"Payday" on the money as superb "lost movie"

By Steven Rosen

Everywhere you look these days, people are honoring the greatest movies of all time.

There are books, newspaper columns, video-store racks, film series and American Film Institute-sponsored television shows devoted to the task. This is, by and large, a good thing - especially if it encourages film revivals and restorations.

But beyond the canonical Great Movies are the "lost movies." They aren't the well-known masterpieces. They aren't perfect; sometimes they have flaws. And they have been forgotten and overlooked, often from the day they were released. But they are exciting, influential, risky and different - maybe too different - for their times.

Every now and then, I'd like to call attention to such deserving lost movies. And for the first, I've picked
1973's "Payday." It was released during an era brimming with challenging movies full of point-of-view and personality. Many became hits (and classics) - "The Godfather," "Chinatown," "Dog Day Afternoon," "Last Tango in Paris." But there were more good films than even the most curious and receptive of audiences could handle, and some fine ones fell by the wayside.

"Payday" was one.I t stars Rip Torn in probably his best role ever, as reprobate country singer Maury Dann. The film is directed succinctly by Daryl Duke and written by Don Carpenter. And its producers are Saul Zaentz, the owner of Fantasy Records who later made "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and "The English Patient,"
and partner/music critic Ralph J. Gleason.

Torn once was considered as powerful and electrifying an actor as Jack Nicholson. In fact, he was scheduled
to play the "Easy Rider" lawyer role that provided Nicholson with his breakthrough.

One wonders if Nicholson was first offered Torn's role in "Payday" as struggling, minor-league country singer Dann. Torn looks a little beefier and bulkier, a little more dangerous, than Nicholson, but they both exude the same kind of gleefully macho, killer-smile self-assuredness.

When "Payday" came out, country music was four-square and patriotic. It also wasn't as fashionable as it is now, when older and/or rootsier performers grow desperate trying to get airplay in a world of more polished, showbiz-schooled acts.

So this intensely critical portrait of Maury and his milieu seemed a stretch. (A very different kind of film, "This Is Spinal Tap," had problems getting audiences to believe its premise of aging metal bands playing well past their prime.)

It also seemed as if Bay area hipsters - Fantasy Records had been home to Lenny Bruce and Creedence Clearwater Revival; Gleason was associated with Rolling Stone magazine - were making fun of country.

Now, after a couple of generations of "outlaw" country singers and their rise and fall, as well as the growth in
knowledge of Hank Williams' life, "Payday" seems extremely honest and true to its character.

And it is a devastating character study, following Maury for the last three days of his life. He plays a small-club date, visits his pill-addicted mom, goes hunting, suffers through a visit with a weaselly deejay, seduces a young woman in his car, violently breaks up with his older girlfriend Mayleen (Ahna Capri) to carry on with a younger one (Elayne Heilveil), fights with and fires a key band member, and kills a man who challenges him to a fight.

Yet he's also irresistible and bullishly charming in his slovenly, cocky, down-home way - he sits on the toilet with the door open to shock people. You also feel sympathy for his neediness and insecurity; he is dependent on his tough manager (Michael C. Gwynne) to help him negotiate life.

Writer Carpenter sees Maury as a guy still searching for his big hit (his latest LP is called "Payday"). I prefer to view him as a guy past his last hit, who doesn't yet know it. Or maybe he just can't admit it.

In a haunting and unforgettable scene reminiscent of Ed Harris' demise in "Pollock," he dies while speeding with an
unwilling passenger in the back seat of his white Cadillac. It's a true death's-head vision - while warbling "She's Only a Country Girl" (a Shel Silverstein song), his eyes bulge and he gives out a short, quick gasp.

Watching "Payday" again recently, I tried to recall another character as compelling as Torn's Maury Dann, as repellent yet also alluring, as frightening yet also appealing, as sexy yet not
conventionally handsome. Then it hit me - Tony Soprano.

(This originally ran in The Denver Post in 2001, before Torn's great performance in "Forty Shades of Blue.")

Requiem for a Day

Oliver Stone's "World Trade Center"

Review By Steven Rosen
From Cincinnati CityBeat
August 9, 2006

There's a perfectly good reason why disaster movies focus on just a handful of characters. It's a way of injecting intimate personal drama into a tragedy whose enormity is so great and whose circumstances so unusual we wouldn't otherwise relate to the casualty numbers as real people, real lives.

Director Oliver Stone, working with writer Andrea Berloff, takes that intimate approach in "World Trade Center," which is based on the true story of Port Authority police officers John McLoughlin (Nicolas Cage) and Will Jimeno (Michael Pena), who were trapped in an elevator shaft after a tower collapsed on 9/11.

Stone does a somberly realistic, disciplined job, technically accomplished with peak moments of brilliance. It's also a surprisingly apolitical and restrained film, given Stone's predilection for inserting weird conspiracy theories and eccentric narrative twists into otherwise historical dramas ("JFK" and "Nixon"). He rises to the challenge here to not make his views -- whatever they are -- the point of the film. As a result, a filmmaking iconoclast has turned into a statesman.

