CULTURAMA: The Mystery of Malvert

As little-known an artist as Ollie Jo Prater, S.P. Dinsmoor, or Vivian Maier, Patrick Boone Varnell plied his trade in near-obscurity. As fleetingly as a firefly, he sped across our field of vision and vanished. Who was he, and for what purposes was he used?

He was born in Lawton, Oklahoma, on Jan. 11, 1941. (Thank to the anonymous reader who provided this link to his obituary.) He was possessed of unique physique, an extreme ectomorph with hypermobility (he was real tall and thin and double-jointed). Slapping the monicker of The Stick onto himself, he takes a credit as Malvert the Janitor in Mickey Rose’s single directorial effort, the 1981 slasher parody film “Student Bodies.”

Rose, a talented comedy writer who started off in high school with friend Woody Allen, cranked out this spoof with efficient fervor. It’s one of a long line of horror-comedy films, from “Ghost Breakers” through “Spider Baby,” the “scary Movie” series, and the new “What We Do in the Shadows.” “Student Bodies” trips along in the scattershot modality of the “riffing” film, made popular in the wake of “Airplane!”.

Varnell (as The Stick) portrays school janitor Malvert, who ambles artlessly through many scenes casually eating half-eaten trash off the lawn . . . without bending over, peeing in the wastebaskets, bringing a blow-up date to the big game, lapping punch out of the bowl at the high-school dance.

Malvert is a revolting grotesque. His ratty hair, thick glasses and spasmodic movements mark him as the archetypal outsider, the freak of nature. As such, he is naturally the first suspect in the serial murders of the local teens who choose to have sex. Of course, he winds up being not only a kind of childishly innocent monster, but a magical helper as well to the movie’s endangered heroine, stealing the keys (and incidentally, the cheese) of the school principal.

After “Student Bodies,” Varnell accumulates only one more credit. He can be glimpsed in the pilot episode of “Out of Control” in 1984. This was the first series produced by Nickelodeon, and featured Dave Coulier as host, right before he moved on to the immortal role of Joey on “Full House.” This anthology show featured comic bits interspersed with semi-educational material, a la ABC’s “Make a Wish” a decade earlier, pitched again to the 5-12-age set.

Once again, Varnell is used purely for his comic physical anomalies, cutting briefly into focus. Like a fright mask, his unexplained injection into the sketch serves to trigger incredulity, discomfort, and (hopefully) some laughs.

Was he witty? Was he in on the joke his appearance had forced upon him? At the end of "Student Bodeis," an it-was-all-a-dream scene takes place, and Malvert is evidently a tweed-clad intellectual. "I dreamed you were the janitor!" the heroine exclaims. "Ab-SUHD!" Malvert responds.

Quasimodo’s crowning as the Pope of Fools in Hugo’s “Hunchback of Notre Dame,” paraded around Paris – what did he make of the inversion of his status? “. . . disdainful joy lighted up the morose face of the cyclops, when he beheld beneath his deformed feet all those heads of handsome, straight, well-made men." Does mockery elevate the different, or does holding them higher only make them a better targetto spit at, to inspire awkward, uneasy laughter?

Did Varnell take it well? Did it dishearten him? Is that just show biz?

He died in Dallas on May 7, 1989, aged 48.

CULTURAMA: Green Lama, the original Fighting Buddhist(?)

I live in Boulder, Colorado, and you can’t throw a brick around here without hitting a Buddhist. Believe me, I’ve tried.

(Of course, we are enjoying notoriety currently as the site of recent severe flooding. We were not victims, as we live on less valuable property on a ridge east of town. In a weird kind of anti-Katrina motif, many houses ruined by the flood are on the pricey end – because they overlooked the picturesque running water. Here’s my flood story: our cable went out. Sorry.)

Anyway, Eastern practices are alive and thriving here in Lotusland by the Rockies, where therapists of every ilk, Trustafarians (white Rastas), marijuana-industry professionals, organic Puritans, the digerati, academic theorists, exer-fascists, and eerily similar clumps of nonconformists intermingle like exotic species in a game preserve, fenced off from the mundane world.

