Post by petrolino on Oct 13, 2020 23:52:01 GMT
Transgressive Movies, The Sundial Revolution & Independent Community Spirit
'Total Confusion' - Minny Pops
The crooked, weaving pathway that connects "no wave" cinema to the independent film movement of the 1980s is only half the story when it comes to the rapid evolution of American punk cinema, though it does cover the entire time frame of the original punk cycle. It was during this fertile period of artistic innovation that you could go and see Lydia Lunch appearing in Beth B. & Scott B.'s drama 'Black Box' (1978) and then go see her again alongside Pat Place in Vivienne Dick's drama 'She Had Her Gun Ready' (1978). Around the same time, Amos Poe directed Patti Astor, Debbie Harry, Anya Phillips, the Cramps and the Erasers in the mystery 'The Foreigner' (1978) and James Nares directed Astor, Place, Arto Lindsay, John Lurie and Jennifer Miro in the historical drama 'Rome '78' (1978). Focusing on 1978 alone demonstrates how punk was always cinematic and wide-reaching in its intent and that it was heavily connected to guerrilla filmmaking from the get-go.
Debbie Harry & Anya Phillips
'Funny' - The Erasers
Transgressive cinema incorporates "no wave" cinema and is a more suitable journalistic (or literary) title to my mind. The idea of transgressive film was around long before punk cineastes got in on the act. Existing experimental, "midnight movie" directors like Paul Bartel, David Lynch, Paul Morrissey and John Waters became figureheads for the movement. The transgressive film movement also bled into the development of cyberpunk cinema, with Lizzie Borden directing Adele Bertei in the futuristic urban project 'Born In Flames' (1983) which features a rare performance in front of the camera from director Kathryn Bigelow.
Bertei was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, where she became a protege of Peter Laughner, but like so many punks from Ohio, she ventured east to New York where she became a member of the Contortions. Bertei went on to direct the erotic fetish film 'Secrets Of A Chambermaid' (2000) which was reportedly Hugh Hefner's favourite feature-length 'Playboy' production. Erotica remained an essential factor in punk expression, something exemplified by Lydia Lunch when she famously clung on to Henry Rollins' bulging junk and gave the well-hung J.G. Thirlwell (she called him "thrilwell") an earth-shaking blow job in Richard Kern's 'The Right Side Of My Brain' (1985).
Officer Elton John arrests the Ramones
'Shift The Blame' ~ Model Citizens
--- --- --- ---
The Sundance Effect
'The Incredible Crawling Eye' - Nervus Rex
I highlighted the work of Jim Jarmusch and Penelope Spheeris in America and Peter Greenaway and Alex Cox in the U K with my earlier posting, 'Rock And Roll High School & The Punk Revolution'. Here's a few additional points regarding punk culture and some of the filmmakers that steered the independent film revolution, a movement that coincided with the rise of the Sundance Film Festival which has been held annually in the state of Utah since 1984 {: the Sundance Institute was founded in 1981 :}.
"I was born in Cleveland, Ohio and spent the first seven years of my life there before moving to New York City with my family. My father was born and raised in Cleveland, and my mother in Omaha, Nebraska. The memories of those early years in Ohio are strong, perhaps because they are the impressions of a child who has not yet made intellectual sense of the place in which she lives. So every memory is very specific and tied to very sensory experiences of early childhood – the smell of wet leaves raked to the curb in the fall, the taste of honeysuckle sucked right from the bud, the low hanging winter sky …"
- Marisa Silver (director of 'Old Enough', winner of the 1st Grand Jury Prize : Dramatic at the 1984 Sundance Film Festival), Midwestern Gothic
01) Abel Ferrara and Spike Lee occupy a certain place within the New York underground. Ferrara was the punk who found himself being embraced by the hip hop movement. Lee was the hip-hopper who found himself being embraced by the punk movement. Ferrara unveiled the magisterial crime drama 'King Of New York' (1990) to open the 1990s. Lee responded in kind by directing arguably the greatest revisionist crime punk picture to close out the decade, the analytical crime melodrama 'Summer Of Sam' (1999). Tributes to Lee have been mounted at 'Afropunk' and 'Punk Rock Theory', while Lee himself has recently been shooting a film version of David Byrne's new stage show 'American Utopia' (2020).
"In Britain, he is regarded as a sensationalist lowlife whose films rely on gratuitous nudity, drug use and violence. His official debut, The Driller Killer, was actually his second movie. The first, Nine Lives of a Wet Pussy, was straightforward porn, starring his girlfriend, her friends and a hired cast of studs, one of whom had difficulty rising to the occasion. "It's bad enough paying a guy $200 to f*ck your girlfriend, then he can't get it up," Abel Ferrara says. The crew drew lots, and he lost, thus making his first appearance in front of the camera. When The Driller Killer arrived in Britain in 1982, straight to VHS without certification, it was cited by Mary Whitehouse as one of the "video nasties" corrupting our youth. It does, as advertised, show people being murdered with a power tool. It's also a vivid depiction of artistic alienation, full of evocative shots of New York, but that didn't matter to the Daily Mail.
