FORGOTTEN FILM - CABIN BOY

I think the first time I noticed Chris Elliott was on his short lived FOX sitcom, Get a Life (1990-1992). I'm sure I'd seen him pop up on Letterman's old NBC show here and there before that (he was a writer and regular cast member), but this series put a name to his face and was just weird enough to appeal to me. I started watching it because his character's name was the same as someone I knew, which we all found rather funny, but then the show turned out to be actually rather funny, so I kept watching until it got cancelled.

A couple of years later, I spotted the VHS of his 1994 film, Cabin Boy, for rent when it hit the shelves and the premise seemed interesting enough to take a chance, so home it came. What I wasn't really prepared for was the flat out assault on my sensibilities that I was going to endure for the next 80 minutes. The thing is, this film should have made me very angry, and I know it made some critics feel that way, but despite the continuous intellectual kicks to the head, I found myself turning into a complete masochist for this movie's abuse. The more ridiculous and irritating it got, the more I loved it and I just couldn't get enough. It simply takes absurdity to a level of Zen transcendence and becomes something quite unique unto itself.

Elliott plays Nathanial Mayweather, an entitled, arrogant, foulmouthed finishing school graduate. He's the kind of guy you want to punch the instant you lay eyes on him and that feeling only intensifies when he starts opening his mouth, which he does far more than is necessary or wise. You see, he's one of them "fancy lads", as is so quaintly put by the stuffed monkey selling street hustler played by David Letterman in a classic cameo. After graduating from finishing school, he's on the lookout for his ship to take him on a luxury ocean cruise, only to end up stowing away on a filthy pirate ship. From there, the film becomes an inexplicable homage to Ray Harryhausen films like The 7th Voyages of Sinbad or Clash of the Titans, as Nathan inadvertently embarks on a quest to discover his manhood while encountering all manner of creatures and characters along the way.

This is one of those flicks that really benefits from psychoactive stimulants of the psychedelic variety as the surrealism of each situation escalates towards the film's climax. Elliott manages to perform something of a minor miracle in terms of creating such a reprehensible protagonist while still giving him enough pathos to make him sympathetic enough to follow through his adventures. I'd still punch him in the face if I met him, but I'd do it with a smile. I hate them fancy lads.

INFLUENTIAL ALBUM - AMON TOBIN, BRICOLAGE

For a long time, electronic music was beaten down by the cudgel that it lacked "feeling' and was too "stiff" and "rigid".  This was something that was even embraced by groups like Kraftwerk, who integrated the rigidity of electronics into their aesthetic, to brilliant effect, i might add.  But still, for the first two decades as the technology worked its way from novelty to necessity in the creation of popular music, there were restrictions on its flexibility.  It took time for keyboards to develop sensitivity to velocity and after-touch and rhythmic devices like drum machines and sequencers were generally slavishly tied to quantization. 

It wasn't until the 1990s that the tech began to truly develop the abilities to incorporate more organic feeling attributes into its compositions.  One of the most preeminent pioneers in terms of breaking electronics free from the shackles of perfection and repetition was Amon Tobin, who debuted with his first album, Bricolage, in 1997. 

I recall this album being something of a revelation in my social circles as we'd never heard anything that sounded quite so loose and spontaneous before.  I remember listening to this with fellow musicians who were well up on the latest tools and techniques and being aghast at the fluidity of the percussion and the arrangements.  So much was going on and no two bars of music seemed to be the same.  There were constant shifts and variations happening and it all felt like someone was really playing this stuff, even though we knew it was mostly done by sampling and editing.  We couldn't figure out how the hell he was doing this stuff.

The style of the music also broke free of genre pigeonholes.  Tobin would effortlessly glide from devastating drum & bass to downtempo coolness to jazzy chill without breaking a sweat.  The title, Bricolage, which is an arts term for "the construction or creation of a work from a diverse range of things that happen to be available, or a work constructed using mixed media", fit the contents perfectly as it was a diverse assemblage of sounds and styles that created its own unique vision for both the dance floor and the living room in equal measure.

FORGOTTEN FILM - HEAVEN

Diane Keaton is well known for her decades long career as an actress in many high profile films, but she has also, on occasion, gone behind the camera and her 1987 documentary, Heaven, is one of my most cherished viewing experiences. I came across it as a rental shortly after its release and found myself enchanted by it from the first viewing. Since then, I've become somewhat "evangelical" about trying to turn others on to it, whenever the opportunity has presented itself. Whether you're a true believer or atheist or agnostic, you are sure to find yourself connecting with this very human experience.

