Jay Meehan, The Park Record, Author at Park Record

‘Blaze’ is Ethan Hawke’s cinematic labor of love

Jay Meehan, The Park Record — Sun, 21 Jan 2018 05:00:00 +0000

“He’s a poet, an’ he’s a picker, he’s a prophet, an’ he’s a pusher

He’s a pilgrim and a preacher, and a problem when he’s stoned”

~ Kris Kristofferson

One of the first things you notice when in conversation with filmmaker-actor-writer Ethan Hawke is how considerate he is. Whether it be a question about his current film at Sundance, “BLAZE” in this case, or an allusion to a common thread that just popped up out of nowhere, he carefully considers whatever is on the table prior to responding.

It is then that, like film directors are wont to do, he goes visual on you and begins blocking the shot or scene. Although it’s a telephone interview with The Park Record, the sense is of him leaning forward in his chair. Before you know it, you’re in Hawke’s living room where Ethan is casually hanging out with longtime friend Ben Dickey.

There is a third aura in the room – that of the late legendary yet not-widely-celebrated Austin outlaw music progenitor, the singer/songwriter Blaze Foley. With guitar in hand, Dickey has been picking and singing one of he and Ethan’s favorite Foley tunes and they were both quite caught up in the reverie as it drew to a close.

It was at that point that a light bulb went off in Ethan Hawke’s always-enabled creative centers. Turning to his buddy Ben, he posed a question: “How would you like to play Blaze Foley in a movie?” Dickeys response was that it would be the dream of a lifetime.

So Hawke made the film with Dickey in the title role and here we are at Sundance 2018 with “BLAZE” screening in the U.S. Dramatic Competition category and premiering Sunday, January 21 at the Park City Library Theater at 3:00 p.m.

When delving into the saga of Blaze Foley, he comes off as much more idiosyncratic than quintessential. There is a template for the Austin outlaw singer/songwriter hovering about, to be sure, but the model and the muse are singular. Not that aspects of the then burgeoning movement couldn’t be traced back to the now legend in question.

Hawke filmed “BLAZE” in the form of a triptych, a three-pronged affair as it were. With separate threads exploring his love affair with Sibyl Rosen, his final night on Earth spent recording a soon-to-become collector’s item cassette, and the effect his sudden demise had on those around him, Hawke systematically peels back layers of the human complexity that was Blaze Foley.

For those familiar with Hawke’s artistic sensibility, the feeling is very much that this yarn of a before-his-time artist cut down in what might or might not have been his prime, is in quite capable hands. The casting of Kris Kristofferson as Blaze’s father and Charlie Sexton in the role of friend Townes Van Zandt also keeps it creatively close to home.

And then there’s the interesting musical trivia that further adds to the heft of Foley’s musical soul. Not only did Merle Haggard record Blaze’s tune “If I Could Only Fly” but he also named the album after it. Legend has it that Blaze kept a copy of a music magazine that quotes Haggard’s praise rolled-up in his boot so he could pull it out like a six-shooter whenever called for.

You might say “BLAZE” has been a long time coming and a long time gone. Cinematic labors of love at this level by a filmmaker of this stature with connections to the Sundance Film Festival as close as Ethan Hawke’s are a gift to be treasured. For allowing us a creative glimpse into the life and times of the quirky Blaze Foley, he has earned our deepest appreciation.

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‘A Futile and Stupid Gesture’ is at Sundance

Jay Meehan, The Park Record — Sat, 20 Jan 2018 19:00:00 +0000

“Wain understands that to tell this story right you need to bypass accuracy and head straight for authenticity.”

~ excerpt from the Sundance Film Festival 2018 Digital Program Guide

It would be expected, of course, that a film dealing with culture-wide irreverence the likes of National Lampoon, Animal House, and Caddyshack would be, at moments, wild, zany, offensive, unrepentant and, at the same time, quite human.

Well, not to worry, you extreme buffoons and marginally functional comedic film buffs out there (myself included): Filmmaker and Sundance veteran David Wain has brought us a quite absorbing piece of work concerning the life and times of Doug Kenney, the brilliant and troubled satirist whose creative notions helped turn “old school” on its head.

Adapted from Josh Karp’s book of the same name, “A Futile and Stupid Gesture,” not unlike its subject, shows little if any fear as it attempts to get inside the heads of Kenney and his co-conspirators as they entertain the re-shuffling of the collective deck – while shipping, without prejudice, Hope and Benny and the boys off to studio system heaven.

