Passages

[beamish14]

I was very fortunate to see Pee Wee on Broadway. He was wonderful in his recurring role in Pushing Daisies and Steven Soderbergh’s Mosaic. An incredible comic talent with a remarkable range.

[hearthesilence]

What really hits hard about O'Connor and Reubens is how progressive they were and how much the world's kind of grown into their work. I noticed that dramatically over the past seven years with O'Connor, who I was already listening to regularly. With Reubens, that was especially apparent when you watch those shows and listen to the sit-down interviews on the bonus material. All the changes in Hollywood in recent years regarding diversity and equality was done on his show back then (in the Reagan era) under Reubens's directive. S. Epatha Merkerson and Laurence Fishburne talk about this, and it wasn't just the cast: Fisburne (who had been acting for film and television going back to Apocalypse Now) mentions that he immediately noticed a lot of women and people of color in crew positions that were normally filled by white males. A lot of these people were fresh out of film school, which brings up another one of the show's great charms: it hired a lot of underground artists, bringing their work into the mainstream but with little compromise - Reubens ultimately signed off on everything, but their imaginations had free reign, though initially it was a very scrappy production, virtually a downtown NYC art project before the success of the first season took the show to more a spacious and comfortable stage in Los Angeles. It changed the lives of guys like Gary Panter and the then-unknown Wayne White. Everyone seems to look back at the show with great fondness - one producer said he never produced another kids' show even though he got a ton of offers because he knew he wouldn't come close to matching Pee-Wee. He also knew a lot of that had to do with Pee-Wee's autonomy, something he likely would not experience on another kids' show, and it would've been too disappointing and too heartbreaking. (Those who went on to other kids' shows found out first hand how different it was.)

It's too bad the extras on the Blu-ray are mostly out-of-print and didn't carry over to streaming with the restored episodes because they are packed with information. I especially liked Mark Mothersbaugh's interview - the show was what got him into film scoring, something he never considered before. After doing the theme song, they approached him about doing the WHOLE show, and he balked, asking if he could just do half of the episodes. It was a fortunate decision because it opened the door to the Residents, Mark Snow, Danny Elfman, Todd Rundgren, Frank Zappa's son Dweezil, Jeff Baxter, Stanley Clarke, Van Dyke Parks, even George Clinton. Mothersbaugh was so green, towards the end of the first season, someone handling sound for post-production asked him "I'm just curious, why don't you ever use timecode?" Mothersbaugh: "what's timecode?" Regardless, the process was immensely rewarding - as he tells it, with Devo, it was a grueling process of planning an album, recording an album, putting it out, touring the world to promote it, then starting over for the next cycle. With Pee-Wee, he'd get an episode to watch, spend a day or two composing, then another to record, FedEx the tape, and then that Saturday he would see and hear his work on television, all within the span of a week, something he found immensely gratifying. It was a tough show and everyone was getting burned out, but you can tell they were really happy to be on it and about what they were doing. It's also sweet how Reubens was so grateful to his crew - they had THE best crew gifts, even a yearbook as if they were all in high school. And according to a few people including Mothersbaugh, Pee Wee never forgot their birthday, even after the show ended.

[Pavel]

Angus Cloud, who was a wonderful presence on Euphoria. Incredibly sad news

[therewillbeblus]

Fuck. Tragic for so many reasons - more than most personalities on TV, he was an extremely "authentic" character, a composite of very kind but hardened people from my past - and by all accounts he was similar in real life to his character on the show. Clearly he was being set up for an arc of rehabilitation that will never happen in the medium either..

[Never Cursed]

Absolutely terrible news. Especially following the cruel tenor of some stuff about him earlier this year, I was hoping very badly that his problems would never come to something like this. What a loss

[barryconvex]

That is awful. He had soul, you could see it in his eyes and was beautifully unpolished in Euphoria.

