Too many indies make the studios go home broke

One of the biggest frustrations for me this summer in terms of movies was just how pathetic A Mighty Heart did at the box office. Featuring an honest, documentary style attitude towards the War On Terror and an Oscar-worthy performance by Angelina Jolie, I called it "the best summer movie you didn't see." As it turns out, A Mighty Heart was the calm before the storm of pathetic box office showing by indies nearly across the board this summer.

Delirious, Interview, The Hunting Party, The King of Kong, Michael Clayton, Sleuth...need I go on? The problem, which was pointed out in yesterday's L.A. Times, is not lack of interest, but overexposure:

"There are too many movies," says Miramax chief Daniel Battsek. "Even if your movie is the best of the bunch, the fact that there are several other movies released on that date all chipping away at the audience is bound to have an overall reducing effect on your movie."

It's hard to produce a Little Miss Sunshine or Pan's Labyrinth every time, but it's even harder when you're competing with 10 other films at the time for a market that's already small and selective.

At this point, this year's indies best bet is to get some unlikely award recognition around Oscar time and hope for a rerelease. This may give A Mighty Heart the inside track through Jolie's performance (similar to what happened with Pollock awhile back). The optimist in me hopes The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters will get some Best Documentary love and salvage some DVD sales. It's probably my favorite movie of the year so far, and I'm not the only one who feels this way.

Say it ain't so, Jello! Torture porn pioneer Eli Roth cites the Dead Kennedys as one of his main influences

As a big fan and defender of the Dead Kennedys (I have to keep telling people that Jello Biafra's voice is actually perfect for the songs and not annoying), it pains me to realize that the Dead Kennedys were a key reason behind the torture porn horror film phenomen. Reprehensible director Eli Roth, the man behind the Hostel films as well as a contributor to Grindhouse, told Spinner.com that old school punk was one of his main influences:

In fact, Roth finds a lot of similarities between the two genres. "I always felt like horror movies were the equivalent of punk rock," he says. "I saw a real correlation between films like 'Dawn of the Dead' and 'Last House on the Left,' and the punk rock music. They had the same energy and attitude, and that's what I try to do in my films."

Goddamnit, Eli, now I won't be able to listen to the Dead Kennedys again without thinking of people's limbs getting cut off, people getting raped and killed in front of their significant others, and mangled bodies. As opposed to normally thinking of poor people being neutron bombed and country club residents being killed by chemical WMDs.

If there's any solace in this, it's that the torture porn phenomenon is on its way out, as evidenced by Hostel Part II's paltry box office performance this summer. This weekend's release of Saw IV will probably be torture porn's last stand, as I don't think most people will be feeling the Halloween love until the middle of the week. Then I can listen to my Fresh Fruit in peace.

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Google trends stays classy

Kudos to my friend Yitz, general genius employed at Yahoo!, who pointed me to what is most assuredly the most deviant Google Trends result I have ever seen (and I looked at it mutiple times every day during the summer). I guess you can't expect a computer program to have taste.

The Whitest Music Ever?

In an essay that has surely ruffled the pristinely disheveled feathers of quite a few U of C indie lovers, New Yorker pop music critic Sasha Frere-Jones calls out contemporary indie rock for turning its back on rhythm, showmanship, soul, and spontaneity. All of this stems from what Frere-Jones diagnoses as a lack of the very thing that created rock music in the first place, "musical miscegenation."

In addition, Frere-Jones elaborates on the piece in a podcast on the New Yorker's website, softening some of his rhetoric while pointing towards the finest examples in the cannon of musical miscengenation. The podcast has also resolved my long running uncertainty (no doubt trivial, and due to a lack of research—F-J appears in a photograph on a basic Google image search, albeit in the company of four others) as to whether Frere-Jones is a man or a woman.

Addition: If it's discussion Frere-Jones wanted, now he's got it. Canadian critic Carl Wilson has written a response to Frere-Jones on Slate, arguing that class boundaries are more formidable than racial ones in today's indie rock. A sample: "It's a cliche to picture indie musicians and fans as well-off "hipsters" busily gentrifying neighborhoods, but compared to previous post-punk generations, the particular kind of indie rock Frere-Jones complains about is more blatantly upper-middle class and liberal-arts-college-based, and less self-aware or politicized about it."

