The Sex Pistols "The Filth & The Fury" Gateway Film Series by Ricki C.

Colin Gawel and Brian Phillips’ “Reelin’ & Rockin’ Film Series” at the Gateway Film Center on Wednesday (happy hour at 7 pm, film at 8 pm) is the Julien Temple-directed documentary on The Sex Pistols entitled “The Filth & The Fury.”  It’s a pretty cool rock & roll movie about a band I never really liked.

My problem with The Sex Pistols was that I always found them more of an Art Project than a Rock & Roll Band.  Anytime a rock combo gets assembled by a Manager, rather than built from the ground up by Rockers, I’m immediately suspect.  And The Manager in this case, Malcolm McLaren (who had already run The New York Dolls into the ground, dressing them up in red patent leather and having them appear in front of a Soviet flag backdrop; quoth David Johansen, “We proved that you can be transvestite homosexuals in America, but you CANNOT be Communists.”) was a lot more interested in Art than Rocking.

In their roughly 26-month existence The Sex Pistols pulled off a lot of publicity stunts – disrupting the headliner’s sets when they were still an opening band (including Joe Strummer’s pre-Clash pub-rock band The 101-er’s), trashing their first record company’s offices (EMI) and, pivotally, going on an afternoon British TV talk show and being goaded into swearing at host Bill Grundy, which led to tabloid headline “The Filth & The Fury,” giving this documentary its title.

I have always wondered how punk-rock would have developed if it had been allowed to evolve as a musical movement rather than as a Cultural Phenomenon, as it was forced to after The Sex Pistols’ media debacle.  Musically, I rate the Sex Pistols as having two GREAT songs – “Anarchy In The U.K.” and “God Save The Queen” – and two good songs – “Pretty Vacant” and “EMI.”   “Holiday In The Sun” is an okay song but, crucially, rips off its main riff from The Jam’s “In The City,” a song that’s superior and (obviously) much more original in every way.  That’s not a good count for a band with The Sex Pistols’ cachet, and their legend.  They only ever recorded one album – “Never Mind The Bollocks, Here’s The Sex Pistols” which would have translated in America as “Never mind the bullshit, here’s the Sex Pistols,” which, I admit, is kinda brilliant, but oh-so-Arty, and oh-so-British.  (And whose Bright Idea was it to fire the only member in the band capable of writing songs, bassist Glen Matlock, before the album was released and before the band ever “toured” America.)  (Don’t even get me started on that nightmare of naivete masquerading as a rock & roll tour, that’s a whole ‘nother blog in itself.  Great book about it called “12 Days On The Road – The Sex Pistols and America” by Noel Monk & Jimmy Gutterman, published in 1990.)      

I’ve always likened The Sex Pistols Story to that of Elvis Presley’s.  With the original four members, including Matlock on bass, The Sex Pistols were a MUSICAL unit, a rock & roll band that played gigs and made records that got LISTENED to, analogous to the lean, mean Elvis in 1956 with Scotty Moore, Bill Black and D.J. Fontana rocking behind him.  When Matlock was booted-out and non-musician Sid Vicious was drafted in (by all accounts at Johnny Rotten’s insistence) The Sex Pistols became a Pure Media Spectacle, a Malcolm McLaren Situationist Art Piece Fantasy, something to be LOOKED AT and WRITTEN ABOUT, a Rupert Murdoch Wet Dream, like Fat Elvis in 1976 Las Vegas, prancing around in sequin jumpsuits doing karate moves and slinging ballads like they were hash.

You should see this movie, you really should.  Julien Temple knows his subject matter and genuinely CARES about his characters (as he also amply demonstrated in the Joe Strummer documentary “The Future Is Unwritten”), but give me The Ramones or The Clash over The Sex Pistols on my stereo any day.  – Ricki C. / June 17th, 2013.

Why the World Needs Superman... by Johnny DiLoretto

Why the World Needs Superman...

I hate when people say they don’t like Superman. It’s like saying you don’t like Elvis. You might as well say you don’t like the first, best idea of something. Every rock and roller who came after Elvis has a part of Elvis in them – they couldn’t exist without Elvis. There are no Beatles without Elvis, no Springsteen, no nobody. Likewise, there are no other superheroes without Superman.

Superman, where superheroes are concerned, was the first best idea. Two guys from Cleveland said, hey, what if there was a dude who could do almost anything? They created Superman. The very next best superhero idea was Batman, who is the exact opposite in that he doesn’t have any powers at all. Every superhero creation thereafter was, is a variation of Superman or Batman.

