Earlier today Consequence Of Sound featured the song “Human Sadness” by Simon Taufique and featuring The Strokes’ Julian Casablancas, and reported that the song was from the film “See’s Lost Control”
I posted this:
“See’s Lost Control” follows a woman in New York City named Ronah, according to Consequence of Sound.
“[She] teaches men how to be intimate and make love,” Marquardt told Consequence of Sound. “Intimacy is one of the hardest things to learn in life and it is becoming increasingly challenging in our modern, technologically-driven society. Ultimately, ‘She’s Lost Control’ is a story about compassion and reaching out to other human beings.”
The film will have its North American debut at South by Southwest in March.
Now it turns out that “Human Sadness” is actually from a documentary that Casablancas and Taufique worked on in 2013, and is not in “She’s Lost Control.”.
On Facebook Taufique wrote me: “Actually, the song referenced in the article is one that Julian and I worked on together for a documentary last year, not SLC.”
Taufique tells me the documentary is called “Unseen Beauty,” and “it’s a doc about Julian’s stepfather, the painter, Sam Adoquei.”
Check out the song:
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Philip Seymour Hoffman was found dead this morning (Sunday, February 2, 2014) of an apparent drug overdose at an apartment in Greenwich Village, the New York Times reports.
He was in a lot of films.
I love this scene in “Almost Famous” where he’s Lester Bangs talking to the kid.
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One of the people who read that post, Will Dockery, commented on that post and included a short quote from a Rolling Stone interview that Jonathan Cott did with Dylan that was published January 26, 1978 (the day after “Renaldo & Clara” was first shown in movie theaters in New York and Los Angeles).
I found the interview and have included some of it below.
While Dylan is specifically talking about what influenced his filmmaking, clearly film has influenced him as an artist in many ways.
I’ve excerpted a section where he talks about other directors and mentions a few films. You can find the interview in a book edited by Jonathan Cott called “Bob Dylan: The Essential Interviews” published by Wenner Books. It’s also online here (but it’s possible you have to be a Rolling Stone subscriber to get access — I’m not sure).
The movie that creates the context for this conversation is, of course, “Renaldo & Clara.”
Bob Dylan: I know this film is too long. It may be four hours too long — I don’t care. To me, it’s not long enough. I’m not concerned how long something is. I want to see a set shot. I feel a set shot. I don’t feel all this motion and boom-boom. We can fast cut when we want, but the power comes in the ability to have faith that it is a meaningful shot.
You know who understood this? Andy Warhol. Warhol did a lot for American cinema. He was before his time. But Warhol and Hitchcock and Peckinpah and Tod Browning . . . they were important to me. I figured Godard had the accessibility to make what he made, he broke new ground. I never saw any film like Breathless, but once you saw it, you said: “Yeah, man, why didn’t I do that, I could have done that.” Okay, he did it, but he couldn’t have done it in America.
Trailer for “Breathless”:
“Breathless” (Dutch subtitles):
Excerpt from Tod Browning’s “Freaks”:
Andy Warhol’s “Beauty Number 2”:
Jonathan Cott: But what about a film like Sam Fuller’s Forty Guns or Joseph Lewis’ Guns Crazy?
Yeah, I just heard Fuller’s name the other day. I think American filmmakers are the best. But I also like Kurosawa, and my favorite director is [Luis] Buñuel; it doesn’t surprise me that he’d say those amazing things you quoted to me before from the New Yorker.
Buñuel’s “El Angel Exterminador”:
[Earlier in the interview Cott read a Buñuel quote to Dylan from a New Yorker interview: “Mystery is an essential element in any work of art. It’s usually lacking in film, which should be the most mysterious of all. Most filmmakers are careful not to perturb us by opening the windows of the screen onto their world of poetry. Cinema is a marvelous weapon when it is handled by a free spirit. Of all the means of expression, it is the one that is most like the human imagination. What’s the good of it if it apes everything conformist and sentimental in us? It’s a curious thing that film can create such moments of compressed ritual. The raising of the everyday to the dramatic.”]
I don’t know what to tell you. In one way I don’t consider myself a filmmaker at all. In another way I do. To me, Renaldo and Clara is my first real film. I don’t know who will like it. I made it for a specific bunch of people and myself, and that’s all. That’s how I wrote “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “The Times They Are A-Changin'” — they were written for a certain crowd of people and for certain artists, too. Who knew they were going to be big song
The film, in a way, is a culmination of a lot of your ideas and obsessions.
That may be true, but I hope it also has meaning for other people who aren’t that familiar with my songs, and that other people can see themselves in it, because I don’t feel so isolated from what’s going on. There are a lot of people who’ll look at the film without knowing who anybody is in it. And they’ll see it more purely.
