Zappa

Year 13, Day 208 - 7/27/21 - Movie #3,901

BEFORE: I feel like I'm in limbo, waiting to hear about this new job that I interviewed for - my life could change tomorrow, if I get a certain phone call, then again, it might not. What's that line about the only thing I know how to do is to keep on keepin' on?  Mentally, that's where I am.  In the meantime, I still have to keep going in to the animation studio three days a week, and the movie theater four nights a week - though next week there are no late shows scheduled, so I'm going to get a bit of a break no matter what happens.  And I figured out that if I block out all my mornings and work only the late shifts, I might have to sweep but I rarely have to mop the floors, that's a morning thing.  It's their loss for cluing me in how the system works, if you show me a system, then I'll try to figure it out and turn that knowledge to my advantage. 

Jimi Hendrix carries over from "Woodstock: Three Days that Defined a Generation", to a film directed by Alex Winter - yes, the actor from "Bill & Ted Face the Music".

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Eat That Question: Frank Zappa in His Own Words" (Movie #3,031)

THE PLOT: An in-depth look into the life and work of musician Frank Zappa.

AFTER: Well, I did NOT see Jimi Hendrix in this film - is he in there?  IMDB says so - but just in case, I've got a back-up to keep my chain going, there's no need to re-organize.  Footage of Ronald Reagan also appears, and he was in the Woodstock documentary complaining about hippies at music festivals or something...

Frank Zappa was not a hippie, not exactly anyway.  And he claimed to not use drugs, other than caffeine, nicotine and things that doctors would prescribe, like penicillin for an STD after he caught something on the road while touring - I'm sure his wife was thrilled about that.  I tend to believe him, because if you're stoned all the time it's more difficult to accomplish things, and Zappa accomplished a lot, so he had to stay focused to write so many songs and release like 60 albums during his lifetime.  He was also the focal point of a rotating group of musicians, their boss and once the first line-up of the Mothers of Invention folded, it became a rotating group of people that he wanted to musically connect with, if he liked or admired someone he'd hire them again, and if he didn't like them, they were gone.  You know, like a boss.  And his personality was such that even if he didn't connect with them personally, or that musician thought he was an asshole, he was THEIR asshole, or an asshole willing to pay that musician, so in essence, all was forgiven.  

I came in contact with (some of) Zappa's music through the Dr. Demento syndicated radio show, which played mostly novelty songs, and while Frank himself was something of a novelty, most of his music wasn't - sure, he wrote tunes like "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow", "Let's Make the Water Turn Black" and "Call Any Vegetable", but he also composed rock music, orchestral music, and jazz fusion (only, umm, who the hell wants to listen to jazz fusion?).  But he got much more attention for being outrageous, like ripping off the album artwork from the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper" album for his own album, "We're Only in it for the Money".  As such, he was practically begging for a lawsuit to happen, because that would only increase publicity, though reportedly he spoke on the phone with Paul McCartney to avoid a lawsuit, only to have McCartney claim that it was out of his hands, the Beatles' lawyers had minds of their own.  This confused Zappa, why weren't the Beatles in charge of their own affairs, the way he was in charge of his own?  

(The Beatles, by the way, reportedly were inspired to create the "Sgt. Pepper" album by Zappa's first album, "Freak Out" - along with the Beach Boys' "Pet Sounds", of course - because of Zappa's use of innovative instrumentation and collages of sounds.  John Lennon later got together with Zappa to perform on stage with Yoko Ono, and a bit of that concert is seen in this documentary - whether you like that or not probably hinges on your opinion of Yoko's "music".)

After his first few albums, Zappa was the composer, musician, record producer for Barking Pumpkin, the CEO of his own little enterprise, chief cook and bottle-washer, as the saying goes. And his first "independent" album was "Shiek Yerbouti", which did pretty well, thanks to the song "Dancin' Fool", which he performed on Saturday Night Live.  (While on SNL, it seems that Belushi et al. only wanted to do skits with him that poked fun at the "fact" that Zappa didn't take drugs, what a surprise that this is what cokehead Belushi wanted to make fun of.  NOTE: the unexpected appearance of the SNL cast does mean that I COULD watch the "Belushi" doc next, and still end up where I want to be the next day - but I hate to change my plan again.  Better to watch the scheduled doc on Netflix that could disappear at any moment.). But still, I have to wonder, why didn't Zappa realize that nicotine is one of the strongest, most addictive drugs on the market? 

My point is, though I drifted away from it for a bit there, that in my mind, as a young teen, I had Frank Zappa lumped in with "Weird Al" Yankovic, Spike Jones, Stan Freberg and other comedy artists, but that just wasn't who he was - not entirely, anyway.  Zappa had maybe grown up with similar influences as Weird Al, like a love for the Ernie Kovacs show, but instead of the comedy, Zappa was probably more interested in how subversive that show was.  Sure, he was interested in ripping off the Beatles, but not as a direct musical parody, he was interested in stealing their ideas, their art style, their album cover, because that would cause the most trouble.  When Frank Zappa was a child, his father worked at a chemical plant, so young Frankie Jr. would use materials that his father brought home to blow things up, and in some ways, he just never stopped doing that. 

What he really wanted, to do, though, was to build, to compose - he was self-taught on guitar (once he figured out what the frets were for) and self-taught on music notation - a member of the Kronos Quartet points out late in the film that young Frank spent a lot of time by himself in the library, figuring out how to compose music, and the type of work ethic needed to do that is just staggering, obviously Frank Zappa didn't have a lot of friends, which was probably both a good and a bad thing.  He may not have been well-liked, he may not have had a lot of fun in his life, but he was incredibly focused on music.  Getting an orchestra together to properly play his elaborate compositions, though, was another matter entirely - he eventually had to fund one in Russia just to get CLOSE to hearing his musical vision come to life.  

The bulk of his life, though, was spent hanging out with both kinds of musicians - the famous ones, sure, but also the ones who had to work for a living, who would show up, learn the music, then be willing to put on a funny wig or a weird costume and act crazy on stage, for the sake of a paycheck.  And thus over decades Zappa built up a contingent of devoted lunatics who were willing to put in the practice time, only they were prevented from getting too close to the man personally, which would generate the risk of them getting fired. Even his most devoted keyboardist, Ruth Underwood, who thought the world of him, got away with complimenting Zappa and thanking him for the decades-long gig ONCE, and she suspects that's only because he was in the midst of dying from cancer. 

Yeah, fuck cancer, the gift that keeps on taking, for removing Zappa from this planet, before I really got to understand him or his music.  (Hey, at least he didn't commit suicide like a certain celebrity chef I could mention, who also has a documentary about him in theaters right now. I don't mean to criticize people with mental health problems, but if you're feeling suicidal, please, get some help, talk to a professional, and don't just take yourself out of the game, leaving behind a young daughter you only just barely got to know.  Not cool.)  Zappa ended up winning two competitive Grammys during his lifetime, and a posthumous Lifetime Achievement Grammy in 1998, three years after he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, despite (or due to) being atheist, conservative, counter-counter culture, anti-communist, anti-censorship, anti-religion, very capitalist, and basically a satirical, eccentric genius of some sort. 

