ emotionality—and
how they’re saying something raw and messy and that they can’t control—and
that’s exactly what Dorothea can’t do in the movie, and needs to do.
The Raincoats’ music is really nonlinear. Your movie also
doesn’t sell you that false narrative of everything being neatly figured out.
My film doesn’t follow plot structure strongly, or it
doesn’t rely on that to hold the film together. It is sort of open-ended; the
characters are a little ambiguous. And everything about the Raincoats is
open-ended. There is a wobbliness to the music on that first record. I think a
lot of people really love that because there’s something more human and
inviting in the fragility of it. I definitely like that. In ways—mostly —the
writing—I’m trying to do that, too.
The Raincoats are so much about this beautifully flawed
statement. In that way, they do sort of echo the philosophy of this film, which
is trying to promote these imperfect connections between people, and imperfect
people generally. Everyone can’t be who they thought they were supposed to be,
or who they want to be. But within that mess, there are some nice moments of
connection, or little moments of grace. I feel like the music is doing that
same project in a different way.
-------------------
5/18/18
Greil - Who was a better president, Bill Clinton or
Barack Obama?
– Alan Vint
That’s a book, not a paragraph, and it’s too early to
write it, especially if the question is who most left the country changed for
the better. Clinton left office in a scandal of his own making—the pardons not
just of people under indictment but fugitives from justice. Obama’s was perhaps
the most honest administration in history. But the question is bigger than
that.
-------------------
1/11/18
Greil - Have you heard Nirvirna’s “Teen Sprite (Sleep Good
Mix)”? It’s…something to talk about, I think. I love it. I can see
where someone else might passionately hate it; I’d be more surprised if someone
felt indifferent. I don’t think it discredits or makes a mockery of the
original at all (how could it, and why would it?), and I’m also guessing that
Dave Grohl, Krist Novoselic, and Courtney Love are aware that it’s out there
and, simply by virtue of it’s not having been taken down, are okay with it. I
hear it as a fascinating version of what might have been if one of the
pop-metal bands at the top of the charts just before Nirvana came along had
somehow come up with “Smells Like Teen Spirit” instead. And it sounds
fantastic. If anything, it deepens my love of the original.
– Alan Vint
“Smells Like Teen Spirit” didn’t hit for me until
I saw the video. After that the song spoke in its own voice and I didn’t see
the video when I heard it—but whenever I do see the video I’m stunned,
thrilled, awestruck by how complex, sexy, visceral it is.
The music here could be the K-Tel version. I’d feel
better about it if Kurt Cobain weren’t dead and could laugh about it or not,
himself.
-------------------
10/8/19
Greil - Any thoughts on Linda Ronstadt? I saw the new
documentary last night. As a teenager in the ’70s, I thought she was gorgeous;
I liked some of her singles, but I wasn’t really a fan. As a not-teenager 40
years later, I feel basically the same.
– Alan Vint
I think the proof of Linda Ronstadt, who made so many
fine records (“You’re No Good” is my number one) is her on-paper totally phony
punk album, the 1980 Mad Love, produced by the leader of the Cretones,
as phony a punk band as the concept could allow, and the concept allows for an
infinity of phoniness. It worked. It came across. It sounded new. It sounded
like her.
-------------------
1/4/19
Greil - Any thoughts on any of the following: Breaking
Bad, Better Call Saul, The Deuce, Killing Eve, Stranger
Things, Ozark, Big Little Lies, Sharp Objects? Pop
music figures into all of them, to one degree or another.
– Alan Vint
I watched the first few episodes of Breaking Bad
and found it tendentious and breast-beating. Plus I find Bryan Cranston one of
the most tiresome actors around. So nothing there. Better Call Saul I
found meretricious and self-flattering at the start and didn’t pursue it. I
didn’t care about the people in The Deuce even though I would usually
watch anything with James Franco and Maggie Gyllenhaal. Yes, lots of music
oozing around but it was just ooze. Never watched Killing Eve, Stranger
Things, or Ozark.