Eisenstein talked of montage in terms of attraction — shots attracting other shots — then in terms of shock, and finally in terms of fusion and synthesis, and of overtones. You seem to be really aware of the overtones in your film, do you know what I mean?
I sure do.
Eisenstein once wrote: “The Moscow Art is my deadly enemy. It is the exact antithesis of all I am trying to do. They string their emotions together to give a continuous illusion of reality. I take photographs of reality and then cut them up so as to produce emotions.”
Eisenstein’s “Battleship Potemkin”:
What we did [in Renaldo & Clara”] was to cut up reality and make it more real . . . Everyone from the cameramen to the water boy, from the wardrobe people to the sound people was just as important as anyone else in the making of the film. There weren’t any roles that well defined. The money was coming in the front door and going out the back door: The Rolling Thunder tour sponsored the movie. And I had faith and trust in the people who helped me do the film, and they had faith and trust in me.
In the movie, there’s a man behind a luncheonette counter who talks a lot about truth — he’s almost like the Greek chorus of the film.
Yeah, we often sat around and talked about that guy. He is the chorus.
That guy at one point talks about the Movement going astray and about how everyone got bought off. How come you didn’t sell out and just make a commercial film?
I don’t have any cinematic vision to sell out. It’s all for me so I can’t sell out. I’m not working for anybody. What was there to sell out?
Well, movies like “Welcome to L.A.” and “Looking for Mr. Goodbar” are moralistic exploitation films — and many people nowadays think that they’re significant statements. You could have sold out to the vision of the times.
Right. I have my point of view and my vision, and nothing tampers with it because it’s all that I’ve got. I don’t have anything to sell out.
Renaldo and Clara has certain similarities to the recent films of Jacques Rivette. Do you know his work?
I don’t. But I wish they’d do it in this country. I’d feel a lot safer. I mean I wouldn’t get so much resistance and hostility. I can’t believe that people think that four hours is too long for a film. As if people had so much to do. You can see an hour movie that seems like 10 hours. I think the vision is strong enough to cut through all of that. But we may be kicked right out of Hollywood after this film is released and have to go to Bolivia. In India, they show 12-hour movies. Americans are spoiled, they expect art to be like wallpaper with no effort, just to be there.
Jacques Rivette’s “Paris Nous Appartient”:
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Thirty-six years ago, on January 25, 1978, Bob Dylan’s epic four-plus hour film “Renaldo & Clara” began a limited theatrical run, opening in New York City and Los Angeles.
The film screened in a handful of additional cities and then was pulled. Later that year a short version was released. I saw that version, found it very intriguing but also quite confusing.
Janet Maslin’s January 26, 1978 review of the film in the New York Times begins like this:
THERE’S an insolence about “Renaldo and Clara,” the four-hour film written and directed by Bob Dylan and featuring members of his Rolling Thunder Revue, that is not easily ignored. Mr. Dylan, who has a way of insinuating that any viewer who doesn’t grasp the full richness of his work must be intellectually deficient or guilty of some failure of nerve, has seen fit to produce a film that no one is likely to find altogether comprehensible. Yet for anyone even marginally interested in Mr. Dylan—and for anyone willing to accept the idea that his evasiveness, however exasperating, is a crucial aspect of his finest work — “Renaldo and Clara” holds the attention at least as effectively as it tries the patience.
No knowledge of Mr. Dylan or his history is supposed to be central to an understanding of the film, but it nevertheless trades heavily upon his past. The singer David Blue, playing himself, talks about the artistic climate of Greenwich Village when Mr. Dylan first arrived there, and Joan Baez is rather coyly cast as Mr. Dylan’s former lover. Mr. Dylan, even more coyly, is cast as someone other than himself, a very vague figure named Renaldo.
Cast:
Bob Dylan … Renaldo
Sara Dylan … Clara
Joan Baez … Woman in White
Ronnie Hawkins … Bob Dylan
Jack Elliott … Longheno de Castro
Harry Dean Stanton … Lafkezio
Bob Neuwirth … The Masked Tortilla
Allen Ginsberg … The Father
David Mansfield … The Son
Helena Kallianiotes … Herself
Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter … Himself
T-Bone Burnett … The Inner Voice
On October 16, 1992, an amazing group of artists came to Madison Square Garden to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the release of Bob Dylan’s self-titled debut album.