His influence ran far and wide, from signing Alice Cooper (a story that takes up space in several documentaries) to inspiring Kraftwerk, Devo, Primus, The Tubes, Phish, Black Sabbath, System of a Down, Brian Eno and even, yes, "Weird Al" Yankovic.  More inspiring to me is his break from the system and the founding of his own independent record label, which was practically unheard of at the time.  There's that famous quote from Brian Eno about the first Velvet Underground record only selling about 10,000 copies, but every person who bought it went out and started a band. Zappa was also a symbol of freedom, somehow, to the citizens of the Czech Republic and served as a cultural ambassador of sorts to that country when it gained independence.  Go figure. 

The other story is that Frank's daughter, Moon-Unit (or just Moon), only got to record the song "Valley Girl" after she slipped a note under his studio door, introducing herself to her father, as a way to get to spend more time with him.  That sort of tells you everything you need to know about Frank Zappa the man, and the difficulty he must have had balancing his professional life with his personal one.  And then that song they recorded together, became the biggest hit of his career - I'm sure that didn't bother him at all.  (Yeah, as if...)

Great news, after a bit of research, I figured out where Jimi Hendrix appears in this documentary - he was one of the people who posed for the cover of the "We're Only in it for the Money" album, so there's probably footage of him showing up for the photoshoot.  Mystery solved - as a result, this is probably the only documentary out there with footage of Hendrix, Vaclav Havel and Kathie Lee Gifford, only who can be sure about such a thing?

Also starring Bunk Gardner, Howard Kaylan, Mike Keneally, Scott Thunes, Ian Underwood, Ruth Underwood, Mark Volman, Ray White (all last seen in "Eat That Question: Frank Zappa in His Own Words"), Alice Cooper (last seen in "The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years"), Pamela Des Barres, David Harrington, Steve Vai, Gail Zappa, 

with archive footage of Frank Zappa (last seen in "Super Duper Alice Cooper"), Arthur Barrow, Adrian Belew, Jimmy Carl Black, Napoleon Brock, George Duke, Aynsley Dunbar, Roy Estrada, Bruce Fowler, Tom Fowler, Ralph Humphrey, Tommy Mars, Jean-Luc Ponty, Don Preston, Euclid James "Motorhead" Sherwood, Jeff Simmons, Chester Thompson, Arthur Dyer Tripp III, Ike Willis, Péter Wolf, Tipper Gore, Vaclav Havel (all last seen in "Eat That Question: Frank Zappa in His Own Words"), Terry Bozzio, Ray Collins, Vinnie Colaiuta, Patrick O'Hearn, 

Dan Aykroyd (last seen in "Everything Is Copy"), Kathie Lee Gifford (ditto), David Letterman (ditto), Charlie Rose (ditto), Jeff Beck, John Belushi, Bruce Bickford, David Bowie (last seen in "Bad Reputation"), Mick Jagger (ditto), Paul McCartney (ditto), Joni Mitchell (ditto), Yoko Ono (ditto), Timothy Carey, Eric Clapton (last seen in "John & Yoko: Above Us Only Sky"), Jane Curtin (last seen in "Ode to Joy"), Mike Douglas (last seen in "Hitsville: The Making of Motown"), George Harrison (ditto), John Lennon (ditto), Ringo Starr (ditto),  Sandi Freeman, Al Gore (last seen in "Hillbilly Elegy"), Arsenio Hall (last seen in "Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond"), Brian Jones (last seen in "Muscle Shoals"), Bill Wyman (ditto), Larry King (last seen in "The Accidental President"), Ted Koppel (last seen in "Shock and Awe"), John Lofton, Charles Manson (last seen in "Let's Go to Prison"), Bill Murray (last seen in "The Bill Murray Stories"), Paul Shaffer (ditto), Laraine Newman, Regis Philbin, Ronald Reagan (also last seen in "Woodstock: Three Days that Defined a Generation"), Murray Roman, Cal Schenkel, Don Van Vliet (aka Captain Beefheart), Johnny "Guitar" Watson, Ahmet Zappa, Diva Zappa, Dweezil Zappa, Moon Zappa and the voice of Neil Armstrong (last seen in "Da 5 Bloods"). 

RATING: 5 out of 10 Edgard Varese compositions

Woodstock 99: Peace Love and Rage

Year 13, Day 208 - 7/27/21 - Movie #3,900-B

BEFORE: This wasn't part of the plan - I just watched this for comparative purposes, to see how much changed between the Woodstock Festival of 1969 and the one in 1999 - a co-worker was talking to me the other day about Woodstock '99, and I saw the listing for this doc on HBO at about the same time, it felt like synchronicity.

And, it turns out, this documentary uses footage of Jimi Hendrix and The Who from the 1969 festival - and footage of Jimi Hendrix is in the film scheduled for tonight, also - so I COULD fit this into my schedule, the question is, though - SHOULD I?

I just found my path to the end of the year, and all 100 slots left in 2021 are spoken for - sure, I could delete one from my plan, some middle film from a three-film chain with the same actor, it could be done.

BESIDES, does this count as a movie, or an episode of MTV's new series, "Music Box"?  Yesterday's documentary on the original Woodstock Festival was part of the PBS series "American Experience", so who can say?  This is movie-length, sure, but is it maybe just a long TV show?  It's a bit like asking if a hot dog is a sandwich - a hamburger is, for sure, but if you define a sandwich as filling between TWO pieces of bread, then a hot dog is not a sandwich.  So it kind of depends which dictionary you read.  

So, here's my compromise - note the numbering above, right now this is film 3900-B.  I know, I know, I'm cheating.  But this is how I get through the year, with a perfect chain of 300 films, I cheat.  If another film in my plan becomes unavailable to me, because it scrolled off of Netflix or disappeared from Hulu, I may be forced to re-work my plan.  It's possible at that point that the new plan could fall one film short, and if that happens, then I'll come back here and re-number this Movie #3,901.  If that's not necessary, I'll just come back here and delete this record.  Yes, I'm a cheater, but at least I admit it. 

AFTER: While I may not count this film at all, I've got a few thoughts about this pre-Fyre Festival festival, which was a breeding ground for rioting, arson, looting, and sexual assault. Maybe most of them are better off left unsaid, but the generation that grew up during the 1990's really seems like THE WORST, and you know who you are.  You can frame this all in the context of white, middle-class ennui or pent-up aggression, post-feminist reactions to the loss of male power, or whatever B.S. you want to cook up.  Bad behavior is bad behavior, and if you find yourself burning down the stage at the festival you bought a ticket for, then you were part of the problem.

If you were one of the acts, like Limp Bizkit or Kid Rock, who fueled that anger and aggression, then screw you, too.  While I'm at it, screw you, Moby, for acting like you're above it all and I'm sorry you didn't get your name on the piece of plywood that listed all of the acts, but if the festival was so terrible, then why the hell did you want your name associated with it?  Screw the festival organizers who thought the event would play out like Woodstock '94 but booked the acts that practically guaranteed it would turn into "Apocalypse Now '99". 