But what’s really galling are the people who don’t like Superman because he’s not… dark; because he’s earnest, honest, and pure.

This is the why of Superman.

Superheroes are spurred to action, driven, or compelled by some motivating event or force. Batman is motivated by the murder of his parents and Spiderman is motivated by the murder of his uncle, but Superman – he’s merely an orphan from another planet. Here on Earth, he just happens to be extraordinary. He was raised and loved by two adoptive parents. There’s no vengeance lurking in his character, no deep seated need to set things right.

So, why does Superman do good, why does he save people? You ready for this one? Because he can. He could rule over the Earth, make little puny, chump-ass, Superman-butt wiping slaves out of all of us, but he doesn’t. He’s motivated only by benevolence.  He doesn’t have to lift a superfinger, a finger by the way that could effortlessly flick our heads off, but he does.

And what makes him all the more extraordinary, is that he does this in spite of human beings being total assholes.

When I was a kid there were two moments in the first Christopher Reeve movies that are seared into my brain that I believe formed, partly, who I am today - or, at least, who I'd like to be.

The first comes in the great scene in which Margot Kidder’s Lois Lane interviews Superman on her balcony. The no-nonsense reporter asks Superman why he’s here, meaning on Earth, and he walks right into it: “to fight for truth, justice, and the American way,” he says. She rudely snickers at this seemingly naive answer. Superman turns suddenly very stern, locks eyes with her, and replies, “Lois, I never lie.”

Boom! Shut your cig hole Lois!

I’ve never forgotten that. And it still holds true today – that the minute you show people some raw earnestness they’ll try to slice you open.

The second moment is in Superman II during his epic battle against General Zod and Zod’s two other fellow Kryptonians, the three of whom all have the same super powers as Superman. It's three against one in the heart of Metropolis (a thinly disguised NYC) but it’s pretty much a stalemate until Zod stumbles upon Superman’s Achilles’ heel, and no, it's not Kryptonite. “I’ve discovered his weakness,” Zod informs his crew. “He actually cares for these… people.” 

Wow. What a punch to the gut. You can hurt him by hurting people?! Heavy. Again, just because he cares. And, then, in a stunningly dark assessment of human nature, the citizens of Metropolis turn against Superman, calling him a coward when he flees Metropolis to draw Zod away from them. He cares even when he shouldn't.

The Clark Kent / Superman Alter Ego Conundrum

The other thing that gets under my skin is when people say “Who wouldn’t be able to tell that Superman is Clark Kent? He’s only wearing glasses! Blah blah blah, I’m typical blah blah, I don’t think about anything interesting and I have no insight blah blah, I’m a dunce. Blah blah.”

Clark’s “disguise” really shouldn’t be an issue. It’s not that people can’t  see that Clark is Superman; it’s that they don’t want to see it.  His humility blinds them from it. People don’t want to see greatness in the quiet, unassuming guy sitting next to them at work. In fact, they downright refuse to see it.

The very fact that people point to the so-called “lameness” of Clark’s disguise only points up their own lameness.

In Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill Vol 2, David Carradine has a great monologue about Superman in which he, and I’m paraphrasing, observes that “Superman’s costume isn’t a costume. Those are his clothes. Clark Kent is his costume. Clark Kent is how Superman sees us.”

I think that’s great, but not entirely accurate. Clark Kent is Superman’s way of showing us who we should be: honest, ethical, good, humble.

That we can’t see that simple truth is our problem. Each of us needs Superman to remind us to be our best possible self, to be good, to do good without the promise of reward, simply for the sake of good, even when it seems like other people don't deserve it. 

You can learn more about Johnny DiLoretto by visiting our contributors page here.

Calling Bulls**t on Iron Man 3 by Johnny DiLoretto

First let me say that Iron Man 3 is a lot of fun. Robert Downey, Jr. maintains a headlock on Tony Stark – he’s incorrigibly charming and still giving his all to the role, committing to the serious stuff just as wholeheartedly as he dives into the smartass, billionaire playboy stuff, at which he excels.

But RDJ gets dealt a shitty hand here. I’d like to think he’s smart enough to catch the BS flaw in this movie but maybe not.

There are two things this movie gets right: Downey, Jr., who, I’ve mentioned, proves he is the undisputed leader of the Marvel superhero pack; and the marketing. They sold this movie like it was going to be the Iron Man version of the Dark Knight with Oscar winner Ben Kingsley as Iron Man’s comic book arch nemesis, The Mandarin.

The trailer campaigns made it look like Iron Man 3 was going to be a long, dark pull on a crisp, cold, light beer. I don’t even know what that means, but it sounds good.

