3 & 30: Lost in America, '70s Cinema, and #RevisSummer Baby
It was you, who could get me high...
You’re reading the latest installment of 3 & 30. At the end of every month, we’ll each be sharing one record, one film, and one other wild card cultural product beyond those categories we’ve been loving. (That’s the 3.) As for the 30, we both recently turned 30 and each made a list of our 30 favorite movies. We’ll be going through them all, one movie at a time.
Record of the month
Elliott: Madonna — Like a Prayer
I've been making my way through Madonna's discography at a languid pace (a new record every 6ish months) and I've arrived at one of her biggest and best, 1989's Like a Prayer. Every new album brings deep cut discoveries that enter my regular rotation. Somehow, the Prince-featured "Love Song" is one of the deepest cuts (currently the least streamed proper song). The lone collab between arguably pop's greatest male and female stars is an aimless tune that essentially functions as two of music's most overtly sexual icons having a sensuality-off. I get why it's memory-holed, but it shouldn't be. It rules.
Other winners include the boppy “Express Yourself” and the drumless “Dear Jessie,” though what swept me off my feet was “Oh Father,” a baroque ballad that would nearly fit on Kate Bush's The Sensual World. "Oh Father" is about Madonna's painful relationship with her father when she was a child. Her voice poignantly switches from high and innocent ("You can't hurt me now") to low and pained ("I got away from you, I never thought I would"). It's as if the child Madonna and adult Madonna are singing together; liberated from their father's grasp yet still heartbroken at what they've endured.
Music videos were just as important as the music itself in the ‘80s. The affecting B&W "Oh Father" video was directed by her former lover and frequent collaborator David Fincher. He advised Madonna to release the song as a single, though it performed poorly for the pop star’s lofty standards, snapping her record streak of 16 consecutive top 5 singles. Charts schmartz. It's maybe her most heartrending song.
Shawn: Cende — #1 Hit Single
I want an algorithm that randomly plucks your 37th favorite album from 2017 that you haven’t thought about in five years. You know, the one that maybe snagged a Stereogum Album of the Week designation (or close to it), but struggled to find its way onto any year-end lists, feels largely discarded by history, while still being pretty dang good.
Well, someone in the Endless Scroll Discord did the Guy Remembering work and posted about finding Cende’s #1 Hit Single in the used bin somewhere, which sent me right back to a record that sounded really, really good at the time, and still sounds that way. Their only full-length release to date now scans as a syllabus of late-2010s indie rock: a catchier, nervier breed of the genre than populated Double Double Whammy’s roster, a distant cousin to Mikal Cronin’s indelibly fuzzy, sunny power pop. “What I Want,” the duet with scenemate Frankie Cosmos, flexes all their strengths with ease — melodic firepower, a flash of dueling guitars, some baroque strings, the brief punk breakdown — all leading up to the fraught, conversational duet harmonizing in clarity. They seem to be back touring again after calling it quits in 2017, which I warmly welcome.
Film of the month
Elliott: Sissy Spacek in the '70s
David Bowie, Joni Mitchell, Reggie Jackson, Jack Nicholson — just a few people who had insane runs in the '70s. I want to put Sissy Spacek on the level of that esteemed company. I caught her debut in 1972's Prime Cut co-starring Lee Marvin and Gene Hackman. What rules about '70s crime thrillers is the pacing is slow as hell. Things breathe. There's a scene where Marvin and Spacek go out to dinner and Spacek dons a see-through dress without a thought to what others might think. The camera basks in Spacek's effervescent glow. It’s a scene that announces a star in the making.
Prime Cut encouraged me to go on a Spacek run and revisit her '70s classics. There's something elemental about Spacek's breakout turn in Badlands; her quiet gaze and curiosity so organic it's as if she's the first woman to ever walk the earth, the first being to experience falling in and out of young love. Her Carrie in Carrie seamlessly goes from outcast to radiant beauty to possessed terrorizer, each more rousing than the one before it. It remains my favorite horror film performance in a field that could not be more crowded. Then there's Robert Altman’s 3 Women, the first shot being a slow pan that climaxes with a long look at Spacek’s mysterious stare. Every Spacek moment that follows is enrapturing, bending our nerves as she transforms again from an eerie, childish follower to a confident, sexy enigma.