Ferrara takes pride in his capacity to shock. "They used to have these charts of how many people were killed in a movie, how many curse words," he says. "Well, King of New York made Scarface look like Mary Poppins." The film has become a hip-hop favourite, partly because of the flamboyant terrorism waged by Christopher Walken, Laurence Fishburne and their gang."
Ferrara takes pride in his capacity to shock. "They used to have these charts of how many people were killed in a movie, how many curse words," he says. "Well, King of New York made Scarface look like Mary Poppins." The film has become a hip-hop favourite, partly because of the flamboyant terrorism waged by Christopher Walken, Laurence Fishburne and their gang."
- Andrew Purcell, The Guardian
Adrien Brody & John Leguizamo in 'Summer Of Sam'
David Byrne speaks with Seth Meyers
02) Friends and filmmakers Alexandre Rockwell and Steve Buscemi were hardcore scenesters in New York. Both men feel their days frequenting punk clubs have informed their artistic outlooks as well as leading to collaborations.
“Back in the day, being a filmmaker was like rock ’n’ roll. It felt exciting. We’d go to see punk music and hang out at the Mudd Club. I just felt like we were inventing the world with music and filmmaking. There weren’t tons of people that were doing it.
I called Jim (Jarmusch) on the phone after I saw ‘Permanent Midnight.’ I said, ‘Man, you gotta keep being a filmmaker,’ and he said, ‘No man, I want to play rock ’n’ roll.’ That was what it was like down there.”
- Alexandre Rockwell, IndieWire
'First Rock Star On The Moon' - The Brats
03) Tom DiCillo was another scenester. DiCillo's comedy 'Johnny Suede' (1991) has been called the final word in rockabilly punk and features Nick Cave as Freak Storm and Samuel Jackson as cool jazz B-Bop (his name, a nod to throwback artists Be-Bop Deluxe, who were embraced by British punks just as Mink DeVille were welcomed into the fold by America's punks). DiCillo himself makes an appearance in Susan Seidelman's punk staple 'Desperately Seeking Susan' (1985).
“Punk opened up the idea of possibilities and the idea that if they can do it themselves, we can do it ourselves. Many people feel they can’t make a film unless someone allows them to. The rules perpetuate that. ‘We won’t give the money unless you change your script, unless you da da da.’ Well, the punk movement said, ‘F*ck that. No one is going to allow me to do anything. I’ll do it if I want to do it.’ The same thing then affected the idea of independent film. A lot of people were shooting features in Super 8 and projecting them on the walls in bars. It was just that feeling of, ‘Don’t tell me a film has to be a certain way.’”
- Tom DiCillo, 'Shoot It! Hollywood Inc. And The Rising Of Independent Film'
Samuel Jackson in 'Johnny Suede'
04) Allison Anders co-directed the definitive cowpunk picture, 'Border Radio' (1987), with Dean Lent and longtime collaborator Kurt Voss. The cast includes members of X, the Flesh Eaters, the Blasters, Green On Red and the Divine Horsemen.
"You can’t expect other people to create drama for your life — they’re too busy creating it for themselves,” a punk groupie says at the conclusion of Border Radio. And the four reckless characters at the center of the film certainly manage to create plenty of drama for themselves. In the process, they paint a compelling picture of the Los Angeles punk-rock scene of the 1980s: what it was like on the inside — and what it was like inside the musicians’ heads.
Border Radio (1987) was the first feature by three UCLA film students: Allison Anders, Kurt Voss, and Dean Lent. The subsequent work of both Anders and Voss would resonate with echoes from Border Radio and its musical milieu. Anders’s Gas Food Lodging (1992), Mi vida loca (1993), Grace of My Heart (1996), Sugar Town (1999), and Things Behind the Sun (2001) all draw to some degree from music and pop culture. (She quotes her mentor Wim Wenders’s remark about making The Scarlet Letter: “There were no jukeboxes. I lost interest.”) Voss, who co-wrote and codirected Sugar Town, also wrote and directed Down & Out with the Dolls (2001), a fictional feature about an all-girl band; and in 2006, he was completing Ghost on the Highway, a documentary about Jeffrey Lee Pierce, the late vocalist for the key L.A. punk group the Gun Club.
The three filmmakers met at UCLA in the early eighties, after Anders and Voss had worked as production assistants on Wenders’s Paris, Texas. By that time, Anders and Voss, then a couple, were habitués of the L.A. club milieu; they favored the hard sound of such punk acts as X, the Blasters, the Flesh Eaters, the Gun Club, and Tex & the Horseheads. The neophyte writer-directors, who by 1983 had made a couple of short student films, formulated the idea of building an original script around a group of figures in the L.A. punk demimonde.
