True Grit and Other Mysteries

Last weekend the Sound Unseen Duluth International Film Festival finished off its second season here in the Northland. On Sunday the weather was too nice for being inside a theater, yet I made the theater my home for one more afternoon and evening, catching half of a Greek film called Attenberg, most of Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris, and Monte Hellman's Road to Nowhere. Then, to top off, when I got home I balanced our checkbook and did paperwork while watching the Coen Brothers' True Grit.

Here's a quick summary of impressions.

Attenberg
The critics raved and I was told this was a must see. Supposedly Greece is counting on this one to bring home an Oscar next year for Best Foreign Film. It's an off-beat coming of age film and I guess I wasn't getting into it and slipped back over to Midnight In Paris where I'd watched the first ten minutes which strengthened my desire to see more.

Midnight In Paris
Woody Allen, despite whatever personal issues one has against him, is still a master story teller and screen writer. The dialogue here is wonderful and the story magical. In fact, that's exactly what it is.

Owen Wilson (Gil) and Machel McAdams (Inez) are engaged to be married. They go to Paris with her rich parents and Gil, a writer, falls in love with the aura of Parisian history, impressed by all the great people and places memorialized there. Through some quirk Gil experiences more than the charm of present-day Paris. He ends up being transported back in time to the Twenties of Gertrude Stein, Picasso, Hemingway, Dali and the surrealists. It's heady stuff for Gil, especially when he begins to fall in love with someone there.

I don't want to spoil it for you, so just know that this film is witty and fun.

Road To Nowhere
The movie is about the making of a movie about a murder and a missing fortune. The director, for the sake of accuracy, is filming this film in the same places the actual crime took place. It is sometimes difficult to decipher what is real and what is not, and because I missed one clue in the early part of the film I kept asking myself how a certain key part of the movie came to be.

There were echoes of Chinatown in it for me, but this film was nowhere near the masterpiece Roman Polanski assembled starring Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway. But it held together for me and had some nice moments.

True Grit
The title is good. Who's the character with true grit? This remake of the John Wayne classic has Jeff Bridges in the feature role of Rooster Cogburn. Matt Damon replaces Glen "he-never-shoulda-been-cast" Campbell as LaBoeuf (The Beef) and Hailee Steinfeld as the gritty Mattie Ross.

I've been waiting six months to see this film so I for one was glad when it was finally released into Blockbuster. Bridges got an Oscar nom for this role, the Duke's last hurrah, I believe. Since I was never a real John Wayne fan to begin with, I would have bet money that this re-make for once would be better than the original. That being said, I do have one complaint about it.

First, the good stuff. It wasn't till I started writing this up that I realized that Matt Damon was in the film. I mean, LaBoeuf was a great character in this version of the story, and a guy who did show true grit. I was half wondering who the actor was but not enough to go check, I guess. Damon is certainly good. And so was Jeff Bridges as that grizzled veteran gunfighter with a lot of tough bark on him.

I guess all the big chatter was about how great a young actress Hailee Steinfeld was. She was fine and I'm sure that being coached by the Coen brothers and working with stars like Damon and Bridges will have a beneficial impact on her future, if she manages to keep it all in perspective.

Now, my own beef. Personally, I disliked the stilted manner in which the characters talked. The diction frequently struck me as unnatural. I am sure the director had his reasons for going that route, maybe imagining that people 120 years ago were more formal in their speech, but I don't reckon I quite agree with that notion.

It's a small complaint, and it didn't ruin the film for me. I just needed to make the point.

Meantime, better get outside and enjoy the weekend.

It Was Only Rock 'n Roll

Woodstock. It happened. And everything that happened there became bigger than life because... because, they made a movie about it and they made an album about it and they made a memory shrine of it. Not only do we remember the groups, we remember the little things that were said between songs because they got repeated again, and again.

One thing I remember about Woodstock (no, I was not there) is thinking to myself what a potpourri of acts this was. You had legends like The Who and Hendrix, and then you had someone like Richie Havens and a group like Sha Na Na. Where did those guys come from?

