David Bowie: Out of This World

Year 16, Day 202 - 7/20/24 - Movie #4,792

BEFORE: Between the events of the last week, with the Republicans poised to take over again, plus the fact that it's too hot to even leave the house, I really just want to chill this weekend, sit around and watched some docs made of hastily-thrown together archive footage and drink iced coffee, but unfortunately it's Saturday and I have to work from some reason.  There's a screening at the theater so my lazy day is re-scheduled for tomorrow.  Finding that balance between work and get paid with my natural impulse to not work is always a challenge - can't I work JUST enough to pay my bills and then just watch TV half of the time?  But then I guess I'm not saving any money for a rainy day or planning some form of retirement income, am I?  No, I guess I'm not. 

David Bowie carries over from "Wham!" and the Live-Aid footage used there. Live Aid took place on July 13, 1985 so I'm off by exactly one week, bummer. It's also Kim Carnes' birthday today, she was seen 2 nights ago in "The Greatest Night in Pop", so once again, I'm just a bit off. 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Bowie: The Man Who Changed the World" (Movie #3,036)

THE PLOT: David Bowie was an astonishing and eclectic performer.  He was a true artist in every sense of the word, infinitely changeable and unpredictable, he remains immortal in people's hearts. 

AFTER: This is another one of those unauthorized docs made completely from archive footage and old Spin articles, much like "Elton John: Becoming Rocketman", so really nothing new will be learned today.  That's kind of what happens when you build a documentary around the free footage that you already have, like that one TV interview when he talked about where his creativity comes from and also that time he changed into a white outfit before a concert during his "Ziggy Stardust" period.  Did you know that Bowie liked to perform as different characters?  That he liked pretending to be a space alien character?

Then they had interviews with the people who knew him least, including one music journalist and one photographer who might have taken his picture once, we're not really sure, but he seems like he knows a lot about Bowie's fashion sense. 

And what was Bowie's deal again? In one interview he said he was gay, a couple years later in another interview he said he was bisexual, and then a few years after that he claimed he was a closeted heterosexual, which I'm not sure was a thing then, or even now.  Well, he was either unique or he was very confused - or possibly he was scamming all of us by being all or none of those things.  Maybe he didn't have it all figured out yet, or maybe he was only gay because it was cool back then or a good career move that got him a lot of attention.  Well I guess he figured it out eventually, because I saw a quote from him in his later years, when he was married again, to Iman - he said, "You would think that a rock star being married to a supermodel would be one of the greatest things in the world. It is."  So that probably explains Rik Ocasek and Paulina Porizkova, Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley, Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall, and so many more. 

But the doc here really didn't break any new ground, so I'm forced to call a Mulligan tonight and just move on.  Maybe I didn't know that one of Bowie's pupils was permanently dilated after a teenage accident - like I knew he had two differently colored eyes, but I didn't know about the left pupil. That's really all I learned tonight, sorry. 

Also starring Kevin Cummins, Paul Gambaccini, Pat Pope, Midge Ure (last seen in "Under the Volcano")

with archive footage of Angie Bowie (last seen in "Bowie: The Man Who Changed the World"), Reeves Gabrels (ditto), Iman (ditto), Duncan Jones (ditto), Hunt Sales (ditto), Tony Fox Sales (ditto), David Cameron, Brian May (also carrying over from "Wham!"), Freddie Mercury (ditto), Iggy Pop (last seen in "Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain"), Mick Ronson (last seen in "Rolling Thunder Revue"), Roger Taylor (last seen in "Count Me In"), Vince Taylor, Tina Turner (last seen in "The Greatest Night in Pop")

RATING: 4 out of 10 movie appearances that someone could not afford to license footage of

Wham!

Year 16, Day 201 - 7/19/24 - Movie #4,791

BEFORE: Just a couple more Rock Docs in the Doc Block, then I can start the final week and a half about other creative types of people who are not musicians or singers. Can't wait, sounds like a plan.  But before I get there, let's send out a special Birthday SHOUT-out to Brian May from the band Queen, born 7/19/47 and turning 77 day.  He appears in today's documentary about Wham!, I'm presuming it's in footage from Live-Aid. Happy Birthday to the band's lead guitarist and in-house astrophysicist, and no, I'm not joking. 

His band-mate, Freddie Mercury, carries over from "The Greatest Night in Pop", and so does George Michael and a few other blokes too. 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "George Michael: Freedom" (Movie #3,017)

THE PLOT: Through archival images and footage, George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley relive the arc of their career as Wham!, from '70s best buds to '80s pop icons. 

AFTER: Linking-wise, this worked out rather well because both yesterday's film and today's film used the same footage, from the Band-Aid single recording session - so there's a LOT of people crossing over via archive footage, like at least eight.

I just went back and read my review of the George Michael doc from four years ago, and man, I remember how confusing it all was.  I was really affected by that video for "Freedom '90" because it was supposed to be a video about George finally figuring out who he was, and then this was somehow symbolized by him not appearing in the video at all, except seen behind the camera, pretending to direct the video, only he did NOT direct the video, David Fincher did, so why lead us to believe that he did?  Then he hired five of the top female models in the world to appear in the video in completely over-the-top outfits, because what could possibly tell me more about what it's like to be a gay man struggling with his sexuality than images of beautiful women?  There's no level on which this made any sense. 

Then after the video came out, his record company sued him because they had a different definition of what it means to "appear" in a music video. They felt he had not done the minimum amount of work to personally promote the song by hiring female models to lip-sync to his vocals.  George Michael then sued his record company because his contract with them was so all-encompassing that it essentially was a form of modern-day slavery. There are a few lessons here, first is that anyone making a movie or a commercial or a music video should make damn sure that it's simple to understand. Secondly if you don't want to fulfill the terms of a recording contract, that's fine, just maybe then don't sign the contract.  However, if you have a chance at being rich and famous, then sure, go ahead and sign, but then you have to follow the terms of the contract or you get NOTHING, good day, sir. 

When I combine the knowledge of that incident with what I saw and heard in this documentary, a more complete picture of George Michael starts to emerge, and man, did he complain a lot.  In this Netflix doc, he's heard complaining about how hard it is to start a band, make a demo recording and get it out to all the record companies within walking distance - really, it sounded like he was willing to throw in the towel if he didn't find fame overnight.  Then he complained more about Wham! having a few minor hits, but after two albums they still hadn't had a number one single.  His record company sent him all the way to the U.S. to have "Careless Whisper" recorded at Muscle Shoals studio, and yep, you guessed it, more complaints.  George didn't like the way it was mixed, so he demanded that he get another chance to mix the song and act as the song's producer (in addition to singer and songwriter).  THEN he's got the nerve to complain about how hard it is to be a record producer, when he got exactly what he wanted, the chance to re-mix the song the way it should sound, according to him, and really, not everybody gets that opportunity to record their song ONCE, let alone twice.  

So he complained when he wasn't famous yet, and then once he became famous, he found a way to complain about THAT.  Je-SUS, George Michael, can't you just learn to be happy and maybe enjoy the ride?  Wham! was selling out stadiums and finally got that #1 single, plus a number one album, and all he could bitch about is then was hard it is to be in the public eye and the fact that women wouldn't leave him alone.  Of course we all know now that he wasn't into women, but he put himself front and center and wore those tiny little swimsuits in music videos, what did he THINK was going to happen?  Finally he reached a point in his life where he'd come out as a gay man, at least to his close friends, but then he felt forced to continue this double life, where he didn't yet talk about his sexuality in interviews, he maintained this charade where he was appealing to screaming female fans, and well, we all know from the Rock Hudson documentary that leading a double life is not really going to work out in the end. But great, one more thing for George Michael to complain about. 

