MEDIA COOL

MEDIA COOL

DEPARTMENTS

This Month’s Media Cool was written by Bill Holdship, Thomas Anderson, Jeffrey Morgan and Toby Goldstein

MORE DARK THAN SHARK by Brian Eno and Russell Mills (Faber & Faber)

Here’s a guy so enamored with Brian Eno’s records that he’s created a series of paintings based on them. In this hefty paperback, Russell Mills presents his story and his artwork, featuring canvases of Eno songs from “Seven Deadly Finns” through the Eno/Cluster LP, After The Heat. Eno’s involvement consists of little more than a few lines of commentary on the songs, some of which was drawn from a mid-’70s Rolling Stone interview. The big problem with this project is that the quirky wit of Eno’s music (an important element in setting his early work apart from the other progressiverockers of the time) seems to have shot right over Mills’s head. I mean, can you imagine a painting based on “The Paw Paw Negro Blowtorch” that doesn’t seem amusing? The dry and ponderous terms in which he discusses his work only reinforces the problem. But if nothing else, this book inspired me to give my neglected copy of Before And After Science a few spins, for which I’m grateful. T.A.

NOT NECESSARILY THE NEWS (HBO)

It’s worth subscribing to Home Box Office for this show alone. It’s a half hour of topical humor—a new show every month—and it generally consists of literally putting words into the mouths of famous people. It’s very rerwiniscent of those photo funnies of famous and political figures you probably loved as a kid. But even more importantly, it seems that the spirit of the original Saturday Night Live pops up here more often than it does on NBC these days, although the show never quite reaches the sick element SNL

B sometimes strived for. It’s cool, irreverent (they lampoon Reagan mercilessly), absurd (i.e., a trailer for Spielberg’s new socially relevant horror flick, The Color Purple People Eater) and very, very funny. B.H.

SHOOT THE STARS: HOW TO BECOME A CELEBRITY PHOTOGRAPHER by Brad Elterman (California Features International, Inc.)

Celeb shutterbug Elterman offers a lot of tips on becoming a member of the paparazzi here—how to break in, where to sell photos, dealing with publicists, legal aspects, etc. He doesn’t include much on technique and mechanics, but I imagine that’s up to the individual. The thing about this book, though, is that even if you’re not interested in the process of photography, the numerous photos inside are great entertainment for the average stargazer, running the gamut from movie and rock stars (old and new) to Elvis’s funeral. The book costs $12.95 in the stores—but Elterman will sell the book to CREEM readers for $9.95 “since CREEM was one of the first mags to publish my photos 10 years ago.” (P.O. Box 659, Beverly Hills, CA 90213) B.H.

INSIDE WARNER BROS.

(1935-1951) by Rudy Behlmer (Viking Penguin)

With the possible inclusion of Universal during their horror reign, Warners were (and still are) the greatest rock ’n’ roll film studio ever. Their animation department alone would’ve given them the nod but, when you consider their live action department, loaded to the gills (pun intended) with the likes of Bogart, Bacall, Cagney, Robinson, Raft, Dietrich, Flynn, Davis, and on and on and on, it’s no contest. And what Behlmer does is present close to 20 years of memos and letters from the moguls and stars themselves, and then let them do the talking. Perhaps you won’t believe me when I say that this is the greatest book on motion pictures I’ve ever read, but it is. How could it not be with this exchange to director Michael Cur-

tiz from executive producer Hal Wallis about Captain Blood: “I did not want you to use lace collars or cuffs on Errol Flynn. 1 want the man to look like a pirate, not a molly-coddle. You have him standing up here dealing with a lot of hard-boiled characters, and you’ve got him dressed up like a God damned faggot.” J.M.

LYDIA LUNCH/RICHARD HELL POETRY READING (City Center, New York City) CBGB’s this wasn’t. Richard Hell, the one time voice of the Blank Generation, and Lydiayou-loved-her-in-Teenage-Jesus -and-the-Jerks-Lunch teamed up to share a prose package with less than 100 souls in City Center, a venue better known for ballet than verbal bruising. Interesting how the passage of time has toughened one and

mellowed (sorry, Richard) the other. Dressed in to-kill black, with snarl to match, Lydia proved she’s still one tough cookie, as she launched an assault on the audience, politics, guys in Spanish Harlem who make sucking noises at women, and life in general. Next stop for Lydia, we hope, advice to the lovelorn. Maybe the baby heard dimly in the hall was Richard and Patty Smyth’s, or maybe not. But Hell’s current status as family man was reinforced by his choice of words—mostly about women and romance. T.G.