Death Cab For Cutie’s Ben Gibbard Talks SLACKER For Film Acoustic

Earlier this week, The Modern School of Film’s series, Film Acoustic, moved its program from the Carolina Theatre in Durham to the N.C. Museum of Art in Raleigh for a screening of Richard Linklater’s 1991 breakthrough debut SLACKER.

The film was the choice of Death Cab for Cutie front man Ben Gibbard, who, in the tradition of the series, took part in a discussion after the screening and performed a few songs for the folks in attendance. MSOF founder and moderator Robery Milazzo told the audience in his intro at the Museum’s open-air theater that “this is our first-ever outdoor event,” and that he “absolutely hates watching movies outside,” but that “tonight’s movie is right in the pocket of a movie that screens really well outside.”

Milazzo was right, SLACKER did indeed screen really well, except for the fact that it was really cold that evening. Linklater’s film, which concerns a day in the life of Austin, Texas with the roaming camera going from eccentric character to another, was well received by the crowd, some of who were smarter than me and brought blankets, but I could tell from the vibe that they were more there for Gibbard.

After the film ended, Milazzo brought out his guest of honor with these words: “It’s really amazing that for a movie that quotes Tolstoy, Nietzsche, and Madonna, to have with us someone that Spin Magazine called ‘the poet laureate of the young and hopeful.’” The audience applauded and wooed “Professor Ben Gibbard,” as Milazzo called him, as he walked onstage to talk SLACKER, and various other related, and non related, topics.

Here are some highlights:

On why he choose SLACKER:

Gibbard: “It was a movie that I saw when I was going to college in Billingham, and it really resonated with me because I recognized so many of these characters in my friends and myself. Conversations that are happening throughout this movie are the kind of pseudo intellectual college conversations that you have at the time feel really deep, but once you kind of remove from them you recognize how silly some of them were.

But I just love the fact that this movie takes place over 24 hours in Austin, Texas, and it does such a great job of putting forth the minutiae of what happens in a college town. The absurd, but also kind of beautiful moments as well; the humor. It really resonated with me when I saw it and I come back to it every couple of years, and still really enjoy it.

How SLACKER has served as inspiration:

Gibbard: “To come back to that word ‘minutiae’ I’ve always enjoyed focusing on small moments in life and tried to blow them up and make them something larger than they actually were, and I think that in this movie you have all these little vignettes that flow fairly seamlessly as one character passes another then the camera follows them. And, you know, there are obviously some kind of funny, silly moments in it, but there are also some kind of beautiful moments there. 

Like I love that scene with the elderly man walking at the end of the movie, and we’ve actually been using – without permission – the audio from that as an opening track when we walk out on this tour because I just love that. I just love that, it’s kind of a wonderful way that encapsulates the characters in the film by having this older gentlemen at the end talk from a place of authority, and experience about a lot of the smaller moments that have happened throughout the movie. And some way or another, I just think that’s really a beautiful little soliloquy he has in there.”

On the Austin, Texas locations of SLACKER:

Gibbard: “The thing that’s interesting about watching this film now, 25 years after it was shot, is seeing how much Austin has changed. There’s the scene in the little dinner where the woman is like ‘you should quit, you should quit…’ and I remember making a pilgrimage to that diner one of the first times I went to Austin because I really wanted to see it and I walked in and that same guy was working there. This was like 2001...the guy who comes over and says ‘smarten up’ or whatever. I walked in and it blew my mind that he was standing right there, but across the street…

Milazzo: “Did he say ‘keep it down?’ I think that’s what…”

Gibbard: “No, he didn’t – he just kinda looked at me and I walked out. But, no, I remember in the movie as the guy is walking into the diner, you can see it’s just like the skyline of Austin in the background, and nothing, just some warehouses. Now, there’s like a massive Whole Foods and condos, and it’s been interesting to see, you know, as I watch this movie I’m aware of where a lot of it was shot, just how much the city has changed. It’s the same when I see movies that take place in my hometown of Seattle, how much the city has grown and changed.

Milazzo: “We’re here in Raleigh, North Carolina, and there are a lot of those sort of cities – smart cities, smart communities, uh, I guess when you watch this movie, is this an inspiring vision of America? As awful a question as that sounds – is there any melancholy in this change for you when you watch this film?”

Gibbard: “Uh, it’s not really melancholy, I think that these kind of conversations and characters still exist in every college town in America, you know? For me, I see this film and it reminds me of a time in my life where these things were of the utmost importance. 