Border Radio — which takes its title, and no little script inspiration, from a Blasters song (sung on the soundtrack by Rank & File’s Tony Kinman) — was conceived as a straight film noir. Vestiges of that origin can be seen in the finished film. Its lead character bears the name Jeff Bailey, also the name of Robert Mitchum’s doomed character in Jacques Tourneur’s 1947 noir Out of the Past; its Mexican locations also reflect a key setting in that bleak picture. One sequence features a pedal-boat ride around the same Echo Park lagoon where Jack Nicholson’s J. J. Gittes does some surveillance in Roman Polanski’s 1974 neonoir Chinatown; Chinatown itself — a hotbed of L.A. punk action in the late seventies and early eighties — features prominently in another scene. Certainly, Border Radio’s heist-based plot and the multiple betrayals its central foursome inflict upon each other are the stuff of purest noir. But the film diverges from its source in its largely sunlit cinematography and its explosions of punk humor; Anders, Voss, and Lent also abandoned plans to kill off the film’s lead female character.
In casting their feature, the filmmakers turned to some able performers who were close at hand. The female lead was taken by Anders’s sister Luanna; her daughter was portrayed by Anders’s daughter Devon. Chris, Jeff’s spoiled, untrustworthy friend and roadie, was played by UCLA theater student Chris Shearer."
Border Radio (1987) was the first feature by three UCLA film students: Allison Anders, Kurt Voss, and Dean Lent. The subsequent work of both Anders and Voss would resonate with echoes from Border Radio and its musical milieu. Anders’s Gas Food Lodging (1992), Mi vida loca (1993), Grace of My Heart (1996), Sugar Town (1999), and Things Behind the Sun (2001) all draw to some degree from music and pop culture. (She quotes her mentor Wim Wenders’s remark about making The Scarlet Letter: “There were no jukeboxes. I lost interest.”) Voss, who co-wrote and codirected Sugar Town, also wrote and directed Down & Out with the Dolls (2001), a fictional feature about an all-girl band; and in 2006, he was completing Ghost on the Highway, a documentary about Jeffrey Lee Pierce, the late vocalist for the key L.A. punk group the Gun Club.
The three filmmakers met at UCLA in the early eighties, after Anders and Voss had worked as production assistants on Wenders’s Paris, Texas. By that time, Anders and Voss, then a couple, were habitués of the L.A. club milieu; they favored the hard sound of such punk acts as X, the Blasters, the Flesh Eaters, the Gun Club, and Tex & the Horseheads. The neophyte writer-directors, who by 1983 had made a couple of short student films, formulated the idea of building an original script around a group of figures in the L.A. punk demimonde.
Border Radio — which takes its title, and no little script inspiration, from a Blasters song (sung on the soundtrack by Rank & File’s Tony Kinman) — was conceived as a straight film noir. Vestiges of that origin can be seen in the finished film. Its lead character bears the name Jeff Bailey, also the name of Robert Mitchum’s doomed character in Jacques Tourneur’s 1947 noir Out of the Past; its Mexican locations also reflect a key setting in that bleak picture. One sequence features a pedal-boat ride around the same Echo Park lagoon where Jack Nicholson’s J. J. Gittes does some surveillance in Roman Polanski’s 1974 neonoir Chinatown; Chinatown itself — a hotbed of L.A. punk action in the late seventies and early eighties — features prominently in another scene. Certainly, Border Radio’s heist-based plot and the multiple betrayals its central foursome inflict upon each other are the stuff of purest noir. But the film diverges from its source in its largely sunlit cinematography and its explosions of punk humor; Anders, Voss, and Lent also abandoned plans to kill off the film’s lead female character.
In casting their feature, the filmmakers turned to some able performers who were close at hand. The female lead was taken by Anders’s sister Luanna; her daughter was portrayed by Anders’s daughter Devon. Chris, Jeff’s spoiled, untrustworthy friend and roadie, was played by UCLA theater student Chris Shearer."
- Chris Morris, The Criterion Collection
'Did You Get The Girl?' - Mumps
05) Todd Haynes was majorly influenced by punk early in his career. Like punk band Television, he also held an interest in the symbolist movement and French poets of the 19th century.
"Assassins: A Film Concerning Rimbaud - that’s one I can watch without squirming too much. There are some parts I find really lyrical, still. What I like about the film, and what it always was to me, is a story of translation: the way Rimbaud is appropriated by artists and writers, who almost covet him as their own. So a lot of the soundtrack is made of multiple voices reading translations of the same poem on top of each other, and in the original French as well — these highly mythologized moments in his work.
People will see the influence of (Rainer Werner) Fassbinder, for sure, including some freeze-frames, and a shot of a burning card straight out of Querelle. And there are other moments of experimentation or of me translating different influences. For example, after a shot of Verlaine f*cking Rimbaud, the camera pans over the room, very Laura Mulvey, very Peter Wollen, and then finds me and my then-boyfriend in this Fassbinder pose, blankly staring at this event on the bed. There’s step-framing and a lot of punk, and some Henry Miller, who was obsessed with Rimbaud, so he becomes a way to think about everyone’s over-identification with Rimbaud, mine included."
- Todd Haynes, Film Comment
Todd Haynes, Susan Norman & Todd Adams in 'He Once Was'
06) Gregg Araki has been called "punk cinema's boldest voice" and is the primary author of the 'Teen Apocalypse Trilogy', consisting of 'Totally F*cked Up' (1993), 'The Doom Generation' (1995) and 'Nowhere' (1997).