From Bob Dylan’s website:
The four hour show, performed for a sold-out audience of more than 18,000 fans and live-cast around the world, brought together an unprecedented roster of artists and icons including Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash, Lou Reed, The Clancy Brothers, Richie Havens, Johnny Winter, Roger McGuinn, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, Stevie Wonder, Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Neil Young, Eric Clapton, Ron Wood, Chrissie Hynde, The O’Jays, Eddie Vedder, Sinéad O’Connor, Tracy Chapman, George Harrison (then making his first US concert appearance in 18 years) and more. Providing musical backing throughout the show was an ensemble dream team featuring three members of Booker T. & The M.G.’s, G.E. Smith on guitar with Jim Keltner and Anton Fig on drums.
There was a a CD and a VHS tape released in 1993, but now, on March 4, 2014, Columbia Records will release an expanded version of the album, as well as DVD and Blu-ray versions of the video.
Promotional video about the new release:
More from Dylan’s website:
Struck from a new High Definition video master with remastered audio, The 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration – Deluxe Edition makes this historic all-star musical event available for the first time on DVD and Blu-ray.
The 2DVD and Blu-ray versions of The 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration – Deluxe Edition include 40 minutes of previously unreleased material including behind-the-scenes rehearsal footage, interviews and more.
The 2CD audio edition premieres two previously unreleased recordings from the concert’s sound check: Sinéad O’Connor singing “I Believe In You” and Eric Clapton’s interpretation of “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright.”
The 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration – Deluxe Edition includes new notes by pop music historian Bill Flanagan.
Check out some of the original version of the concert:
Bob Dylan – The 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration – Deluxe Edition:
Like A Rolling Stone – John Mellencamp
Blowin’ In The Wind – Stevie Wonder
Foot Of Pride – Lou Reed
Masters Of War – Eddie Vedder/Mike McCready
The Times They Are A-Changin’ – Tracy Chapman
It Ain’t Me Babe – June Carter Cash/Johnny Cash
What Was It You Wanted – Willie Nelson
I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight – Kris Kristofferson
Highway 61 Revisited – Johnny Winter
Seven Days – Ron Wood
Just Like A Woman – Richie Havens
When The Ship Comes in – The Clancy Brothers and Robbie O’Connell with special guest Tommy Makem
War – Sinead O’Connor
Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues – Neil Young
All Along The Watchtower – Neil Young
I Shall Be Released – Chrissie Hynde
Love Minus Zero, No Limit – Eric Clapton (Track Only Available on DVD/Blu-Ray Format)
Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright – Eric Clapton
Emotionally Yours – The O’Jays
When I Paint My Masterpiece – The Band
You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere – Mary Chapin Carpenter/Rosanne Cash/Shawn Colvin
Absolutely Sweet Marie – George Harrison
License To Kill – Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 – Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
Mr Tambourine Man – Roger McGuinn
It’s Alright, Ma – Bob Dylan
My Back Pages – Bob Dylan/Roger McGuinn/Tom Petty/Neil Young/Eric Clapton/George Harrison
Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door – Everyone
Girl Of The North Country – Bob Dylan
DVD Bonus Tracks:
Leopard-Skin Pill-box Hat – John Mellencamp
Boots Of Spanish Leather – Nancy Griffith with Carolyn Hester
Gotta Serve Somebody – Booker T. & The M.G.’s
DVD Bonus Features:
Behind The Scenes (40 minutes of previously unreleased rehearsal footage, interviews and more)
CD Audio bonus tracks:
Sinéad O’Connor – I Believe In You (from sound check – previously unreleased)
Eric Clapton – Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright (from sound check – previously unreleased)
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Neil Young at Carnegie Hall, Jan. 6, 2014. Photo via the New York Times website.
I’ve posted video clips from this show before, but now Reelife Productions has put together a terrific concert film based on “crowd sourced” material from the January 7, 2014 Carnegie Hall show.
The audio is quite good and so is the video.
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Bob Dylan has loved the movies since he was a kid.
Not long after his success as a folk singer, in 1965, he made his first movie, letting documentary film-maker D. A. Pennebaker tag along on Dylan’s 1965 U.K. tour. The resulting 1967 film, “Don’t Look Back,” established the sarcastic Dylan persona — to this day the Dylan of “Don’t Look Back” remains iconic.
He let Pennebaker come with him on the 1966 UK tour and the result was “Eat The Document,” a planned TV special that was shelved, but continues the mood established in “Don’t Look Back,” only taken to a more arty and at times outrageous level.
The Byrds’ version of “It’s Alright Ma, I’m Only Bleeding” and the Roger McGuinn/Bob Dylan collaboration, “The Ballad of Easy Rider,” were used in 1969’s “Easy Rider.”
Dylan’s fascination with the movies continued. He supplied songs to Sam Peckinpah’s 1973 film, “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid,” and acted in that film as well.
