Immorality or Isolation

Just a quick revisit to the “Blame Game” post… one that other site, another online conversation got started regarding financial regulations, Occupation Wall Street, morality and accountability.

One of the more interesting comments I got to that post (and I’m not sure if he’d want to be attributed here or not, and I stress that my paraphrasing could be inaccurate so mea culpa up front) had to do with objecting to the idea that the 1% are behaving immorally.

He made the legitimate point that wealth isolates people and sometimes creates a sense privilege that they deserve their wealth. He made it clear he knew this was nonsense, i.e., that the accumulation of wealth may or may be a result from just desserts, but that wealthy were not inherently immoral, that many are quite engaged with, and worry about the state of the world.

I really want to give this point of view its due. There really is an oversimplification with the sloganeering: we are the 99% and that the 1% is to blame and are immoral.

Clearly there are good, moral rich people as there bad, immoral poor and middle class people. And of those in the 1-ish percent that seem to have benefited directly and greatly from the recent run up to this worldwide financial crisis, some of what seems like immorality really can be attributed to isolation or isolation / arrogance.

A good example would be those who made a massive fortune by making bets on the failure of various investments (i.e. those who bought derivatives that were betting on all those foreclosures happening. These truly clever people didn’t create the system but they recognized its inherent flaws and made the proverbial killing exploiting those flaws. It wasn’t about wishing those people any ill will. It was statistical analysis of bad investments that they thought were likely to default. I really don’t see these people as evil in any sense.

Also, QUITE a few people within the 99% have enabled some of the worst behavior of a portion of the 1%.

However, I still hold true to my belief however that those within the 1-ish percent that actively lobbied to create or maintain this very rotten system do have a moral culpability, and should be held accountable. They wanted the Glass-Steagall act junked; they wanted the rules changed to be able to see investments to one party while betting against those investments with a different party; they wanted special treatment by federal government; they wanted their investment firms re-classified as banks to receive TARP funds, etc. They then funneled this money into their personal fortunes and have done everything possible to pay lower and lower taxes on these accumulated fortunes.

These people I will continue to classify as immoral and selfish. None of these actions are criminal, though a few them had been illegal prior to the lobbying to have certain laws changed, but yes I see these things as unethical. (Now of course, people have a way of compartmentalizing their behavior so they can be highly ethical and moral in one aspect of their lives and the reverse in another… so even here, there can be complicated patterns of black, white and a multitude of grays.)

Unfortunately in our mass media age, if a message isn’t simple – in black and white with no shades of gray – the mainstream media will ignore that message and the consumers of such media will not watch / read beyond the headline.

So it’s become an unfortunate necessity that OWS is so simplistic in its messaging, though I don’t know if that was planned or just a result of the non-hierarchal aspect of the movement. But the topic has quite fortunately been raised.

But thoughtful people everywhere have a duty to deepen the conversation, now that it has been begun.

Art in Between (life), New York City, Politics and Finance, Uncategorized

Meet the New Boss, the Same as the Old Boss

Any classic rock fan will recognize the above line as having been derived from the Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again” who assumedly re-phrased it from popular wisdom. Unfortunately, their generation got fooled again as did my generation and the next generation… up till perhaps the most recent generation. Many a pundit or just older person who has sympathy for the Occupation Wall Street movement have been impatient for them to develop a literal, hierarchal organization and have a direct political impact like the so-called Tea Party did/does (see my post from last week about what I think about the Tea Party).

I on the other hand am just happy that the OWS is just changing the conversation away from the Conservative dominated media.

(There I say it plainly: the mainstream media which includes NPR and PBS is NOT liberal; it’s centrist to very conservative. Period. I’ll probably blog about this fact at some point too.)

Very recently a respected organ of that mainstream media, THE WASHINGTON POST, published an extremely revealing article. It backs up something I’ve been saying from the beginning. President Obama is a pro-business president and a very good friend of Wall Street, just like George W. Bush was a pro-business president and a very good friend of Wall Street. (W. was also a particularly good buddy of the oil/coal industry and O. is just a friend to these, so as just one example, I don’t mean to make blanket associations and equivalents between them.)

