CREEMEDIA

CREEMEDIA

Ralph Bakshi On American Pop

by Toby Goldstein

Not many movie makers would dare attempt to present an 80-year socio-musical history of the United States in an hour and a half—and animated, yet. Then again, not many directorial types would have introduced themselves to feature audiences with an X-rated Fritz The Cat, or alienated the Hollywood establishment with Coonskin. Ralph Bakshi, whose latest film portrait is a challenging, painfully estatic movie called American Pop, has done all of the above, and more.

A jovial bear of a man whose Brooklyn accent has not been tempered by a decade of Los Angeles living, Bakshi eats controversy like corn flakes. His fundamental Truths are expressed so boisterously, an opponent had better have her facts ready, and fast. “Music is totally allegorical,” he booms. “Y’know music doesn’t create a period, the period creates the music, I think. I don’t think the Beatles created the 60’s.

“You wanna fight? I think they articulated how we all were feeling and music has a great way of isolating that. But if the Beatles started today, a) they might not even become famous and b) they wouldn’t stir all the straights out there ’cause the world has suddenly gone very straight, right? Would Blondie have made it then?” Bakshi immediately switches to a raft of questions about the new wave scene, arid I’m not surprised to read a few days later that he wants to explore modem music further, perhaps in a fi|m with Debbie Harry.

American Pop illustrates, in vivid post-Disney colors, how the 20th century’s popular music accompanied, commented upon and expanded its main social and political events. Bakshi constructs an archetypal family and follows its four generations from 1890 to the present. It’s all there—the pogroms, the Triangle factory fire, Worlds Wars I and II, the Depression, the Mafia, Vietnam, psychedelia, inner city, suburb and farm, drugs, sex, television, radio, beatnik clubs, punk cellars, piano bars, recording studios. Depending on one’s willingness to accept history as frozen moments the characters become either cliches or standard bearers. When Bakshi is told about one critic’s negative reactiori to his 1960’s figure ending up a junkie, the big man stutters his contempt.

“Some critics are very intelligent, they’re very avant-garde, they’re very full of shit. There are highlights of a period that are cliches. But what would Tony have done, gone straight? After what he went through... Drugs were what turned the 60’s inside out; we ended up with Helter Skelter.

“That’s what cartooning is all about, isolating the focal point of a moment. What cartoon doesn’t go for that moment—it’s all we have to live with. And that’s why Pete (the up-to-date rock star) represents, a very direct ‘Fuck you, Jack.’”

Music is the heart of American Pop, masses of sound that span from vaudeville to punk. Bakshi’s only mistake in content was in using “Pretty Vacant” instead of “Teenage Lobotomy,” but when he found out the Pistols were British, he recut with American studio musicians. “But they could never get it dirty enough,” he frets. Even Bob Dylan, who is highly self-conscious about his sinful past, allowed Bakshi the use of a few tunes.

“I have very simple feelings about pop music and all my feelings come from before 1 started making movies. It was very important to me growing up, as I think it is to all people, in what it did to me at various periods of my life, whether I was driving around New York City looking to pick up some chick, or depressed over my marriage or depressed over my work. The radio would be going. So each song in the film from the 40’s on was personal to me, ’cause it depicted how I was feeling at the time.”

As one of those misfit kids who grew up clutching a transistor as firmly as an IV tube, letting the motorvating beat of Spector’s girlgroups, Motown and the Philly greaser boys help vent our frustrations, I can accept American Pop’s sweeping egotism at pure gut level, forgiving Bakshi his few chronological errors. Because of its self-ceriteredness, I guestioned him about the film’s acceptance outside the LJ.S.

“I had an interview with a German the other day and I tried to veer him off that one. I said, basically American Pop is against trying to be a star. I think all of us try too hard to be stars and I think we love our stars to death. But the great thing about America is that you have a choice. I said, in other countries you don’t have that choice, like Nazi Germany in the 30’s. He turned white.” Bakshi, a Russian-American Jew raised in the slums of Brownsville, laughs heartily, relishing even verbal revenge, even 45 years too late. Then he looks around the expensive Park Avenue hotel suite in which he’s been holding court all day, and starts scheming how to chase down to Coney Island for a Nathan’s hot dog, with maybe some Carvel for dessert.

Maltin Milk Again?

