Friday, August 29, 2014

James Brown Gets On Down at the T.A.M.I. Show



Too bad that the new James Brown biopic, Get On Up, is apparently something of a dud. I’ve heard praise for the performance of Chadwick Bosemen (who was brilliant as Jackie Robinson in 42), and the film is produced by an interesting pair of heavyweights, Imagine’s Brian Grazer and his Satanic Majesty himself, Mick Jagger. But critics and audiences are giving decidedly mixed reviews to the film’s scrambled chronology and the directing chops of Tate Taylor (The Help).

My own interest in James Brown stems from a film I saw in a UCLA class devoted to the movie musical. I was there to soak up the pleasures of Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, and MGM’s technicolor extravaganzas. So I was nonplussed when I discovered we’d be watching something called The T.A.M.I. Show. Say what? This oddly named concert film captures, in unimpressive black-and-white, an event staged in October 1964, right here in Santa Monica. The T.A.M.I. Show (whose name stands for “Teen Age Music International) was a live concert at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium that was videotaped by a secretive process called “Electronovision” and then transferred to film for theatrical release.

The film version of The T.A.M.I. Show was distributed by American International Pictures, well-known for flicks with youth appeal. So you can imagine the thinking that went into this project. It was clear in 1964 that young people were developing their own subculture, and had the buying power to support it. So the folks behind the show were trying to tap into the kind of musical acts that attracted the young. They gathered a remarkable collection of stars-on-the-rise, mixing soul music (Marvin Gaye), surf music (The Beach Boys), Motown (The Supremes), British Invasion (Gerry and the Pacemakers), and teen angst ballads (Leslie Gore, of “It’s My Party and I’ll Cry if I Want To” fame). Local legends Jan and Dean were the hosts, zipping into the barnlike auditorium on skateboards. The Civic’s seats were packed with screaming teenagers who were too busy bouncing up and down to actually listen to much of the music. Their energy was matched by the gaggle of go-go dancers who twitched, shimmied, fruged, and watusied non-stop throughout the show. (One, I’m told, was a young Teri Garr.)

Though the final act featured a very youthful Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones, who were then new to U.S. audiences, there’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that the real star of The T.A.M.I. Show was James Brown. The fabulously pompadoured Brown, nattily attired in a checked jacket and matching vest over a black shirt, strutted onto the stage and belted out four numbers, each more outrageous than the last. He crooned; he cried; he led the audience in a spirited call-and-reponse; he glided through quirky dance steps with an ease that suggests he was a key inspiration for Michael Jackson’s moonwalk. Sometimes he was so overcome with the emotion of a song that he dropped to his knees, at which point a backup singer would rush to pat him on the back and drape a regal-looking cape (yes, a cape!) over his shaking shoulders. I’ve never seen anything like it. Nor, apparently, had the mostly middle-class white kids in the audience. Future filmmaker John Landis (The Blues Brothers) was in the crowd as an eighth-grader. When Mick Jaggers followed Brown’s performance, his immediate reaction was “Who is this English twerp? Bring James Brown back on the stage!)

Jagger himself has apparently rued his group’s star billling over Brown, whom he had long idolized. In helping produce Get On Up, he was simply trying to make amends.


Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Jonathan Gording, OD: Eyes on the Prize



So Guardians of the Galaxy is once again at the top of the domestic box office. I’m someone who generally prefers artier films (like the dark but fascinating Calvary). But every once in a while I need my popcorn-movie fix, and Guardians certainly provides that. For one thing, it’s a visual treat: this is a galaxy in which nearly everyone has a spectacularly off-kilter look. In one of the earliest scenes, when Djimon Hounsou opened wide his powder-blue eyes, I couldn’t help thinking about my optometrist, Dr. Jonathan Gording.

Dr. Gording, who did some minor work on Guardians of the Galaxy, has an award-winning sideline crafting contact lenses for Hollywood. The walls of his office are full of posters from big-name movies like 127 Hours (for James Franco he made lenses that simulated pink eye) and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. He’s something of a Tom Cruise specialist, having worked on Interview with the Vampire, Vanilla Sky, and Minority Report.  For 2011’s Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol he joined with an SFX team to concoct a video camera embedded in a contact lens and supposedly activated by blinking. But his real expertise is in the realm of the supernatural. He’s the go-to guy for zombie and vampire eyes, on such shows as The X-Files and True Blood. Southern California is a land where delis and drycleaners decorate their walls with autographed headshots of their celebrity clientele. But Jonathan Gording, OD,  has on his wall a wooden stake, a souvenir of the 100th episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Naturally, for Hollywood creative types, it’s all about the look of Dr. Gording’s lenses. But as a optical professional, he puts much effort into ensuring cast members’ comfort and eye health. When I mentioned a well-known star who had a terrible time adapting to the full-eyeball yellow lenses required for one fantasy production, Gording made clear that if he’d been charge, the lenses might have caused far less problem. But he also emphasized that this particular star – who’d been fitted by Gording on his breakout film – was a chronic complainer, rarely satisfied with any aspect of his costumes and makeup.

