Little Richard: I Am Everything (2023)

This documentary about the self-proclaimed king of rock ‘n’ roll (“shut up!”) makes a solid case that Little Richard Penniman is the one and only, accept no substitutes, and at the same time keeps it well shy of adoring hagiography, as much as he deserves adoring. Director and coproducer Lisa Cortes (The Remix: Hip Hop X Fashion; All In: The Fight for Democracy) keeps the focus on Little Richard’s complex status as a Black, queer icon. She ropes in a handful of celebrities to provide sound bites (Nona Hendryx, Mick Jagger, Tom Jones, Nile Rodgers, John Waters who admits his pencil mustache is an homage), rounds up another handful of academics to offer insight and context, and lets the music play. The Todd Haynes movie Velvet Goldmine gave Little Richard his just deserts, but I Am Everything benefits from actually having a rich well of archival footage of Little Richard himself, often in superior form. It charts his career from his earliest work trying to break in in the early ‘50s until his death in 2020. He first rejected show business for the church in 1957 because of a vision. By 1962 he was running out of money and turned to rock ‘n’ roll again. From the footage, the ‘60s was the time to see him. Later he would return to the church again, and even marry in the ‘70s, before running low on money again. The pattern repeated for much of his life. The Specialty label recorded all his early hits but kept the royalties for themselves after 1957, because he broke their contract in his spasm of religion. The performance footage from all eras is often wonderful. He refers to himself as the king of rock ‘n’ roll a few times—I suspect Elvis getting the honors more widely may have vexed Little Richard nearly as much as it did Jerry Lee Lewis. In Little Richard’s case, however (and Chuck Berry’s, while I’m at it, and Jerry Lee Lewis too why not?), the claim has at least as much weight as the one for Elvis. Give Elvis his due, but one thing I Am Everything slyly does is show clearly how, on the ‘50s covers of Little Richard’s hits such as “Tutti Frutti,” Elvis is a lot closer to Pat Boone than Little Richard. Little Richard was the one and only, he was the original, and he felt rejected most of his life for being what he was, rejected most tragically perhaps by himself, who never really strayed long from piety (though he strayed very far). A moment here where he finally feels acknowledged and honored at a 1997 ceremony gives a rare moment of evident peace for him, when he was 64. All the rest was God. Worth seeing.

“Egnaro” (1981)

Another story I know by M. John Harrison takes off on Arthur Machen’s “The Great God Pan,” title and all, and makes a reasonably good job of it, in the same quiet, understated way as this story from The Weird. These stories operate on the peripheries, which almost are not weird or scary at all. You kind of have to talk yourself into it. Yet later, something may nag or gnaw at you a little. Egnaro in this story is a mythical unknown land. No one knows how to get to it, and most have never heard of it or don’t believe it exists. The first-person narrator is an accountant who keeps the books for Lucas, a low-level merchant in printed matter, rare books, porn (the revenue mainstay), memorabilia, comic books, etc. It’s a shoestring business. Teens come and hang out to read the comic books. Surreptitious businessmen in suits show up in the lunch hour to buy the porn. The narrator comes in once a month to do the books and he’s paid with cash and a meal. Lucas is obsessed with Egnaro. Over dinner, he talks about it and shares passages from rare books. There may be references to Egnaro in them, but if so they are oblique and barely detectable. Eventually things catch up with Lucas, his business always a little on the shady side. He goes bankrupt and disappears. The narrator, and this may be where the thread of the story strays beyond everyday norms, assumes Lucas has found Egnaro and moved there. The obsession is contagious, as the narrator finds himself caught up in it now. One of the best effects in the story is its dependency on scraps of overheard conversation, taken as full of portent and secret knowledge of Egnaro. To me they seem mostly like meaningless scraps of overheard conversation. But: “It is in conversations not your own (so I learnt from Lucas) that you first hear of Egnaro.” Example: “Egnaro, where the long sunlit esplanades lift from a wine-dark sea.” It's true that snatch of conversation (“by the time you have turned your head the woman is speaking of tomatoes and hot-house flowers”) sounds to the hearer as if it contained the word “Egnaro,” but that is an ambiguous sound, likely easily confused with others. Then the language seems stilted and artificial for conversation—Egnaro, where the long sunlit esplanades lift from a wine-dark sea—perhaps as intended, with its reference to both Homer and Robert Aickman. I like this story because the lives of its two principals are interesting, and I like the obsessiveness and the way it plays out in printed matter and overheard conversation.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.