But there's a problem with this approach, however well realized. We as a nation -- and probably much of the world -- don't need to have 9/11 made personal for us. The 2,749 people who died on that day at the World Trade Center site, when Islamic militants flew two hijacked planes into the tower, are not just statistics to us. Not yet, anyway, not after just five years. (Militants also hijacked and crashed two other planes, one into the Pentagon.) Those victims are us. We feel every death vividly. We take each one personally.

Thus this film's approach inevitably reduces the impact of the attack rather than heightening it. It turns it into something -- dare I say it -- conventional, movie-wise: two injured men trapped in a cave-in, trying to survive while rescuers search and family members at home worry and bicker among themselves.

As this story arc plays out with a few flashbacks and much crosscutting, it's easy to get lulled by its familiarity despite the restrained and unglamorous acting by Cage and Pena and Maria Bello and Maggie Gyllenhaal as their respective wives.

It's possible this movie was green-lighted by Paramount Pictures because it is, essentially, about heroism. But Stone isn't quite buying that take on things. He does spend time presenting this story from the rescuers' eyes, but those scenes are as spooky as they are inspiring. And he treats his shots of the twisted steel at the surface of Ground Zero as if it's a sacred war memorial, too sacred for Hollywood melodrama.

Primarily he and his fine cinematographer Seamus McGarvey concentrate on the darkness of the rubble in which the two officers, often shown in close-up, are trapped. It's portrayed as a claustrophobic entombment, and the rumbles and creaks and snaps of the collapsing debris sound like the world as we know it ending. There's even a hurtling fireball or two.

This is apocalypse now. It's also a place for death's-head religious visions, where Jimeno imagines Jesus before him carrying a water bottle.

Yet two of the most memorable scenes are those that transcend the story's particulars. In one hauntingly poetic moment that plays like melancholy Spielberg, pregnant Allison Jimeno (Gyllenhaal) goes out into her deserted suburban street at night, the lights of television sets broadcasting the news shining through all the living rooms. In the other, after the officers become trapped in the debris, Stone pulls back to consider what happened from a higher and higher vantage point -- a space satellite, even. It reminds me of "2001: A Space Odyssey."

Never previously shy of graphic depictions of violence in movies like "Platoon," "Natural Born Killers" and "U Turn," Stone this time uses only power of suggestion to show the actual attack. The build-up is crisp and quick, as short scenes of New York life on that morning -- the twin towers sometimes evident in the distance -- pass by like floating clouds, accompanied by Craig Armstrong's ominous score. The attack itself is but a shadow, a muffled boom, a cop looking up, a television report.

Cage's and Pena's characters are not portrayed as gung-ho types. There's fear on their faces -- and on those of their cohorts -- as they initially arrive by busload at the damaged but standing World Trade Center for rescue operations and tosee what's happening. A body falls from a tower; just one, but it's jolting. The sky is turning gray.

There's an extremely odd character in "World Trade Center," one also based on true events even though he seems out of a Stone movie. As played by Michael Shannon, retired Marine Dave Karnes is tall, gaunt and almost sinister -- he's like a stalker. Living in Connecticut as an accountant, he puts on his uniform after the attack because he realizes this is war, gets a haircut and goes down to help with rescue operations. Hooking up with a Marine Sergeant Thomas (William Mapother), they prowl like ghosts calling out for survivors.

In an article for Slate, Rebecca Liss called the actual Karnes "crazy brave," and Stone captures that creepy quality. When Karnes says he's going to re-enlist because "they're going to need some good men out there to avenge this" -- the closest thing to a political statement in the film -- the effect is more foreboding than rousing. Maybe that's as it should be, considering what's come since 9/11.

Within the confines of a movie about "courage and survival," as Paramount is promoting "World Trade Center," Stone has made a film that's a requiem, with a modestly optimistic ending. We're probably not ready for more than that yet. I'm not sure we're ready yet to see 9/11 through the eyes of characters in a Hollywood drama, rather than through our own.

Certainly we weren't ready for "United 93" earlier this year. But Stone has handled his material with respect.

IN THE MOOG
Celebrated by a new film, the inventor reflects on his synthesizer’s role in modern music

~ By STEVEN ROSEN ~

(This story ran in Los Angeles CityBeat on Nov. 11, 2004. Moog died Aug. 21, 2005. The film "Moog" was screened this weekend as part of Grand Performances film series in downtown Los Angeles.)

Usually, the term “back to roots” in music describes the renewed interest in acoustic styles – especially bluegrass, folk, gospel, and country blues – most recently sparked by the Grammy-winning "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" soundtrack and its related tours.

So it will surprise many to learn there’s also a roots movement going on in that seemingly most unrootsy of musical regions – electronic sounds. Musicians tired of the digital synthesizers that became popular in the 1980s and 1990s, which encode sound as digital information that can then be decoded, are opting for the more “natural” analog instruments of the 1970s and even earlier. Analog produces direct musical sound, and many synthesizer buffs, like audiophile record collectors, believe it is warmer, livelier, and more responsive to the musician’s emotional state.

And that means electronics inventor Robert Moog, at age 70, and his namesake Moog and Minimoog analog keyboard synthesizers are back. (The part of the instrument that produces the sound is analog; other parts use digital technology.)