Dylan’s “Things Have Changed” was used in 2000’s “Wonder Boys.” And Dylan’s songs have been in many other films including “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35” in 1994’s “Forest Gump” and “The Man In Me” in 1998’s “The Big Lebowski.”
He directed and starred in 1978’s “Renaldo and Clara” and 2003’s “Masked and Anonymous.”
Dylan was influenced by and at times has lifted ideas from films he’s seen.
Below are ten films that had an impact on Bob Dylan. I’ve also included two quotes from Dylan, following the list of films, about movie men who have loomed large in Dylan’s life: director John Ford and actor/director Charlie Chaplin.
1 “Rebel Without a Cause” (directed by Nicholas Ray)
Bob Spitz writes in “Dylan: A Biography”: It was at the State Theater, in the fall of 1955, that a movie and its enigmatic star gave Bobby the first peek at the combustible properties of attitude and self-expression. On a crisp autumn day, he sat mesmerized by the premier showing of Rebel Without a Cause, a stagy morality play about teenage restlessness in suburbia… It ever the term “born-again” applied to Bob Dylan it was then, following this celluloid revelation. He had gotten a glimpse of the future up on the screen in the form of James Dean, teenage rebel, and it appealed to his sensibility.
2 “The Wild One” (directed by László Benedek, starring Marlon Brando)
Bob Spitz: Almost overnight Bobby metamorphosed from a wussy squirt into Hibbing’s protopunk. Ge redid himself from head to toe, like a fashion model undergoing a beauty makeover. Along with another impressionable school chum, Bobby made a beeline for Feldman’s basement, the uncharted bluye-collar section of the store, where he picked out stuff Levi’s, black biker’s boots, and a leather motorcycle jacket similar to the one Brando wore in The Wild One.
3 “Blackboard Jungle” (directed by Richard Brooks featuring Bill Haley and the Comets)
Bob Dylan’s high school classmate Larry Hoikkala, after the two of them saw “The Blackboard Jungle”: Bob couldn’t believe it. … he kept saying, “This is really great! This is exactly what we’ve been trying to tell people about ourselves… Looking back that film really changed our lives because for the first time, we felt it was talking directly to us.
From IMDb: A new English teacher at a violent, unruly inner-city school is determined to do his job, despite resistance from both students and faculty.
4 “Lonely Are the Brave” (directed by David Miller, starring Kirk Douglas and Gene Rowlands)
From Wikipedia: Lonely are the Brave is a 1962 film adaptation of the Edward Abbey novel The Brave Cowboy. The film was directed by David Miller from a screenplay by Dalton Trumbo. It stars Kirk Douglas as cowboy Jack Burns, Gena Rowlands as his best friend’s wife, and Walter Matthau as a sheriff who sympathises with Burns but must do his job and chase him down. It also featured an early score by legendary composer Jerry Goldsmith. Douglas felt that this was his favorite film.
5 “A Face in the Crowd” (directed by Elia Kazan, starring Andy Griffith)
From Wikipedia: A Face in the Crowd is a 1957 film starring Andy Griffith, Patricia Neal and Walter Matthau, directed by Elia Kazan.[1][2] The screenplay was written by Budd Schulberg, based on his short story “Your Arkansas Traveler”. The story centers on a drifter named Larry “Lonesome” Rhodes (Griffith, in a role starkly different from the amiable “Sheriff Andy Taylor” persona), who is discovered by the producer (Neal) of a small-market radio program in rural northeast Arkansas. Rhodes ultimately rises to great fame and influence on national television
6 “La Strada” (directed by Federico Fellini)
7“La Dolce Vita” (directed by Federico Fellini)
Dylan in Chronicles: There was an art movie house in the Village on 12th Street that showed foreign movies – French, Italian, German. This made sense, because even Alan Lomax himself, the great folk archivist, had said somewhere that if you want to get out to America, go to Greenwich Village. I’d seen a couple of Italian Fellini movies there – one called La Strada, which means “The Street,” and another one called La Dolce Vita. It was about a guy who sells his soul and becomes a gossip hound. It looked like life in a carnival mirror except it didn’t show any monster freaks – just real people in a freaky way. I watched it intently, thinking that I might not see it again.
IMDb on “La Strada”: A care-free girl is sold to a traveling entertainer, consequently enduring physical and emotional pain along the way.