Frankenstein (1931)

USA, 70 minutes

Director: James Whale

Writers: John L. Balderston, Mary Shelley, Peggy Webling, Francis Edward Faragon, Garrett Fort, Richard Schayer, Robert Florey, John Russell

Photography: Arthur Edeson, Paul Ivano

Music: Bernhard Kaun

Editor: Clarence Kolster

Cast: Boris Karloff, Colin Clive, Mae Clarke, John Boles, Edward Van Sloan, Frederick Kerr, Dwight Frey, Marilyn Harris

The original film production of Mary Shelley’s landmark Frankenstein novel (written when she was 19) incredibly is now almost a century old itself. As a kid I used to stay up late to get a look at it whenever I could. The two bridge tables of writers credited at IMDb for the screenplay are a reasonable approximation of the convoluted history of the Shelley property, originally published in 1818 and followed in five years by the first of a long series of stage productions. The most recent before this movie was put on just in 1927—Peggy Webling wrote that. Balderston adapted her play for this script, with story elements by Schayer. It sounds like Faragon and Fort actually blocked out and typed up the screenplay, with uncredited contributions from Florey and Russell. Director James Whale puts his own stamp on it, including hiring Boris Karloff out of the commissary to play the monster. Whale reportedly liked him for the part because he thought Karloff resembled himself. While I’m at it, makeup artist and designer Jack P. Pierce also counts as an auteur on this enterprise. He is responsible for the look and feel of the Frankenstein monster as we think of it today, including the flattop head, neck bolts, and tattered outfit.

The short picture starts in a curious way, often lopped off of the TV broadcasts. The gentle and mild-mannered Edward Van Sloan (who plays Henry Frankenstein’s mentor Dr. Waldman in the movie proper) steps out from behind a theatrical curtain to issue a friendly warning about the movie: “It is one of the strangest tales ever told. It deals with the two great mysteries of creation: life and death. I think it will thrill you. It may shock you. It might even horrify you. So if any of you feel that you do not care to subject your nerves to such a strain, now is your chance to, uh... well, we've warned you.” And then on to the opening titles.

“The Horror of the Heights” (1913)

I liked this silly story by Arthur Conan Doyle for a few reasons. It reminded me in good ways of H.P. Lovecraft, specifically “At the Mountains of Madness” (from 1936). Still need to get to Lovecraft’s book of criticism—I wonder what if anything he made of Doyle. Lovecraft doesn’t necessarily seem like he would appreciate Sherlock Holmes and maybe never looked past Doyle’s most famous work. After a random dud or two, this is the second Doyle story I read in a row that was pretty good. I expected more stuff like this from him—simple, engrossing fantasy adventure stories. Here it’s all about the state of flight technology circa 1913, and the idea is that there are jungles of a type above the cloud level, with creatures living there we can’t see from the ground. Even on clear days it all just blends into the blue sky. There’s a strained frame about a found notebook with a few missing pages and (gasp) bloodstains, but basically this is a first-person story told by the pilot. He’s attempting to get above 30,000 feet and that alone requires some telling. Doyle sounds knowledgeable about flying and the technology, at least to me who knows very little about it, so it’s believable enough. After some tribulations this pilot gets all the way to 40,000 feet and that’s where the real action is: giant floating translucent jellyfish creatures and a purple snake-like monster that attacks and forces him to land, which is the last we hear of him. The frame narrator speculates that our pilot fueled up and returned forthwith for further study, where he met his unknown demise. Also, maybe not so obviously, he took some time to write up this 5,000-word account. This story might be too busy on the margins—Doyle makes the heart of it more the climb to 40,000 feet. But the detail is interesting even before we get way up there and encounter the creatures. It probably qualifies as some kind of “weird” story. I quite like these creatures up there. They verge on the tall penguins in “Mountains of Madness” and they are nice story decoration. In both stories it’s apparent they are more or less earthly life-forms still unknown. Now we know there are no jellyfish creatures in the sky, no mountain range to rival the Himalayas in Antarctica. But there might have been when these stories were written. Now I think it’s more Mars where we focus our maybe-just-maybe imaginations (even as we are learning it is impossibly cold and toxic). Or spaceships and deep generational space travel. We should try thinking about surviving climate change. This story probably has to be accounted quaint by most contemporary readers, and so it is. But it’s also charming and this rising to the occasion (no pun intended) to face down the challenge, even if the result is death, is probably the best part of it. It’s plucky, and in an unaffected way.

