In Which Absolute Fame Corrupts Absolutely

The Aura of Prosperity

by MOLLY LAMBERT

The King Of Comedy came out twenty four years ago and it rings like a truth bell more than ever. Martin Scorsese's criminally underrated dark comedy is about fame and its pursuit. Not the lovingly sepia-toned version he rolled out in The Aviator that keeps chumps like me interested in the VF Hollywood Issue. ("Ooh! Hitchcock!") The King Of Comedy is interested in focusing on the chumps. What happens to the lowly consumer of culture who tries to reciprocate.

The King Of Comedy was written by Paul D. Zimmerman, who once said "If you're not cynical, you're stupid."

Fame is a one-way mirrored monologue masquerading as a conversation. Celebrity Worship Syndrome is a recognized psychological condition. Some people think it's at an all time high in America, corresponding with insecurity about the impending recession. I buy that, but it's not just America. The epidemic is worldwide. Celebrities represent our cultural Jungian archetypes.

Adult child beauty pageant queen Britney Spears is busy demonstrating the full spectrum of psychological conditions in the DSM IV on a world stage. Angelina Jolie is practically a fertility cult and Jennifer Aniston is the patron saint of jilted women. Whether you see yourself in Anna Nicole or Alan Rickman, no one is immune to identifying with celebrities.

They are our Olympians. They act out the same basic emotional dramas as mortals. Through invasive media we get to watch voyeuristically and make judgments from home. It's the concept behind social networking sites, blogs, American Idol and the election. That bizarre desire to be judged, to be evaluated and approved by strangers, is somehow innately human.

Scorsese's made a lot of films about celebrity. His Mafia films are about the localized version; neighborhood notoriety. It's basically the same idea. You get recognized and receive special treatment. People help you out and want to give you things.

But there's a malevolent flip side, which is that people want to tell you about themselves. They are helping you in the hope that you will give them something in return. You most likely can't and they will be disappointed. Fame is both convenient and a curse.

Rupert Pupkin (Robert De Niro) is neither funny nor talented, but he wants to be a famous comedian. He lives in his mother's basement with a cardboard cut-out of Liza Minelli. He is sidesplittingly pathetic, which makes his drive to be recognized fucking hilarious.

Fabulous ginger dykon Sandra Bernhard, as Masha, gives DeNiro a run for his money in the 'genuine psychopath' school of performance. Masha's masking tape seduction of Jerry Langford is as uncomfortable as you imagine being forcibly raped by your lesbian stalker might be. (Unless you are Alex, who is gunning for lesbians to start stalking him.)

Scorsese excels at depicting the interior lives of poignant losers. Pupkin and Masha may be his most blindly confident losers and by that token, the most poignant. The film's "happy" ending is perhaps the darkest touch of all.

"I make you laugh, I'm here to fuckin' amuse you?"

You know the saying Kill Your Idols? Sometimes just meeting your heroes can be enough to destroy the positive illusions you've built up around them. You're generally better off not meeting them without a proper introduction.

Success begets other people trying to leech off that success. If people came up to you every day wanting something you can't really give them; the aura of prosperity, I imagine it would get tiresome really fast.

Jerry Lewis; Money, Cash, Hoes

But fans feel like celebrities owe them the courtesy of an encounter. Especially in the case of a comedian or a talk show host with a 'friendly' public persona that is supposedly also your 'real' one. How do you be a dick to someone badgering you for an autograph when you're, say, Conan O'Brien or Ellen DeGeneres?

Like the true cliche, a lot of comedians are deeply unhappy people. Sad clowns abound. It makes you suspicious of funny people. Humor is often a more socially acceptable form of more uncomfortable emotions like anger or sadness. Charismatic people are generally hiding some kind of insecurity or fatal character flaw behind their great personality.

no one knows what it's like to be the sad clown

Jerry Lewis seems like a testy enough guy to start. To coax this great performance out of Lewis, Scorsese had DeNiro shout anti-Semitic shit at him in character before shooting a scene. Lewis never finished his own jaw-droppingly offensive magnum opus, 1972's The Day The Clown Cried. The complete script is online.

TDTCC tells the story of a self-centered circus clown, Helmut Doork, who is sent to a concentration camp after a drunken impersonation of Hitler. There, he befriends the Jewish children of the camp, and performs for them, angering the camp Commandant. He is sent with the children on a train to Auschwitz, and there, he is expected to lead the children, like a Pied Piper, to the gas chambers.

The Larry Sanders Show really picks up where The King Of Comedy left off. I can't recommend that show enough. Judd Apatow (who wrote and produced Larry Sanders) has his own Pupkinesque anecdote about Steve Martin that he is surely sick of telling by now:

Apatow regaled an audience at the New Yorker Festival this weekend with the tale of how, on vacation in California as a boy, he had spotted Martin washing his car in front of his home. The young Apatow jumped out of the car and asked for an autograph, but Martin said he didn't give autographs at his home. "Please, we won't tell anyone," Apatow begged. Sorry, Martin said, but no.So Apatow went home and wrote Martin a nasty letter, in which he gave an early glimpse of his now well-documented talent for profanity. Three months later, he received a package from Martin that contained a copy of his book Cruel Shoes. "I'm sorry," read Martin's inscription. "I didn't realize I was speaking to THE Judd Apatow."