Will Forte seems the perfect choice as Doug Kenney, the psychological loner who comes out of an Ohio Catholic prep school to enter Harvard College with a Midas touch for the consciousness-expanding one-liner. Everyone (except Doug himself) loves and adores this blue-eyed blond with the subtle knack to create out of whole cloth.

It must have been exhilarating to tell the story of a genesis of such bandwidth. And, every step of the way, it works. With his extraordinary ensemble cast in tow (Since “Ex Machina,” I can’t get enough of Domhnhall Gleeson), David Wain is on the complex mission of making art by portraying genius and serendipity in a food fight.

Prior to the likes of John Belushi, Chevy Chase, Bill Murray, and Gilda Radner succumbing to the Kenney magnetic field, however, there are those who coalesced around Doug’s light in the castle that housed the century-old Harvard Lampoon.

Therein lays the field upon which the initial seeds were sown. And it would be from there that tiny shoots would break through to the sunlight and, yet once more, re-shuffle the culture.

Following graduation, it would be the “National Lampoon” emerging in a cloud of stardust to completely shape-shift the magazine landscape. Then would arrive “Animal House” and “Caddyshack” and the paradigm, which hadn’t stopped jiggling since the previous quake, would shift once again.

For Doug, the euphoria that surrounded the former would not carry over to the latter. But that’s a story to be told on the big screen once you’re settled in your seat at the Festival. You even get to check out the view from Hanapepe Point on the Garden Isle of Kauai.

David Wain brilliantly hopscotches the outer-actual on his way to the inner-real in a manner few filmmakers dare to tread. To be invited along as the creative license of the figurative gets to the bottom of the emotional plane is transformative.

The cosmology that chased Doug Kenney from Ohio to Kauai and, in between, shaped what many consider the most influential comedy force of the last 50 years is one that, indeed, needed to premiere at the Sundance Film Festival.

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‘Our New President’ takes a new look on the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign

Jay Meehan, The Park Record — Wed, 17 Jan 2018 20:00:00 +0000

“Fake realities will create fake humans. Or, fake humans will generate fake realities and then sell them to other humans, turning them, eventually, into forgeries of themselves.”

–Phillip K. Dick

If you thought consuming television news during the 2016 U.S. presidential election cycle was a dizzying ride, you should have seen it from the Russian side. Well, prepare yourself for a visit to the Mother Ship, a vessel running on “gullible gas,” one of the higher octane’s of the time.

Filmmaker Maxim Pozdorovkin, whose films include “Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer,” which walked away with the 2013 Sundance Film Festival Special Jury Prize, has, in 2018, brought us as dizzying a cinematic roller coaster ride as you could imagine.

“Our New President,” an opening day selection screening in the “World Cinema Documentary Competition,” keeps up the pressure on the old cranial lobes, let me tell you. You can see where Fox News learned their well-honed “piling-on” technique.

Take RT (Russia Today), Vesti and NTV, for example, state-run news outlets in Putin’s Russia. Over-and-over, against a continually looping video backdrop of Hillary Clinton tripping, coughing, gagging, and maniacally laughing in 4-second snippets, the dark spell is cast.

Evolving out of the often visited fake news story that ever since an encounter with a mummy in its glass tomb during the late ‘90s, Hillary has been plagued by physical and psychological maladies from chronic-fatigue syndrome and fainting spells, to even committing sexual abuse and murder, the murky shadow is cast.

Hard to believe? Not if you’re a news consumer whose lack of sources has them, Kubrick-like, figuratively restrained in a chair with eyes propped open while being pounded by the same story over and over until their brain is mush. Just one example out of many propagated by Putin’s fake news arm and endorsed by their American cronies at Fox.

Lucky for us, we have a gifted filmmaker in Maxim Pozdorovkin to artfully and satirically craft Trump’s election and first year in office entirely through the lens of Russian propaganda. Taking us from the horrifying to the hilarious, “Our New President” demonstrates the current inability of the human mind to pare wheat from chaff.

In his “Director’s Statement,” Pozdorovkin tells how when a film editor returned to their office in New York following a trip to Russia with a story that the motherland was “very excited about Trump,” he recognized a pattern he first came across while shooting the “Pussy Riot” film.

“To understand the sentiment we began collecting material about the American election produced by Russian television, a weapon often use by Vladimir Putin to manipulate public opinion,” Pozdorovkin added. “While making ‘Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer,’ I had firsthand experience of how the Kremlin used television to stifle dissent by demonizing the opposition.”