The film is essentially a series of interviews with a wide variety of people possessing all sorts of beliefs and representing a full spectrum of everything from everyday schmucks to the most eccentric oddballs. They are all interviewed in bizarre, angular, sets with a distinctly "new wave" aesthetic, which does slightly date this to its 1980s origins, but the substance and message remain timeless and transcendent.

A lesser film maker would have given in to the temptation to treat the interviewees as fodder for humiliation and ridicule, which would have been incredibly easy to do with some of these people. The camera could have cast judgements on them quite superfluously, had Keaton allowed such an angle to guide her production. Instead, however, she stealthily manages to keep judgements out of the equation and simply lets these people be themselves and express their views. The end result is that the audience is able to develop a surprisingly intimate relationship with them all, no matter how conflicting they may be with one's own world views. It's more than just "tolerance" which connects the viewer to these subjects, it's sincere affection for them. Every time I see this film again, I get the overwhelming sense of visiting with a group of old friends. I may scoff at some of what they have to say, but in the end, I'd still give them a hug, for the most part anyway.

Beyond the banquet of strange personalities, the film is an exploration of Heaven (and Hell) as a concept, not trying to prove whether or not it's real, but examining what people think it might or might not be, like how you get there and what you do once you are. Because the film doesn't approach the subjects with a predefined conception of "Heaven" and whether or not it exists, it's able to straddle the gulf between those who believe and those who don't. You get to make up your own mind and the film doesn't try to shove a belief system down your throat. You're not going to change your mind about your beliefs watching this, but you may find yourself thinking about them in a different way after you've heard what other people have to say and how they think about these things.

After all these years of seeing it many times, the film still brings the brightest grin to my face and, in the final sequence, the biggest lump in my throat. There are some people who you simply connect with in a very real way and they bring so much joy, even when they're so burdened with sadness. A particular senior lady is a perfect case in point. She reminds me of my great grandmother so much and then the final sequence of the film features her voice saying goodbye to all the other people in the film, like she's saying farewell to close family and friends. This device brings the concept of mortality into sharp focus and is what hammers home the emotional impact of it all, realizing that we're all going to die at some point and to cherish each other while we can.

Ultimately, it's a message of love and acceptance and joy and it'll make you feel good no matter what you believe.

INFLUENTIAL ALBUM - THE BEATLES, YELLOW SUBMARINE

Music was a big part of my childhood. My mom even played music extra loud while I was in-utero because she wanted me to love music, and this was in 1963, long before hipster moms glomed onto the idea of trying to influence their babies while they were still chillin' in the womb. Once I was outta there, it was mostly stuff like Elvis & Johnny Cash records for my mom, while my dad had a Latin easy listening lean, stuff like Herb Alpert & Mexican Joe. They were still in their early 20s, so while their tastes were rooted in the 1950s, they'd still pick up the odd contemporary single, things like The Monkees' I'm a Believe & Last Train to Clarksville, but it was mostly country music stuff from them beyond that.

The real eye/ear opener for me as a kid was the day the babysitter brought over her newly purchased copy of The Beatles Yellow Submarine. It being released in 1969, I couldn't have been more than 5, going on 6. I can remember it so clearly, being in the living room, sitting with her on the floor next to the big old console stereo and her showing me this record. The cover of it was marvelous, so colorful and strange! Coming into my sense of self-consciousness in the late 1960s was a weird time because psychedelia was in full swing and it had an immediate appeal for a kid like me with its bright colors and fantastical imagery. It most definitely became a foundation memory for me in terms of guiding my quests for the unusual.

When she put the record on, I recall being transfixed by the music. It was so different from anything I'd really heard before and so instantly memorable. The hooks in the songs sunk into you and never let go. You heard this stuff once and were humming it forever afterwards.

I had no idea of what went into making this music back then nor how sophisticated it was in terms of its production, arrangements and execution. All I knew was that I wanted to find more music like this. It would be several years before my record collecting obsession would fully kick into gear in 1977, but this album was the one that got me to perceive the medium as something special and collectible, objects worth coveting. At the time, however, all I knew was that I also wanted to live in a Yellow Submarine.

INFLUENTIAL ALBUM - LED ZEPPELIN, PRESENCE

While we're on the subject of influential albums and their covers, I wanted to talk about one of my favorites from one of the most important design houses of the 1970s, Hipgnosis. Hipgnosis was stared in 1968 by friends Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell. The duo was later joined in the mid 1970s by a young Peter Christopherson, who would go on to gain acclaim and recognition making his own music as a member of Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV, Coil and Soisong, as well as releasing solo work as Threshold Houseboys Choir.