8 Children of Paradise (directed bu Marcel Carné)
9 Shoot the Piano Player (directed by François Truffaut)
Ben Corbett writing about Ranaldo and Clara on about.com: In his Rolling Thunder Logbook, Sam Shepard (who ‘wrote’ the script Dylan’s film Ranaldo and Clara) wrote that when he arrived in New york, Dylan asked him if he’d ever seen Marcel Carné’s Children of Paradise or François Truffaut’s Shoot the Piano Player. When Shepard asked if that’s the kind of film he wanted to make, Dylan replied, “Something like that.” Both examples of French New Wave cinema, these films would have a huge impact on Dylan’s vision for Renaldo & Clara. In Children of Paradise, the French mime Jean-Louis Barrault plays a role in whiteface, much as Dylan would perform in whiteface during the Rolling Thunder Revue. And the same leitmotif of a flower runs through both films, in Dylan’s case a rose. But more than these similarities, the editing techniques in Carné’s and Truffaut’s masterpieces—jump-cutting, random sequencing, etc.—informed much of Renaldo & Clara’s nonlinear, almost anti-narrative dreamscape qualities.
Bob Dylan, liner notes for The Times They Are A-Changin’:
There’s a movie called
“Shoot The Piano Player”
the last line proclaimin
“music, man, that’s where it’s at”
it is a religious line
outside, the chimes ring
an they
are still ringin
From IMDb on “Children Of Paradise”: This tale centers around the love between Baptiste, a theater mime, and Claire Reine, an actress and otherwise woman-about-town who calls herself Garance. Garance, in turn, is loved by three other men: Frederick, a pretentious actor; Lacenaire, a conniving thief; and Count Eduard of Monteray. The story is further complicated by Nathalie, an actress who is in love with Baptiste. Garance and Baptiste meet when Garance is falsely accused of stealing a man’s watch. Garance is forced to enter the protection of Count Eduard when she is innocently implicated in a crime committed by Lacenaire. In the intervening years of separation, both Garance and Baptiste become involved in loveless relationships with the Count and Nathalie, respectively. Baptiste is the father of a son. Returning to Paris, Garance finds that Baptiste has become a famous mime actor. Nathalie sends her child to foil their meeting, but Baptiste and Garance manage one night together. Lacenaire murders Edouard. In the last scenes, Garance is returning to Eduard’s hotel and disaster as Baptiste struggles after her through crowds of merrymakers, many dressed as his famous character.
Wikipedia on “Shoot The Piano Player”: A washed-up classical pianist, Charlie Kohler/Edouard Saroyan (Charles Aznavour), bottoms out after his wife’s suicide — stroking the keys in a Parisian dive bar. The waitress, Lena (Marie Dubois), is falling in love with Charlie, who it turns out is not who he says he is. When his brothers get in trouble with gangsters, Charlie inadvertently gets dragged into the chaos and is forced to rejoin the family he once fled.
10 “Cat On A Hot Tin Roof”
From Wikipedia: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a 1958 American drama film directed by Richard Brooks.[2][3] It is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the same name by Tennessee Williams adapted by Richard Brooks and James Poe. One of the top-ten box office hits of 1958, the film stars Elizabeth Taylor, Paul Newman and Burl Ives.
From IMDb: Brick, an alcoholic ex-football player, drinks his days away and resists the affections of his wife, Maggie. His reunion with his father, Big Daddy, who is dying of cancer, jogs a host of memories and revelations for both father and son.
In the film Brick Pollitt (Paul Newman) says to Big Daddy’s (Burl Ives): “You don’t know what love means. To you it’s just another four-letter word.”
Dylan wrote “Love Is Just A Four-Letter Word,” which Joan Baez sings some of in “Don’t Look Back” in 1965.
http://youtu.be/OchpaSIYrDYJohn Ford on the set.
John Ford
Bob Dylan, talking in Rolling Stone, (Douglas Brinkley interview) in 2009 about John Ford: I like [John Fords] old films, He was a man’s man, and he thought that way. He never had his guard down. Put courage and bravery, redemption and a peculiar mix of agony and ecstasy on the screen in a brilliant dramatic manner. His movies were easy to understand. I like that period of time in American films. I think America has produced the greatest films ever. No other country has ever come close. The great movies that came out of America in the studio system, which a lot of people say is the slave system, were heroic and visionary, and inspired people in a way that no other country has ever done. If film is the ultimate art form, then you’ll need to look no further than those films. Art has the ability to transform people’s lives, and they did just that.
Charlie Chaplin in “Shoulder Arms,” 1918.
Dylan talking to Robert Shelton about Charlie Chaplin, December 1961, as quoted in Shelton’s book, “No Direction Home: the Life and Music of Bob Dylan”: He [Charlie Chaplin] influences me, even in the way I sing. His films really sank in. I like to see the humor in the world. There is so little of it around. I guess I’m always conscious of the Chaplin tramp.
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