The Screengrab : willie nelson

Phil's Film Faves, Part Two

Phil Nugent — Tue, 26 May 2009 19:00:00 GMT

STOP MAKING SENSE (1984) & SOMETHING WILD (1986)

Jonathan Demme's movies were essential to my having survived the 1980s. I had the closest thing I've ever had to a religious experience during the week when I saw Stop Making Sense five times; I've never seen another movie, including dance films and martial arts flicks, that conveyed to me so much of the pleasure of physicality, of moving your body, and there was something about seeing all those people joining their skills together and losing themselves in the shared experience of being simultaneously brainy, goofy, and hot that suggested everything I wanted to get, and never got, from college. The mixed-tape road trip of Something Wild, where the wild weekend gives way to a trial by fire that leaves the hero and heroine stronger, was everything I wanted out of the rest of life, including the handcuffs and the used-car-salesman cameo by John Waters.

RE-ANIMATOR (1985)

I've always loved horror movies, I've always loved comedy, and I've always loved the idea of comic horror midnight movies that go just far enough in the direction oftoo far. Maybe if more movies that light out in this direction got it right, it would matter less to me that Stuart Gordon got this one just right. But most of them don't.

DUCK SOUP (1933)

What I just said about midnight movies? It goes double for crackhouse-rat comedy.

SONGWRITER (1984)

This movie, starring Willie Nelson and Rip Torn, written by Bud Shrake, and directed by Alan Rudolph during those three weeks a decade when his meds are working, captures the spirit and flavor of Texas hipsterdom as it has always come across in the best of Nelson's music, Torn's acting, and Shrake's writing, and that's about as hip as things get in the South. I myself, a product of the Louisiana/Mississippi border, have spent about a month total in Texas my whole life, but am not above resorting to a contact high.

BEFORE SUNRISE (1995)

Can we talk? I don't get girls. Never have, never will. I miss signals, I misread situations, I don't know...I just don't get girls, okay? And if I may presume to speak for the losers of the world for a second, being one of those people who doesn't get anywhere with other people in that way can sometimes make it a sobering experience to sit in the dark watching a lot of movies in which couple effortlessly hook up. But if I ever saw a movie in which my own fantasy of the best way you could hook up with somebody, this is probably it. Two nice, smart people just run into each other, take a chance, and for as long as the movie is running, it pays off, only to end with a cliffhanger. The director, Richard Linklater, later resolved things with his sequel, Before Sunset, and I like it fine, but I think I may have enjoyed the nine intervening years of wondering even more.

I met Linklater once, not that he would remember. It was at a festival where he was showing his first movie, Slacker, and someone tried to introduce the two of us, and I actually, fairly elaborately snubbed him, because I'd heard about--hadn't seen--his movie and thought it sounded like a pile of shit. After snubbing him (and mortifying the person trying to make the introductions(, I walked away invisibly pinning a medal to my chest, and the last time I looked back at Linklater, he was smiling at me in a very nice way that I may only imagine seemed to say, "Gee, before I made a movie, this fellow would be one of the biggest jackasses I've ever met, but now, he wouldn't even make my personal top 500!" Maybe I don't deserve to get girls.

MAGNOLIA (1999)

I could get very personal here too, but I'll just say that I saw this movie at a moment when I very badly needed to see this movie. It is, of course, the movie that, of all P. T. Anderson's works, is the one most likely to get a shoe thrown at you if you sing its praises before a mixed audience. Both these facts probably have something to do with the fact that, while there are other movies of Anderson's that I think are better, his having made this one is the reason I'd be happy to take a bullet for him.

Billy Bob Thornton's Boxmasters Retreat from Canada; Radio Comments Made Band Member Sick

Phil Nugent — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 15:00:00 GMT

Last Friday, Billy Bob Thornton and his band the Boxmasters called an early end to their tour of Canada, where they've been opening for Willie Nelson. Last week, Thornton did his part for better relations between our two countries by getting pissy during a radio interview with CBC host Jian Ghomeshi, first playing mum because he felt that, by mentioning the fact that Thornton has a movie career, he had suggested that his music career is merely a "hobby", then opening up enough to say that Canadian audiences are too "reserved" and unresponsive to suit his rowdy ways. "We tend to play places where people throw things at each other and here they just sort of sit there," he told Ghomeshi, adding, "It's mashed potatoes with no gravy." Thursday night, the Boxmasters were greeted with the responsive audience of Thornton's dreams; the group was, reportedly, loudly booed, with a few shouts of "Here comes the gravy!"