So who would ever serve as Boulder’s superheroic champion? I nominate the Green Lama. I found this Golden Age champion via a short-lived CBS radio series that served as a summer replacement in 1949. Kendall Foster Crossen penned these episodes, based on his original pulp-fiction stories that first saw light in 1940. The unmistakable basso voice of Paul Frees embodied our hero.

The Green Lama is, in reality, the oddly named Jethro Dumont, another wealthy young socialite in the Batman tradition, whose parents conveniently orphan while he’s at Harvard. He differs from the Caped Crusader in that he studies for a decade in Tibet to gain enlightenment and purpose.

As the anonymous Wikipedia contributor succinctly states, "He returned to America intending to spread the basic doctrines of Tibetan Buddhism (remove ignorance and relieve suffering), but realized that he could accomplish more by fighting crime."

OK.

With the help of both his soul power and various other abilities (depending on the medium) including flight, invisibility, energy beams, and such, generated at least during his beginnings by the use of “radioactive salts,” he battles criminals, murderers, international cabals, and even the Axis.

The idea of taking a spiritual practice a central pillar of which is Ahimsa, or non-violence, and making it fuel a two-fisted ethical vigilante’s struggle for justice is a unique American inversion of impulse. The air of Oriental mystery, coupled with Crossen’s accurate research and usage of Tibetan mantras, was meant to ape and rival the exploits of the more popular Shadow, who as Lamont Cranston learned the “power to cloud men’s minds” while traveling in East Asia.

The Green Lama sprang to life in pulp fiction, then migrated to comics and radio, surprisingly reincarnating in various graphic-novel forms, and even a live aerial dance performance, in the recent past . . . coming back to life again and again just as a Buddhist does. Here in the land of yoga mats and TOMS, he could be the savior we muddy, unenlightened ones are looking for.

“Om –mane –padme –OM!”

Review: "Directing: Film Techniques and Aesthetics," Fifth Edition

Directing: Film Techniques and Aesthetics, Fifth Edition

Michael Rabiger & Mick Hurbis-Cherrier

2013

Focal Press, Burlington, MA, USA

517 pgs.

So you want to be a movie director? Read this book. That’s it, you’re ready!

Comprehensive is too weak a word for the contents of the freshly updated “Directing.” In contrast to past tomes I’ve reviewed in the publisher’s FilmCraft series, this is not a string of anecdotal accounts about an aspect of the film profession. Possessed of a depth and scope far beyond what might suffice for laymen, this is a playbook for people who are serious about learning how to do this job called directing.

Film-school education has long turned away from the days when theory, interpretation, and critique held sway. The film industry is the quintessential capitalist/industrial venture – every movie a startup, an invention, an experience, a product, a gamble on the ability of the filmmaker to connect with a paying audience. And, like most artistic endeavors, you learn a lot more and a lot faster on the ground getting it done than sitting around thinking and talking about it. Film is a practicum: if you can’t make it happen, you won’t get far.

That being said, this would be the book to read before diving in to the daunting business of directing. The key to its effectiveness as an introduction, a classroom text, a reference work, or as a literal template for a specific film project is its straightforward, forthright style, peppered with both flashes of humor and a serious sense of purpose. The concern of the authors to be as clear and logical as possible is clearly felt, and the text is profusely illustrated with relevant stills and diagrams as well.

The organization of “Directing” is as impressive as the scope of work it suggests is the director’s responsibility is staggering. The book begins with basic premises through storytelling, film aesthetics, and cinematic “language,” on to preproduction, casting, working with actors, hiring a crew, breaking down the script, all the way through post and concluding with a friendly reminder to the filmmaker not to drink too much after the first screening, so that he or she can network more effectively.

Original author Michael Rabiger’s work has been seamlessly updated by Mick Hurbis-Cherrier, who writes with a similarly engaging thoroughness. (We are even treated to a photo of Rabiger’s father, makeup artist Paul, brushing Shirley Eaton down with gold paint for her memorable appearance in “Goldfinger.”)

The upshot for me, personally, after reading “Directing” is that I do NOT want to direct. It seems to demand a combination of the personality traits of Superman, Moses, Patton, and Renoir, with a double portion of the patience of Job.

A caveat – this is a text loaded with valuable content, and it means slow going and careful digestion for the reader who wishes to make full benefit of it.