Screw all of the music from the 1990's, while I'm at it.  There hasn't been a decent song written since 1989, and I stand by that.  I don't listen to Korn, Bush, the Offspring, DMX, Dave Matthews Band, Counting Crows, Metallica, Rage Against the Machine, Collective Soul, Megadeth, Creed, Rusted Root or even Jewel, Sheryl Crow or Alanis Morissette. (Everclear does some cool covers, but I don't know any of their original songs.). Screw grunge and death metal and nu metal and screw the Insane Clown Posse and all their juggaloes.  You're part of the reason there was no Woodstock 2019, and you know it.  Screw MTV for covering the event as if they were on the last chopper out of Vietnam, and screw every male douchebag who just wanted to spend his time seeing naked titties and assaulting women.  

Also starring (too many 90's rockers and personalites to include here, but I will list them if it comes to that.  Or this record may vanish, and then I won't have to do all that work.  We'll see. Sure, it would be great to get another appearance in for Dave Grohl, but then I also have to count an appearance for Kurt Cobain - and screw Kurt Cobain.)

RATING: TBD (but probably like a 3 because I'm so utterly disappointed in humanity - proceed at your own risk)

Woodstock: Three Days that Defined a Generation

Year 13, Day 207 - 7/26/21 - Movie #3,900

BEFORE: It's Big Movie 3,900, and part of the Big Summer Music event, so what's bigger than Woodstock?  500,000 people in one field, and the culmination of 1960's counter culture, so tonight's film is a big event, all around.  Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey carry over from "Bad Reputation" via the performance of The Who and the magic of archive footage. 

I tried very hard to push this film into August, because the original concert event took place August 15-18, 1969, but I couldn't do that, AND line it up with a personal century mark, AND still make it to my horror movies on time.  Some sacrifices have to be made.  I'm about five days behind where I planned to be right now, but that's OK, because there was 12 days of downtime in September built into that plan - now that's down to one week, but it's OK to reduce that even further. 

Synchronicity is still in play, though, because HBO just started running a documentary about Woodstock '99, the 30th Anniversary concert, which ended in disaster, and was sort of the Fyre Festival of its time.  I may watch that after this, for comparative purposes, but I won't count that, because the linking's not there.  What's even sadder to me, though, worse than the disaster of Woodstock '99, is the fact that there was NO concert or event to commemorate the 50th Anniversary, in 2019.  Several companies and organizations tried to put something together, but there were disputes over the rights, lawsuits, in-fighting, etc. - and in the end nothing happened, then the whole world went into lockdown the next year.  It's pathetic. 

Still, there are many false memories and untruths told about the original event itself - the name, the date, who played - it's all a big mess, really, which I'll explain in a bit.  But if I were to say, "The Woodstock Festival was a three-day event devoted to peace and music in Woodstock, NY" - well, nearly every word in that sentence is false in some way.  

THE PLOT: In August 1969, 500,000 people gathered at a farm in upstate New York.  What happened there was far more than just a concert - this documentary tells the story of a legendary event that defined a generation through the voices of those who were there. 

AFTER: OK, let's start with the name - the Woodstock Festival was not CALLED the Woodstock Festival at the time, that's the name that everyone called it after the fact.  It was called "The Aquarian Exposition", this is true, just look at the old posters. The group mind took over somehow and started calling it "The Woodstock Festival", or just "Woodstock", and the 1970 movie about the musical performances just kept that group think train rolling.  

Now, some personal background - last November, right after the election and while the result was still being "disputed", and the pandemic restrictions were starting to ease, my wife and I decided to go on a road trip, get away from it all for just a couple days.  We drove up to Sullivan County, stayed at a casino in Monticello, and there wasn't much to do but go antiquing for the first time.  The antique store in Bethel had a large display of Woodstock items, and that's when I remembered a bit of trivia, that the Woodstock Festival didn't take place in Woodstock, it was held in Bethel.  So I asked the clerk at the store if the festival location was nearby, and she said, "Yep, it's just down the road, a couple of miles..."  Well, we just HAD to go.  I'd been pestering her for years to take a road trip to the town of Woodstock, because I'm such a fan of music from that era, but if we had done that, I would have been searching around Woodstock for the festival location, and I would have been in the wrong place!  By, like, over 100 miles!

The confusion comes, I believe, from the fact that the festival was once PLANNED for Woodstock - it grew out of a promotional event tied to the opening of a sound studio in that town, which was where Bob Dylan lived, and there was a thriving cultural scene.  But by January 1969, that location had been abandoned by the concert promoters, and they were instead focused on holding it in Walkill, NY (after also scrapping plans for White Lake).  If you look at the tickets sold for the event in the spring of 1969, they all mention the Aquarian Exposition in Walkill, NY.  Well, as tickets sold and the number of planned attendees grew from 28,000 to 50,000 to possibly 100,000, the very conservative citizens of Walkill started balking over how many hippies would be arriving in their town that summer, and a new venue had to be found.  Throughout July of 1969 the promoters toured every town in the Catskills before finding Max Yasgur's dairy farm in Bethel.  The name of the organization planning the event, however, retained the name of Woodstock Ventures (which wasn't based in Woodstock, either, they had an office in Midtown Manhattan).  So if anything, the "Woodstock" in the name comes from the company that produced the event, with very little connection at that point to the town with the same name.  

And "3 days of peace and music"?  Well, Jimi Hendrix played on day FOUR, so there goes that notion.  Music, sure, oodles of it, but really, how much peace was there?  The event ran out of food, there was no protection from the rain, other than two guys on stage chanting "NO RAIN" (like, sure, that'll help...) and security was provided by a bunch of untrained hippies from The Hog Farm.  Perhaps everyone was so high that you could say the event was relatively peaceful, but if stations were set up just to help people come down from bad trips caused by the brown acid tabs, I'm not sure you can call that peaceful.  

Now, every documentary takes a different approach, and of course I've seen the 1970 film that focused mainly on the music, with no narration - and I think there was even a second doc with just the "lost" performances that didn't make it into the first three-hour film.  Hey, if you've got four days worth of footage from the stage, cutting that all down to three hours, or even six, is probably a challenge.  But tonight's documentary, which aired on PBS's "American Experience" probably couldn't focus on the music, probably because the rights to those performances are expensive, but also because it wanted to tell the story behind those performances, via interviews with the event organizers and promoters (one of them was named "Chip Monck", ha ha, dude, you're freakin' hilarious) and also the regular people who attended.  Or claim that they attended, what's that famous line, if you can remember Woodstock you probably weren't there...

There's also a half-hour at the beginning of this doc that provides historical context, something that also wasn't present in the 1970 music-based film.  To be fair, back then you didn't have to mention Vietnam, civil rights, and what counter-culture was, because everybody was already soaking in it, it was all around.  But for TODAY'S viewers, it's worth taking a few minutes to maybe explain who MLK and RFK was, and the fact that the country was still reeling from seeing both of them assassinated in the span of a few short months.  Then there's a nod to San Francisco and the Monterey Pop festival, as background for the kind of event that the Aquarian Exposition promoters were trying to put together.  

