The New York Times has a story by Peter Facini about Bob Parent’s 1953 photograph of Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, and Roy Haynes: ”Is This the Greatest Photo in Jazz History?” Facini asserts that this photo has “has been called by many ‘the greatest photo in jazz.’”
I know this photo well, having first seen it in a Parker biography many years ago. It’s a wonderful photo, but I’m not sure there’s any evidence that “many” have called it “the greatest photo in jazz.” I’ve never heard of the photo being described in that way; who the “many” might be, I don’t know. Try searching for greatest photo and bob parent and you’ll turn up this Times article and a 2018 article in which Facini makes the same claim: “widely considered the greatest photograph in Jazz.”
The idea of a work of art being “greatest” is foreign to me. But if there must be a greatest photo in jazz, the obvious contender is the 1958 Art Kane photo that has become known as A Great Day in Harlem, a photo that Facini doesn’t mention, a photo that’s spawned a documentary, a poster, a hip-hop homage, and at least two books. Kane’s photo is an extraordinary human-interest story in which every face is distinctive. As is the case with Parent’s photo. But it’s Kane’s photo that is known as immortal, legendary, the greatest, &c.
[Of the four musicians in Bob Parent’s photograph, only Roy Haynes is living. Of the fifty-seven musicians in A Great Day in Harlem, only Benny Golson and Sonny Rollins are living.]
Thursday, March 14, 2019
“The greatest photo in jazz”?
Not from The Onion
From the New York Post: “Son defends parents caught in college admissions scandal while smoking blunt.” Says the son: “I believe everyone has a right to go to college, man.” But it’s his sister who pursued higher education.
While he pursued “higher” education? Now I’m thinking like the Post.
But I’d revise the headline: “Blunt-smoking son defends parents caught in college admissions scandal.” Or more Post-like: “Higher education? Son offers ‘blunt’ defense of parents caught in college admissions scandal.”
Domestic comedy
[Ciphers are sometimes difficult to work out.]
“What kind of ten-year-old are you?”
Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)
In the library
It’s Thursday night. Alvin Fernald, Shoie Shoemaker, and Daphne Fernald (the Pest) are in the Riverton public library, scheming to copy a coded message held by the mysterious J.A. Smith. Mr. Smith is seated at a table trying to work out the message.
Clifford B. Hicks, Alvin’s Secret Code (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1963).
Alvin’s Secret Code is a wonderful blend of thrills, chills, and comedy, even in the library, even on a school night. This novel was my favorite book in childhood, and it’s now a book for our household’s two-person reading club.
Related posts
Rediscovering Alvin’s Secret Code in adulthood : One last Alvin novel : Clifford B. Hicks (1920–2010)
[Metaphysical Aspects of Existentialism: there is no such book, except in the Riverton public library. But the title forms part of a book published in 1980.]
Wednesday, March 13, 2019
Twelve more movies
[One to four stars. Four sentences each. No spoilers.]