Disney continues tradition of ruining tween actresses lives

So I had not even heard of High School Musical until this year's Scav Hunt, which resulted in this glorious video from the Snell-Hitchcock team:



Apparently I was in the minority, as High School Musical 1 was already a certified phenomenon whose soundtrack was the top selling album of 2006. There are now dozens of productions all over the U.S., High School Musical 2 broke cable TV records, and the HSM soundtrack very well may repeat as bestselling album of 2007. Of course, there was the rumored romance of stars Zac Efron and Vanessa Anne Hudgins, which was believed to be a ploy to hide the fact that Efron may possibly dig dudes. Of course, if Zac Efron were gay, he wouldn't be interested in the naked pictures sent by his 19-year old costar (proving that the Maroon is a front for pornography, you can see them in a very NSFW link here). It seemed like a win-win, help prove male hearthrob's masculinity while simultaneous proving squeaky queen teenage girl is more mature than she gets credit for.

Apparently, Disney didn't take the bait. According to OK! (via Defamer), Hudgens will not be invited back to High School Musical 3. Here was a Disney insider's reasoning:

"They feel that as long as Zac Efron is in the movie, all will be fine. He's the real star -- the household name -- and, most importantly, he comes without baggage."

I have not seen HSM and have no business judging Hudgens' acting abilities or her chemistry with Efron. But this decision is not based on Hudgens as an actor, this is about Disney protecting its family friendliness to ridiculous extremes. I know they don't want another Lindsey Lohan, but wasn't it the shackling of Lohan to family friendly roles and the lack of respect Disney gave her that caused her to spiral out of control in the first place?

They seem to forget that their main audience for High School Musical is 9-12 year-olds who can't really fully grasp the social implications of nude pictures being posted on line (let alone know if they exist, though I hesitate to underestimate 9-12 year olds). I don't think any parents are really going to be offended by having someone who posted pictures on the internet appear in a role she's much better known for than as internet nude starlet (which already puts her ahead of Paris Hilton). All this seems to do is to preemptively clear your name of any potential DUI, coke possession cases, even though by killing her career you're actively facilitating that.

I'd say the best outlet for Hudgens to take was to back up the goals of the photos and do some serious, adult-themed acting work. If successful you can bitch about Disney all you want and seemed justified, but it's going to be hard to break out the character mold she's set herself up for. The good thing is there's a whole segment of the population who doesn't know who she is. Macaulay Culkin was a much bigger child star with much bigger tabloid headlines, and even he managed to salvage a decent film and stage career while facing drug possesion charges. Hudgens is nowhere near that point yet, but she certianly has enough examples of how not to live her life (Jason Bateman: good. Drew Barrymore: bad).

Butthole Surfers continue to corrupt our nation's youth

Would you want this man teaching your 8 year old?

Apparently some people are stupid enough to leave their kids with Gibby Haynes, the former (current?) frontman for the Butthole Surfers turned teacher in the School of Rock. The Butthole Surfers are best remembered in popular circles for their 1996 top 40 hit "Pepper," but as any somewhat knowledgeable music snob and reader of Our Band Could Be Your Life will tell you, the Butthole Surfers were the scariest, batshit fucking insane band of the '80s. Slayer looks childish compared to them. It's not enough to teach them, Haynes is going to have these kids actually PLAY Butthole Surfers songs. These are songs that come off albums titled Rembrandt Pussyhorse and Locust Abortion Technician. Hairway to Steven was considered their tamest album to date in 1988, and that's after the 12-minute, child rape-featuring "Jimi"!

