Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice

Year 13, Day 215 - 8/3/21 - Movie #3,905

BEFORE: I hope other people can also see the progression here - Divine had hit disco records, and so did the Bee Gees, who wrote "Islands in the Stream" for Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton, and Dolly released the album "Trio" along with Emmylou Harris and, of course, Linda Ronstadt.  It makes perfect sense in retrospect, right?  And I didn't even plan the chain along those lines, I was just looking at the cast of each documentary, but I guess ultimately that results in putting together the most logical order sometimes, right? 

Dolly Parton carries over from "Dolly Parton: Here I Am".

THE PLOT: With one of the most memorably stunning voices that has ever hit the airwaves, Linda Ronstadt burst onto the 1960's folk rock music scene in her early twenties. 

AFTER: Way back in 2018, I did my first chain of musical documentaries, starting with the birth Beatles and going through to the retirement of Rush - and while the whole year wasn't a perfect chain, the documentaries DID form a fully-linked chain of 53 films, it even shocked me that it was possible, but come on, they tend to interview the same people, over and over for these things - and then even if the interview subjects changed, nearly all those docs used footage of the Beatles or the Stones in them at some point.  Still, considering that I went through docs on Chicago, the Grateful Dead, Black Sabbath, David Bowie, the Rolling Stones, the Beach Boys, 

James Brown, Metallica, Michael Jackson and even Lady Gaga in one fell swoop, that still seems like it was an accomplishment - one of endurance, if nothing else. 

You may notice that this year's music docs haven't been about the top-tier acts, not in my book anyway, I'm really clean-up hitting now by watching docs about Joan Jett, Frank Zappa, the Bee Gees and Dolly Parton - these are not acts I tend to listen to in my everyday life.  But I'm aware of the docs, and I'm aware of these musical artists, so let's cross them off - when I'm done this year, I'll have cleared the category again, except for docs about Pentatonix and Gordon Lightfoot, which I was unable to work in based on the cast lists that I have - perhaps there's some archive footage in those two docs that would have allowed me to connect them into the chain, but how am I supposed to KNOW that without watching them?  Who gives a crap about Gordon Lightfoot, anyway?  

But watching the Linda Ronstadt doc feels a bit more important - though I've seen the other side of some of these stories back in "The History of the Eagles", how Linda hired Don Henley out of his band Shiloh to be her drummer, and then found Glenn Frey because she was living with JD Souther, who was in a band with Frey.  Then Henley and Frey went out on the road in Linda's band, and bonded over their shared love of American folk music/rock, and that's how the Eagles started - though they floundered for a while until Ronstadt covered their song "Desperado" and really turned it into something.  Whatever happened to those guys, anyway?  Oh, yeah, they're still out on the road playing "Hotel California", even though there are more ex-Eagles than current members (only Henley, Walsh and Schmidt remain, I think) and Glenn Frey Jr. is subbing in for his late father.  Anyway, this part I seen already...

But there are plenty of other facets to Linda Ronstadt's career, like that duet with Aaron Neville, the tight harmonies of Ronstadt/Parton/Harris on "Trio" (really, they're like the female CSN) and that time Linda sang with the Muppets, pretending to be Kermit's ex-girlfriend (he dumped her for some PIG, very embarrassing).  Then there was her whole venture into Mexican/Spanish music, which was part of her family's recreation when she was a child, then she re-discovered it singing back-up for Ruben Blades, then went full-on Hispanic and released her own album of Mexican folk songs, "Canciones de mi Padre", and I didn't realize Will Ferrell was riffing on that title with HIS spanish-language comedy film until just now.  

Then there was her earlier foray into operetta when she appeared in "The Pirates of Penzance", both as a live theater production and then a movie made with the same cast.  Or her three-album tour through the Great American Songbook, with help from arranger Nelson Riddle, who thankfully was still alive long enough to oversee the same arrangements he used for Sinatra's albums.  With forays into new wave, big band, jazz, country, Latin music, there really wasn't a section of the music spectrum that Ronstadt couldn't work her way into - to her it was all just singing, and singing is singing, right?  (There's no mention of how Linda covered Dolly's "I Will Always Love You", but way before Whitney Houston did...)