Sha Na Na was a Fifties style retro group that was so relatively new that by the time they appeared at Woodstock they still didn't even have an record label yet. You no doubt recall their shimmery gold outfits and lively whirl through "At the Hop." It was all about putting on a show. It's the entertainment business, and promoters will throw anything together if it can turn a buck. Hendrix followed Sha Na Na, making famous his unique rendition of the Star Bangled Banner to a dawn desolation littered with the debris left behind by the Woodstock Nation. No matter. The album captured it for posterity.

A few years later, while in college in Ohio, I got to see another Rock 'n Roll revue that was on tour, again with Sha Na Na in the lineup. This road show was a far more cohesive team in terms of the music and acts that performed. They were bringing the Fifties to the Seventies. Headliners included Chuck Berry, The Coasters, The Shirelles, and Sha Na Na among others. Unlike the Folk Festival the year before, which included Mary Travers and the Youngbloods, there were no Viet Nam War protest overtones. This was that "canned innocence" that rock 'n roll was supposed to be with sock hops and bobby soxers.

I was in a funky blue mood that evening though. My seat for much of the concert was in the front row, behind the stage. It gave me an almost jaded viewpoint as I watched some of the setups and saw the way the groups worked the crowd. The gold outfits of Sha Na Na had loose threads like they were getting worn out but didn't have the money to replace them. And Chuck Berry looked like he was getting a little tired of doing that ever popular bent-knee leg kick strut across the stage. It's a little like three year olds when you give them a big toss up into the air, and they laugh and say, "Again!" Sometimes crowds are so easy to please.

In short, I had a cynic's take on the night. Rock 'n roll shows like this one were a strange bubble that people could escape into. And yet, the music these people gave us... it's been woven into the fabric of our lives in so many ways. The old classics always give us a lift.

All these memories come to mind because I read a small news story yesterday that Carl Gardner, lead singer and co-founder of The Coasters, just passed. You probably know a few of his songs. "Poison Ivy" was big way back when. "Charlie Brown" is hilarious fun. "Why's everybody always pickin' on me." And the classic, "Yakety Yak." "Don't talk back!" Yakety-yak, yakety yak.

Gardner loved being a performer, his career in entertainment running fifty years. Thank you, Mr. Gardner, for the fun you brought to so many lives through your music.

The Case for Celebrating Dylan's Home Town

A few weeks ago I mentioned a gentleman from Manchester with whom I had visited during my Dylan-themed show at the Ochre Ghost Gallery, the week of Dylan Fest. Since that time we've begun a correspondence and it turns out he is no ordinary Dylan fan. He's a professional who has written extensively about the topic of music-based tourism.

Last week I received a 17 page document co-authored by David Leaver and Ruth A. Schmidt of Manchester Metropolitan University titled, "Before they were famous: music-based tourism and a musician's hometown roots." The paper opens, "Music-based tourism is well developed and growing, especially in countries featuring both mature tourism and music industries, such as the USA and the UK." One sources estimates that destination travel related to music involves as many as 55 million annual visits worldwide. The destination points rely on evidence of cultural activities, incidents and tangible artifacts that can be photographed.

The paper cites Liverpool as one community that increased its incoming tourism dollars by 40% when they deliberately embraced this concept, that people want to visit and see the places the Beatles actually once were. Graceland in Memphis attracts 600,000 visitors a year now. Buddy Holly's birthplace, Lubbock, Texas, is another lodestone for the rock 'n roll faithful.

As the Beatles once sang,
"There are places I remember
All my life though some have changed..."

Hibbing, MN, in recent years began to capitalize on this notion of place with regard to Dylan, creating a week long celebration called Dylan Days. And it's about time, because a lot of people want a time and place for seeing the school auditorium where Dylan first played, and the surrounding neighborhood he grew up in.

Last week I talked with someone who said the first day that he got his motorcycle license, the very first thing he did was ride to Hibbing to see where Dylan grew up. At the time, there was nothing to see. Today we have Zimmy's and more. There are things one can photograph and save for a scrapbook of memories, and touch and feel.

