When you look back on your life – especially once you’re, how you say, OLD – it’s sometimes interesting to try to untangle some of the strands, the things that happened that made you who you are, and try to find the source, the start, the beginning. Sometimes certain people take on gigantic significance when you look back on things from a distance. Carroll Baker is one of those people for me. She was the gateway.
Or … James Dean was the start, but her autobiography was the gateway, which I read at the tender age of 12/13, having somehow tripped over it in the library where I worked after school. It was James Dean that was the attraction: I saw East of Eden and began scouring the index pages of actor biographies looking for his name. (I am not a librarian’s daughter for nothing.) This is how I found her autobiography, which I DEVOURED.
Her autobiography is not all that great, really, but something in it grabbed hold of me, and I followed the bread crumbs to other books, conducting my own independent research project, reading books and watching movies, educating myself. Learning of Elia Kazan and Lee Strasberg. 15 years later, I’d end up in New York, at the Actors Studio, taking classes in the room where Carroll Baker had taken classes … and it all made a kind of sense. There were so many things that went into my Strasberg-ian path – even though my first acting training (my favorite training) was Meisner – but Sanford Meisner was part of that whole crowd. I loved everything to do with that whole crowd. And I first learned about them because of Carroll Baker. I went into this whole thing in excruciating detail in a post I wrote years ago about her autobiography – in a weird way, that little cheap paperback was one of the most important books I’ve ever read. It was the start of it all.
I haven’t even written a word about Carroll Baker’s actual career yet. This is how deeply entangled she is in my actual development as a human.
When she showed up in Ironweed a couple years later, I felt a jolt of excitement and happiness. THERE SHE IS. I felt like I KNEW her.
This backstory is why being asked by Criterion to write the booklet essay for the release of Something Wild (1961) – directed by her husband at the time, Jack Garfein, and starring Carroll Baker and Ralph Meeker, was such an emotional thing. It felt … right. It felt like part of the continuum started when I first read her autobiography. I had been inspired by Carroll Baker as a teenager (even though she barely mentions Something Wild in her book. She devotes pages to her affair with Ben Gazzara but only one line to this great film, one of her best performances!). If you haven’t seen Something Wild, then you really must.
“This record sold like hotcakes. TOO BAD IT DIDN’T SELL LIKE RECORDS!” — Sonny Burgess, introducing one of his songs, as related by Deke Dickerson
It’s the birthday of Arkansas-born Sonny Burgess, who died in 2017.
Burgess was a Sun Records artist whose big Sun hit was “Red-Headed Woman”. He lived a long life, outlasting many of his contemporaries, and he never stopped performing. He was such a character. Tall, gorgeous, he would wear bright red suits.
Sonny Burgess didn’t have a mesmerizing voice like Elvis, he couldn’t write songs like Carl Perkins or Johnny Cash, and he wasn’t a white-hot genius-phenom like Jerry Lee Lewis, but he made up for all of that with passion and showmanship and fun. There are perks to NOT being a genius.
Sonny Burgess & the Pacers
Billy Lee Riley, another Sun Records artist (his big hit was “My Gal is Red Hot”), complained until the end of his days that Sam Phillips didn’t invest enough in him, didn’t invest as much as he did in Elvis / Jerry Lee Lewis. Johnny Cash, too, felt abandoned by Sam (and he was: Jerry Lee Lewis took up all of Sam Phillips’ time). Cash jumped ship as soon as he could. The Black artists on the roster, the men Phillips had literally set up Sun Records for in the first place, felt totally abandoned. Nobody could predict an Elvis, though. It happened the way it happened.
In a documentary about Sun Records, Billy Lee Riley is talking to Sonny Burgess, both of them elderly at this point, expressing his anger and resentmentL He could have been as big as Jerry Lee Lewis or Elvis if Sam had just put in the time. Riley is ranting, completely certain of his point, and you can tell Sonny is hesitant to speak, but if he were to speak he would say something along the lines of, “No way would you ever have been as big as those guys, Billy Lee.” Burgess hears Riley out, though before saying, “But I don’t think that’s true. If I was going to be as big as Elvis, I WOULD have been as big as Elvis. Same for you. Neither of us were ever gonna be that big.” Riley (poor guy) shook his head in disgruntled disagreement. (Meanwhile, Riley had a great career. He was a member of the famed Wrecking Crew in Los Angeles. He was hauled out of retirement by none other than Bob Dylan, who was obsessed with him. Like, you had a great career, Billy Lee!)