The film also manages to be rather coy when it comes to Linda's personal life - they never really say why she and JD Souther broke up (he claims to not remember) and then there's perhaps short shrift given to Gov. Jerry Brown, but no mention AT ALL of a relationship with a certain successful sci-fi filmmaker, and we all know that went down.  I guess you just don't want to risk saying anything negatives about multi-millionaires with teams of lawyers...  She was quite a looker back in the day, and probably got a lot of attention, thanks to the sexy (but still demure) Rolling Stone photo shoots.  She never married, claiming she could never find anyone who was musically talented but also not a moron, who could also put up with her.  She described herself as "lonely" in articles, but that's where you may end up if you never settle. Just sayin'. She did, however, adopt and raise two children (also not mentioned in the doc).

It's a bit of a bummer to see her at the end of the documentary, barely able to sing because of her Parkinson's disease - she can still harmonize with her brother and nephew, but she doesn't really count that as singing, not the way she used to belt out songs on stage in big arenas, anyway.  Again, if you're judging someone by the company they keep, who else managed to collaborate with Johnny Cash, Gram Parsons, Warren Zevon, Philip Glass, Neil Young, Bette Midler, Rosemary Clooney, and Frank Zappa?  Plus Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, James Ingram, Aaron Neville AND the Muppets?  Nobody else, because doing all of that sounds impossible, but it somehow wasn't for her. 

Also starring Linda Ronstadt (last seen in "Chuck Berry: Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll"), Peter Asher, Ruben Blades (last seen in "Hands of Stone"), Karla Bonoff, John Boylan, Jackson Browne (last seen in "David Crosby: Remember My Name"), Cameron Crowe (ditto), Patricia Casado, Ry Cooder, David Geffen (last seen in "Everything Is Copy"), Emmylou Harris (last seen in "The Last Waltz"), Don Henley (last seen in "History of the Eagles"), Robert Hilburn, Bobby Kimmel, Kevin Kline (last seen in "Life as a House"), Aaron Neville (last seen in "Sandy Wexler"), Bonnie Raitt, Bobby Ronstadt, Peter Ronstadt, Joe Smith, JD Souther, Waddy Wachtel (last seen in "Keith Richards: Under the Influence")

with archive footage of Nina Blackwood, Jerry Brown, Glen Campbell (last seen in "The Wrecking Crew!"), Johnny Carson (last seen in "Cinema Verite"), Johnny Cash (last seen in "Sound City"), Stevie Nicks (ditto), Dick Cavett (also last seen in "Everything Is Copy"), Gene Clark (also last seen in "David Crosby: Remember My Name"), Glenn Frey (ditto), Chris Hillman (ditto), Roger McGuinn (ditto), Felicia Collins, David Crosby (last seen in "Woodstock: Three Days That Defined a Generation"), Neil Young (ditto), Sheryl Crow, Daryl Dragon, Anton Fig, Tim Hardin, Hugh Hefner (last seen in "Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond"), Lena Horne, Elton John (last seen in "The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart"), Paul McCartney (ditto), Ringo Starr (ditto), Kris Kristofferson (last seen in "I Am Divine"), Will Lee, Anna McGarrigle, Kate McGarrigle, Sid McGinnis, Joni Mitchell (last seen in "Zappa"), Paul Shaffer (ditto), Frank Zappa (ditto), Laura Nyro, Joseph Papp, Gram Parsons, Teddy Pendergrass, Keith Richards (last seen in "ZZ Top: That Little Ol' Band from Texas"), Nelson Riddle, Paul Rodriguez (also last seen in "Sandy Wexler"), Frank Sinatra (last seen in "Bad Reputation"), Rex Smith, Harry Dean Stanton (last seen in "The Last Stand"), Toni Tennille, Tanya Tucker, Carrie Underwood (last seen in "Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping"), Hank Williams (last seen in "No Direction Home: Bob Dylan"), Paul Williams (last seen in "Baby Driver"). 

RATING: 6 out of 10 top ten singles

Dolly Parton: Here I Am

Year 13, Day 214 - 8/2/21 - Movie #3,904

BEFORE: August is here, and I'm hoping that a new job comes along with the new month.  Before that, however, comes the format breakdown of the movies I watched in July:

5 Movies watched on cable (saved to DVD): Shattered Glass, The Virgin Suicides, The Onion Movie, Zeroville, Woodstock: Three Days that Defined a Generation

5 Movies watched on cable (not saved): Miss Firecracker, Everything Is Copy, Downhill, I Used to Go Here, The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart

5 watched on Netflix: Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny, Hillbilly Elegy, The Woman in the Window, The Runaways, I Am Divine,

1 watched on iTunes: The Operative
2 watched on Hulu: Bad Reputation, Zappa

1 watched on HBO MAX: Cinema Verite
19 TOTAL

That's a slow month for me, but it's intentional because I had less time to watch movies, working long shifts at the movie theater.  I'm still on track to finish the Big Summer Music series before mid-August, and I still should be able to get to the start of the October horror chain about a week before the end of September.  Netflix made a good showing in July, thanks to the music films, but it still got beat by cable, 2 to 1. 