I look back at that time in my life fondly, that these conversions and these characters and the people that I knew in my own version of this were kind of like folk heroes of my college experience. You know, the townie who worked at the bar, the guy who’s in 15 bands, all that stuff, these people – you knew ‘em. And I think these people still exist, they’re just that age now.

Milazzo: “It funny, if you cast actors here you’d think ‘ah, those people don’t exist.’ But the fact that he used real people brings it to life in this kind of cool way.”

Gibbard: “I actually have an interesting story about that. Years ago, this was 2000, and we were playing a show in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and we had been warned that the sound guy at this particular club was kind of ornery, but we kind of warmed up to him, we kind of hung out with him, and he seemed so familiar, but I couldn’t place him. He was kind of a heavy set guy, kind of balding. I was like ‘I know this guy from somewhere.’ We were going home later, going back to a place we were staying with this person, and I was like ‘man, that guy looks so familiar!’ And she was like ‘you, know he’s Steve with a van from SLACKER.’ And I was just like, ‘what?’ It was like the first movie star I met. I was like, ‘I can’t believe it!’ I was almost glad that I didn’t recognize him because I would’ve like bothered him all night.”

With a little prompting by Milazzo, Gibbard picked up his guitar and played a few songs between the chit chat starting with “Title Track” off of Death Cab for Cutie’s 2000 album “We Have the Facts and We’re Voting Yes.” 

After some strained talk about the writing process (move it along, Milazzo!), Gibbard fittingly tackled “A Movie Script Ending,” from 2002’s “The Photo Album,” took a stab at Nirvana’s “All Apologies” (he started playing the riff then said “I’m not gonna be able to do this”), did a rough but still solid version of “Steadier Footing” (also from “The Photo Album”), and concluded his appearance with a stunningly superb rendition of “I Will Follow You into the Dark” from 2005’s “Plans,” which you can watch a crude video of his performance that somebody recorded on their phone.

A final anecdote, in response to an audience member’s question about what is a favorite song of Gibbard’s that he has returned to again and again:

Gibbard: “It’s not so much because of the lyrical content, and it might seem like a strange choice, but I really believe that “There She Goes” by The La’s is like the most perfect song ever written. It’s a perfect song – it’s short, it feels like you’ve heard it before but you haven’t. 

And someone might hear that song and go like ‘that’s just a light pop song - like, I could write that.’ Well, no you couldn’t…because you would’ve written it if you could. And that entire record is like that for me, but that song in particular, like you know there’s a lot of covers of it in the world, it’s kind of a ubiquitous song, but whenever the original comes on I have this moment like ‘God, this is like an amazing song.’

I had this moment, this is name dropping so forgive me, but years ago, Death Cab was playing a festival in Japan, and Teenage Fanclub is my all-time favorite band, they were playing…it was us, then Teenage Fanclub, then The La’s – they were doing a reunion. 

So it was really crazy, and I’m standing next to Norman (Blake) from Teenage Fanclub, he was like one of my heroes from the time I was 14, and they go into ‘There She Goes’ and he turns to me and says ‘Man, classic pop song, right?’ ‘Yeah!’ ‘It’s crazy that it’s about heroin, right?’ 

And I was like ‘what?’ I never thought of that angle on the song. And it just changed it all for me. This moment where somebody, who’s one of my heroes, was giving me information that I hereto did not have and it’s changing the whole song for me.”

More later…

Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy Talks AMERICAN MOVIE For Film Acoustic

Last weekend, possibly my favorite installment so far of The Modern School of Film's series, Film Acoustic, went down in Durham: Jeff Tweedy of Wilco screened and discussed Chris Smith's 1999 cult favorite documentary AMERICAN MOVIE.

The film was well received by the audience at Fletcher Hall at the Carolina Theatre - many of whom had raised their hands when MSOF founder and moderator Robery Milazzo asked afterwards how many had never seen it before - and I enjoyed seeing it on the big screen for the first time, especially considering it was an original 35 mm print.

AMERICAN MOVIE focuses on aspiring Milwaukee filmmaker Mark Borchardt's attempts to complete his short horror film COVEN, so that he can finance his dream project, an epic full-length feature named NORTHWESTERN.

Borchardt's sidekick, the lovably sclubby Mike Schank, who composed the music for movie, got a lot of laughs, but it was the director's Uncle Bill, who skeptically financed the project and is recruited to act, that most got the crowd rolling. 

After the screening ended, Milazzo relayed a message from Schank: “Happy Memorial Day. Thank for showing the film and thank you, Jeff Tweedy.” Milliazzo then added, “An hour later he texted me back and said ‘Oh, if there are any hot girls in the audience that would like to call me, you c an give them my number.’ And then he texted me a half an hour later – ‘Girls only though.’