The band subsequently dropped out of Nelson's final shows in Montreal and London, Ontario, with an explanatory note on Nelson's web saying that "several" crew members and one member of the band had been stricken with flu. The web site seemed confident that everyone would be in the pink of health and ready to resume full participation in the tour come Tuesday, when the Nelson show returns to the relative safety of Stamford, Connecticut. Presumably, if Thornton feels like sharing his views of Stamford audiences with some hardy local radio personality, he'll be beating potential interviewers off with a stick.

Video of the Day: Billy Bob Thornton Blames Canada for Lack of Gravy on His Mashed Potatoes

Phil Nugent — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 15:00:00 GMT

This week's international incident comes to us courtesy of Jian Ghomeshi, the apparently unflappable host of the daily arts program Q on CBC Radio One in Canada; the Boxcutters, a music group currently touring with Willie Nelson and Ray Price; and the Boxcutters' lead singer, drummer, and songwriter, Billy Bob Thornton, who gets sulky if you make passing mention of his side career in movies when he's there to talk about his goddamn music! The band stopped by the station for a live interview Wednesday morning; in the ensuing fracas, which started spreading across the Internet like kudzu yesterday, the talkier members of the band, who may possibly be unconvinced that their proceeds from their latest album, Modbilly, will leave them set for life, talked about the inspiration they have taken from such diverse sources as Buck Owens, Michael Nesmith, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, and Chad and Jeremy. However, Billy Bob, peeved that Ghomeshi had referred to his movie career in his introduction, chose to express his displeasure by claiming not to be too clear on how long he and the boys had been playing together, how they came to be touring with Willie Nelson, and whether or not he had ever almost pursued a professional baseball career. Thornton also seemed less than thrilled with Ghomeshi's description of his band's music as a combination of hillbilly with British invasion, which seems reasonable, and expressed a preference for the term "cosmic cowboy", which might actually be worse. For his part, Ghomeshi earned some kind of grace under pressure award just by not reaching over and yanking the soul patch off his guest's face.

Once Billy Bob did start talking, he managed to piss off the Canadian listening audience by referring to the audiences of the Great White North as "mashed potatoes with no gravy," which seemed to be his poetic way of saying that he was disappointed to play for people who didn't throw beer bottles at him for his trouble. Since Bily Bob was there to talk about his music, he might he annoyed with us for reporting on his travails at what's supposed to be a movie blog, so before you proceed to the clip, let's have a shared understanding that we're posting it here so that everyone can bask in the hardy tunesmith's passionate and heartfelt tribute to the recently deceased Famous Monsters of Filmland editor, Forrest J. Ackerman. Booga booga!

Screengrab's Favorite Movies About Music: Fiction Edition (Part Three)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 21:00:00 GMT

TRUE STORIES (1986)

In a recent interview on The Colbert Report, David Byrne admitted that edgy artists like himself often fear being normal and that while he’s “getting over it” now, there was a time when he was neurotic about enjoying ordinary things or being like everyone else. This brainy misfit’s ambivalence about the straight world enlivens the companion film of the 1986 Talking Heads album True Stories...or maybe the album was the companion to Byrne’s directorial debut about a small Texas town’s sesquicentennial “Celebration of Special-ness,” where the inhabitants (played by John Goodman, Swoosie Kurtz and fellow misfit Spalding Gray, among others) are viewed from a bemused, extraterrestrial distance by Byrne’s Our Town-ish narrator, who may or may not find the “common folk” around him fascinating, ridiculous, contemptible, endearing, inspiring and/or weirder than himself. It perhaps speaks to Byrne’s singular creative vision that I’ve never really seen another movie quite like True Stories, what with its largely plotless structure, catchy musical numbers (including the anthemic “Wild, Wild Life”) and dreamy visuals of late-night traffic stops, avant-garde fashions and a big stage in the middle of the desert where everyone, ultimately, seems welcome to fret and strut...unless the whole thing is really just an elaborate performance art put-on, full of sound and irony, signifying nothing.

THE HARDER THEY COME (1972)

The first feature made in Jamaica (by the late director Perry Henzell) stars Jimmy Cliff as an aspiring pop star who winds up on the run with a gun in his hand, which turns out to be an excellent career move. This movie didn't attract much attention at first when it opened in the States, but when it hit as a long-running midnight movie, its influence turned out to be lasting and deep, especially when its soundtrack album, featuring classics by the Maytals, the Melodians, and Desmond Dekker as well as four new songs by Cliff, instantly became everybody's favorite compact reggae sampler. The film itself captures a world never before seen on film: a sun-baked lanscape where people who dress in bright Pop-Art colors live in squalid poverty row landscapes, so that it makes a kind of sense that someone could cross over from aspiring singer to public enemy number one as easily as crossing the street.