It looked like they were taking the character to a grim place where he needed to reassess who he is as a man and a hero and then exact butt-kicking, chest-blasting revenge on a ruthless terrorist. Turns out, it’s not that at all. The movie surprisingly pushes hard on the comedy  but the fact that – BIG OL’ SPOILER – Kingsley’s Mandarin turns out not to be the magic ring-wielding fiend of the comics, but a drunken, drug-addled simpleton actor playing the role of his life is a lame smack to the face.

This might have worked at an earlier stage of the Iron Man evolution, back before Thor and Loki and the alien menace of The Avengers, back before Marvel thought mainstream audiences wouldn’t buy the more ridiculous, otherworldly aspects of the comic book universe.  But  now that’s all changed since Iron Man teamed up with the Hulk and Thor in The Avengers and fought Loki and an army of speeder-bike riding extraterrestrials.

It’s safe to say, I think audiences might have bought the magic ring-wearing version of the Mandarin.

Yes, Ben Kingsley is hilarious. Yes, it’s a surprise twist. But it’s jackass stupid. And it’s a nutless move.

But that’s not my biggest problem with the movie.

There’s a scene where nearly a dozen staffers get sucked out of a gaping hole torn in the fuselage of Air Force One and Iron Man flies out to save them, taking them by the hand one by one and forming a sky diving chain. With nearly a dozen people in tow,  he gently lowers into the bay below. It’s a stunning set piece – thrilling, inventive, and – heroic. Until, that is, the filmmakers reveal that Tony Stark is safely in the plane above remotely operating his suit of armor.

From the start of Downey’s turn as Stark, his journey has been one of a narcissistic hedonist who has found a path, through his technology, to a meaningful life. This all culminates at the end of The Avengers when he takes a nuclear missile up through a worm hole to save New York City.  As far as Stark knows, this is suicide. He is willing to sacrifice his life to save the lives of others. Once in space, he passes out and falls back through the worm hole before it closes up.

In Iron Man 3, Tony is haunted by his Avengers battle, you know, having faced down Asgardian evil and everything.

But this remote-controlled saving of the Air Force One passengers is a sign of sloppy writing and betrays the character’s arc. Maybe the old Tony Stark would have remote controlled his suit when human lives were at stake, but certainly not the post-Avengers Stark who has finally become a superhero by putting his life on the line for a greater cause.

In short, this is bullshit. This is how the glorification of video games is sneaking into our concept of heroism. So, now, people who fly drones are going to be considered as heroic as the soldiers on the ground?

Maybe I’m old fashioned, but I don’t want my superheroes to be superheroes just because they’re awesome at video games.

Johnny DiLoretto is a man of many talents. Click here to learn more on our contributor page.

Columbusland, or... The Abby Singer Show!

I used to be on TV. But, after ten years, I had to leave because of the man. And by “the man,” I mean this dick I worked for.

While I was pondering leaving my high profile, perk-riddled gig, my wife asked me if I could do it.

“Do what?” I asked.

“Not be on TV,” she said.

“What, are you kidding?”

Was she implying that I was some sort of egomaniac who needed to be on TV, like I needed the attention of an audience in order to be fulfilled?

Yes. She was.

“Of course, I don’t need to be on TV. That’s preposterous.”

It wasn’t long after I started my new job at the Gateway Film Center that I began plotting ways of getting my face on the screen. Why be on TV when you can be in the movies?

Yes, it killed me, but she was right.

The first piece I shepherded into being was a promo spot for the film center’s annual summer Double Barrel Western Series.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcWwHiXb6QE

Well, seeing my mug plastered across a 50-foot wide screen was all the encouragement I needed to do more.

As part of the Cinema Classics film series, a companion to the WCBE radio show of the same name that I co-host  with my friend John DeSando, I saw another opportunity: comedy sketches that spoofed the movies we were showing.

They both feature an idiot studio exec who doesn’t quite get the geniuses who work for him.  In the first one, he (me) tussles with Stanley Kubrick; and in the second, Orson Welles.  Jimmy Mak, ShadowboxLive’s head comedy writer and an old friend, plays both directors -- brilliantly. DeSando turns up in a weird non-sequitir cameo in both.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48XxD4nDBek

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1w6T-Lna6Q

Fortunately, my boss, the phenomenally talented and brainy and not susceptible to in-print ass kissing, Chris Hamel, approved of these extracurricular activities. In fact, he’s so game he played the James Bond figure that my Nameless Cowboy guns down in the Western bit. What kind of a boss allows that to happen? An awesome one.