I applaud the intention of the progressivism of some parents who will let their children hang out with Gibby Haynes, and considering they spend their time hanging with rock stars in general, I imagine they deal with some pretty crazy people. I don't know if any of these parents have read this passage in Our Band Could Be Your Life, courtesy of Poor Mojo:

The night of the [Butthole Surfers] appearance at the huge Pandora's Box festival in the Netherlands, [bassist Mark] Kramer went to fetch [singer Gibby] Haynes for a sound check. "It is firstly most important to state that, on this night, Gibby had eaten an entire handful of four-way acid tabs and drank an entire bottle of Jim Beam before the sound check had even begun," Kramer notes.

[Guitarist Paul] Leary was furious at Haynes for getting wasted for such an important show. "Fuck that stupid-ass motherfucker," he snarled to Kramer. "I hate this fucking band. I swear to fucking Christ on a stick, I hate this fucking band more than I hate myself. And that's a lot. I don't even care if we ever play again. If you can't find him, fuck it. FUCK IT!!!!" With that, he began smashing a couple of guitars with his bare fists.

The festival featured several stages, and Kramer eventually found Haynes at a Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds show. As Kramer tells it, Haynes was completely naked, repeatedly fighting his way onto the stage and charging at Cave as hulking security guards punched and kicked him off the ten-foot-high stage and back into the audience, where he would remain for a few seconds before trying to claw his way back onstage again. Finally, guitarist Blixa Bargeld came forward and kicked Haynes in the groin with a pointed German boot. This time Haynes did not get up.

Kramer pushed his way through the crowd to come to the aid of his bandmate, only to find him lying unconscious. "I bend over to see if he is still alive, but he seems not to be breathing," Kramer says. "I poke him in the shoulder. Suddenly, like a volcano, he bursts to life and swirls his fists in every direction, clipping me but good, along with a few innocent girls, and drawing the ire of their boyfriends and the enraged security guards, who are now motivated to leave Mr. Cave to his own devices, descend the stage, and join the boyfriends in administring a thorough and none-too-subtle beating upon Gibby's face, head and shoulders, until he is once again unconscious on the floor."

Or so it seemed. Actually, Haynes was only pretending he'd been knocked out, and as the hired thugs walked away, he rose to his feet and began screaming at them, "DUTCH FAGGOTS!!! GODDAMN FUCKING DUTCH FAGGOTS!!!! A WHOLE FUCKING COUNTRY FILLED WITH NOTHING BUT FUCKING TURD BURGLING FAGGOTS!!!! I FUCK YOUR ASS IN HEAVEN AND HELL!!!! FUUUUUUUUCK YOOOOOOOOU!!"

"The ensuing chase and capture was the stuff dreams are made of," Kramer says. "Stark naked like the day he was born, beaten, bruised, bloody, and tripping, this icon of modern music ran like Jesse Owens through the entire complex, down the halls, up the stairs, grabbing beer bottles from people's hands as he went and throwing them down on the concertgoers below. A hail of beer cans, bottles, and miscellaneous garbage rained down upon the Dutch persons as I finally caught up with Gibby just as a throng of the biggest security guards I had ever seen caught up with him, too.

"At this time there were perhaps twenty hands upon him, holding him down, and although Gibby is completely crazy, he is not stupid. 'I'M SORRY!!!! I'M FUCKING SORRY!!!! PLEASE DON'T BEAT ME ANYMORE! I HAVE A BRAIN TUMOR!!! I CAN'T HELP THE WAY I AM!!!! PLEASE DON'T HIT ME AGAIN!!! IT'S AGAINST MY RELIGION!!!!'"

Haynes then made a successful run for the dressing room and slammed the door behind him. Kramer could hear Leary and Haynes screaming at each other inside, and when he finally worked up the courage to open the door, he found the two of them smashing guitars, bottle and chairs in what Kramer calls "the most potent example of bad behavior I have ever seen. To this day, more than fifteen years later, I have no more vivid memory of the effect a life in music can have on a human being."

Moments later a man entered the dressing room and asked if he could borrow a guitar. "BORROW A GUITAR??!!! WELL, WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU???!!! Haynes screamed, eyes flashing in delerious anticpation of forthcoming violence. But the man was totally unfazed.

"I'm Alex Chilton," the man answered calmly.