Sonny Burgess’ attitude, on display in that recorded conversation, is a rare for an artist. Imagine being a hopeful musician, recording songs at Sun in 1953, 1954, hoping for a hit, hoping to be put on some kind of regional tour. Hoping to get radio play or a contract at the Grand Ole Opry. You know: that was the definition of success to those guys (pre-Elvis, that is. Elvis single-handedly changed what success could look like). Imagine you’ve already been doing it for years. And then imagine that a pimply high school boy with a stutter who can’t even play the guitar, who doesn’t write songs, walks in, records one song, and becomes the biggest star the world has ever known, and may ever know. Imagine how the situation could turn you bitter, eaten up with envy and resentment. “It’s Sam Phillips’ fault. I coulda been Elvis!!” This was Billy Lee Riley’s attitude.
Sonny Burgess was there as well. He watched Elvis explode, and maybe had a couple of moments thinking, “Damn, I wish that was me.” Sonny Burgess was good-looking and an electric performer.
But Sonny took things easy, he was philosophical about it, he could look himself in the mirror and say, “I would never be that big” and not let this self-knowledge poison his love of music and performing. There’s room for LOTS of people, even if there’s only room for one at the top. Sonny Burgess spent his life touring and performing. He packed them in. No matter where he played, or when, for the next forty fifty years, people showed up in droves. THAT’S SUCCESS.
Just watch this live performance. He was crazy onstage, in the zone, a real wild man.
Here he is in the Arkansas Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame, where he is an inductee.
György Ligeti – whose birthday it is today – was a classical composer, born in Romania, who lived in Hungary as a young adult, before fleeing Stalinist oppression to Austria. As he said in an interview much later, he lived under both the Nazis and the Communists (“so many years of Hitler and Stalin”). Growing up, as he did, limited his ability to travel, isolated him musically as well, cut off from the outside world, dominated by the restrictions placed on all art under tyrannical regimes. As horrible as all this is, it gave him a different perspective, the perspective of an outsider, a refugee, which he was. (One could say he was an internal refugee as well, held in place by the ruling power. We are learning what it means to have a government who turns its Big Brother eye onto its own citizens.) Stanley Kubrick used his music in 2001, The Shining and Eyes Wide Shut (one of the things pointed up again and again by the people interviewed for Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures was how much Kubrick changed the way music was used in film).
Ligeti’s work is well-known by his colleagues and classical contemporaries, but it was Kubrick who introduced his work to a wider audience. Ligeti died in 2006, but how fortunate that he was still alive to be interviewed for Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures because some of his comments are invaluable. One, in particular.
Ligeti sits on a couch, reminiscing about Kubrick. Ligeti is an old man, and he does not look well. His skin is chalky white, his lips are almost blue, and there are black circles around his eyes. His accent is thick, and he has a passionate emphatic way of speaking that makes you listen very closely. This is an artist.
He was interviewed about all of the pieces he composed that Kubrick used, but it was the brief comment he made about his “Musica Ricercata” – used so unforgettably throughour Eyes Wide Shut – that stays with me. The clanging piano notes of the song are used so artfully, so perfectly, in Eyes Wide Shut that when I first saw it I couldn’t quite locate what was so frightening: it all seemed frightening, but it was the music that tipped it over the edge.
“Musica Ricercata” is almost unbearable to listen to. It’s so tense you ache for something to relieve it, even if whatever it is is violent. The music is not a “call to violence”. Those sharply struck piano notes are violence itself. The notes happen one by one, there is no “arrangement” or blending of left-hand with right-hand – there is NO cooperation. There is also an echo: what happens at the top-end of the piano is echoed by the same notes at the bottom end. The top and bottom create a trap: you can’t escape ABOVE and you can’t escape below: the notes are locked gates.