Later on, through narration and interviews we also get a better idea of what, exactly, went wrong during the planning and execution of the thing that turned into the Woodstock Festival.  Moving the venue all over upstate New York meant that all the time spent constructing a stage, running power lines, arranging for portable toilets, etc. in Walkill was completely wasted - they had to start OVER in Bethel with just four weeks to go.  Impossible - I think they were still building the stage when Joan Baez finished her set on the first night.  And calculating how many port-a-potties you need for a crowd of 400,000 is fairly useless when that many units aren't even available on the East Coast.  

More problems arose when music fans started to gather in the field a week before the event was scheduled to start - and by August 15 they still hadn't erected the fences to keep people out, so what were they going to do, build a half-mile of fencing around a crowd that's already THERE?  What's the point?  So screw it, the concert is now free, because it's too late to collect admission. And the food tents running out of food on day 2 - well, gee, who could have foreseen that half a million people might start to feel a bit hungry after a while?  Shout out here to the great citizens of Bethel, NY who opened their hearts and their pantry doors and had food air-lifted in to the concert when all the roads were blocked.  When Wavy Gravy mentioned the "breakfast in bed for 400,000", he was talking about rolled oats, which is not anyone's breakfast of choice, not even horses, mixed with milk from Yasgur's dairy farm and a little bit of honey.  Umm, thanks, but I think I'd rather starve. 

Another mistake that the 1970 film made was not editing out Richie Havens (personal opinion, he brought nothing to the table, sorry, not a fan) and here we find out that his song "Freedom" -  which honestly, is just the word "Freedom" repeated about 1,700 times - was, in fact, a time-filler.  Havens wasn't scheduled to perform until later on the first day, but he was THERE, and the other musical acts were stuck in various hotels around the region and could not get to the venue by car, due to all the traffic and people still coming to the event.  So Richie Havens' song had to be stretched out to about 75 minutes while the promoters arranged a helicopter to fly in a few more acts.  Now, the truth can be told. 

When we did locate and gaze upon the famous field in Bethel, NY, which I sort of didn't realize was on my bucket list until I did it, I was a bit disappointed that I couldn't still see any trash or debris from the event.  I mean, of COURSE they cleaned it all up after, which probably took weeks, and no public event in the world ever existed without generating a lot of trash, I get that now that I work in a movie theater.  Even the event devoted to peace, love and music, though, degenerated into a pile of garbage that got left behind, and I can't tell if that's irony or just more truth. 

There's an arts center now, adjacent to the festival field, and since we arrived at 4:45 pm and the museum was due to close at 5, there was no point in buying a ticket.  But if I find myself back in Bethel someday I'd be willing to take a spin through that museum.  Don't go to Woodstock, NY looking for any evidence of the concert, because you won't find it - Woodstock probably has a lot going for it, though, like art galleries and the Woodstock Film Festival and maybe you can find that big pink house where The Band recorded, but there's little connection, if any, to the 1969 festival.  

There's also a plaque next to the field, in Bethel, to mark the occasion - and it has all the names of the performers on it.  Only that's not true, either, it lists the big names, like The Who, Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix and Grateful Dead.  It even lists the 2nd tier acts, like Sweetwater, Mountain, Ten Years After, and Paul Butterfield Blues Band.  And it lists Richie Havens and Sha-Na-Na, for some reason.  But what about Bert Sommer, Tim Hardin, Quill, and the Keef Hartley Band?  They all performed, didn't they?  Are we just going to ignore them, and let the groupmind remember only the acts that were the most influential over time?  Don't make me dig out that documentary about the lost performances, just to see how bad the Keef Hartley Band was - I'm guessing they were terrible, but now part of me really wants to know.  

I'm going to go watch the HBO doc about Woodstock '99 now, and if that changes any of my feelings, I'll post an update below.  But I think first I want just one night alone with my thoughts about the 1969 festival.  This documentary was incredibly informative, but it only really touched on the highlights of the musical performances, while the 1970 doc kind of did the reverse. (Like, come on, man, where's footage of The Grateful Dead? Blood, Sweat & Tears?  Canned Heat?  Mountain?  THE BAND?). But I think there's room for both movies, you sort of have to watch them both to get the whole story.  Now we're going to need a documentary made about how the plans for the 50th Anniversary concert fell apart.

Also starring the voices of John Roberts, Joel Rosenman, Joel Makower, Bob Spitz, Michael Lang, David Crosby (last seen in "David Crosby: Remember My Name"), Paul Kantner (last seen in "Down in the Flood: Bob Dylan, The Band & the Basement Tapes"), Wavy Gravy, Henry Diltz, Donald Goldmacher, Mel Lawrence, Chip Monck, John Morris, Louis Ratner, Miriam Yasgur, 

with archive footage of Joan Baez (last seen in "No Direction Home: Bob Dylan"), Paul Butterfield (last seen in "The Last Waltz"), Bill Graham (ditto), Joe Cocker (last seen in "20 Feet from Stardom"), Bob Dylan (last seen in "Muscle Shoals"), John Entwistle (last seen in "Rush: Time Stand Still"), Keith Moon (ditto), John Fogerty (last seen in "Sound City"), Richie Havens, Jimi Hendrix (last seen in "ZZ Top: That Little Ol' Band from Texas"), Robert F. Kennedy (last seen in "John Lewis: Good Trouble"), Martin Luther King (last seen in "Malcolm X"), Country Joe McDonald, Graham Nash (also last seen in "David Crosby: Remember My Name"), Stephen Stills (ditto), Dan Rather (last seen in "Straight Outta Compton"), Ronald Reagan (last seen in "Walt: The Man Behind the Myth"), Nelson Rockefeller, Carlos Santana (last seen in "Sound City"), Grace Slick (also last seen in "Down in the Flood: Bob Dylan, The Band & the Basement Tapes"), Sly Stone (last seen in "Standing in the Shadows of Motown"), Max Yasgur, Neil Young (last seen in "Hitsville: The Making of Motown"). 

RATING: 6 out of 10 bands who couldn't make it or declined to appear (The Beatles, the Byrds, The Jeff Beck Group, Chicago, The Doors, The Guess Who, Jethro Tull, Led Zeppelin, The Moody Blues, Poco, Procul Harum, The Rolling Stones, Simon & Garfunkel, Spirit, Strawberry Alarm Clock, and Frank Zappa, among others)

Bad Reputation

Year 13, Day 205 - 7/24/21 - Movie #3,899

BEFORE: Kristen Stewart carries over from "The Runaways". This just makes sense, right, to follow up with a doc on Joan Jett, last member of that all-girl band left standing - or left touring and performing, I guess, after the others quit or found better things to do.  Jackie Fuchs (aka Jackie Fox) appeared on Jeopardy! in 2018, and had also worked as a record company executive, a modeling agent, an entertainment attorney, and a promoter for Tony Robbins' seminars.  I guess all that beats working as a chainsaw sculptor.  

