William J Cobb on books & film

To note that summertime is a wasteland of stupidfilm is an understatement, but to read in the NY Times this morning that Todd Solondz has a new film coming out, well, that puts a smile on my face. Happiness (1998) is wickedly good, even better than Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995), with its classic wiener dog character. Storytelling (2001) has the best writing workshop sequence I’ve ever seen, with a great scary writer dude glowering at his students. And Palindrome (2004) is almost a magic act, with eight different actors playing the same character.
Next comes Life During Wartime, which Talking Heads fans will recognize as an allusion to a song of theirs from the early Eighties. The article describes it as a kind of sequel to Happiness, and usually I flinch at sequels, but because this is Solondz, it’s cool with me. Here’s a url to the Times piece: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/18/movies/18solodnz.html?_r=1&hpw
I agree with the following quote from him: “But Mr. Solondz said he fears he’s on an endangered-species list. “If I were Turkish, I wouldn’t worry,” he said. In Europe, he explained, “there’s a system in place to support and value someone like me, but here it’s purely market forces.”
He’s right. It’s about making money, and you can be as daring as you want, as long as it makes money. If not, you’re a fat boy on thin ice.

Here’s Rocky Raccoon in the wild.

At the annual fireworks show over Lake Deweese in Custer County, Colorado, a terrific lightning show unfolded behind the mountains, with constant lightning & thunder for over two hours. The storm clouds were low and above them, a perfectly clear sky, sparkling with the Milky Way stardust.

So I feel Richard Brautigan’s (1935-1984, R.I.P.) ghost hovering over me this cool Colorado morning, on this July 4th, while reading about a battle in Montana in 1876, perhaps a mythic, blood-stained centennial. He lived and wrote late in his life outside Livingston, Montana, and is one of our under-appreciated writers. So the Wind Won’t Blow It All Away (1982) and Willard and His Blowing Trophies (1975) are both little classics. Some of his poetry is knockout, too, especially the Donner Party poem. He’s good with one liners, as in, “All of us have a place in history. Mine is clouds.”
On the plains east of Brautigan’s writing home of the 1970s, Custer made his last charge, and they share a common love of long hair and funny hats. Nathaniel Philbrick’s The Last Stand has some juicy tidbits about the Little Bighorn, if you’re a morbid-onlooker like myself. Although not reported at the time, so as not to upset his wife, when Custer’s body was discovered on Last Stand Hill, his penis had an arrow jammed up it. (Lucky shot.) Philbrick describes Sitting Bull’s Sun Dance ceremony where he gouged 50 pieces of skin from both arms and was covered in blood, passed out in the Sun Dance lodge, when he received a vision that foretold a victory over the 7th Cavalry. (Lucky dream.)

So this summer I’ve been turning my daughter on to the Beatles, meanwhile rediscovering how great they were, taking me back. I was a child when “Let It Be” was on the AM radio airwaves and I remember it as no less than the greatest pop song of all time. In college in the Seventies I pretty much memorized the Beatles songs, even while other bands came and went in popularity. Now I’m listening to Revolver, Rubber Soul, Abbey Road, the White Album, Let It Be, and Sergeant Peppers. Every day I get hooked on a new old song. Today it was “Across the Universe,” jai guru deva om. What a beginning:
Words are flying out like
endless rain into a paper cup
They slither while they pass
They slip away across the universe
Pools of sorrow waves of joy
are drifting thorough my open mind
Possessing and caressing me
What impresses me now, all these four decades later, is how absurd and inventive they are. Plenty of love songs, many titled with female names: Julia, Prudence, Martha. But over and over again they turn the pop clichés on their heads and spin them around. When I queue up “Let It Be” and “Two of Us” comes on, my three-year-old Lili’s face lights up with smile and she starts nodding to the tune. Her favorites are on the White Album, particularly “Bungalow Bill” and “Rocky Raccoon.”
Meanwhile we  have a caterpillar barn of sorts, with Monarch butterfly caterpillars just now going into chrysalis. Hence it’s the summer of Beatles and caterpillars.

I’ve blogged before about Daniel Woodrell’s novel Winter’s Bone (2006): There’s a review today in the NY Times of the film version, which sounds good, gets glowing praise: http://movies.nytimes.com/2010/06/11/movies/11winter.html?hpw. And being an indie film, this review is just the kind of attention it needs. The novel is haunting, brutal, and eye-opening: Some Americans tend to think of the whole country as a vast, cellphone-obsessed shopping mall. This is a mainly a TV media creation. Go to the corners and you’ll see something more interesting. Take where I live in Custer County, Colorado: the other day coming home from town we watched an elk chasing a coyote through the meadows, probably trying to scare it away from its calf. My small town is quite different than the hillbilly world of Winter’s Bone, much more charm and less depression. This week I spent several hours at the local park with my baby girl, watching a crowd of kids laughing and running, with a skyline of 14,000 foot Rockie mountains as a backdrop.