"Gregg Araki's films are the kind of guilty pleasures you don't actually have to feel guilty about. They tend to offer everything you'd want from a teen film — good-looking actors, shallow dialogue, angsty post-punk soundtracks — but without all the heterosexuality and clichéd endings. Instead, the director opts for nihilistic, disenfranchised characters (so much more relatable) and a resolutely queer approach. His most famous film, for example, is Mysterious Skin: the story of a small-town rent boy who first fell in love with a man who abused him at the age of eight.
Araki first made his name as a filmmaker in the 90s, emerging as part of the new queer cinema movement when his third feature, _The Living End—_the story of two HIV-positive fugitives — debuted at Sundance, in '92. He was banded together with Todd Haynes, Tom Kalin, and Rose Troche — filmmakers who shared his dedication to putting a more accurate portrayal of gay characters on cinema screens.
"It was very small, like a high school class," he remembers. Araki's in his 50s now, but he talks like a Valley Girl and doesn't look a day over 35. "Rick Linklater is another filmmaker — we have a very similar method of working, doing our own thing." He compares himself to Gus Van Sant, too — another art-house auteur for doomed Gen X. "We're similar in that we all have our own voice."
Araki first made his name as a filmmaker in the 90s, emerging as part of the new queer cinema movement when his third feature, _The Living End—_the story of two HIV-positive fugitives — debuted at Sundance, in '92. He was banded together with Todd Haynes, Tom Kalin, and Rose Troche — filmmakers who shared his dedication to putting a more accurate portrayal of gay characters on cinema screens.
"It was very small, like a high school class," he remembers. Araki's in his 50s now, but he talks like a Valley Girl and doesn't look a day over 35. "Rick Linklater is another filmmaker — we have a very similar method of working, doing our own thing." He compares himself to Gus Van Sant, too — another art-house auteur for doomed Gen X. "We're similar in that we all have our own voice."
- Amelia Abraham, VICE
'Wok N' Woll' - Milk 'N' Cookies
07) Film composer Carter Burwell and musician Miranda Stanton (aka. Miranda Dali) were members of experimental punk group, Thick Pigeon. Burwell has frequently worked with filmmaking brothers Ethan Coen & Joel Coen, as well as Spike Jonze who documented skate punk in the 1980s. Stanton played drums in the punk group CKM alongside bassist Kim Gordon (Sonic Youth); she also acted in several films directed by Jonathan Demme, including those for which independent New York filmmaker Nancy Savoca served as a production assistant.
"A highly respected independent filmmaker, Nancy Savoca spent the early part of her career learning the filmmaking ropes from such greats as John Sayles and Jonathan Demme. Her first feature film, True Love (1989), which she made in her late 20s, won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival."
- Monica Sirignano, The Free George
Melanie Griffith in 'Something Wild'
08) Filmmaker John Dahl played guitar in the Pugs, a punk band based in Montana. Dahl co-wrote the horror punk musical 'Here Come The Pugs' in his junior year at Montana State University, before directing his senior year film, 'The Death Mutants'.
"Here Come the Pugs - that was our junior year film. It was a very ambitious musical where we had this punk rock band and there was a disco maniac who was trying to take over in this small town. The conflict was live music versus records. It was fun. Our senior film was an 87-minute black-and-white horror film spoof called The Death Mutants, where a college professor accidentally radiated himself and turned three students into the death mutants, who were helping him build “the laser.” It was totally silly."
- John Dahl, Filmmaker
'Rats' - Tuff Darts
09) Seasoned punk drummer Cliff Martinez (The Dickies, Lydia Lunch, Red Hot Chill Peppers & The Weirdos) composed film music for director Steven Soderbergh, including the original score for his breakthrough feature, 'Sex, Lies, And Videotape' (1989).
"One of the reasons why I think virtual reality, as a narrative format, is never going to go beyond the short-form immersion space is because the bedrock of visual storytelling is the reverse angle. If you can't look into the eyes of the protagonist, you cannot hold people's attention for more than 15 minutes."
- Steven Soderbergh, Vulture
James Spader & Laura San Giacomo in 'Sex, Lies & Videotape'
10) Darren Aronofsky continues to identify with punk in interviews, having been quoted as saying 'Requiem For A Dream' (2000) and 'Mother!' (2017) are "punk films". Whit Stillman became the disco king of indie cinema in the 1990s. Richard Linklater has looked at 1970s American rock music, en masse, throughout his work. Quentin Tarantino, Wes Anderson, Sofia Coppola and others have also taken a broader approach to 20th century music. But at the end of the day, whether it's Anderson spinning the Clash and the Ramones on the soundtrack to 'The Royal Tenenbaums' (2001), or Coppola's multi-pronged new wave attack designed for 'Marie Antoinette' (2006), they can still get the punks talking ...
"I identified with new wave and punk, but where do you put the art rock like Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, King Crimson? Tull? All that stuff still sounded cool to me."