Haynes was flabbergasted. After a long pause, he methodically opened the remaining guitar cases one by one and guestured at them as if to say, "Take anything you want."

Just before they went onstage, Haynes chugged an entire bottle of red wine; moments into the set he dived straight into the horrified crowd, which parted like the Red Sea. Haynes knocked himself unconscious on the floor, to warm applause from the theater's security team. "I look down at Gibby," recalls Kramer. "He tires to move, but the collapses as vomit begins pouring from his mouth."

After the gig Haynes was irate about having been unconscious for most of the show and insisted on getting paid within five minutes or he'd be "taking it out on your Dutch testicles!" Haynes snatched up the fistfull of guilders and stuffed them in a pair of pants in his guitar case, but almost immediately forgot that he had been paid and went on yet another rampage, streaking naked through the fesival complex and screaming that he'd been ripped off.

"FUCKING DUTCH FAGGOTS!!! A WHOLE FUCKING COUNTRY OF COCK-SUCKING QUEENS!!!! YOU FUCKING BEAT ME UP AND THEN YOU RIP US OFF!!! WHICH ONE OF YOU FAGGOTS STOLE OUR MONEY??!!!! FUCKING DUTCH FAGGOTS!!!!"

Yet another chase scene ensued, and yet another pack of Dutch goons wrestled Haynes to the ground, and yet again he profusely apologized. "After which he is released once again," Kramer says, "and once again dashes through the halls screaming obscenities while grabbing beer bottles from people's hands as he runs and hurling them against the brick wall."

"Those fuckin' Dutch," Leary explains, "they kind of get your pissed off after a while, man."

"We thought we had just ruined our careers by botching this show," [drummer Jeffrey 'King' Coffey says. "Of course, the Dutch loved it -- 'The mayhem it is beautiful, it is wonderful, every song erupted into chaos!'" The next day the local paper ran an article about how the Butthole Surfers were the sensation of the festival. "So of course, every time when we came back after that and just played music, people would be horribly disappointed," says Coffey. "'[In Dutch accent] How come you do not beat up people?'"

Stagehand's Union still Waiting for Lefty

I have not been following the Broadway stagehands labor negotiations as intensely as I should, considering it could mean Broadway will be shut down for awhile. My main problem with union negotiations is that labor politics is so complicated and raises so many questions about our current economy, I usually feel like I'm not qualified to discuss them. But, for those whose views on labor are largely shaped by Clifford Odets's Waiting for Lefty (pictured above), Jeremy Gerard at Bloomberg.com has an excellent analysis of the situation.

Bascially, he notes that the main issue is not money, but technology. The pay disputes are negotionable, but the main issue is that at load-ins of Broadway shows, more stagehands are there than necessary. I've been to UT project days and load-ins, and while the scale is much smaller, there's always about four people standing around a pile of dirt with one person sweeping it. The only difference is we're not paid, and we joke about how this is like the unions of the '50s.

While the producers (this time) are right in that too much position-padding is going on, they have much more to lose then the stagehands. If they strike stagehands can find plenty of jobs in film and TV, while producers will have to deal with having to pay the rent without any source of income. The stagehands are in the drivers seat, and probably pushing it to the point where producers will have to continue to pay an excessive number of workers if they don't want to lose hundreds and thousands of dollars.

It's an issue petty enough that I think it will not result in a strike, but it'll be a constant annoyance to producers that won't go away if an agreement is reached that favors the union. It's hard for me to concede that producers are being wronged, since they're not exactly the most pleasant human beings. As theater's most famous producer—Max Bialystock noted: 'I've been a lying, double-crossing, two-faced, back-stabbing despicable crook, but I had no choice. I was a Broadway producer.'' The premise of The Producers is not without merit, the reason they can afford to take so many flops is that they always manage to take a portion off the top that skirts the shores of fraud, but not enough for a felony, and screws over the directors and actors in the process. That being said, it'd be nice if everyone got their fare share, and in this case it seems we're not seeing it.

(Photo courtesy of Circle in the Square.)