Millazzo introduced Tweedy as “former lead singer of Land Ho! And Black Shampoo,” and the Wilco singer came out to rousing applause. 

Tweedy discussed the film and several other subjects with Milazzo, including the Wilco rock doc I AM TRYING TO BREAK YOUR HEART, his contribution to the BOYHOOD soundtrack, and his mother's love of movies. Tweedy's 15-year old son Sam also came on stage for a brief bit and answered some questions.

But the best news for fans was that Tweedy had brought his guitar and performed solo acoustic versions of “Less Than You Think,” “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart” (see video below), “The Losing End (When You’re On)” (Neil Young cover), “One By One,” and “You Are Not Alone.”

Here are some other highlights from the excellent evening:

On why he choose AMERICAN MOVIE:

Tweedy: “One of the reasons that we wanted to watch this movie together is the idea that making things and immersing yourself in making things is an incredibly healthy and sustaining thing to do. I really have this fantasy that if everybody in the world were given the opportunity to make things, uh, it sounds pretty naïve and simple saying it out loud, but I think the world would be a much better place. Everybody would be on the side of existence as opposed to destruction. Creation as opposed to destruction.

That’s the main focus in our house that it’s ‘study hard, do good, try to be kind to people, and try to make stuff – it makes you happy.’”

“I see him (Borchardt) as a very optimistic and vocal person. He preaches it to everybody around him. To Bill, to everybody in the community, you know ‘Do something! You gonna die and not do something? Do something!’ 

I think people might, on one hand might be sort of cynical in indulging him, On the other hand I think that there’s a deep sense that they have to honor that. They have to honor that least there’s somebody in their midst that doesn’t feel like giving up.”

Milazzo: “You guys are roughly the same age, you and Mark, I think there’s a year apart – what separates you from Mark?”

Tweedy: “I ask myself that question all of the time. I think that anybody that has had any modicum of success whatsoever asks themselves that question periodically. ‘Why me? Why not a lot of other people that have worked very very hard or our very talented people.”

On Sam Jones' 2002 documentary I AM TRYING TO BREAK YOUR HEART:

Milazzo: “Was it a big decision to kind of open yourself up that way?”

Tweedy: “No, I can honestly say it was a naïve decision. I didn’t feel like Wilco had a persona worth any spending any amount of effort to prune or shape, I just didn’t think there was anything that could come from it that would be that, I don’t know. I felt that a lot of people who spend time on their personas, and their image, were people like Madonna, and I don’t know, maybe Bob Dylan, somebody like that, but it has never been a part of how I view what it is that I’m doing.

But I learned a lot - after the fact I realized that I would’ve never done that again. We basically just let him make the movie, and we didn’t have any say. Well, I mean, we probably could’ve pulled our songs from the movie, you know, so we could have some control if it was really really terrible, but we didn’t. We didn’t do anything. We just saw it when it was done, and said ‘oh, that’s uncomfortable.’ Imagine how very similar Mike and Mark might’ve felt if they went to a screening of this when it first came out.”

Milazzo: “What did you learn about yourself though? You know, in the sense of watching the documentary of Wilco, did you ever have a moment ‘oh, that’s my response’ or ‘that’s my process’? In a sense worrying that you don’t want to put yourself in that again, did you see yourself differently?”

Tweedy: “Yeah, there are…I haven’t seen it in a long time, but there were a lot of moments watching that movie, well, there were a lot of moments during the filming of that movie where, uh, the first time there was an observing ego in the room – the camera…”

Milazzo: “Camera – you do such a beautiful song called ‘Kamera,’ which speaks to that…

Tweedy: “It just felt like, I don’t know if I’ve ever been able to put myself outside of myself enough to see what a camera might be seeing. And so there were a lot of moments during the process of making that record where I was like ‘oh, no – oh, no, that’s what the camera is seeing.’ Obviously, this is not – our relationship with Jay (Bennett) for example was made painfully obvious that there was a big problem in the way we were interacting, the way he was interacting with the band. And it’s really sad that it took a camera to do that or that we weren’t together enough, or grown up enough as people to see that without a camera.”

On Tweedy's mother, Jo Ann Tweedy, who passed in 2006:

Milazzo: “One thing I thought was interesting about your cinema DNA is how it connects for your Mom, and Judy Garland of all people. Because when we asked about a movie I thought we’d be getting a Judy Garland film, not that that would’ve been wrong at the time. But what about when you were young and your Mom watching films with you or around you…”

Tweedy: “My mother was a night owl. She was a high school drop-out who had my sister when she was 16 years old, and I was born much much later than everyone else in my family. I’m 10 years younger than my youngest brother. And so by the time I came around, she had really given up on parenting. You know, there weren’t a lot of boundaries so I was up all night watching movies while my Mom fell asleep with cigarettes in her mouth. 