The ultimate bitchiness probably came when George came close to his latest imaginary self-imposed career goal, to have four number one singles in the U.K. in one year, and his plan was to make this happen by recording "Last Christmas" and releasing it for the holiday season in 1984.  But wouldn't you know it, he got called to appear on the Band-Aid charity single "Do They Know It's Christmas" and with it's all-star line-up (including himself) that song went straight to #1 and that kept "Last Christmas" in second place on the charts.  So sorry, George Michael, you. wanted four number one songs and you only got three, I know you must be absolutely devastated, and I don't know how you're going to be able to carry on. Give me a damn break. 

Look, I appreciate that he knew he was going to have a smash hit with "Careless Whisper", and sure, you shouldn't release a track if it's not up to your standards, I get that.  But he and Andrew Ridgeley wrote the song very early in their band's history, and then they just had to sit on it for several albums until the song was ready for the world, and vice versa.  But then even though it appeared on Wham's second studio album "Make It Big", it was released as a solo single, which doesn't seem quite fair to Ridgeley.  Or in some markets the song was credited to "Wham! featuring George Michael" which makes even less sense.  

I'm going to fall back on one of the other recent rock docs I watched to maybe get some insight here to the Michael-Ridgeley partnership. I think Andrew Ridgeley was kind of the Brian Jones of this band, he was the alpha when the band started, and George Michael (or "Yog", as he's constantly called in this doc for some reason) was just happy to be singing in a band.  Yes, there was a time when George Michael was happy and not complaining about something, as strange as that sounds.  But time went by, and George found his voice and learned a few things about himself, and this gave him a bit more confidence as a songwriter and as a performer, and it seems it was a lot like Mick Jagger taking the lead in the Stones.  What was left for Andrew RIdgeley to do, if George was writing the songs, singing lead on them, producing the album and directing the music videos?  Not a whole heck of a lot, I think.  By moving on to releasing a solo album, George Michael essentially kicked Ridgeley out of his own band, or perhaps it's more accurate to say that he dissolved Wham! so he could be a solo artist.  Ridgeley was left to sing backing vocals at Live-Aid and then he needed to figure out a better way to meet girls than just sleeping with the women that George Michael turned down. It's sad, really. 

The band really only lasted four years, which is pretty good for a band with two Alphas, but the writing was kind of on the wall once George Michael became that second Alpha. A final word of warning tonight, if you watch this doc it means that you will probably have to hear the song "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go", there's just no way around it.  I know, I know, once the 1980's ended you hoped that you would never have to hear it again, but unfortunately that's not the way these things work. 

With archive footage of Andrew Ridgeley (last seen in "Last Christmas"), Bono (also carrying over from "The Greatest Night in Pop"), Boy George (ditto), Phil Collins (ditto), Bob Geldof (ditto), Sting (ditto), Stevie Wonder (ditto), David Bowie (last seen in "Little Richard: I Am Everything"), George Harrison (ditto), Mick Jagger (ditto), Elton John (ditto), John Lennon (ditto), Paul McCartney (ditto), Connie Chung (last seen in "Yogi Berra: It Ain't Over"), Mark Dean, Helen DeMacque, Aretha Franklin (last seen in "Belushi"), Tony Hadley, Shirlie Kemp, Brian May (last seen in "Elton John: Becoming Rocketman"), Philip Oakey, Simon Napier-Bell, Kyriacos Panayiotou, Jerry Wexler (last seen in "Muscle Shoals"), Paula Yates, 

RATING: 4 out of 10 scrapbooks kept by Andrew Ridgeley's mum

The Greatest Night in Pop

Year 16, Day 200 - 7/18/24 - Movie #4,790

BEFORE: Well, it's all kind of been building up to this, hasn't it?  A documentary about the recording of "We Are the World", the big charity single recorded back in 1985. I tend to love docs that are set in a recording studio, that show me the inner workings of how music is made. But I don't watch a lot of movies about how MOVIES are made, go figure.  I guess there's just something more honest about crafting a song, there's less trickery or something, it's all less fakey than making a movie somehow. 

There are so many music stars making cameos here, I could have slotted this film in just about anywhere in the last week or so - but then I just didn't want to throw it away by making it the middle film of a three-part set, the question became, where would it do me the most good?  Where would I need it, where would it HAVE to go?  There's footage from the Band-Aid single, so a lot of British musicians in addition to the U.S. ones - but in the end it didn't matter, because I moved things around to get that other David Bowie doc in the mix.  Still, this serves the purpose of connecting the docs about the U.S. 80's acts with the U.K. 80's acts, you'll see.

Madonna and Michael Jackson carry over from "Keith Haring: Street Art Boy". 

THE PLOT: On January 28, 1985, dozens of the era's most popular musicians gathered in Los Angeles to record a charity single for African famine relief. Setting egos aside, they collaborated on a song that would make history. 

AFTER: God, there's so much for me to love about this documentary - first there's the behind-the-scenes making of a song that EVERYBODY in my generation remembers.  We remember where we were when we heard it the first time, we remember watching it on MTV over and over, and we remember what a BIG DEAL it was that (nearly) everybody who was anybody in 1985 got together in one room and worked together for a good cause.  Famine relief, right?  I mean I think in the 1980's all the charity records were about famine, even Farm Aid was about feeding the farmers which is weird because usually they're the ones who are supposed to be feeding us.  Wait, Hands Across America wasn't to fight hunger, what was THAT deal again?  I guess it was to fight hunger and homelessness and poverty, so i guess it didn't work because we still have all of those things. 

But let's focus on the production of "We Are the World", which was the brainchild of Harry Belafonte, originally, but piggy-backing on the success of the Band-Aid song "Do They Know It's Christmas?" which featured an all-star line-up of singers and musicians from the U.K. Harry Belafonte wanted to repeat that success with American talent, but singing "Do They Know It's the Fourth of July" didn't seem to make much sense, so they had to go a different route.  Belafonte contacted the key personnel for "USA for Africa", (which I didn't know until today was an acronym standing for United Support of Artists, not United States of America).  Belafonte called Ken Kragen, who in addition to being a fundraiser was the manager of Lionel Richie - So Kragen called Richie, who called Michael Jackson, and Jacko called in Quincy Jones, and they all tried to call Stevie Wonder, who didn't call them back right away.  Stevie's funny like that, but maybe he just couldn't find the phone.  Or he lost the number and couldn't find it, it happens.

Anyway, these key four called in all their friends and the top recording artists of the day, and there was something of a domino effect, if they got Bruce Springsteen to commit, then they could work on Bob Dylan.  If they got Kenny Rogers, maybe they could also get Willie Nelson, and so on. And if they got Daryl Hall, they'd probably also get John Oates, they were kind of a two-fer. And they locked in Sheila E., thinking they'd get Prince to come along, but Prince doesn't really play that game.  He eventually agreed to come and do a guitar part, provided he could record in another room and not have to interact with the other talent, but they just didn't want it to work that way.  One room, one night, one session, check your egos at the door.

They did have a singular opportunity to get everyone together because of the American Music Awards, an event where Lionel Richie was already scheduled to be the host, and most famous recording artists were planning to attend, especially if they were nominated for something.  So everybody agreed, with 90% of the recording industry already planning to be in L.A. that weekend, that would be their shot to get everyone together and record something - and nobody got paid, either, it was all pro bono, except Bono wasn't there.  

But a lot of people were, Ray Charles and Dionne Warwick, Billy Joel, Cyndi Lauper, Huey Lewis (kids, ask your parents), Steve Perry from Journey, Kenny Loggins, the Pointer Sisters, Paul Simon, Bette Midler, Tina Turner, Smokey Robinson, Kim Carnes (look her up), and somehow even Dan Aykroyd got caught up in it, no, we didn't quite understand that at the time, either.  Sure, he was a Blues Brother, but he was primarily known for his comedy and not his singing ability.  I think he snuck in by pretending to be the parking valet or something. 