- Richard Linklater, Louder Sound
'Student Teachers' - Channel 13
--- --- --- ---
Hal Hartley's 'Long Island Trilogy'
By analysing the films of Hal Hartley, you can trace a direct pathway from experimental jazz through industrial punk, "no wave", "noise rock", "math rock" and other related subgenres / sublabels, which might be considered subsidiaries, depending upon your view. Anders Grafstrom's underground period piece 'The Long Island Four' (1979) inspired Hartley in the making of the 'Long Island Triology' which consists of 'The Unbelievable Truth' (1989), 'Trust' (1990) and 'Simple Men' (1992).
Grafstrom's film also inspired Whit Stillman's distinct visions of Manhattan life and Steve Buscemi's contemplative debut feature 'Trees Lounge' (1996). The cast of 'The Long Island Four' included cabaret artist Joey Arias, ballerina Patti Astor, filmmaker Eric Mitchell, classical tenor Klaus Nomi and comedian Gedde Watanabe, as well as Tina Lhotsky of Minny Pops, and Kristian Hoffman & Lance Loud of the Mumps.
"I did not have Adrienne (Shelly) in mind when I first wrote Trust. In fact, a fully fleshed out version of Trust existed before I wrote and shot The Unbelievable Truth. When editing the first feature, I decided to show her the script for Trust. She and I agreed Maria in Trust was a more demanding role. But I was confident she could do it.
I pushed Adrienne pretty hard on Trust. I didn't have the time or resources to wait for her to really understand and appreciate the dramatic, emotional, aesthetic pitch I was after. She picked it up as we went along. Adrienne would have said her natural inclination was toward broader comedy — which, in fact, is where she went in her own writing and filmmaking. But so much about her manner, her looks and her intelligence (which I could observe thoroughly while editing The Unbelievable Truth) convinced me she would be very moving as Maria."
- Hal Hartley speaking in 2019, Tone
I pushed Adrienne pretty hard on Trust. I didn't have the time or resources to wait for her to really understand and appreciate the dramatic, emotional, aesthetic pitch I was after. She picked it up as we went along. Adrienne would have said her natural inclination was toward broader comedy — which, in fact, is where she went in her own writing and filmmaking. But so much about her manner, her looks and her intelligence (which I could observe thoroughly while editing The Unbelievable Truth) convinced me she would be very moving as Maria."
- Hal Hartley speaking in 2019, Tone
Adrienne Shelly in 'The Unbelievable Truth'
Hartley shot his first feature film, 'The Unbelievable Truth', in 1988. It was made on a shoestring budget and filmed in his native Long Island. It's an unconventional tale of longing, desperation and philosophy, in which a Long Island teenager (played by Adrienne Shelly) finds herself drawn to a mechanic with a criminal past (played by Robert John Burke).
'Trust' confirmed Hartley as one of independent cinema's auteurs. He defined his style with an improved budget, relaying the complex tale of a Long Island teenager with morbid desires (Adrienne Shelly) who becomes enmeshed in the fallout of a television repairman's mental, physical and emotional collapse (played by Martin Donovan).
'Simple Men' is a different proposition altogether; a romanticised family piece concerning the fractious relationship between discipline and anarchy. But just like 'The Unbelievable Truth' and 'Trust', it has the spirit of punk coarsing through its veins.
"There was considerable push-back at the time regarding abortion in particular. After the premiere at the Toronto Film Festival, where it was very positively received, a woman did stand up and say the film was hateful toward women. Adrienne and I were both baffled by this, as we thought of the film as very loudly a celebration of female autonomy, generosity, and a takedown of male patriarchal habits generally. And despite its warm reception at Toronto, Sundance and elsewhere, distributors waited quite a while to make offers. Recently, a college in a right-leaning state chose to show most of my most popular films — except Trust. That was clearly a choice to avoid controversy."
- Hal Hartley speaking in 2019, Tone
Martin Donovan & Adrienne Shelly pose for a publicity still for 'Trust'
'The Unbelievable Truth' was scored by composer Jim Coleman, keyboardist and sampler with the industrial punk band Cop Shoot Cop. Other members of Cop Shoot Cop included keyboardist David Ouimet of darkwave cabaret Sulfur and "world punk" gypsy rockers Firewater, bassist Tod A. of Firewater, bassist Jack Natz of horror punks the Undead, and drummer Phil Puleo of "post-rock" pioneers Swans.
Coleman's also worked with photographer and filmmaker Richard Kern, who frequently collaborates with Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth. 'Simple Men' has songs by Sonic Youth and New Jersey outfit Yo La Tengo on its soundtrack.
'Trust' composer Philip Reed was a member of Wild Blue Yonder, the New York group whose songs are on the soundtrack to 'The Unbelievable Truth'. The soundtrack for 'Trust' also features music by Hub Moore & the Great Outdoors (a band led by bassist James Hubbard of Massachusetts groove group Three Colors). Hartley is a musician himself; he's composed minimalist musical pieces for the soundtracks to many of his own films.