But facts are facts and they’re well documented in this article – Wall Street’s profits are better than ever: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/wall-streets-resurgent-prosperity-frustrates-its-claims-and-obamas/2011/10/25/gIQAKPIosM_story.html

One could say that Obama fulfilled Bush’s plan (remember the Bush admin. set up the no-strings attached TARP plan) just as well as Obama also fulfilled Bush’s withdrawal plan for Iraq (i.e. we got out now sooner, or later, than the agreement previously negotiated during the Bush administration).

So, one shouldn’t make the jump that Obama is doing something different, more favorable to Wall Street… actually ever so slightly to the contrary since the Dem’s did pass modest Wall Street/banking reform (which the Republicans universally opposed).

Some one I know brought to my attention President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s 1936 rousing speech where he said “I welcome their hatred” regarding Wall Street http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nuElu-ipTQ It’s a great speech from FDR, and yes an enormous contrast from Obama and of course, Bush too, or any other potential Republican presidential candidate.

Despite any rhetoric from either Democratic or Republican or their associated allies, in practice, they’re all profoundly intertwined. In contrast, FDR actually backed up his rhetoric.

Unfortunately, what the FDR parallel probably also shows is that not much will change in the United States, unless we hit rock bottom and suddenly those in power become innately afraid of social chaos.

So many of the great changes of the 1930’s were essentially pre-emptive. The banking regulations, Social Security and other New Deal long term and shorter term programs like the WPA were as much about saving capitalism from itself as they were about relieving the suffering of the citizenry. Elizabeth Warren said this very nicely in a recent speech, but I’ll take it further: rich people benefit more, proportionally, from civilization and an orderly society than poor people. Innately this is true, and that’s why morally it is justified that they are taxed at a higher rate.

Additionally, in the private sector, GM introduced health insurance as a union benefit for reasons of labor peace. That was the beginnings of our current ad hoc health care “system”.

Even the not overtly economically connected, Fairness Doctrine (vastly underrated how Reagan’s ending of it has profoundly affected our current political culture and economic condition) was adopted as a way to keep Congress from seriously regulating the broadcast industry, as back then, many in Congress were so silly that they seriously considered the airwaves to be public property.

The Fairness Doctrine worked. News divisions at the networks did not have to justify their bottom lines; documentaries were also regular fixture on the big 3 networks and as result viewers got facts and not just opinion and salacious puff pieces. But the Fairness Doctrine wasn’t actual law so it was rather easy for Reagan to just junk it.

So instead, in our current political system, we get to have an elaborate theatre of the Democrats and Republicans sounding very different, while their actions keep overlapping. The basic problem is that the Supreme Court has long equated money with speech and now that corporations are “people”, that person or company with the most money has the loudest voice.

We Americans have a true dilemma of keeping the continued disaster of stasis, versus chaos. But one can’t hope for the suffering of another great depression. Chaos is never anything to wish for because you don’t know who will emerge from the muck. After all, there’s no guarantee another FDR is waiting in the wings as opposed to some neo-fascist.

Which once again, is why I think Occupation Wall Street offers true hope – not for any immediate political change but as hopefully the beginning of a cultural change. Just shifting our culture slightly away from the false smiling visage of Ronald Reagan, who truly was the emblem of greed is good (not the mythical Gordon Gecko), is something to hope for.

If we become more morally in favor of an economic system where all have a fair chance to succeed (through intelligent, strong regulations and intelligent, fair re-distribution of wealth through a graduated tax system… not just the income tax, but the entire tax system), and moreover that greed may not always be bad, but cooperation is always good.

Politics and Finance, Uncategorized

The ORIGINAL Boston Tea Party Impulse

If you were to Google my name, you might come across a couple of obscure law journals which name me as the Tea Party activist in a lawsuit against a particular California election law. This would seem particularly odd, since anyone who knows me, knows I am a die-hard liberal.