We may all look back on our lives, once we've been through several jobs and several relationships, and realize there were several incarnations of ourselves, and perhaps this pandemic has been an opportunity for people to revisit their lives, reshuffle the deck, maybe even chart a new course.  I know I looked for part-time work for about 6 months without landing anything, and then when the movie theaters started to open up, I grabbed a job that turned out to not really be to my liking, but at least I got out of the house more and got some exercise and a little extra cash.  Now that things are opening up even more (knock on wood) I'm trying to transition to a job at a college, because they're all starting to prepare for the new school year.  Here's hoping the Delta variant doesn't shut us down again, that would really put a monkey wrench into my plans - could, umm, everybody who's been avoiding getting vaccinated please reconsider their plans?  Because that would really help me out here. Thanks. 

THE PLOT: Documentary about rock star Joan Jett.

AFTER: OK, first off, this is why it's important to keep track of EVERYONE who appears in a documentary, even via archive footage.  If I had known that footage of Dave Grohl (from Joan Jett's Hall of Fame induction) would be used, then I could have come here STRAIGHT from "Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny".  For that matter, if I'd known that footage of Freddie Mercury would appear in this film, I could have come here STRAIGHT from "Bohemian Rhapsody".  I may be the only person watching films linked together by actor, but I can't do it alone, I need some help, people!  If you're a documentary filmmaker, PLEASE make sure that your film's IMDB records are complete, especially the more famous people who appear in archive footage.  It just makes my life easier, don't make me beg.  Now I have to spend a couple hours updating YOUR film's record, just in case somebody else travels this same road in the future, which I'll admit is unlikely.  But I'll do it, just the same. 

(I also would have had more options for my outro, and the order of the next 14 or 15 films in general, but it doesn't matter, the schedule is set, I've got a chain that gets me there.  It is what it is. In the end result below, I'm listing the added personalities alphabetically, which places Freddie Mercury next to Liza Minnelli, David Bowie next to Bing Crosby, and Donald Trump next to Sid Vicious - look, I just want everybody to be OK with all that, including the stars themselves, living or dead.)

But this isn't about me, today it's about Joan Jett, and all her incarnations, through the Runaways and after, working as a solo artist and then as a producer and promoter of young punk bands on the rise.  After some down time (and I think we've all been through some of that lately) she positioned herself with a new band JUST as MTV was starting to hit in 1982, and who doesn't remember "I Love Rock and Roll" being the biggest damn hit around that time?  MTV was only supposed to play it twice a day, so people didn't get sick of it, but they ended up playing it about sixteen times a day - because that's what they did back then.  Oh, yeah, kids, MTV used to play these things called music videos, it's sort of what they became famous for, before there were reality shows. 

Of course, she's also famous for her cover of "Crimson & Clover" (and for NOT changing the pronouns in that song, hint hint), also "I Hate Myself for Loving You", "Bad Reputation" and "Light of Day", among others.  But because I'm so into cover songs, the only album of hers that I own (in addition to her Greatest Hits) is "The Hit List", which is all covers - AC/DC's "Dirty Deeds", The Kinks' "Celluloid Heroes", ZZ Top's "Tush", CCR's "Have You Ever Seen the Rain", The Door's "Love Me Two Times", the Sex Pistols' "Pretty Vacant" and so on.  Also, I've mailed out compilations of Christmas songs to my friends and family over the last 25 years-plus, and let me just mention that I used the Blackhearts covers of "Little Drummer Boy" and "Silent Night", with great gusto. 

Much is made of the relationship between Joan and her longtime manager, Kenny Laguna - they bicker like an old married couple, but of course they're not, for several reasons.  Kenny is married, and Joan just doesn't swing that way, obvi.  But I think it's more evocative of the fact that nearly every single famous, successful person has someone like that, someone to take care of the travel arrangements, the contracts, the e-mails and the finances, and you know, keep an eye on things and keep them out of jail, if it comes to that.  I fulfill that function for somebody, and I know several people who do something similar for other celebrities, it can be a full-time, all encompassing but also very interesting job.  

NITPICK POINT: Supposedly, Joan Jett was the one who wanted the story of The Runaways to be all about the music, not the band members' image as sex objects.  The music, the music, it was always supposed to be all about the music.  So, umm, then how come this documentary ended up ALSO being about vegetarianism, animal rights, gay rights, appreciating those serving in the U.S. military, and several other causes?  I get that Joan Jett is an activist, and feels strongly about these things, but remember when it was supposed to be all about the music?  Just sayin'...

But if there's a lesson here, it's one of persistence and durability - if you stick around at any job long enough, you could end up becoming the one in charge.  Sometimes it takes a decade or even two to get there, but there's just no substitute for patience and experience.  Even a terrible gig or a bad job could wind up feeling like it's exactly where you're supposed to be, after the fact, of course, provided that you maintain a positive attitude, make the right connections and channel that failure into something positive in the long run, I have to believe that.  How long did it take for Cher to be taken seriously as an actress?  It's kind of like that.  Joan Jett made it into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2015, so that (only?) took about 40 years.  Sometimes, that's just what it takes, I guess. 

Also starring Joan Jett (last seen in "Lemmy"), Billie Joe Armstrong (last seen in "This is 40"), Cherie Currie, Miley Cyrus (last seen in "A Very Murray Christmas"), Michael J. Fox (last seen in "Back in Time"), Debbie Harry (last seen in "Love, Gilda"), Adam Horovitz (last seen in "A Kiss Before Dying"), Iggy Pop (last seen in "Dead Man"), Chris Stein, Pete Townshend (last seen in "Rush: Time Stand Still")

Eric Ambel, Gene Baur, Rodney Bingenheimer (last seen in "Up in Smoke"), Don Bolles, Carianne Brinkman, Gen. Kevin Byrnes, Michelle Cho, Bill Curbishley, Phanie Diaz, Shepard Fairey (last seen in "Exit Through the Gift Shop"), Laura Jane Grace, Nikki Haley, Kathleen Hanna, Sally Hershberger, Kenny Laguna, Meryl Laguna, Anne Larkin, Ian MacKaye, Toby Mamis, Evelyn McDonnell, Alison Mosshart, Dougie Needles, Mike Ness, Thom Panunzio, Thommy Price, Gary Ryan, Elliot Saltzman, Dana White