“Directing” is exemplary not only in its address of its subject, but as a model for anyone who would seek to cover a subject thoroughly, with insight, and a healthy sense of how a neophyte should proceed. Really? You really want to direct? Read “Directing” and call me in the morning.

Review: "FilmCraft: Producing"

FilmCraft: Producing

By Geoffrey Macnab & Sharon Stewart

Focal Press, 2013

By BRAD WEISMANN

“The way I see it, my function is to be responsible for everything.”

n  David O. Selznick

“What is a producer? An enabler.”

                                    Jeremy Thomas

So what is a movie producer? A visionary who brings cinematic glory to life, despite all odds? A blackhearted bastard who reduces people and ideas to numbers? The new installment in FilmCraft’s anecdotal survey of cinema, “Producing,” does its best to answer the question. It’s a hallmark of the position that it is both so nebulous and so all-encompassing that you still may be confused about what it involves even after reading the book.

The producer does indeed do everything – from finding scripts and directors to back, digging up financing, generaling the logistics of the shoot, securing distribution, generating publicity – and anything else that needs to get done to make a movie come to life.

Despite the auteur theory, it’s the producer who picks up the Oscar for Best Picture each year, an acknowledgement of the ultimate responsibility of the producer to make things happen. And, although the titles of producer, associate producer, executive producer, etc. are flung about liberally these days, usually as an honorarium for a substantial cash contribution, the buck still does indeed stop with the producer.

“FilmCraft: Producing” follows its usual m.o., which is an anecdotal and not an analytical approach, lavishly illustrated. No fewer than 16 prominent contemporary figures, such as “Avatar”’s Jon Landau, Jon Kilik (“The Hunger Games,” much Spike Lee), Jan Chapman (Jane Campion’s long-time partner), discourse in cut-together monologues about their experience and approach. There is as well a quartet of profiles from the past – Selznick, Korda, De Laurentiis, and Balcon.

The variety of experience outlined here clearly demonstrates that a producer’s involvement and structuring of each project can be radically different. The highly structured, hierarchical paradigm of Hollywood’s Golden Age still exists, to some extent, and churns out international product efficiently. The American indie movement, where many of today’s top producers learned their trade in the DIY spirit of the time, is fading fast. The producer must constantly keep his or her skills honed and be ready to adopt new techniques – whether it means CGI or fundraising.

“FilmCraft: Producing” suffers a bit from its anecdotal approach in this instance. Unlike more concrete crafts such as editing and cinematography, producing is so ill-defined by nature that, after hearing from all the participants, the ultimate impact is less informative and cohesive than in other FilmCraft volumes.

If, as it is said in the book, that each film production is akin to creating a startup company, the demands of the job span both diplomacy and ruthlessness, exacting planning and foolish faith, persistence and energy. For those who seek information about the craft from highly respected industry leaders who are working now, “Producing” is a good place to start.

Eargasm: ‘Feelin’ Alright’ and the mechanics of the listenable

There is a name for that song that gets stuck in your head. Scientifically, It’s termed involuntary musical imagery, and a surprising amount of research has been done on it. It happens to 99 percent of us, and quite frequently. They are still working on a cure.

For me, it all started with Joe Cocker. I could not understand what the hell he was singing in his famous 1969 cover version of Dave Mason’s “Feelin’ Alright.” Thanks to my compulsive research skills, I found that it has reached “anthem” status, that it’s been covered by more than 40 artists, including:

·         Mongo Santamaria

·         Grand Funk Railroad

·         Three Dog Night

·         5^th Dimension

·         Lou Rawls

·         Freddie King

·         Lulu

·         Chairmen of the Board

·         Rare Earth

·         Ohio Players

·         Diana Ross/Jackson 5

·         Maceo Parker

·         Gladys Knight & the Pips

·         Widespread Panic

·         Black Crowes

·         Issac Hayes and the Osmonds (? Yes, there is video evidence)

·         Dr. John/Louis Prima

·         Coldplay

·         Huey Lewis

The best running list of covers is curated by Mr. Mason himself, complete with full lyrics (although there are two variant sets even on Mason’s page), chords, and more on his website at davemasonmusic.com -- http://www.davemasonmusic.com/feelin-alright.