Some people think all this nostalgia quest is just a bunch of aging Baby Boomers trying to keep the flame alive. "Come gather round people wherever you roam...." But the Leaver/Schmidt study notes that 34 per cent of the people who visited Graceland in 2008 were under 30. Not only is the music being passed down to new generations, but the significance of the places and people is being noted.

In David Leaver's recent email to me on this topic he wrote, "I learnt a long time ago that it’s not the message sent out but the message received that’s important so we will all have different takes on it."

Included in this email was the link to a 22 minute film he created based on the 1966 Dylan concert in Manchester's Free Trade Hall. The film is essentially three men reminiscing about that critical juncture in Dylan's career when he careened into a new path, going electric, which many fans thought was a betrayal of his own ethos.

"My interest in the Free Trade Hall 1966 stemmed from my interest in the notion of place and its link to music and emotion (my first degree was in Geography.) The film is dedicated to my friend Ruth Schmidt with whom I wrote three Dylan related papers on that topic. Ruth loved Dylan and her adopted city of Manchester. She passed away on May 17 2011 – the 45th anniversary of the concert and every time I go past the FTH I think of her."

When you have time, check out this film about Dylan at Manchester's Free Trade Hall 1966.

Message to Duluth: Remember, these visitors are emotion-driven customers who spend without thinking. Duluth and Hibbing deserve the same recognition as Memphis and Nashville, don'tcha think?

Have a great day!

Enger Tower Awaits Coming of the King

It's 6:00 a.m. and if I were a true Enger Park Restoration enthusiast I would not be here typing this, but would instead be at Enger Tower for this morning's celebration of the 72nd anniversary of the Tower. I did set my alarm a wee bit early, just in case I woke with a desire to go for it.

For those who don't know our city, Duluth has one of the most beautiful skylines in the world. The city itself snakes along Lake Superior and stretches south along the St. Louis River bay for a spell. From one end to the other the city fathers set aside lands for parks and we have 29 of them. One of these is on a knob above the Lincoln Park area just a few hundred yards from Twin Ponds, encircled by Skyline Parkway.

Years ago our family took a vacation to the Black Hills region of South Dakota. I had my AAA maps in tow and studied them to make sure our days would be seasoned with highlights. In one section I found a list of the most scenic drives in the U.S. citing Duluth's Skyline Drive with the highest rank that could be given. The views from the our skyline are everything you'll ever want from a great view. Whether by day or by night, morning or evening, the ever shifting angles of light and even temperature changes make the view something new every day.

Of all the views on the skyline, Enger Tower offers the most enriching of all. Here's an amateur video of the 36o degree view from the tower which includes the harbor and the bay, the lake and the unique Aerial Lift Bridge in one vista. On the back side you overlook the rolling hills of Enger Park Golf Course which for me includes memories of golfing in the rain with my dad.

This past year our local Rotary Clubs raised $100,000 to restore Enger Tower, including the addition of special lighting to make it alive again. The occasion for which this effort was undertaken is the return visit of the King and Queen of Norway. I say return because the original tower was dedicated in 1939 by the Crown Prince Olav and Crown Princess Martha of Norway at that time. They enjoyed our city so much that they shared memories of the visit with their children, hence King Harald's desire to return in October.

Like all good cities, every attempt is being made to put its best face forward for this return visit. In addition to the facelift for the tower itself, The Enger Park Restoration Committee has been raising funds to re-build and expand the gazebo and other structures in the park. You can read more about all that here.

In the meantime, thank you to Bert Enger for the generous donations from his estate which started it all. You can also follow on Facebook the events leading up to October's return of the king.

TOP: Map of Enger Park

Five Minutes with Artist/Designer Marian Lansky

It was about two decades ago when I first became aware of Marian Lansky's work. I was in need of a designer for a project at the time and she was recommended to me by, I believe, Service Printers. We met for lunch and I reviewed her portfolio. I was impressed. She also said she was too busy with other projects to take on something new. That was that.

This past month I attended an art opening for Mad Women, featuring the work of women in the advertising field. Marian Lansky's exhibited works again made an impression on me, and I asked if she'd consent to be interviewed for this blog. She said she was still quite busy, but made the time.