Having been there and seen that, he goes on to tell that “we gathered a massive archive of disinformation. In the process, we uncovered a galaxy of plausibly ‘newsy’ sites and YouTube channels that existed solely to re-circulate Russian propaganda. Much of the re-circulated material was create by English language network Russia Today.”

Pozdorovkin goes on to say that “the main idea of this film is to tell the story of the American election entirely through falsehoods perpetrated by the Kremlin – to use the news in order to weave an entirely fictional story.”

Buy the ticket, take the ride. Oh, that’s right, you’re already on board. Then just hang on until, hopefully, Americans “right” the ship.

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Characters’ glances tell film’s story

Jay Meehan, The Park Record — Fri, 27 Jan 2017 23:34:56 +0000

As part of what they conceive as a film-quartet, Sundance veterans Alex and Andrew Smith return to the Sundance Film Festival this year with “Walking Out,” the third of the series. Native sons of Montana, where they grew up in a quite literary household, they, once again, cast the state’s ever-evolving grandeur in a prominent role.

Returning for the first time since 2002’s multi-layered “The Slaughter Rule,” their current feature, screening in the U.S. Dramatic competition, is also rife with a tangled and emotional relationship. This time, it’s between an estranged father and son, when the boy returns to Montana for his annual visit.

To Cal, the living off-the-grid testosterone-rich father, a hunting trip into the deeply forested mountain wilderness country seems like just the ticket to square away the off-track youngster. David spends entirely too much time with his smart-phone and too little with the lore of manhood to suit Cal.

Hunting mega-fauna in the winter mountain wilderness, as Cal had done with his father, and which is referenced often through flashbacks, seems an appropriate way of turning the kid around. Initially, until intervening variables on the hunt reduce options for both, David longs to return home to his mother and a more comfortable environment.

As in many highly nuanced films, thoughts are implied through close-ups, especially of the eyes. This film also doesn’t hold your hand or over-dialogue you through the plot. The actors, Matt Bomer as Cal and Josh Wiggins as David, are charged with conveying the implications of the tale in a more subtle fashion.

Both filmmakers and screenwriters, Alex, with original and adaptation writing credits with Fox Searchlight, HBO, Warner Bros., Disney, Sony, and FX, and Andrew, a professor at the University of Montana School of Media Arts, came upon the David Quammen short-story relatively early in life, and both had been highly-impressed.

For years, the tale just seemed to lie fallow, waiting for the right time for them to actually see it in terms of a personal film project. Once that light went on, however, and fundraising came together, they were off and, if not exactly running, at least trudging through the deeply drifted snow of a Montana mountain range.

“Walking Out” is a story of both survival and coming-of-age — almost “Hemingwayesque” in its reach — not unlike one of “Papa’s” Nick Adams stories. In order for Cal and David to make it back to civilization following a violent disruption to their physicality, raw emotions and deeply-held convictions need to be harnessed.

So far along the arduous trek of the hunt, however, teamwork has been about as evident as trust, surplus energy and fresh water. Cal has spent much of the journey recounting to David his own first hunt with his father (Bill Pullman in a somewhat joyfully-grizzled role with Alex Neustaedter as the young Cal).

Having his own suburban lifestyle being constantly compared to his father’s more manly exploits rubs the boy the wrong way — while the father’s seeming lack of ability to communicate how important the hunt will appear to David later in life, grates in the other direction.

Realizations-of-oneness arrive slowly but inevitably as the “walking out” from their wilderness quandary ensues. Again, it’s not dialogue, but rather the sounds of exertion as they make their way through a highly improbable set of circumstances that fills in the emotional gaps. Often, resolution is bought with the hardest of currency.

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Axolotl simile stands out

Jay Meehan, The Park Record — Tue, 24 Jan 2017 23:42:00 +0000

In her über stylish debut feature “Axolotl Overkill,” 24-year-old German filmmaker Helene Hegemann draws up a 16-year-old female protagonist who exhibits many genetic behavioral traits similar to those of the Mexican salamander known as an Axolotl.

Not that the writer/director’s implication is the exotic-species-in-question ditches school, never makes her bed, and thinks of casual sex as, well, quite that casual. Like the salamander, Mifti has a cute smile and is not hard to harbor a “crush” over. And does she ever know it… and exploit it!