Yeah, right, it sounds like a terrible parenting thing – it is. But my memory of it looking back is actually really warm. It’s a warm feeling. It’s actually one of the images that comes to mind when I miss my mother. But in St. Louis, the St. Louis TV stations had a movie program, or a late night movie called the “Bijou Picture Show.” I think that’s kind of a Midwestern thing. There were a lot of Judy Garland movies that they would show, a lot of black and white, now it’s Turner Classic Movies – it’s the same thing.”

Milazzo: “If performance cures a sort of anxiety, what does writing cure for you?”

Tweedy: “Well, I think that, I have a lot of thoughts about this. Because I can’t help myself, we’re pretty philosophical in our house and we end up talking about a lot of things like this. I think the best that I can come up with, is that it’s like a really really healthy way of killing time for me. It’s actually, uh, I don’t know, I like not being there. I like to be gone, unburdened enough of having an ego. Which is like what happens when I get completely immersed in the process of making a song. Or making something – it becomes, you become this thing – it’s a maker.

But it’s not necessarily…in fact the more the ego gets involved, the more it suffers. It really suffers when you start to think ‘well, are people gonna think I’m cool because this is so great?’ Then you’re done. The song is done and you can’t return from that. You should put it away until some other time when you can get lost in it again. 

That’s why I said ‘once a song is done, it’s on a record, or finished recording it, or finish writing it even, it’s already done all the good stuff that it was going to do for me. After that it’s all pain and suffering. Because even if people like it, it’s never enough. Or they see it somehow different, or they’re indifferent – that’s the worst of all. ”

On his songs in BOYHOOD:

Milazzo: “BOYHOOD, the great Richard Linklater film, which to me was the best film of last year…”

Tweedy: “I think it should’ve been called ‘Motherhood.’ (Audience applauds) I think the most compelling character in the whole movie was Patricia Arquette. Beautiful.”

Milazzo: “Speaking of beauty, one of your songs is in it. How did that come about? Could you demystify that process? What’s it like to hear your song in a really killer movie in a really killer moment?”

Tweedy: “Well, in that movie there’s a Wilco song “Hate it Here” is in a scene, an actual scene where they’re talking about the song. And I didn’t know it was in there, so it was a little, it actually took me out of the movie a little bit which is kind of a drag. I was like ‘Abbey Road’?”

But anyway, and then the song ‘Summer Noon’ is in the movie also, but it’s kind of on the radio in the background, and I think they wanted something that would be really contemporary when the movie came out. And so they asked me to write a song for the movie and I was working on ‘Suikerae’ so we sent them that. ‘How about something like this?’ Then they said ‘great,’ and they put it in the movie. And then for some reason it was disqualified for an Oscar though. So Maybe you could talk to somebody about that.

“Summer Noon” is basically cut and pasted like a Warhol, like Zerox. I thought, people do that with art, why don’t they do that with songs? I had a minute and a half long song, and I thought, why don’t I just put it on the record twice? Back to back.”

On Wilco’s breakthrough album “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot”:

Milazzo: “The first attempt at a release was at an interesting moment in history, because the first attempt at release was…”

Tweedy: “‘Yankee Hotel Foxtrot,’ the original release date was September 11th, 2001. The artwork, the entire package, everything was done. And we were dropped so we lost that release date. Obviously, over time it’s weird that it’s become associated with that.

“The lyrics on the whole record were really meant to be…I was thinking a lot about America, and I really wanted to know what I thought of America. Having grown up being somewhat skeptical of America, growing up in a time where I was heavily influenced by punk rock as a young teenager. Very, I don’t know, not willing to submit to the party line of America. I don’t know, I just really, I think a lot of things, ‘oh, there’s a cash machine, is that evil? Is a cash machine evil, or is it just blue and green. You know, what actually is the evil part of America? Because I really don’t think like anything I grew up seeing was particularly evil, but I also knew a lot of things weren’t right.

Anyway, lyrics aside, I don’t know how cinematic they might be, but the actual construction of that record, very very consciously constructed with the idea of cinematic pacing.

Milazzo: “And the transitions, the lack of thereof…”

Tweedy: “Everything was recorded in a lot of different formats, and what we would end up doing is we would mix the first verse of a song and then completely wipe the board and everything completely clean, and start all over for the second verse. And then splice those two together. So we could never remix that record if we wanted to – it doesn’t exist.

