Pixies and "Old Joy"

Originally posted November 2006

These movies come and go at the Guild Cinema, and I'm beginning to think that my top-10 list for the year could come just from the local art house's '06 slate, starting with "The World" back in January.

In the past few weeks, the films "Old Joy" and "Loud Quiet Loud: A Film About the Pixies" have hit close to home, even though they are two of the most laconic, uneventful movies you'll ever see. In the manner of the recent "49 Up," they are about people my age, or nearly so, who are settling into their skin, realizing that, for better or worse, this is your life.

As I watched the Pixies movie about their 2004 reunion tour, I was reminded of the Beatles. Running hot for six years; four people outgrowing each other; creative tension between the two songwriters. And the music is that good. Few bands nailed just about every song straight on for six years like the Pixies and Beatles did.

The mini-review of "Loud Quiet Loud" we ran recently (from the band's hometown Boston Globe) faulted the film for being tedious and uneventful. But it was the movie's quietest moments that were some of the most powerful. The four of them sitting in a room without speaking. Kim Deal (or was it twin sister Kelley?) doing needlepoint on the porch of their home in Dayton, Ohio.

We see Deal struggle mightily a year into sobriety (chain-smoking and slamming nonalcoholic beers day and night). Black Francis and Joey Santiago adapt to sudden fatherhood and the separation from their new families. Drummer David Lovering deals with his ailing father. One of the four is clearly having a nervous breakdown.

The Pixies were the poster children for the explosion of diverse popular music in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the time I call the Heyday of the Planet of Sound, before the co-opting of "alternative" music. I saw the Pixies live once, in 1991 at the Riviera Theater in Chicago. It was a jet ride of a show. Greg Kot, the great rock music critic of the Chicago Tribune, said the band members played as if their cars were double-parked outside. He meant that in a good way. It was a frantic show.

Apparently, though, these four people who reach sublime heights onstage don't have much in common and are all missing the communication gene. At the beginning of the film, during their first rehearsal in a dozen years, they can't remember how to start the song "Hey." Finally, Deal fetches an iPod to play the original version. Late in the movie, toward the end of the triumphant reunion tour, the band is sailing through "Hey," and the filmmakers flash back to old footage of the band as young 20-somethings. It's done in the melancholy style usually reserved for the now-dead. The boys have flowing hair. (One scene from the reunion tour shows the men shaving their heads; they all go shaved now to mask receding hairlines.) In the flashback, Deal doesn't have lines on her face — or any worries, it seems. (She and her sister, after years of substance abuse and weight gain, could easily pass for 55 now.) The old footage is poignant.

Then we return to the stage for the climax of the wildly popular tour. Black Francis hugs his bandmates as they leave the stage, but it seems like less of an emotional moment and more of a pat on the back for making their business venture a success (they all needed the money). They survived. They are flattered at the reaction from the fans. Maybe they know that that's all they should expect.

The members of the band still haven't learned how to talk to each other. Black Francis tells an interviewer for Rolling Stone magazine that he has demos ready for a Pixies album and that he's waiting for one of his bandmates to ask about booking studio time. But the passive-aggressive frontman is obviously incapable of just walking up to Joey or David or Kim and telling one of them directly.

That's just the way he is, apparently.

We find ourselves in our late 30s or early 40s and we realize we are hard-wired a certain way. This is who we are. This is who we are sharing our lives with; either mates or bandmates, songs or babies. We worship our youth and marvel at our energy and our accomplishments. We occasionally try to recapture moments, but it's easier if we just admire them from afar and write new songs.

The bleak drama "Old Joy" leaves us wondering which direction two estranged friends will head. One of them shares a memorable line: "Sorrow is nothing but worn-out joy."

And worn-out joy is joy just the same. It comes with implied hope. And it's what we pass among the people in our lives, often unspoken and unwritten.