Additionally, the notes are in a cluster, which is a contradiction, due to the echo effect. But within the “tune,” there is not a wide range. The notes stay in one section of the piano, going up one note, down two, up two, down one … The sound is strange and jagged, creating tension, but resolution never comes. The notes just keep clanging, one by one, a little bit up, a little bit down. The workings of the piece are mysterious but undeniable.
Watching Eyes Wide Shut, I wanted the music to stop. Sometimes it does, but it always returns. When I would hear that clanging piano note, the dread would rise again. Primal.
This is how Kubrick used music in film.
Here is one of the sequences in Eyes Wide Shut:
The comment from Ligeti I am leading up to stopped me in my tracks because it reveals something, almost in a throwaway line, the moment gone before you can fully grasp it …
Musica Ricertata (a much longer piece than the section used repetitively in Eyes Wide Shut) was written in the early 1950s.
Ligeti, sitting on the couch, an old ill man, says to the interviewer:
I was in Stalinist terroristic Hungary where this kind of music was not allowed. And I just wrote it for myself. Stanley Kubrick understood the dramatics of this moment and this is what he did in the film and for me, when I composed it in the year 1950, it was desperate. It was a knife in Stalin’s heart.
Listen to the piece again. Listen to it thinking of his words.
An old piece, re-posted for John Wayne’s birthday:
In one lengthy scene in Hondo, filmed in one almost unbroken take, Wayne makes horseshoes in the little outdoor smith in the yard. Geraldine Page hovers nearby. He talks to her about the Apaches, and what they are up to. She argues back, resisting him, standing up for herself.
The thing I want to talk about, though, because it’s instructive and a perfect example of what I want to talk about: Throughout this very tense scene, with tons of back-and-forth dialogue, John Wayne actually makes horseshoes. It’s not a pantomime. He’s actually doing it. He has a task to complete, and so he goes about completing it, all while he tells her how things are, and what needs to happen, and what she needs to do.
I want to talk about the importance of physical action in acting, and how it grounds an actor in reality. This is what Kimber Wheelock, my acting teacher in college, called “the reality of the doing.”
This is a deep subject. It’s about acting technique. This is rudimentary for actors, you really can’t act at all if you can’t perform physical actions … but it’s so much a part of acting technique that it is 1. taken for granted and 2. not understood at all by outsiders, by culture critics, by those who claim a love of film but half the time don’t know what to look for (at least when it comes to acting). Acting technique is as much a part of film collaboration as lights and sound … but it remains a mystery. There’s really no mystery about it. Technique is technique. You don’t have to STUDY to get great technique. Experience is all you need (and openness and talent, too). Technique doesn’t mean anything fancy, like proficiency with accents, or acquiring “special skills” like horseback riding or fencing. Technique is practical. “The reality of the doing” is a great way to discuss this, and teach this.
When Dennis Hopper first started out, James Dean was his idol. Hopper came up in a theatrical tradition, through classical stage training. His training and technique was old-fashioned. When he had a small part in Rebel Without a Cause, he watched Dean’s work with amazement and awe. He started copying Dean’s attitude and mannerisms. Dean noticed, and pulled him aside, saying, “If you’re going to smoke a cigarette onscreen, don’t act like you’re smoking a cigarette. Just smoke the cigarette.”
This is crucial. How many untalented actors “act like” they’re smoking – or crying – or singing – or listening. You can “act like” you’re listening and not be listening at all. A light bulb went off in Hopper’s mind when Dean said that to him. Dean’s comment set him free as an actor. It helped him know what to DO. It relaxed him.
This reminds me of Wayne’s famous comment about how he did not see himself as an “actor” but as a “RE-actor.” He said that partly because he was invested in the somewhat false narrative that he had somehow “fallen into” acting, that he started out as a prop guy, he had no ambition to be an actor. Uh-huh, Duke. Whatever you say. But the fact remains that he was right: As much as Wayne DOES onscreen, he never forgets the RE-actor part of it (this is the “listening and talking” element of acting. I’ve said it before: ALL good actors are world-class listeners. There are no exceptions.)
What does “the reality of the doing” mean? It has to do with James Dean’s advice to Dennis Hopper.