And one final thought from the evening:

Tweedy: “It’s one of the weird things about rock music – it’s a youth obsessed culture within a youth obsessed culture, and it’s disheartening sometimes when you start to become known as ‘Dad Rock.’ That doesn’t help.”

The next installment of Film Acoustic, on Monday, June 22nd, looks like another winner: Will Butler of Arcade Fire screens and discusses Terry Gilliam's 1996 sci-fi thriller TWELVE MONKEYS. Tickets are on sale now.

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Neko Case & Mike Nesmith Talk REPO MAN For Film Acoustic: Part 2

This is part 2 as the conversation between Neko Case and Mike Nesmith at the Carolina Theatre in Durham following a screening of REPO MAN earlier this week was so enjoyably rich with insights that I wanted to give it more space (click here for Part 1). For the second installment of the new series, Film Acoustic, the acclaimed singer/songwriter Case had chosen the 1984 cult classic, being one of her all-time favorites, to screen, and invited its executive producer, Nesmith, who you also may know from a little band he was in called the Monkees, to discuss it and other related topics with her.

Here, Nesmith speaks about the Monkees' sole film project, the possibility of a REPO MAN sequel, and whether or not popular singer/songwriter Jimmy Buffett had a cameo in the film.

Nesmith on HEAD, Bob Rafelson’s 1968 psychedelic masterpiece starring the Monkees: “It’s actually a masterwork. And whose masterwork it is, is Jack Nicholson’s. When HEAD came about, it was, I don’t want to build too much – take it on fact, that the movie Bob and Bert (Schneider) had decided to do, HEAD, as a kind of assisted suicide for the Monkees and they hired Jack to come in and help them. ‘Cause they wanted to kill the monster. The monster had turned on them.

They had been praying for the little wooden boy to come to life and suddenly it did, and it scared the hell out of them so Geppetto was going to throw the marionette off the bridge. Well, okay off the air, but what do you do in that particular case with the music? What do you do with what that film is about to become? And Jack was able to bring the music into that film in such a way that it satisfied what everybody wanted out of that movie, that wanted anything out of the movie. And instead of killing the monster, it imprinted it forever on the history of film. And there it is, there it jolly well is.

Bob tells this story in the commentary of the movie’s Criterion release of HEAD where he says that Jack and him were sitting around loaded, and Bob gets dark and Jack said ‘what’s going on?’ ‘I’m thinking about the blackest, darkest thing in the world.’ And Jack said ‘well, what would that be?’ And Bob said ‘Victor Mature’s hair.’ And Jack said ‘that’s it! The whole movie takes place in Victor Mature’s hair!’ I thought Jack had one of the greatest dope riffs I ever heard!’ But he took that and suddenly he made it all work around that music.”

Nesmith on his favorite line in REPO MAN: “‘The life of REPO MAN is intense’ is the fulcrum. That’s talking about intensity, it’s talking about what happens to you when you watch the movie – it’s intense.”

On Alex Cox having the rights to the screenplay to REPO MAN: “Now Alex has the right to make a sequel if he wants to.”

Milazzo: “If he rang your phone and said ‘hey, would you like to jump on this journey again with me?”

Nesmith: “No.” (audience laughs) I know, it sounded flip but no. It’s not because it was a bad experience because that’s not…I’m not sure that there is a sequel to REPO MAN. I think REPO MAN is a whole complete thing.”

Case: “I’d be really sad if they made a sequel.”

Nesmith: “Yeah, I’m kinda following you in on that. He wrote the sequel called “Otto’s Hawaiian Holiday.” (audience laughs) Just as funny as you think it is.”

Questions from the audience Q & A:

Audience member: “The last scene, or near the end, with the guy that says ‘I love my job’ and they bring out a book, I think I remember that being a copy of ‘Dianetics’ but I didn’t quite pick it up in the movie…”

Nesmith: “I’m so glad you asked me that, because it’s one of the funniest jokes in the movie and nobody sees it!”

Audience member: “And I just watched BATTLEFIELD EARTH yesterday!” (laughter)

Nesmith: “You see, and this is an example, like how we got the generic food, they’re not gonna let us use Dianetics!” So Alex calls it ‘Diaretics’!

Another audience member: “Jimmy Buffet is credited as one of the blond agents, which one is he?”

Milazzo: “Where’s Jimmy Buffett in this film?”

Case: “Did they make that up?”

Nesmith: “No, no – Jimmy was there.” (audience laughs)

Case: “You guys planted this stuff like they’re little landmines that are just gonna keep going off for years and years.

