Now Playing ABSOLUTELY FREE on You Tube - Tortured Women Edition

During the 1970's a whole slew of films documenting the unhappiness of American women proliferated, whether it was John Cassavettes' "Woman Under The Influence" or Alan Rudolph's "Remember My Name". One thing was certain, in the Seventies women were unhappier than ever and the cinema was there to document it so well.

Some of these films have finally made it in their fullest form on You Tube. One of them, That Cold Day In The Park is available on DVD, but the other two are not. Fortunately they are now available on You Tube for your viewing pleasure. They all come highly recommended.

That Cold Day In The Park (1969) - Directed by Robert Altman, this film stars Sandy Dennis as a young spinster who socializes with couples much older than her. Just when you think she's going to drown in her cobwebs she looked out her window and sees a meek-looking teenage boy sitting alone on a park bench, staying in the same spot even in the pouring rain.

She runs out to get him and gives him shelter in her apartment. He's a mute and doesn't speak, virtually behaving like a small infant (shades of The Baby!) with her bathing him and all the rest. Of course, things are never what they seem and we find out that there's more to this teen than meets the eye. Dennis progressively behaves more carnally towards this puppy boy until things take a deadly turn.

Filmed during the hoary hippie era, That Cold Day in The Park has a trashy groovy vibe about it that's dated as hell but still has that kitschy TV rock star veneer about it. Luana Anders has a great part as a Patti Smith-type hooker that raises the energy level of this mostly downbeat film.

By the way, as a side note did you know that Sandy Dennis was girlfriend to cool jazz bop genius Gerry Mulligan? What an angular silhouette they must have cut.

Looking For Mr. Goodbar (1977) - Although the only full movie version is in German you can still follow along and figure out what the hell is going on. Based on Judith Rossner's best seller, Goodbar is the disturbing story of good Irish Catholic daughter Theresa, a teacher for deaf mute children (Madonna) who prowls the discofied bars of naughty New York at night (Whore). There's some serious sexual Jekyll and Hyde hijinks afoot in this story.

By day Theresa juggles her teaching with trying to get a decent hearing aid for a sweet ghetto child, trying to gain the confidence of her protective brother (a great LeVar Burton) and arguing with social worker William Atherton (best known in Day of the Locust).

By night Theresa falls for no-good hustler Richard Gere, sleazier here than he was in Breathless, if that's possible. Before she meets Gere we see her hooking up with guys and actually charging money for her services. What a tramp! The scary part is that she's supposed to be the stable daughter in her family. Guess who plays the unstable one? You guessed it, Tuesday Weld.

I won't give the ending away, but I will say that things don't go well, and why should they, when a brazen hussy flings her quiff like a party favor? Oh well, at least the poor kid gets her hearing aid. Someone gets a happy ending.

Looking For Mr. Goodbar has never had a proper DVD release in the United States because of clearance problems regarding the heavy disco soundtrack. Basically what this means is that the DVD company would have to pay a small fortune to the songwriters and publishers for permission to use their songs in the picture. This also explains why films with rock heavy soundtracks have either taken forever to be released or not been released at all.

As a side note, director Richard Brooks co-wrote the screen play for The Killers with John Huston but never received credit for it. I hope he got paid, anyway.

Play It As It Lays (1973) - I reviewed this before a few years ago on my blog (The American Nightmare of Frank Perry). In fact, I was the one who posted this little gem on You Tube, so don't forget to subscribe.

Play It As It Lays is the story of Maria, former model and star of a 10th rate flop biker film. The unhappy wife of a wild, temperamental film director, we see Maria get an abortion, mope about the beaches of Malibu, visit her autistic son and drive endlessly down the freeway in her convertible shooting off her gun. Does any of this really lead up to anything?

Tuesday Weld is perfectly cast as the disillusioned California blonde swilling booze and popping pills with gay producer friend Anthony Perkins, reuniting them professionally for the first time since Pretty Poison. It's great seeing Perkins play a sane human being for a change. This time Tuesday's the psycho in an empty headed blonde way.