What I never knew before watching this was that someone had to not only arrange the song, but figure out who was going to sing each line on the solos.  Thankfully that was someone with a brain who did their research, and he figured out, OK, Dionne Warwick has THIS kind of voice, it's soft and gentle, so let's follow her with Willie Nelson, who has a gravelly voice, and then Al Jarreau comes back in with a velvet one, and so on.  AND IT WORKED, almost just like this guy planned it would.  So they had the line-up, they sent out demo tapes and instructions to all of the participants, and said the studio's location would be revealed only in person, immediately after the awards ceremony. 

Now, bear in mind all of these stars had just been through a whole awards ceremony, those can go on for HOURS, so I hope they also told everybody to sleep in that morning, because the recording session went until 5 am or so. Jeez, even the superstars were bound to get a bit gamey after staying up so long and then working in close quarters in a tight sound studio, under those impressive lights, because they were also filming the music video at the same time.  

This is the other part of the documentary that I love so much - seeing that the stars are just like us normal people, only they might even be a little more screwed up.  All it took was one person asking another for their autograph, and suddenly everybody wanted everybody else to sign their lyrics sheet, and so there had to be a 15-minute break where everybody did this, but hey, if any of these stars got to meet their idols, and got a chance to feel starstruck themselves for once, maybe they knew after that what it was like for their fans to meet them.  

They recorded the chorus first, with everyone singing in unison, and if the song was out of somebody's range, well, too bad.  Don't sing the octave, that won't sound right, and don't sing harmony, because we're trying to project unity, one voice.  So that meant some people who were known for being drummers or guitarists or Bob Dylan had to just move their mouths AS IF they were singing, for the sake of the music video.  But many of them were not.  Scandalous!

And then Stevie Wonder got the bright idea that there should be some lyrics in Swahili, that would be culturally appropriate so the starving people in Ethiopia could understand the song.  All this time I didn't know this really happened, I thought it was just a joke I saw in a Doonesbury strip. But no, he suggested this, which made Waylon Jennings suddenly decide he had to leave, he wasn't going to be part of any song sung in an African language.  Sheila E. also bailed out early when she figured out that they only invited her so Prince would swing by and pick her up. Plus there was no drum part to the song, so she felt out of place, I guess. 

Other people were cut loose after the recording of the chorus, they weren't selected for solo lines in the verses of the song.  I think this meant that after the meal break, the Pointer Sisters, John Oates and Bette Midler were cut loose - also all non-essential (non-Michael) Jacksons. Sure, I can see sending Lindsey Buckingham home early, but Smokey Robinson?  The News got kicked out the door, but Huey Lewis benefitted from Prince never showing up, this kicked him up to a line in the bridge that they'd been saving for His Purple Majesty.  And it's so great that Huey was neurotic about singing with the headliners, but he totally nailed it. 

Finally it came down to just the overdubs, the "really big fills", as Quincy Jones called it.  This was left for Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, and Bruce had just come off his massive U.S. tour, so his voice was very tired, and Bob Dylan was, well, Bob Dylan.  Remember, he didn't sing on the chorus, he just stood there looking confused while pretending to sing.  So they gave him a chance to sing on the last chorus, but again, it seemed like he was out of place or maybe didn't know where he was or what they expected him to do.  Thankfully Stevie Wonder took him aside and sang his part to him, and he imitated Dylan's vocal style to inspire him.  Take two, and Dylan came alive with his signature voice, seemingly out of nowhere, and it was somehow exactly what the song needed. For some young people this might have been the first time they'd heard Bob Dylan on a record, and sure, it probably led to kids imitating his funny way of singing, but it's such an amazing shock in this film when Dylan proves that yes, he was in fact paying attention. 

Then it was just up to the Boss to bring it home, again in that last chorus, it just needed a little something extra, and Springsteen took it over the top, with whatever he had left in the tank.  Remember this last bit was recorded around 6 am, he'd been up all night, and while he hadn't been at the American Music Awards, he'd just flown in from Buffalo, the last stop on his tour.  Well, sure, everybody's happier and full of energy once they leave Buffalo, right? 

Like this song, this documentary is just one surprise after another, from what crazy things went on at Michael Jackson's house during the writing session with Lionel Richie, to finding out which singer got drunk (Al Jarreau) and also learning to be thankful that the Beach Boys were not invited. They only would have wanted to add harmonies to the chorus, anyway.  

Also, isn't this the kind of documentary we all need right now, when our country is more fractured and divisive than ever, and our two-party system has nearly put us on the brink of Civil War II?  Can't we all just take a minute and review what can be possible if, I don't know, everybody could just focus on a common goal. Just one, that's all I ask - it can be climate change or figuring out whether abortion should be legal or finding a place to put homeless people that doesn't involve putting them on a bus to another mayor's city?  Let's start small and pick one thing that we all agree on (I know, that's the tough part) and raise some money and, you know, try to fix it.  We'll all feel better about ourselves, even if we don't accomplish the goal, but we'll feel better for having tried.  It's maybe worth a shot?

Also starring Tom Bähler, David Breskin, Bob Dickinson, Sheila E. (last seen in "Summer of Soul"), Humberto Gatica, Steven Ivory, Quincy Jones (last seen in "Love to Love You, Donna Summer"), Dionne Warwick (ditto), Larry Klein, Cyndi Lauper (last seen in "Bitchin': The Sound and Fury of Rick James"), Huey Lewis (last seen in "Rock 'n' Roll High School"), Kenny Loggins, Wendy Rees, Lionel Richie (last seen in "Little Richard: I Am Everything"), Bruce Springsteen (ditto), Smokey Robinson (last seen in "Dionne Warwick: Don't Make Me Over"), Harriet Sternberg, Ken Woo, 

with archive footage of Dan Aykroyd (last seen in "Belushi"), Ray Charles (ditto), Philip Bailey (last seen in "Under the Volcano"), Harry Belafonte (last seen in "What Happened, Miss Simone?"), Stephen Bishop, Bono (last seen in "Elton John: Becoming Rocketman"), George Michael (ditto), Christie Brinkley (last seen in "Jack and Jill"), Tom Brokaw (also carrying over from "Keith Haring: Street Art Boy"), Diana Ross (ditto), Lindsey Buckingham (last seen in "The Beach Boys"), Bob Dylan (ditto), Al Jardine (ditto), Bruce Johnston (ditto), Mike Love (ditto), David Byrne (last seen in "New Wave: Dare to Be Different"), Kim Carnes, Dick Clark (also seen in "Little Richard: I Am Everything"), Freddie Mercury (ditto), Prince (ditto), Tina Turner (ditto), Phil Collins (last seen in "Buddy Guy: The Blues Chase the Blues Away"), Courteney Cox (last seen in "De Palma"), Lola Falana, Bob Geldof (last seen in "Pavarotti"), Mark Goodman (last seen in "McEnroe"), Daryl Hall (last seen in "You Again"), John Oates (ditto), James Ingram, Jackie Jackson (last seen in "Hitsville: The Making of Motown"), Marlon Jackson (ditto), Tito Jackson (ditto), LaToya Jackson, Randy Jackson, Al Jarreau (last seen in "Quincy"), Waylon Jennings (last seen in "Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind"), Kenny Rogers (ditto), Billy Joel (last seen in "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives"), Martin Luther King (last seen in "Little Richard: King and Queen of Rock 'n' Roll"), Ken Kragen, Bette Midler (last heard in "The Addams Family 2"), Willie Nelson (last seen in "Bathtubs Over Broadway"), Billy Ocean, Jeffrey Osborne, Steve Perry (last seen in "Can We Take a Joke?"), Anita Pointer, June Pointer, Ruth Pointer, David Lee Roth, Paul Simon (last seen in "Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street"), Rick Springfield (last seen in "13 Going on 30"), Sting (last seen in "Air"), Eddie Van Halen (last seen in "The Dirt"), Sarah Vaughan (also last seen in "Dionne Warwick: Don't Make Me Over"), Jack Wagner, Stevie Wonder (last seen in "American Symphony")

RATING: 8 out of 10 orders of chicken and waffles from Roscoe's

Keith Haring: Street Art Boy

Year 16, Day 199 - 7/17/24 - Movie #4,789

BEFORE: I've decided that I'm counter-programming against the Republican Convention, because I just can't take any more news about it.  I know I'm supposed to "turn down" the rhetoric at this time of "national crisis" but I just can't do it.  Republicans are terrible people, and they're a bunch of dumb-asses if they think Trump cares about them, or anybody but himself. And Ronald Reagan was a terrible president, both Bushes too. There, I said it. And J.D. Vance got it right the first time when he said Trump was like "America's Hitler" or had the potential to be that, or whatever he said then that he's not saying now. Nobody likes a flip-flopper, J.D. 