Nesmith: “Nobody planned it. They just fell off the truck and landed some place.”

Case: “Jimmy Buffet’s on the lot.” (laughter) “Do we have a size 44 blazer? Show Mr. Buffett in.” (more laughter)

Nesmith: “That’s exactly what it was. That very thing. He and I were sort of friends, and hanging out, and was ‘what are you doing?’ “Shooting REPO MAN,’ ‘oh I want to come to the set.’ Alex said ‘do you want to be in the movie?’ and handed him a blazer and a pair of sunglasses. And he is part of the team when they set the body on fire that’s on the park bench, he’s one of those guys and if you look at it – he’s standing by the back of the van. That’s Jimmy.”

Nesmith on the legacy of REPO MAN: “Alex and Peter were all frustrated by the way that movie got distributed, and what happened to it in the public’s mind. The fact that it has gotten some traction, and there are people who love it, and people who really get it, is nourishing. 

Case: “And I’m thinking that it probably made more money than GREYSTOKE: LEGEND OF TARZAN that came out that same year.” (audience laughs)

Nesmith: “Actually, that’s my favorite movie, GREYSTOKE: LEGEND OF TARZAN.” (more laughter)

Milazzo: “Goes without saying.” (even more laughter)

The next Film Acoustic is a real doozy: Frank Black from the Pixies Presents Terry Gilliam's BRAZIL, another favorite film of mine, on Thursday, March 19th. Tickets are on sale now.

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Neko Case & Mike Nesmith Talk REPO MAN For Film Acoustic: Part 1

Film Acoustic, the Carolina Theatre’s new series which pairs special guests with their favorite movies, went down in Durham earlier this week on Monday evening, February 23rd, which was luckily the night before the big snowstorm hit the Triangle area. It was an event that was highly anticipated and didn’t disappoint: Neko Case presents Alex Cox’s 1984 cult classic REPO MAN, with Very Special Guest Mike Nesmith.

Unlike last month’s program with Lucinda Williams, there was no music played but the discussion with the two fine musicians, Case and Nesmith, who was the Executive Producer of REPO MAN, after the film was lengthy and incredibly engrossing (it may have been too lengthy for my wife, but that’s another matter). 

The last time I saw REPO MAN It was on its 25th anniversary on the big screen in the Cool Classics series at the Colony Theater (read my post about it from back in the day), and I enjoyed seeing it again. I think it’ll always hold up as Cox’s weird, funny curio and it has one of the greatest soundtracks ever.

After the screening, a video of Case’s was shown, “Maybe Sparrow” from her excellent 2006 album “Fox Confessor Brings the Flood,” then Modern School of Film founder and Duke graduate Robert Milazzo introduced Case, who was greeted warmly by the Fletcher Hall audience.

Case spoke about seeing REPO MAN and how it reflected how scary it was as “a 14-year old who grew up in the Pacific Northwest” living in the Reagan/Cold War era. “People look back now and talk about Ronald Reagan like he was this really beloved President, but people fucking hated that guy,” Case explained to some clapping from the crowd. “People thought George W. Bush was funny, nobody thought Reagan was funny.” 

Case went on about the film: “I looked for myself in everything as well, and I never could find a female. And in this movie, the female characters are all just like fragments of women. Kind of like the men are fragments of men, like nobody’s a complete character. It’s very cartoony, which makes sense since Alex Cox drew a comic book strip first.”

After Case talked about how she “knew a lot of boys exactly like Otto,” how New Wave was the death knell of punk, and that this was the first time she’d ever seen REPO MAN on the big screen (“I’ve only seen it in rooms with shitty Christmas lights”) moderator Milazzo introduced Nesmith who walked from the back of the theatre to huge applause. My wife leaned towards me and said, “that’s a Monkee!”

Milazzo gave the interview over to Case, and they revealed that this was a continuation of their three hour conversation at lunch (Case to Milazzo: “We cheated on you with each other…in a restaurant”).

Here are some highlights from Case’s talk with Nesmith:

Nesmith on the inception of REPO MAN: “I had just finished doing a movie called TIMERIDER. Harry Gittes and a friend of mine, Bill Dear, who I’d been working with for a while, directed that movie. And I made friends with Harry, and Harry was working over in Jack Nicholson’s office at Sony, and this script came across the desk, and he called me up and said ‘you’ve got to see this.’ So he sent it to me, and I read it, and I said ‘this is great! What do we do?’ He said ‘well the studios are going to make this picture but I thought maybe you would be interested in doing it as a independent producer.’ I said ‘well, let’s talk to the guys.’