Mifti (Jasna Fritzi Bauer in a killer performance), while possessing a beauty that is quite singular, is reckless and messy as-all-get-out. Having recently lost her mother and with a mostly estranged eccentric and wealthy father, she keeps her peers at arm’s length while roaming the club scene. Never seeming to troll for sex and drugs, she lets them come to her.

The breakout novel “Axolotl Roadkill” is where Hegemann, a then 17-year-old novice writer, and Mifti, her shiny yet unpolished subject, first achieved low-chakra prominence.

Diagnosed as a “‘pseudo stress-debilitated problem child,” Mifti notes in her diary that “horrible lives are a godsend.” One supposition is that freedom comes part and parcel.

Mifti, however, despite her years, is quick as a whip when it comes to analyzing adult behavior and the often lack thereof.

The confusion and chaos that often accompany females through adolescence, although certainly present to some degree, are not as pronounced as with others her age.

It’s evident in the startling, quite-frank questions she poses, seemingly out of the blue, to her soon-to-be-stammering elders. Mostly accusatory in tone, they imply, to put it mildly, a general lack of parenting skills. It’s also quite evident that, her deduction abilities notwithstanding, she’s a boatload of positive reinforcement shy of well adjustment.

An interesting sidebar to the salamander Hegemann chose to spirit into the metaphoric realm of her film is that Axolotls, as it turns out, can currently only be located in the wild among the enchanting lakes and canals and floating gardens of Xochimilco, on the outskirts of Mexico City. They could have found worse digs, that’s for sure.

Known for their ability to regenerate severed appendages, they resemble a lizard with feathered looking gills growing out of their heads. Their popularity as pets has put them on an endangered species list.

Trait-wise, in more than a few instances, Mifti resembles Axolotl. When the amphibians are impelled to relocate from home waters, they naturally receive a rush of hormones that lead to an increase in maturation. It’s been referred to as “getting kicked out of your parent’s basement.”

Not that Hegemann’s structural choices in her storyline strictly follow the metaphor, but both similarities and differences between Mifti and the “walking fish” are what I found most intriguing about the film.

Plus the fact, of course, that, when Bauer’s face was not in the shot, I missed her. No matter the echoes of implied carnage in her wake, she lent warmth to the scenes. The last time I had a similar reaction was with Brooke Smith in “Series 7” from 2001.

If I may be allowed a smidgen of hyperbole “overkill,” in Hegemann’s cinematic landscape, warts and all, youthful excess and exuberance have never looked and felt so good. It’s to be expected, I suppose. In her short life she has directed award-winning productions of, not only film, but also theater and opera.

A caveat, however, is, in many ways, the film forces you to go to it. Coming to you is not at the top of its “to do list.” There’s a bit of the ol’ abstract at play here. Now, if those mental hoops aren’t too difficult to jump through, you’ll find “Axolotl Overkill” a most interesting and entertaining film.

“Axolotl Overkill” is in Sundance’s World Cinema Dramatic Competition and will screen at the following times:

Wednesday, Jan. 25, noon at the Temple Theatre

Friday, Jan. 27, 11:45 p.m. at the Egyptian Theatre

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Sundance doc ‘Rumble’ reveals surprising roots of rock

Jay Meehan, The Park Record — Tue, 17 Jan 2017 23:32:41 +0000

So, you consider yourself culturally erudite? Connecting all the musical dots from Congo Square to the jazz and blues of Storyville and the Mississippi Delta to the refinements of Chicago and New York has long been in your musical wheelhouse, right?

And you’ve got your British Isles and Appalachian ducks simmering in a similar gumbo and you can combine them at the drop of some “roux?” Well, have I got a Sundance film for you. Are you ready to RUMBLE?

What’s going to really smack you in the face when watching this extraordinary documentary about indigenous influences in the evolution of American popular music is that, no matter how long you’ve been a part of the tribe, I’m pretty sure your quiver is an arrow or two short.

How did you miss it the first time around? Well, as it turns out, it was probably a glitch in both your auditory perception and pattern recognition centers. Not to worry. It’s nothing an epiphany couldn’t fix. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!
Even for those of us who haunted local Powwows, completely immersed in and hypnotized by the heartbeat of drums, rhythm of dance, and wail of songs, to not hear and recognize the same in the delta blues of the seminally influential Charlie Patton confounds the sensibilities. Obviously, we had yet to learn to listen.