Top Twenty Movies About the Corrosive Nature of Fame

1. A Face In The Crowd

2. Sweet Smell Of Success

3. Ace In The Hole

4. All About Eve

5. Stardust Memories

6. Zelig

7. 8 ½

8. Opening Night

9. Nashville

10. This Is My Life

11. Being There

12. All That Jazz

13. I Shot Andy Warhol

14. Mulholland Drive

15. Boogie Nights

16. Cecil B. Demented

17. Showgirls

18. To Die For

19. Valley Of The Dolls/Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls

20. Glitter

Molly Lambert is the managing editor of This Recording. She lives in Los Angeles, and she tumbls right here for your pleasure, and she twitters right here for mine.

"Kundun! I liked it!"

"Rock and Roll Nightmare" - Spinal Tap (mp3)

"Warmer Than Hell" - Spinal Tap (mp3)

"Gimme Some Money" - Spinal Tap (mp3)

In Which You Can't Let The Gloom Get You

With Friends Like These

by JACOB SUGARMAN

If Tony Soprano was a fan of Gary Cooper he must have loved Robert Mitchum. Cat sliced off his own finger in Sydney Pollock’s The Yakuza and didn’t make a peep. Just sweated a little and wrapped that bitch up in a napkin. 

When he wasn’t sucking on cigarettes in fedoras and trench coats, he even found the time to cut a calypso record and the sensationally titled country album, That Man, Robert Mitchum, Sings.

Really, who knew? With the May release of The Friends of Eddie Coyle on Criterion DVD, Gen-Y audiences have their first crack at Eddie “Knuckles” in this classic, 70’s crime saga and quintessential Mitchum vehicle.

The movie centers on Eddie “Knuckles” Coyle, a low-grade hoodlum and gunrunner famous for the extra set of knuckles he acquired from the wrong side of a dresser drawer. Such is the price for selling traceable arms to the Mafia. When he’s pinched for hijacking a truck, Coyle turns snitch for Detective David Foley in the hopes that he’ll have his sentence reduced. Because what would his charming, Irish hobbit of a wife do without him?

Meanwhile Jimmy Scalise (Alex Rocco, best known as Moe Green from The Godfather) and his crew are traipsing about the greater Boston area with guns and elaborate masks, robbing banks and taking names. Why? Because he’s Alex Rocco! He made his bones when you were going out with cheerleaders!

When Scalise’s crew is captured by the police, the mob fingers Coyle for setting them up. I won’t spoil the ending but a baby-faced Peter Boyle and a Boston Garden-era Bruins game are involved.

Made in 1973, The Friends of Eddie Coyle enjoys the same funk-infused score and gritty, urban texture as The Taking of Pelham 1, 2, 3. But while Joseph Sargeant’s caper caught the nostalgic eye of Tony Scott (who’s-gulp-slated to remake The Warriors in 2010), Coyle is the infinitely more stylish of the two films.

Scalise’s crew robs its first bank in translucent masks that look like a cross between John Waters and Ricardo Montalban. Take my word that this hybrid is as chilling as it is hideous. In their follow-up heist, they’re sporting rubber disguises that bear an awful resemblance to the president masks from the 1991 idiot-genius film, Point Break. I see you, Kathryn Bigelow! Your sexy DILF act is fooling no one.

With all the double-crossing, snitching and hammy Boston accents, it’s also hard to think that Martin Scorsese didn’t at least take a peak at Coyle before he started shooting The Depahted.

Yet for all of director Peter Yates’ artistry, this movie really belongs to Mitchum. Watching him stagger about like a man marked for death in the Frankenstein-like company of Peter Boyle, you can’t help but recall his appearance twenty years earlier in the classic film noir, Out of the Past.

Fatalism just agrees with him. But what makes Mitchum so compelling is that he never lets the doom and gloom of his characters drag him too far down. When asked about his approach to acting, he once famously responded: “I have two acting styles: with and without a horse.”

You can see from the still photographs of the movie shoot included on the DVD that Mitchum never took himself too seriously. And really, that’s The Friends of Eddie Coyle—a throwback, crime story long on verve and short on pretension. Arm your netflix queues accordingly.

Jacob Sugarman is the senior contributor to This Recording.

"Last Nite (demo)" - The Strokes (mp3)

"Meet Me In The Bathroom (home recording)" - The Strokes (mp3)

"New York City Cops (live in Iceland)" - The Strokes (mp3)

In Which It's Getting Late Early

Against the Elderly

by ALEX CARNEVALE

Every available piece of evidence tells us that the elderly are the most racist, least educated segment of society, and yet our government rewards them with the kind of money most of us can never expect to receive in our old age. The only thing the elderly are good at besides complaining is cashing checks and political lobbying.