In fact, some of them only half-jokingly call me a socialist. That’s utterly untrue as I accept capitalism as a necessary evil. After all, it is the best system for creating wealth. However, as capitalism also tends to concentrate wealth, and wealth entwines into politics, unregulated capitalism leads to plutocracy, oligarchy and even fascism.

So yes, I particularly believe in strong regulation of capitalism, a graduated income tax and re-distribution of wealth and certain, yes, socialist institutions like a national health care system. Very not, Tea Party positions.

But I joined a lawsuit against a California election law that I think is bad for a number of reasons – one being that it doesn’t allow write-in votes, or rather the law allows them but specifically says that they will not be counted. So I proved useful to this suit because I live in a district that was having a special election. At the behest of the lawyer bringing this case forward, I registered as a Tea Party member and then tried to vote for myself in order to show that I was harmed by this law. To repeat, it was his idea that I register as a Tea Party member because it is not one of the parties officially recognized by the state of California, as well as for other strategic reasons legally and politically which are not for me to discuss.

However, why would somebody with my leftist political views make this profound sacrifice of identification??? Below is the partial explanation, made in an online comment to the writer of one of these obscure law journals. (Note – at the lawyer’s request, I ended up deleting one clause below, the one about the Tea Party being a re-brand of the Republican base… so my comment letter was published without it. I re-insert it here on my own website.)

An Activist Yes, But Not a “Tea Party Activist”

Dear Mr. Eris,

As I am the subject of the headline of your July 20, 2011 story (“Top-Two open primary faces legal challenge from Democrat-turned-Tea Party activist”), I would have hoped that you would have contacted me directly to understand the nuance of my actions, for now it absolutely behooves me to make a correction and clarification of that headline: while I am certainly an activist, in no sense could I accurately be labeled a “Tea Party activist”, as that term is popularly understood today.

In the first place, I do not adhere at all to the current policy positions of what the media typically labels as Tea Party issues, since such have become nothing more than the issues of a re-branded right-wing Republican base.

Then you may be wondering why I tried to register as a Tea Party member, an action that could so easily be misconstrued as making me a supporter of anti-unionism and the like, which I absolutely am not.

I agreed to this action of trying to become a “Tea Party” registered voter and potential candidate, not only because it would be an efficacious means to legally challenge what I consider to be an unconstitutional and unfair law, but also because it has a moral justification, as I do agree with the original Boston Tea Party impulse.

For it is important to remember that there is another, original aspect of the amorphous modern Tea Party movement that spiritually harkens back to that revolutionary protest in the Boston Harbor.

After all, this modern protest was partially born, at least amongst some of its initial adherents, of an inchoate rage that something with wrong with the System itself. This failure of the System was exemplified by the bailout of the banks and big brokerage houses while score upon score of ordinary Americans were losing their jobs, their pensions and their homes.

The Top-Two Open Primary law was deceptively sold to the public, and moreover disenfranchises Independents and the small parties – both in the “No Party Preference” label for such candidates and even more importantly, precluding a write-in candidate (thus a version of Lisa Murkowski’s write-in Senate victory could never happen in California).

The colonial Tea Party was not a protest against taxation per se, but a protest against taxation without representation. It was the lack of representation that was the motivation and rationale for the American defiance against the Crown. It is that original Boston Tea Party ideal for true democratic representation for which I am an activist and why I became a party to this law suit.

Thus a potential correction of your original headline would be “…challenge from Democrat-turned-original ‘Tea Party’ activist” but only if an explanation of my motivations were also included within the body of the article, that I am re-appropriating a piece of American history. Right wing conservatives do not own an exclusive trademark on patriotic American symbols after all.

Sincerely,
Julius Galacki

Art in Between (life), Los Angeles, Politics and Finance, Uncategorized

Absolutely, Play the Blame Game with the 1%

Below a long response (or call it a well-reasoned rant) I made in someone else’s blog. That person, who truly seems to be a thoughtful decent man as well as a successful businessman, was attempting to strike some kind of middle ground regarding Occupation Wall Street and the articulated goals of their consensus. I say “their consensus” because they operate along the line of a pure Athenian democracy, have only temporary facilitators instead of leaders, etc. So, for now, it’s clearly more of a social movement rather than a political movement like the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party, and therefore, OWS has no hierarchy to present a truly articulated list of political goals.

