Plato Shrimp » Watching Movies Alone with crumbsroom

Jinnistan · 1/06/2023 9:06 pm

crumbsroom wrote:
That was even released?

No, but I've seen clips and they published a bunch of stills from it in Interview magazine.

I'd like to see a disc-release of Korine's assorted short films, maybe some music vids. Some of them are very hard to find, like the one where he plays OJ Simpson and gets Johnny Depp to play Kato. (My understanding is that this was made when he was a full-fledged drug casualty, around 2000.)

crumbsroom · 1/06/2023 9:13 pm

crumbsroom · 1/06/2023 10:22 pm

crumbsroom · 1/06/2023 10:47 pm

crumbsroom · 1/06/2023 11:20 pm

"It's so sad to see
The world agree
That they'd rather see
Their faces fill with flies"

-anonymous

crumbsroom · 1/07/2023 1:22 pm

Jinnistan wrote:
crumbsroom wrote:
That was even released?
No, but I've seen clips and they published a bunch of stills from it in Interview magazine.

I'd like to see a disc-release of Korine's assorted short films, maybe some music vids. Some of them are very hard to find, like the one where he plays OJ Simpson and gets Johnny Depp to play Kato. (My understanding is that this was made when he was a full-fledged drug casualty, around 2000.)

I would hope to think these things would eventually find the light of day. Korrine, as much as many people don't want to admit it, is an important artist. I desperately want to see what he made when he was at the brink. Most of it might be horrible, but so what. I'd rather see horrible things from guys with his kind of potential, then decent things from guys who spent all their lives auditioning for the part. Korrine's level of intuition is rare and that is the most valuable of valuable things.

Jinnistan · 1/07/2023 8:59 pm

I think I might try depressing myself with a double feature of Triangle of Sadness and Tar.

crumbsroom · 1/08/2023 3:40 pm

One of the great films at articulating both the dream like essence of childhood as well as the sneaking hell that is grief. Our main character is borderline inarticulate, but is always watching. Is always trying to understand the world around her. Is taking everything in, even as it becomes clear her small world has become impossibly damaged.

As for the grief, it just lays in the heart of the film like a kidney stone, waiting to be passed.

The ethereal pleasures of being a child. The earthy sadness of losing a loved one. The film perfectly lives in this limbo and it's kind of a masterpiece.

crumbsroom · 1/11/2023 2:46 pm

Does everything absolutely perfectly right, aside from not somehow figuring out a way to never end. But maybe truncating its running time to mortal lengths is important for it to zero in as wonderfully as it does on what is essential about the legacy of this band. Not getting lost in the weeds of every story where Lou Reed asks someone to shit on him. Not having a bunch of talking heads reading from the footnotes of some lame gushing Rolling Stone review. David Fricke gawking at us from a cozy chair to give us the VU 101 on the importance of coolness and violas in rock and roll and sunglasses at night. Instead it breaks down the cultural and personal and musical influences which made the music actually matter. Everything in the film rotates around the centrifugal force of the transcendence and originality and beauty and terror of what is on those records. Those really fucking important records.

How does it do this? Well, it doesn't give LaMonte Young the footnote treatment. It puts Warhol's influence and genius into proper perspective. It understands the relationship between Cale and Reed (as much as anyone could possibly). It knows what the other members contributed to the musics weird alchemy. It documents the decay of New York at the time and finds evidence of that beautiful entropy sneaking into the songs. It lets us know why all of this matters. It understands that the music matters because the people matter. And the places. And the whole rotten rest of the country surrounding them.

And to top it all off, the film even speaks the same language of 60's underground films where everything is worth watching and watching and watching until we see the real truth. And everything needs to be cut up and manipulated until we also recognize the artifice in everything. A kind of perfect retroistic style that can't help but put us back in the headspace of a cultural revolution. A revolution that has sadly long washed away, but whose influences will still manage to linger as long as more documentaries like this one are made.

Could it have hurt having a little more Lou Reed scat content? Or John Cale killing chickens on stage with his face covered in cocaine dust? Probably not. But that is at least secondary to the thudding heart of (Mo Tucker's) never ending beat.

crumbsroom · 1/11/2023 2:59 pm

Oh Armond

Haynes gets so lost in his preening art gestures that there's no practical information about contracts or record-company business, just the useless glorification of pop-art myths.

Because isn't that what everyone is yearning for in a Velvet Underground documentary. How dare we glorify the act of creation when there are all those contracts and business things to talk about.

What a knob.

Rock · 1/11/2023 3:24 pm

Is this from his annual “Better Than” list?