TV MOVIES 1981-82 Edited by Leonard Maltin (Signet)___

This is the fourth edition of Maltin’s famous guide to movies shown on television, bigger than ever with over 13,000 entries, an indispensible aid for both dilettantes and cognoscenti, both the casual viewer who can appreciate an authoritative opinion and the hardcore buff on the lookout for another Phil Karlsen epic. Since its debut 13 years ago Maltin’sbook has become the definitive word, acing out the competition—mainly Steven H. Scheuer’s Movies On TV, a pallid and ill-formed work that only the most benighted TV viewers will have anything to do with—and a great American institution. New editions are awaited by film buffs with the same eagerness with which less sensitive types await the second coming. And now it’s come.

Maltin’s phenomenal success lies, I think, in his having found the perfect formula for dealing succinctly with an amorphous and potentially overwhelming topic. Each entry is a masterpiece of rational conciseness. A closer look is in order.

The structure is this: First comes the title, naturally, then the year and, if necessary, country of origin, then the running time. This last bit of info is necessary in order to figure out how much of any given film has been edited to make room for commercials—allowing that 5 to 10 minutes of each TV half hour goes to the little buggers (more during the day, less during the night). This is important to know since you wouldn’t want to watch Bowery Buckeroos (’47) if you figured that three minutes had been cut out, now would you? Well, then. Next is the debatable core of the matter, the rating—Maltin uses a Bomb to four-star rating system, with V2 star gradations for, one supposes, subtlety. A tip here from a long-term Maltin reader—generally speaking, the movies rated 1, IV2, aind 2 stars are the real dogs. These movies are bad and boring, the worst combination. Movies rated 3,3V2, or 4 are generally worth considering, tho many of the higher rated gems have either lost their sheen bybeing on the tube every other week (Casablanca, Maltese Falcon, even, God forgive me, Citizen Kane) or are over-hyped period pieces or dated coffee table classics. I mean, who really wants to see Gone With The Wind again? Wouldn’t you rather see Shriek Of The Mutilated? Or Plan 9 From Outer Space?Puke-O’s On Parade? Anything? Speaking of which the definite must-sees are the Bombs. These are movies that are so ineffably bad that they move the kindly Maltin to anger. A random sampling with quotes: The Man Who Turned To Stone (’57)—“Hokum!”; The Sporting Club (’71) — “Enough ineptitude to offend everyone;” Sammy Stops The World (’79)—“a stage production that couldn’t get by at Three Mile Island Dinner Theater” (ah, that rare Maltin wit); the aforementioned Plan 9 (’59) —“whacked-out sci-fi.. .Lugosi died during production, and it shows”; the unspeakable Americathon (’79) — ’’unfunny.and a personal favorite of mine, Return From The Past (’67) —“utter monstrosity.” Who can resist recommendations like these? It seems that the book’s greatest value lies not in telling you which good movies are really good (almost everyone knows anyway) but rather which obscure losers have achieved that exhalted level of badness that must be seen to be believed, experienced, cherished. Moving on, we come to the listing of the director, cleverly designated by a “D.” A hip inclusion, but even in this era of poat-savvy it can be more than you need to know—familiarity with Edgar G. Ulmer never hurt anyone, but knowing that Vittorio Musy Glori directed Sign Of The Gladiator (’59Italian) is having the kind of knowledge that you’ll most likely take to your grave without having shared it with a fellow human being. It just doesn’t fit into normal conversation, letters to home, or reasonable graffiti. I just barely managed to work it into this review. Next up is the cast list; fairly large, fairly inclusive, often full of funny names. Then the critique itself, brief, pithy and with a sprinkling of buffy nouns (a western is an “oater,” a melodrama is a “metier, ” a suspense story is a “suspenser,” etc.) and quaint words like “hokum” and “yarn.”

Put it all together and it goes like something like this:

Antlers Of Doom (Canadian 1962) 83 m. * V2 D. PaulRojack. Bart Mimosa, Linda Thartz, AverillKrellman, Jock Le Fudge, Mimsey Flaherty. Title tells all in low budget mooser about deranged Indian Le Fudge and his tribe posing as rogue elk during raids on early Canuck settlers. Nice cameo by Jayne Mansfield as a psychotic lumberjack but, overall, a piece of shit.

Jock Le Fudge? You may think I made that up, and I did, but the reality is no less silly . Browsing thru Maltin one meets such cinema luminaries as E.W. Swackhamer, Gustav Von Seyffertiltz, Madame Spivy—but I don’t want to ruin it for you. It’s a peculiarly American artform, this condensing, listing, labeling, and rating and Maltin is its premier practitioner, an inspiration to us all. Go now and buy.

Richard C. Walls

Less Is More?