with archive footage of Roseanne Barr (last seen in "Cecil B. Demented"), David Bowie (last seen in "We Are Twisted Fucking Sister"), Bing Crosby (last seen in "The Last Laugh (2019)"), Darby Crash, Roger Daltrey (also last seen in "Rush: Time Stand Still"), Micky Dolenz (last seen in "Super Duper Alice Cooper"), John "Johnny Rotten" Lydon (ditto), Joey Ramone (ditto), Lorna Doom, Dakota Fanning (also carrying over from "The Runaways"), Lita Ford, Kim Fowley, Jackie Fuchs, Whoopi Goldberg (last seen in "The Color Purple"), Dave Grohl (last seen in "Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny"), Chrissie Hynde, J.J. Jackson, Mick Jagger (last seen in "The Burnt Orange Heresy"), David Johansen (also last seen in "A Very Murray Christmas"), Elton John (last seen in "Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond"), Paul McCartney (last seen in "The Accidental President"), Malcolm McDowell (last seen in "Bombshell"), Freddie Mercury (last seen in "Bohemian Rhapsody"), Liza Minnelli (last seen in "George Michael: Freedom"), Joni Mitchell (last seen in "David Crosby: Remember My Name"), Manuel Noriega, Krist Novocelic (last seen in "Sound City"), Yoko Ono (last seen in "The U.S. vs. John Lennon"), Elvis Presley (last seen in "ZZ Top: That Little Ol' Band from Texas"), Suzi Quatro, Gena Rowlands (last seen in "Paris, Je t'Aime"), Frank Sinatra (last seen in "They'll Love Me When I'm Dead"), Tom Snyder (ditto), Pat Smear, Donna Summer, Nancy Spungen, Donald Trump (last seen in "Class Action Park"), Sid Vicious, Andy Warhol (last seen in "John & Yoko: Above Us Only Sky"), Elizabeth Warren, Sandy West, Mia Zapata, 

RATING: 5 out of 10 U.S.O. concerts

The Runaways

Year 13, Day 204 - 7/23/21 - Movie #3,898

BEFORE: It's finally here, the Big Documentary/Summer Music series, or BSDM for short.  Wait, that's no good, that already stands for something.  Plus, it already SORT OF started with "Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny" for music and "Everything Is Copy" for docs.  But either way this is where I'm hoping it all comes together, music and docs and such for the next 14 films, which would normally be two week's time, but my work schedule has slowed things down a bit, so 14 films should now stretch for about 3 1/2 weeks, nothing I can do about that.  

Also, this WOULD have normally been the start of a superhero/sci-fi chain, in previous years I've timed those to synch up with San Diego Comic-Con, even though I stopped going out there in 2017. (Since the event went virtual in 2020, and is virtual again this year because of the COVID-19 pandemic, I would have had to stop in a couple years anyway, it feels a bit like I had a ticket for the Titanic that read, "Get off before the iceberg hits."). Yes, I've got both "Black Widow" and "Hellboy" coming up on the schedule, but it wasn't possible to link to them in time and still have a chain that gets me to the end of the year - at least there wasn't one that I found.  But I'm still going to get there - I can link to them just four films after the Big Doc/Summer Music series ends, so in just about a month.  Things could change though, my situation could allow me more time, that's what I'm waiting to hear about this week.  The question then becomes, if I CAN accelerate my movie-watching schedule, should I?  Or should I space out my movies so I don't have a big 2-week gap in September?  I'm not sure, but I'll figure it out. 

Hannah Marks carries over from "I Used to Go Here". 

THE PLOT: A coming-of-age biographical film about the 1970s teenage all-girl rock band The Runaways.  The relationship between band members Cherie Currie and Joan Jett is also explored.  

AFTER: If Tenacious D was my warm-up/opening act, then the next band to take the stage is The Runaways (in fictional form) followed by Joan Jett (in documentary form).  Lots of headliners coming up on the schedule, don't worry, from the BeeGees to Tina Turner.  Once I started putting this chain together, though, I felt I HAD to include this one, because it's been on the list so long that if I don't watch it now, I'm afraid it's going to scroll off of Netflix.  Yeah, THAT long. 

It's weird to think that there hadn't been a successful all-girl band until the mid-1970's.  There had been girl GROUPS, like the Supremes, the Ronettes, Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, but nothing that could be called rock and roll, everything was all very safe, very cookie cutter, and this is all a result of the patriarchy, right?  America liked their women to present themselves in a certain way, something that represented the bygone days of the post-war era, where women could vote, sure, but they better not express strong opinions or have weird sexual desires and stuff.  One rock promoter, Kim Fowley, who had produced hits for everyone from Cat Stevens to Paul Revere and the Raiders, saw the potential in molding a bunch of horny teen girls into some combination of strong feminists and sex objects at the same time.  Just as male rockers were becoming more feminine (David Bowie, Lou Reed), he figured he'd flip the script and get a group of girls to act more masculine on stage.  Somebody had to break through that wall, the one that said that "girls don't play electric guitar" - but that's only because nobody would let them.  

And this was back when Joan Jett (aka Joan Larkin) was the SHY one, if you can believe that.  So the lead singer was Cherie Currie, (it's pronounced in the French way, like "shuh-REE", because if you pronounce it like "cherry" then she sounded like an Indian dessert.).  This was perhaps a bit confusing, though, that she sang the thrown-together song "Cherry Bomb", which I guess was a play on her name, only spoken differently.  Anyway, in a few weeks Fowley had released his five girl recruits from their idyllic Hollywood lives and thrown them on the road in a van, hoping they'd learn some better chords along the way.  So rock and roll, just throw the band into the fire and hope that they bond together and write some more songs while trying to dodge all the stuff that the audiences are throwing at them.  

The film might be playing a bit fast and loose with the band's official story here, though - Jackie Fox didn't sign off her rights, so her character doesn't appear here, and there's no mention of original bassist Micki Steele, who was fired from the group, or her replacement, Peggy Foster, who left after one month.  Since this is based on a biographical book by Cherie Currie, naturally the POV puts her in a more prominent role, but then again, she was the lead singer and got the most attention at the time, from Japanese photographers in particular.  One has to make allowances, I suppose, for a film diverting from reality at times in order to tell a more compelling story.  

So there's a focus here on the relationship between Cherie and Joan Jett - of course, you put these girls out on the road together with no supervision, at a time in their lives where they just want to party and screw and figure out all the implications later, stuff like this is bound to happen.  Plus it was the 1970's, near the start of the whole gay rights movement, feminism, and they probably weren't even thinking about all this, they just wanted to have a good time.  Jett never officially "came out" and was taken to task a bit for this in 2006, but come on, by that time if you couldn't figure out her sexual preference you were probably blind, deaf and dumb.  Lita Ford had also written in her book about how she quit the band because everyone else in it was gay, so you figure it out. 

The Runaways enjoyed success after traveling to Japan, and putting on shows that the Japanese teens had never seen before or even imagined, and you have to wonder what effect they had in the long run on those Japanese boys - and the girls, too.  Cherie's photo layout for the Japanese press caused deep division in the band, though - Jett didn't want the band to just be about sex, she wanted it to be about the music.  OK, well, umm, maybe write better songs, then?  You can't have it both ways, really, to present a strong sexual image on stage, and then complain when fans are looking at sexy photos of you after the show.  But that's the conundrum of feminism right there, I suppose - you put yourself out there sexually and some people in the crowd are going to be turned on, sorry if those aren't the people you were trying to reach.