Mason wrote it in 1965 when he was 19; its first recording debuted on Traffic’s self-titled second album. (Mason had left the group right after making their first album “Mr. Fantasy” the year before, and returned just long enough to appear on “Traffic” before leaving again, this time for good.)

Dialing through all the covers of the tune I could track down, I found that age did not wither nor custom stale its infinite variety. How come I don’t get sick of it? What makes it work? A. Its funky, rolling rhythm, adaptable to many musical genres; B. Two chords! (C7-F7, kids) – Easy to transmit and perform. C. The call-and-response chorus and gospel-derived harmonics give it an urgent forward motion, no matter what the tempo; D. The breaks leave plenty of space for inventive, wide-ranging solos, and E. The plaintive lyrics are simple, memorable (once you understand the words), and the sentiments are universal.

It’s kind of a breakup song, rueful in the same way that “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright” is. However, it’s not accusatory and contemptuous. It’s a lyrical, flowing white-blues song. Although a girl is referenced, the subject of the song could be any situation or institution that needs to be left behind.

“Feelin’ Alright” delicately straddles the gap between the “earworm” quality of infectiously listenable hits such as “Louie Louie,” “You Really Got Me,” “Free Bird,” et al and the raise-your-lighters-high inspirational-rock-anthem category – “Hold Your Head Up,” Don’t Stop Believin’,” Dream On,” and all the other fist-pumpers.

In other words, it combines a strong basic structure with an inherent flexibility that allows for all kinds of musical colorings (and lyrical variations). I found a few versions that felt more compelling than Cocker’s classic take. Here they are:

5. Badfinger

This rare live version is from a compilation LP, “Badfinger: BBC in Concert, 1972-73” – Peter Ham’s lead guitar was never better. A swamp-rockish take --

https://youtu.be/TltPbivxvg0?si=nzx7s3fQUoSf9epo

4. Tufts Beelzebubs

GREAT a capella version from this university group!

3. Bar-Kays

The Bar-Kays were built from the ruins of the 1967 plane crash that killed Otis Redding and most of his backup band. The slow, deliciously horn-rich funk of this cover is distinctly reminiscent of the Stax Records style, where most of the group got their start.

2. Traffic

Of course, the original recording. With Mason on lead, the vocals penetrate as they only can when the writer sings them. Chris Wood appropriately sticks a phrase of “It Ain’t Necessarily So” at the front of his horn solo. Jim Capaldi’s astonishingly crisp, rapid-fire riffs are tutorials in themselves!

https://youtu.be/xYXxbtkGtW0?si=XsVGmbfJxNXJ6v73

1.      Trinidad Oil Company

Yes, a steel drum band. This 1977 cover takes the prize. Why? The guitar solo is not terribly inventive, and the mix needs serious work. I guess it’s partly the intense focus of the effort, and the unorthodox instrumentation. The drummer rides that splashy ‘70s cymbal so hard that it creates harmonic over- and undertones that encompass the performance and urge it on. The song marches at a brisk, uninflected pace, and the vocals snap out like firecrackers on the sidewalk.

The overall effect is that of turning the song into a warrior chant, an undefeatable and propulsive force of nature – just the thing one needs to hear when you need a little cheer and inspiration.

Now, if I could only get "Slow Hand" out of my head . . .

Code of silence: Iversen’s “Full Body Burden” is a revelation

Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats

Kristen Iversen

Crown Publishers

2012

It is very rarely that a complex, decades-long historical tragedy and an intensely personal narrative can be woven together artfully. In “Full Body Burden,” writer, editor, and educator Kristen Iversen does so with a combination of clarity, self-revelation, and readability. That she does so in my critical eye is even more remarkable – as her childhood story is largely my own.

Like her, I grew up in the 1960s and ‘70s in the suburb of Arvada, Colorado, eight miles southeast (and downwind) from the U.S. government’s Rocky Flats nuclear weapons production facility. She writes, “Some of those new suburban homes would have built-in atomic bomb shelters, including a show home in Allendale Heights . . . It was one of fifteen ‘Titan’ showcase homes – homes named after the newly developed intercontinental Titan ballistic missile – scattered around the country near other nuclear weapon production sites.”