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“The $30,000 Bequest” (1904)

This Mark Twain story seemed a little humdrum and forced to me, although it deals with one of his favorite themes, the comical madness of greed and all the wreck a little bit of money can cause. The two principals here—husband Sally and wife Aleck, gender confusion noted by Twain himself, though not really to what end intended—catch wind that a long-lost uncle will be leaving them money on his death (amount per title) on the condition they never make inquiries of him. As it happens, he dies early in the story, but the couple never learns of it because they know they don’t dare ask after him. This story is about what their fevered imaginations dream up, which ultimately are amusing and harmless. There’s not really any story to this story to drive it home, as in the similarly minded “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg.” In fact, Sally and Aleck are often charming, if maybe a little pathetic. Another (or perhaps the same) mystifying gender inversion, or maybe not one at all, is that Aleck is the responsible manager of finances whereas Sally only wants to know how much he can spend. Aleck keeps plowing the (imaginary) money into investments, as capital. She starts from the day they hear of the bequest—which, as fate would have it, was only a week before they should have gotten it outright. Over the years she puts the money here, moves it there. And over the years they actually become billionaires, though Twain expresses it rather oddly as “twenty-four hundred millionaires”—as if the idea itself of a billionaire were ludicrous (as out of reach as a trillionaire would seem to be now, perhaps, here in this second gilded age). Anyway, Aleck finally slips up late in the game and loses everything, which, as a fantasy, just isn’t a tragedy. There’s still the real bequest, if they ever hear of it, let alone get it. At story’s end they haven’t, so we’re left at sea about what the story is about. They are greedy but they are also harmless and kind. Perhaps they wasted portions of their lives, but who hasn’t done that and isn’t it in the eye of the beholder anyway? To me, they look like an exceptionally compatible and loving couple, but that’s not what this story is about either.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over. (Library of America)
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Is This It (2001)

I’m not sure why the title of this Strokes album, which comes in the form of a question, has no question mark. Do you know why. Nor can I guess why it holds back the sequencing of my favorite song here, “The Modern Age,” for second position, which means sitting through the beguiling singalong but slow title song to get to the proper kickoff. Once there, all good. This 35-minute raveup (an ideal album length, note) zooms and zips all over the place with crackling energy, vocals recorded through some megaphone filter. It is irresistible 2 guitars bass drums business. Turn it up. The Strokes, most of them NYC natives, hit first in January 2001 with the EP The Modern Age (darn right featuring my favorite), which triggered buzz and a bidding war among labels. This RCA / Rough Trade debut came out that summer. It made them darlings of the moment, though they were never able to follow up so effectively again. Interesting historical fact: the original release had a song called “New York City Cops” that was later replaced with “When It Started” due to sensitivities over the 9/11 terrorist attacks. I’m happy to report the new song does not appear to be about the War on Terror. Nothing from Is This It ever charted mainstream but the Strokes took a shot on three singles—“Hard to Explain,” “Last Nite,” and “Someday”—which did well on indie charts, especially in the UK. “Hard to Explain” arrives as the eighth track on the album, by which time the prevailing groove is well established, so much so that they can insert a relatively lengthy moment of silence and never miss a beat of your bobbing head. Fun anecdote: a young friend of mine (already a Strokes fan) was visiting New York in the summer of 2001 and one day, sitting in a public space, heard some music by the Strokes he did not know. Inquiring about it, he was somewhat viciously scolded because it was the Velvet Underground that was playing. Me, I don’t think it’s a bad thing at all to be confused with the Velvets. Is This It may fairly be reduced to “I’m Waiting for the Man” with extra megaphone filters, but I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. This groove kicks hard and it kicks still. Also, the cover art is spectacularly beautiful.