[j99]

What really hits hard about O'Connor and Reubens is how progressive they were and how much the world's kind of grown into their work. I noticed that dramatically over the past seven years with O'Connor, who I was already listening to regularly. With Reubens, that was especially apparent when you watch those shows and listen to the sit-down interviews on the bonus material. All the changes in Hollywood in recent years regarding diversity and equality was done on his show back then (in the Reagan era) under Reubens's directive. S. Epatha Merkerson and Laurence Fishburne talk about this, and it wasn't just the cast: Fisburne (who had been acting for film and television going back to Apocalypse Now) mentions that he immediately noticed a lot of women and people of color in crew positions that were normally filled by white males. A lot of these people were fresh out of film school, which brings up another one of the show's great charms: it hired a lot of underground artists, bringing their work into the mainstream but with little compromise - Reubens ultimately signed off on everything, but their imaginations had free reign, though initially it was a very scrappy production, virtually a downtown NYC art project before the success of the first season took the show to more a spacious and comfortable stage in Los Angeles. It changed the lives of guys like Gary Panter and the then-unknown Wayne White. Everyone seems to look back at the show with great fondness - one producer said he never produced another kids' show even though he got a ton of offers because he knew he wouldn't come close to matching Pee-Wee. He also knew a lot of that had to do with Pee-Wee's autonomy, something he likely would not experience on another kids' show, and it would've been too disappointing and too heartbreaking. (Those who went on to other kids' shows found out first hand how different it was.)

It's too bad the extras on the Blu-ray are mostly out-of-print and didn't carry over to streaming with the restored episodes because they are packed with information. I especially liked Mark Mothersbaugh's interview - the show was what got him into film scoring, something he never considered before. After doing the theme song, they approached him about doing the WHOLE show, and he balked, asking if he could just do half of the episodes. It was a fortunate decision because it opened the door to the Residents, Mark Snow, Danny Elfman, Todd Rundgren, Frank Zappa's son Dweezil, Jeff Baxter, Stanley Clarke, Van Dyke Parks, even George Clinton. Mothersbaugh was so green, towards the end of the first season, someone handling sound for post-production asked him "I'm just curious, why don't you ever use timecode?" Mothersbaugh: "what's timecode?" Regardless, the process was immensely rewarding - as he tells it, with Devo, it was a grueling process of planning an album, recording an album, putting it out, touring the world to promote it, then starting over for the next cycle. With Pee-Wee, he'd get an episode to watch, spend a day or two composing, then another to record, FedEx the tape, and then that Saturday he would see and hear his work on television, all within the span of a week, something he found immensely gratifying. It was a tough show and everyone was getting burned out, but you can tell they were really happy to be on it and about what they were doing. It's also sweet how Reubens was so grateful to his crew - they had THE best crew gifts, even a yearbook as if they were all in high school. And according to a few people including Mothersbaugh, Pee Wee never forgot their birthday, even after the show ended.

What an excellent tribute this is.

[j99]

Just heartbreaking. I haven't looked at the news just yet, but given her struggles over many years, I imagine it's what's been feared for a very long time. Absolutely loved her music, and it was wonderful to see something like a resurgence over the past decade as people re-discovered her or re-evaluated what they overlooked. (There was a stretch in the '00s where I felt like no one I knew ever talked about her, much less put on her records, which was remarkable for someone who had attained massive popularity not that long ago.) She was probably my favorite singer of the past 40 years, certainly my favorite outside of jazz. Her second and most popular album remains her best, a landmark, but anyone willing to dive deeper will be richly rewarded.

I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got. A brilliant album, and proof there was more to her than Nothing Compares 2 U. Three Babies is stunning, probably my favourite ever Sinead song. What a voice!

https://youtu.be/I4Sp7hVI4Ak

[hearthesilence]

I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got. A brilliant album, and proof there was more to her than Nothing Compares 2 U. Three Babies is stunning, probably my favourite ever Sinead song. What a voice!

https://youtu.be/I4Sp7hVI4Ak

That's one of my very favorite albums of the '90s. A while back, Greil Marcus mentioned he had an epiphany when he looked at a photo of O'Connor and realized her image brought to mind Renée Falconetti in Carl Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc. Pretty amazing considering 1) everything that happened when she confronted the Catholic Church and 2) IIRC O'Connor originally shaved her head on a whim, more inspired by punk fashion than anything else, and she did it again after her career got started because of a label executive who pushed her to accentuate her looks, so it was not a self-conscious attempt to emulate Joan of Arc. However, I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got always struck me as rock's aesthetic equivalent to Dreyer's film - they're both masterworks that are just raw to the bone in terms of how exposed they are, and aesthetically they're so sparse and stripped down that they have that focused and concentrated power of the best minimalist works.