That was the house I grew up in. The bomb shelter still sits in my mother’s basement, now crowded with cardboard boxes, Christmas decorations, 78 rpm records, and miscellaneous keepsakes. There were a double-handful of government documents stored there, telling us all about how to successfully overcome Armageddon. They formed the basis for my own magazine-length memoir of growing up in the heart of the Cold War (“Growing Up Nuclear," 5280 magazine, April/May 2000).

Iversen’s narrative of course far more comprehensive and inclusive – in fact, it’s the first historical account of Rocky Flats, from its star-spangled start to its ignominious finish, that I found comprehensible. Its convoluted, largely hidden story of secrecy, danger, accidents, Cold War paranoia, and corporate exploitation is riveting in Iversen’s telling. Her research is far-ranging and impeccable.

Rocky Flats manufactured plutonium triggers which would set off the chain reaction inside thermonuclear devices. She describes the urgency and corner-cutting, pushed along by fear of being outgunned by the Russians, that characterized the project from the start. As the years went by, cost overruns, deadly errors, and incidents of contamination were routinely covered up in the name of national security. Iversen aptly delineates all the players – from the technicians and scientists to the bureaucrats to those whose families began to suffer from unexplained cancers in the region to the peace and environmental activists whose increasing clamor finally forced investigation and shutdown of the site.

Iversen, like me, was steeped in the ethos of the time. Most of our neighbors worked at Rocky Flats – high-paying jobs that enabled them to live the suburban dream of affluence and security. None of them could or would tell their children, or us, what they did for a living. “I keep America strong,” was one memorable answer I received.

Iversen has the wisdom not to paint one-dimensional pictures of the characters in her story. For a time, circumstances led her to working within the plant itself giving her an irreplaceable perspective. By sharing all points of view with the reader, she quite accurately portrays the zeitgeist of an area in which a “Father Knows Best”-type setting is sustained by an underlying traffic with the deadliest and most morally questionable of dangers.

Speaking of “Father Knows Best,” the other half of Iversen’s narrative consists of discussing her troubled family life. Once again, parallels between her youth and mine abound – our families came from the Midwest, our ancestry is Danish, we were raised Lutherans . . . and our fathers were alcoholics.

The symptoms and repercussions of her father’s addiction are almost unbearable for me to read. I can verify their verisimilitude. Like her family, mine coped largely by ignoring the problem (oh, those good old emotionally remote, reality-denying Scandinavian genes!). The shame, anger, sorrow, and guilt she outlines are heartbreaking; and the convolutions of her relationship with her father, with its muddiness and lack of closure, are all too familiar.

The big historical picture and the intimate personal one fuse in a mutually enlightening manner. Beyond my uniquely personal reaction, I think that this book serves as a fundamental resource for anyone trying to understand that particular place and time.

How long will it take until the 6,240 acres on the rolling plains east of the mountains will be safe again? The site has, laughingly, been turned into a wildlife refuge. Many hidden deposits of radioactive waste lurk there; meanwhile, housing developments are springing up everywhere around it, many in the fallout path of past plutonium leaks.

The fallout from a dysfunctional childhood has a big shadow, too. We strive to overcome our own addictive behaviors, try to heal, and pray that we don’t pass the curse on to our own children. Personally, I am very grateful for this book. Isolation is one of the hallmarks of those who grow up in an alcoholic household. Many thanks to Iversen for making me feel a little less alone.

Eargasm: "Gunsmoke"

Producer-director Norman Macdonnell (left) confers with William Conrad during a rehearsal for "Gunsmoke."

“Gunsmoke”

Dramatic radio program; “adult Western”

CBS

30 min. episodes

Broadcast April 26, 1952 to June 18, 1961

Not all memorable sounds are musical. During the Golden Age of Radio, a number of programs and a subculture of talent entertained, informed and inspired the public. One of the best of these was “Gunsmoke.”

Very few people retain a living memory of that medium, but from 1926 through Sept. 30, 1962, network radio was a real-time, (at least until Bing Crosby pushed through pre-recorded programming in 1947) vital cornucopia of drama, comedy, variety, news, music and public service. There were niche shows that appealed to specialized audiences, and even prestige and experimental efforts that the networks “sustained” (carried without commercials).