Well, this business man wrote, to paraphrase, yes the system is broken and needs to be fixed and people have a right to be angry about that, but that it is not constructive to blame or specific people – in particular, doing such acts as marching in front of certain financial figures homes and condos as the OWS did about two weeks ago – and furthermore, people in the 99% had to accept responsibility for their own financial failures. He didn’t say this specifically but I think the implication was particularly if your home had been foreclosed, then it was your own fault.

While compared to so many who have denigrated and dismissed OWS, his civil tone and conciliatory admission of systemic fault was very welcome and should be applauded, I nonetheless immediately felt angry… I worked through that emotion and produced the following (slightly revised from the original for clarity):

“I disagree. It is absolutely essential to point the finger and actually create accountability and ramifications for their behavior that very, very nearly created a world-wide depression. The system is broken because of the greed, yes greed – no reason to play semantics, of those that benefited from the breaking of the system. Congress didn’t repeal the Glass-Steagall Act (legislation created after the Great Depression that had successfully regulated the banks for approximately 50 years), and other financial regulations for fun. It did so because wealthy contributors wanted them to do so. Then what had been illegal became legal and the floodgates were wide open for what has happened to our economy and much of the world’s.

The more than 1% deserve all of the social and moral approbation that they’re getting. And much more.

(Obviously, it’s not just the financial system that is broken – the Supreme Court’s equating of money and speech for the past 100 years, has logically created a democracy where the person with more money has more speech, and thus is “heard” more easily. Almost all politicians follow the money – nearly all Republicans overtly, and most Democrats in a combination of the overt and subvert – and are therefore in obeisance to the will of a moneyed elite. So, Republicans universally opposed re-regulating the Street, while Democrats put forward regulations that for the most part are more fig leaf than substantive.)

If there are neither financial ramifications (since the tax payers have done and will continue to do the bailing out, and in general, the financial decision makers have NOT lost their jobs or fortunes) nor any legal repercussions (since the laws were changed), a similar financial meltdown is going to happen all over again.

That is one of the great services that the OWS people are doing. Their righteous indignation – as amorphous and without nuance that it sometimes is – is creating an environment politically where it might actually lead to the politicians literally hearing those without money for a change, and actually re-instituting sane regulations on the banking and investment industries.

As for the responsibility of the 99%, certainly some home buyers were foolish in buying something well over their income level, but there was also quite of lot of deceptive practices in the real estate and mortgage industries, and/or understandable ignorance too. Plus, there are those who have gone “underwater” through no fault of their own even though they have been making payments. Or, those who were keeping up on their payments then lost their jobs (thus their homes) because of the domino effect from the worldwide financial meltdown.

In other words, real people suffered and lost everything they owned or everything they had for their retirement in totally unrelated industries because of those bankers and investment companies who profited from the inflated real estate and other investment markets, i.e. from all of the derivatives and credit default swaps and other convoluted, complicated financials instruments that finally collapsed upon themselves, precipitating a financial black hole that then led to bankruptcies and lay-offs and local, state and national government (Iceland!) defaults around the globe.

So, why shouldn’t someone who is losing their house, is being laid off through fault of their own, has lost their retirement savings, and all other losers in this glorified Ponzi scheme NOT blame the ones who both profited from this financial system, AND then were made whole by tax payer money when their financial house of cards collapsed? Yes, even Goldman Sachs could have gone under without a government bailout. So, why shouldn’t the losers say, “I didn’t cause this mess, so why not bail me too?” Or even: “Okay I messed up and made some stupid financial decisions but they did too, so why not me?”

Capitalism obviously runs on greed, but if there isn’t enough people in power to counter that greed with strong restrictions (including a sane tax policy) on that greed, in the long term capitalism will fail all but the very, very few and America will slowly corrode as a world power. It seems to me that Argentina which was of rough equivalence economically to the US at the turn of the 20th Century is a good example of what happens to a country when wealth is hyper concentrated.