Sanford Meisner, an original member of The Group Theatre, who became one of the most famous acting teachers in America through the Neighborhood Playhouse, was obsessed with “the reality of the doing.”
He thought the Method, at least as taught by his old friend Lee Strasberg, was too focused on feelings. Meisner’s definition of good acting was thus:
… behaving truthfully under imaginary circumstances.
Notice it’s “behaving.” Not “feeling” or “being.” Behaving. Behaving is Doing. And “truthfully” is just as crucial. None of it matters if what you are doing is phony.
Elia Kazan, another Group Theatre alum, described his job as a director as “turning psychology into behavior.”
Again with the “behavior.” I don’t mean to beat the drum so repeatedly, but the focus on emotions has a way of taking over, at least in acting classes, when actors are susceptible and eager to learn. Gena Rowlands has said that she “can’t cry.” “Crying” is not her thing as an actress. Who cares. She’s one of the greatest actresses who ever lived.
Meisner created great exercises, now known as “The Meisner Technique” (this was my training) to help actors click into “the reality of the doing.” Actors get swept up in the emotions: they worry about whether or not they will be able to cry, they are concerned with what kind of anger to bring to a scene, they obsess on emotional backstory. These are all necessary things, by the way, each with its own importance. I don’t mean to dismiss them, and neither did Meisner. But what about the DOING? Remember: the name of the job is ACT-or. Not FEEL-er.
If all an actor does up there is feel, the audience will be left cold. It is the DOING that makes scenes come alive, “pop.”
The doing can be physical, backed up by objective: “I am going to wash these damn dishes like MAD because I am so pissed off at my husband right now and don’t want to deal with it.” (Joan Crawford was a master at this. I like to point out that the “Method” didn’t just magically emerge in the 1950s, and everyone before hand was doing it wrong.) Watch the scene with the dictaphone in Sudden Fear. Or her waitressing in Mildred Pierce. Her coffee-pot-sketch-artist business in Daisy Kenyon. Business, as actors call it. Business, business, business. All motivated, all figured out by her, all flowing with lines and her emotions.)
The doing can be emotional, what people mean when they talk about “objective”: “What I am DOING in this scene is trying to get THROUGH to you/trying to fuck you/trying to comfort you.” Everything you say, every gesture you make, comes from that objective.
Sam Schacht again: When actors were “stuck” in a scene in his class, unsure of how to make something happen, he would throw out the reminder: “Every scene is either Fight or Fuck. Pick one. See where it gets you.” “Fight” or “fuck” are objectives, things to do, or at least ATTEMPT to do, because your scene partner, with his or her own objectives, may not want to fight you, may not want to fuck you. If you both play your different objectives 100%, then Voila. You are doing what Tennessee Williams wrote, or Shakespeare, or Wendy Wasserstein. It’s amazing to watch when it clicks. I still think of that “fight or fuck” thing when I’m trying to break down a scene and analyze what the actors are doing, how they are going about achieving their objectives.
If you want to witness a group master-class in that kind of “doing”, watch episodes of Thirtysomething.
The entire show was built on emotions, shown through everyday behavior like making dinner or getting the kids ready for school. That was the rhythm of the show, and those actors were brilliant at accomplishing it. That’s why the group scenes in that show were so incredible and the sheer amount of DOING going on was often overwhelming. It always felt like dinner was REALLY being made, the kids’ backpacks were REALLY being packed.
Dean’s advice to Hopper again: Don’t act like you’re making dinner. Make dinner.
Thirtysomething devoted itself to physical behavior in a way that is unique – definitely something for actors and directors to learn from (especially those master shots in the series – so many master shots used – with people coming in and out of the frame, going to the fridge, searching through cupboards, exiting out the back door for a second, re-entering holding a bike helmet, or whatever – there was always a REASON to go outside, all as everyone is talking, and listening, and living their lives. It’s unbelievable ensemble work: very difficult to accomplish and choreograph.)
Everything we do has a reason behind it.
“I must board up the windows of my house before the typhoon hits/before the aliens arrive/before the serial killer comes up the driveway”) or small and non-urgent (“I carefully place coasters on all the tables in the house because I am a neat-nik/because this is my dead mother’s furniture/because I am a germaphobe.”) If you do physical business without a reason behind it, then you got nothing.