The AARP - American Associated of Retired Persons - began as a way for retired teachers to get health insurance. Now 35 million people strong, its purpose is to preserve the rights of the elderly to suck from the matronly tit of the government at the expense of young people, who are too stupid to steal properly and through the right channels.

In the Long Island community where I used to work, advertisements adorned every wall, to encourage youth people to stay where they are instead of moving to Brooklyn and Manhattan. The communities of the old will die except for the young; perhaps they do not realize they are preventing the young from living there by virtue of their one-sided public policy approach and general crankiness.

All politicians let old people get away with murder, and in the latest saccharine Pixar weepie, that's exactly what they do. Carl Fredericksen (Ed Asner) is desperate to remain in his home as progress rages all around him. And we're supposed to sympathize with him!

A similar situation has manifested itself on Ratner's Atlantic Yards project. One resilient homeowner is preventing the construction of a badly needed economic center that will house the home of the Brooklyn Nets as well as housing and convention center space. He is aiming to prevent the project from happening, apparently just to be a douche.

It's a measurable fact that our elderly - or 'derlies" as I believe Nick Gillespie or Hitler memorably called them in one missive - take up 40 percent of our usable resources and 76 percent of our illogical complaints, and a startling 96 percent of all American bowel movements.

I agree that in some ways derlies are much cooler than the average Andrew Sullivan - they use the n-word in a much more surprising way, and they're sometimes capable of actually fucking the police. But mostly they just watch Wheel and sample cold cuts at the supermarket without paying for them. (They are also the only people other than Jews and hippies still dumb enough to pay for The New York Times, a publication that ran this article and charged over 45 people $1.50 to read it.)

The young boy-child whose innocence Mr. Fredericksen takes with his pinkie finger is named Russell, whose date with derlie destiny is adapted from David Spade's childhood. Before I discuss the intricacies of a type of a relationship no longer condoned by Western culture, I should say that Up! is mostly tremendous. Although it's only 90 minutes long and feels a bit stretched out, it looks phenomenal and it's funny.

carl, you soiled yourself againWe can't really know, but we can suspect that Mr. Fredericksen's anger at the premature end of his sixty-year relationship with his wife is what justifies his man-boy pedophilic relationship, a sweet set-up that leads him to South America, where he can marry Russell and they live out the rest of their days giving each other rough, chafing footjobs.

For his part, Russell spends quite a bit of time complaining about how adults aren't given to spend much of any time with him. He calls his step-mother Phyllis, and nostalgically chuckles with one of his seven chins about how much he loves counting cars with his dad. Hmm, why is it that every 10 year old I know in real life is more concerned with Lil Wayne, abusing painkillers, and baby blogging?

the small mailmanCamille Paglia has long argued the civic virtues of To Catch a Predator-aged love, pointing out that the practice was relatively common in ancient cultures. A wealthy man and his young patron: it is a set-up whose only casualty is the lost of innocence, like what Samantha did to that poor actor with the huge penis in the Sex and the City movie.

this guy definitely got his merit badge for helping the elderlyPixar's been accused of being sexist by some people who don't have anything better to do, but all its men are impotent boy-children with dreams of illicit sex that suck liquid food from straws. This is an upside-down version of sexism the likes of which we haven't seen since Tom Wolfe, John Belushi, and that derlie Peace Prize winning pissant Jimmy Carter. Do you really want to be these characters? If I'm a woman, I'm happy to just be left out of it.

inappropriateBut back to my main point. Not only is Mr. Frederickson enjoying the peaceful retirement that most of America will never be able to have, he violently assaults people who are just trying to continue generating income and economic growth for the country. Is there really no end to how much we have to indulge this fat fuck's failed dreams?

Shows like Seinfeld and All in the Family were able to show us exactly how much of a drain derlies were on society, with their schemes to make male brassieries and their legendary intolerance. Today all we have are How I Met Your Mother flash-forwards that imply how much of a-hole Ted Mosby is going to be once he hits 50 and snaps up that AARP card. The elderly don't just control the government, they now control all media.

My mother drives derlies to the doctor sometimes, a practice I abhor. I believe there's something in the Bible about the virtues of not helping people, or maybe in Ayn Rand. Helping people never works out; it's always a bad idea. They just end up not wanting to talk to you again because they are shamed by needing your help.

Pixar seems to be running a little thin at this moment, developing every little idea they have into a full-length movie and bathing in the ensuing dollar bills. This is the only conceivable explanation on how they greenlighted a pro-elderly project. It is a bad idea to give the derlies any more attention than they already have. They drive too slow, and they talk too slow.

In Up!, the filmmakers themselves are so sickened by the traditional cutesy animated adventure that they just subtly mock it by making us care about Ed Asner of all people. Up! is darker than it seems, concerning itself with suicide, miscarriage, and homicide. It's like watching David Carradine hang himself with a bunch of balloons.

Alex Carnevale is the editor of This Recording. He tumbls here.

"Use Somebody (Kings of Leon cover)" - Bat for Lashes (mp3)

"Use Somebody (Kings of Leon cover)" - Karima Francis (mp3)

"Use Somebody (Kings of Leon cover)" - Pixie Lott (mp3)