PAYDAY (1973)

Rip Torn makes the most of his rare starring role as Maury Dann, a country music celebrity crossing the country one low-rent concert date at a time in a two-car caravan. Directed by Daryl Duke from an original script by the novelist Don Carpenter, this movie doesn't exactly celebrate music or the musician's life: nobody would have bought the soundtrack album, if the studio had bothered to release one. But it's just about peerless as a snapshot of the second- or third-tier musician's life at its least rewarding. The expert supporting cast includes one of the long-lost great character actresses of the '70s, Ahna Capri, perfectly cast as the one mistress likely to not only stand up to Torn but finally push him too far.

SONGWRITER (1984)

Bud Shrake, the sportswriter and journalist who later co-wrote Willie Nelson's autobiography, cooked up this script for Nelson and Kris Kristofferson to star in; a comic celebration of the sagacity and self-preservation skills of a uniquely self-reliant and unstable race of people, it looks as if Shrake and his buds had read one too many references in the music press to country music "outlaws" and thought, You want outlaws, I'll give you outlaws. The film is also graced with one of the funniest of Rip Torn's wild man turns as a bearded music promoter who is not above armed robbery when his attempts to collect all the money in the surrounding area through less threatening means of persuasion prove unsuccessful. The only way this movie could be more entertaining would be if Torn's character had been able to face off against his character from Payday in a steel cage death match.

BANDWAGON (1996)

Ah, to be young and naive and forming a band for the first time! John Schultz, who has made nothing but bottom-feeding Hollywood dreck ever since, directed this film about young people who are a little naive and the band they form and take on the road. Kevin "If I'm In It, It Debuted At Sundance" Corrigan and Doug "Lead Singer of the Connells" MacMillan are about as close as this movie gets to having name actors. It has the common problems of many a little debut indie film, such as amateurish actors and an occasional loss of focus. These are all forgiveable sins. The way that Schultz captures the feeling of the road is inspired and obviously the result of hard-earned wisdom. There's the initial thrill, then the frustration of playing gigs for not quite enough people to call your audience a "handful," the sheer pleasure of making music, the growing realization that you can't stand some of the people you make music with, the tedium, the smell, the damn van that keeps breaking down, the poverty, the ashtrays, floors, dirty clothes, and filthy jokes. Makes one grow nostalgic, is what it does. Schultz was the original drummer of The Connells, and I realize that I should explain that The Connells were (or are? Are they still a going concern?) a North Carolina-based indie rock band who produced a fine string of power pop albums throughout the '80s and into the '90s. I don't think it's a stretch to say that Bandwagon is the result of his time on the road with his band. Anyway, the plot is simple: Tony has written some songs about a girl named Ann. Tony and some acquaintances put a band together and go on tour. A record label is interested in them, but they are a little dubious. There's some lovely details along the way, such as Tony's stage fright, which leads him to play with his back to the audience. When Corrigan's character Wynn gets upset, he wants to go fishing, anywhere and now. The purely symbolic act of placing a guitar on train tracks has the sudden and obvious conclusion. When Ann shows up, she likes Tony's most obnoxious bandmate more than him. Great stuff, and sadly hard-to-find at the moment.

Click Here For Part One, Two, Four & Five

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent, Hayden Childs

The Rep Report: September 5--10

Phil Nugent — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 20:30:00 GMT

NEW YORK: Anthology Film Archives commences its salute to Jerry Schatzberg tonight with screenings of the director's firat features, the 1970 alienation-fest Puzzle of a Downfall Child (starring Faye Dunway) and the 1971 The Panic in Needle Park, costarring Al Pacino, in his first starring role, and Kitty Winn as a young couple of heroin addicts. Schatzberg, who seems to be more or less retired, had an erratic career, and to his other problems, he'll probably have at least one chance during his personal appearance at this retrospective to patiently explain that, no, he isn't Joel Schumacher. But as a filmmaker he had a broad curiosity about different milieus and kinds of characters, and his pictures have generally had texture and weight. Needle Park retains interest as a deep quaff of '70s New York at its most confoundingly ungovernable, and Schatzberg can boast of having directed Pacino in both his last performance before The Godfather made him a star and the first picture he made afterwards, the 1973 road movie Scarecrow co-starring Gene Hackman. When Schatzberg made the New York-set Street Smart fifteen years after Needle Park, he had to shoot it in Toronto, but once again he helped launch the movie career of a major star, this time someone who'd been working for decades and would turn fifty the year the picture was released: just a couple of years earlier, Morgan Freeman had been reduced to holding down a job on Another World, but his terrifying performance as a pimp who emerges like a monster from the id to turn pampered reporter Christopher Reeve's life into a pretzel earned him his first Academy Award nomination and a long-belated measure of the industry stature he'd long deserved. Also showing: Honeysuckle Rose, a 1980 country music remake of Intermezzo starring Willie Nelson and Dyan Cannon, which introduced Willie's theme song "On the Road Again," and "Reunion," a sadly overlooked 1989 film starring Jason Robards, with a screenplay by Harold Pinter.