Ennyman: Briefly outline your career.
Marian Lansky: My graphic design career started in 1989 when my son was a baby and I was looking for a way to be able to make a living at home. I'd always loved combining words and images, and then one day I saw a demonstration of a Macintosh computer with Aldus Pagemaker, Aldus Freehand, and Adobe Photoshop. It was pretty primitive stuff compared to now, but I was hooked. Went to a bank downtown and got a loan to buy a Mac IICX, one of the first HP scanners, and an Apple Laserwriter. Within a couple of years I was making a decent living doing what was, at that time, called desktop publishing.

Enny: How did you determine to make a living in the creative realm?
ML: Before then, I'd worked at a number of different jobs. I wasn't especially fond of any of them, but they were excellent life experiences for me. I'd worked in offices, stores, restaurants and as a registered nurse in hospitals. Coming back to doing something visually creative was coming back to my roots. I'd grown up in New York City and attended the High School of Music and Art as an art major. My art education there was fantastic. The school pulled kids from all over the city (you had to test in by submitting a portfolio of work and taking several hours of drawing exams). We had five studio classes a day in every conceivable discipline, on top of a rigorous academic load.

Enny: Who were your early influences?
ML: My early influences were probably too many to mention. Growing up in NYC, I spent countless hours at museums. They were my favorite hangout. When I played hooky from school, I'd spend the day wandering through museums. And then my teachers… all incredible artists in their own right, were a tremendous influence. As a teenager I loved Matisse and Bonnard.

Enny: Do you consider yourself more designer or artist? And what is the difference between the two?
ML: For the last 22 years, I've considered myself more a designer than an artist. As a designer, you give visual expression to your client's goals and values. Now, however, I am beginning to consider myself more an artist than a designer. In a way, I've become my own client… giving visual expression to my own inner values.

Enny: How have you gone about getting clients? What works and what doesn't?
ML: I've been just unbelievably fortunate in that I never had to advertise to get work. For most of my career I've had as much work as I could handle (and sometimes more!), without doing anything to promote myself. My philosophy of business has always been to keep my head down, put the client first, and do good work. Word of mouth worked wonders for me.

Enny: You have a wonderful portfolio. Do you have a few favorite pieces?
ML: Thank you. I have to say that I usually love the last piece I did the most! I learn more with everything I do. I recently completed a big commission of 14 pieces for a client and what I learned doing those pieces I've turned around and applied to my own work. I finished one yesterday that is my new favorite.

Enny: Any advice for young creative people looking for a career in design?
ML: I guess one piece of advice I'd give to anyone starting out in this business, or perhaps in any creative endeavor--is to love what you are doing. If you don't enjoy it, your lack of joy will show in the work. Find what you love to do, do it well, and the rest will follow.

Marian and her partner Rick Allen own a business called Kenspeckle Letterpress which can be found at www.kenspeckleletterpress.com.

You may follow Marian and Rick's current activites at their Blogspeckle, located on the Specklesphere at http://www.kenspeckleletterpress.com/blogspeckle/

The Autobiography of Mark Twain

“Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.” ~Mark Twain

I am currently on disc four of The Autobiography of Mark Twain, Part One, as read by Grover Gardner, who has narrated so many hours of literature in my virtual presence that he is becoming a very good friend. This audio book is 25 hours on 20 discs, and it's a most stimulating read.

The first two-and-a-half hours is all introduction, which includes a lengthy and detailed discussion of how the manuscript came to be. Countless caretakers of the manuscripts were involved in preserving Mr. Twain's writing. Many duplicates of various sections are also in existence with words struck out or portions edited in one place but not another. Systems were required for analyzing dates and times portions were produced and determining which version should supercede. The publication begins by identifying all who have been involved in sorting these strands out and assembling them properly over the past 100 years, and thanking them.

Now the notion of publishing this voluminous work 100 years after his death was not the marketing idea of a modern publisher. Quite the contrary. It was Twain's own idea, and he details it in this introduction to the story of his life.

Mark Twain had an unusually interesting life and he wanted to tell about it. But he did not know exactly how to do it. Begin with his birth and take the chronological approach? One could precede that and talk about ancestors and their influence. And should one bang it out on a typewriter? And what about all the stories and insights and feelings and beliefs that you wanted to share that you feel you can't because you will hurt other people?