After that, though, this just follows the typical "Behind the Music" formula for any band - get famous, get drunk, get stoned, and then get dead.  Or the band breaks up, which is the other way to go - dying is actually the smarter career move at that point, some might say.  Of course we all know that Joan Jett kept at it, re-invented herself several times over and made it to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, but I'll deal with all that tomorrow.  Lita Ford had a hit in the 1980's with "Kiss Me Deadly" (only, not if you're a girl), Cherie Currie became a chainsaw artist, and manager Kim Fowley was still reportedly prowling Hollywood Boulevard, trying to put another band together, until he died in 2015.  See, smart move, he got out before the whole #metoo movement would have taken him out.

But does it go without saying that the best part of this film was Michael Shannon's performance as Kim Fowley?  I often find that the best part of a film is Michael Shannon's performance, but I'll say it anyway.  And who knew that if you put a bunch of glam make-up on Michael Shannon that he'd start to resemble Eddie Izzard.  Just me? 

Also starring Dakota Fanning (last seen in "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2"), Kristen Stewart ("ditto"), Michael Shannon (last seen in "Let's Go to Prison"), Riley Keough (last seen in "The Devil All the Time"), Stella Maeve (last seen in "Brooklyn's Finest"), Scout Taylor-Compton (last seen in "13 Going on 30"), Johnny Lewis (last seen in "Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem"), Alia Shawkat (last seen in "Duck Butter"), Tatum O'Neal (last seen in "She's Funny That Way"), Brett Cullen (last seen in "Joker"), Jill Andre (last seen in "The Master"), Keir O'Donnell (last seen in "Gifted"), Brendan Sexton III (last seen in "Everybody's Fine"), Peggy Stewart, Robert Romanus, Nick Eversman (last seen in "Cinema Verite"), Lisa Long (last seen in "What Women Want"), Time Winters, Masami Kosaka (also last seen in "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2"), Masayuki Yonezawa.

RATING: 4 out of 10 seedy hotels

I Used to Go Here

Year 13, Day 202 - 7/21/21 - Movie #3,897

BEFORE: I've been working at a movie theater for about six weeks now, and it's just a few blocks from NYU, where I went to college.  That sort of justifies watching this one tonight, though it's not June (graduation time) or August (back-to-school time) when I might normally program something like this.  Anyway, I need to make the connection to get where I want to be for Big Movie #3,900 this weekend. 

I had a job interview yesterday, fingers crossed - I'm very motivated to get out of my current job for several reasons, among them the fact that working at the movie theater is drastically cutting into my movie-watching time, which seems very ironic and inappropriate.  I should know by the end of next week if I can hand in my notice there - I mean, I can quit any time but I'd rather have another job lined up first, for safety's sake.  I was unemployed or under-employed for over a year and I don't want to backslide.  

Zoe Chao carries over from "Downhill" - she is NOT the director of "Nomadland", that's Chloe Zhao, different person.  I have to pay closer attention to names, especially the subtle differences, as I'm busy straightening out the IMDB listing for a composer that I worked with - his name was off by one letter on the IMDB and I didn't notice, but now I'm working on fixing that.  Thankfully we spelled his name in the credits of a short film correctly, and that's been helpful in getting the main record adjusted. 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Liberal Arts" (Movie #3,654)

THE PLOT: Following the launch of her new novel, 35-year-old writer Kate is invited by her former professor to speak at her alma mater.  After accepting the invitation, Kate finds herself deeply enmeshed in the lives of a group of college students. 

AFTER: This is one of those films that cherishes all those little awkward moments in life, like when you've got a thing for your Creative Writing professor, or you find out that he's got a thing for you.  Or you find out your girlfriend is hooking up with someone else, or your ex-fiancé is posting pictures on Instagram of himself with his new partner.  Or you have to make conversation with your roommate's mother and you end up really bonding, and what is THAT all about?  

The whole thing starts when author Kate Conklin has her book tour cancelled by her publisher, due to lagging sales, or lack of funding, or maybe it's the rise in eBooks.  The whole point of the book tour is to increase sales, so she doesn't quite understand it (it couldn't POSSIBLY be because the book is, you know, terrible...) but at least this does free up her schedule so she can accept that invitation from her old professor to speak at Illinois University.  What else is she going to do that week, besides cyber-stalk her ex on Instagram and then needily text him?  So she's off to Carbondale to re-visit her roots.  

She ends up learning that she still has so much to learn - like the fact that a bed and breakfast comes with breakfast (umm, how could she not know that?) and that her old off-campus house is now populated by a group of three male students, all with their own unique problems and hang-ups.  But, those glow-in-the-dark stars she put on the ceiling are still THERE, so it's like an awkward walk through her own past, parts of which are still visible, just in different forms.  After giving her lecture she ends up spending time with these three young men, awkwardly, of course, and gets caught up in their personal problems - well, at least that's something to do.  

Her old professor claims to be her biggest fan, but has he even READ her book?  And he's married now, so there's no chance of rekindling whatever attraction they may have felt when she was a student, but is he seeing a younger student on the side?  Super awkward, but part of her needs to know.  Sure, this is more than a bit contrived, especially when losing her keys is the thing that forces her over to the frat house to sleep, and you can practically see the dominoes tipping each other over to get the plot to where somebody felt it needed to go.  Same goes for the iPhone needing to be charged...

Speaking of complicated data issues with the IMDB, the director of this film is Kris Rey, formerly known as Kris Williams (her birth name) and Kris Swanberg (her married name). See, this is why I'm opposed to women changing their names when they get married, not because of the patriarchal system or because it's an archaic system that implies the women are the properly of their husbands, but because it's just too confusing, from a record-keeping point of view.  If somebody wants to change their name, that's fine, like if they don't like their birth surname, but why should there be any pressure forcing someone to change their name to their spouse's, which is generally confusing and another meaningless thing that then everybody else has to keep track of?  Unless you're a celebrity, just keep the last name you were born with and learn to live with it - I'll make an exception for Duncan Jones, formerly known as "Zowie Bowie".

Off to work today, 5 pm to 1:30 am, so I can watch another movie on Friday night, and i'll report back in on Saturday. 

Also starring Gillian Jacobs (last seen in "Dean"), Jemaine Clement (last seen in "What We Do in the Shadows"), Hannah Marks (last seen in "The Amazing Spider-Man"), Forrest Goodluck (last seen in "The Revenant"), Josh Wiggins, Jorma Taccone (last seen in "An American Pickle"), Kate Micucci (last seen in "Jay and Silent Bob Reboot"), Brandon Daley, Khloe Janel, Rammel Chan, Jennifer Joan Taylor (last seen in "The Weather Man"), Cindy Gold, Kristina Valada-Viars, Nik Whitcomb.

RATING: 6 out of 10 weed gummies

Downhill

Year 13, Day 199 - 7/18/21 - Movie #3,896

BEFORE: This is going to sound a bit weird, but we spent part of yesterday visiting the 9/11 Memorial and Museum in downtown Manhattan.  I've had a couple days off from the movie theater, and I asked my wife if she wanted to do anything on the weekend day I was free, and she opted for the museum visit.  Well, we are approaching the 20th anniversary of that disaster, and there's a chance that the museum traffic will go up this September, so we figured we'd go on a July weekend, when more people would be likely to visit the beach or an amusement park or something.  Perhaps this was seasonally inappropriate, but it was done with good intention.  