THE ROLLING STONE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF ROCK & ROLL—REVISED EDITION

Edited by Jim Miller

(Random House/Rolling Stone)

Originally the idea was to have the hard-working historian Barry Hansen (“Dr. Demento” to the kiddies) tackle the momentous task of a Rolling Stone encyclopedia history all by himself. Formerly Hit Parader’s finest scholar, he deserved the assignment. Certainly there’s a good chance that the present-day Rolling Stone Illustrated History might be more accurate and consistent if he had undertaken the big job singlehandedly. Unfortunately, this was notto be. “I got as far as 1967,” Hansen once said, “by which time it was 1972.”

Published in 1976, the first edition of the Rolling Stone Illustrated History had its problems, a major one being its size. (“And then there’s that red Rolling Stone book that’s too big for my bookshelf, and just might fall on my head and knock me cold,” wrote Hansen in an article for Waxpaper.) Another problem was that there seemed to be omissions, whole chapters of rock left in search of an author. A good many historians wet their pants.

Now, the size of the ’76 edition has been reduced to manageable proportions; most importantly, the new edition gives the impression of being chock full of information. True, a sacrifice has been made—there are fewer photos, full-page portraits, and virtually no shots of album covers—but this time they got it right, right?

Well, that’s the problem: there’s always a next time because this rock ’n’ roll stuff never seems to fade away. The continual fascination with writing the definitive rock history has become such a common obsession among amateurs and scholars alike that one wonders if it’s worth the trouble. For example, there are no definitive histories of comic books or television, only personal summations by individual thinkers. In much the same way, the best books about popular music (Greil Marcus’ Mystery Train, Nick Tosches’ Country, John Broven’s Walking To New Orleans, Charlie Gillett’s The Sound Of The City and Making Tracks, Arnold Shaw’s The World Of Soul and Honkers And Shouters—to name merely a few) are hardly collections of essays exploring diverse genres; on the contrary, they are thoughtful examinations of well-defined areas, particularly paths their authors have chosen to traverse... alone.

The inherent problem with the continuing (I assume it’s continuing, rock ’n’ roll being as ongoing process) Rolling Stone Illustrated (but will it continue to be “illustrated”?.. .by the year 2000, will the ever-expanding historical text allow room for photographs?) History (is it even a history?... in the lsted., Paul Nelson’s piece on Bob Dylan was absolute fiction!) is that it tries too hard to be definitive, or rather, that it worries too much about completeness. A couple of years ago, when I happened to mention in a history of American punk for CREEM that one cannot read about the awesome authority of punk in Rolling Stone History, I vX/as halfway joking. But this time around, there’s a piece on “protopunks” written by that old gentlemanly buffoon and inimitable critic, Lester Bangs. Why not go all the way next time and include articles on novelty music, rock ’n’ roll on TV, or bubblegum rock? (You mean the history of bubblegum is already in there?! Weird!)

Part of the problem in compiling a history of rock is that we have become too dependent upon generic analysis. There’s nothing easier than hauling out the battered hyphen (art-rock, jazz-rock, folk-rock, funk-punk, heavy metal-reggae) either to create a new genre or to categorize very different artists for the aske of convenience. Rolling Stone’s history fell victim to this common practice in the first edition (e. g., what the hell is “halo-American” rock?), and its * updated version perpetuates the generic chimera (“New Wave: Britain and America,” “The Sound of Manhattan”). But to be true to its formulation, the history should condense 20% of its content under the classification “Counter-Cultural Psychedelia”—who needs entire chapters off ' Joplin, Hendrix, the Doors, the Jefferson Airplane, the dippy San Francisco scene, and Britain’s hallucinogenic contributions?

Are the handier size and the 18 new chapters, then, worth all the hoopla? A hearty ‘yes!’—it’s a vast improvement over the Jolly Red Giant. Joe McEwen’s essay on funk, John Rockwell’s synopsis of Hollywood’s studio tradition, and Ed Ward’s piece on reggae are sharp, concise, and objective assessments of heretofore neglected styles. Surely though, if chapters can now be devoted to Steely Dan and Elvis Costello, the Velvet Underground and Captain Beef heart (both of whom are essentially confined to the status of footnotes) deserve more than the space usually given to eccentrics.

Of all the additions, however, Greil Marcus’ “Anarchy in the U.K.” is the most welcome; it alone is worth the price of thq new edition. Marcus’ prose is revelatory, his discography exhaustive, his pronouncements authoritative (“Johnny Rotten was perhaps the only truly terrifying singer rock ’n’ roll has ever known”). The assumption from which he writes, though, has never really been articulated (although most critics sensed as much, they didn’t dare put it into words): that English punk was the only genuine revolt in rock ’n’ roll since the hippie movement, everything else in between only a lie.

