Arrivederci, Maestro!

The brilliant film composer Ennio Morricone has left us with an extraordinary array of music and memories that will live on forever. His work has always filled my heart, soul and imagination with wonder since I first heard him in my formative years and continues to do so to this very day in the process of writing my most recent novel.

Here is an excerpt from my first book IN THE DARK: A LIFE AND TIMES IN A MOVIE THEATER, recalling how the Maestro's music has followed me my entire life, even when I moved here to Portland, Oregon.

The first movie soundtrack album I ever bought was THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY. I’d play it incessantly and discovered the inspirational qualities of music while I wrote my stories as a kid. Many a time, that familiar strangulated cry from the main theme blasted out of the stereo speakers in my bedroom. I often wondered if anyone in my neighborhood thought someone was being murdered in our house. Later, I compiled several tracks from this and other soundtracks to create a mix tape that I used for atmospheric purposes at a western theme park called Pollardville Ghost Town. I was the entertainment director for a couple of years there as well as a cowboy stunt player in the various skits we performed on the town’s main street. (I even wore the poncho I bought ten years before in Tijuana after I’d seen GBU)

Recently, I was in downtown Portland, Oregon waiting for a light rail train nearby what is now known as Providence Park, the stadium home of the Portland Timbers and Thorns soccer teams.. It was near five o’clock on a Friday and I was fatigued by a particularly grueling week. Like everyone else, I just wanted to go home. Music, very familiar music at that, caught my ear. This was a melody so esoteric and personal to me that I began to feel as though I were imagining it, scoring my daily life like music sometimes does. 

But no, it was indeed Ennio Morricone’s music from GBU. The exact track on the soundtrack is entitled “The Strong” and its melancholy tones echoed throughout the streets of Portland. It was coming from the stadium across the street from where I was standing. I walked to the curb and just stared at the ballpark when another cut called “The Ecstasy of Gold” began. In the film, it plays when Tuco (Eli Wallach) discovers Sad Hill Cemetery and searches for the grave holding the buried treasure he seeks.

It was then that I discovered my own treasure. I smiled from ear to ear as I heard the magnificence of Morricone enrich my soul and an actual tear came to my eye in recognition. It was right then that I found that I wasn’t alone in the world. Some one had the chutzpah to play Ennio goddamn Morricone for a sound check at a baseball stadium and that person was just as big of a freak as me. When you’re an eccentric weirdo, you never know when you’re going to run across a kindred spirit.

One final word, Maestro Morricone.

Bravo!

Oscar de la Venta

With a head full of death snot and a resonating cough sounding like a barking seal at Fisherman's Wharf, it's time for Hollywood's most glamorous  night...the Academy Awards! Yeah, this is first Oscarcast I can recall when I was sicker than sick can be. This goddamn bug has kicked my ass every which way but loose. Maybe it's the plague. If so, I'm the outbreak monkey.

This illness is yet another obstacle from allowing me to enjoy what I used consider my Super Bowl experience. Not being a football fan, I gravitated in this direction and would block out my schedule to accommodate this celebration of, my greatest passion, cinema. In years past, I viewed it through rose colored goggles and became one of the ceremony's chief apologists. But as I get older, the glitz and glamour have lost their luster, so the Oscar telecast has became just another reason to to spend four hours on the goddamn couch. We used to party on with a theme meal with special appetizers and perfectly potent potables like my take on a Bloody Mary. This year, with no appetite to speak of, I sat in front of the screen sipping on a juice box leftover from when my four year granddaughter visited last summer.

I actually entered this year's viewing event with some honest to goodness anticipation. Oh, not because of the nominees but thanks to the media hype concerning Chris Rock taking on the Hollywood elite and #OcarsSoWhite controversy. Hey, whatever kick starts my interest. I've addressed my feelings about this in a previous post (#BlackNomineesMatter) so I won't backtrack on that, only to say that Chris Rock and I had similar observations. However, Chris is a world class comedian whose commentaries on life and its morays has elevated him to the upper echelon of show business while I am a flu-ridden maroon with a blog.

It's been over ten years since Rock hosted the awards and his announcement as host for the year's show took me aback, considering his poor reception last time. He hasn't changed his style at all, but back then he dared poke the ribs of the H'wood community and was taken to task for it onstage. He made fun of Jude Law being in every movie at that time (which he was) and Sean Penn, before presenting the Best Actress award, scolded him oh so very sanctimoniously.