Raindance, the British company responsible for the Raindance Film Festival (which opens October 7, by the way), is bringing its educational program to the New York Film Academy. Aspiring filmmakers looking to drop a few bucks towards their futures might want to check out Elliot Grove's "99 MInute Film School" on Tuesday, September 9 and the "Lo to No Budget Filmmaking" seminar on the weekend of September 13 and 14, which bears a recommendation blurb from director Christopher Nolan, whose most recent film, The Dark Knight, has been well-received. This marks the first time the Raindance people's first venture into America, and it might be nice if it wasn't their last, so for God's sake, behave yourselves.

LOS ANGELES: Every Thursday in September, the Silent Movie Theater hosts "Word Is Born: Hip Hop at the Movies, 1979-1984". Included are Hollywood exploitation jobs such as Breakin' and Beat Street, the solid period documentary Style Wars, and on September 25, Beat This! Hip Hop Rarities, winner of this month's Rep Report Award for Promotional Copy That We Have No Intention of Trying to Re-Word: " We've dug even deeper for our closeout night, and we're bringing you some of the rarest cuts in a fantastic mix of rarities from the old-school hip-hop era. Watch them one after the other, obscure odds and ends from the Golden Age, ending with Beat This! A Hip-Hop History! Yup! It’s the history of hip-hop! And it was made in 1984! And it’s all in rhyme! And it’s vocoderized by Afrika Bambaataa! And it’s sci-fi! And it stars BS-ing punk-impresario-turned-double-dutch-promoter Malcolm McLaren in all his patronizing glory! And it was made for Granada TV! And they forced director Dick Fontaine to slip in McLaren against his will, but he couldn’t do anything about it!"

SAN FRANCISCO: Sean McCourt of the Bay Guardian has the dirt on this weekend's Lebowski Fest.

NORTH CAROLINA: The tenth Hi Mom! Film Festival, festuring an international, family-friendly selection of fifty-one animated and live-action shorts, runs this weekend starting tonight, at the Art Center in Carborro. Please note that the outdoor screenings planned for Chapel Hill have been moved indoors due to a "strong threat of rain."

Screengrab Review: “Surfer, Dude”

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 15:00:00 GMT

It’s not always a pretty sight when documentary filmmakers make the leap to fictional features. See – or rather, do whatever you can to avoid seeing – Michael Moore’s Canadian Bacon and Errol Morris’s The Dark Wind. As I implied in this post yesterday, I’m a big fan of S.R. Bindler’s documentary Hands on a Hard Body. Even so, I wasn’t exactly stoked to learn his follow-up (nearly a decade later) would be a surfing movie starring The Shirtless One, Matthew McConaughey. I dunno, maybe it’s just because I watched the entire goofy-ass David Milch series John From Cincinnati, but there’s something about the whole mystical-spiritual aura surrounding surfing that makes otherwise talented people a little loopy.

Surfer, Dude definitely qualifies as loopy – even that comma in the title is a little too self-consciously quirky. McConaughey, a friend of Bindler’s since high school, produced the film through his production company j.k. livin and brought his essential dudeness aboard in the lead role of Steve Addington, a free-spirited “soul surfer” who lives for the waves. Upon returning to Malibu from his latest world tour, Addington is informed by his manager (Woody Harrelson) that his board and shorts sponsorship contracts have been sold to Eddie Zarno, a former surfer turned multimedia mogul. Zarno has big plans for Addington, including a role in a beach house reality series and a virtual reality videogame bearing his image.

Addington’s “not feelin’ it.” He’s an all-natural dude and all he needs is his friends, his weed and his waves. “I’m not some assclown in a green room. I’m a surfer, dude!” Despite his manager’s warnings that cash is in short supply, Addington wants nothing to do with the digital world. His spiritual crisis arrives when the waves disappear. As the days pass with no surf to ride, he goes on a fast (including the ganja), but can he remain true to himself and resist selling out to the Man? Duuuuude.