Seance on a Wet Afternoon (dir. Bryan Forbes, 1964). Myra (Kim Stanley) is a medium; Billy (Richard Attenborough) is a husband who does what he’s told. On Billy’s to-do list: kidnapping a child from a wealthy family so that Myra can make a show of her psychic powers and solve the crime. And then there’s the couple’s backstory. Utterly unnerving. ★★★★
*
Fräulein Else (dir. Paul Czinner, 1929). An adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler’s novella, in which a young woman seeks to keep her debtor father from prison by approaching an old family friend for money. Alas, the power of the novella, which takes the form of a desperate interior monologue interrupted by conversation, is largely lost in a silent film. With Elisabeth Bergner as Else, and Albert Steinrück giving a great performance as Herr von Dorsday, the somber, lecherous family friend. Available restored, with a brilliant new score (by whom?), at YouTube. ★★★
*
The Kindergarten Teacher (dir. Nadav Lapid, 2014). For once the remake wins: Sara Colangelo’s 2018 version (same title) is a far better film, offering a far better sense of why a teacher might become obsessed with a poetry-composing pupil. In the remake, teacher Lisa (Maggie Gyllenhaal) lives with cultural dissatisfactions and family tensions that fuel her fascination with her pupil Jimmy (Parker Sevak). In the original, teacher Nira (Sarit Larry) is thinly drawn, her obsession more difficult to fathom. There’s little here to suggest why Nira is so crazy-scary in the cause of poetry. ★★
*
Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (dir. Robert Aldrich, 1962). Speaking of crazy-scary: this film satisfies in every respect. A star in childhood, Baby Jane Hudson (Bette Davis) now lives as caretaker to her older paraplegic sister Blanche Hudson (Joan Crawford), an actress whose stardom eclipsed Jane’s earlier fame. Enmity, madness, sadistic torments, and a strong dash of Sunset Boulevard. With Maidie Norman and Victor Buono as outsiders attempting to do the right thing, the latter also providing comic relief. ★★★★
*
Boy Erased (dir. Joel Edgerton, 2018). Adapted from Garrard Conley’s memoir, tracing the nightmare of his time in “conversion therapy,” with flashbacks to his life in college and a brief look at his life four years after the “therapy.” For young LGBTQ people struggling with their identity and their family relationships, this film offers hope that things can get better. For parents coming to terms with a child’s sexuality, this film emphasizes the importance of acceptance and unconditional love (which in a better world would be givens). For any viewer, this film has pedagogical value: it shows conversion therapy (still permitted to be practiced on minors in thirty-six states) to be cruel and unusual punishment — torture, really. ★★★★
*
The Big Clock (dir. John Farrow, 1948). George Stroud (Ray Milland), editor of a crime magazine, is assigned to locate a man said to be involved in deep political intrigue, but who is in fact the sole witness who can implicate Stroud’s boss (an ultra-creepy Charles Laughton) in a murder. That witness: Stroud himself, and only he knows who is he hunting and why. Fine performances all around: Milland, Laughton, Lloyd Corrigan, Elsa Lanchester (looking like Helena Bonham Carter), George Macready, Henry Morgan, and Maureen O’Sullivan. But this adaptation of Kenneth Fearing’s novel adds too much comic relief and removes too much of the noir. ★★★
*
Undercover (dir. John Ford, 1944). A training film for the Office of Strategic Services, showing how agents prepare for their work in “Enemy Area.” One trainee follows the rules; the other, arrogant and overconfident, makes a mess of things. With uncredited appearances by the director (as a pipe-smoking lawyer) and Peter Lorre, and a slow pace that must have been meant to assure good learning. Netflix has the same lousy print as YouTube. ★★★
*
The Assistant (dir. Christophe Ali and Nicolas Bonilauri, 2015). A man (Malik Zidi) driving to the hospital with his pregant wife hits and kills a pedestrian; nine years later, that pedestrian’s mother (Nathalie Baye) takes slow-moving revenge. This film doesn’t wear its influences on its sleeve, because the influences, most notably Vertigo and Fatal Attraction, need the whole shirt. Derivative, for sure, but worth watching for Baye’s performance and the suspense. Enigma: what happened to the secretary on leave? ★★★
*
When Harry Met Sally . . . (dir. Rob Reiner, 1989). It’s charming, sometimes too much so, offering not the Lubitsch touch but a Lubitsch punch in the face. And plenty of Woody Allen, which results in something like Annie Hall with a happy ending (that’s no spoiler). Plenty of laughs, plenty of time-capsule, plenty of weird chemistry between Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan. And Sally Albright’s habit of peeking to make sure the mail went into the mailbox is adorable, yes, but is Sally anything more than just adorable? ★★★
*