But all survey rock histories like Rolling Stone’s have a built-in flaw—they cannot convey the sense of discovery one gets from a personal history. Rock ’n’ roll, more than anything else, is one’s own private mystery: hearing a record on the radio, in isolation, never fully comprehending what comes next or how it connects with what came before, finally seeking continuity*— the record’s context—only as an explanation of that first chance encounter.

What we are left with today seems largely a result of our preoccupation with the continuity of rock’s past rather than with its value as personal experience. When John Lydon proclaims the death of rock, he’s not saying that its essence has been buried but that its form has become too predictably self-referential. What we desperately need is a lot less history and a lot more rock ’n’ roll.

Robert A. Hull

Eensy—Weensy Books On Parade

Have you ever noticed those tiny books they sell at the check-out counters of supermarkets? You know, the ones that measure 3V2 x 5”, cost 49^ and bear titles like Dr. Frank’s No Aging Diet, Hidden Psychic Powers and Lose Weight While You Sleep. Well, a couple of days ago, I couldn’t stand it... I’d never bought even one little book in my whole life!.. .so 1 broke down and bought 8 or 10 of ’em in one shot. These miniscule manuals are a veritable barrel of literary monkeys that are sure to amuse, amaze and annoy even the most discriminating consumer of JunkusAmericanus.

Would I kid you? Sure, but not this time. The Dell Publishing Company, who seem to be the (ahem) giant of the little book field, peddle The Book Of Useful Information, for example. I’m still dazed at the wealth of information the Useful Book (as I think of it) has brought to my normally somnolent mind. Whether you want to measure for wallpaper (damn the consequences!), discuss the care of fabrics, or just know the average temperature in Albuquerque in January, it’s in the Useful Book. Did you know that ink can’t be removed from furniture once it’s penetrated the wood? Or that the United States has a Bill Of Rights that’s been written down and everything? What a surprise-filled world!

Anyway, Dell has a whole slew of these baby-mice monographs out, ranging from Roller Skating (64 timeless pages) to The Guide To Entertaining, which even includes a section on “How to enjoy your own party.” (No, there isn’t a teensy prescriptions for Quaaludes inserted.) But just imagine... having a party and even enjoying it! Is it right? Is it proper?

I don’t know, but I found out that Dell, being the apparent General Motors of the itsy-bitsy book biz, is relatively the most staid as well. Lakewood Books, for example, put out such irresistible titles as Hair: Have It Your Way. With two crisp pieces of bacon, please. Hourglass Books seems to lean toward cheap romance; Passion’s Mistress was a title I was able to resist, but will you show comparable restraint? The hands-down winner, though, is the Globe Communications Corporation. They publish the astounding Globe Mini-Mags, a collection of tripe that delivers a guaranteed 49(^ worth of readable ■ sewage.

I suppose the most colossal offering in their catalogue is Yes! There’s Life After Death, which purports to offer “convincing evidence that documents the existence of another world—told by those who returned from the dead.” Written by Carlson Wade—an obvious pen name; surely Keith Richards is the only person qualified to discuss the subject with any authority—Life After Death weaves a strange argument, intelligible only to K-Mart check-out girls, to support its bizarre thesis. Dante is quoted. Lionel Barrymore is quoted. Even Albert Einstein is quoted. The inevitable pyramids are hauled out, proving something or another. What the heck, I’ll believe practically anything, but when it comes to life after death, I’ll settle for nothing less than a Pete Townshend rock opera as final evidence.

Possibly less sensational, but certainly as much fun, is Globe’s Fortune-Telling Game To Predict The Future. This one will answer any of 140 burning questions you ordinarily couldn’t answer for $1.49. Serious, thoughtful stuff, like: “*19: What will my future husband reveal to me?” That he’s secretly Green Lantern? Or “#24: Will I be the ruling power in my marriage?” No, but you may partition Poland someday. They keep getting weirder, too. “#126: Will I die before my husband?” No, he’ll be on the golf course and you’ll die before some peroxided nurse in CCU. And, of course, the one we all want to know, the big “#140: How shall I die?” 1 don’t know, join the Allman Brothers and figure it out for yourself.

With any luck, Globe’s junk will catch on and quash the endless diet/fitness/cooking/ crossword puzzle stuff that now dominates the world of petite publications. I’ll pay 49/ anyday for Your3000 Previous Lives And How To Make Them Work For You or Evidence Of The Extra-Trerrestrial Origins Of Baseball: On-Deck Circle Of The Gods? Surely What To Name The Baby is not the limit of the genre. But, come to think of it, I didn’t know that “Mick” was an old Teutonic word meaning “thick-lipped homo’...

J. Kordosh