Surfer, Dude has a green theme in more ways than one – in addition to McConaughey and Harrelson, Willie Nelson is on hand as a goat farmer to complete the trinity of Texas stoner icons. But the movie is so lightweight, it’s hard to invest too heavily in Addington’s existential dilemma. It’s a vanity project to the core, an ode to its producer-star in all his toned-and-tanned golden glory. With his lazy honeydew drawl, allergy to shirts and “awright awright awright” party-guy vibe in full effect, McConaughey isn’t playing a character so much as his US magazine persona come to life. His wink and nod towards his lovable rogue image recalls the Burt Reynolds of the late 70s, and that’s one way of looking at this movie: it’s Smokey and the Bandit with surfboards.

Related:
Woody Harrelson Eats Your Brains
Trailer Review: Fool's Gold

America the Beautiful: 15 Movies That Show What's RIGHT With U.S. (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 20:00:00 GMT

It’s easy to criticize America (and, in fact, we did...just last week, with our list of movies showing what’s wrong with the U.S.). Yet, as we fire up the grills and sparklers for the long Independence Day weekend, it’s worth noting that, for all the flaws of our presidents, our corporations and ourselves, we’ve still managed to accomplish some amazing things: declaring independence, defeating the Nazis, putting a man on the moon, Wall*E, etc.

So, just for a moment, let's all put down those copies of Mother Jones and the Noam Chomsky Reader, switch off Fox News and simply join together in commemorating fifteen films that remind us why the United States is still a nation worth celebrating.

1776 (1972)

Let’s start at the very beginning, shall we? Sure, Stephen Dillane, Tom Wilkinson and Paul Giamatti were good as Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin and the eponymous revolutionary in HBO’s recent miniseries, John Adams... but in my book, Ken “The White Shadow” Howard, Howard Da Silva and William “K.I.T.T.” Daniels’ definitive Adams have always been the Founding Fathers to beat. This cinematic adaptation of the Tony-award winning musical by Sherman Edwards and Peter Stone pumps blood (and catchy showtunes!) into the hoary old high school history class tale of the founding of America while actually managing to generate suspense about whether the Declaration of Independence will actually get signed by vividly detailing the players and dueling agendas (North vs. South, entitled conservatives vs. scrappy progressives, same as it ever was) involved in Philadelphia’s pressure cooker Second Continental Congress of 1776. With all the story’s passion and pathos (Adams’ tender affection for his truly better half, Abigail, Jefferson’s overpowering lust for his new bride, Martha, the bloody cost of independence paid by the young soldiers in the fields of Lexington and Concord), the songs (“Yours, Yours, Yours”, “He Plays the Violin,” the heartbreaking “Momma Look Sharp,” etc.) are never intrusive and fit quite nicely into the plot...including “Cool, Considerate Men” (sung by the movie’s conservative characters) which then-President Nixon wanted producer Jack Warner to remove from the movie for its clear-eyed assessment of the once and future G.O.P. and its mysterious appeal to voters whose interests it barely pretends to represent: “...don’t forget that most men without property would rather protect the possibility of becoming rich than face the reality of being poor...and that is why they will follow us to the right, ever to the right, never to the left, forever to the right!” And, while the film clearly sides with the progressives, it’s fairly even-handed in its presentation of the struggle for true independence in America. When Massachusetts homeboy Adams insists on anti-slavery language in the Declaration of Independence, John Cullum’s conservative South Carolina delegate Edward Rutledge slaps back at his smug liberal hypocrisy by pointing out New England’s intimate financial stake in the shipping industry that made the slave trade possible. Ultimately, of course, the warring factions manage to put aside their differences just long enough to form a more perfect union, birthing the nation and establishing a pattern of governance and congressional behavior that continues to this day: deadlock, division, short-sighted compromise and, every now and then, an inspiring historical moment. Happy Birthday, America!

YANKEE DOODLE DANDY (1942)

Okay, so it's pretty hokey. And yeah, it lacks the subtlety and nuance of many of the other films on this list. And sure, we'll even go as far as to say that Yankee Doodle Dandy – the 1942 biopic of George M. Cohan, starring an irrepressible James Cagney – is a bit jingoistic. But its rambunctious pro-American sentiment, at least, isn't at anyone else's expense: it's the story of a guy who thinks America is just swell, gosh darn it, and he'll be hanged if he isn't gonna let everybody know how swell it is. Indeed, it's even aware of its flag-waving nature, and revels in it: during his own lifetime, after all, Cohan was accused of being overly rah-rah, and responded by writing a serious, issues-driven play – which completely bombed. Audiences didn't want Cohan to be socially relevant. They wanted him to be a singing, dancing dynamo who celebrated the best things about their culture, so that's what he delivered; and Yankee Doodle Dandy does the same. Never a great hoofer (especially in a role originally intended for Fred Astaire) or the world's best singer, Cagney compensates for what he lacks in technical prowess with indefatigable energy, enthusiasm, and charisma. Working with the notoriously strict Casablanca director Michael Curtiz, Cagney managed to add a number of improvised bits that are, today, remembered fondly as some of the movie's best moments. Yankee Doodle Dandy is a big, dumb, fun movie that does nothing but put a gifted performer with a goofy smile in front of our faces to wave the flag for an hour, but sometimes, that's just what you need.