You can say that greed is part of human nature, but another defining characteristic of what it means to be human, is cooperation. So, if the roughly 1% don’t acknowledge their culpability and accountability (and they certainly have not) and do things to make amends for the vast damage they have done to so many people not just in this country but the entire world, then somebody else has to create equilibrium. For that reason alone, I see the people of OWS as being great patriots.”

Of course, Fred disagreed with me. I followed up with this (and some more):

“So bringing this back to OWS and the Blame Game and personal responsibility. Blame IS a dangerous game. Throughout history, individuals and groups (usually some minority) have been blamed unfairly and incorrectly, and thus great evil has been perpetuated. BUT in the instance of the most recent worldwide financial meltdown, Wall Street is not a scapegoat but directly responsible. They can’t be prosecuted because they successfully lobbied to have the laws changed; they haven’t lost any power, influence, position or cash (except for Lehman Bros) because the TARP program was no strings attached. So there’s only one thing left, and that is, for a lot of people to say, no Lloyd Blankfein, you are not “doing God’s work”. You and the rest of the arrogant people in the financial industry are part of the problem. Social embarrassment is all that’s left to force these people to cooperate. Actual people, not a faceless “system” have to be held accountable.”

More disagreements. Dan’s comment: “And if you’re relying on “social embarrassment” to make people do the right thing, I have to ask, “Have you met these people?” As long as they’re making pantloads of money, they’re embarrassed all the way to the bank.” (I would say that I’m not relying on it but rather there just isn’t anything better. I am hoping, however, that the politicians get scared.) And Fred’s: “And maybe I am less quick to demonize those Wall Street titans because I actually know several of them and I know that they are mostly not indifferent and not immoral. Often arrogant, yes. But I don’t think that’s a hanging offense.”

Art in Between (life), New York City, Politics and Finance, Uncategorized

Registering a work with the Copyright Office vs. the WGA

Unlike my previous posts which have had more personal content, this is just a pragmatic, public service post … of interest only to other writers, but if it helps one person, then I’ve done a mitzvah: I was relatively recently at a Dramatists Guild all day seminar on various business aspects of writing. I was rather surprised to hear a question – echoed by a friend of mine sitting next to me – asking which was better, registering a work with the U.S. Registrar of Copyrights or the Writers’ Guild.

I hadn’t realized that the WGA was now registering non-screenplays as well. I like the WGA, and even more, the Writers Guild Foundation. BUT Writers Guild registration is NOT a substitute for registering one’s work with the U.S. Registrar of Copyrights. The latter’s website is fairly easy to use now.

I know this not only from taking Law and the Arts taught by an attorney at Yale, but I’ve had day jobs working for and with lawyers, including intellectual property rights ones, for over 10 years. Finally, I’ve worked for 20th Century Fox Film Corp. in the legal and business affairs departments where dealing with screenwriters’ credits is a common issue – so I have direct and theoretical experience here.

Copyright exists the moment expression (not ideas, but the expression of that idea… likewise titles of a work are not copyrightable) is put into a fixed form, i.e. typically ink on paper. However, to enforce one’s copyright, i.e. bring suit for infringement, one has to have registered that work first with the Copyright Office.

Registering with the WGA is only necessary for screenplays, particularly in terms of determining film credit in WGA arbitrations, and otherwise should only be seen as a supplement to Copyright registration for both screenplays or anything else. It could be useful for instance as supporting what specifically is the date of creation in a more official way than mailing a script to oneself. But if you want to save money, yet do what’s absolutely necessary, just register with the U.S. Copyright Office.

Never submit a work until you’ve done that first.

Also, film companies typically require a clear chain of title, which includes U.S. Copyright Registration.

As far as re-registering after substantial changes have been made, that’s more of a gray zone decision. The
suggestion I’ve heard is to so again upon publication or that first production. There is a section on the form where you can specify that this is a previously registered work, and what changes have occurred since then.

By the way, the Dramatists Guild business affairs person was even more dismissive of a non-screenwriter doing anything other than registering with the Copyright Office, but I thought that was being too black and white myself.