Today's linking's easy, Dolly Parton carries over from "The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart", where she was seen singing "Islands in the Stream", written by the Brothers Gibb.

THE PLOT: The life, career and music of Dolly Parton are reflected in interviews with friends and companions and the artist herself, interlaced with clips of Parton's performances. 

AFTER: I'm only 6 or 7 films in to the Big Summer Music chain, and now I'm sort of getting hit with the sameness of it all - every documentary about music legends is starting to feel very similar.  It's all get famous, get rich, get stoned (or drunk), then get dead - in some cases, at least.  Joan Jett's still with us, as is Barry Gibb, and a perhaps surprising number of musicians who played at Woodstock in 1969.  But then, how boring is a Dolly Parton doc going to be when she's only completed half of the cycle, to my knowledge she never had a drinking problem or drug habit.  

She also gets pitched here as a "very smart" person, but I hear that accent, and then suddenly I've got a disconnect.  How many smart people, honestly, have a Southern drawl, do you know what I mean?  Maybe that's my Yankee upbringing, some Civil War leftover that's ingrained into my upbringing that allows me to think I'm smarter than all them good ole boys down South.  But then, I know that Dolly has donated millions over the years to philanthropic medical causes, like hospitals and cancer centers and AIDS-related charities, literacy causes and she helped fund the COVID-19 research that helped create the vaccines that are working now, or at least they would be if everyone would simply get their shots.  So Dolly basically gets a pass from me - except you can't pitch yourself both as "a very smart person" and also "a simple country girl", I'm just saying, those two things just don't go together. 

So I'm left with what is essentially a Dolly Parton concert here, arranged mostly chronologically, through her years on Porter Wagoner's show on the magic pitcher box, then a few years making movies, and of course, touring, touring, touring.  But just like a concert, you can't just play the hits straight away, you've got to save them for the encore, right?  Like the Rolling Stones can't open with "Satisfaction", they've got to make you think they maybe aren't going to play that one (as if...) so they save that one, plus "Start Me Up", and maybe "Sympathy for the Devil", for the very end, and they make you get up and cheer until you're hoarse, you've got to DEMAND those songs.  God, the Stones are such whores - but then, so is every band.  Their fragile egos just couldn't take it if there were a few people in the audience who said, "OK, I heard the big hits, the last songs are probably going to be stinkers, so let's head out and maybe we can get to the car and get on the expressway before we get stuck in a traffic jam."  Seriously, I think the Stones have enough money now, they're not losing ANYTHING if anyone leaves early after paying full price, so what's the big deal?  

The three Dolly Parton songs that everybody wants to hear are (apparently) "Jolene", "9 to 5" and "I Will Always Love You" - so they save her performance of that last one for the very end of the documentary (but they tease you with Whitney's version about halfway through...) and they dole the other ones out.  "Jolene", of course, came around a couple years after Dolly broke out as a headliner act, and then there's a BIG section of this film devoted to making the movie "9 to 5", probably because Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin are both still alive and available, with a TV show of their own to promote.  Oh, sure, there's the sexual harassment angle, because that film was ahead of its time, and the topic got bigger as time passed - this was the first film where three women formed their own #MeToo movement, and ganged up against their boss.

But come on, nothing about "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas", what about the plight of the sex workers in the Lone Star State?  Anybody?  No anecdotes about working with Burt Reynolds?  He was a big star back then, and that was a BIG, popular movie?  Could it be that the movie was just a big exploitative, with Dolly rocking a corset for the majority of the film?  Something to be embarrassed about?  She wore almost the same exact outfit in a social media post that she wore on the cover of Playboy back in the day, so what's the big deal?  Also, no footage from "Rhinestone", no stories about working with Sylvester Stallone?  OK, THAT she's embarrassed about, at least we know where the line is being drawn, I guess. 