Jinnistan · 1/11/2023 5:42 pm

It's interesting that you bring up the issue of the doc's length. My biggest gripe about it is that I felt it gave short shrift to the latter half of the band, post-Cale, the 3rd and 4th albums (which are my favorite), and most of this waved off in the last 15 minutes or so. Basically, I would have wanted a doc which was maybe about half an hour longer.

crumbsroom · 1/11/2023 5:54 pm

Jinnistan wrote:
It's interesting that you bring up the issue of the doc's length. My biggest gripe about it is that I felt it gave short shrift to the latter half of the band, post-Cale, the 3rd and 4th albums (which are my favorite), and most of this waved off in the last 15 minutes or so. Basically, I would have wanted a doc which was maybe about half an hour longer.

I'm saying I would have preferred it was longer. I would prefer it to have never ended.

As for not giving enough time to the later end of their career, I don't necessarily disagree. But if all we're getting is two hours, I'd like as much about the first two records (and before) as possible.

That isn't to say I don't love those last two records. You could argue their third is my favorite of them all. But when it comes to what the Velvet Underground essentially means to me, it is very specifically about the Cale years. Because Cale is my fucking man. And the relationship between these two divergent powerhouses is what I wanted every minute devoted to. That and the culture and personalities and city that surrounded them. And the movie did that miraculously well.

Jinnistan · 1/11/2023 6:02 pm

crumbsroom wrote:
You could argue their third is my favorite of them all.

I have steadfastly. And #2? Probably the Mercury Live 1969. Sure, Doug Yule ain't John Cale, and I wish Cale stuck around for when Lou had mellowed a bit. Cale's influence is clearly evident on those records. Was "Hey Mr. Rain" really worth quitting the group over?

(I know that it was a lot more complicated than that....)

Rampop II · 1/13/2023 6:36 am

Jinnistan wrote:
crumbsroom wrote:
I believe I remember you saying at some point you were around Korrine's general stomping grounds.
There aren't a whole lot of stomping grounds to choose from in Nashville for the hip social youngsters. The West End area is about the best place, where all of the colleges, the best book stores, the best restaurants and diners, the best art-house movie house, arguably the best music (Elliston Place), best record stores (Great Escape, Tower), definitely the best drugs (Dragon Park) and just generally the best mix of what the city has to culturally offer that doesn't include belt-buckles are located. Keep the tourists quarantined downtown, let them buy the expensive cowboy hats and boots and football tickets, bitter draft beer and square dance competitions. Make as much noise as you want, we can't hear your Hee Haw cosplay.

So it's true that we shared the West End stomping grounds, but I barely crossed paths with Korine. We share a handful of mutual friends, we attended adjacent high schools, he's a year older than myself, and by the time I was spending a lot of time in West End, he was already in New York writing Kids. He "got out" as the kids used to say. Korine, as you may be aware, had a Dylan-esque habit of making a whole lot of shit up about himself, and tried to slum himself off as a bit more downtrodden than he was. This "trash humping" tendency is clear in his films, but he lived in one of the nicer neighborhoods (Green Hills) and his father was a PBS producer. I may be wrong, and he'd deny it anyway, but I'm pretty sure he was class president for at least one of his high school years, as odd as that seems today. He's back in Nashville now, I believe, and last I heard (around 2008) he was shooting Budweiser commercials (which were never picked up) down at one of the city's finest dive bars, Springwater, with one of our mutual friends on banjo and another of West End's late street eccentrics, Dave Cloud.

And here's our mutual friend in his regular band.

crumbsroom wrote:
And his Letterman appearances.
And the great punchline of his appearances - getting a lifetime ban from the show for getting caught in the green room rummaging through Meryl Streep's purse. Devil's advocate: I bet Meryl has access to some fantastic pills.

“They got schools for you to go to!!!”

Sorry to wrinkle the timeline, here, but this brings back too many memories for me to stay silent.

I met Korine once, but I want to talk about Dave Cloud for a second, here. And while we’re at it, let me emphasize the savory glimpse these videos provide of the sleazier side of Nashville’s personality, the Nashville we preferred to inhabit, where we found respite from all the shallow commercialized banalities and closed minds that infect so much of that podunk cash cow of a city, the dimly–lit corners and enclaves where the underground music scene thrives. Also where the drugs can be found.

Look again at that big man in the white suit, beloved local legend and professional madman Dave Cloud. JJ and I enjoyed his company on many occasions and we even sang backup vocals for him once while he informally demonstrated some of his latest tunes in front of Nashville’s landmark arthouse cinema The Belcourt (usually our only hope for seeing avant garde and independent cinema).