Film Commentary, Literature, Los Angeles, Theatre, Uncategorized

Patti Smith – Just Kids

On a day that I just had a common, but very uncomfortable medical procedure, yet one that diagnoses that disease which probably killed my uncle, my beloved grandmother and definitely struck (but did not decimate) my mother and grandfather, I am reading “Just Kids” by Patti Smith.

I’m starting again from the beginning, because so much life had intervened with my initial attempt at reading it, I knew I had to start fresh to find the flow of the narrative. My first impression then, that it is a book of poetry in the guise of prose, still holds.

And just as I’m aware when I listen to Patti’s music, I recognize that there is a self-consciousness, an awkwardness of an over-imagined phrase next to an original, achingly crystalline phrase in this book. (Though fortunately, the powerful lines far outweigh the none ones.)

But I’ve always ignored the self-consciousness in her songs, or more perhaps, forgave what potentially could put me back into my critical mind instead of experiential one BECAUSE of her envelopment into the totality of the song. An envelopment that enveloped me.

She tranced for me. She excessed for me. She fought god for me. (“Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine…”) She was strong – strong in voice and strong in not being afraid to make a mess of a song, but still so full of her sex to me (“See a young girl humping on a parking meter… oh she look so good, oh she look so fine… G-L-O-R-I-A”). These songs went to my heart and loins, together always together. In the 5 times, I’ve seen her perform (4 with the band, and once solo with only her poetry as accompaniment), that prophetic vinyl message (yes, first on vinyl, only latter delivered in bits and bites of digital code) was vastly reinforced.

In “Just Kids”, there is definitely a gauze of nostalgia, but much more it is a meditation on death and re-birth, both a celebration and an elegy of life in New York City and vice versa. And a life in art, and vice versa.

After all, the titular co-character kid is Robert Mapplethorpe – he who created exquisite images of often not overtly exquisite content and who then died young of AIDS. And Patti would lose her husband, her brother and one of her bandmates. All died young too.

I’m reading this book right now again because of Mz. Amuse – who bought this book for me as a Valentine’s gift. She said, “You’re recovering tonight – don’t run around. Drink liquids, rest. Read a book. Read the Patti Smith book.” She should know the right idea of recovery. She had breast cancer recently, at a younger than expected age.

Overtly, that explosion of wayward cells are all gone now, but the shadow remains. Statistics doing their statistically obfuscating thing go into overdrive in such circumstances where death is the prize. (Yes, I was the researcher – try to figure out the best course of action where numbers lie and tell the truth simultaneously. In the end, it was her choice anyway.)

Obviously, I’ve stopped reading to write this post. I needed the break to express. Too much loss and recognition. My losses, my recognitions of places the same or similar… but all different too, of course.

I’m sure my father’s death last month is only focusing my long standing profound sense of my mortality. I am only in, not of, the Zeitgeist as of this moment.

I don’t have the perspective, the distance from myself, to say whether or not Patti Smith is a great artist for the ages – I only know she speaks to me. She speaks to me.

Art in Between (life), Literature, Music, New York City, Uncategorized

Elderly Background Actors

I work on the Fox Lot and the way to my office in the Old Executive Building takes me past the sound stage where the TV show “How I Met Your Mother” is shot.

I’ve only seen one of the leads once, but I often see the extras. Typically these people are young men in suits and/or hot women in short dresses or evening attire. Particularly lots of these attractive women.

But this morning was different. A coffee station had been set up, which I’ve never seen, and all of the extras were clearly over 65, all in evening attire, i.e. except for 3 young men who clearly were cast as waiters. It’s the first time on the Lot I’ve ever seen so many older actors in one place being called in for a shoot… at least a dozen of them.

It’s hard to say if these older people did background work as a hobby in their retirement, or were actually working actors who had had a long career. I imagine the latter only because of the grimness or sadness on the faces of so many of them… as if their expressions said, “I was once a leading lady and now I’m being relegated to a background visual punchline.”