'Disconnected 666' - Cop Shoot Cop
- -- -
The Adrienne Shelly Foundation
Elton John is summoned to the Royal Palace by the Queen
Adrienne Shelly embodied gothic style, student poetry and post-punk sensibility with her characterisations in 'The Unbelievable Truth' and 'Trust'. In many ways, Hal Hartley's filmmaking was the next step on from Abel Ferrara, Jim Jarmusch and Susan Seidelman's punk-infused visions of streetlife. Hartley showed that suburban insanity in New York could be just as all-consuming as urban insanity.
"At last night's show in New Orleans, Elton John dedicated Don’t Let the Sun Go Down On Me to Pete Shelley, singer of the British punk band the Buzzcocks. Shelley died earlier in the day of an apparent heart attack. He was 63 years old."
- Chief Editor, Elton John World
- Chief Editor, Elton John World
“Joe Strummer seemed to be singing from a different place - the kind of place that I suppose Bob Dylan sings from, or John Lennon sang from. He was part town crier and part storyteller. The Sex Pistols were punk, and I loved them because of the sort of Richard III character that John Lydon was playing, and just the sheer noise of the guitars; but what the Clash did was more like roots music.”
- Elton John, Far Out
- Elton John, Far Out
"John Lydon’s stage presence was simply electrifying - and Elton John rang me one Sunday, asking to meet to discuss the revolution that was going on in pop music. Elton was totally bowled over by punk, realising that nothing in pop would be the same again.
John Lydon didn’t just take on the establishment with hits like God Save the Queen, his alternative National Anthem (which topped the charts in the Queen’s Silver Jubilee Year in 1977) and Anarchy in the UK, he sent shock waves through the world of popular music - he mouthed off about Queen and ‘pomp’ rock, played in pubs and small village halls where kids could get up close - everything mega stars like Rod Stewart had left behind long ago.
I’ve known him through three of my marriages, while he’s always been devoted to one partner for almost 40 years. Nora has been his rock and his soul mate, a woman who shuns the limelight and gets on with her life. A man of many contradictions, a shy sensitive soul who carefully keeps that aspect of his personality hidden, a loud mouth who can terrify any hard-bitten interviewer with one withering F*** off. From Vogue to your local newspaper, he doesn’t discriminate, but behind that belligerent façade lurks a highly intelligent bloke.
At my 50th birthday guests like Stephen Fry, Ruby Wax and Ian McKellen and the boss of the BBC all queued up to be insulted by the king of Punk. What an inspiration."
John Lydon didn’t just take on the establishment with hits like God Save the Queen, his alternative National Anthem (which topped the charts in the Queen’s Silver Jubilee Year in 1977) and Anarchy in the UK, he sent shock waves through the world of popular music - he mouthed off about Queen and ‘pomp’ rock, played in pubs and small village halls where kids could get up close - everything mega stars like Rod Stewart had left behind long ago.
I’ve known him through three of my marriages, while he’s always been devoted to one partner for almost 40 years. Nora has been his rock and his soul mate, a woman who shuns the limelight and gets on with her life. A man of many contradictions, a shy sensitive soul who carefully keeps that aspect of his personality hidden, a loud mouth who can terrify any hard-bitten interviewer with one withering F*** off. From Vogue to your local newspaper, he doesn’t discriminate, but behind that belligerent façade lurks a highly intelligent bloke.
At my 50th birthday guests like Stephen Fry, Ruby Wax and Ian McKellen and the boss of the BBC all queued up to be insulted by the king of Punk. What an inspiration."
- Janet Street-Porter, The Daily Mail
"Any straight-down-the-line punk rock. Anything by the Clash. Ha ha! I hate the f*cking Clash! I'm sure they are (or were) nice fellows, but they always seemed like temporary rebellion music for college students. And Gang of Four--don't get me started on them. Blaaarrrgggghhhhh! Give me the Cramps any day.
Anyway, I think, ultimately, though it erupted at the right time and was an assault on complacency initially, and at least nominally aggressive and virulent--all qualities I applaud-- punk rock was music for joiners, for people who needed to be a part of something, and inevitably it became very claustrophobic and stylized.
True punk rock would be Throbbing Gristle or SPK. Then again, to contradict myself, I liked--though I couldn't listen to them now--Black Flag, the Dead Kennedys, the Germs, and later even the Buzzcocks, Magazine, Wire, the Fall, etc. Hardcore??? [It's] veiled homo music for jocks."
- Michael Gira, Self-Titled
"Sit back, kids, and I’ll tell you about the baddest punk of them all. No, I’m not talking about Johnny Rotten or Richard Hell or Sid Vicious even. No, I’m talking about Captain Fantastic, The Big E — that’s right, Elton John his tough mofo self. Sure, he’s better known for such anthemic softballs as “Your Song,” “Somebody Saved My Life Tonight,” and that awful piece of treacle “Candle in the Wind.” But John is the same rock’n’roll badass who gave us “The Bitch Is Back,” “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting,” “Your Sister Can’t Twist (But She Can Rock’n’Roll),” “Midnight Creeper,” and “Street Kids,” the last of which is off Sir Surly’s punkest LP of them all, 1975’s Rock of the Westies.