Sharp Objects I never missed. The use of music was
as cutting as the title. It was predictable here, over there so unpredictable
it could seem like a mistake—Sandy Denny in that Hispanic joint? The Everly
Brothers singing “Rose Connolly”? Amy Adams and Led Zeppelin? I wrote about it
in Real Life Rock Top 10 in the
first installment in Rolling Stone in September. And Big Little
Lies—that fantastic Elvis show! That was beyond unpredictable. I wrote
about that in the April
19, 2017 Real Life Rock column for Pitchfork.
But I think the most faraway, tantalizing, seductive use
of music on TV recently was in The Night Of. There was one song, playing
in the background of a bar. I wrote the music director asking what it was. He
didn’t know. Maybe it just showed up, I said, like this show, and stuck around
til it found the right moment.
-------------------
9/27/20
Greil - With some trepidation: have you read, and do
you have any thoughts on, Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility? I’m glad I
read it, and it did give me pause and got me to reflect on various things. It
was also frustrating in a way that’s hard to pinpoint. Whenever I thought “Yes,
but…”, it felt like there was nowhere to go, that everything has been closed
off in advance.
– Alan Vint
I haven’t read it. Why should I? Please say more.
-------------------
8/21/20
Greil - As a Californian, do you have any thoughts on
Kamala Harris? It would seem she has a very realistic chance to end up as
president.
– Alan Vint
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I’m very patriotic to
the Bay Area, so I’d like her even if I didn’t. I liked her Biden take down
about “That little girl was me” because when she was being bused to Thousand
Oaks Elementary in Berkeley I was living two blocks from there.
As a senator, she’s been the closest to Al Franken in
questioning dubious people. As a speaker, she can seem programmed. As a DA, she
defeated a very so-called progressive Democrat who was too progressive—that is,
he didn’t prosecute a lot of people who belonged in jail. As AG, in California
that’s traditionally been a stepping stone office, usually to governor. So she
used that office as it’s been traditionally used—while making alliances with
other AGs in group actions, which didn’t get her publicity but were effective.
Over the last few days, some polls show very dramatic
tightening, with one poll showing Minnesota tied (which it probably has been
all along—Hillary barely carried it) and CNN showing the national race
effectively tied. Given what’s happened over the last two weeks, that either
means Trump’s amplifying lunacy strategy—promising a third term, attacking
immigrants as animals, endorsing QAnon—is working, that people are finding
Biden the Man Who Isn’t There, or perhaps most likely are scared to death of a black
woman. If that’s so, Kamala has her work cut out for her to present herself as
someone people can imagine as president. And I’m not sure the Biden
people, who will be running her campaign, will know how to do that.
At the moment I would say Trump has a 75% chance of
winning. Before the sabotage of the Post Office, I figured the voter
suppression would add 3 to 4 points to Trump’s legitimate position, but now I’d
guess 7 to 10. And that’s a huge amount.
-------------------
4/2/20
Greil - You’ve seen a lot. At a societal level—meaning
not something personal, like the death of a parent—is this the worst thing
you’ve ever experienced? I’m 58, and it’s not even close.
– Alan Vint
It depends on what you or I mean by experienced. As a
possible double trigger of the 1918 influenza pandemic, which almost killed my
father at the age of one, and the Great Depression—as a rationally calculated
threat to the future of the country and the world, to the future of my children
and grandchildren and my wife and myself, to say nothing of our immediate
future, i.e. dropping dead next week or next month, no, nothing is comparable.
But in terms of dread—carrying around at any moment of
the day or night the sense that life could not continue as it is and in some
sense doesn’t deserve to—in my experience, this does not compare to the depths
of American depravities in the Vietnam War or the attempts to destroy American
ideals by the Reagan, George W. Bush, or Trump administrations: for Reagan, I
believe, a difference between his ideas of what those ideals are and mine, for
Bush, a casual disdain for and congenital inability to comprehend anything
outside of his own country club, and for Trump adherence to a foreign power for
personal financial gain, which is to say treason.
Regardless of what anyone did or did not do on this
crisis, it is a natural disaster and it does not have the moral dimension that
for me, in my experience, which is what you’re asking about, defines the worst
thing I’ve ever lived with. I’m not saying anyone else should feel or think as
I do. I’m not saying, on any level, that I’m right. But there are ways in which
for me seeing Trump stand during one of his daily events at the White House and
degrade both anyone who is watching and the whole history of this country, its
worst along with its best and even its ordinary life, is worse than what as a
society and a future we are facing. It makes struggling for a decent future
seem like a sucker’s game. That’s what keeps me up at night.