Dave Cloud was wild on stage. I bet JJ could provide a more poetic description of the man than I, but I’ll do what I can. Maybe imagine The Big Bopper but older rounder and rougher, and possessed by the spirit of Lux Interior. He was always in a suit that never seemed to quite fit him (think Colbert’s impersonation of Bernie Sanders). His shows were an unusual pairing of rockabilly and psychedelia; His voice and mannerisms invoked a sloshy but commanding shade of vintage rockabilly attitude, backed by trippy experimental acid rock guitar sounds. He’d gyrate, he'd moan lewdly, he'd lie face down flat and hump the stage. He’d throw all his corpulence into Elvis–like poses, exuding the confidence of a top–brass sex machine. He had this one move where he would strike a wide–legged Elvis Presley fighting stance, then repeatedly reach one arm out to grab handfuls of air and yank them back as his deep voice thundered percussively, “Pullin’ out zombie hearts! Pullin’ out zombie hearts!”

In conversation he had a croaking voice, similar to Tom Waits’ cameo on Primus’ Tommy the Cat, or Tommy Lee Jones’s prison warden character Dwight from Natural Born Killers. He was a friendly and sociable guy, and one of those dudes you might call “slightly off” in some way, like maybe a little bit “on the spectrum.” Nothing extraordinary, just enough for you to sense it, somewhere in the timing, maybe, like Ringo Starr’s drumming, like a slight accent, something that added to his weird charm. I have a video I took of his final show before he passed away, so it’s a treasure for that reason, but it’s not much (flash back on Ed Wood, Jr). It was taken on an old 2006 Casio Exilim camera that could only take 8mb SD cards, it’s only one song, and low-res by today’s standards. I hope more video of him surfaces.

Those Budweiser videos made my night; I wasn’t aware of those, and the Trophy video really takes me back. You guys are seeing some esoteric shit, here. That venue, Springwater Supper Club and Lounge (where the first video was shot), is fucking legendary, with a long colorful history, and a bit of a David Lynch vibe. A one–toilet restroom with no lock, and the kind of towel dispenser with the real cotton towel on some kind of unseen spool mechanism inside a metal box, the kind where you yank down on the wet, used towel to expose a fresh dry segment of it, thus feeding the used portion back into the opaque mystery box while assuring yourself that it only looks like the same filthy towel is just being cycled back through for infinite re–use. If you hesitate to use it, you’re probably not drunk enough yet. What’s a little scabies among fellow reprobates? Bathroom graffiti stays in an ever–expanding tapestry as part of the decor. A hand–scrawled advertisement for Guzak vs somebody, with a date written next to it. The grand prize for their yearly raffle event: the privilege of smashing an old TV with a bowling ball. People getting high in the gravel parking lot, delicious grub prepared by the owner himself, homeless dudes wandering in to pass out and get dragged out, literally all “walks of life” represented, all colors and all collars, without a whiff of prejudice or snobbery, this old funky free–standing structure smack in the center of – and in contrast to – its polished Vanderbilt/Centennial Park surroundings. Maybe I romanticize, but I make no apology for it.

Now about that dwarf…

JJ and I had a funny encounter with Bryant Crenshaw, aka “Midget” in Gummo, who was a familiar face around the areas JJ outlined. He was homeless for at least some of his life. One night JJ and I were walking through bustling Hillsboro Village when a voice behind us requested our attention. We turn, and there’s Bryant Crenshaw. I remember he was in a jersey that hung to his ankles. He was about to ask us to spare a couple bucks, but the first thing he says to us, with hands open in a non–threatening gesture, and in a tone of assurance: “I’m not going to rob you or nothin…”

Last edited by Rampop II (1/14/2023 5:37 am)

Rampop II · 1/14/2023 4:55 am

...Let me elaborate on that last story, if the humor isn't already apparent. Dark humor. No pun intended. Dark humor on many levels. Also no pun intended.

I don't know if anyone here lives with, or knows someone with, any of the various forms of dwarfism. In many ways it's of course no laughing matter, as it not only guarantees a life of stigma and limited opportunity, but some kinds of dwarfism are fatal. What little we know about Bryant Crenshaw's life, and his death, is enough to know the man did not have it easy.

So I'll just have to pray that the man who agreed to appear as "Midget" in Gummo can approve of what I'm writing from beyond the grave. I mean him approving from beyond the grave, not me writing from beyond the grave. If I'm dead, I'm still catching on. (for choice writings from beyond the grave, check out Love, Crumbsroom)

But getting back to the story at hand...

Try to imagine turning around, looking down (assuming you're over four feet tall), and seeing this dude:

...and he's displaying a gesture and facial expression that says “everybody stay calm.”

Then he utters those words. "I'm not gonna rob you or nothin," in an intonation like Eddie Murphy's "I just want some chips" moment in The Golden Child.