So, Chris asked me what I thought of the film center’s pre-show. For those of you not familiar with theater parlance, a pre-show is that generic package of trivia questions, ads, and animations that plays before the movie and is generally ignored.

We sat and watched the pre-show together. In its entirety. Afterwards, he asked me what I thought and I told him I thought it was crap. He agreed and asked if we could do better. Naturally.

And so, our new in-house show was conceived. After breathlessly kicking around different titles based on obscure movie jargon like The Cross Cut the good ideas began to flag. By the time we were seriously considering calling it The Abby Singer Show we were good and loopy. “But no one will know who or what an Abby Singer* is,” our co-workers cautioned. “Right!” we shouted back. “That’s the beauty part.” Eventually, having reached the nadir of our naming sessions, Chris blurted out Columbusland.

Abby Singer, for the record, is the second to last shot of the day on a movie production, named after 1950s Hollywood production manager and assistant director, Abner "Abby" Singer. When Singer's crew would ask how many shots were left to do he'd answer, "We'll do this and one more." 

Fortunately, the "Abby Singer" show idea never left Chris's office. The basic idea survived though and that was to create a loosely formatted, informal talk show in which we would interview Columbus prominents about the movies while drinking.  And the city would be our playground.

Kinopicz American, a hyper-talented production company in Grandview, agreed to take the project on and brought their insight and ideas. In order to keep the show from becoming me and Chris drinking and ego-jousting, Kino, as we affectionately call them, suggested bringing on a Girl Friday who would temper the testosterone and drastically drop the combined age of the two-man cast which if combined would approach octogenarian heights.

We immediately thought of social media maven and Columbus vlogging sensation, Amy "Schmittastic" Schmittauer. 

We thought Amy would anchor the show, keep it grounded, but she quickly proved to be as strange as we are, and so the show quickly took on a life of its own.  So far we’ve only shot 3 episodes, but it continues to evolve. We’ve worked in more scripted comedy and we’re playing around with the interview dynamics, and, quite frankly, I'm not sure where it's headed. As long as it continues to get better, which it has, we'll all be happy.

Each episode of Columbusland runs at the Gateway Film Center for 8 weeks and you can see the show 20 minutes before any movie we’re showing. Well, due to the constant cocktail drinking and frequent light cursing, you can see it before any PG-13 or R- rated movie.

The entire endeavor, it bears repeating, is the kind of project that can happen when a cool boss rolls the dice on a great idea and lets it ride.

Here’s episode two:

The complete cut of Columbusland: Episode 2 CASINO, shot at the new Hollywood Casino in Columbus, Ohio. Join in the misadventures of the Gateway Film Center characters as they traipse around Columbus, bumping into local personalities who share their takes on life, Columbus, and, of course, movies.

'Searching For Sugar Man' Makes Ricki C. Cry

It’s not often that a rock & roll movie leaves me crying like a 12-year old girl at the end, but Searching For Sugar Man accomplished that task.

This film (which, by the way, won this year’s Oscar for Best Documentary, quite rightly I must add) documents the story of Sixto Rodriguez, a Detroit singer/songwriter who recorded two albums for a small American label in 1970 and 1971. Promotion on the records was minimal, the albums sold in the hundreds, Rodriguez never got to tour and soon returned to the twilight obscurity in which so many musicians have found themselves lingering over the many years of the rock & roll era.

However, in a weird twist of fate, Rodriguez’s first album – Cold Fact – found its way to South Africa courtesy of an American tourist and the disc became a touchstone and flashpoint of the nascent apartheid movement. As detailed in the movie, Rodriguez went on to sell half a million records in a nation of 40 million people. That’s one record for every 80 man, woman and children. (To put that in perspective, there were 200 million people in America in the 1970’s, and Fleetwood Mac sold “only” 8 million copies of Rumours.) Legends grew up in South Africa surrounding Rodriguez — tales of onstage suicide by self-immolation or gunshot to the head in front of a disinterested & blasé audience, to name just two — and Cold Fact just kept selling.       

More than just the story of Rodriguez though — which would have been compelling enough to be great — the film Searching For Sugar Man is just so gorgeously SHOT. The filmmakers play off the relative glamor of the seaside & beautiful Cape Town, South Africa with the urban squalor that was (and is) Detroit. But somehow director Majik Bendjelloul accomplishes the seemingly impossible task of making even the eternally snowy Detroit LOOK romantic.  (And believe me, I’ve been going to Detroit to see bands or roadie for bands since 1971; it is in no way, shape or form romantic.)