Anyway, I couldn't work my Pride Month (OK, week) films into June, it just wasn't possible to honor both that and Father's Day AND still get to a July 4 movie.  Maybe I should have worked a little harder at it, but even I get sick of building up my movie chains at some point, always looking for a "better" order.  At some point I just have to go with the order that I have.  So Pride Week is in mid-July for me, sorry about that, but at least I'm celebrating it in some fashion, that's better than ignoring it, right?  This week is all about what made American culture great - gay musicians like Elton John and Little Richard, gay movie stars like Rock Hudson and, umm, others, and gay artists like Keith Haring.  There, deal with it, conservatives. 

Tom Brokaw carries over from "Rock Hudson: All that Heaven Allowed". I know the links are pretty tenuous if I'm falling back on news anchors and talk show hosts, but it's the only way to watch these films in the order I want to watch them in.  And seeing as this doc's been on my list for two years at least, it's really high time I found a way to link to it.  I'm not letting it slip through the cracks again this year. 

THE PLOT: The story of international art sensation Keith Haring, told using previously unheard interviews. 

AFTER: I was around NYC in the late 1980's, since I went to NYU from 1986 to 1989 (got paroled a year early) and back then you couldn't walk around town without seeing Keith Haring graffiti, or maybe billboards by that time.  I remember seeing his art on the album cover for "A Very Special Christmas" in 1987, and thinking how much it looked like the graffiti that was all over town, but duh, same artist.  And then in the early 1990's I had a job at a little production company in lower Manhattan, and she directed and edited a dance piece with Bill T. Jones in it, and between the dance numbers he talked about friends who had died from AIDS, and I remember there was footage of Keith Haring in the montage.  

Then, well, then thirty years kind of came and went in a flash, and I found myself, well not exactly back where I started, but let's say at a different job a few blocks away.  I'm working part-time now at a movie theater run by the School of Visual Arts, and it's two blocks west of a movie theater that I worked at in the summer of 1989, before getting married the first time, and before starting my climb up to middle management of independent production companies.  But SVA is also where Keith Haring went to art school, so knowing that kind of brought back some memories from the 1980's, the school is still there, but the theater I worked at back then is now shuttered (after changing hands about five times) and of course, Keith is still gone. 

So I never met him, but people at SVA still talk about him with reverence, the way they still talk about Spike Lee at NYU (they have to, he teaches there and I think donated a wing to the film school or something) but of course every university likes to take some credit for their students being successful.  I'm honestly not sure if he graduated from SVA, or if he just kind of outgrew the school and went from sophomore year to having gallery shows and exhibitions - I think in some schools you can get credit for that, it's called being a successful artist and then they just kind of hand you a degree, or they grade your opening night party as if it's your final exam or something.  Anyway, Keith had already studied art at the Ivy School in Pittsburgh, and also had a temp job at the Pittsburgh Arts and Crafts Center where he heard lectures from Christo and explored the art of Jackson Pollock and Mark Tobey, so I think he only came to NYC to make connections, both professional and personal. 

Anyway, he attended School of Visual Arts in 1978, while also working as a busboy at a nightclub, Danceteria.  Inspired by graffiti artsts who spray-painted subway cars, he brought chalk with him into subway stations and made his drawings any time there was a black space for a poster where a poster had not yet been placed.  Naturally, people believed that the art belonged there, and then once you saw it in one subway station, you knew what to look for, and you'd see similar designs in the next station, on that lamppost, and on that mailbox.  Haring's rudimentary outline drawings of men, babies and dogs seemed to be everywhere, and he graduated from subway station poster spaces to outdoor murals.  By 1982 he was showing his art in group exhibitions, then got the gig designing the poster for the 1983 Montreux Jazz Festival.  

Murals at art centers and at Brooklyn Academy of Music followed, a stamp for the United Nations and a poster for Live Aid (kids, ask your parents). Posters for nuclear disarmament and against Apartheid. A 90-foot banner to commemorate the Statue of Liberty's centennial, and the big sign up in Harlem that read "Crack Is Wack".  And a big mural on the Berlin Wall in 1986, three years before the wall came down.  Album covers for David Bowie and that Christmas album, and painting directly on the bodies of people like Grace Jones and Bill T. Jones. And when people said his work was getting overpriced, he opened up the Pop Shop to sell his art on t-shirts and buttons, he was like Banksy before Banksy, except everybody knew who he was in addition to seeing his art everywhere. 

But then of course he was diagnosed with AIDS in 1987 - it didn't slow him down, however, quite the contrary.  In 1989 he established his foundation, funded by the Pop Shop, to fund AIDS organizations and non-profits to educate disadvantaged youths.  After his death came more fund-raising, benefit concerts, the AIDS quilt, and keeping his art on display worldwide to increase awareness as well as fund-raising.  His work was in 50 solo exhibitions during his life, and then was featured in over 150 exhibitions after he died.  So yeah, I'd say he tapped into something, for sure.  A 2020 online auction of his works by Sotheby's was expected to raise $1.4 million and went on to raise $4.6 million, with all proceeds going to the LGBT Community Center of New York. And I'm just going to leave things there. 

One quibble, though, the IMDB lists this documentary as being 89 minutes long, but the version that ran on the PBS series "American Masters" was just under an hour, so was the version I watched edited?  And if so, what did they leave out when they aired this on PBS?  I can't really get a straight answer on this. 

Oh yeah, one more connection, last year at the theater, which again is run by the school that Keith Haring went to, the Tribeca Film Festival had a special screening of "Wild Style", a 1982 film about early hip-hop and the graffiti art movement in NYC.  And Fab 5 Freddy came to the screening!  Sure, I knew who he was, but I had to explain that to some of my younger co-workers.  Anyway, everything seems to come around full circle if you just wait long enough, I think. 

Also starring Kurt Andersen, George Condo, Fab 5 Freddy (last seen in "Barry"), Julia Gruen, Allen Haring, Joan Haring, Kristen Haring, Bill T. Jones, Ann Magnuson (last seen in "Desperately Seeking Susan"), Samantha McEwen, Kermit Oswald, Lee Quinones, Kenny Scharf, Bruno Schmidt, Tony Shafrazi, Jack Smith, Peter Staley, Drew Straub, Gil Vazquez, Keyonn Wright-Sheppard,  

with archive footage of Keith Haring, David Dinkins (last seen in "Citizen Ashe"), Boy George (last seen in "Little Richard: I Am Everything"), Michael Jackson (ditto), Madonna (ditto), Grace Jones (last seen in "Bitchin': The Sound and Fury of Rick James"), Richard Nixon (last seen in "LennoNYC"), Yoko Ono (ditto), Andy Warhol (ditto), Diana Ross (last seen in "What's My Name: Myhammad Ali"), Brooke Shields, with narration by Josh Hamilton (?)