That's it. This is only a small sampling of films demonstrating women at their most tormented. What makes the these films so deft is their reluctance to simplify their subject in a Phil Donahue women-are-victims sort of way. Make no mistake, these dames are screwed up badly and are living wrecks, but that's what makes these movies so enjoyable. You want to see them wreak havoc on their lives and everyone else's, and there's no Joan Crawford quick fix happy ending going on here, either. I didn't even mention Diary Of A Mad Housewife, also directed by Frank Perry, also available on You Tube and a must see on your YT list. But anyway, watch and feel the pain, the sadness and madness of what it means to be a woman.

We Can Go Anywhere

One of the few pleasures left on the internet without fear of reprisal or stalking is the amazing and virtually miraculous app called Google Earth. The word miracle definitely comes to mind because the fact that I can go anywhere on Earth and see what it looks like is absolutely remarkable.

Google Earth works brilliantly in concert with Mapquest in that you can quickly identify what your destination will look like before you even get there. Pretty phenomenal resources if you ask me, and anyone taking this for granted most be crazy in their rapidly decaying brain.

The application begins with a pic of planet Earth, asking you where you want to go. You type in an address and once filled in, you start flying over the planet, narrowing down to the country and over the city and into the neighborhood, taking into the street you’re looking for. This can be a little dizzying, like you’re parachuting into the location you’re looking for.

The weird part is typing in old homes and finding that many of them have been torn down to make way for some ugly Los Angeles condo. Pretty depressing. On the other hand, my last house in Providence, Rhode Island and first home in LA are virtually unchanged since the day I last lived there.

I checked out my last home in Providence, and other than the lawn being changed into some ridiculous bush pageant has been virtually unchanged since I last moved out in 1964. That’s pretty remarkable. Thanks, Google Earth!

Little House I Used To Live In

I also visited my old grammar school, Providence Hebrew Day School and realized it hasn’t been renovated a touch since I last attended there (the same time period). In a weird sense, there’s the feeling of time travel in these Google Earth travels. If your old haunts haven’t been touched since you last left them you are essentially traveling back through time to visit them again. That’s simultaneously miraculous and eerie, but that’s the bizarre miracle of Google Earth.

Another benefit to scoping out unknown areas is the ability to possibly avoid a bad neighborhood, or at the very least preventing yourself from making a bad turn at the wrong corner.

Can you imagine being invited to a party in some seedy area, like the Downtown arts district where Peter Ivers got killed, and not knowing what the building even looked like in the dark? Well, thanks to Google Earth you can print up a pic of what this dank hipster hole looks like before you get there, saving you dangerous hours of circling around some fucking loft nightmare.

So, while you’re dumping your little man figure into the landscape and sliding your slider to get a closer look at a weird storefront, just remember that you can also sit back and laugh at atrocious banalities like Kat Von D’s High Voltage Tattoo wall mural (pictured above) without attracting too much attention. Technology wins again.

Beggar's Buffet

France has made a habit of taking us Americans to task for not appreciating our hometown artists, so it’s somewhat ironic that France has finally lifted its taboo on Bernard Buffet in nearly forty years with a huge retrospective of his work. Bernard Buffet has experienced some of the most extreme highs and lows of anyone in the art world.

Buffet painted in the Expressionist style, emphasizing harsh deep lines alternating with thin, scratchy ones and using thick applications of color. His content and style was simple enough to appeal to the man on the street as well as art critics. His art hit a nerve so immediately he made millions and won awards by the time he reached his mid-twenties.

Blessed with movie star good lucks, fame and fortune, he incurred the enmity of none other than Pablo Picasso. Picasso was incensed that his children allegedly found Buffet’s art more fun to look at than Daddy’s. Picasso led a rather loud campaign against Buffet out of sheer jealousy.

He also incurred the hatred of writer Andre Malraux, Pres. Charles de Gaulle’s Minister of Culture. Malraux branded Buffet’s genius paintings as “bourgeois” = I’ll translate it for you: “He’s too fucking rich, famous and good-looking so let’s just attack him because we’re a bunch of ass-wipe snobs”.

In retaliation Buffet did something that made him an even bigger fucking king in my opinion= HE STARTED DOING CLOWN PAINTINGS! Crazy, wild, deformed looking clowns! Lots of them! Enough to piss off every art snob from Paris to Marseille. And prints of these clown paintings sold by the millions. Every French household had a Buffet clown print in the house. Bernard officially joined The Ranks of The Terminally Uncool. He was sort of the Gallic Keane.