I had such an overwhelming sense of sadness… seeing them sitting out in their chairs throughout the day, as I passed the Commissary Lawn… just waiting to be called in. Perhaps of course, this is purely my own anxiety about my own tumbling years. Thus I could be imagining their angst and frustration, and they were just having a grand old time on those folding chairs. After all, at least the grips had put up fabric to give them shade.

Film Commentary, Los Angeles, Uncategorized

Rhino Resurrected

I saw the premiere of “Rhino Resurrected” on Saturday Aug.20… as the movie’s producers don’t have a distribution deal, I can only urge you, if you see another screening listed, to GO if you’re a music geek especially, and secondarily if you’re interested in LA cultural history.

The story of a record store and it’s off shoot record label (before Warner Brothers ate it) would seem to be a super obscure subject but think a real life version of “High Fidelity” and obnoxious record store employee Jack Black. The two hours fly by and it’s mostly like being in the company of a funny, smart, sometimes annoying bunch of music fanatics.

From a purely filmmaking standpoint, the movie is well-edited with very few dead spots. It is a mix of archival footage (stills, band performances, a few interviews) with more extensive present day interviews. The organizing device was the “resurrection” of Rhino with a temporary pop-up store last year. Overall this device works well structurally, but there a few too many shots of getting the temporary store ready for the public which slows down the movie. In general all tech. elements are solid. But this is a movie where content is everything, not how good or not good the cinematography is. And the content, as I said, was surprisingly interesting and often amusing.

As I’m originally an East Coaster, my first exposure to Rhino was through its superlative compilations of garage rock and soul.

But backing up, I was, and am, a huge Patti Smith fan. Indirectly because of her I discovered 1960’s garage rock. (It should be noted that because of my brothers’ record collections, I was already a fan of Dylan, the Beatles, the Stones, the Airplane, Hendrix, Cream and all of the other well known 60’s greats etc.) Patti’s long time collaborator and guitarist, Lenny Kaye, had selected and produced the ground breaking Nuggets compilation of forgotten garage rock and psychedelic rock hits, semi-hits and rarities back in 1972 and then re-issued in 1976 on Sire. I would discover it in 1980 or so. Wanting to go deeper, and using those songs on Kaye’s compilation as the jumping off point, I was led, more often than not, to Rhino Records.

Rhino’s compilations would usually have the best sound quality, the best selection for the money and the most interesting liner notes. My visceral history of rock music was profoundly, though not in any sense exclusively, influenced by the tastes and quirks behind Rhino. My favorite Christmas CD to this day is Cool Yule with an incredible bunch of up tempo soul, r&b, rockabilly and rock X-mas originals or vastly altered traditional songs (e.g. a bouncy, danceable, truly joyous “Silent Night”).

So, when I came out to LA in 2000, I was a little surprised to realize that there were two brick and mortar Rhino Records stores: one in the Westwood section near UCLA and another on the LA county border in the college town of Claremont. The former, original store, had already lost the ethos that is so wonderfully chronicled in the documentary but I can still say I bought a few CD’s there.

I actually bought far more in the Claremont store because my first LA girlfriend (and more than that, eventually) lived in that town. I didn’t know then that the original owner Richard Foos had sold that store a long time ago – a fact I learned only at the Q&A after the documentary. Nonetheless that Claremont store still carried some of that vibe of community and quirkiness.

(Another tangential fact about me – over my life, the majority of my disposable income has gone into books and record/cd’s with movies a close third after that. Fancy cars, clothes, etc. have never held much appeal to me for while in a sense I could easily be accused of being a collector, it is only of things that produce an experience that truly matter to me; I am decidedly NOT a materialist.)

But what the documentary really captures that is so universal is the experience of going into your neighborhood record store, pawing through the record jackets… that sense of tactility of holding a record album in one’s hand… seeing the art work… reading the liner notes…chatting a little or maybe even a lot with the record store clerk… it was place where geeks could feel cool and sometimes even a community could exist.