RATING: 5 out of 10 crude barking dog drawings

Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed

Year 16, Day 198 - 7/16/24 - Movie #4,788

BEFORE: Yes, there's clearly a theme this week, it should be obvious.  But then sometimes things aren't obvious even when they should be. 

Joan Rivers and Liberace carry over from "Little Richard: I Am Everything".

THE PLOT: The biography of renowned actor Rock Hudson is examined in this relevant investigation of Hollywood and LGBTQ+ identity, from his public "ladies man" character to his private life as a gay man. 

AFTER: Well, as long as I'm on the topic of people who led double lives, let's talk about Rock Hudson. Sure, it's easy to say you "knew" about his secret relationships, especially if you lived in Los Angeles and were part of that scene yourself.  It was an open secret, if that's not a contradiction in terms.  Armistead Maupin is very open about his relationship with Rock, and there was a time when he wondered if he was the only gay man in California that had NOT slept with Rock Hudson. I guess maybe all you had to do was wait your turn, like there was a system or you took a number or something.  

Rock, or Roy Fitzgerald, or Roy Scherer, whichever you prefer, was discovered by a talent agent named Henry Willson, who was also gay and frequently dated his clients, so there was something akin to a gay casting couch, but he also put them through a training program of sorts so they could learn to walk and talk and act like macho men, if they didn't already, and thus fit the profile of what Hollywood casting directors were looking for in leading men.  Basically, they had to appeal to women, but not in a threatening way, and men had to aspire to BE them, and sure, some men had to want to be with them, too.  If they ticked all the boxes - and who better to judge them but other gay men - they could get starring roles in action pictures, and romances if they were willing to kiss girls.  Well, it is called acting, after all - and if they could act well and put out a certain public image to the world, they could go far.  

However, sacrifices were involved, they couldn't be seen in public or photographed with other men, else people would draw the right conclusion.  And they had to get married by the age of 30, even if it was a sham marriage, or else the tabloids would start speculating that they were not interested in women at all. As the studios provided their meals and a place to live not far from the set, these actors had a lot of spare time, which they spent traveling, or at pool parties and beach parties if they weren't shooting on location.  And the system was such that the agents only had to make a phone call in the morning so that by the mid-afternoon there were two dozen young gay men hanging out around Rock Hudson's pool.  

The gig was almost up with Rock Hudson appeared in a photo pictorial in a magazine, showing the small house he shared with Bob Preble, with photos of them getting dressed side-by-side, eating breakfast together, and working on a car without shirts on, it's almost a portrait of some kind of domestic bliss, two actors who did everything together when not working, and maybe that was a little too close to gay marriage for some people's tastes.  Another magazine threatened to go beyond blind items about "pajama parties" and expose Rock Hudson's secret life, but his agent gave them the scoop on Tab Hunter and another client if they would kill the story about mega-star Rock.  

Rumors persisted, including the very false one that Rock Hudson and Jim Nabors were secretly married in a ceremony performed by Truman Capote - it just didn't happen, but once these urban legends start, they are very hard to disprove, and therefore they get repeated for years.  Really, this was a joke that had gotten out of hand, in the early 1970's there was a group of gay men in Huntington Beach who got together for an annual party, and one year they sent out joke invitations to this fake wedding of Hudson and Nabors, the punchline was that one actor would (for some reason) take the married name of the other person's TV character, and thus become Rock Pyle.  No, it's not all that funny, but that was the gag. 

The only people who knew for sure were Rock's lovers (and apparently that was a long list) and his female co-stars like Julie Andrews, Elizabeth Taylor, Doris Day and Susan St. James, who could probably tell that he wasn't really into them during the love scenes.  And obviously his wife, Phyllis Gates, who was a secretary for his agent, therefore close at hand, and though she later claimed she had no idea he was gay, rumors were that she was, too, so how could she not have known?  

There are more Little Richard-like contradictions in his life, so we're seeing the same sort of "split personality" situation, how can the same person be seen on screen as a macho actor, always involved in a whirlwind romance in the middle of a battle scene or an African jungle, and also be the guy hanging out at the gay beach, or having breakfast with his male roommate before they take their shirts off and go rotate the tires on their car?  Well, as we've seen, people can be more than one thing, and they can go through phases in their lives.  Rock Hudson was born Catholic and later called himself an atheist, what happened in between?  How could he vote as a conservative Republican, belong to a party that didn't support gay rights or gay marriage or really, anything gay, at least publicly?  But come on, we know that there have to be gay Republicans, there have been many political scandals over the years, so they exist, they're just better at hiding this aspect of themselves, at least publicly.  

The later part of this documentary gets into the AIDS crisis and Rock Hudson's declining health,  at the time he was the most notable public figure to contract the disease. And even though he spent months denying it, while flying around the world seeking various treatments, near the end he did declare it publicly, which kind of radically jump-started the need to find a cure, it gave a face for the disease.  You have to remember, the 1980's were a very different time, with this epidemic spreading across the world and it was still a mystery where it came from and even why it seemed to target certain people who were perhaps reluctant to change their behavior, while a Republican President refused to listen to medical advice or take any actions to combat it and a Christian-based coalition was attempting to control the government.  Wait a minute, that does feel a little familiar, doesn't it? 

Also, there were problems that resulted from his appearances on "Dynasty", where his character had to kiss Linda Evans - and people were still unsure how AIDS spread, or what precautions needed to be taken.  Well, I guess if the industry learned anything from the AIDS crisis, it was to take better precautions during the COVID years, and put protocols in place that would protect the actors.  Filming of all major movies and TV shows shut down for months in 2021 and COVID testers and safety crews were hired, and I think the whole of show business took maybe two years to get back on track, which is why there are so many movies released last year and this year, it seems like there are new ones every week!  Who can possibly watch them all?  

Special mention really has to be made - a shout-out to whoever selected the archive footage from Rock Hudson's movies.  Perhaps it was the director, perhaps it was a bunch of interns who had to go through every movie he was in very carefully, looking for lines of dialogue that could be taken out of context and then applied to the actor's personal life.  It's really genius, because they found a lot of clips where he played a man with a secret, or a character trying to figure out who he was, or in some cases he was turning down the idea of marrying a woman, without giving a definite reason, and we're left to infer why.  There's also dialogue from the film "The Spiral Road" with Burl Ives, where Rock's character is talking about the symptoms of leprosy, but he mentions "lesions" and other things that suggest the symptoms of AIDS.  But the most spot on came from one of those romantic comedies - "A Very Special Favor" - where his character is found hiding in a bedroom, and Leslie Caron's character finds him and says, "Hey, what are you doing, there? Hiding in the closet isn't going to cure you!" 