In a deliberate effort to be misunderstood, because every good punk wants to be misunderstood, John larded his earlier LPs with love songs, broken heart songs and the like. He threw in lots of oddball tunes as well; the great “Solar Prestige a Gammon” is made up of nonsense words, “Social Disease” is a hillbilly ode to living life as a form of human syphilis, and “Teacher I Need You” is “Hot for Teacher” years in advance. As for the great “Bennie and the Jets,” who else could have conceived of such a thing? And who but Elton John would have thought to write a song called “I Think I’m Going to Kill Myself” and fit it up with a bona fide tap dance solo? That right there is a real punk move for sure."
In a deliberate effort to be misunderstood, because every good punk wants to be misunderstood, John larded his earlier LPs with love songs, broken heart songs and the like. He threw in lots of oddball tunes as well; the great “Solar Prestige a Gammon” is made up of nonsense words, “Social Disease” is a hillbilly ode to living life as a form of human syphilis, and “Teacher I Need You” is “Hot for Teacher” years in advance. As for the great “Bennie and the Jets,” who else could have conceived of such a thing? And who but Elton John would have thought to write a song called “I Think I’m Going to Kill Myself” and fit it up with a bona fide tap dance solo? That right there is a real punk move for sure."
- Michael H. Little, Vinyl District
"My first love in music was Elton John and I finally got to meet him a few weeks ago. My wife arranged it as a birthday present for me, out in Vegas. He was so nice; he loves music and musicians.
Bruce Springsteen definitely; huge fan, continues to be a huge influence. Really the greats – Dylan, Stones.
Both Greg (Graffin) and I were very influenced by Darby Crash in terms of how he tried to be a smart, artistic lyricist in punk, and that kind of let us know that you could do that. And the Ramones are a huge influence ’cause they let me know that it didn’t matter that I suck at guitar, you could still write good songs, good lasting songs."
- Brett Gurewitz, Rolling Stone
"I listened to Elton John, David Bowie and Roxy Music obsessively when they came out. I haven't heard it in years, but the austerity of that second Elton John album stands out. In the early days he was more earnest and low-key, but I like the way he turned into Liberace ... anyway, I saw a special on Elton John on TV maybe a decade ago, and I was in awe. Creatures like him are what makes the rest of us retreat and slink away into the murk of daily existence, cowering and furtive, only to emerge again when the light and sound and magic of an Elton John lures us, hypnotized, out of our dismal lives."
- Michael Gira, Self-Titled
'If There's A God In Heaven (What's He Waiting For)' - Elton John
Shelly was born in Queens and raised in Long Island. She was murdered on November 1, 2006 in Manhattan, New York City, aged 40. The Adrienne Shelly Foundation was established in her memory. The foundation awards scholarships, production grants, finishing funds and living stipends to artists. The Women Film Critics Circle presents the Adrienne Shelly Award annually to films that oppose violence against women.
"Adrienne Shelly and Soren Kierkegaard lived 150 years apart but their approaches to death were comparable. The Danish philosopher believed people fail to grasp their own mortality despite the constant presence of death. “I shall certainly attend your party, but I must make an exception for the contingency that a roof tile happens to blow down and kill me; for in that case, I cannot attend,” he thought they should say. Shelly quoted this line 10 years before she died. The director/writer/actress lived her life believing one could seize the day while also acknowledging its potential to cease. She believed when we were prepared, we could face death with dignity. She herself had been prepared since the age of 12, when her father had died suddenly. “Who, now, is going to decide which life was easier, whether it was the life of those who continually lived with a certain reserve because the thought of death was present to them or the life of those who so abandoned themselves to life that they almost forgot the existence of death?” Kierkegaard asked. Shelly’s answer was to live both, the presence of death abandoning her to life.
“Probably the rush wasn’t necessary,” the New York native told Sassy in 1990 after dropping out of university to pursue acting, “but I finally had gotten up the courage to do it, so I wanted to do it right away.” So Shelly sent her picture to every casting notice in Backstage magazine that “sort of” applied to her, including one by a music video producer who happened to share office space with a young filmmaker named Hal Hartley. A graduate of SUNY Purchase film school, Hartley had directed three shorts and was casting his first feature, The Unbelievable Truth, about a suburban-teen-turned-big-city-model who thinks the world is about to end. His producer, Bruce Weiss, came across Shelly’s headshot by chance. “I found Adrienne’s picture somewhere in the back of the office,” he says. “It was odd that her eight by ten was sort of sitting separately from all the rest. It was like just hanging out.” He held it up to Hartley and asked: “What about her?”
Hartley found the 22-year-old Long Islander’s photo “bitchin,’” though at 5’1” she was too short to play a model. “But I saw her and just kind of got knocked out,” he told The New York Times. “I said, ‘Wow, she’s interesting and pretty.’ She was also the best actress.” She was also the one with the right sense of humour. But it was still her first film, and Hartley was sensitive to that. “Will you keep an eye on her?” he asked the rest of the cast. Julia McNeal, who was 27 at the time and played a friend of Shelly’s crush, said it was easy to do. She and Shelly had similar personalities so they got along. “We each have a natural frankness and even a blunt frankness,” she says. “We just said what was true for us.”