Also mention of the album she made with Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris?  I remember that was HUGE...  I guess maybe that'll be in tomorrow's documentary, though.  Instead we get footage of the video for "A Hard Candy Christmas", and I guess any footage of her with Kenny Rogers would similarly have interfered with her image as a solo act, as a strong independent woman who didn't need to do a duet to have a hit.  Still, another glaring omission that makes this all feel a bit by-the-numbers.

Also starring Mac Davis (last seen in "Muscle Shoals"), Jane Fonda (last seen in "Whitney"), Lily Tomlin (last seen in "I Am Divine"), David Dotson, Jerry Douglas, Stuart Duncan, Lloyd Green, Lydia Hamessley, Dave Haywood, Charles Kelley, Charlie McCoy, Kylie Minogue (last seen in "San Andreas"), Wayne Moss, Danny Nozell, Linda Perry, Hillary Scott, Mike Severs, Chris Stapleton, Kent Wells

with archive footage of Dabney Coleman (last seen in "You've Got Mail"), Kevin Costner (last seen in "Whitney"), Whitney Houston (ditto), Miley Cyrus (last seen in "Bad Reputation"), Elvis Presley (ditto) Carl Dean, Sandy Gallin, Porter Wagoner, Barbara Walters (last seen in "Everything Is Copy"), Jack White (last seen in "Shine a Light"). 

RATING: 5 out of 10 giant wigs

The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart

Year 13, Day 212 - 7/31/21 - Movie #3,903

BEFORE: Today's film is the last one for July (and after this I'm working for a couple days, so I'll be back here on Tuesday) but maybe it's time to check in to see who's had the most appearances in films so far this year.  The unexpected appearance of both Liv Ullmann and Max von Sydow in "I Am Divine" lifted both of them into third place with 6 appearances, and they're tied with Toni Collette, Adolf Hitler, Lyndon Johnson and Michelle Obama. (Right there, I can tell you it's already been a very weird year...).  Tied for second place right now, with 7 appearances each, are Chris Messina, Ronald Reagan, and Oprah Winfrey. Yeah, I'd say Chris Messina's had a very good year so far.  Out in the lead, with 8 appearances each, are Samuel L. Jackson, Martin Luther King, Barack Obama and Donald Trump.  OK, so I watched a bunch of political docs earlier this year, can you tell?

The musical documentaries are their own animal, of sorts, so you never know, a lot of films use footage of the Beatles and the Stones, so there could be a rally coming up for those band members.  But also, as I've said before, keep your eye on Oprah, she could easily take the prize this year - plus there's a documentary about MLK coming up, so things are bound to change at the top level. 

Elton John carries over from "I Am Divine" via archive footage, for his fourth appearance in 2021.  And a birthday SHOUT-OUT today to the late Ahmet Ertegun, president of Atlantic Records, born on July 31, 1923.

THE PLOT: An exploration of the history of the Bee Gees, featuring revealing interviews with oldest brother Barry Gibb and archival interviews with the late twin brothers, Robin and Maurice. 

AFTER: My wife got to watch this one before I did, which is pretty rare.  I came home one day and she said she'd watched it, and it made her quite emotional.  "Uh oh", I thought, "this ones a real tear-jerker..." but it wasn't for me, I think maybe she just is a bigger fan of the Bee Gees than I am, so she had more of a connection to the subject matter.  Plus, I've watched at least three dozen documentaries about musicians by now, and I'm fairly accustomed to the formula.  The life expectancy of everyone and everything, over time, is of course zero, so many of these docs tend to end with an update on "where are they now", and that news is often, well, not good.  And of course we all know going in that three of the four Gibb brothers are no longer alive, so yeah, that ending was bound to be a downer. 

I'm just not that big of a Bee Gees fan, but these chains are all about learning, right?  Besides, I already watched all the docs about The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Chicago, The Eagles, David Bowie, The Who, even Quiet Riot and The Beach Boys.  I literally covered rock music from A to Z - Alice Cooper to Zappa - back in 2018, but I've returned to the topic each year to catch what I missed the first time, and now I feel like I'm doing the clean-up work.  Last year it was Bob Dylan, The Band, David Crosby, Motown and a second look at John Lennon and Whitney Houston, and now I'm down to the acts that I sort of tangentially know about, or know just a few songs from, or don't even like much, but I know them because they just loom large in pop culture. 