Also starring Allison Anders, Carol Burnett (last seen in "I Am Burt Reynolds"), Joe Carberry, Illeana Douglas (last seen in "The New Guy"), Lee Garlington, Paul Garlington, Mark Griffin, Robert Hofler, Ken Jillson, Peter Kevoian, Ken Maley, Armistead Maupin, Howard McGillin, Bill Misenhimer, Tom Santopietro, David Thomson, Tim Turner, Wes Wheadon, 

with archive footage of Rock Hudson (also last seen in "I Am Burt Reynolds"), Kirk Douglas (ditto), Jim Nabors (ditto), Joe Abrell, Claude Akins (last seen in "The Defiant Ones"), Bea Arthur (last seen in "Being Mary Tyler Moore"), Rona Barrett (ditto), Burt Lancaster (ditto), Gena Rowlands (ditto), Lucille Ball (last seen in "Albert Brooks: Defending My Life"), Jack Benny (last seen in "The Beach Boys"), Doris Day (ditto), Marlon Brando (last seen in "Sly"), Tom Brokaw (last seen in "Framing John DeLorean"), Yul Brynner (last seen in "Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It"), Truman Capote (last seen in "Breakfast at Tiffany's"), George Peppard (ditto), Leslie Caron (last seen in "Becoming Mike Nichols"), John Chancellor (last seen in "Attica'), Dan Rather (ditto), Yanou Collart, Joan Colllins (last seen in "Wolfgang"), James Dean (last seen in "Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind"), Troy Donahue, Ralph Edwards, Leif Erickson (last seen in "Show Boat"), Linda Evans, John Forsythe (last seen in "Destination Tokyo"), Phyllis Gates, Steve Gendel, Michael Gottlieb, Betty Griffin, Murray Hamilton (last seen in "MLK/FBI"), Ken Hodge, Richard Hodge, Kathleen Hughes, Ross Hunter, Tab Hunter (last seen in "I Am Divine"), Burl Ives (last seen in "Ensign Pulver"), Jennifer Jones (last seen in "She's Funny That Way"), Larry Kramer (last seen in "Koch"), Piper Laurie (last seen in "Eulogy"), Gina Lollobrigida, Anna Magnani, Dorothy Malone (last seen in "Scared Stiff"), Doug McClure (last seen in "Tapeheads"), Mark Miller, Liza Minnelli (last seen in "Little Richard: King and Queen of Rock 'n' Roll"), Roger Moore (last seen in "Scandalous: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer"), George Nader, Laurence Olivier (last seen in "Val"), Jane Pauley (ditto), Robert Preble, Paula Prentiss (last seen in "The Parallax View"), Tony Randall (last seen in "Bathtubs Over Broadway"), Nancy Reagan (last seen in "Balls of Fury"), Ronald Reagan (last seen in "Yogi Berra: It Ain't Over"), Sue Simmons (ditto), Al Roberts, Hayden Rorke (last seen in "The Robe"), Dean Rusk, John Schuck (last seen in "McCabe & Mrs. Miller"), Esther Shapiro, Randy Shilts, Dinah Shore (last seen in "Love to Love You, Donna Summer"), Douglas Sirk, Elizabeth Taylor (last seen in "Ira & Abby"), Claire Trevor (last seen in "Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold"), Rudolph Valentino (last seen in "Remembering Gene Wilder"), John Wayne (ditto), Vivian Vance (last seen in "Lucy and Desi"), Nancy Walker, Henry Willson, Jane Wyman (last seen in "Stage Fright").

RATING: 6 out of 10 beefcake photos, posing with lumberjack gear

Little Richard: I Am Everything

Year 16, Day 197 - 7/15/24 - Movie #4,787

BEFORE: Yes, there is a second documentary about Little Richard, they were released last year within a month of each other, this one popped up on HBO Max and yesterdays film was part of the PBS series "American Masters". Did we need two documentaries?  Here's what I think happened, two separate directors or production companies realized he represented an important topic, especially since gay rights have come further along in the last decade - tonight's film got selected for the Sundance Festival and then made it to the big time, HBO Max, in May - and the "King & Queen of Rock 'n' Roll" doc was probably not going to get a general release, so somebody cut a different distribution deal, to sell the film to PBS, to salvage what they could of this situation.  Competition is a good thing, but being second to market is not usually a successful strategy - at that point, someone who's invested years in making a film could stand by and watch as their project becomes irrelevant, so really, any path toward distribution would be preferable to none.  This happens all the time with animated films, several different studios will make films about Bigfoot characters ("Missing Link", "Smallfoot") or bugs ("A Bug's Life", "Antz") or fish ("Finding Nemo", "A Shark Tale") and then at some point it becomes a race, because whichever film gets released first is likely to do better, and the second will look like a copycat.

But I've watched many docs about the Beatles or the Rolling Stones, there could be room for more than one film on the same musician, you just have to hope that each film takes a different angle, two films that are almost exactly the same wouldn't make much sense.  

Little Richard carries over from yesterday's very similar (?) doc and so do a number of other people. 

THE PLOT: The life and career of Little Richard, the one-of-a-kind rock 'n' roll icon who shaped the world of music. 

AFTER: Yeah, so a lot of the same ground got covered here as in "King & Queen of Rock 'n' Roll", so that's really a shame. It's the same story, same subject, same struggle between the two sides of Little Richard, the side that was the preacher and claimed not to be gay, and the boastful man who sang (and claimed to have invented) rock and roll, and talked about voyeurism and orgies and wearing his mother's make-up and dresses as a child.  I want to say tonight's doc did a better job of trying to resolve the split personality, the way he could yo-yo from being gay and boisterous to being a god-fearing Christian who said at one point he hadn't had sex in 14 years.  He was BOTH of those things, he changed over time, he contained multitudes, and maybe all things are true, or the truth lies in the middle of all of those things. 

I will tell you that I did some research, between the films - I looked up Little Richard's first gospel album on YouTube, and listened to the tracks.  They are a complete 180-degree turn from "Good Golly Miss Molly" and "Tutti Frutti" and even "Lucille".  Well, again, we know with Elvis he liked to record rock songs AND Gospel songs, and he even had a Christmas album.  And Little Richard was a great gospel singer, I think, when he wasn't hollering and yodeling and shouting "WHOOO!" all the time - the gospel album was quite boring by comparison, but maybe that's what sold gospel albums, or what people thought gospel albums should be.  There was one exception, though, the song "Joy Joy Joy", give it a listen and you might get a feeling what he could have done by merging both of his worlds, both of his personalities.  Imagine gospel music sung with the same intensity as "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" and damn it, why couldn't the whole album have been done in that uplifting, exciting way?  It's a shame.  

(I also researched that first Beach Boys live concert album, released in 1964.  Sure, there were a lot of girls screaming at that concert, and the album reflects that, it's almost impossible to find the Beach Boys songs under all that screaming.  But I'm forced to admit that maybe the Beach Boys could play their instruments, as the songs were apparently performed live, but again, this was EARLY Beach Boys and the songs were still very simple, like "Surfin' USA" and "Fun Fun Fun" and the hardest thing for them at the time was singing harmonies AND playing guitars at the same time, unless the music was a recorded track (which is still possible) then maybe they could play and sing at the same time. HOWEVER, later tours with more complex songs like "Good Vibrations", I'm still betting they hired those extra musicians on stage for a reason.) 

Where was I?  Oh, yeah, Little Richard.  He was gay when it suited him to be gay, and then he had to be "more gay" than anyone else or say, "I was one of the first people to come out..." which would be impossible to prove, of course, and then a few years later he appeared on the Letterman show and said, "I used to be gay" and "God told me it should be Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve..."  Yeah, THAT old chestnut, the one that got Donna Summer in trouble, he said that.  So he had some experiences where God spoke to him, or he saw angels saving his plane from engine trouble, and also he was under the impression that the world was going to end soon, and so he figured he better make peace with the man upstairs.  Also, apparently in Australia in 1957 he saw a blazing fireball go across the sky (this is right after the angels saved his plane) and took it as a hint to stop singing the devil's music and go to theology school.  Later someone told him that the fireball was actually the Sputnik satellite, but it was too late, the message from the Lord had already been received.  