This last was a thorny item for Twain. And he literally mulled it over for years, at one point suggesting that those stories be told between-the-lines, knowing they would still be painful to others when deciphered. No, the best way would be to give strict instructions that the manuscript be left unpublished till 100 years after his death, at which time he would be "dead, and unaware, and indifferent."

The other matter of how was resolved when he hit upon the idea of dictating his life story. And even in this form the guy was an original. It would not be a story told in any particular order. Rather, whatever interested him at the moment is what he would talk about.

The hundred years has passed and the book is now a reality, capturing all the wit and humor and acerbic commentary one might expect from the pen, or in this case tongue, of Twain. Here's one example. A reviewer wrote with such over-the-top praise for something he had written that Twain confronted him thus. "Oh come on, in the Twain household they don't lather it on with a knife, they use a trowel."

In the intro when Twain was wrestling with the problems of candidly telling his story, I thought about today's world where so much of what people think and feel is posted on blogs and on Facebook and who we are encountering when we see one another so apparently transparently displayed. What kinds of things would be written and posted if the only readers were people who lived 100 years from now, after we're dead and gone? How many people on Facebook are portraying themselves as they are, and how many have been crafting an identity that is far different from who they really are?

As for the Autobiography, here's a good summation of the book from a review by Publisher's Weekly:
Eschewing chronology and organization, Twain simply meanders from observation to anecdote and between past and present. There are gorgeous reminiscences from his youth of landscapes, rural idylls, and Tom Sawyeresque japes; acid-etched profiles of friends and enemies, from his "fiendish" Florentine landlady to the fatuous and "grotesque" Rockefellers; a searing polemic on a 1906 American massacre of Filipino insurgents; a hilarious screed against a hapless editor who dared tweak his prose; and countless tales of the author's own bamboozlement, unto bankruptcy, by publishers, business partners, doctors, miscellaneous moochers; he was even outsmarted by a wild turkey. Laced with Twain's unique blend of humor and vitriol, the haphazard narrative is engrossing, hugely funny, and deeply revealing of its author's mind. His is a world where every piety conceals fraud and every arcadia a trace of violence; he relishes the human comedy and reveres true nobility, yet as he tolls the bell for friends and family--most tenderly in an elegy for his daughter Susy, who died in her early 20s of meningitis--he feels that life is a pointless charade. Twain's memoirs are a pointillist masterpiece from which his vision of America--half paradise, half swindle--emerges with indelible force.

In the meantime, have a great new week.

Steampunk Chronicle Premiere at Friends of Industry

Last night I took in a steampunk event at the Gustave Campini's Friends of Industry art space in downtown Duluth. The event included steampunk art, costumes and a the world premiere of Chronicle, a multi-media show based on a comic book being produced by Eric Horn and friends. From what I've been told Steampunk is a huge new passion, not unlike the Trekkie movement that resulted in Star Trek conventions around the country.

Steampunk is a subset of science fiction, except these futurists are from the past. Think of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. Put yourself in 1880 and imagine what the future would look like, what space ships of tomorrow might look like from the vantage point of pre-flight and what futuristic weapons and uniforms might consist of.

If you ever saw Will Vinton's claymation production The Adventures of Mark Twain, you will recall seeing a steampunk-style flying contraption that carried the story, along with its characters. Mark Twain had a fascination with the future, and was intensely curious about the capabilities of science. As a result he developed a close friendship with Nikola Tesla and spent a lot of time in that brilliant man's lab.

Some people credit cyberpunk writers William Gibson and Bruce Sterling with the re-birth of interest in steampunk. The two wrote The Difference Engine, a book that brought their futurist sensibilities to Victorian England.

Steampunk artisans take ordinary objects and make extraordinary masks, gear and goggles using materials that were likely to be found 130 years ago, hence the preponderance of leather, brass, wood and iron. Events like Campini's last night provide the occasion for steampunk fans to get decked out and show their stuff.

As a starting point to learn more about Steampunk, visit Wikipedia.

Below: The Victorian era projection screen.