So they set up a meeting with Alex, Alex Cox, and Jonathan Wacks and Peter McCarthy to his office. And I just went over, and, you know, at that point I was in the middle of kind of a roll-off of my artistic endeavors and so forth. Come off a bunch of albums at RCA, was done with the Monkees, it was, you know, everything was kind of behind me, and TIMERIDER had not been successful either in theaters, or artistically, it just hadn’t quite worked like I wanted it to work. But I had financial freedom because my mother had left me a lot of money, she died in 1980, and I was knocking around looking for something to do, in terms of how to keep going as an artist, because I figured it was over for me at that point.

So when I met them in Harry’s office, I was in a frame of mind which was, I thought maybe what I could do is help get this movie made somehow, and if I can do that, what I should do, not that I can, but what I should do is not mess with it. I shouldn’t try to fit this into some sort of mold. What I could provide as a kind of role where I could stand between the filmmakers and the studio, and the filmmakers could do the film they wanted to do, and the studio would get either delivered to them a product that they could quantify somehow.”

Nesmith on the screenplay: “It was like free association origami. I mean, I knew it was not gonna turn into a swan, but it was folded up somehow; everything had a point, it had a way of referring and closing up loose ends and so forth.”

Nesmith on the original ending: “It was supposed to end with Otto as a Salvadorian rebel. And Marlene and the Rodriquez brothers were really sort of the American conscription for South American rebels.”

Case: “And that’s why you see her in her Che Guevara outfit.”

Nesmith on revisiting the movie: “When I watch this movie, and this is the first time I’ve seen it with an audience in 30 years, as it develops along, one of the things that’s outstanding to me about it, and it just holds, is that it is a comedy that doesn’t have one gag in it. They don’t play anything for funny. Even ‘let’s go get sushi and not pay,’ he reads that line flat! And Alex never cuts tight on the generic food cans, you can barely see it say “food,” he’s eating food. And the standard play, the TV play, the formula play is cut, cut on “food,” so people go ‘ho ho, it’s food.”

Nesmith on the ending they used: “Alex called me up at some point, and he said ‘you know, I’ve been doing this movie now so, and I still don’t know how to end it, but I think something’s happened with Miller *. I think he’s come forward as a fulcrum, a kind of nexus of the film.’ And I thought, ‘this is genius. This is smart. This is right. What are you gonna do?’ He said ‘I don’t know. But can I have some money for special effects? I think I want the Malibu to glow.’ I said ‘that’s a great idea.’ ‘Can I have some money.’ I said ‘no.’ Million eight, that’s it. ‘I’ve got to make it glow for a million eight.’ So he went out and bought the reflective tube they use on the highway, and painted the whole car with a brush. And shot green lights on it – that’s what you see in the film! That was great filmmaking.”

Nesmith on what was in Otto’s can of “food”: “Corned beef hash.” 

Nesmith on the killer punk soundtrack: “The soundtrack ultimately redeemed the film financially - it made money.”

Case: “Which is my favorite story about the movie.”

Nesmith: “It came out, Universal released it and put it in one theater in Boston, where it played for a year. And that was it! We were done, we were toast. And so we, you know, slumped shoulders and went home, and then suddenly, Universal people at music said ‘holy crap, look at this soundtrack!’ And they put it out and it sold 5 times what soundtracks sell, which was not a huge number but was enough to get us attention.”

Nesmith on nearly contributing the score for EASY RIDER: “Dennis (Hopper) said ‘would you be interested in doing the music?’ So I came up with some sort of thing, it was like a cross between Memphis horns and cherry pink and apple blossom pie– it was some stupid idea, about I would use brass band in sections, and I realized that I didn’t have a sense of this, I didn’t have any idea. And he looked at me and he was courteous, which was kind of a first for Dennis, and he was ‘okay, good’ and I was out! And then the next thing you hear is “If 6 Was 9” by Hendrix, and you realize ‘okay, they created a whole other world that I could’ve massively fucked up with cherry pink and apple blossom pie.’”

Nesmith discusses one of my favorite films ever, the Monkees' movie HEAD, a possible REPO MAN sequel, and much much more in Part 2.

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Lucinda Williams’ Pick For Film Acoustic: John Huston’s WISE BLOOD

Late last year when I heard about a new series starting up at the Carolina Theatre, programmed by The Modern School of Film, called “Film Acoustic,” which pairs special guests with their favorite movies, I was very intrigued. Yet, I regretfully skipped the first installment in December with Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips presenting and discussing a 40th anniversary screening of Liliana Cavani’s THE NIGHT PORTER. Yeah, sure wish I’d gone to that.