Watch Gena Rowlands walk into the cavernous penthouse suite in Opening Night (the scene repeats itself a couple times).
What she wants, what she is DOING, in that purposeful walk, is going to get a drink. She doesn’t take her coat off. She makes a beeline for the bar. She cannot wait to get there, why is the room so HUGE, why are the drinks so far away? In every single scene, every. single, scene, her desire for alcohol is so imperative it drives everything she does. You can FEEL her need for a drink. THAT’S “doing.”
If an actor only focuses on emotions and forgets the DOING part of it, not to mention the whys of the doing, you don’t have a scene. Much of acting class, in general, is helping actors click into “the reality of the doing.” (The bad acting teachers only focus on emotions. You can clock those actors from miles away. They can cry, but they cannot walk and talk at the same time. When they are asked to do “physical business” at the same time as an emotional catharsis, they are unable to do both and will always prioritize the catharsis. They’ll be sobbing and let the soup boil over. No: you gotta sob AND take the soup off the stove.)
The great actors understand all of this intuitively. They’d think all this talk about it was silly. Either you DO it, or you don’t. Don’t sit around TALKING about it.
John Wayne did not become a star right away. He made many B-Westerns before The Big Trail and then many many after, until Stagecoach came along and made him a star. He was not a natural “actor”, but he was a natural personality. Once he figured out he didn’t need to “act” at all, and he could just “be” onscreen (nothing “JUST” about it!), everything clicked into place. His personality was so strong that everybody felt it, in real-life and onscreen. But to OWN that? To understand it, and be able to utilize it on purpose? To be able to channel it into roles as diverse as the ones he played? Ethan Edwards, Ringo, Hondo, Thomas Dunson? These are not the same characters. Wayne used himself and his personality consciously. Only the great ones can pull that off.
Gary Cooper once said that he enjoyed doing Westerns so much because it was real. You have to really ride the horse, get off the horse, tie up the horse. You can’t fake it. While all that “doing” is going on, there’s no time to worry about acting. It’s funny: if an amateur actor (a talented and coachable amateur actor, that is) is flailing a bit in a scene, unsure of what to do with his emotions, give him a physical action to perform and then have him play the scene. A talented albeit green actor will suddenly understand, get the Dennis Hopper light-bulb. Ohhhh, okay, so if I play the scene AS I sew a button on the sweater, if I focus just as much on sewing the button as I do on my lines and my scene partner, suddenly we’ve got a SCENE. I’ve seen such moments in countless acting classes, and have had such moments myself. It’s great. Because in real-life, the whole world does not stop because you are arguing with your wife, the entire world does not take a pause so that you can burst into tears at your leisure. You are still driving your car, or boiling water, or herding sheep. You have to do BOTH. Simultaneously.
Sounds elementary, right? Well, actors will understand how much of a challenge all of this is (and Wayne had to figure it out too, he didn’t stride out of the gate as his confident glorious self, although he brought to the table many natural attributes like grace and fearlessness – those things help.) Actors have to understand this concept and master it QUICK, or they will find themselves being acted off the stage by their scene partner who already gets it.
My point, ultimately, finally, is this:
In one mostly unbroken take, John Wayne makes horseshoes, all as he banters and scolds and flirts with Geraldine Page. If they had been just standing in the corral, doing nothing else but talking, the audience would not only fall asleep, but it would feel phony. In general, people do not stand in the middle of an open space and talk at one another about their lives for 20 minutes. They’re doing other things. Making horseshoes is a complicated multi-step process. Wayne’s doing it all: hammering out the shoe, heating it up, pumping the bellows, plunging the shoe into the cold water – a hiss of steam accompanying it – hanging the shoe up for later, starting in on another one. It’s an archaic piece of business, a 19th century kind of thing, and Wayne does it with the grace and ease of a man who has been around horses all his life, and knows how to take care of them, knows what he is doing. His actions are as automatic as a practiced and experienced cook making Thanksgiving dinner for a huge crowd all by herself. She’s got the turkey going, she’s mashing potatoes, she’s boiling water for green beans, she’s got the biscuit batter all mixed … and as she’s doing all of this, she’s chatting with her kids, giving them chores, talking with her guests, whatever.