Call me insensitive, but in that instant I had to do a fast and hard valsalva maneuver to suppress the explosions of laughter suddenly kicking mercilessly at my insides like so many fighting fetuses. I can only assume JJ was similarly choking down guffaws of his own. The thought had never entered our minds that the man before us might be any kind of threat. Crenshaw had, knowingly or unknowingly, delivered a first–class punchline, and it was putting water in both our basements.

Sure, there are ways a 4–foot man could harm a couple 5 foot–something dudes, if he really intended to do so. I mean no insult to the man by laughing or almost laughing at the thought of anybody being intimidated by him. Humor isn't always rational, as we know, nor is it always diplomatic. It strikes without warning and the reaction is involuntary. Raw hilarity can hit the nervous system and stimulate a response long before it reaches the brain (I have nothing to support that claim), so by the time it rides the elevator and reaches the desk of executive function, the news may have long been leaked.

I did hold it in, but the part of my 5'11" self, the part that fails to be instantly afraid of a four–foot man with 14-inch arms, was convulsing internally. Again, I'm sure Crenshaw could’ve at least laid a hurtin' on somebody if he needed to, win or lose. Never underestimate an underdog. But Crenshaw was familiar to us anyway, being a regular part of the scene, so to speak, and we had no reason to fear him. So we just politely went through the standard sequence, "spare change," "sorry, no," "OK, God bless," etc. Later on we laughed our guts out.

Another level to this story is the world of speculation it opens up: Had people really reacted to Crenshaw that way in the past? To the point that he needed to calm them? What does that scene look like? Who are these people? How does that scenario play out?

"Please, Mister Afro–Gremlin, don't turn us to stone! We're sorryyyy!"

Maybe he said “I’m not gonna rob you” on the premise that his Blackness could supersede his smallness in making him more intimidating. So then I have to laugh again at the image of some startled racist, terrified into such a panicked state that Crenshaw might actually appear distortedly huge to them. I imagine seeing him through their eyes, a picture in which the world recedes into shadow behind him as he emerges fully into view, whereupon he begins to steadily increase in size, especially his head, inflating like a shiny brown balloon, those eyes looking straight at them as it grows absurdly huge, like some Terry Gilliam clip art, until his face floods their entire field of vision, gorgonizing them with fright. They shrink and cower before the dreadful visage, their vocal cords too paralyzed to scream, hands fumbling spastically for valuables through piss–soaked pockets, helplessly ensnared, in a grip of deadly fear.

"Take her, not me! You'll be fine, honey, they love white women!" [shove] "Fetch, boy!" [fading tekku-tekku sound of cowardly soles beating asphalt in earnest retreat]

[later] "He was HUGE, officer! I think he abducted her to the top of the AT&T building; send planes!"

It wasn't until JJ and I were back in the car and on the road that we were able to release. One of us said something and we both exploded, like a couple of popped balloons.

Bryant Crenshaw, 1972–2015. Rest in peace, thanks for the laughs… and thank you for showing mercy on us all.

crumbsroom · 1/18/2023 8:18 pm

I will eventually get back to this thread. I just wanted to step away from feeling any obligations towards anything for awhile, and with my 'name' attached to this, I felt like I have to tend to this like a lawn at times. And I'm a terrible mower. Sometimes I don't even want to look out the window.

Rampop II · 1/18/2023 8:40 pm

crumbsroom wrote:
I will eventually get back to this thread. I just wanted to step away from feeling any obligations towards anything for awhile, and with my 'name' attached to this, I felt like I have to tend to this like a lawn at times. And I'm a terrible mower. Sometimes I don't even want to look out the window.

No pressure, Crumbs, we've got your back. Sometimes the grass just has to wait. Papa's gotta take care of Papa, especially with all these hungry mouths to feed.

(oh shit, new emojis)

Rampop II · 1/18/2023 8:51 pm

crumbsroom wrote:
I will eventually get back to this thread. I just wanted to step away from feeling any obligations towards anything for awhile, and with my 'name' attached to this, I felt like I have to tend to this like a lawn at times. And I'm a terrible mower. Sometimes I don't even want to look out the window.

Why not take some time out to hound JJ for more New American Christmas Apocalypse?

BTW I think he also had an uncle who presumed to lamely school him on The Beatles, if I am not mistaken.

Rampop II · 1/19/2023 7:57 pm

crumbsroom wrote:
I will eventually get back to this thread. I just wanted to step away from feeling any obligations towards anything for awhile, and with my 'name' attached to this, I felt like I have to tend to this like a lawn at times. And I'm a terrible mower. Sometimes I don't even want to look out the window.

I hope I didn't jack your thread, Crumbs. I get carried away sometimes.