Since he reacquired the rights to the name “Moog” in 2002 – almost 30 years after selling them and watching the purchaser eventually cease production – and subsequently introduced the Minimoog Voyager, business has been booming at his company in Asheville, N.C. And now his life and ideas are the subject of a new documentary – fittingly titled "Moog," in honor of his instant name recognition.

Besides Moog, who speaks at length about his vision, the film also includes performances and/or interviews with such Moog-favoring musicians and DJs as Keith Emerson (and his incredible, 10-foot-tall Monster Moog), Rick Wakeman, Bernie Worrell, Stereolab, Money Mark, and DJ Logic.

In this sweet, thought-provoking movie, directed by Hans Fjellestad, the white-haired, grandfatherly Moog expresses a surprising kind of “I Sing the Body Electronic” cosmic consciousness about his creations. Looking a bit like Einstein, and talking like Buckminster Fuller, he just may be the elusive ghost in the machine.

“I can feel what’s going on inside a piece of electronic equipment,” he explains in the film, as the camera pans over the thick, brightly colored wires of one of his instruments. “I have this sense that I know, and to some extent have control over, what’s going on inside the transistors and resistors.”

Director Fjellestad, an American of Danish descent, studied classical piano and previously made a film about Tijuana culture, "Frontier Life." “I’ve been interested in looking at frontiers, and Bob was the archetypal frontiersman exploring the borders,” he explains.

On the phone from Portland, Oregon, where he and his wife are visiting their daughter and her husband, an expansive Moog further elaborates on the spiritual relationship he feels with his work. “When I was a teenager, and a little bit before, I really loved electronics,” he says. “I have a talent and a gift for making contact with electronic circuitry. It’s a gift that enables stuff to come through you. I don’t think I’m so smart or creative that it starts off inside my head and then comes out.

“I think all us humans are capable of experiencing connections – engaging in spiritual things like that,” Moog continues. “Whether or not we take advantage of that depends on a lot of things. But I found it through electronics, particularly musical electronics. Our customers find it through the musical side of musical electronics. I find it through the electronics side.”

In a separate interview, musician Worrell also sees a spiritual edge to Moog. “Thank God for his innovations and inspiration, which I believe came from the Creator,” Worrell says. “It’s coupled with Bob Moog’s knowing how artists think and what kind of tool keyboardists would appreciate. It’s part of his ability to see.”

It should be noted that not every musician views Moog and his synthesizers in such terms. In the movie, Wakeman – who first became famous with progressive-rock band Yes – talks about his motivations for turning to the Moog: “It changed the face of music. For the first time, the keyboard player could give the guitarists a run for the money on stage.”

Growing up in Flushing, Queens, Moog built his first theremin at age 14 from a do-it-yourself kit. The strange, in-vogue-again instrument, invented by Russia’s Leon Theremin, uses high-frequency radio signals to create otherworldly, eerie electronic sounds. To play it, people move their hands and bodies near its antennae, thus varying pitch and volume.

“I was a card-carrying electronics nerd,” Moog says. “My father was a professional engineer, so I used to love to go down in his basement and build things with him. We did that together; that was very nice. There was not too much I could do with the guys at school, other than get beat up.” He was interested in the theremin because it was a do-it-yourself project and looked like fun. “To be able to make something that had a musical sound and could be played was an interesting thing to me.”

While a sophomore in college, Moog sold his first home-built theremin. Eventually, that led to a business, R.A. Moog, selling electronic musical instruments. “When we began making synthesizer components in 1964, we saw experimental musicians as our customers – people putting music together on tape,” Moog says.

“These people weren’t interested in traditional melody or harmony,” he continues. “What interested them the most was tone color. So our early electronic-music instruments were designed with the idea you could make a wide variety of sounds by connecting modules together and setting [the controls of] each one individually. There were a variety of ways to play that sound – a keyboard was just one device that could be used. There were joysticks, sequencers, and a whole bunch of things we built in small quantities and made available.”

One early customer was Walter Carlos – now Wendy Carlos – who decided to use a Moog keyboard synthesizer to record Bach. Switched-on Bach, released in 1968, was as big a pop-cultural sensation as any classical album before or since. It was the first platinum-selling classical record, won three Grammy Awards, and caused the mass acceptance of the Moog synthesizer as an instrument that made music, rather than sound effects. (Carlos did not want to appear in this film, Fjellestad notes.)

Yet, there remain people – including musicians – who feel a synthesizer produces synthetic sounds, unlike a traditional instrument or human voice. As a result, you still don’t expect to see Moogs at folk or bluegrass festivals, or even in symphony orchestras or no-nonsense punk bands.

“But when you think about it, the piano is pretty unnatural, too,” Moog says. “You don’t find pianos growing on trees. The same is true for trumpets and violins; they’re highly artificial. You really have to work to put together a violin. Over the centuries, when musical instruments have been developed, they’ve been developed with the most recent technology of the time,” he explains. “In the 20th century, the technology of our times was electronic. To me, it was only natural that new instruments would be made with that technology.”