-------------------
3/2/21
Greil - in your Yoko Ono response [2/26], you said
something you’ve written before: that artists know things the rest of us don’t.
I’ve never really agreed with this. To me, they have the talent and imagination
to express those things, to give voice to them, but we know them too, that’s
why we respond to their work. There are so many strange lines in Dylan’s
mid-’60s work that I understand immediately, although I couldn’t begin to
explain what they mean. He can. Or maybe he doesn’t need to, he wrote them.
– Alan Vint
Maybe another way of saying that artists know things
others don’t is that they see thing differently—which is a real reduction of
what I mean, but maybe more acceptable. Which why it isn’t what I mean. Maybe a
more psychologically accurate way to say it would be that artists think they
know things others don’t, and are driven to try to say what that is. And there
could be many motives in that, beyond the edification of humankind. Think of
Robert Johnson (as I seem to do all the time these days). He could play the
guitar in ways that others couldn’t. He could weave his voice into his guitar
playing in ways that produced an impression of the uncanny: what is this
feeling, how can he do that, where am I, the world doesn’t feel exactly as it
did a minute ago, an element of unreality, or super-reality, has just been
introduced. There is a secret language being spoken that while I myself can’t
speak it I can understand, in some aspect of my being, every gesture, note,
word, sigh, stop, fall, and close. And why might Johnson want to tell the world
what he knows and, he feels, no one else does, to make his secret knowledge
public? Hobbes argued that the motive behind the creation of Greek philosophy
was to seduce more boys than the other guy—which is to say that the most base
or selfish motives can lie behind the highest creation. For Johnson—maybe just
to show the other guys up and get more women, which amounts to the very same
thing. For Jonathan Edwards, the purpose of philosophy was to affirm “the
beauty of the world.” Those are the words he used—not “The Beauty of God’s Creation.”
He introduced a certain element of hedonism, or even paganism, into the idea.
Maybe Johnson’s motive was also to affirm the beauty, the order, of the world,
especially when, in his lyrics, he says that the world is disordered and he
doesn’t understand why it is as it is, and refuses to accept it. But really,
what the artist knows is not determinate. It’s the will to tell.
-------------------
6/1/22
Greil - I’m wondering if you’ve ever commented on
Roberta Flack’s “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.” I don’t think it had
much critical support at the time. I was 11 when it was a hit: it was one of my
favourite songs from my favourite year then, and remains so today. I don’t
think I’m alone in the deep impression it made on me: it’s been used memorably
in episodes of both Mad Men and, more recently, Atlanta.
– Alan Vint
I’m kind of shocked that you had the concept of critical
support in your head at the age of 11, not that the record needed it. It was a
natural hit and made its own atmosphere. I liked listening to it, admired its
craft, but it dried up for me very quickly, like “Live to Tell” and “Every
Breath You Take,” which came on so strong, promising eternal wisdom and world
domination and then became good songs you’d heard enough.
-------------------
12/22/22
Greil - I'm very interested in any thoughts you might
have on the new Sight & Sound poll/list of the greatest
films ever, just published last week [Dec. 1]: the ascension of Chantal
Ackerman's Jeanne Dielman to #1, the much greater presence of
female and black directors in the Top 100, the inclusion of much newer films,
the disappearance of The Godfather Part II, Raging Bull, The
Magnificent Ambersons, and others...All the stuff people have been arguing
about all week.