The first of what would be known as Hartley’s Long Island Trilogy was shot in the filmmaker’s hometown of Lindenhurst in less than two weeks. In her opening scene as high school grad Audry, Shelly wakes up stretching, imitating the sound of an explosion. “History is coming to an end,” she says with the same emotionless cadence used throughout Hartley’s oeuvre. It’s the late ‘80s and this girl doesn’t smile, doesn’t wear neon and doesn’t see a future. “I’m not mixed up,” she says, “I’m depressed.” Though Audry is accepted to Harvard, she makes a Reagan-friendly pact with her parents that has her acquiring an empty modelling career in the city. “People are only as good as the deals they make and keep,” she says, before breaking hers.
“Gratitude is the feeling I most remember in regard to Adrienne when making The Unbelievable Truth,” Hartley told Film List in 2013. “She just understood the character perfectly.” Shelly herself told the Times she was attracted to Audry because she empathised with her displacement (as a teen she also felt alienated from her peers, in her case because of her dad’s death). And even though Hartley told everyone exactly how to perform—“He kept saying he was trying to turn a three-dimensional thing into a two-dimensional thing,” McNeal says—Shelly was particularly attuned to his unadorned dialogue-driven set. The ingénue had ingenuity, according to Hartley. “He used the word ‘gumption’ to describe her quite often,” McNeal says. “He said she had ‘real gumption,’ which was an unusual old-fashioned word and he knew it.”
“Probably the rush wasn’t necessary,” the New York native told Sassy in 1990 after dropping out of university to pursue acting, “but I finally had gotten up the courage to do it, so I wanted to do it right away.” So Shelly sent her picture to every casting notice in Backstage magazine that “sort of” applied to her, including one by a music video producer who happened to share office space with a young filmmaker named Hal Hartley. A graduate of SUNY Purchase film school, Hartley had directed three shorts and was casting his first feature, The Unbelievable Truth, about a suburban-teen-turned-big-city-model who thinks the world is about to end. His producer, Bruce Weiss, came across Shelly’s headshot by chance. “I found Adrienne’s picture somewhere in the back of the office,” he says. “It was odd that her eight by ten was sort of sitting separately from all the rest. It was like just hanging out.” He held it up to Hartley and asked: “What about her?”
Hartley found the 22-year-old Long Islander’s photo “bitchin,’” though at 5’1” she was too short to play a model. “But I saw her and just kind of got knocked out,” he told The New York Times. “I said, ‘Wow, she’s interesting and pretty.’ She was also the best actress.” She was also the one with the right sense of humour. But it was still her first film, and Hartley was sensitive to that. “Will you keep an eye on her?” he asked the rest of the cast. Julia McNeal, who was 27 at the time and played a friend of Shelly’s crush, said it was easy to do. She and Shelly had similar personalities so they got along. “We each have a natural frankness and even a blunt frankness,” she says. “We just said what was true for us.”
The first of what would be known as Hartley’s Long Island Trilogy was shot in the filmmaker’s hometown of Lindenhurst in less than two weeks. In her opening scene as high school grad Audry, Shelly wakes up stretching, imitating the sound of an explosion. “History is coming to an end,” she says with the same emotionless cadence used throughout Hartley’s oeuvre. It’s the late ‘80s and this girl doesn’t smile, doesn’t wear neon and doesn’t see a future. “I’m not mixed up,” she says, “I’m depressed.” Though Audry is accepted to Harvard, she makes a Reagan-friendly pact with her parents that has her acquiring an empty modelling career in the city. “People are only as good as the deals they make and keep,” she says, before breaking hers.
“Gratitude is the feeling I most remember in regard to Adrienne when making The Unbelievable Truth,” Hartley told Film List in 2013. “She just understood the character perfectly.” Shelly herself told the Times she was attracted to Audry because she empathised with her displacement (as a teen she also felt alienated from her peers, in her case because of her dad’s death). And even though Hartley told everyone exactly how to perform—“He kept saying he was trying to turn a three-dimensional thing into a two-dimensional thing,” McNeal says—Shelly was particularly attuned to his unadorned dialogue-driven set. The ingénue had ingenuity, according to Hartley. “He used the word ‘gumption’ to describe her quite often,” McNeal says. “He said she had ‘real gumption,’ which was an unusual old-fashioned word and he knew it.”
- Soraya Roberts, Hazlett
'She Used To Be Mine' - Sara Bareilles
Shelly directed the film 'Waitress' (2007) in which a small town waitress (played by Keri Russell) deals with daily frustrations and an abusive husband (played by Jeremy Sisto). The film was adapted into a stage musical in 2015 with music and lyrics by Sara Bareilles. An accompanying book was written by Jessie Nelson.
Sara Bareilles performs 'Goodbye Yellow Brick Road'
In Memory ~ · Adrienne Shelly (1966 - 2006) >'Gone, but never forgotten' <