No Country For Old Men

While the Maroon will have to wait until after November 21 to weigh in on the Coen Brothers' highly anticipated new film, No Country For Old Men, the freedom of graduation and the internet allow me the privilege of a few pre-release words.

I saw No Country For Old Men at the New York Film Festival where it was honored as the festival's centerpiece and packed the house even with $30 tickets. (Yes, I'm a sucker.) The film had a lot of buzz at Cannes, almost garnering the Palm d'Or, and received gushing praise from Roger Ebert at the Toronto Film Festival who called the film "perfect." A friend of mine who saw the film with me claimed that Ebert had called it "one of the ten greatest films of all-time," but I've been unable to find any evidence of such a comment and I imagine it probably had more to do with my friend's enthusiasm than anything Ebert ever said.

On to the film. It's unlike anything the Coen Brothers have ever made. It's a master class in tension, very Hitchcockian, eschewing the Coens' usual forays into quirky comedy in favor of taut cat-and-mouse chases through deserted Texas towns, motels, and the wide-open landscapes of the Southwest. It's beautifully shot in the same way that Fargo was, allowing the beauty of desolation to form not only the film's aesthetic palette but also its desperate soul. Javier Bardem's performance as the psychopathic killer Anton Chigurh is being talked up a lot, and while it's genuinely creepy—the few times that he smiles have to rank among the most frightening moments in recent cinema—it's very much a one-note role.

This is an expert film, but the classically McCarthian lack of conflicted, laughing and crying humanity, ended up leaving me a little cold. The Coens’ best film, Fargo, is about all about the sad comedy of desperate people, and I missed feeling the anguish of a similarly desperate brood. Instead of emotions, we get a script, which, following the source material, strives for metaphysical resonance. Jones rasps about his father setting up camps far out into the desert of life and death, and we're meant to feel like important things are being said. Bardem's Chigurh is a kind of embodiment of death, and like much of McCarthy's work, the film seems to shoot for a kind of Biblical tussle of good, evil, and absolute power.

It’s in these metaphysical ambitions where No Country For Old Men goes awry. The suspense thriller portions are fantastic. As good as anything in the genre. The metaphysical mumbo jumbo, on the other hand, feels tacked on. It’s as though there are two films—one a remarkable achievement in genre filmmaking, the other a somewhat hackneyed film of ideas about death and evil. Thankfully, the first film dominates the action, but when the second film rears its head towards the end, a fantastic piece ends on a sour note of pretension.

That said, this is bound to be one of the very best films of th year. I'll look forward to reading a more official review in a more official outlet come next month...

The Best Maureen Dowd column ever

Sure enough, it's written by Stephen Colbert. This may be the first MoDo column that I finished without turning away in disgust first.

Back to the drawing board

As my future former employer prepares to layoff a third of their staff, I'm starting to reconsider my options for after graduation. Thankfully, Variety is there to provide me with a muse, as they recently had an excellent "Critics on Criticism" feature, featuring their head theater, film, television and gaming critics talking about the state of their professions.

Some were more incisive than others. My theory of television critics being one rabbit-ear short of a signal was confirmed by Brian Lowry talking about his state of undress, but suprisingly, perhaps the best column came from gaming critic Ben Fritz. Fritz both echoed my frustration with film critics using the term "video game" as an insult, and pointed out a true but unheralded fact: that video game critics, despite being not taken seriously in the rest of the world, hold more sway within the industry than any other form of entertainment. Considering he writes for a trade publication, he's preaching to the choir, but it's still an excellent column by a writer who takes his job seriously.

Ray Davies to follow Radiohead's lead

The crappier the music industry gets, the more popular musicians will look for other strategies to release albums - even musicians of the 60-year old geezer variety. Ray Davies, one of my favorite musicians in the world and one who's vastly underrated in the United States, will be releasing his second solo album Working Man's Cafe in the October 21 issue of the Sunday Times in London, according to Spinner. It's free with the paper.

Ray Davies, of course, is best remembered as the the frontman of The Kinks, most famous for their British Invasion hits like "You Really Got Me," "All Day and All of the Night," "Tired of Waiting for You," and "Lola." However, their legacy in America was dampened by being banned from the U.S. for years during the 60s. The Kinks responded by producing some of the most distinctly British rock of all time, both with their now-classic The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society and tracks such as "Waterloo Sunset" and "David Watts."