Hanging their cultural war bonnets on the distorted power chords and in-your-face guitar riffs of Link Wray’s classic 1958 instrumental hit “Rumble,” filmmakers Catherine Bainbridge, Alfonso Maiorana, and Producer Stevie Salas (Apache) make their case both forwards and backwards from Dockery Plantation with archival film and photos, interviews, and, most especially, concert footage, which will flat-out blow you away!

While speaking to The Park Record from his beach chair on the Kona Coast of Hawaii, Salas, an advisor for Contemporary Music at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian and co-creator of the exhibit “ Up Where We Belong: Native Musicians In Popular Culture,” reminisced about the four-years it took to make the film.

“It was a hard movie to make! There’s a story here that’s never been told and putting all the people together, both native and not, who wanted, and needed, to play a part in it, wasn’t easy,” Salas recalled.

Writer/Director Catherine Bainbridge, who brought her love and devotion to music, history, politics, and the importance of Indigenous stories to the film, put it this way:
“We are so honored to be able to tell this story about the influence of iconic Native American musicians like Link Wray (Shawnee), Charley Patton (Choctaw/African American), Mildred Bailey (Couer d’Alene), Robbie Robertson (Mohawk), Jimi Hendrix (Cherokee), Buffy Sainte-Marie (Cree), Jesse Ed Davis (Kiowa), Redbone (Yaqui/Shoshone), Randy Castillo (Isleta Pueblo/Apache) and Taboo (Shoshone).” (Tribal affiliations have been added by the writer.)

The Jesse Ed Davis and Jimi Hendrix segments are going to floor you. And when you hear Taj Mahal, Rhiannon Giddens, Slash, Stevie Van Zandt, Buddy Guy, Martin Scorsese, Tony Bennett, Jackson Browne, and Steven Tyler speak about how these icons were an influence, you’ll buy in.

And that’s not even the half of it. Native activists and poet/musicians Joy Harjo (Muscogee) and John Trudell (Santee Dakota), as usual, mesmerize while drawing their own pointed lines in the sand. And longtime music writer David Fricke, while drawing different parallels, is equally, or nearly so, illuminating.

What can I say? That a film with such an important, timely, and profound message would also be so beautifully paced and lit and shot with such extraordinary love and care, I found astounding. Plus, of course, the level of passion exhibited by filmmakers and interviewees alike. There’s a lot of love in this tribe!

And, might I add, when you walk out, you won’t be the same person that walked in!

“RUMBLE: The Indians Who Rocked The World” will screen in the Sundance Film Festival’s World Documentary program at the following times and locations:
Sunday, Jan. 22 at 9 p.m. at the Yarrow Hotel Theatre
Tuesday, Jan. 24 at 3:30 p.m. at the Redstone Cinema 1
Thursday, Jan. 26 at 6 p.m. at the Library Center Theatre
Friday, Jan. 27 at 11:59 p.m. at the Broadway Centre Cinema 6
Saturday, Jan. 28 at 11:30 a.m. at Holiday Village Cinema 1

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Acclaimed Sundance director goes surfing

Jay Meehan, The Park Record — Tue, 17 Jan 2017 23:32:40 +0000

With such seriously profound films as “Last Days in Vietnam,” and “Ghosts of Abu Ghraib,” already in her Sundance rear-view mirror, filmmaker Rory Kennedy arrives at the 2017 Film Festival with a more personal tale.

“Take Every Wave: The Life of Laird Hamilton,” while certainly not your father’s surfing movie, utilizes the iconic “Waterman’s” passion for the ocean’s forces to show a life that transcends competition in favor of almost off-scale personal accomplishment.

Speaking to The Park Record from her Los Angeles office, Kennedy characterized the shooting of the film as a “super fun break” from some of her other recent work. “I’d never really surfed before or rode a Jet Ski or flown in helicopters while shooting film with the helicopter actually flying beneath the wave,” she explained.

Her excitement over the archival footage used in Laird’s back-story also showed through as she spoke of “interweaving it with more recent footage shot during last year’s highly impressive El Niño season.” Ocean swells often increase dramatically in size during an El Niño pattern.

Principal photography followed the intensely committed Hamilton upon his never-ending quest for bigger waves and new challenges both on the water and in his multi-dimensional life.

Described as an “American athlete, surfer, author, inventor, stunt man, model, producer, TV host, fitness and nutrition expert, husband, father and adrenaline junkie,” he truly attempts to “take every wave.”