What connects these four performances is Spacek's singular ability to convey devotion, each character devoted to a lover, a protector, an idol. Her eyes can't be moved from the subject of her obsession, the intensity of her gaze always turned to 11. She doesn't need to speak to communicate the world and more. I closed my ‘70s Spacek run by watching Alan Rudolph's underseen and inspired by/produced by Robert Altman ensemble Welcome to L.A. In a flick full of self-centered characters who try and fail to shake their sorrows, Spacek's Linda hums and sings with untamed spirit. Everybody wishes they could be like Linda.
But nobody has ever been like Sissy Spacek.
Shawn: Dawn of the Dead (Romero, 1978)
I watched some incredible movies this month for the first time, that kind of tower above blurbs — Inland Empire, Jeanne Dielman, The Mother and the Whore, Fred Wiseman’s Belfast, Maine and Domestic Violence — so this one’s going to be about local boosterism. The concept of “being a New York 7 but a local 10” applies to any art from a given metro area (I’ve joked that my job hunt (mis)fortune makes me something like a New York 2 and a Pittsburgh 4), where something gets vastly overrated within a place because of its roots. This can happen to local music scenes, beloved old movies filmed in a given place, or the general perception of a celebrity, and my dumbass thought George A. Romero and Dawn of the Dead might be one of these situations.
Well, I’m happy to report this couldn’t be further from the case. On assignment from friend-of-the-blog Michael Brooks, I finally watched my first Romero, and his brilliance is obviously not graded on a curve around the Pittsburgh area, where he filmed most of his classic films and plucked local actors. The performances are charmingly amateurish, the Tom Savini makeup work is so deliberately grotesque and stomach-churning in all its artifice, while Romero grounds this in a mastery to capture and briskly edit action with few peers. He also knows how to pull off the post-apocalyptic hangout movie — and there are few better settings for such a thing than an abandoned mall. Hearing the one intercom recording blare “half hahr” with thick regional flair, nestled between all this craft, is maybe the proudest I’ve felt to be a Pittsburgh resident. The local fanfare is no mirage: it’s a wonderful, wonderful movie that’s automatically one of my favorite horror sequels of all time and favorite horror movies period.
Wild Card:
Elliott: Revis — “Caught in the Rain”
Every 6 months or so, I’ll send my buddy Tank the music video for “Caught in the Rain,” the only hit from the 2000s one-album wonder post-grunge band Revis. Or he’ll send it to me. I’ve only made the connection while writing this that I typically send it his way after I look in the mirror when I have long hair. The thought passes through my mind of, “huh, I’m starting to look like the lead singer of Revis again. That dude is sick.”
“Caught in the Rain” is a song we loved in middle school. We also loved it in high school. We also love “Caught in the Rain” to this day. It’s a difficult song to intellectualize because my thoughts when listening are essentially, “this shit rocks so hard” or “oh my GOD what a banging chorus.” Or “IT WAS YOU!! WHO COULD GET ME HIGH!!!” Post-grunge rock was the first music that was mine. Pandora radio opened my 6th grade eyes and ears to adult men with adolescent angst. The timing was perfect for 12-year-old me. I’ve reconnected with a lot of these bands in the past few years, shedding my pretentious nose-in-the-air attitude as I fully reengage the beauty and truth of simply rocking. I need that sometimes. Especially when my hair is long.
But I didn’t need to come back to “Caught in the Rain.” It never left me. The rawness and soul in Justin Holman’s vocals, the perfectly distorted washiness of the guitars; it’s my personal pick for the apex of post-grunge. And this time, Tank and I wanted to expand the Revis cult. I had somebody in mind that might be especially receptive to the “Caught in the Rain” gospel…and I’m thrilled to share we’ve gained another disciple…
Shawn: Revis — “Caught in the Rain”
Some guy sent me this song, unprompted, and very seriously asked for my thoughts on it, as a known post-grunge respecter. Watching the music video, the dude singing looked like a stock contestant on Rock Star: INXS/Supernova (or an American Idol top 24 rocker guy) with that goatee and bushy eyebrows. He had a fairly similar vowelly howl to the guy in Theory of a Deadman or Myles Kennedy of Alter Bridge (kinda derogatory, to me). The first verse didn’t quite break through. And then, smacking me across the face…IT WAS YOU, WHO COULD GET ME HIIIIIGH. It’s the kind of chorus you have to drop everything upon hearing, wailed with the conviction of someone who knows it demands to be heard in a stadium — the stuff some of this era’s more popular bands never even scratched once. And then it comes back again, with the breathtaking pause before the second chorus. And then the kind of monster solo that kept the paychecks flowing at Velvet Revolver HQ during this era. The next song on this record has threatened to play after “Caught in the Rain” many times (10, second only to “Sympathy Is a Knife” this month) — but I always turn it off after a few seconds, preferring to keep it frozen in amber as an awesome, world-beating superhero soundtrack single you’d receive as a one-hit wonder on rock radio. I’ll never need another Revis song in my life. And yet, #RevisSummer charges ahead.