The Heroic Trio (1993)

My first look at a picture by Hong Kong director/producer Johnnie To came courtesy of my local art house, cheerily cashing in on the renewed interest in Michelle Yeoh brought on by the big sweep by Everything Everywhere All at Once at the Oscars this year. Yeoh is indeed part of this heroic trio, along with the equally iconic Maggie Cheung, plus Anita Mui. They are ridiculously young. Cheung was close to 30 when this was made but she looks closer to 17. She rides a motorcycle and totes a shotgun. Tung (Mui) is known as Wonder Woman. She wears a mask and not even her own police investigator husband recognizes her. Well, that’s par for the course isn’t it when superheroes are involved, but really this movie came out well before the commercial juggernaut of superhero movies. I also noted a special effect around gunshot fire that looked to me like a reasonable approximation of “bullet time,” more often associated with The Matrix from 1999. It appears someone is kidnapping babies—18 of them and counting in a matter of weeks as the picture starts. No one’s asking for ransom and no one knows what it’s about, but police need to get it under control pronto. The first of several don’t-miss-it sequences in The Heroic Trio, arriving early, feature the rescue of many endangered infants, who are dropping from buildings, even in their swaddling, and of course helpless as babies as they plummet. The plummeting is generally leisurely, the rescue maneuvers impressively thought through. It’s all a good-hearted romp, built around sensational stunts, special effects, sight gags, and other random switch-ups. Some of them miss but there’s always another on the way. The narrative, coming at us so pell-mell, is confusing—though things like rescuing the babies is entertaining enough and they just keep coming. The humor is broad and transitions abrupt. I sometimes felt like I was at a drive-in show or a midnight madness picture. It never entirely makes sense (how could it?!) but it has a rousing, Terminator-like finish that’s thrilling to watch and hilarious too. The Evil Dead movies felt like still another touchpoint here. The Heroic Trio bristles with energy and resourcefulness and who cares if it’s trashy. Play loud.

The Byrds’ The Notorious Byrd Brothers (2007)

It was weird to be reading this 33-1/3 volume by Ric Menck at the beginning of this year when David Crosby died. The Byrds have mostly been a blind spot for me, though I’ve come to like all the hits quite a bit over the years: “To everything there is a season.” Menck’s book is practically a template for how these things are done: the first half sets the context with a history of the artist to that point, and the second half takes up the album track by track. For me it was the history that was most useful. It’s concise and to the point, although it may be less useful for fans who already know it. But I learned a lot that was still resonating when Crosby died. The Notorious Byrd Brothers had no hits and it was virtually all new to me when I started listening to it while reading. I had a hard time finding anything in the album to hold onto, but Menck ranks it very highly, comparing it favorably to Blonde on Blonde and Revolver. A musician himself, associated with Velvet Crush and the Springfields among others, Menck is clearly the right person for this job. I’m not sure I agree with him that NBB is anywhere near the Dylan or Beatles albums but the enthusiasm is infectious. I like the way Menck sprinkles in personal details of his record-buying and listening history, which are relatable. I can listen closely to the NBB tracks under his direction—a few were already standing out even before I got to Menck’s track-by-track rundown. So it’s a perfectly competent entry in the 33-1/3 series (though with more than the usual number of typos I’ve seen in these things). But it also suggests that “perfectly competent” on another level may mean “for fans only.” Or maybe my resistance to the Byrds just runs that deep. The best audience for this book might be someone already onboard with them but maybe dubious about this album. Maybe they haven’t got to it yet. It could be a book that opens up the whole album for someone. Odd point: So far it’s the only Byrds album in the 33-1/3 series, which surprised me, all things considered. It’s not really their most emblematic, is it? Anyway, n.b., for fans only.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.