John Wayne is doing multiple things at the same time in this wonderful scene. He is taking over Angie Lowe’s life, in a peremptory manner, even when she says, “I don’t need you”. He doesn’t care, she DOES need his help, and her husband is a loser/loafer who has left her in peril, whatever great things she may say about him. Hondo is also drawn to her, physically and emotionally, and he’s been alone a long time, probably his only sex life is fucking the prostitutes in town whenever he makes it that way. So … he likes her. You can tell he likes her. The scene ends with him coming up behind her and grabbing her. Because dammit, she’s a good woman and he wants her. She deserves to be taken care of. She deserves to be man-handled. With care, of course. She’s flustered, saying, “I know that I am a homely woman.” The way he looks at her though … she’s the most gorgeous thing in the world. Through all of this emotional stuff, though, grounding the scene, and giving it its structure, is the horseshoe-making Grand Pantomime. Only it’s not a pantomime. It’s the real thing.
Wayne never stops. He walks and talks at the same time. He plays multiple levels of emotional reality with every line. He throws lines over his shoulder. He has a comeback for everything she says. There’s a build to the scene, a long slow crescendo. When he pauses, you hold your breath. And Wayne makes those damn horseshoes right before our eyes.
This is the sort of acting moment that rarely gets pointed out and praised. (I think this is partly because many folks writing about movies care most about direction, to generalize. And so they don’t understand how important/rare/difficult/beautiful such a scene is for an actor to pull off – and also how crucial it is that these details are set, and present, and it is up to the ACTOR, not the director, to accomplish that.)
Watch him make the horseshoes. And carry on a conversation. And have multiple objectives. And be attracted to her. All at the same time. And as you watch, understand that what he is doing looks easy, because it is easy for him, but it is not easy for others. Also: it’s not just that it’s easy. It looks easy because Wayne prepared. He was meticulous in his preparation. If he had to do something onscreen, he learned how to do it, he practiced it, so when the cameras were rolling, he was confident, he had done it 100 times before. The rifle-twirl he does in his famous first entrance in Stagecoach is a perfect example.
He had to practice that, he had to have a stuntman show him how to do it, the rifle had to be slightly sawed off so it wouldn’t catch under his arm, and he did it over and over and over again, until it was automatic. Business like that has to be worked out. An actor has to devote himself to the smallest details. The camera is tuned into truth: phoniness and fakery are magnified a hundred-fold by the movie camera. Wayne understood that. The only way to combat it is to be 1. prepared and 2. relaxed. But you can’t have 2 without 1.
Similar to the bad acting classes where the folks who cry loudly in every scene get the most attention/praise, the more histrionic “showy” acting gets the most attention, from critics who tend to be a little bit credulous about acting, which seems … magical to them. (#notallcritics). Wow, she was really crying. Wow, his anger was so loud. Wow, she really seemed super-drunk in that scene. ACTING with a capital A! I wonder if this is because acting and the use of the imagination in such a powerful childlike way is still such a mystery to many folks, who couldn’t even begin to do something like that.
But the emotional stuff doesn’t pack a punch if the actor is not clicked into some “reality of the doing”. The “reality of the doing” is present in big moments of catharsis and crisis, helping us understand the stakes. But, more importantly, the “reality of the doing” must be present in small moments as well.
Moments like making horseshoes as you talk to a woman you desperately want to kiss.
Thank you so much for stopping by. If you like what I do, and if you feel inclined to support my work, here’s a link to my Venmo account. And I’ve launched a Substack, Sheila Variations 2.0, if you’d like to subscribe.
“When I first heard Elvis Presley’s voice I just knew that I wasn’t going to work for anybody and nobody was going to be my boss. Hearing him for the first time was like busting out of jail.” – Bob Dylan
“Nobody was going to be my boss” is one of my favorite comments from a fellow musician on the impact Elvis had. There’s also this from Keith Richards’ great memoir. My favorite comment about Elvis very well may be George Harrison’s response to the question from an interviewer about his musical roots. Harrison, surprisingly, said he didn’t have any musical roots. The only “root” he could think of was from when he was a kid in Liverpool, hearing “Heartbreak Hotel” playing through an open window.