Both docs interviewed some of the same people, like his girlfriend Lee Angel, and Sir Lady Java, who was a close friend and female impersonator (or trans, or hermaphrodite, it's not that clear).  Nile Rodgers tells the same story in both docs, about David Bowie coming to him with a photo of Little Richard and saying that was his vision board for the "Let's Dance" album.  Both films talk about Little Richard's time on the chitlin' circuit, both use the footage of him clowning around with David Johansen at the 1988 Grammys, and both films end with montages of some of the gay and proud musicians that came along and came out later on, pointing out that LIttle Richard paved the way for them.  And damn if it isn't almost the exact same montage, with Elton John, Madonna, Prince, Lizzo, and Harry Styles.  I mean, that doesn't just HAPPEN, or I guess maybe it does, if both docs are trying to make exactly the same point about Richard's influence.  So it's really too bad that these two productions couldn't be combined into one killer documentary, it would have saved both of them some money, renting all that archive footage.  But we live in a world of Coke vs. Pepsi, McDonald's vs. Burger King, HBO/Warner/Discovery vs. Paramount/Showtime/MTV.  (If you think about it, Coca-Cola and Pepsi could save HALF their advertising budgets every year, they'd just have to agree that Coke would advertise in January, Pepsi in February and so on.  Nobody's going to STOP drinking Diet Coke just because they haven't seen a new ad in a while.)

Nope, apparently we need two Little Richard documentaries to cover almost all of the same material, just with slightly different approaches "I Am Everything" uses more talking head-style interviews with journalists and music scholars, while "King and Queen of Rock 'n' Roll" focused more on Little Richard's band members and the people who knew him back before he was famous.  Last night's film interviewed Keith Richards, tonight's film interviewed Mick Jagger.  Ringo Starr was interviewed in one, Tom Jones in the other.  And Little Richard was on so many talk shows over the years - Dave, Merv, Mike Douglas, Tom Snyder, Arsenio Hall, Donny and Marie - there are so many clips to choose from, so you'd think that you could craft whatever narrative you want, just by choosing the clips where he said he was gay OR the clips where he said he'd heard from God and wasn't gay any more.  

But you have to watch ALL the clips to really understand this man - I think it's more like he was secretly gay when that suited his career, then his career took off and it didn't really matter, then his career cooled off so with nothing else to do, he went to seminary school and tried very hard to NOT be gay, which we all know now isn't really a workable solution, only people maybe didn't know that back then (late 1950's).  Then when he had a second chance at a career in rock, he took it (the 1964 UK tour) and that just brought all the other stuff back with it, and when he was up against the new hippies and the free love movement and the blurring of the genders in the late 1960's, well, he just fit right in and outdid them all - then when gay was finally OK, he was free to say it and be it and also say he invented it, because that's who he was.  He was BOTH of those people, ALL of those people - remember, this is the guy who brought his Bible to the orgies, for some reason.

Sure, he was everything, but at different times.  He just couldn't find a way to be everything everywhere all at once.  So those two sides of him never spoke to each other, he flip-flopped between them, except, maybe, for just a couple brief moments in time - one would be his appearance in the 1986 comedy "Down and Out in Beverly Hills", where he played an evangelist preacher, Orvis Goodnight, and sang a song, "Great Gosh A'Mighty", which he co-wrote with Billy Preston.  Finally, he was a preacher and a rock singer AT THE SAME TIME.  Secondly, the 1983 Jerry Lewis MDA telethon, where he sang a powerful song called "Someone Worse Off Than I Am", which brought together the powerful singing he was capable of with the very powerful messages that he tried to convey as a preacher.  OK, maybe it's not much but it's a little inkling of what more he could have accomplished if he could only have resolved the conflict within himself. 

Also, this doc shows Little Richard selling Bibles, and I said yesterday that his bragging reminded me of Donald Trump, now here's another thing they had in common.  So yeah, I had to watch both Little Richard docs, but you can just pick one, it doesn't really matter which, you'll get essentially the same story.  

Also starring Lee Angel, Mick Jagger, Sir Lady Java, Nile Rodgers (all carrying over from "Little Richard: King and Queen of Rock 'n' Roll"), Libby Anthony, John Branca, Newt Collier, Charles Connor, Ashon Crawley, Charles Glenn, Fredara Hadley, Ralph Harper, Nona Hendryx, Cory Henry, Ramon Hervey, Muriel Jackson, Tom Jones (last seen in "Mel Brooks Unwrapped"), Valerie June, John P. Kee, Jason King, Tony Newman, Tavia Nyong'o, Billy Porter (last seen in "80 for Brady"), Morris Roberts, Zandria Robinson, Stanley Stewart, Billy Vera, John Waters (last seen in "The Velvet Underground"), DeWitt Williams, Keith Winslow,

with archive footage of Chuck Berry, Robert Blackwell, Bill Boggs, Pat Boone, David Bowie, Celine Dion, Alan Freed, Merv Griffin, Arsenio Hall, George Harrison, Michael Jackson, Rick James, David Johansen, Elton John, Brian Jones, John Lennon, David Letterman, Lizzo, Paul McCartney, Elvis Presley, Prince, Keith Richards, Arthur Rupe, Ringo Starr, Harry Styles, Bill Wyman (all 26 carrying over from "Little Richard: King and Queen of Rock 'n' Roll"), La Vern Baker, Boy George (last seen in "Under the Volcano"), David Brenner, James Brown (last seen in "Belushi"), Ruth Brown, RuPaul Charles (last seen in "Fled"), Cher (last seen in "Albert Brooks: Defending My Life"), Dick Clark (last seen in "The Beach Boys"), Janis Joplin (ditto), Bo Diddley (last seen in "The Stones and Brian Jones"), Jimi Hendrix (ditto), Fats Domino (last seen in "Standing in the Shadows of Motown"), Mike Douglas (last seen in "The Kid Stays in the Picture"), Esquerita, Tom Ewell, Louis Jordan (last seen in "Bitchin' The Sound and Fury of Rick James"), Lionel Richie (ditto), Dorothy La Bostrie, Lady Gaga (last seen in "House of Gucci"), Annie Lennox (last seen in "Count Me In"), Jerry Lee Lewis (last seen in "The Sparks Brothers"), Liberace (last seen in "Listening to Kenny G"), Rod Stewart (ditto), Madonna (last seen in "I Could Never Be Your Woman"), Bruno Mars (last seen in "Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown"), Cosima Matassa, Brother Joe May, Freddie Mercury (last seen in "Dionne Warwick: Don't Make Me Over"), Donny Osmond (last seen in "Mr. Saturday Night"), Marie Osmond, Earl Palmer, Charles Penniman, Ernestine Penniman, Billy Preston (also last seen in "Mr. Saturday Night"), Lloyd Price, Ma Rainey, Paul Reubens (last seen in "Cocaine Bear"), Joan RIvers (last seen in "Kevin Hart & Chris Rock: Headliners Only"), Tom Snyder (last seen in "Love to Love You, Donna Summer"), Bruce Springsteen (last seen in "De Palma"), Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Ike Turner (last seen in "Tina"), Tina Turner (last seen in "McEnroe"), Red Tyler, Clara Ward, Marion Williams, Billy Wright,   

and the bands Bon Jovi, Bad Brains, Fishbone, Led Zeppelin (last seen in "Count Me In"), Living Colour, Red Hot Chili Peppers

RATING: 6 out of 10 appearances as "Princess LaVonne"

Little Richard: King and Queen of Rock 'n' Roll

Year 16, Day 196 - 7/14/24 - Movie #4,786

BEFORE: Well, I was at work all day yesterday, didn't get a chance to watch the news.  Did I miss anything? 

Mick Jagger and Keith Richards carry over from "The Stones and Brian Jones".  

THE PLOT: The meteoric rise and legacy of Little Richard - this portrait explores his far-reaching influence, still felt in pop culture today and his advocacy for the rights of Black artists in the music industry. 

AFTER: Nothing changes overnight, not attitudes or trends or opinions - sure, there are key moments in history, like the first airplane flight or the invention of the light bulb, that we can point to, but getting to those moments took years, and then getting people to accept electric lights in their homes or taking the 3:00 pm flight to Minneapolis took a few more years.  But if you were to interview Little Richard, he'd happily take credit for inventing rock and roll, but even then, there couldn't have been one specific moment, not even the release of "Tutti Frutti", it just doesn't work that way.  He spent years as a struggling musician on the Southern "chitlin'" club circuit, developing his piano playing and his fashion sense, and then it took for that to be deemed "acceptable" in the mainstream.  People maybe loved that record, and a few that came after it, but how many more people bought the Pat Boone cover of that song?  Yeah, sure, racism might have been involved, and maybe homophobia, too, but people still liked the song, even if they didn't know what it was really about.  