The Deer Hunter (1978)

USA / UK, 183 minutes

Director: Michael Cimino

Writers: Michael Cimino, Deric Washburn, Louis Garfinkle, Quinn K. Redeker

Photography: Vilmos Zsigmond

Music: Stanley Myers

Editor: Peter Zinner

Cast: Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, John Savage, John Cazale, Meryl Streep, George Dzundza, Chuck Aspegren, Rutanya Alda

A lot of strengths and weaknesses can be found in this much-lauded movie, perhaps related to how long it is. There’s time for everything here. Set in the 1960s, the first hour is devoted to the build-up and then a highly traditional wedding in the small western Pennsylvania town of Clairton, south of Pittsburgh. Clairton is dependent on steel work and made up of a Slavic population large enough that some of its buildings have onion domes. The wedding and reception are huge affairs where we meet our main characters, three of whom have been drafted and are bound for the Vietnam War. Then the finish to The Deer Hunter is one of the best endings to any movie anywhere. After war, loss, and many changes, after a funeral and long night, the survivors gather around a kitchen table for breakfast and all they can do to console themselves is sing “God Bless America” in numbed tones. It’s haunting, powerful, and extraordinarily moving.

Between that start and finish, however, we find the Vietnam War, which director and cowriter Michael Cimino, with his merry band of cowriters, have turned into a hellscape of brutality, PTSD, and Russian roulette. Fair enough. But one of these things—namely, Russian roulette—has nothing to do with Vietnam or the war. It never happened, certainly not in the systematized way it is shown. I’m not saying it doesn’t work as a kind of metaphor for the US intervention in Vietnam in the first place—arrogant, blinkered, suicidal, foolish, all those things and more. Metaphorically, it may speak to the US experience in Vietnam. But practically it starts to seem very silly, as among other things it appears all anyone was doing in Vietnam according to this movie was pointing guns at their heads for money in craptacular rundown drinking joints and losing their lives approximately one in six times.

“The Colomber” (1961)

This story by the Italian writer Dino Buzatti is short and quite mild. In the introduction to it in The Weird, editors Ann and Jeff VanderMeer compare it to a fable, which seems about right. It also has certain echoes of the short novel by Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea. A “colomber” is a made-up term for a sea monster, a giant shark that trails its prey from a distance, waiting to strike. The legend is that only the person hunted by the colomber can see it, and it will hunt you all your life. Oh, well, apparently, relatives of the hunted can also see it. The father of the main character, Stefano, is a sea captain. When Stefano turns 12 his father takes him on a voyage and they see a colomber. The father knows it means Stefano is doomed. He urges his son to stay on land. Then the father dies and, when Stefano turns 22, he decides he wants the sea life after all. He is soon pursued by the colomber but evades it and has a long career at sea—40 years. The colomber never gets him. Then he takes out a small boat to confront the colomber, who not only can communicate with him but also has a story and gift for him. The gift is a giant pearl. The story is briefly of his attempts to reach him all these years. Much sadness, much poignance. Stefano feels he has been wrong all his life. Then one more twist: “Two months later, pushed by the undertow, a small boat approached a steep cliff. It was sighted by a few fishermen, who, curious, went to see. Onboard, still seated, was a white skeleton, and between the tiny bones of its fingers it clutched a little round pebble.” The colomber gets his man, if psychologically. But did Stafano believe he was holding a pearl until the end? Or what? It seems a little silly when you start to probe at it too literally, but I thought the story was effective and worked pretty well. It does feel like a fable, but it is also baffling that way. I did not detect any meanness to the colomber in its encounter with Stefano. If anything, it seemed to pity Stefano, who was so obviously full of regret by then. For that matter, what did Stefano lose? He had a long and full career in the occupation of his choice. He may have felt shadowed by the colomber all that time but how was he supposed to know it only wanted to give him a gift? The legend sounded bad enough and he got it from his sea captain father. Maybe the colomber is death itself, which shadows us all our lives and always is coming for us. In the end perhaps it is a lustrous gift, or perhaps it is an illusion. Who can say? But you can see the thing about it being like a fable.