So I didn't know that the Bee Gees wrote over 1,000 songs over their career, for themselves and others.  But the flip side of that is, I wonder how many of those songs actually had a second verse. It feels like most of the time, they couldn't be bothered - instead of verse, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, the Bee Gees songs I know all repeat the first verse in place of a second.  And "How Deep Is Your Love" only has a chorus that loops around indefinitely, it doesn't even HAVE a verse.  How lazy is that?  

I also didn't know they'd been around THAT long, performing as teenagers on Australian TV, before there even was a Beatlemania wave to ride.  So when the Fab Four hit in 1964, the Bee Gees were perfectly positioned to take advantage of the hoopla, they were already a band, unlike the thousands of guitar acts who formed very quickly and took similar animal names with one tiny spelling error.  But was it just a coincidence that the Bee Gees' name was alphabetically NEXT after the Beatles, at a time when most records stores organized their vinyl in that order?  I mean, come on, anyone who was looking through the Beatles section for a record they didn't own yet might get to the end and then the next record they saw would be a Bee Gees one, assuming that section was properly organized.  Then the Beach Boys came along with a name that would naturally go in FRONT of the Beatles ones, that had to be a jab at the Fab Four. It's a slick move, but also a dick move.

The Bee Gees also had a few different chapters in their lives, they tried the folk music thing in the late sixties when it seemed that guitar groups were maybe on the way out, and then of course they had the biggest disco hit record of all time when the movie "Saturday Night Fever" took the songs they were working on for their new album and blew them UP on the big screen.  Then just a few short years later, disco music fell out of vogue, and that Chicago DJ was blowing up disco records at a baseball game, to the chants of "Disco Sucks" from the crowd.  The Bee Gees tried in vain to disassociate themselves, but the damage was done.  You can't have it both ways, you can't enjoy the success of releasing the biggest disco album of all time, and then say, "Oh, we're not a disco group" when the crowd's sentiment turns.  It's a bit like James Cameron saying that "Avatar" isn't a sci-fi movie, after the film became so successful that it suffered some backlash.  Some things just do a bit TOO well, and then people, on the whole, start to reject it, it's just a thing that happens.  (It happened to folk music, grunge music, boy band music - just deal with it.)

I did like seeing how "Jive Talkin'" and "Staying Alive" came together musically, even if I'm not a big fan of the songs, it's always fun to see a song develop from bits and pieces and turn into a finished work.  It's a bit like watching small brushstrokes turn into a famous painting, here's one case where I do want to see how the sausage is made, even if I don't like sausage.  I also didn't know that Maurice Gibb was married to Lulu (yes, THAT Lulu), or that the band broke up for a year or so in 1969-1970, that seems like just a thing that might happen if you form a band with your brothers.  Oasis, Hanson, even the Jonas Brothers probably had to work out some family issues, it's a trade-off for getting that harmonious sound that only comes when you sing with siblings with similar voices (but ones that are also conveniently in a slightly different range).  

For me, personally, I thought it was a shame that there was no mention of the Bee Gees work shadowing the Beatles, they recorded some cover songs in 1975, like "Golden Slumbers" and "She Came In Through the Bathroom Window" for the ill-fated movie "All This and World War II", then their manager and head of their record label, Robert Stigwood, produced the so-bad-it's-good (no, wait, it's not good at all) movie "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", with Peter Frampton as Billy Shears and the Bee Gees playing musical brothers in that same fictional band.  Yes, it was a blatant cash grab to make a film out of a record that didn't need to be a film, and it's so horribly cheezy that (for me) it loops around bad and almost comes back to good again, but why no mention of it in this documentary?  Or on the Bee Gees' Wikipedia page - but it's STILL a thing that happened.  Without this movie, we might not have Aerosmith's version of "Come Together" or Earth, Wind & Fire's cover of "Got to Get You Into My Life", and those are both good, right?  Hell, track this movie down just so you can hear Billy Preston singing "Get Back" near the end, but you will have to endure Steve Martin singing "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" and a few other clunkers, but it's umm, maybe worth it?  The Bee Gees' harmonies on Beatles songs are ON POINT, and it's the only project of theirs that I genuinely care about.