The Graduate (dir. Mike Nichols, 1967). Always worth seeing again. Something I’d never noticed before: none of the parents have first names, not even in conversation with one another. Something I’ve thought of many times: Ben’s pursuit of Elaine Robinson is really Huck and Jim all over again. But where, in 1967, was the Territory — San Francisco? ★★★★
*
The Heartbreak Kid (dir. Elaine May, 1972). Fresca suggested this movie, which I’d never heard of. It’s like a much darker version of The Graduate. Lenny and Lila (Charles Grodin and Jeannie Berlin) have traveled from New York to Miami for their honeymoon. Barely married, Lenny begins to feel trapped, “for the next forty or fifty years,” with a woman he barely knows. Then, still on his honeymoon, he meets Kelly, a true-life white goddess (Cybill Shepherd), and complications ensue. ★★★★
*
Sólo con tu pareja (dir. Alfonso Cuarón, 1991). A serendipitous followup to The Heartbreak Kid, with a feckless, duplicitous advertising man (Daniel Giménez Cacho) getting his comeuppance at the hands of a vengeful partner (Dobrina Liubomirova). Cuarón puts the comedy into sex comedy: linguistic pratfalls, physical pratfalls, mad naked dashes to retrieve the morning paper, and an exceedingly dangerous variation on the two-dates-at-once trope. But there’s also a consideration of freedom and responsibility that made me think of Rilke’s line: “You must change your life.” Beautifully filmed in fifty shades of green by Emmanuel Lubezki. ★★★★
Related reading
All OCA film posts (Pinboard)
Hal Blaine (1929–2019)
Hal Blaine, drummer and member of the Wrecking Crew, has died at the age of ninety. From The New York Times obituary:
If he had a signature moment on a record, it was on the Ronettes’ 1963 hit, “Be My Baby,” produced by Mr. Spector. The song opened cold, with Mr. Blaine playing — and repeating — the percussive earworm “Bum-ba-bum-BOOM!” But the riff came about accidentally.And from the Los Angeles Times obituary:
“I was supposed to play more of a boom-chicky-boom beat, but my stick got stuck and it came out boom, boom-boom chick,” he told The Wall Street Journal in 2011. “I just made sure to make the same mistake every few bars.”
Three years later, he used the same beat, but in a softer way, on Frank Sinatra’s “Strangers in the Night.”
“It’s kind of a shock to the general public when they find out that a lot of [musicians in famous bands] didn't play on their records,” Blaine told the Times in 2000. “But not everybody can be a plumber and go fix a broken pipe. Sometimes you need an expert, and that's all there is to it.”
Tuesday, March 12, 2019
The Museum of Everyday Life
The New York Times visits the Museum of Everyday Life:
Past shows have focused on the toothbrush, the safety pin, bells and whistles and even dust. The current special exhibition, which closes in May, features locks and keys. The next yearlong show, a rumination on scissors, opens in June.I’m reminded of the Museum of Jurassic Technology, save that everything in the Museum of Everyday Life is, well, non-fiction. Like the MJT, the MEL has a website.
Scandal in academia
From The Washington Post:
The Justice Department on Tuesday charged more than 30 wealthy people — including two television stars — with being part of a long-running scheme to bribe and cheat to get their kids into big-name colleges and universities. . . .The final quoted sentence would benefit from a minor revision. The original:
The criminal complaint paints an ugly picture of high-powered individuals committing crimes to get their children into selective schools. Among those charged are actresses Felicity Huffman, best known for her role on the television show Desperate Housewives, and Lori Loughlin, who appeared on Full House, according to court documents.
Among those charged are actresses Felicity Huffman, best known for her role on the television show Desperate Housewives, and Lori Loughlin, who appeared on Full House, according to court documents.Revised:
Among those charged, according to court documents, are actresses Felicity Huffman, best known for her role on the television show Desperate Housewives, and Lori Loughlin, who appeared on Full House.See the difference? But better still, I’d say:
Among those charged, according to court documents, are the actress Felicity Huffman, best known for her role on the television show Desperate Housewives, and the actress Lori Loughlin, who appeared on Full House.See the difference?
[Felicity Huffman but not William H. Macy? Meaning that he didn’t know about it? The affidavit says that “Huffman and her spouse made a purported charitable contribution of $15,000 . . . to participate in the college entrance exam cheating scheme.” Maybe Macy thought it really was a contribution? And good grief: Lori Loughlin now stars in Hallmark movies. Reading the affidavit, or at least as much of it as I could stand, made me feel sick to my stomach.]
Que me ves guey
The strange thing: for all my searching, I can find nothing to suggest that Que me ves guey was a catchphrase associated with Don Ramón.
[Elaine and I visited Olvera Street with our daughter Rachel in 2012. I have been meaning to make a post about Que me ves guey for some time.]
