Soundtrack of Your Life: Where Am I?

An occasional feature in which we mark the songs of our relative youth as played over public muzak systems and beyond.

A famous New Yorker profile of Bill Bradley, during his Princeton basketball days, introduced the concept of a self-awareness about one's place in the world at a specific moment of time. Bradley, speaking about court command, referred to it as a "sense of where you are." It would be a better world if more people, more often, had a sense of where they are, in relation to others. And that's not a COVID thing. It's a simple acknowledgment of others.

Sometimes, having that sense of where you are is a mundane wakeup call. That concept is pretty much the essence of this random series, which finds us reminded of our place in pop culture, now and long ago, usually while shopping. It drives home the long and winding road taken by me and by a particular song.

That's a long way of saying that I recently heard two songs of my (relative) youth in two (relatively) embarrassing places: Lowe's on a Sunday morning and Supercuts late on a Tuesday afternoon. That's two middle-age moments. There comes a time when you end up at Lowe's (because you are rehabbing a house) and Supercuts (countering the sticker shock of post-COVID price hikes and staff turnover at local barbershops) in the same week. And the alt-music scene -- aging as quickly as the rest of us -- played in the background.

Just because you have a sense of where you are doesn't mean you have a clue about why, at this particular moment in time, you are there.

Date: 20 September 2020

Place: Lowe's hardware store

Song:  "No Myth"

Artist: Michael Penn

Irony Matrix: 4.9 out of 10

Date: 22 September 2020

Place: Supercuts

Song:  "First Day of my Life"

Artist: Bright Eyes

Irony Matrix: 4.4 out of 10

That '70s Drift: Minds Blown

 

CREEM: AMERICA'S ONLY ROCK 'N' ROLL MAGAZINE (B) - This one is quick (75 minutes) and serviceable, an insider's fawning tribute to the hard-rock magazine of the 1970s that was home to Lester Bangs and other sons of Hunter Thompson and William Burroughs. The writer-director (Scott Crawford) and most of the producers (including talking head Jaan Uhelszki) are alums, so don't expect a hard-hitting Me-Too slant on the rampant celebration of the sexist, homophobic, drug-glorifying ways of the era. 

But this does give a good sense of the era, love it or not. Creem was the upstart middle-finger-waving bad boy that complemented the more effete ways of Rolling Stone magazine. And it rode its highs or crashed hard along with the fortunes of the insufferably blunt Bangs or the foul-mouthed, hard-partying owner, Barry Kramer, both of who would live to glimpse the dawn of the Reagan era. Speaking of blunt, the ex staffers are not shy about airing some very old dirty laundry. 

Dave Marsh was the star editor of the heyday before escaping with his sanity mid-decade for the relative peace and quiet of Rolling Stone and other ventures. He's still full of piss and vinegar while reboarding that rollercoaster. Uhelszki (with an assist from Gene Simmons) recalls her on-stage stunt with KISS (in full makeup). Others act like children of broken homes meekly speaking out decades later after the parents have died. Tributes pour in from R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe (who found in Creem a recognition of his own otherness); Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth), Chad Smith (Red Hot Chili Peppers); Jeff Ament (Pearl Jam); and a frazzled Kirk Hammett from Metallica. 

For better or worse, this was how we lived back then, and you'll either get a mild kick out of all that black-and-white footage, or you'll take a pass on yet another exit to Boomerville.

SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE (1972) (B-minus) - I'm under-educated in Kurt Vonnegut's novels, but I'm guessing that his mastery on the page is tough to translate to the screen. Here, veteran George Roy Hill (in between two little films called "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and "The Sting") is in full '70s swing, though this is less of a road trip than a head trip (which is its own kind of a road trip).

We follow Billy Pilgrim (Michael Sacks, who did not go on to have much of a career) as he time travels and hopscotches from his horrific experience as a WWII POW in Dresden during the bombing through to his death and beyond, to immortality on another planet with Valerie Perrine (playing Montana Wildhack). Hill is a skilled storyteller, but the whiplash this movie induces can be irritating. Not to mention Ron Leibman, chewing scenery from start to finish like a shark on a diet.

The message here is that we don't live in linear time but instead constantly in the now, which can be at any point in that timeline. That concept certainly helps deal mentally with not only our inevitable mortality but also with blotting out the horrors of unspeakable war crimes. Watching a film from 1972 allowed me to jump back in time and muse upon Perrine -- here comfortably and defiantly naked in a pair of randy scenes -- who would soon go on to break ground with her bare breasts on PBS in 1973's "Steambath," which I still associate with her and didn't mind hopscotching back to. Just another piece of that adolescent puzzle that either defines or distracts a person as he navigates the tracks of time.

New to the Queue

 Cooler by the lake ...

A documentary about an irresponsibly dangerous amusement venue from back in the day, "Class Action Park."

A documentary explores our addictions to social media with the help of those who helped create it, "The Social Dilemma."

A look at the artist who created the cartoon character Pepe the Frog, which became a symbol of hate, "Feels Good Man."

From Sean Durkin ("Martha Marcy May Marlene"), Jude Law and Carrie Coon dial it up for some family suspense in "The Nest."

Miranda July ("The Future") is back with more of her quintessential quirk, "Kajillionaire."