But as far as today's HBO documentary is concerned, that never even happened.  All that really matters is that the Brothers Gibb sort of went into hiding for a while (some blame the "Disco Sucks" movement, but in my heart I know it was because of the "Sgt. Pepper's" movie...) but they never stopped, they kept writing songs for other people, like Barbra Streisand, Celine Dion, Dionne Warwick, and then they wrote "Islands in the Stream" for Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton (that could be important to my next documentary in the chain...) and finally they were allowed to come back and tour again, this time on the nostalgia circuit.  So yeah, then Andy Gibb died and then Maurice a few years later, then Robin a few years after that, but I don't really feel sorry for the Bee Gees, they changed with the times and enjoyed more comebacks than most bands have.  Look at REO Speedwagon, they never really changed their sound, fell out of favor, but they're still working on the State Fair circuit.  (Hey, where's the documentary about REO Speedwagon - any takers?  Anybody? Hello?)

There's another wave of Bee Gees nostalgia going on right now, with the Foo Fighters covering their songs for an album titled "Hail Satin", under the name the Dee Gees. (It took me a minute to realize D.G. stands for "Dave Grohl"...). OK, so they can't possibly have a real comeback, but Barry's still "Stayin' Alive" and performing once in a while, so their music will live on.  I just don't have to listen to it if I don't want to - I've done my due diligence now by learning all about the band and their songs.  I didn't care for their music when I was growing up, but now at least I can give them some respect. 

Also starring Barry Gibb (last seen in "It Was Fifty Years Ago Today! The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper & Beyond"), Peter Brown, Dennis Byron, Eric Clapton (last seen in "Zappa"), Noel Gallagher (last seen in "Exit Through the Gift Shop"), Albhy Galuten, Yvonne Gibb, Nick Jonas (last seen in "Midway"), Alan Kendall, Vince Lawrence, Lulu, Chris Martin (last seen in "Greed"), Vince Melouney, Bill Oakes, Karl Richardson, Mark Ronson (last heard in "Spies in Disguise"), Nicky Siano, Charley Steiner, Justin Timberlake (last seen in "Capitalism: A Love Story"), Blue Weaver, 

with archive footage of Maurice Gibb (last seen in "Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child"), Robin Gibb (last seen in "I Am Big Bird: The Caroll Spinney Story"), Andy Gibb, Barbara Gibb, Hugh Gibb, Linda Gibb, Jane Asher (last seen in "Death at a Funeral" (2007)), Ginger Baker, Jack Bruce, John Belushi (last seen in "Zappa"), Alice Cooper (ditto), George Harrison (ditto), John Lennon (ditto), Paul McCartney (ditto), Ringo Starr (ditto),Lindsey Buckingham (last seen in "Sound City"), Mick Fleetwood (ditto), Richard Burton (last seen in "Anne of the Thousand Days"), Sid Caesar (last seen in "Comic Book: The Movie"), Imogene Coca (last seen in "Under the Yum Yum Tree"), Steve Dahl, Neil Diamond (last seen in "The Last Waltz"), Celine Dion, Richard Dreyfuss (last seen in "The Last Laugh" (2019)), Brian Epstein (last seen in "It Was Fifty Years Ago Today! The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper & Beyond"), Ahmet Ertegun, Aretha Franklin (last seen in "Da 5 Bloods"), David Frost (last seen in "John & Yoko: Above Us Only Sky") , Merv Griffin (last seen in "Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond"), Bob Harris, Arif Mardin, Marcello Mastroianni, Brian May (last seen in "Bohemian Rhapsody"), Meat Loaf (last seen in "Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny"), Dolly Parton (last seen in "Richard Pryor: Omit the Logic"), Colin Petersen, Otis Redding (last seen in "Fyre Fraud"), Smokey Robinson (last seen in "Hitsville: The Making of Motown"), Diana Ross (ditto), Kenny Rogers, Ed Sheeran, Tom Snyder (last seen in "Bad Reputation"), Robert Stigwood, Barbra Streisand (last seen in "An American Pickle"), John Travolta (last seen in "Everything Is Copy"), Dionne Warwick (last seen in "Whitney") and the voice of Casey Kasem.

RATING: 6 out of 10 

I Am Divine

Year 13, Day 211 - 7/30/21 - Movie #3,902

BEFORE: There are THREE different documentaries that could go here - one is about Frank Sinatra, and since the original SNL cast had archive footage cameos in "Zappa", the doc about John Belushi is also eligible.  Oddly all three films will link to the Bee Gees documentary tomorrow, only they don't link with each other, which is why I have to make a choice.  "I Am Divine" won out because I have the Belushi doc on DVD, and the one on Sinatra isn't available any more, it scrolled off Netflix before I could get to it.  Today's documentary, by contrast, is on Netflix right now, so I had better watch it before it also disappears. 