An innovator without pretentions to the “purity” of the sport, his involvements in the birth and growth of both “tow-in surfing,” where a surfer is able to access waves not available to the usual “paddle-in” practitioner, and “foil boarding,” where a hydrofoil affixed to the base of the board raises it above the wave, differentiate him quite significantly from the norm.

And, of course, Laird Hamilton, almost since its inception, has become the worldwide poster child of “standup paddle boarding.” A video of him “shooting the pier” at Malibu during hurricane force winds on a SUP immediately went viral.

Not much of a surprise there, as Surfer Magazine once anointed him thusly: “The sport’s most complete surfer, displaying almost unnerving expertise in a multitude of disciplines, and flat out surfing’s biggest, boldest, bravest, and the best big wave surfer in the world today, bar none.”

Kennedy also spoke of Laird as not having the world handed to him. “Although his high-school quarterback good looks might make you think otherwise, Laird has a toughness born of the ‘bullying’ that comes with being a white kid growing up and going to school in Hawaii,” she remarked.

Although the film is about Laird’s personal journey, his wife, pro-volleyball player and TV personality Gabby Reece, and their children, also play large roles. Hamilton, you see, is a complex man with an insatiable appetite to challenge the future. Over the last decade or so, Laird has expanded his horizons beyond surfing, becoming an international fitness icon and nutrition expert and, it would seem, the family is never far out of the frame.

Carrying the distinction of “Waterman,” is just about the highest honor that can be accorded someone in the surfing community. Only reserved for those with long-standing credentials and indisputably significant all-round achievements, Laird Hamilton wears the homage with both respect for its cultural history and with an ease born of the water.

Such an individual is worthy of a film tribute directed by the equally fabled documentarian Rory Kennedy. Takes one to know one, as it were.

In response to a final query, Kennedy stated she “hoped that people not just from the surfing world would take something away from her film. That Laird’s story is relatable across the board, and that what drove him to be who he is, his personal story, goes well beyond the normal surf film.

“Take Every Wave: The Life of Laird Hamilton will screen in the Sundance Film Festival’s Documentary Premieres category at the following times and locations:

Sunday, Jan. 22 at 5:30 p.m. at The MARC
Monday, Jan. 23 at 9 a.m. the Temple Theatre
Tuesday, Jan. 24 at 9:30 p.m. at the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center
Saturday, Jan. 28 at 9 p.m. at the Temple Theatre

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America’s musical roots explored in new series

Jay Meehan, The Park Record — Sat, 30 Jan 2016 07:16:14 +0000

Musical events are a tradition at the Sundance Film Festival and Thursday night’s special event at the Eccles Center was one not to miss.

Appearances by Robert Redford and filmmaker Bernard MacMahon, a partial screening of "American Epic," the upcoming four-part six-hour television mini-series about the evolution of American music, an extended onstage conversation between Sundance Institute Film Music Program director Peter Golub, T Bone Burnett, Jack White, Taj Mahal and MacMahon, and live mini-sets from Taj Mahal and the Avett Brothers, were highlights.

Setting the stage for the film, Redford spoke about how music became a major force in shaping his life and how it continues to influence his journey to this day. MacMahon then talked about the music sessions depicted in the film and the recently reassembled pulley-operated recording machine used in the film and at the dawn of the recording industry.

Things got interesting in a hurry.

The film-footage put on display for the packed house had the sense of being a relatively long snippet from one of the upcoming American Epic episodes. In many ways, hanging its hat on the early and late recording and performance careers of the legendary bluesman Mississippi John Hurt, it became evident early on that the archival footage used in the production had been the recipient of some deep love.

Possibly the most beloved individual involved in the 1960s folk music revival, John Hurt displayed a most sincerely humble virtuosity. Finger-picking guitarists everywhere soon adopted his syncopated alternating-bass line technique. But it would be his smile and gentle demeanor that would draw people to him. Mississippi John Hurt was a magnet of joy.

Jack White also performed onscreen with both the aforementioned recording device and a supremely talented group of musicians including Lillie Mae Rische on fiddle, Dominic Davis on bass, Fats Kaplin on mandolin and Carla Azar on drums. Also featured in the part of the film screened Thursday were the rap artist Nas and Taj Mahal.

Those were heady times when America’s diverse musical strands began to intertwine and it certainly looks like American Epic, when it unfolds in full on PBS and BBC Arena this spring, will have documented them in the most fine and authentic fashion.