It wasn't really until the Britpop sensation of the '90s that the Kinks started to get their full respect in the States, as bands such as Oasis and Blur listed the Kinks as major influences. Like Oasis, the Kinks were led by constantly sparring brothers, and Ray Davies released his first solo album Other People's Lives in February 2006 while his brother Dave was recovering from a stroke. Davies and the Kinks have toyed with the trends of the time in the past, whether it was their disco-like Come Dancing or their failed rock opera Preservation, and now Ray Davies is giving record executives a headache, but in a subtle, incisive manner. Basically, it's a deceptively subversive move, as deceptively subversive as, say "Apeman," "Plastic Man," and "Where Have All the Good Times Gone," so I'm fine with it.

Radiohead Freakonomics: Did the U of C revolutionize the music industry?

Most of the time my media whorage and love of arts and entertainment are in spite of my efforts as a University of Chicago student. That's why I cherish every moment that Chicago contributes to the arts world.

When Radiohead announced their plan to shake up the music industry, I realized Steven Levitt, Allen Sanderson, and the rest of the U of C econ crowd must be going crazy with glee over the economic questions such an experiment raised (and Levitt did indeed blog about it). Now, I find they may have directly influenced Radiohead's decision.

It's totally speculative, of course, but the U.K. Telegraph wonders if Freakonomics could inspire a rock band with a leftist, anti-establishment reputation (say what you will about selling out as I have). Radiohead's experiment is virtually identical to the example of Frank the Bagel Man in Freakonomics, but of course Radiohead's experiment is much more massively scaled and higher profile. The bagel experiment, where people paid whatever they wanted based on an honor system, showed people were generally honest when price was unregulated. Considering Radiohead is rumored to be making £4 per album to the tune of a £4.8 million gross, Levitt may be right once again. It's all a nice setup for the Nobel Prize in Economics announcement later today.

Radiohead's groundbreaking business plan: will it work?

Radiohead's never been one to shy away from pushing boundaries. While I don't know if they deserve quite the legendary status they've obtained, I'm inclined to believe that the leap from OK Computer to Kid A was one of the boldest ever made by a platinum-selling rock band. Now, without a contract, they're making an equally bold and potentially disastrous move, though this time it has nothing to do with their music, but instead their business model. Radiohead's contract with EMI expired after 2003's Hail to the Thief, and, as Thom Yorke noted in The New York Times last year when his first solo album came out, " "Why would you want to sign a six-album deal with a business that is imploding?"

So instead, starting next week, Radiohead's new album In Rainbows will be available for download from this website. What you pay, however, is up to you. The absolute minimum is £0.01 (about 2.1 cents), but there's also a £0.45 processing fee. That means it's legal to buy an album from a band who has sold 20 million albums for about a dollar. Somehow I don't see Metallica doing that.

What I'm wondering is whether this will work in Radiohead's favor, or completely backfire. True, they don't have to give a cut to any label, and yes, they don't have to pay for the production of multiple CD's, but if a million people pay $1 for the album, they won't seem like the innovative geniuses they once did. Of course, they could get the random Radiohead freak who pays $1000 for the album, and have it cancel itself out. I for one preordered it for £2, and I thought it was rather generous of me. In fact, The Wall Street Journal noted that since the production costs are so low, Radiohead might actually be overcharging its fans who pay $10 for the album. Idolator asked how much its readers would pay, and most of the responses were in the $2-$10 range. I really do think legal, cheap downloads would do enough to dissuade people from piracy, but it'll be interesting to see how this unfolds.

Of course, one does have to remember that there is an actual album out there, that conceivably has music on it. It's kind of sad to realize that the hype for the business model of the album will overwhelm the hype of the quality of the actual album, but since the press have to download the album along with everyone else, they may go into reviewing it with a chip on their shoulders. Of course, if it's OK Computer good, they'll have a harder time complaining about it.