Both Larry King and Regis Philbin carry over from "Zappa", via archive footage.

THE PLOT: A look at how Divine, aka Harris Glenn Milstead, became John Waters' cinematic muse and an international drag icon. 

AFTER: Sometimes it seems like the only thing that our country is more divided on than mask mandates and vaccines is transgender rights - there's a whole segment of the populace that just gets freaked out by the whole issue.  You mention there's a transgender person in the town next door, and the conservatives will race over there, just to make sure that people are using the "correct" bathroom and not competing on any sports teams as anything other than what they were at birth.  It's a silly over-reaction, and maybe it represents the way that people used to over-react to gay people, which used to happens before they realized that they knew gay people, or had gay people in their family.  I have a co-worker who used to be a woman, now he's a man, it's as simple as that, if you can get beyond the pronouns thing.  (She wrote a chapter in a book that I ghost-edited, and the book's going into a second edition now, and I made sure to tell the publisher to change all his former pronouns to male or gender-neutral ones.)

I noticed that about half of the people interviewed for "I Am Divine" used male pronouns when refererring to the film's subject, but many also used female ones.  I guess some people just thought of Divine as female, or he was that good of a drag queen, or else they just did that out of respect for what they thought his wishes were.  But in the interviews shown here, Divine didn't want to become a woman, nor did he consider himself a transvestite - it seems he was quite content being a gay man, and dressing in drag was a job, one that made him very famous.  So I wonder how Divine is regarded by the transvestite and/or trans-sexual community, do they feel he was a poser of sorts, or a respected icon, or just a guy who got paid to wear a dress in movies?  Because I happen to know that some of the very same people who want to break down barriers with regards to sexual orientation and gender also maintain some rather rigid rules on what it means to be gay, or trans, or queer or whatever.  At times this can be very ironic.  Why can't we all just live and let live, and not put labels on everything?  

That being said, it's fascinating to take a peek into the life of Harris Glenn Milstead, who dated a woman for five years, starting in high school, I guess before he figured a few things out?  Was he trying to conform to society's rules, or had he just not known how to become part of the gay community?  John Waters mentions that once he found other people like himself, there was no stopping him.  But this also may have led to relationship problems later on, because some gay men apparently won't date a drag queen - there are those rigid rules again, just on the other side of the issue.  Still, Waters also said that Divine didn't have too much trouble getting dates - he was the most famous drag queen, after all, at least until Rupaul came along.  So I suppose there's some kind of distinction to be made between those who practice cross-dressing because it's a true reflection of how they feel about themselves, like, say, Eddie Izzard, and those men who put on a dress because they're getting compensated for it in some way.  

(There's a LOT I don't understand about trans issues, like many questions about the mindset and the process that I wouldn't feel comfortable asking a friend about.  Plus I wonder how much of this whole issue is just being trendy, and I worry about the effect on young people who are perhaps being encouraged to radically change their bodies while chasing some level of perceived newfound comfort that others seem to enjoy when they change gender.  I suspect that another solution might be to learn to be more comfortable in their own bodies as is, that's a skill that could serve anyone better in the long run.  But this seems to be a somewhat unpopular opinion in certain circles - we no longer ask gay people to try to act straight, right?) 

Later in life, Divine was actually trying to break out of the drag queen mold, he'd already established himself as an actor playing female roles (mostly in cheapo John Waters films, but still...) and the new challenge for him would be to then transition into male roles.  He was signed to have a recurring role as a male character on the show "Married...with Children", but he died shortly before filming began, it seems.  He had a few male roles, like in a film called "Trouble in Mind", but the vast majority of his on-screen time was spent in drag. (I'll admit I haven't seen anything close to every John Waters movie, but come on, I've been busy, plus other movies always seem to take priority.  