The straw that broke the camel’s back, unfortunately, was when he broke up with his boyfriend, Pierre Berge, over a spat about Yves St. Laurent. Berge ran into the arms of St. Laurent, and Buffet in turn fell in love and married beautiful singer and actress Annabel Schwob. The art community felt he’d gone traitor by marrying a woman. Is there no French word for bisexual?

In spite of it all the French government employed Buffet to design a postage stamp and Japan opened a Bernard Buffet Museum in Osaka. He continued to paint up until he contracted Parkinson’s Disease in his seventies and lost the ability to paint. With the loss of his only passion, Mr. Buffet committed suicide by self-inflicted asphyxia in 1999.

After all the awards and millions earned does it really matter if a jealous cognoscenti badmouths the work of an unimpeachable master? Buffet struck a chord with the average Frenchman, Picasso’s kids and me. And that’s what all great art should do.

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If you haven’t seen the works of Belgian animator Raoul Servais you’re in for a treat. Every animated work is a masterpiece of sight and sound and can be dug up anytime on You Tube. This one is one of my favorites by him: it’s an animated version of Belgian surrealist Paul Delvaux’s paintings. It’s called “Papillons De Nuit” (Night Butterflies) and is absolutely dazzling to watch.

I also recommend “Siren” and Chromophobia”, but all his works are breathtaking visually and well worth your time. You won’t be sorry!

"Race With The Devil"

Metal will always be with us, even for those of us who don't listen to it as often as the true believers do. Case in point, 20 years ago when I listened to 3WK Classic Rock Radio and they played a great 60's pop song called "Sunshine" by the legendary English band Gun. I liked it so much I bought a used copy of it on eBay. What I didn't reckon was checking out the phenomenal flip side, an insanely wild metal romp called Race With The Devil.

Gun were probably smitten by Cream judging by the choir-like harmonies which provide the fanfare in this song. It then blasts into a furious galloping boogie tempo with that blazing guitar line made immortal by Adrian Gurvitz and worshiped by all metal fans worldwide. The lyrics read like some incendiary western pulp novel: "You better run, you better run from the devil's gun. Strange things happen if you stay, the devil will get you any way...." and then Gurvitz rips out a maniacal laugh reminiscent of The Crazy World of Arthur Brown. The addition of horns in the production never comes off as too obtrusive; it actually punctuates the rhythm quite well. Great stuff!

The Gun

Gun didn't really strike it big in America, but the Gurvitz Bros. continued making records in the power trio format, even forming a band with ex-Cream drummer Ginger Baker called the Baker Gurvitz Army. After all was said and done, nothing could top Race With The Devil. Not long ago an old broadcast video of Gun performing the song (it was probably Beat Club) was available on You Tube, but has since been taken down. Drat!

Black Oak Arkansas

Black Oak Arkansas play a comparatively loose version of the song. The three guitars harmonize prettily, taking a little bit of the edge off the song. Jim Dandy Mangrum sings in an almost Las Vegas croon, recalling David Lee Roth. No big surprise as Mangrum was a heavy influence on Roth in the early Van Halen days, both visually and musically. While I wouldn't call this the definite cover version (unless you're a serious Ethel Merman fan), there's something almost irreverent in the way they refuse to take the song too seriously. Everything's a party with these guys!

Girlschool

Girlschool make up for their lacking vocal talent with their powerful guitar interplay and in this regard acquit themselves rather well. I like the tempo on this version, too, although other live videos on You Tube show them dragging the beat. Just like Black Oak the fanfare is carried by the guitars rather than with vocals, a good call by them. This is probably the best live version by them I've seen so far, and here they are in top form.

Judas Priest

Ah, Judas Priest. Nobody can rock a cover tune like the Priest, whether it be a brooding Fleetwood Mac song (The Green Manalishi) or a moody Joan Baez ballad (Diamonds And Rust). Rob Halford puts his balls to the wall and flawlessly tackles the Nordic God fanfare all by himself with enough operatic relish to strangle Wagner himself. Glen Tipton and K.K. Downing bring the hoary Sixties classic straight into the Eighties with an awesome, modern guitar sound, never losing the intensity of the tune.