SONGWRITER (1984)

On any worthwhile list of the most beloved living Americans, you'd find Willie Nelson's name somewhere near the top. Beware false prophets claiming to be uniters, not dividers; it was Willie who brought together the hippies, the rednecks, the bikers and the good ol' boys when he moved to Austin in the '70s and helped launch the cosmic cowboy movement. He's the only longhaired stoner your grandmother loves, and the one guy we'd forgive for singing "To All the Girls I've Loved Before" without a second thought. There can be no more quintessentially American story than Willie's, and that makes Songwriter, a freewheeling take on the red-headed stranger's legend penned by Nelson biographer Bud Shrake, a quintessentially American – not to mention criminally under-appreciated – movie. One-time Altman protégé Alan Rudolph actually bests his mentor for once; with all due respect to Nashville, found elsewhere on this list, Songwriter is a warmer, wittier and wiser take on the country music scene and its denizens. Willie plays Doc Jenkins, a country superstar with no financial acumen but a genius for exploiting loopholes (such as playing multiple instruments on a record by a supposed 11-piece supergroup and collecting all the extra paychecks). His nemesis is Rodeo Rocky, a Chicago wiseguy in Nashville drag who has swindled Doc out of his copyrights. A showdown looms, but as Doc's erstwhile partner Blackie Buck (Kris Kristofferson) says, "I'm puttin' my money on a con man gypsy badass true blue legendary bandit hero. And when it's all over they can say he did it for the love, but he was not above the money." Con movies too often become mechanical exercises, but Songwriter is as relaxed and buoyant of spirit as a Willie Nelson concert on the Fourth of July.

THE MIRACLE OF MORGAN'S CREEK (1944)

The late Veronica Geng once wrote of the writer-director Preston Sturges that he "had a supreme gift for making people laugh without representing the world as better or worse than it is." Sturges saw America as a place where politics was crooked and rigged, business was crazy, and the few people who had any brains were liable to misplace them in the throes of passion. Yet his tone towards it all remained affectionate: he was a realist with a romantic streak who appreciated lunacy, corruption and chaos for their entertainment value and could forgive any thug his trespasses if he had a gaudy line of slang and a colorful croak with which to deliver it. (William Demarest never had a better patron.) Sturges knew that the little guy didn't always come out on top in America, but he felt that he should, and he used his movies to set about improving on reality. In this, his slapstick tribute to the virtues of the heartland as he saw them, Betty Hutton is Trudy Kockenlocker, a good small town girl whose response to the nation's call that our brave boys in uniform be shown the affection they deserve before heading overseas leaves her pregnant by some fellow whose face she can't remember, though she thinks his name might have been something like "Private Ratskywatsky." This development brings shame and disgrace on Trudy, her family, and her boyfriend Norval (Eddie Bracken), until Trudy gives birth to sextuplets, a feat that so impresses the newspapers and the clods who read them that she and Norval and proclaimed national heroes. Private Ratskywatsky could not be reached for comment.

WHY WE FIGHT (1942-1945)

Frank Capra, so the story goes, was terrified. The legendary director had seen a screening of Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will, and witnessed the power of cinema to sway the loyalties of an entire nation. Despite the attack on Pearl Harbor, America in the early days of World War II wasn't entirely certain, after the disaster of the First World War, that it wanted to be involved in another European conflict; Capra needed a way to counter the Nazi use of film as a propaganda medium, and convince a largely isolationist nation that this was a war worth fighting. His solution, produced in conjunction with the United States government, was Why We Fight. A series of seven documentaries (most about an hour long and initially targeted at American military men before their runaway popularity demanded they be shown to a receptive civilian audience as well), Why We Fight examined great battles, war crimes, and political differences between the democratic Allies and the fascist Axis. It was composed largely of stock footage, brilliantly edited together by Academy Award winner William Hornbeck, and enhanced by animations provided by Walt Disney Studios. The Why We Fight series is undoubtedly propaganda – it makes no pretense towards fairness or balance, contains more than a few factual distortions, and is meant to stir up the feelings of an entire nation in favor of a devastating war – but it is propaganda of the best kind, which helped the country understand that there were real humanitarian reasons for opposing Germany and Japan. One of the most celebrated works of filmmaking in American history, Why We Fight still has the power to stir the spirit today. Ironically, in a time when America has largely abandoned the moral leadership it carried in the Second World War, the documentary lent its name to another (2005) film which profoundly questioned our militaristic bent, but nothing can distract from the power and purpose of the original, which shows the American fighting spirit at its very best.