Golub posed rotating starting points for each of the participants and they took it from there. T Bone Burnett got well below the molecular level in a hurry with a discourse on String Theory of Quantum Physics and how, if its supposition is true, all "matter," including us, has as its most basic building block a vibrating string. Ol’ T Bone has never had trouble separating wheat from chaff.

As everyone knows, Jack White is one excitable boy and he wasted little time arriving at his thesis, which is that the earlier in time one goes back, whether looking for musical roots or primitive recording technology, it only gets better.

Once you’ve gotten to Charlie Patton, Howlin’ Wolf, and Robert Johnson, or the pulley-driven recording machines, huge amplifiers, and proto-condenser microphones from the era, any and all attempts at "updating" only subtract from the whole.

Taj is always a pleasure. There’s something about the manner in which his face contorts on its way to a wink and a smile — and the way he attacks the opening riffs of either a thought or a blues-guitar intro. Having kept the musical faith like few others, he has become the elder mentor that Mississippi John Hurt was to him.

During the first of the two live mini-sets, Taj got right into Hurt’s syncopations with a tasty take on "John Henry" (who was a steel-driving man, by the way). Following a few demonstrations of various blues techniques of the era, he ambled offstage to an ovation. Also a truly beloved soul, Taj Mahal continues his mission to educate.

To wrap up the evening, we got the Avett Brothers waxing "old-timey" with songs from Uncle Dave Macon to the early Gospel traditions. One thing that came through quite clearly from the entire evening is how deeply everyone involved "cares" about this project.

The series is tentatively scheduled to air in May on PBS. It’s about how the various genres of American music came to be. It’s about Blues, Country, Gospel, Hawaiian, Cajun, and Folk music. Which means, of course, it’s about us!

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Richard Linklater: dream, destiny, and daze

Jay Meehan, The Park Record — Sat, 30 Jan 2016 07:15:25 +0000

"The most unique property of cinema is how it lets you mold time, whether it’s over a long or a very brief period."

~ Richard Linklater

From dawn to well past dusk this past Tuesday, the Sundance Film Festival busied itself paying homage to that most singular of Independent Filmmakers, Richard Linklater.

The Texas kid who jumpstarted the Austin film scene and gave us such indie classics as "Slacker" — which completely dazzled Sundance in 1991 — "Dazed and Confused," the "Before Sunrise," "Before Sunset," "Before Midnight" trilogy, "School of Rock," "A Scanner Darkly," and the recent multi-Oscar-nominated "Boyhood" among other gems, had a festival day like few others.

Kicking off the festivities with a mid-day premiere at The Library Center venue, the documentary "Richard Linklater — Dream is Destiny" took film buffs on a process-oriented journey from screenplay through director’s cut following a true-to-oneself creative career that not only few can match but that launched others in its wake.

Configured by two of his longtime friends, Austin artistic movers-and-shakers Louis Black and Karen Bernstein, the film follows Linklater’s feature-film history of dramatizing what he terms "the youth rebellion continuum." Utilizing archival production footage, the film provides an insider’s POV while baring layers both poignant and hilarious.

Although it’s impossible to truly understand the courage it takes to make the relatively meager-budgeted films he continually puts out there, spending film-time with this quiet wunderkind-turned-master while he goes about his daily creative routine is helpful to that end. Plus the love the filmmakers feel toward him radiates through the manner of their editing decisions.

Black, a Sundance vet with the Peabody Award winning "The Order of Myths" under his belt, had co-founded the local alternative rag The Austin Chronicle before, in 1987, helping to kick off the South by Southwest (SXSW) film festival and gathering, where he continues to serve as Senior Director.

Bernstein, with director credits for "Are the Kids Alright?" and the Emmy Award-winning "Producing Light," also serves as a producer for PBS’s American Masters, where she won an Emmy for an Ella Fitzgerald film and a Grammy for the ’98 Sundance film "Lou Reed: Rock and Roll Heart."

As you might have surmised, PBS’s American Masters is where "Richard Linklater — Dream is Destiny" will be heading following its run at Sundance. And rightfully so, I might add.

And that brings us, later in this quite auspicious day, to a Sundance Film Festival event of epic proportions: the late-night screening up on Main Street at the Egyptian Theater of Linklater’s classic "Dazed and Confused" with both the filmmaker and his good buddy (and, in a sense, protégé) Jason Reitman sitting side-by-side with microphones in the audience while trading insider comments on the film-in-question and whatever off-the-wall sidebars raised their head.