The Weird, ed. Ann & Jeff VanderMeer
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Top 40

1. Boy George, “Death of Samantha” (5:28, 2013)
2. Come to Grief, “When the World Dies” (4:07)
3. Damien Jurado, “A.M. AM” (3:16, 2016)
4. Donna Lewis, “I Love You Always Forever (Sylk 130 Remix)” (9:00)
5. Ennio Morricone, “The Crave” (1:49, 1998)
6. Jelly Roll Morton, “The Crave” (3:07, 1939)
7. John Hiatt, “Homeland” (4:47, 2010)
8. Zombie Nation, “Kernkraft 400 (Original Mix)” (4:45, 1999)
9. Rocket From the Crypt, “On a Rope” (2:54, 1995)
10. A-ha, “October” (3:53, 1986)
11. Pet Shop Boys, “My October Symphony” (5:18, 1990)
12. Jacky Terrasson, “Oh My Love” (4:47, 2012)
13. Soul Stirrers, “Come, Let Us Go Back to God” (2:47, 1951)
14. Byrds, “Change Is Now” (3:21, 1968)
15. Electric Beauty, “Cindy’s Gone Away” (2:59)
16. Wire, “A Touching Display” (6:55, 1979)
17. Weyes Blood, “It’s Not Just Me, It’s Everybody” (6:16)
18. Minnie Riperton, “Reasons” (3:26, 1974)
19. Jimi Hendrix Experience, “Third Stone From the Sun” (6:44, 1967)
20. Fleetwood Mac, “Mystified” (3:09, 1987)
21. Bubble Puppy, “Hot Smoke and Sassafrass” (2:35, 1969)
22. Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band, “Moonlight on Vermont” (3:56, 1969)
23. Brennen Leigh, “I Don’t Want Someone Who Don’t Want Me” (2:21)
24. Hitkidd feat. GloRilla, “F.N.F. (Let’s Go)” (2:17)
25. Honeybus, “The Breaking Up Scene” (2:33, 1967)
26. Lee “Scratch” Perry, “I Am the Upsetter” (3:06, ca. 1968)
27. Shadows, “Apache” (2:52, 1960)
28. Kyuss, “Green Machine” (3:37, 1992)
29. Eric Prydz, “Call on Me (Radio Mix)” (2:51, 2004)
30. Beyonce, “Heated” (4:20)
31. Monster Magnet, “Space Lord” (5:55, 1998)
32. Tucka feat. King George, “Jukebox Lover” (3:59)
33. Blackstreet, “No Diggity” (5:05, 1996)
34. Christine & the Queens, “Tilted” (3:53, 2014)
35. Little Simz, “Woman” (4:29)
36. Gossip, “Standing in the Way of Control” (4:16, 2005)
37. Black Keys, “Lonely Boy” (3:13, 2011)
38. Godsmack, “I Stand Alone” (4:06, 2002)
39. Nina Simone, “Feeling Good” (2:55, 1965)
40. War on Drugs, “Red Eyes” (4:58, 2013)

THANKS: rockcritics.com, unusual suspects ... 3, I would swear I heard this in 1986 on KJET