– Alan Vint
I'm not the perfect person to answer this. I've
never seen Jeanne Dielman, so maybe that disqualifies me from the
start. I always thought the idea of Vertigo as the
greatest film of all time was a joke—I'd rather watch North by
Northwest (which is on this list) or The 39 Steps any
time. If I were compiling a vote, I'd keep it to those movies that when I
saw them said to me "This is what a movie can be!" and let me
understand the form, the ambition it called for, the opening of infinite
possibilities in telling a story and leaving behind a work that would thrill
and trouble the minds of generations to come. For me, pictures that did
this are Sunrise, The Passion of Joan of Arc, The
Godfather, City Lights, Citizen Kane, Way
Down East (Griffith, 1920, not on list unless I missed it), The
Lass from the Stormy Croft (directed by Victor Sjöström in 1917—not on
the list), and Bonnie and Clyde (not on the list, unless again
I missed it). And a few more. Otherwise it's just favorites and
consensus and not wanting to seem uncool. If such a list has any use at
all, it's to lead people to movies they might never have heard of or would
never been otherwise inclined to see—Sunrise being the great
example. But really, it's all bean counting. I don't like
lists. I hate the internet meme of "The 10 Funniest Things JFK Ever
Said, Ranked!" And that's what this is. I'd prefer something
like "A few movies you might want to see after you're dead."
-------------------
1/16/23
Greil - Along with the Shangri-Las, my own special HOF
pleading would be for Dionne Warwick and Tommy James. I think for a lot of
people my age (61), Warwick's late-'60s radio hits are among your first and
best Top 40 memories; add to that her earlier hits ("Walk on By,"
obviously), "Then Came You" with the Spinners later, and I'm
perplexed she's not in. (A recent CNN documentary may give her an extra push.)
Tommy James had a couple of huge hits I don't care for ("Hanky Panky"
and "Mony Mony"), one I like a lot ("I Think We're Alone
Now"), and three I love: "Crimson and Clover" (brilliant),
"Crystal Blue Persuasion," and "Draggin' the Line." Three
of those were also big hits for others, so he's had some influence, too.
Do you think either one belongs?
– Alan Vint
I swear on the grave of Garfield Akers—wherever it
is—that I will never get trapped by this game. But it’s like eating one potato
chip.
I’m dubious about Warwick, unless she and Lesley Gore can
be inducted together for the two-sided single “Don’t Make Me Over” and “You
Don’t Own Me.” Lesley Gore deserved so much better. So much more. And
Tommy James should walk right in. I always thought “Hanky Panky” was fluff
until one day I was overwhelmed by its building intensity—and heard “Be Bop a
Lula” uncoiling inside of it like a snake. “Crimson and Clover” was good on the
radio but it wasn’t until I heard the long version with its endless tumbling
fuzz-as-the-meaning-of-life guitar solos that I realized how much Tommy James
wanted and how much he got. But it’s really his irresistible book Me,
the Mob, and the Music that to me takes him there. Find someone who’s
already in there who’s got their name on a book about the number one rock ‘n’
roll gangster—and Tommy James is far from the only one who could write it—so
completely lacking in either apology or cynicism and I’ve got a nice velvet
painting of Morris Levy you can have for free. Or a million dollars. Depending.
-------------------
11/10/23
Greil - Not a question, just a comment. Some TCM
programming from the other night made me think of you immediately. They devoted
the evening to films with "Weekend" in the title, much as, soon after
the last election, they had a night of films with "Joe" in the title.
Just after midnight, back-to-back, they had Godard's Weekend followed
by Palm Springs Weekend, with Troy Donahue and Connie Stevens (and
with Troy Donahue on the soundtrack). "Real Life Top 10 material, for
sure," I thought.
– Alan Vint
Someone at TCM has a great sense of humor. And
realizes the TCM vault holds more treasures than Sean Connery found in The
Man Who Would Be King.
I may have morbidity on the brain, but my first thought reading the names you
mention was, and who's still alive? Connie Stevens!
-------------------
7/22/24
Greil - Obvious question: what are your thoughts on
Biden, specifically whether you think he should continue or if he should step
aside? And if the latter, which is the better course of action: an open
convention, or they go with Kamala Harris as the nominee?
I'm a little too young to remember anything about LBJ in '68—far from a perfect
analogy anyway—but I've never experienced anything like the past 48 hours [June
29]. Obama and Jeremiah Wright, to an extent, but again, very different. My own
preference is that Biden steps aside for Harris. I know she's polling a point
or two behind him, but I remember her sharp performance against Biden in the
debates, and I think—even after a slow start as VP, followed by four years of
Republican bile about her—she'd win.