Young Reitman, son of Ivan (producer of "Animal House" and director of "Ghostbuster," etc.), became a Sundance vet almost too early with 2006’s "Thank You For Smoking." The same could also be said for the Academy Award nominations for the two feature films that followed, "Juno" and "Up in the Air."

It was Jason who came up with what turned out to be the quite-well-received concept of screening "Dazed" with live commentary and who kept the shuck-and-jive rolling. Tickets were at a premium all week long and the crowd that showed up had their slacker-stoner-kegger game faces firmly in place. They were hip to why they were there — it was a celebration of a cult film that had become a classic, and not much got by them.

As the closing shot filled the screen and the crowd prepared to erupt, Jason leaned over to Richard one more time and his whisper filled the theater: "Thanks for this film and thanks for your career." The joint went nuts in collective solidarity. Richard Linklater had been truly celebrated by the festival and fans that had been with him from the beginning.

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‘Miles Ahead’ offers new understanding

Jay Meehan, The Park Record — Wed, 27 Jan 2016 06:31:36 +0000

The silence was deafening! From 1975 to 1980, no one outside the always-bolted Manhattan townhouse door of Miles Davis really had a clue. No new recordings! No concert tours! A strange inexplicable aura had engulfed one of music’s true icons and, although everyone had theories, no one really knew why.

Now, however, filmmaker Don Cheadle has picked those locks and, through intensive research and a highly artistic improvisational sensibility, brought us his intriguing and somewhat flamboyant Miles-like take on the matter.

His resultant film, "Mile Ahead," currently screening at Sundance in the Spotlight category and featuring a screenplay combining plausibility with sidebars of historical fiction, plays both as a psychological thriller and an essential addition to the canon.

Brimming with flashbacks while refusing to touch upon all the usual biopic clichés, Davis’ legend dominates everyone and everything and the multitude of eras, defined brilliantly by music and style, are true to the respective timeframes involved. Suspension of disbelief is a given!

It tells its story not as a primer but rather as an out-of-order peeling back of layers. It doesn’t hold your hand. Shapes continually shift without explanation and all the fabrications are true.

Cheadle’s premise to artistically investigate Miles’ "missing years," when he hunkered down with substance abuse and women and, according to his autobiography, never played his horn, was a stroke of pure genius. With nothing in the record to contradict, the Oscar-nominated actor and first-time director flowed free.

Although Miles had stated in his aforementioned autobiography that during the timeframe in question he "didn’t pick (his horn) up once," Cheadle had heard snippets of recordings that belied that assertion. With his curiosity now fully fueled, he peeked inside other doorways of consequence.

An often madcap search for a stolen reel-to-reel tape involving mayhem and gunplay and featuring actor Ewan McGregor as a Rolling Stone reporter who, as a film character, reeks of composite intruders into Miles’ comfort zone, is the jumping off point.

His romantic-turned-dominating marriage to dancer Frances Taylor (Emayatzy Corinealdi just flat-out killing it) comes through flashback, as do earlier "cool-school" recording sessions with John Coltrane, the post-modal quintet with Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams, and the jazz-rock-fusion days that followed.

As one who once was on the receiving end of an innocuous Miles Davis glare, I can say that in terms of facial expression and attitude, Cheadle nails the role. From Brooks Brothers to elegant-hipster mix-and-match, the "angry genius" mindset never had a better clothes model.

In fact, all the locations, from rains-soaked alleys to corporate boardrooms to Miles’ own disheveled multi-story pad, are dressed to the hilt. Naturally. Nothing feels forced. Nothing feels like a reach. I mean, when you’re attempting to reconcile the coolest cat on the planet with his Howard Hughes endgame, demons come with the territory.

As one who’s had Miles in his life pretty much from his late-teens on, he homesteaded a section of my pantheon rather early. In moving jazz forward, he’s easily in the same conversation as Satchmo, Bird, Duke, Bix, Lady Day, and a few others. I loved Miles although, in retrospect, he was anything but loveable.

And, I must admit, I’m rather smitten with Don Cheadle’s film. Although I had more questions coming out than I did going in, that’s a good thing. I can’t say the film caused me to listen to more Miles for the sole reason that I’ve listened to more Miles than anything else for years. Consider that a disclaimer.

The film also features cameos of still-living bandmates of Miles that are to die for. In fact if they have Oscars for "performance footage played alongside rolling end credits," do I have a nomination for you!

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