So how he going to be received this year? Why, with open arms of course. There's nothing that a while Liberal collective likes more than to be called out for perceived racism. They laughed uproariously at their own foibles and short-sightedness. "Oh, it so funny because it's TRUE!" Rock's monologue skewed the issue up one side and down the other, scoring high and often. And those fools just sat there and took it, even in potentially insensitive moments regarding lynching and Rhianna's panties. It was speculated which audience he was going to play to and somehow he managed to do both masterfully.

Continuing on this same theme throughout the show had more mixed results. The segment filmed in Compton was decent enough, though I'm curious why he didn't ask those cinema-goers if they had seen MAD MAX? And the Stacey Dash segment, while fortunately brief, was confusing if no one understood the context. Explaining the joke never makes it better. Or funny. The best was the deleted scenes from Oscar films with Tracey Morgan stealing the bit as THE DANISH GIRL.

Otherwise the show was pleasant enough. The Best Song performances were a snoozer (Sam Smith even acknowledged his mediocre effort) save for Lady Gaga's stirring rendition of "Til It Happens to You" surrounded by a stage full of sexual assault survivors. Louis CK killed with his monologue about Best Documentary Short nominees. And fortunately, no embarrassingly award presenters as is usually the case, save for the positively lame animated segments with the Minions and Toy Story characters.

The awards were agreeable as well, though it's hard to judge when one has not seen the nominees save for a few. (It never mattered when I was a kid. I don't why it does now.) FURY ROAD, which I did see, picked a half dozen well deserved statues in editing, production design and costuming, among others. I though George Miller might have a shot a director award which, alas, was not the case. Mark Rylance's Best Supporting was a surprise, though I admit that I sentimentally pulled for a Stallone win. I also would have liked to have seen Tom Hanks to be nominated for BRIDGE OF SPIES as well for the old fashioned gravitas he gave to that film. Ennio Morricone's win made my heart soar like an eagle and I haven't heard one note of his HATEFUL 8 score because he is quite possibly the finest film composer of all time. Most everything else was predictable, save for the grand prize won by SPOTLIGHT the first Catholic Best Picture win since GOING MY WAY.

Though I had blown my nose about three dozen times, hacked up my own phlegm festival about half that amount, by show's end, I realized that I had basked in Oscar's golden glow one more time and convinced I will do so again until I say goodbye, cruel world. This weekend, I felt like I had. Hey, looks like I had a Oscar celebration after all. I hosted my very own pity party.

ChernFest 2016: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Some day, either before I kick or even after, I want my very own film festival. (Of course, if I'm dead, it would really ruin the experience for me) It could bear my name, which of course would be an honor unless, of course, I named it myself. (I am nothing if not self-serving) But I can also rock out the self-deprecation like nobody's business which explains away my other suggestion, the Some Dunce Film Festival. But since it's my birthday and this is the date I designate for my this fauxtival o' mine, I decided to settle on the more self-reverential ChernFest. Yeah, it's all about the Self. (But truth to tell, Some Dunce is better and probably more accurate)
 ChernFest will obviously center on my favorite films of all time, but the feature attraction of the very first cinematic celebration has to be what I consider the King of the Hill. Here, in an excerpt from my book In the Dark: A Life and Times in a Movie Theater, is my take on Sergio Leone's masterpiece, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

Sergio Leone used his camera like the baton of the maestro he was, conducting his grandiose shoot-‘em-up horse operas with a robust flair of an outrageous master with a lust for life. Never was this more evident than in his masterpiece The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, the last of his Dollars trilogy, which were akin to Wagner’s Ring Cycle on horseback. This became the epic film of my youth. Never before had I seen the western set in such a bold canvas as the Civil War. When I tasted this spicy mesh of fact and fiction, stirred together in a cinematic bowl of rich minestrone, my palate was changed forever for it made me want to sample more complex flavors that existed in thecinematic world, which I soon did.