Of course, most people just wanted to talk about "Pink Flamingos", and that infamous scene where John Waters asked Divine to pretend to eat dog poop.  The party line is that this really happened, but as a filmmaker I've always felt that there were about 18 workable ways to fake it, such as cutting to a close-up of the actor putting something that looked exactly like dog poop in his mouth.  But what do I know, if I haven't seen the film?  There are quite a few John Waters films I haven't seen, in fact, but I don't know if I could take all the horrible acting and those TERRIBLE pseudonyms that everyone used.  "Mink Stole"?  Ugh, it's horrible - that's worse than Wavy Gravy or all the bad fake names used by Zappa's musician put together.  

This film also serves as sort of a documentary about John Waters' entire filmography.  Sure, I could program a chain of John Waters movies, like I need to catch up on some Spike Lee movies, too, but I'm not sure I could take it, they all look like student films, with poor production values and little character development.  I watched "Serial Mom" last year and "Cecil B. Demented" some time before that, I'm honestly afraid to dive any further back into his oeuvre, partially because Divine was a much better actor in his own mind than he was on camera.  There, I said it. 

Divine and John Waters needed each other, it was some kind of symbiotic relationship where they fed off of each other's energy, or Divine was Waters' muse, or perhaps neither one could get as far individually as they did by working together.  And then when John Waters wasn't filming, Divine toured the world doing concert appearances, and then even had a few hits on the disco chart, which was a thing back in the 1970's, and thankfully qualifies this film to be part of my Big Summer Music series.  (Take that, John Belushi...)

There's probably a whole psychological study that could be made of Divine, what happens when a child is spoiled by his parents, never given proper instruction on what to eat and how much to eat, and made to feel self-conscious about his appearance and activities by the bullies in high-school.  As a teen he worked for a florist, and then as an adult he was a hair-stylist in the Baltimore area, then he lived in both Provincetown, MA and San Francisco for a while - I'm not sure if he just followed the gay stereotype careers or was forced into them out of necessity, but anyway, you put together all that repression and body issues and overeating and bullying, and somehow Divine comes out of all of that.  I guess you can only repress some things for so long in a human before they all come exploding out, with a vengeance.  Divine was disconnected from his family for many years, but eventually reconciled after they figured out his other identity, and accepted him anyway.  I'm sure it's no fun to lead a double-life, but that also makes the Divine persona a bit of a superhero, in a way.  

Also starring John Waters (last heard in "Serial Mom"), Tab Hunter, Ricki Lake (last seen in "Serial Mom"), Mink Stole (ditto), Lisa Jane Persky (last seen in "Great Balls of Fire!"), Mark Bauman, Lady Bear, Jackie Beat, Jay Bennett, Brenda Bergman, Beverly Bonner, Greg Day, David DeCoteau, Dennis Dermody, Alonso Duralde, John Epperson, Diana Evans, George Figgs, Guy Furrow, Allan Glaser, Greg Gorman, Helen Hanft (last seen in "I.Q."), Susan Lowe (also last seen in "Serial Mom"), Mary Vivian Pearce (ditto), Frances Milstead, Pat Moran, Michael Musto, Mark Payne, Vincent Peranio, Joan Agajanian Quinn, Robert W. Richards, Rob Saduski, Bruce Vilanch (last seen in "You Don't Mess with the Zohan"), Holly Woodlawn, Belle Zwerdling, 

with archive footage of Divine, Warren Beatty (last seen in "McCabe & Mrs. Miller"), David Bowie (also carrying over from "Zappa"), Mick Jagger (ditto), Quentin Crisp, Mary Hart (last seen in "Stuck On You"), David Hockney, Bernard Jay, Elton John (last seen in "Bad Reputation"), Andy Warhol (ditto), Grace Jones, Lainie Kazan (last seen in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2"), Diane Keaton (last seen in "Everything Is Copy"), Jack Nicholson (ditto), Eartha Kitt, Kris Kristofferson (last seen in "Janis: Little Girl Blue"), David Lochary, Sophia Loren (last seen in "Grumpier Old Men"), Jayne Mansfield (last seen in "Kiss Them for Me"), Edith Massey, Rudolf Nureyev, Rik Ocasek, Vincent Price (last seen in "The Raven" (1963)), Van Smith, Jerry Stiller (last seen in "Zoolander 2"), Alan Thicke (last seen in "The Clapper"), Shawn Thompson, Lily Tomlin (last seen in "Richard Pryor: Omit the Logic"), Liv Ullmann (last seen in "Autumn Sonata"), Max von Sydow (last seen in "Hour of the Wolf").

RATING: 5 out of 10 perverts, maniacs and sh*tkickers

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)