– Alan Vint
In the first couple of minutes, Biden seemed so barely
there, confused, and unable to finish a thought—there never was a coherent
argument—I couldn’t see how he could recover. He didn’t. When he said
“We beat Medicare” I knew the hole was deeper than I’d ever imagined. Sure, he
meant “We solved the Medicare funding problem, opened it up to negotiating drug
prices, lowered the insulin premium,” but he threw it right into Trump’s
wheelhouse and he predictably hit it out of the park.
I think the story is now set in stone. Trump’s support is
a mile wide and a mile deep. The ‘Save Democracy’ banner is meaningless on his
side. As I’ve argued before, I don’t think support for democratic government or
democratic political culture has amounted to more than 65 percent of the
country in our history, often it’s been far less, and it’s far less now. Many
people don’t want the burden of democratic choice, they don’t want more people
included in the polity rather than fewer, they don’t want the far more free
America we have now than before, they want someone to tell them what to do,
what to think, how it’s going to be, and get out of the way. Biden’s support
was, I believe, somewhat wider and far more shallow. I don’t believe he can
continue as a credible candidate. Harris can’t be thrown overboard. It would
confirm that she was never more than window dressing. It’s Biden’s fault that
she was buried in the administration when she should have been built up.
Biden could withdraw on the simple basis that “I care
more about the country than myself,” endorse Harris as ‘my personal choice,’
and call for an open convention. Other than Harris no possible nominee is well
known or fixed in the minds of most of the electorate. Which allows for
self-definition and a new story. A well handled convention—dream on, with the
pro-Hamas demonstrations guaranteed to disrupt it from inside and out—with an
interesting, dynamic, well-why-not nominee—Whitmer, Shapiro, Warnock, Pritzker,
Tester, Klobuchar—could come out of the convention with a flood of enthusiasm
that could possibly be sustained or even built upon. And a strong candidate,
even if they lose, could help protect the Senate, which will be the only check
remaining if Trump reclaims power.
I don’t, at this moment, think any of this will happen.
The best hope is probably a heart attack.
— I wrote this soon after the June debate. Biden just
dropped out, which I didn’t think he would. Though Dean Phillips’s
he’s-too-old-he-can’t-win campaign looked silly by the end, he couldn’t have
been more predictive: and since he never considered himself a serious
alternative, but was trying to open the field, brave. At the moment it looks as
if party names are rallying around Harris. It’s too late to gin up a Draft
Whitmer-Shapiro-Pritzger-Kelly-Beshear movement; someone would have to step out
and say they have a better chance of beating Trump and here’s why. As I said
above, a candidate who is undefined can define themselves, and Harris is
defined. Although a friend came up with a campaign slogan today: PROSECUTOR
VERSUS FELON. Which Amy Klobuchar could run with too.
-------------------
1/8/25
Greil - Conceding all the inherent problems with
“biopics,” I get the feeling there’ll be more and more of them in the coming
years about pop stars from the ’60s through the ’90s. I’ve often thought
there’s a good one to be made about Cass Elliot. She turned up in both
Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Rocketman,
the Elton John film, and also (obviously) in the two Laurel Canyon
documentaries from a few years back. She strikes me as one of those people who
was connected to everybody for a moment in the late ’60s and early ’70s—and, no
surprise, I’m a big fan of a lot of music she made. Do you think there’s a film
there?
– Alan Vint
I’m not a producer. But I’d imagine that over the years
people have taken options on treatments for a Mama Cass picture. And they all
hit the same wall. “After all, didn’t Charlize double her weight to win that
Oscar?” “Yeah, but she didn’t have to die on camera with food on her mouth.”
Oh. I know, that’s not supposed to be true. But movies are fables, and in this
case the fable is already there.
-------------------
2/16/25
Greil - My favourite moment among many in A
Complete Unknown is between Dylan and Baez, right after Baez asks
Dylan to play “Blowin’ in the Wind” for her and she joins in halfway through
(paraphrasing).
Baez: “So that’s...what?”
Dylan: “I don’t know.”
I thought that beautifully captured the template for the entire film—people
reacting to Dylan, trying to process what they were hearing—and something
fundamental about the mystery of great art, the point where explanations aren’t
needed or even possible.
– Alan Vint
To me that’s weak dialogue, poor writing. The script asks
a question and then can’t think of an answer.