I genuinely regret not going to see the movie when it played at the Drexel for two weeks this past January, but it fell in the midst of my self-imposed winter hibernation.  As much as I enjoyed it sitting in my living room, I bet it looked great up on the big screen. (Maybe Colin and Brian Phillips can bring it back as part of the Gateway Reelin’ & Rockin’ movie series. Hint, hint.)

Anyway, I don’t wanna spoil the movie for you (as I have for so many of my friends as I rave and/or blather on about it) but when we finally meet Sixto Rodriguez in the film the guy just has so much soul and humanity pouring out of him that it not only brought tears to my eyes, it brought on the full blown crying jag mentioned in sentence one of this story.  This is a man who was essentially cheated out of his music career — who sold hundreds of thousands of records in a faraway land and never saw a penny from it, who worked hard-labor construction and demolition jobs for decades when he should have been playing his guitar in front of adoring fans, who still lives in the same rundown Detroit home he’s resided in for 40 years — and there is not one ounce of bitterness or regret in his voice or being.  This man, Rodriguez, is a true American hero to me.

You’ve gotta rent this movie.

                                                     Ricki C. 3/14/2013         

(ps. Rodriguez declined to attend the Oscar ceremony in Los Angeles at which Searching For Sugar Man ultimately won for Best Documentary because he “didn’t want to take away the spotlight” from the filmmakers. Without him the filmmakers HAD no movie, but he did not want to take any of the recognition. If this was me or Colin we’d have been snatching that Oscar out of the director’s hands and making a rambling speech of our own until they dragged us off the stage.)     

Uploaded by SonyPicturesClassics on 2012-06-19.

Watching the Mildly Inappropriate Parts of 'Predator' with a 7-Year-Old

Yesterday, I had just settled into a comfy recliner for a little downtime after a long day of standing on my feet at Colin's Coffee, when my 7-year-old son Owen came into the family room and challenged me to a one-on-one game of basketball in our driveway. Now, I am nothing if not a "hands on" Dad and have no problem spending hours at a time playing with the little man. Not only is it quality father-son time, I view it as building an emotional firewall for the day when he finally glimpses his college savings account ($76.34). Anyway, on this particular day, busting my ass chasing him all over the court wasn't sounding very appealing, so I stalled for time with a classic parenting diversion tactic.....

"Hey, O, guess what's on? Predator. Want to watch a little bit to see what it looks like"

I was fairly confident this would stop him in his tracks and allow my dogs some precious extra minutes to stop barking. See, for the past three years, every time we went to the library, Owen would grab the Alien vs Predator DVD off the shelf and ask, "Dad, am I old enough to watch this yet?" and I would answer, "No." The upshot of this is that he was dying to get a glimpse of the Predator, as any self-respecting first-grade boy should be. As with life, timing is everything, so today he was in luck. My strong desire to stay reclined triumphed my need to be a responsible parent. So we switched over to AMC.

Now, I'm not a total jack-ass, I didn't give him carte blanche to watch the whole movie. I just kind of flipped back and forth to scenes I felt were only mildly inappropriate for a child his age. Needless to say, he got the gist of the flick pretty quickly. Futuristic alien hunts and kills soldiers until Arnold kills alien. Standard stuff, really. At one point, after the Predator has showcased his laser guns and invisibility by dispatching Apollo Creed and some other dude with relative ease, the native American warrior decided he was going to take matters into his own hands and kill the Predator... his way.

He rips off his shirt, tosses his machine gun in the river, pulls out his knife and holds it in the air pointing towards the Predator. Owen, who hasn't said a word in 10 minutes, summed up the situation and suddenly said: "Dad, this doesn't seem like a very good time to go old school."

"No, Owen, it sure doesn't," I said. I had never heard him use the expression "old school" in my life.

About 20 seconds later we get to hear the scream of the Indian warrior being killed by the Predator. "Well at least he learned a valuable lesson he can use in heaven," Owen said. "You can't fight old school if the other guy is fighting future school."

Or, put another way, don't bring a knife....

Uploaded by ranzischini on 2011-06-12.

The bit that EVERYONE remembers from Predator

... To a laser fight.

BTW, we did then go play basketball. Owen acting as the Ohio State Buckeyes beat me (Duke) in 72-68 in OT. Personally, I think I got some bad calls but what can you do. got to go now. Customer!​

Colin Gawel plays in the band Watershed. He owns a small coffee shop where he bugs his smart friends to send him things to post on Pencilstorm. His son Owen still isn't allowed to check out Predator vs Alien from the Library. More things Colin at www.colingawel.com.