Click here for Part Two and Part Three

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Leonard Pierce, Scott Von Doviak, Phil Nugent

I.R.S. to Wesley Snipes: "I Got Your Blade Trinity Right Here, Pal!"

Phil Nugent — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 15:04:00 GMT

If, like some of us, you have fond memories of Nino Brown and White Men Can't Jump, then today wouldn't be the worst day to go to Ocala, Florida, and hang out in front of the courthouse holding a sign reading "Free Wesley Snipes!" As noted here previously, Snipes, who in the Blade movies worked so hard to rid Los Angeles of blood-sucking vampires [insert joke here], but who has been increasingly M.I.A. in Hollywood, is facing off against an enemy that might have made even Dracula blanch: the Internal Revenue Service. Snipes, who has been charged with attempting to defraud the government, goes on trial today. The talented and charismatic actor, who was once described by critic Elvis Mitchell as looking "so chiseled that his six-pack abs look stocked with 16-ounce cans," appears to have been taking his tax advice from Willie Nelson, or perhaps at a seance where he was able to consult with the spirit of Gordon Kahl. Snipes is said to have simply stopped paying taxes for six years starting in 1999, and is also charged with filing a false claim for a seven million dollar refund in 1997. (He is also said to have written the I.R.S. a total of fourteen million dollars in rubber checks.) Snipes's position is that he doesn't owe the government squat, and to back that up, he's cited "the 861 position." This, as David Kay Johnston explains in The New York Times, is not a direct-to-video sequel to Passenger 57 but a crackpot theory that's been gaining traction in tax deniers' culture: "Adherents say a regulation applying the 861 provision does not list wages as taxable, though it does say that 'compensation for services' is taxable. The courts have uniformly rejected all such theories, and eight people have been sentenced to prison after not paying taxes based on the 861 argument."

However, in a few recent high-profile cases, juries looking to side with the little guy against big gummint have frustrated the courts by turning tax deniers loose. It's hard to imagine the steroid-addled gargantua who might regard Wesley Snipes as a little guy, but he does have his celebrity on his side, and because of that, the trial has the potential to attract unprecedented attention to the tax deniers' movement. J. J. MacNab, a Maryland insurance analyst who works on tax denial cases, told the Times that if Snipes emerges victorious, the case "will get more press and attention than any other victory by the tax deniers, and the growth in new members will be exponential.” As the aptly named MacNab points out, the star is a pioneering tax denier in another way: "“Snipes is already drawing whole new demographics to the movement. Tax protesters used to be white, 50 or older, blue-collar, rural and often connected to racist movements, but Snipes is young, urban and famous.” (Snipes also has connections to a group called the Nuwaubians, "a quasi-religious sect of black Americans who promote antigovernment theories.") Sitting in the dock with Snipes are his tax advisers, Douglas Rosile, who lost his accounting license ten years ago, and Eddie Kahn, who "has served prison time for tax crimes". Not for nothing, but my sister does my taxes for me for free, and so far she's managed to keep me out of prison, to the general astonishment of the rest of the family. I'm sure she'd do Wesley's for him, in exchange for his agreeing to come to the house sometime in full costume to scare her kids.

Take Five: Mockumentaries

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 20:45:00 GMT

It can't have been long after the first documentary film was made that some enterprising wise-ass with a cut-rate kinetoscope hit upon the idea of making a fake documentary. After all, since it's an age-old comedy trope that reality always outstrips satire, it only makes sense to create satire that apes reality as closely as possible. Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story opens wide this weekend, and there's plenty of reasons to believe it'll be a fine entry into the mockumentary canon; it's directed by Jake Kasdan, co-written by the red-hot Judd Apatow, and stars the talented and eminently likable John C. Reilly (as well as a boatload of potentially amusing guest stars, including Jack White as Elvis, Frankie Muniz as Buddy Holly, and, as the Beatles, Jack Black, Paul Rudd, Justin Long, and Jason Schwartzman!). We figured it might be a good time to bring up some of our other favorite pseudo-documentaries, and, as an extra challenge, do it without mentioning any of the films of a certain Mr. Christopher Guest. (To top it all off, I'm not even going to discuss Albert Brooks' amazing Real Life. Well, except right then.)

