When You're Strange

The PBS "Independent Lens" series brought to my living room this first-ever Doors documentary, with all the bad words bleeped and naughty bits blocked out. I could tell, despite Congress' best efforts, that those were the best parts.

It's a straight-up, here's-what-happened-next story, without any current "no-here's-what-I-remember" statements to compare/contrast. The wealth of concert and studio footage is what makes it worthwhile. Robbie Krieger shoots a perturbed look while he's trying to work; Ray Manzarek takes a deep drag and gives it a try; John Densmore is a friggin' hero; Jim sure looks cute and deranged. Then someone takes some still photos that end up in a courtroom, and they didn't even show the best parts, and PBS couldn't show them if they wanted to.

One good thing about this uneven but revelatory film: It will reset your Doors queue, so you can restart with the familiar or check back with something you've taken for granted. Like "Spanish Caravan," or "Crystal Ship," ... or "Light My Fire"...

There were some pseudo-Jim scenes created with backstory in mind -- really, when's the last time you saw someone dressed like that, in a car like that, pulling up to a gas pump that looked like that, and handing cash to someone dressed like that? I give that a big ten-four, good buddy.

But those scenes were a sideshow, not the main attraction.

Big up to the producers for getting Jim Ladd on board as the voice of Jim Ladd on the radio. I remember during Roger Waters' "Radio KAOS" tour, going up to the DJ booth on the floor to see Jim Ladd in action. Great voice to guide you through, like always.

Garbage Dreams

New tag: "Almost"!

I almost made it to the closing credits before nodding off. It isn't because of the subject matter - the Zabbaleen, an Egyptian underclass, has found a method of survival by voluntarily recycling all of Cairo's waste that they can lay hands upon. I've been doing that for way too long myself.

I just naturally nod off about twenty minutes before the credits, is all. Then I rent, borrow, or buy the film so I can see what I missed.

It's happened with Truffaut's "The Green Room" and Brando in "The Fugitive Kind" when they were on a local movie network. It happened with this film too, but I got the gist of it.

American Boy

I love me some movies through the mail. Who needs Netflix when friends are all around?

Although Big Star reunions and some 1971 Grateful Dead were the centerpieces of this set of discs I received recently, I watched "American Boy" first (a couple of times - it's less than an hour) because... well....

...because they just don't make Italian/Jewish actor junkie road manager murderers (in self defense) like they used to, do they? They also don't make Martin Scorsese documentaries like they used to, but that's a separate issue.

Steven Prince played a guy who sold some guns in "Taxi Driver," but aside from that he has a lot of stories to tell. A LOT of stories. Way more than an hour's worth, but that's all Scorsese gives us here, and it turns out to be plenty. Including one about reviving an OD victim with a shot of adrenaline, which I immediately found familiar without needing to go through the Tarantino back-catalog.

And then, he went to work at a gas station... or ... was that before, or after, he became Neil Diamond's road manager...?

Ghosts of Cité Soleil

A hip-hop gangsta-fable about too-real life.

Too real.

The ending score is Brian Eno's "An Ending (Ascent)", which we've also heard in:

For All Mankind
Traffic
28 Days Later

All of which you and I have seen. Right?!

My first sweetie was half-Haitian. So I guess I cared about Haiti long before it was the cool thing to do. I just wish it hadn't come to that, but that's another thread on another blog.