Hipgnosis was responsible for many of the most iconic covers of the decade, working with the likes of Pink Floyd, Peter Gabriel and Led Zeppelin, just to name a few. It's their 1976 cover for Led Zeppelin's Presence which I want to bring to your attention today. 

 

One of the common traits of Hipgnosis covers, which always drew me to them, was that they usually had some sort of subversive "twist" to them. They were generally photo-real artworks that often relied on in-camera effects to create their surreal auras, though they would also use collage cut-&-paste techniques, something common with Photoshop these days, but much more demanding back then when it was done with physical photographs, blades and glue.

The "hook" with the Presence LP cover was the "object". Designed by Christopherson, it was an enigmatic looking black twisting obelisk type form that appeared to defy normal geometry. Its shape and proportions looked to be at odds with physical space and the cover depicted it in a variety of seemingly benign, mundane contexts of superficial, idyllic mid-century, middle class life. Yet its presence in these scenes lends each of them a nebulously sinister edge. It's obtuse, but it sinks in, almost subliminally, suggesting some kind of conspiratorial plot is taking place. Like some sort of "invasion of the body snatchers" scenario, normality is being subverted here. 

 

I recall seeing this in the shops and being constantly drawn to it. I'd stare at the photos and try to imagine what could be going on. Why was this thing in all these pictures? What was it? What did it do? Its blackness and confounding shape only implied something nefarious. A truly ingenious concoction for an album cover. The record itself wasn't Zeppelin's best, though I find it often unfairly criticized as I quite like most of it, but it's a cover that stays with me after all these years contemplating that "object" and its mysterious purpose...

FORGOTTEN FILM - RIDERS OF THE STORM

Here's a forgotten movie from the 1980s that should get more attention.  I watched this one several times after my first viewing because it was so unexpected and subversive.  It's about a crew of former vets who fly around in an old B-52 bomber fitted out with a mobile pirate TV station and they go around the US jamming local broadcasts and inserting their own counterculture programming.  The captain of this airship is played brilliantly by Dennis Hopper and they go up against a nasty Republican, proto Sarah Palin type presidential candidate.  It's a fantastic stoner movie as the scenes where they jam out local TV shows (like evangelical shows suddenly being interrupted by some Satanic dude with rats crawling all over him) are pretty psychedelic.  The anarchic message of this movie couldn't be more timely, so if you ever come across it, don't miss out!

FORGOTTEN FILM - RETURN TO OZ

I've always had a thing for kids films that aren't really appropriate for kids.  Willy Wonka always appealed to me like that.  When Disney released Return to Oz in 1985, it was pretty quickly savaged by critics and audiences ran the other way.  It was something of a sacrilege in most people's minds, especially if they were fans of the 1939 Wizard of Oz movie, of which they assumed "Return" was meant to be a sequel. 

I remember seeing this on the bottom shelf or the kids section in the video store for some time and every time I walked by it, I heard this little voice, much like the chicken in the movie, beckoning me to pick it up and rent it.  I finally convinced some friends to give it a shot and we went back to the viewing pad and proceeded to get stupidly high before putting it on.  No one knew what to expect, but I was nestled up against my oversized pillow on the floor, gooned to the gills and ready for anything.  I was not disappointed! 

It didn't take long for the eeriness of this film to kick in and I was also immediately struck by the performance of Vancouver native, Fairuza Balk, in her big screen debut.  She was only 10 years old at the time, but there was a maturity and wisdom in her performance that took her out of any kind of childishness.  She wasn't a "dumb kid" in any sense and that made me love her character right off the bat. 

Then the antagonists of the story start to show themselves and they bring this dark brooding quality along with them.  There is no singing and dancing in this movie either, but there is a real sense of menace and malevolence.  However, this is all balanced by the arrival of Dorothy's traveling companions, none of whom were familiar characters.  There is the talking chicken, the mechanical soldier, the pumpkin head and the moose with a sofa body.  Each one distinctive and with an appealing nature that makes you care about them. 

The film is bursting throughout with wonderful visuals and amazing clay animations of the villainous rock gnomes.  The Wheelers, while absurd, are also psychotically terrifying and the maleficent Mombi, with her rotating cabinet of stolen heads, offers one of the most unsettling Disney villains ever.

In all, it's got nothing to do with the beloved classic film and must be considered entirely in its own right as a separate creation with its own merits.   It's a film I own on DVD and can (and have) watch over and over and I get goosebumps whenever I see it.  If you don't know it and you appreciate "fantasy" that falls between the cracks of what's considered adult vs children's entertainment, you can't go wrong with this classic.