Whatever you do, wherever you are, whoever you are, I am hoping and wishing you well. It has been the worst week in the history of this nation since I’ve been alive, except of course, 9/11. But then we weren’t sure what was going on, and we certainly didn’t know of the government’s conspiracy to go to war with Iraq. We had not yet crossed the river Styx (not the band – the river!). We are of course riding the rapids now.
Please try, if you can, to make it a good weekend for yourself and your loved ones. This sounds like a ridiculous article from a typical ‘woman’s’ magazine, a banal list of things that will lift your spirits, but like Elvis Costello says, “My Aim Is True.”
1) Start there. Elvis Costello is a real icon, an amazing figurehead on the landscape of pop music. He defines more than one generation. His expanse of musical vision enters all genres, with collaborations with artists as varied as The Brodsky Quartet, Burt Bacharach and Daryl Hall, and a fearlessness and intense focus on the music.
Once, he came into the back of Largo, to pay homage himself to the great Jon Brion, who plays Friday nights without fail. If you are in the LA area, you should make that pilgrimage if you haven’t done so before.
I have had the pleasure of seeing Elvis live many times, because he tours frequently. The shows with Steve Nieve and the Attractions have always been my favorite. I remember being enshrouded in depression, the kind that you cannot shake, the mental winter cold that lasts until spring, and I was in New Orleans, my favorite city. New Orleans, the crossroads of dreams and nightmares, debauchery and salvation, a maelstrom of weather and good cooking, a place where ghosts roam the streets and hotels with the same frequency as the tourists, co-exist on different planes usually peacefully. However, the Big Easy is fickle, and if it doesn’t take to you right away, you will receive your eviction notice without ceremony. Thankfully, the city embraces me like one of its kin, and I travel there when I can, like visiting relatives. My sadness buys me plane tickets there, and the muggy arms of the French Quarter never fail to lift me higher. Walking along the busy streets, in the cloudy blackness of my part time bipolar moodswings, I looked up on the marquee of the State Theater. Elvis Costello was playing. There were tickets at the box office, the performance was to begin in just a few hours. My life was saved.
Ruben Blades introduced us once at the Kodak Theatre, the new one, on Highland and Hollywood. I threw my arms around him and could not let go, could not let go, but then I was pulled off him by bodyguards and for some odd reason, Val Kilmer, who wanted Elvis Costello to himself. “Blood and Chocolate” and “Imperial Bedroom” are at the top of my list, but it is all as good as music gets.
2) Catherine Deneuve is the most beautiful woman in the world, still, was, and will always be. Not only is she elegant, but surreal in her physical perfection. She’s incredibly intelligent, and has a body of work that competes with her own gorgeous body. She needs no botox or microdermabrasion, because she is who she is. Beauty has no expiration date.
She proves that age does nothing to interfere with the pure symphony of nature and the glory of woman. I love her, and her films do nothing but make me glow with happiness. From “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg” to “Repulsion” to the sublime “Belle du Jour,” to “Dancer in the Dark,” with the winsome and equally lovely Bjork.
I just watched the new version of “Les Liason Dangereuse,” with Rupert Everett, my favorite fable of all time. Laclos told one hell of a story that has lasted centuries, and every era seems to have a go at it. A Valmont and a Marquis de Marteuil for all. Catherine Deneuve is my favorite. “The Hunger” sends me every time, because it stars both Catherine Deneuve AND David Bowie. It is like a cinematic 8-ball. I have to watch myself, for I might die of joy.
I am in love with Catherine Deneuve because she is her own woman, lives alone, loves it and wouldn’t have it any other way. She is private. Paris is hers, as is her life. I have numerous legends, collected over years of anecdotal archiving, archeological digs with esteemed directors, stars, publicists, journalists, which flatter and sometimes do not, her legendary coldness, but her icy exterior is one of the qualities that make her the greatest. You will never have her. She belongs to herself. We can merely watch her butch femininity, like my friend Mark Davis likes to say. She is femme, the ultimate femme fatale, but she walks like a man and wherever she goes, she is never going your way.
No, you cannot have a ride. Yet it is an honor to watch her leave and close the door quietly behind her.
3) Wong Kar Wei films are for me a tonic, a salve to life’s sometimes unbearable misfortune. He is bittersweet, and that flavor is elusive and mildly unpleasant, yet it is quite honestly, my favorite.
“Happy Together” is an incredible, romantic, ironic serenade to the love between two men. It could have easily been two women or a man and a woman, for it depicts merely the human experience of being violently in love. In it, Leslie Cheung, who committed suicide this year, gives the performance of his life.
Wong Kar Fei and cinematographer Christopher Doyle capture the essence of love, in the eye of the camera, and that is no small feat. I watch “Chungking Express” and “Fallen Angels” every month or so, but all Wong Kar Wei’s films are masterpieces. Quentin Tarantino, my old friend, turned me onto these movies before he brought them to the Western cultural landscape. The entire cinephile community must embrace him just for that, as well as his own extraordinary and legendary genre smashing work as a director, writer , auteur and visionary. Q know what he be doing.
In times like these, look for beauty. It is everywhere, and knowing that, maybe we shall survive. Art and love are all we have, after all.
We also have David Cross. That man is funny as fuck. Awwww… shit.