John Phillip Law, 1937--2008

Phil Nugent — Thu, 15 May 2008 22:00:00 GMT

John Phillip Law has died at the age of 70. Six foot five with blond hair, blue eyes and finely crafted features, Law worked in New York theater in the early 1960s before breaking into Hollywood films as the romantic juvenile in Norman Jewison's 1966 comedy The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming. He would go on to appear in two megaton bombs directed by Otto Preminger, the Southern gothic Hurry Sundown the acid-testing comedy Skidoo, in which he played a hippie. That project turned out to be harbinger of the career to come, as was this quote from an interview Law gave in 1966: "I've had more kicks out of playing far-out things. It's like putting on a funny face and going out in front of people and going, 'yaaaaaa.' " He was about to have plenty of opportunities to put on his funny faces. In 1968, in one of his highest-profile roles, he appeared opposite Jane Fonda in Barbarella (1968), playing a blind but well-hung angel and wearing enormous, tacky-looking wings. He also starred in a failed 1971 film version of the Jacqueline Susann pulp bestseller The Love Machine and had the honor of being kissed on the lips by Rod Steiger in The Sergeant (1968). In 1974, he donned a turban to star in The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, one of the better later showcases for the stop-motion special effects of Ray Harryhausen.

Although he slipped far down from the A-list in Hollywood, Law kept working, on TV, in oddball low-budget genre films such as Night Train to Terror, and often in Europe, where he made such films as the 1967 spaghetti Western Death Rides a Horse with Lee Van Cleef. In recent years, he began to acquire a new fan base among new filmgoers who saw him as a key figure in the 1960s international cinema of the weird. (In 2001, Roman Coppola honored him as a living memento of that era by casting him in his directorial debut, CQ.) One movie that made a cult comeback through that particular pipeline is Diabolik (sometimes called Danger: Diabolik), a 1967 sci-fi comic-strip caper directed by Mario Bava, starring Law as a space-age super-cat burglar; it served as the inspiration for a Beastie Boys video (see below) and was the last film shown on Mystery Science Theater 3000. Law, a dedicated actor who was almost equally famous for his dedication to the Playboy mansion, could scarcely have asked for a more appropriate, and affectionate, tribute.

SXSW Review: "The Upsetter: The Life & Music of Lee 'Scratch' Perry"

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 16:45:00 GMT

Reggae, dub & ska are extremely popular musical genres with documentarians, and it can be hard to believe that any figure in Jamaican music hasn't already been covered in film to the point of oversaturation. This would seem to be especially true of Lee "Scratch" Perry, perhaps the towering figure of dub music and one of pop music's all-time mad geniuses. So influential in the world of Jamaican music is Perry that he's been featured in nearly every single film or television documentary about it, but amazingly enough, this is the first one to focus on him exclusively — a fact that's almost unbelievable given the reach of his five-decade career.

The Upsetter, written and directed by Ethan Higbee and Adam Bhala Lough, certainly can't be accused of not paying its subject the proper respect. The filmmakers are almost uncannily attuned to Perry's colossal reputation — to a fault, in fact: they treat Perry, whose appeal rests largely on a sly sense of humor and a reputation as a bit of a crazy, with a degree of whispering awe that verges on the reverential. While his contributions to the world of music certainly justify such treatment, treating Perry like a messenger of Jah kind of takes the fun out of his music. Higbee and Lough likewise don't really want us to think of Perry as nuts, as if his being nuts in any way detracts from the brilliance of his creations, and they go a bit out of their way to try and illustrate that he's just operating on some sort of higher spiritual plane. There's also the common problem of music documentaries: with a limited amount of screen time, you can't give too many minutes to the most appealing thing about them: their music. The Upsetter's 93-minute runtime is barely enough to cover one of Lee Perry's groundbreaking albums, and too much of it is handed over to big names like Paul McCartney and the Beastie Boys, who pontificate about how great Perry is at the expense of playing his actual music, which would prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Does this all mean that The Upsetter isn't worth seeing, however? Absolutely not. Whatever its other flaws — and, to be fair to Higbee and Lough, they stem more from the nature of music docs more than any inherent problem with their approach — it's still an hour and a half of absolutely fantastic music from one of the most unique talents in the business, and there's tons of rare and entertaining archival footage as well as more Lee Perry on camera than you'll ever see anywhere else. The pure joy, complexity and heaviness of the man's music alone makes this a movie worth seeing, and for all its reverence, it provides some nice insight into that music's architect as well.

The Screengrab : beastie boys

John Phillip Law, 1937--2008

SXSW Review: "The Upsetter: The Life & Music of Lee 'Scratch' Perry"