Animal Farm (1945)

Animal Farm is George Orwell’s attempt to write a fairy tale, and what surprises me most about it is that it succeeds exactly on those terms. It always feels like an Aesop’s fable even when its anti-Soviet message is most thuddingly obvious. It’s also wickedly funny in places, for example the farm animals’ rallying song, “Beasts of England,” sung to the tune of “Clementine” (or maybe “La Cucaracha”). The very short novel, under 100 pages, was a staple of Cold War literature, taught in my high school in the early ‘70s. I read 1984 and saw the 1956 movie based on it around the same time but I don’t think it was for any class. I liked Orwell—he was dark, and mordant, and acid. But by the time I was in my 40s and doing a high school literature catch-up and reread (A Separate Peace, Hesse, Bradbury, Lord of the Flies, etc.) I was inclined to skip Orwell, who had become a darling by then of movement Republicans and other libertarians who like Ayn Rand too. I’m glad I got back to him—Animal Farm is a gem. I’ll know more when I get back to 1984, but I’m taking Orwell as less specifically anticommunist and more generally antitotalitarian. Totalitarianism can come from the right as well as the left—today’s GOP can fairly be called totalitarian, and Orwellian too, with their book-banning, speech controls, and increasingly invasive calls for body monitoring, all in the name of freedom. These days we accept active, constant, and close surveillance so deeply we walk around with the device enabling it everywhere we go. We think everyone should have a smartphone—I finally broke down and got one myself last year. Setting aside all the allegory issues, I think really what makes Animal Farm work is the fairy tale air and some great characters: notably Boxer and Clover, the horses, and Squealer, the propaganda pig. The pigs take over everything. The two main ones—Napoleon and Snowball—are obvious analogues of Stalin and Trotsky, respectively. I am stuck with an edition that has an introduction written by Christopher Hitchens in 2003, which turned out not to be as cringy as I feared. He makes an interesting point about how Stalin and Trotsky are part of the story, but not Lenin. Best of all about Animal Farm is that the story is often touching. The betrayals and ultimate fates of many of these characters are often sad. Very nice tale.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.

Rewind & Play (2022)

Two things I can say about this eccentric, arguably found-footage documentary: 1) I don’t know what the intent of director Alain Gomis is, and 2) it comes alive every time Thelonious Monk starts playing the piano, which is not often enough. Rewind & Play is composed of footage shot for a French TV show in 1969 while Monk was touring and playing a date in Paris. I have no idea how much of what was shot that afternoon was left out of this picture. It feels like we’re seeing all of it the way it unspooled when they found it, raw and bloopy, with botched shots and technical problems, multiple takes, an interviewer who is not sure how to approach Monk, and a subject who is having a hard time even understanding some of these questions, let alone why they are being asked. Some on the internet think Gomis is out to show Monk being treated demeaningly. Maybe so, but it looked more like a language barrier than racism to me. It’s true a lot of the questions the interviewer asks are inane and/or awkward—“why did you put your piano in the kitchen?” “do you think you are too avant-garde for Paris?” so forth. This poor guy, last seen stranded at a fondue party in the early ‘70s, is smug, pious, and shallow. But that’s true of most TV celebrities and hosts of talk shows. The guy wants to pretend he’s hip to Monk. Maybe he was. Meanwhile, the picture is at least as instructive on the frustrations of shooting a documentary as it is on Monk. But when they let the piano player rip, which adds up to maybe a third? maybe a half? of the movie, it’s truly a great Thelonious Monk time. No one played the piano like him. It feels childlike but sophisticated, like he’s just picking out random notes up and down the keyboard, but backing it with compelling rhythmic chording as he chops up and purees his melodies. It makes a kind of intuitive mathematical sense and it’s a kick for the duration of his jams. I hope Gomis didn’t leave any of the playing out of this already very short movie, because if he did that’s a shame. It’s the only thing that’s really enjoyable about Rewind & Play.