THE RUTLES: ALL YOU NEED IS CASH (1978)

Yes, Screengrab readers, there actually was a time when goofing on the Beatles wasn't the most played-out thing a human being could do! That time was about thirty years ago, when Monty Python alum Eric Idle penned, starred in, and co-directed this made-for-TV movie about the rise and decline of the Prefab Four, the most famous band ever to come out of Rutland. George Harrison liked it enough to funnel some money into producing the film, even though he's savagely parodied as Stig O'Hara, the group's dullest member, who doesn't appear to speak any English, accidentally sues himself, and is eventually replaced by a wax dummy. It features a few other Python members as well as some Not-Ready-for-Prime-Time SNL alums — the only filmed collaboration between the two groups — and as such, contains more than its share of hilarious dialogue and situations. What really elevates it above the level of standard rock 'n' roll pseudo-documentary is the music, written entirely by co-star (and former Bonzo Dog Band front man) Neil Innes. The songs so closely resemble Beatles originals that it's easy to miss the absurdly funny lyrics.

BOB ROBERTS (1992)

Tim Robbins' mockumentary about the rise of a right-wing demagogue who rises to fame on the strength of a bunch of pseudo-populist folk hits directed at the underclass was a labor of love, growing out of his sincere liberal political beliefs and his fear of the then-growing power of conservative radio talk shows. Sincerity and deeply held beliefs, though, can be death to comedy, and the worst parts of Bob Roberts are the ones where he tips his hand too much or allows his characters to devolve into one-dimensional caricatures, whether on the left or the right. But it's still a very worthwhile film, with a smart script, some excellent and sure-handed direction, and a few terrific performances and cameos from the likes of Gore Vidal and John Cusack. Robbins wrote the Bob Roberts songs himself, and they're catchy enough to make you believe that they could actually catch the popular imagination, though they play like parody, and whoever heard of a right-wing folksinger, anyway? Also of interest, if for no other reason than its prescience, is Alan Rickman as a Karl-Rove-like figure.

FEAR OF A BLACK HAT (1994)

As the East Coast-West Coast wars heated up and gangsta rap swept the nation, fans were waiting for just the right man to come along and make the quinessential hip-hop mockumentary. As it happened, they got two — but while Chris Rock's CB4 was the bigger hit, Rusty Cundieff's Fear of a Black Hat was the better film. Universally broad in its targets, merciless in its self-parody (particularly biting are the scenes where Cundieff's Ice Cold attempts ham-handed political justifications for his bottom-drawer lyrics: "See, the butt is like society..."), and dead-on in its use of songs that cleverly mirror then-popular hip-hop trends, from g-funk to Native Tongues to Miami bass, it's the best satirical treatment of the rap world to come along so far. It's not perfect; it goes on about a half hour too long, and some of its targets are ridiculously dated (how much comic mileage can you get out of making fun of Kriss Kross?), but it's still worth seeing, and the three lead actors — Cundieff, Mark Christopher Lawrence as the goofy mystic Tone Def, and a coked-up, paranoid Larry B. Scott as Tasty Taste — are pitch-perfect in their roles.

DILL SCALLION (1999)

Every other musical genre seems to get its own fake documentary, so why shouldn't country? Well, possibly because country so often plays as self-parody. Or maybe because it would be almost impossible to top Henry Gibson as Haven Hamilton in Nashville. Still, Jordan Brady's Dill Scallion gives it the ol' dropped-out-of-grade-school try, and is carried for quite a while by a charismatic lead performance by Billy Burke. Some of the gags are real killers (Dill's producer, played by Henry Winkler, strives to create a "barn of sound", and his signature dance requires him to dislocate his own ankle); some are subtler jokes that require a fairly intimate knowledge of country history; and others are just flat-out failures. But the songs (by Sheryl Crow, of all people) work quite well, and there are a ton of winning cameos — everyone from Willie Nelson to Jason Priestley, who's truly funny as the amusingly named Jo Joe Hicks. At its best when it's smart and self-referential and at its worst when it takes easy laugh-at-the-hillbillies cheap shots, Dill Scallion is only half a good movie, but it's a pretty good half-a-movie.

IT'S ALL GONE PETE TONG (2004)

Attempting to do for the world of DJ culture what This is Spinal Tap did for metal, Michael Dowse's It's All Gone Pete Tong (the phrase is rhyming slang for "it's all gone wrong") scores largely on the strength of some blindingly funny dialogue and a handful of near-perfect performances. Paul Kaye is both ridiculous and hilarious as DJ Frankie Wilde, whose stellar career is derailed when he starts to go deaf, and Neil Maskell nearly steals the movie as a callous record company executive. The movie goes off the rails with a few obvious jokes and a detour, late in its run time, into taking itself a bit too seriously, but it's worth watching for the comedic moments that score, an outstanding score (including a few songs by the actual Pete Tong), and a refusal to tip its hand to the bitter end.