By and large, though, network radio was pitched by mutual consent to the lowest common denominator, and censored rigorously . . . save for some gruesome violence on horror shows such as “The Inner Sanctum” and “Lights Out,” and not excluding the matter-of-fact retailing of then-popular racist stereotypes of the day on such shows as “Amos & Andy,” “Life with Luigi,” Asian villains galore, especially during World War II, and of course the faithfully subordinate, monosyllabic Tonto.

Television killed radio, at precisely the point when it was about to mature and diversify. The juvenile and wholesome tone of “old-time radio” was disturbed by several darker shows that cropped up late in the era – most significantly, “Gunsmoke.”

Producer-director Norman Macdonnell and writer John Mestin wanted to bring gritty realism to the Western genre, which was previously the domain of children’s programming. They devised a formula so successful that it lasted a decade on radio and transferred to TV for a 20-year run as well.

“Gunsmoke” was set in frontier Dodge City, Kansas, and centered on the exploits of Marshal Matt Dillon. Although the typical story arc of conflict and bloody resolution prevailed, Macdonnell and Mestin’s conceptual framework enabled all manner of stories to be told, all kinds of themes to be explored, and countless sharply-drawn characters to be delineated. Later writers like Antony Ellis, Les Crutchfield, and Kathleen Hite kept up the quality.

The choice to play Dillon was William Conrad. Perhaps better remembered today for his TV work in the detective shows “Cannon” and “Jake and the Fat Man,” Conrad was a stellar radio performer for decades. Although he jokingly referred to himself as “The Man with a Thousand Voice,” he was adept at accents and graced all manner of shows.

Conrad’s husky baritone allowed him to play leading men on radio, but he had a quality of vulnerability in his voice as well. His thoughtful, nuanced delivery personified the complexity and ambiguity found in the show itself. Dillon killed regularly in the course of his job, yet he was a man of conscience. As he said in each show’s intro, “It’s a chancy job, and it makes a man watchful . . . and a little lonely.” Pathos, and humor, were not excluded either. Still, week after week, we never forgot that Matt Dillon was a violent and haunted man.

The regular cast of characters included Parley Baer as Chester Proudfoot, Dillon’s deputy; Howard McNear (Floyd the barber later on TV’s “The Andy Griffith Show”) as Doc; and Geogia Ellis as Miss Kitty, the saloon proprietress. A host of top-notch supporting players handled a variety of roles each week, including John Dehner, Harry Bartell, Larry Dobkin, Jack Kruschen, Jeanette Nolan, and Vic Perrin.

Two of the highlights of the show were Rex Koury’s score, scored eloquently and economically for guitar, trumpet and violins, and the best sound effects in the business. So elevated was the approach to them that they were referred to as “sound patterns” in the credits, and Tom Hanley, Ray and Bill James Kemper provided them. Their quest for realism led them great lengths. You can listen to characters’ footsteps change from wood to gravel to dirt as they “track” through a scene; the aural landscape is meticulously if subtly laid out for the listener.

Here's an exemplary episode to try: "The Square Triangle," from Nov. 14, 1952 -- 

Fortunately, these shows were preserved and are available for free listening on the web. Such locations as http://archive.org/details/OTRR_Gunsmoke_Singles, http://www.otr.net/?p=guns, http://otrarchive.blogspot.com/2009/04/gunsmoke.html will give you pleasure by the hour. I must refer exceptionally curious listeners to Denver writer and old-time radio expert John Dunning’s classic 1998 reference work, “On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio.” Dunning, who enchanted me with his weekly broadcasts for decades, cannot be surpassed.

Network TV killed network radio. In contrast, narrative radio in England never died out, and the medium is mature and robust there (oh, yes, they still have their share of dreck as well). What would Amrican radio sound like now if the form hadn’t been dropped? There have been sporadic attempts to revive the genre, such as “The CBS Radio Mystery Theater” and some National Public Radio efforts, but unless some miracle occurs, you could do worse than realize the possibilities for edgy and challenging content that “Gunsmoke” made manifest.