Due to their familiarity to American audiences, Lee Van Cleef, Eli Wallach and Clint Eastwood almost seem like astronauts stranded on a distant planet against the backdrop of Leone’s vision. It takes but an instant to realize that they are the great director’s boldest colors on this magnificent painting of his and they are unforgettable. Van Cleef had such a distinct presence on screen that it is difficult to believe and the shame of Hollywood that he was so unsung an actor and underutilized by producers. Wallach, in the role of Tuco as the credits state and “also known as The Rat” as Eastwood says in the film, is nothing short of fantastic. It is to his credit that he goes so far over the top in his portrayal without becoming obnoxious, not an easy task in a film not in one’s native tongue.

Then there’s Clint. He is so laid back that he appears to be slumming and allows his co-stars to outshine him. The majority of critics had already misdiagnosed his acting style as “wooden” at this point. They ignored the inherent cool he projected which became part of his signature style. But, it is evident that this is still his movie. One of the most poetic moments in GBU (Good, Bad, Ugly) occurs when the Man with No Name (or Blondie as Tuco calls him) tends to a dying young soldier near the end of the film. He allows the boy a drag off his cigar, a last smoke for comfort. Suddenly, there is a decency about this man that surfaces momentarily. While this small act of charity is fleeting, this Man with No Name more than earns the title of “The Good”.

The first movie soundtrack album I ever bought was GBU. I’d play it incessantly and discovered the inspirational qualities of music while I wrote my stories as a kid. Many a time, that familiar strangulated cry from the main theme blasted out of the stereo speakers in my bedroom. I often wondered if anyone in my neighborhood thought someone was being murdered in our house. Later, I compiled several tracks from this and other soundtracks to create a mix tape that I used for atmospheric purposes at a western theme park called Pollardville Ghost Town. I was the entertainment director for a couple of years there as well as a cowboy stunt player in the various skits we performed on the town’s main street. (I even wore the poncho I bought ten years before in Tijuana after I’d seen GBU)

One afternoon, I was in downtown Portland, Oregon waiting for a light rail train nearby what is now known as Province Park, the home stadium for the 2015 MLS champion Portland Timbers soccer team and other sporting events. It was near five o’clock on a Friday and I was fatigued by a particularly grueling work week. Like everyone else, I just wanted to go home. Music, very familiar music at that, caught my ear. This was a melody so esoteric and personal to me that I began to feel as though I were imagining it, scoring my daily life like music sometimes does.

But no, it was indeed Ennio Morricone’s music from GBU. The piece from the film soundtrack is entitled “The Strong” and its melancholy tones echoed throughout the streets of SW Portland. It was coming from the stadium across the street from where I was standing. I walked to the curb and just stared at the stadium when another cut called “The Ecstasy of Gold” began. In the film, it plays when Tuco (Wallach) discovers Sad Hill Cemetery and searches for the grave holding the buried treasure he seeks.

It was then that I discovered my own treasure. I smiled from ear to ear as I heard the magnificence of Morricone enrich my soul and an actual tear came to my eye in recognition. It was right then that I found that I wasn’t alone in the world. Some one had the chutzpah to play Ennio goddamn Morricone for a sound check at a sports arena and that person was just as big of a freak as me. When you’re an eccentric weirdo, you never know when you’re going to run across a kindred spirit.

I’ve always resisted making Top Ten All-Time Best Film lists. I dunno. Maybe it’s fear of commitment or something. What’s more likely is that I’d end up obsessing over the damn thing. “Oh no! I left off Megaforce!” It’s all relative anyway. Do I really know what’s the best? I can only state my own preferences. To tell you the truth, I didn’t actually come to terms with what my very favorite movie of all time was until just a few years ago. I had in my head it was either Citizen Kane or The Godfather Part II. But after I took in a screening of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (with restored footage) in 2003 at Portland’s Cinema 21, it all come home to me. I sat in that theater on a Saturday afternoon, bouncing up and down in my chair like I was 12 years old all over again. (Thank God I went alone) The film was as vibrant and spectacular as I had remembered and reminded me of the influence it has made on my life. Therefore, I can emphatically proclaim without any reservations whatsoever that The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

moved into the number one spot, making it my favorite film of all time. (Yeah, I know. Way to make a stand.)

                                                        
Happy birthday to me.


In the Dark: A Life and Times in a Movie Theater is available on Kindle at Amazon.com and in paperback at Lulu.com This is the Special Edition too. It says so right on the book jacket.