Metal will always be with us, whether we like it or not. There's something unshakable about it. Even if you don't like it you'll discover a song or two so pure and honest in its vision that you'll find yourself listening, anyway. It doesn't care about your age or politics or even what the fuck you're wearing. And that's the key to its universality.

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Here in L.A. we have lots of billboards promoting a new TV comedy on FX called Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll, complete with faux Never Mind The Bollocks lettering. While I haven't seen the show and know nothing about it the billboard bothers me a great deal. I have nothing against comedies, I love 'em to death. What bothers me is the way Hollywood has perpetually depicted rock bands through the years as a bunch of clods who haven't got a brain cell to split between them.

I wish I was in on the joke about rock bands being bozos, because the truth is more rock musicians commit suicide than any other kind of artist. Try to find the humor in that!

I suspect that the real reason why filmmakers are always spoofing rock bands is because they're secretly jealous of the power bands have over shitty movies and TV shows. Behind every shitty screenwriter and director is a guy who wishes he could play badass guitar or front a band. Get over yourselves, Hollywood. A two-hour high octane action film will never hold anyone's attention the way a powerful, rockin' two minute song can.

GQ:George Quaintance: Gentlemen's Queertopia

I’m pretty new to the George Quaintance camp compared to a lot of erotic art fans. In 2012 I saw the Quaintance retrospective book which Taschen released. What I saw in this lavishly packaged book looked a lot like romantic pulp fiction covers, i.e. sexy senoritas, seductive belly dancers, etc. The only difference is that George Quaintance’s paintings had not one woman in them, but perfectly sculpted men with hairless bodies and beautifully colored skin.

If "Brokeback Mountain" was a picture book, this would be it. George Quaintance creates a veritable gay cowboy paradise where every man has the perfect looks and body, rodeos are for tyin' and wranglin' boys, the sun always shines, and every mesa is the Garden of (sw)Eden. The book is pretty pricey so I settled for the 2012 calendar, which was better because the images were large and in charge.

The Taschen Gallery just opened an exhibition of Quaintance’s amazing paintings in a show called “The Flamboyant Life and Forbidden Art of George Quaintance”. This was a herculean task in itself because he only produced less than sixty paintings in his lifetime, and many were simply traded or sold to private collectors. More than a few paintings had a NOT FOR SALE caption written beneath them.

Many of the paintings shown depicted men of in cowboy settings bathing, swimming or horseback riding. They’re mostly depicted in various stages of undress. These western settings suggest a virtual queer Utopia where men are perpetually young and fit and don’t require female company.

The best bathing paintings were Rainbow Falls, Sunset, Havasu Creek, and Morning In The Desert. In these paintings the boys either seem to be taking a shower or frolicking in a waterfall stream.

There are also many paintings of men bonding with their horses, as seen in the paintings Stallion, Manolo, and Dashing. It’s fascinating that Quaintance created these works during the late Forties-early Fifties when western films were at their peak and the image of the cowboy was the All-American image of masculinity at the time.

According to the gallery’s biography on George Quaintance, he was at one point or another a “vaudeville dancer, coiffeur designer, window dresser, magazine cover artist, photographer and portraitist”.

The biography also points out that Quaintance only lived to be 55 years old and ironically produced only 55 paintings in all. The exhibition also featured a well-researched timeline on Quaintance’s life and work, which took up and entire wall at the gallery. It was pretty awe-inspiring.

Compared to Tom of Finland, I'd say Quaintance's subjects are feminine in comparison, almost feline in their sleekness. The macho aggressiveness in Tom's images are replaced by an angelic idyll. There's also a more romantic and less carnal theme running through these images. The most overtly sexual image in these pieces are two men lying down together, a far cry from Tom's elephantine erections. This is the romance of homosexuality up on canvas.

If I were asked why I responded immediately to George Quaintance and his art I would say that his use of color and light is some of the most impressive I’ve seen. I also think his depiction of homoeroticism has a surrealistic flavor more mysterious than most erotic art ever made. You want to meet these people and understand how they live. This is part and parcel of what makes for great art, and George Quaintance is deserving of your attention.

The Flamboyant Life and Forbidden Art of George Quaintance is on exhibit at the Taschen Gallery, 8070 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles, CA, through August 31, 2015.