30 for 30 #5 — Lost in America
Elliott: We love Albert Brooks at Even Better. And not only is this your favorite AB joint…but I’ve seen you say this is maybe your favorite comedy of all time!
Shawn: That’s right! Well, maybe (some Letterboxd hyperbole could be at work there). But solely on the strength of his big four directorial efforts (Lost in America, Modern Romance, Real Life, and Defending Your Life), good old Albert Einstein’s in play to be my favorite living comedic artist, and so by transitive property my favorite of his movies might just hold the belt.
I watched this for the second time before we both went to Vegas in February (shoutout the Even Better Sphere meetup), and its replayability was off the charts. While two centerpieces loomed in my memory — Brooks’ David learning that his much-expected promotion is actually a transfer to New York, and his hilarious sales pitch to Garry Marshall’s casino manager for a mulligan (“the Desert Inn has heart”) — the little acidic moments in between pull ample weight alongside Brooks’ sturdy direction. It’s just so fun to watch these hollow, restless people fail to loosen up.
How about you — where does Lost in America slot into the Brooks experience for you, and how’d this viewing go?
Elliott: I think Modern Romance will forever be my favorite, but this isn't far behind. Both viewings of Lost in America have been with a buddy that I love laughing with. Ideal circumstances really.
What I love about the starring, written/directed by Albert Brooks films is how self-contained they are. Each movie is about something extremely specific. Real Life is a prescient look at reality television, Modern Romance a ruthless and absurd take on male jealousy, and Defending Your Life uses his signature humor to examine something much deeper: to borrow the Japanese and superior title of Miyazaki's latest — "How Do You Live?" With Lost in America, Brooks sends up Reagan-era yuppies who want to "find themselves." They yearn to be free spirits, but only if they can afford to be. David and his wife Linda (the always hilarious Julie Hagerty) wouldn't dare live like the boys in Easy Rider without their nest eggs.
Shawn: I love how tentative they are about taking the leap, until Linda gloriously decides to plunge them into financial instability at the Desert Inn casino. Brooks and co-writer Monica Johnson brilliantly don’t show us her hot streak at the roulette table — only the crazed eyes and rolled sleeves after she’s blown the nest egg, in a similar state of denial to her husband upon losing the big promotion. They obviously need a taste of this precarity to unlock true freedom on the road, and it only leads to misery; first at the Hoover Dam, then in small town Arizona, where crossing guard and fast food assistant manager are the only vocations available. Brooks plays exasperation better than anybody, but also the huffy resignation of giving up the dream. It’s fitting this came out the same year as After Hours, two movies that resolve their nightmare odysseys with broken spirits right back at the office in New York.
Elliott: The deranged turn that Linda takes is so key to the film’s greatness. Most versions would have a classic dynamic of neurotic man paired with eye-rolling, puts-up-with-all-the-dude’s-bullshit woman. But the nest egg catastrophe evens the playing field and Hagerty matches Brooks beat for beat.
We laugh at Brooks’ films because we can relate, a sign of a great comedian. He takes human flaws and elevates them to the nth degree. We all have insecurities, but in Modern Romance, Brooks asks, “what if a dude acted on every single insecurity?” to hilarious effect. Speaking for myself, I love watching John Ford films, reading All the Pretty Horses, listening to Sturgill Simpson's “It Ain't All Flowers,” all while thinking about how romantic it would be to be a cowboy in the Wild West. That would be my idea of “finding myself” like David and Linda attempt in Lost in America. The difference is I have have the self awareness to know that I would be a total wimp in that environment. By night two under the stars I’d give anything to have a warm shower and clean clothes and be close to a television. Good on Linda and David for trying though! And good on David’s creative persistence in trying to recoup all their lost money in one of my favorite comedy scenes…