But Dylan: hearing a song, hearing a singer, on the radio, and suddenly knowing that “nobody was going to be my boss”?
Bob Dylan considering Elvis
Elvis recorded Dylan’s song “Tomorrow is a Long Time” in 1966. Dylan had written it, and recorded a demo of it in the early 60s. He played it in his concerts, and others started recording it. (Everyone recorded it, including Odetta, which is how Elvis heard it.)
No matter. Elvis’ cover was buried on the soundtrack album for the movie Spinout, and it didn’t make a splash of any kind (and it should have, it’s a high point of his 60s recordings, and different from anything else he ever did, before or since.) Elvis sang a couple of other Dylan songs during his live shows in the 70s, “Don’t Think Twice,” and “I Shall Be Released” – and he liked “Blowin in the Wind”, and would sing it around the piano with his buddies (there’s a tape recording of this), even though it seems like Elvis and Dylan would have had nothing in common, especially socially/politically. But “Tomorrow is Such a Long Time” is the best of all of these. It’s haunting, eerie, James Burton showing his genius with his Telecaster. Dylan officially released the song in 1971, I believe, after a decade of performing it live, and a decade where everyone and their grandmother had recorded it. It was one of those songs.
Bob Dylan: “The highlight of my career? That’s easy, Elvis recording one of my songs.”
“I don’t adhere to rabbis, preachers, evangelists, all of that. I’ve learned more from the songs than I’ve learned from any of this kind of entity. The songs are my lexicon. I believe the songs.” — Bob Dylan
Thank you so much for stopping by. If you like what I do, and if you feel inclined to support my work, here’s a link to my Venmo account. And I’ve launched a Substack, Sheila Variations 2.0, if you’d like to subscribe.
Physical Media Booklet Essay is the brainchild of Sean Abley, whom I have known since we were 20something actors running from blackbox theatre to storefront theatre and back up and down the stores of Lake Michigan. He had a theatre company back then and was also a playwright, and his ambition was very PRO-active then, something that really stood out because when you’re “just” an actor you can feel at the mercy of forces beyond your control. At any rate, here we still are, doing our thing, where I interview him about his book Queer Horror: A Film Guide, and Sean is still making stuff – plays and essays and all the rest – plus creating (designing, editing, producing) zines like Physical Media Booklet Essay, which he very kindly asked me to contribute to.
The zine’s concept is not easily put into words, and we have been holding back in our descriptions, hopefully to add to the fun and anticipation.
Suffice it to say: the essays included are written by Sean, myself, Calpernia Addams, Rich Newby, Michael Varrati, Sarah Stubbs, Heather Petrocelli, Julieann Stipidis, and Dave White. Each is about 2,000 words long, typically the length of any booklet essays, the type of which accompanies all 4k re-releases on DVD/Blu-ray of classic films (like the ones Criterion specializes in). A “physical media booklet essay” is always a plum assignment for any film/culture writer – monetarily but also creatively. Physical media is part of this equation because … of course … they exist in the real, not just virtual world.
And with AI looming, being forced upon us, in the year of our Lord 2026 where commencement speakers have been rolling out their AI endorsements (almost like they all agreed upon it beforehand) – and, beautifully, blessedly, looking totally baffled when all of the graduates start booing them as one … making real stuff which exists in the real world – stuff we can touch, stuff we can own – feels more important than ever now. Like Guillermo del Toro has been saying about Frankenstein: “art about humans made by humans.”
What are the Physical Media Booklet Essay essays about?
Films that have not been released due to … reasons, but not the reasons you might suspect. I don’t mean to be coy. Sean will be releasing interviews with each of us on his podcast, where we will discuss the movie we wrote about, letting the cat out of the bag. For now … I wrote about a low-budget (on the verge of no-budget) mid-90s film … seen by no one. Not really. I mean, you sort of have, in a way, but it’s complicated.
Purchase the zine – on Sean’s store – it will also be available on Amazon, and there are also international options for purchase.