Tragedy Plus Time

 

LOOK BOTH WAYS (2006) - This gloomy but hopeful Australian drama earned an honorable mention on our list of the best films of 2000-09. It holds up well as a poor man's "Magnolia," featuring characters whose lives intertwine and who are at a crossroads, meditating on their station in life and specter of death.

Meryl Lee (Justine Clark) and Nick (William McInnes), who has just gotten a cancer diagnosis that he mostly keeps to himself, are brought together at the scene of a train-pedestrian fatality that was either an accident or a suicide. She witnessed it, and Nick covered it as a newspaper photographer along with reporter/columnist Andy (Anthony Hayes), who suspects more of these accidents than you think are really suicide by train. Andy, divorced with two kids, has just found out that his doctor girlfriend is pregnant, so he's in a foul mood. Meryl Lee and Nick bond over the recent loss of their fathers.

Writer-director Sarah Watt, who would die five years later of cancer at age 53, weaves the multiple storylines masterfully, and leavens the heavy theme of death with charming dry humor. Clark is a complex single woman, an artist who enters into this budding relationship gingerly, and McInnes and Hayes are at ease, whether moping or bantering. Everything unfolds over the course of a long, brutal weekend in which even the most tangential characters (like Nick's editor and the victim's widow) can break your heart. Extra points for pretty accurate depictions of the newspaper process.

AMERICAN PICKLE (C-minus) - Well, it's never a truly lost cause when Seth Rogen is involved in a project. He's reliable for a clever idea and a few good laughs. This riff on Jewish culture, though, truly comes across as a comedy skit expanded to excrutiating length (88 minutes), droning on until it loses all sense of humor. (In fact, it's based on a short story by Simon Rich, who adapted the screenplay -- and stretched the soup.)

Rogen plays dual roles -- schlubby app developer Ben Greenbaum and Ben's great-grandfather from the old country, Herschel, who died 100 years earlier in a vat of pickles, but who was miraculously preserved by the brine and who comes back to life when hipsters revive the old factory. Sounds silly, and it is, but the film gets credit for wringing one of its best laughs from just glossing over the ridiculous science that explain such a miracle. 

The initial interplay between the two Rogens -- tough, sensible old-world immigrant vs. slacker vidiotic millennial -- is fun for about 20 minutes. But then Rogen and Rich try to get deep and sentimental, and they barely manage to achieve mawkish. By the end you might be wondering if this is the same movie and why you are bothering. The ridiculousness turns from funny to forgettable. It's a concept in search of a story. Many of the best laughs (including Herschel assuming various pictures on a David Bowie poster are Ben's parents) are in the trailer. Start there, and maybe end there.

Besties

 

BANANA SPLIT (B+) - Hannah Marks is a gem. She co-wrote the slyly effective relationship film "After Everything," and she follows it up with a star vehicle for herself, a smart comedy about two teenagers falling into friendship despite the fact that they have dated the same guy in succession. 

Marks (as April) and Liana Liberato (as Clara) meet at a party after April is curious about her ex-boyfriend Nick's new girlfriend who just moved to town. Call me naive, but despite the apparent contrivance of a movie script, the pair give a moving and convincing effort at showing the depth of the female bonding process, despite the circumstances of keeping things from Nick (Dylan Sprouse). During their summer before starting college, they still are steeped in adolescent angst and attraction.

In the middle of all this is Nick's nerdy best friend, Ben, a comedic breath of fresh air from Luke Spencer Roberts, who plays exasperation well. The four main actors dig deep to lift this above classic teen drivel.

Marks collaborates again with co-writer Joey Power, though this time they hand off the directing duties to veteran cinematographer Benjamin Kasulke, who keeps things moving at a peppy clip. Marks makes good use of her time inventing a truly moving character, creating a real person behind her puppy-dog eyes and beyond her glib disaffection. She and her movie are clever, charming and funny.

THE TRIP TO GREECE (B) - The boys -- Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon -- are back with Michael Winterbottom for a fourth installment in their series of gastronomic adventures across Europe, starting with the original in England in 2010 and moving on to Italy and Spain. For the first time, all parties involved show a little weariness that can't simply be assigned to middle age.

Maybe having gotten the message from critics, the men cut way back on their competitive celebrity impressions and settle for some good ol' banter. That's a mixed blessing. The Michael Caine-offs of the past films grew overly familiar, but they were funny. An incidental Werner Herzog riff doesn't quite have the same zing. 

Once again, Brydon plays the character of the chaste family man, while Coogan gets his obligatory fling with a beautiful woman. (His open flirting with a cute young waitress (actress Soraya Mahalia Hatner) introduces a creep factor in the Me-Too era that arrived after the last installment.) Coogan also gets the gloomy dramatic role (he does, after all, boast seven BAFTAs, which we're reminded of constantly), this time dealing long-distance with an ailing father, which requires Coogan to interact a lot by phone with his "son," Joe (Tim Leach). 

If the witticisms have worn a bit, Winterbottom is like a kid with his camera. He laps up the scenery of a truly beautiful country, offering up quite a few stunning visuals. That helps quite a bit. Coogan and Brydon are still engaging company, but those of us new to middle age can get awfully grumpy. A picturesque setting can really lift a guy's mood.