The original Rhino Records seems to have been a particular special, maddening, annoying, enlightening. entertaining version of the above. But having been to many a record store first in my home town and then in the East and West Villages in NYC, I still recognized my own variants. I’m sure music geeks in Cleveland, Chicago, Boston, etc. etc. will too.

So, there was sadness and poignancy of something lost (both an era and a community). After all, we now more than likely sit at our computers listening to sound samples on Amazon, etc. or i-tunes and either download the music immediately or have a CD delivered to our door. In Los Angeles, there remains only one last Nessie – Amoeba Records… a hybrid of the old neighborhood indie record store and the Tower Records / Virgin Records corporate type store. You can still get recommendations there from fairly knowledgeable clerks and discover tons of obscure music. Not quite an intimate experience but still one I have to limit or otherwise I spend far too much money there. But once again, it’s the last of its kind. Fortunately, we still have live music so community is in no danger of completely disappearing.

Furthermore, all of the participants in the Rhino comedy drama have survived and found someway to keep doing something of value, so it’s not a depressing documentary but a poignant celebration.

Art in Between (life), Film Commentary, Los Angeles, Music, New York City, Uncategorized

Much Ado, seen

… well in continuation with yesterday’s post, now that I’ve actually
seen “Much Ado About Nothing” at the Santa Monica tennis courts last night – I can say it was the usual mix of good, bad and okay performances but as many of the good included the leads: Bennedick and Beatrice (Bridget Flanery, perf. again on Sunday), the Prince, Antonio and especially the father Leonato (particularly after his daughter is accused of sexual perfidy…quite moving). I don’t have the program with me so unfortunately, I can’t credit all of these actors properly. So, it’s worth seeing just because of them, and of course, it’s pay what you can so the price is right for everybody.

The director’s concept was a grab bag of contemporary anachronisms – the women wear tennis outfits, the men fatigues… at one point Benedick comes out in roller skates… the show stops often for choreographed movements to a soundtrack ranging from techno to classical to big band jazz. There are clever, even inspired aspects to all of this, but it’s also very unevenly executed (both technically and performatively), so there are painful, bizarre pr boring moments alternating with very entertaining ones.

In other words, I liked the energy and the idea of the production more than the totality of the production. Too many of the ideas felt so arbitrary. In fairness, this morning I had a more positive feeling about the production as a whole.

After all, the play itself is far more problematic and not the summer lark that it is often ascribed to be. There are wild variations of tone that don’t jibe with well with our modern sensibility. In a way, the “problem plays” (Measure for Measure, Pericles, etc.) are most easily solved by treating them essentially as dramas not comedies. But what of “Much Ado”? This production just added even more wild tonal swings and arbitrary actions in a shotgun attempt at creating comedy when the play itself isn’t being very funny at all, or perhaps is just being more quietly witty than knockabout farcical.

So, the flaws of that approach actually inspired me to want to try to tackle this play and direct a production… I’ve already come up with staging and scenic ideas… and alternate ways the scenes should have been interpreted. I don’t recoil from the arrogance of the word “should” since some scenes really have one way that they can be played if they are to work within the play as a whole.

That’s not to say there can’t be multiple wiggles within that “one way” but sometimes certain things just have to be accomplished so the final arc for the particular character or even the entire play makes sense.

Los Angeles, Performance-Dance, Theatre, Uncategorized

Much Ado

This is a second test blog… to add some content, I’m seeing “Much Ado About Nothing” in a park in Santa Monica tonight. This is notable, at the moment, solely because Bridget Flanery is playing Beatrice tonight. Bridget is one of my very favorite stage actresses in Los Angeles… a real gift… worth seeing in a very good productions like “The Rainmaker” a couple of years ago at A Noise Within and even in a painful to watch exercise of ego (not her’s, but rather that of the lead actor who was also the director who was also the artistic director) in the worst production of “The Taming of the Shrew” that I have ever seen. Back to the play tonight, I can only hope she is surrounded by actors commensurate with her talent and that all are directed competently. There may be more theatre in LA than most other cities in this country, but the quality is wildly hit or miss.

Los Angeles, Performance-Dance, Theatre, Uncategorized