The museum is a bit of an oddity, because it's a combination of a tragedy plus patriotism with a gift shop at the end, of course.  After going there and being forced to relive the trauma of 9/11 at every turn, we started to wonder why anyone would go there to relive the trauma of 9/11 if they didn't have to. I got the same sort of feeling I did when we visited Dallas, and I wanted to see the book depository and the grassy knoll and the place where JFK was killed.  It was interesting for a while, and then once we were down on the street and saw the marking on the street that denotes, you know, the exact spot, it all became too real and I got that weird sinking feeling.  That happened again today when we realized we were in a building inside what used to be "the pit" and they had preserved some of the original building columns in their original place, and the walls of the pit, and suddenly it all became too real.  The displays are designed to recreate the trauma of the original day, but now I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not.  Certainly there must be more constructive and fun museums to visit, and yes, I realize that's not the point, but still.

Speaking of seasonally inappropriate, tonight's film is a skiing-based film, right in the middle of summer.  Sure, there are Olympics coming up next week, but they're the Summer Games, delayed from last year.  Maybe watching a film with a lot of snow in it will help me deal with the heat?  I don't know, but Will Ferrell carries over from "Zeroville".  It's difficult to recall why I didn't watch this film last year - I think it was part of the plan, perhaps between "Eurovision Song Contest" and "Drunk Parents", did I cut it because I was one film over my limit, or was I trying to save it for winter so it would feel more seasonally appropriate?  I recorded it on my DVR in early December, so maybe it wasn't available to me when I watched those other Will Ferrell films.  Maybe later tonight I'll listen to some Christmas music...

THE PLOT: Barely escaping an avalanche during a family ski vacation in the Alps, a married couple is thrown into disarray as they are forced to reevaluate their lives and how they feel about each other. 

AFTER: Ah, I get the double meaning now - this married couple is in a relationship that may be "headed downhill", as the saying goes.  But doesn't everything head downhill, automatically?  Not to be too depressing about things, but doesn't entropy demand that everything has a shelf-life, we're all circling the drain, and ultimately everything gets worse instead of better.  Right?  That's all implied, I shouldn't even have to bring it up - like saying "downhill skiing", it's unnecessary, because all skiing is downhill, you can't ski uphill.  Well, I suppose there's cross-country skiing, so maybe you do have to say "downhill" - but you don't need to say "local restaurant", because all restaurants are local to somewhere, so you can just say "restaurant", OK?  

The trouble started months ago, when Pete's father passed away, and he was a travel agent who for decades never traveled anywhere himself, which reminds me of Jimmy Stewart's character in "It's a Wonderful Life", who had all kinds of travel plans but never left Bedford Falls.  Life's too short, man, you've got to get out there and see parts of the world before it's too late, and that's what prompted Pete and his wife Billie to take their two sons to the Austrian Alps - or maybe it was Will Ferrell who wanted to take his family there, and making a movie was a great excuse to do that.  I think his wife is from Sweden, right?  So maybe he's really into skiing and winter stuff.  

Anyway, according to the movie the authorities create these small controlled avalanches at certain times, to prevent a larger one from taking place naturally, which would be more dangerous.  Our American family here is unprepared for this, despite the numerous warning signs posted around the resort - so they're on the outside deck of the restaurant when it takes place, and Billie reacts by protecting her sons with her body, but Pete grabs his cell phone and takes off, which doesn't exactly win him any points with his family.  The rest of the film is basically a hashing-out of the relationship in light of this occurrence, the couple needs to re-connect and perhaps some new ground rules need to be established with regards to emergency procedures, and also how protective the couple is going to be of their teenage sons in the future.  Generally speaking, Billie is the "helicopter mom" and Pete is the "hands off" dad, but maybe this needs to change, or a middle ground needs to be established.  

I don't have kids, but I get that neither extreme is probably ideal, you need to watch after your kids but also allow them to develop as individuals, and that means they may need to take some risks once in a while to learn and grow, and they may get hurt once in a while.  The important thing is to keep them alive while also allowing them to try new things and have fun, and that doesn't sound easy - way too much work for me.  Better to just not have kids in the first place, but I know, somebody's got to keep the species going, just maybe let's slow it down a bit for a while, until we can get this climate change thing figured out, that's all I ask.  Yes, I'm childless for the sake of the planet, let's go with that. 

The couple then tries changing roles a little bit, Billie has a solo day on the mountain where she flirts with a handsome Italian ski instructor, and Pete takes the kids on an alpine sled ride (Jesus, didn't he see "Action Park", doesn't he know how dangerous those things are?) and realizes that he doesn't have all the answers either, that his way of dealing with the kids may not be the best way, and what do you know, they all maybe find a new middle ground they can work with.  I approve of the sort of switcheroo used here, Billie is put into what we might normally consider "male" situations (considering infidelity, and the scene in the bathroom) while Pete is thrust into the traditionally "female" role (taking the kids on an outing) in order for them to walk a mile in the other's shoes and come to a new understanding.  OK, so it's hardly "King Lear", but at least the plot points and turn-arounds are properly motivated. 

This film was based on a Swedish film called "Force Majeure", which in turn was inspired by an episode of "Seinfeld", in which George Costanza pushed an old woman out of the way when there was a small fire at a child's birthday party.  Appearing in that episode, of course, was Julia Louis-Dreyfus, so it kind of feels like we've seen this idea come around full circle, right?  One knock, though, is that based on the cast most people would approach this film expecting a comedy, and it's quite unclear if it actually is one.  I guess it has comic elements to it, but first and foremost it plays out like a family drama/relationship film.  Had I known that, I might have scheduled it somewhere else - but whatever.  It was released on Valentine's Day last year, which was prior to all theaters getting shut down - still, I think the message may be an important one post-pandemic, as things slowly return to normal, most parents have to re-assess the risks associated with letting their kids return to school, travel, and participate in activities, and maybe there are relationships and work schedules among the adults that need to be re-assessed as well. 

I'm working tonight, after two and a half days off, and then both jobs on Monday, and another night shift on Tuesday.  Plus there's a job interview in there somewhere, too - so I may not get to four movies this week, we'll have to see.  But I'll be back here again after watching a movie on Wednesday, I guess.  I won't get to Movie #3,900 until next weekend at this rate...

Also starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus (last heard in "Onward"), Miranda Otto, Zoe Chao (last seen in "Where'd You Go, Bernadette"), Zach Woods (last heard in "The Angry Birds Movie 2"), Kristofer Hivju (last seen in "The Thing" (2011)), Alex Macqueen (last seen in "All Is True"), Julian Grey, Ammon Jacob Ford, Giulio Berruti with archive footage of David Hasselhoff (last seen in "The New Guy")

RATING: 4 out of 10 co-worker's Instagram photos