How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
-— Alexander Pope, from “Eloisa to Abelard”
Alexander Pope was born on this day in 1688.
He was so huge in his day, so talked-about, so hated and feared by some writers – and so loved by other writers – that his lapse into total obscurity for over a century – until he was rediscovered in the 20th century, is one of those fascinating – and alarming – literary phenomena. People are “in style” and then they aren’t. They are so much NOT in style that they are forgotten. A link in the chain of cultural continuity is broken. It will take reparative work to connect the chain. It’s good to keep in mind that nothing is forever.
Pope was so famous, so dominant, so feared, it’s not surprising he was a huge target. Writers reacted against Pope – and against the whole Neoclassical era – for 100 years. Every “movement” creates its own counter-movement. Reacting AGAINST something is how the culture moves forward. After Pope’s generation came the Romantics, and we still live in the world made by the Romantics. The Romantics changed everything. The 18th century Enlightenment yielded to subjective Romanticism which morphed into late 19th-century curlicues, which was then demolished for all time by Modernism.
It’s John Strasberg’s birthday today. I told this story before on here years ago, when I used to write like this on here, on occasion. Figured I’d re-post it. He is very very important to me.
Back in the late ’90s, I took an intense acting workshop with John Strasberg, son of Lee Strasberg, and author of one of my favorite acting books/memoirs, Accidentally on Purpose. The workshop lasted 4 or 5 days but I came out of it altered. The quote in the title to this post is one of the things he said during the workshop. I never forgot it. Going into it, I was tense with excitement and anticipation, because Lee Strasberg was so important to my own development and growth, particularly as a teenager, and Lee’s influence was so vast – considering the Studio circle in which I ran – that being connected, in some small way, to Lee’s legacy was really exciting to me. I did not know much about John Strasberg at the time, although I had read his sister Susan’s books, in which he is often quoted, and exists as a peripheral figure to the main triangular drama going on between Susan and her parents (Lee and Paula). John came off as a troubled young man, resisting his parents’ domination, and hurt by their affectionate tender relationships with the actors they coached (in stark contrast to their rigid displeasure towards him). But I didn’t know much about him as an acting teacher. How does one become an acting teacher if you are the son of one of the most famous acting teachers who ever lived? How do you begin to come out from underneath that shadow?
The new zine – created and produced and edited by Sean Abley is here. It is called PHYSICAL MEDIA BOOKLET ESSAY. The idea behind it, the concept – is rather high concept and we’re still not saying exactly what it is. However: this is a rif on the “booklet essay” side of film criticism. Sean had this idea to invite writers to write 2,000-word booklet essays for films that … haven’t been released … yet? More than that I can’t say.
It’s only $10 total plus postage, and you can get it directly from Sean here. You can also get it from Amazon come June but why would you do that when you can support the artist directly?
Sean did it all, including the very cool design and layout.
The roster of very cool writers: Sean, Calpernia Addams, Richard Newby, Heather O. Petrocell, Julieann Stipidis, Sarah Stubbs, Michael Varrati, Dave White, and yours truly.
I love the idea of artists like Sean creating his own stuff. It’s the wave of the future, I’m telling you. Or … it’s now. It’s bleak out there. We have to make our own stuff.
An accompanying podcast will be arriving in a couple of weeks.
“To me, John Lennon and Elvis Presley were punks, because they made music that evoked those emotions in people.” — Joey Ramone
It’s Joey Ramone’s birthday today.
Nothing I can say will top my brother Brendan’s essay on seeing The Ramones at the Living Room in Providence. So I’ll pass the mike. It’s one of my favorite things Bren has written – with a HELL of a final sentence – JESUS. Not only does he describe that show – and the extraordinary nature of it – but he evokes that whole entire time, and what it meant to be a fan of “that kind of music” in the ’80s, and what the Ramones signified and embodied.
And I’ll leave off with this: Joey Ramone’s painfully exuberant cover of “What a Wonderful World”.
Thank you so much for stopping by. If you like what I do, and if you feel inclined to support my work, here’s a link to my Venmo account. And I’ve launched a Substack, Sheila Variations 2.0, if you’d like to subscribe.