With hindsight, and the opinions of people in the LGBT+ community, we get more insight into that song - tell me you're gay without telling me you're gay, in other words. In Italian the words would me "all the fruits" or "very fruity", and you can learn even more by looking up the original lyrics to the song - oh, if only Pat Boone knew those lyrics, or maybe took five minutes to figure out what the song was referring to, he probably would have declined.  Rock's tongue-in-cheek definition as "black music sung by white people" doesn't really tell the whole story, part of it is also "gay music sung by straight people", and really think about the lyrics of "Jailhouse Rock", another very homo-erotic song.  "You're the cutest jailbird I ever did see?"  Umm, you know there's only men in that jail, right?  The very word "rock" started as a euphemism for another four-letter word, and you can make any song like "Rock Around the Clock" dirty by thinking about that. 

"Good Golly, Miss Molly, you sure like to ball."  It was right there, all the time, though for a couple decades people said, "Oh, that's not what the word ball means".  Umm, yes it is. "With your rockin and your rollin, Can't hear your mama call."  Miss Molly is having sex so loudly, she can't hear her own mother calling her.  What's up that, and is Miss Molly really a girl, because girls don't usually need to put "Miss" in their names, so it could be a drag thing.  This documentary points out that in some of the places Little Richard played on the circuit, like the Dew Drop Inn in New Orleans, really, anybody and everybody was there - pimps, prostitutes, politicians - and there was often a drag queen hostess, and this was way back before drag shows were popular everywhere.  But there's a bit of a contradiction here, did Little Richard pave the way for drag culture and gay culture, or was it always prevalent before, just better hidden?  Discuss. 

It's clear that Little Richard (and Chuck Berry and Howlin' Wolf and Bo Diddley) inspired the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, and there apparently was a concert where Little Richard visited London, just before those two groups went from popular to mega-popular, and Keith Richards admits that he and Mick went up to the rafters in the theater, so they could watch how Little Richard moved on stage.  But the story Little Richard told later about teaching McCartney to go "Whooo!" like him was obviously exaggerated.  Hell, if you asked Little Richard in an interview about the moon landing, he'd say he taught Neil Armstrong how to get by in a tiny space capsule or how to walk in zero gravity.  It's a lot like a certain former President taking credit for things he didn't do at all, like saying "I got America through COVID" or "I fixed immigration" or "I eliminated government red tape".  Umm, no you didn't, you just played golf every day for four years. 

There are signs of the former Richard Penniman's internal struggle as well - it took years for him to talk about being gay, he avoided the word "homosexual" for years in interviews, and then he spent years working as a preacher, like, sure, yeah, that'll fix it.  Just find religion and sweep everything else under the rug - it doesn't work that way.  Even the conversion therapy pushed onto teens by organized religion does more harm than good, by making gay people feel like shameful sinners.  So then years later, after the pendulum swung back the other way, and we had George Michael and Freddie Mercury and Elton John and it was "cool" to be gay, then Little Richard mounts a comeback and says he invented the whole thing.  

The concert in front of the Beatles and the Stones was presented here as something of a turning point - Little Richard hadn't performed or had a hit record in a while, would he play something proper and religious, or something loud and boisterous to get the whole room dancing?  A long pause, and then he broke into "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" - and the whole place went crazy, people dancing out of control, they just had to move.  The devil on the shoulder won out, because that music was what gave the singer the most applause, the most appreciation from the crowd. Makes sense, with all the drugs available to musicians, the applause is perhaps the most addictive one.  

There's a clip from the Grammys one year where Little Richard was a presenter, and he couldn't help but take credit for Buster Poindexter's big hair. Yes, we know, you used to have big teased hair too, but that doesn't mean you invented haircuts.  Poor Jody Watley, she had to wait to get her Grammy award as Little Richard pulled the "the award goes to ME!" trick, not once but maybe five times.  To be fair, it got a little funnier each time, and after three times it was hilarious.  Little Richard also pointed out that he never won a Grammy, and naturally he felt he should have, having invented rock and roll and all that.  Well, he was part of the first group of acts inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, isn't that something?  And he got a Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Recording Academy (which puts out the Grammys).

But I remember that Elvis didn't get his Grammys for rock, he got them for his gospel albums.  Why couldn't Little Richard do the same thing, put out gospel records?  Well, according to Wikipedia, he did, during that five-year period where he quit rock and roll and became a born-again Christian, 1959-1964.  I can only assume that either the market wasn't there, or the albums were terrible, worse than hearing the early Beach Boys play in concert. I will try to investigate this further if the tracks are on YouTube.  But I can predict that Little Richard probably didn't bring the same spirit to his Gospel music that he brought to "Good Golly Miss Molly" or "Tutti Frutti", I'm guessing it was all or nothing, either listen to the angel on one shoulder or the devil on the other.  More on this topic tomorrow. 

But suggesting that we might not have Prince or Lizzo or Harry Styles without Little Richard, that seems like a little bit of a stretch.  I think society still would have gotten there, it just might have taken a little bit longer. I still maintain that a certain percentage of the kids today are coming out as pansexual or non-binary just because it's trendy to do that.  Sure, it's a bold personal move, and it probably feels very liberating, just bear in mind that when the pendulum swings back the other way and the Christian Nation takes over in the next insurrection, now they're going to know where to find you - and they'll be checking your status on the socials. 

Also starring Lee Angel, H.B. Barnum, Pat Boone (last seen in "Mr. Warmth - the Don Rickles Project"), Big Freedia, Ron Jones, Rev. Bill Minson, Charles Moore, Deacon John Moore, Nile Rodgers (last seen in "If These Walls Could Sing"), Bobby Rush, Sir Lady Java, Ringo Starr (also carrying over from "The Stones and Brian Jones"), Tyina L. Steptoe, Charles “Dr. Rock” White, 

with archive footage of Little Richard (last seen in "Muscle Shoals"), Chuck Berry (last seen in "The Beach Boys"), Robert Blackwell, Bill Boggs (last seen in "Night Falls on Manhattan"), David Bowie (last seen in "Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time"), Billy Crystal (last seen in "Yogi Berra: It Ain't Over"), José Diaz-Balart, Celine Dion (last seen in "Pavarotti"), Alan Freed, Leeza Gibbons, Merv Griffin (last seen in "Love to Love You, Donna Summer"), Arsenio Hall (ditto), Elton John (ditto), George Harrison (also last seen in "The Stones and Brian Jones"), Brian Jones (ditto), John Lennon (ditto), Paul McCartney (ditto), Charlie Watts (ditto), Bill Wyman (ditto), Michael Jackson (last seen in "Elton John: Becoming Rocketman"), Elvis Presley (ditto), Rick James (last seen in "Bitchin': The Sound and Fury of Rick James"), David Johansen (last seen in "Tales from the Darkside: The Movie"), Martin Luther King (last seen in "Elvis"), David Letterman (last seen in "You've Been Trumped"), Lizzo (last seen in "Hustlers"), Liza Minnelli (last seen in "I Am Burt Reynolds"), Janelle Monae (last seen in "The Beach Boys"), Prince (last seen in "Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool"), Arthur Rupe, Harry Styles (last seen in "Don't Worry Darling"), Big Mama Thornton (last seen in "Buddy Guy: The Blues Chase the Blues Away"), Mike Wallace (last seen in "Scandalous: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer"), Jody Watley

RATING: 6 out of 10 messages from God