[therewillbeblus]

Trailer

[Matt]

That is awful. He had soul, you could see it in his eyes and was beautifully unpolished in Euphoria.

Nice remembrance in The New Yorker along those lines: Angus Cloud’s Eyes Said It All

[Ribs]

Carl Davis

[bearcuborg]

One of the greats, truly. There’s a massive output to recommend, but with the Oppenheimer movie that’s currently out, I encourage everyone to seek out the superior BBC version that features music from this great artist.

[Blutarsky]

Carl Davis

Damn this week just keeps getting worse. Back in college when I needed background music to study, I would listen to his score for Hollywood on loop. The theme alone to that show would put such a smile on my face. I hope one day we will get a posthumous release of his score to Greed which I absolutely love.

[colinr0380]

If Channel 4 had any sense, they would schedule a season of some of the Photoplay silent film restorations that he contributed scores to: the Valentino Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse; Wings; The Phantom of the Opera; The Wedding March and the Douglas Fairbanks version of The Iron Mask.

And that's before we get to the opening titles of The World at War series.

[MichaelB]

If Channel 4 had any sense,

Or the rights. I assume their original contract with Photoplay specified a limited number of broadcasts.

[Orlac]

The Phantom of the Opera scored by Davis was my introduction to silent cinema at the age of 10.

It's a shame he only got to score the bizzare hybrid version (a mix of 1925 and 1930 footage), as I'd have loved for him to get the opportunity to score the original 1925 cut.

[Sloper]

Carl Davis is one of the main reasons I fell in love with silent films: a good score (or a bad one) makes such a difference, and he was one of the best composers in the medium, especially for a certain kind of film. The Crowd is my personal favourite, with Greed a close second. Passages from both those scores get stuck in my head at least once a week, and they're always very comforting.

I saw him conduct live accompaniment to The General, Our Hospitality, Safety Last, a selection of Chaplin shorts, and The Iron Mask, all among the most memorable cinematic experiences I've had (even the last one, which is not a great film). He clearly got so much joy from these performances, and it was incredible to see how responsive the audiences were - being in the Birmingham Symphony Hall, hearing everyone cheer when Buster knocks that sleeper out of the way of the train, was a great communal experience.

I knew he was getting old, but he always seemed so vivacious that I kind of expected him to outlive me.

[Ann Harding]

Carl Davis is one of the main reasons I fell in love with silent films

Me too. A broadcast on French TV of BROKEN BLOSSOMS and THE THIEF OF BAGDAD in the 80s made me a silent fan. I was lucky enough to meet him in Paris in 2011 and I recorded an interview. You can read it here: Part 1 and Part 2.

[therewillbeblus]

Mark Margolis

[Mr Sausage]

Mark Margolis

While most people know him from Breaking Bad, I’ll always know him as the lead character’s concerned mentor in Aronofsky’s Pi.

[therewillbeblus]

Yeah I always think of that role and his weasel-y henchman in Scarface - I don't like the film, but his eccentric, quiet presence is always a fun social contrast to Pacino's obnoxious, verbose Montana

[domino harvey]

He’ll always be Antonio Nappa to me

[therewillbeblus]

My first reaction to the news was "I should finally get into Oz" - no experience with it outside of watching a couple random eps back in high school, though they were certainly memorable!

[j99]

That's one of my very favorite albums of the '90s. A while back, Greil Marcus mentioned he had an epiphany when he looked at a photo of O'Connor and realized her image brought to mind Renée Falconetti in Carl Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc. Pretty amazing considering 1) everything that happened when she confronted the Catholic Church and 2) IIRC O'Connor originally shaved her head on a whim, more inspired by punk fashion than anything else, and she did it again after her career got started because of a label executive who pushed her to accentuate her looks, so it was not a self-conscious attempt to emulate Joan of Arc. However, I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got always struck me as rock's aesthetic equivalent to Dreyer's film - they're both masterworks that are just raw to the bone in terms of how exposed they are, and aesthetically they're so sparse and stripped down that they have that focused and concentrated power of the best minimalist works.

Good point about the Dreyer film. I never connected them. Probably accidental, but similar nevertheless.