So, the second in the series, I made sure I attended, especially when I heard that it would feature Grammy-winning singer/songwriter Lucinda Williams, one of my favorite artists. 

Williams’ pick was WISE BLOOD, John Huston’s 1979 adaptation of Flannery O’Connor’s 1952 debut novel of the same name. It was announced that in addition to taking part in a talk about the movie with Modern School of Film founder and Duke graduate Robert Milazzo, Williams, unlike when Coyne appeared, would be playing a few songs after the screening. But the real kicker was that the event was, scheduled by happy accident, on Williams’ 62nd Birthday! (Monday, January 26th)

The Birthday girl’s choice, the darkly humorous WISE BLOOD, is one of the weirdest in the iconic Huston’s filmography, far removed from the Humphrey Bogart classics he helmed (THE MALTESE FALCON, TREASURE OF SIERRE MADRE, KEY LARGO, THE AFRICAN QUEEN), and way less epic than the film that came before it, his 1975 Rudyard Kipling adaptation THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING, starring Sean Connery and Michael Caine.

Brad Dourif, best known for his roles in ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST, Deadwood, and, as Milazzo reminded us in a trivia question, as the voice of Chucky in the CHILD’S PLAY franchise, stars as Hazel Motes, a young Southern man who’s trying to establish what he calls the Church of Truth Without Christ.

Although referred to as the town Taulkinham (from the book), the film is clearly set in Macon, Georgia (the name Macon can be seen on buildings throughout). Dourif’s Motes travels to the area to set up his ministry, which is basically just him and his constantly breaking down Essex automobile, which he stands on the hood of to preach to people on the street.

Somewhere around the time that Motes finds himself a room at a boarding house, chosen because Harry Dean Stanton as a scam artist posing as a blind preacher and Amy Wright as his airheaded, horny daughter live there, I realized that I had seen this before. Or at least a large chunk of it, because a lot of its imagery, acting, and story points were very familiar to me. Ned Beatty’s role as Hoover Shoates (love that name), a boisterous guitar-playing rival to Motes, and an odd subplot involving Dan Shor as a needy, racist halfwit who steals a gorilla suit, rang bells of recognition in my mind too.

I believe I had happened upon it when devouring every movie I could as a kid watching cable in the mid ‘80s. What I saw of WISE BLOOD back then had been locked away in some file in my mind, and this special screening rekindled those memories.

That was a cool thing to recall, and it enhanced this viewing quite a bit. But, of course, what really elevated the evening was Williams. Relaxed, drinking a glass of red wine, the woman who Time Magazine once called “America’s best songwriter” came out to warm applause, and yelled birthday wishes, and seemed very satisfied with how the movie had been received by the audience there in Fletcher Hall that evening.

One of the key points of her discussion with moderator Milazzo was Williams’ recently passed father, award winning Arkansas poet Miller Williams (1930-1915), who was a student of O’Connor’s.

Williams spoke about how her father’s agnosticism influenced understand what Motes meant by a church of Christ without Christ, and, alone with only her acoustic guitar, she performed two songs that were directly influenced by the film: “Get Right With God,” from her 2001 album Essence; and “Atonement,” from its 2003 follow-up Worlds Without Tears.

Williams’ comments around those striking performances were priceless. On “Get Right With God” winning a Grammy: “It won Best Female Rock Vocal Performance, which doesn’t make any sense – it wasn’t a rock song.” On the new solo arrangement of “Attonement”: “That sounded really cool, we might have to start doing it that way.”

Among some more lively discussion, which included her amusing recollection of meeting Bob Dylan for the first time, and some nifty audience Q & A, Williams also performed a blistering cover of Robert Johnson’s “Stop Breakin’ Down,” which appeared on her 1979 debut album Rambling, and a sweet version of “Compassion,” adapted from one of her father’s poems, from her excellent 2014 album Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone.

All in all, a great evening. Seeing WISE BLOOD, a pleasingly warped piece of Americana in the presence of one of its biggest fans, the wonderful Lucinda Williams, who sang its praises in both meanings of the phrase, on the occasion of her birthday, is something I’m sure I’ll never forget.

The next Film Acoustic, set for Monday, February 23rd, looks incredibly promising as well: Neko Case presents Alex Cox’s 1984 cult classic REPO MAN, with Very Special Guest Mike Nesmith. Being a big fan of Case, both solo and with the New Pornographers, and even a bigger fan of Nesmith, who executive produced REPO MAN, but, of course, is best known for being one of the Monkees, there’s no way I’m missing that.

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