Working with Hollywood folk, it seems, is a big challenge, for reasons that have nothing to do with the medical. Just recently Gording had to help an award-winning but now elderly actress turn into a zombie. When he showed up, she was already notorious on-set for stripping off her top to reveal what he delicate calls “her womanly wiles.” When he went to do measurements on her eyes for “zombie lenses,” she announced she was a 36 and threatened to prove it. The skewed priorities of showbiz types also give him pause. He remembers getting a Monday morning call from an assistant director, “Dave,” who had signs of a detached retina. In this critical situation, Gording urged Dave to come to his office immediately. Then Dave started stalling, citing a heavy workload. Eventually he accepted a Wednesday appointment. On Tuesday, though, he was carted off to the emergency room.

When Gording decided to pursue a Hollywood career, other optometrists in the biz gave him the cold shoulder. But he enjoyed a warm welcome from the late Dick Smith, whose prosthetic work on such films as The Godfather and The Exorcist revolutionized the field of movie makeup. The gentlemanly Smith told him he’d have a ball. Which, of course, has been quite true.
 
Leaving his office one day, Gording cheerily told me, “I’ve got to go torture someone.” Yes – someone needed his eyes propped open on CSI


For those who appreciate things that go bump in the night, I’ll be speaking on Roger Corman’s screen adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death at the Weird Weekend (featuring screenings, a storytelling competition, and other fun) sponsored by the Historical Society of the Upper Mojave Desert. The dates are September 12-13 and the place is Ridgecrest, California. More info awaits at 760-375-8456.    

Dr. Gording (he's on the right) and friend from Buffy 

 



Friday, August 22, 2014

Covering Syria: From Page to Screen

Cover design by J.T. Lindroos

When my colleague Howard Kaplan first published The Damascus Cover back in 1977, I imagine he gave some thought to his book’s movie potential. After all, he’d written a fast-paced spy novel full of intrigue, betrayals, and narrative twists galore, set amid Syria’s bloody byways. I doubt, though, it ever occurred to him that Hollywood would come calling in 2014.

Well, not Hollywood exactly. There’s British money involved in this modest indie production, now called simply Damascus Cover, which is slated to begin shooting in Morocco this fall, with Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Abigail Spencer, and Jurgen Prochnow in major roles. But writer-director Daniel Berk (who once helped connect John Travolta with Quentin Tarantino, and has also served as the Senior Envoy for Cultural Affairs at the Israeli Consulate in Los Angeles), shares Howard’s fascination with the Middle East. Berk enlisted a second screenwriter, Samantha Newton, to deepen the film’s central romantic relationship and otherwise up the dramatic stakes. Some of Howard’s own story suggestions were taken, but he’s the rare novelist who seems delighted by the changes that have been made to his original work. With both Syria and Israel all too prominent in the news of late, it seems high time to make a film that follows an Israeli spy who’s gone undercover in Damascus, masquerading as an ex-Nazi businessman while striving to carry out a dangerous mission.

A Nazi enclave in Syria decades after the close of World War II? That’s the kind of historic detail on which Howard Kaplan thrives. He’s a student of Middle Eastern history, one who spent several years living in Israel, speaks fluent Hebrew, and has contacts of all persuasions in the region about which he writes. During his student years, he made a brief, clandestine visit to Damascus, then enhanced his knowledge of this teeming, fascinating city by studying detailed maps as well as every memoir and travel book he could find. As he puts it, “God bless the Brits, who go everywhere and write about it.”

Howard’s enthusiasm for cloak-and-danger stories was primed in the early 1970s when he made two trips to the Soviet Union. On the first, he successfully smuggled out a dissident's manuscript on microfilm. The second time around,  he was arrested and interrogated for several days by Soviet police before being expelled from the country. (This incident contributed to the plot of his second published novel, The Chopin Express.) To flesh out The Damascus Cover, he read widely about the Israeli spy Eli Cohen who, explains Howard, “had been highly placed inside Syrian Intelligence before the Six Day War and provided Israel with much of the intelligence to allow them to take the Golan Heights from Syria in that war. He was uncovered and hung publicly in Marjeh Square in Damascus.” In addition, Howard steeped himself in the writings of  Somerset Maugham, Eric Ambler, Graham Greene, and especially John Le Carré, whose espionage novels benefit from his real-life experiences in British Foreign Intelligence. He’s also been inspired by Ken Follett, who early in his career wrote a vivid novel about Afghanistan without once having set foot in that troubled land.

Howard prides himself on his even-handedness, which comes from decades of researching both Israeli and Arab points of view. His objectivity on thorny Middle Eastern matters has been noted by many reviewers. He also knows how to spin a good yarn. Bestselling author Clive Cussler is a fan, saying, “Kaplan is up there with the best.” Let’s hope the movie version of The Damascus Cover lives up to expectations, and sheds light on what’s happening in the Syria of today. 

The movie poster, as of now 


Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Of Poor Doors and Balconies



As racial and social tensions mount in Ferguson, Missouri, I’m also struck by a new phenomenon that’s perhaps unique to the two coasts: the “Poor Door.” It seems that some pricey residential towers in Manhattan and at least one luxury property in West Hollywood have been trying to do a bit of fancy footwork around local zoning ordinances. Developers are often given certain valuable concessions when they promise to offer a fixed number of affordable “below-market-rate” apartments along with costlier units in the same building. In order to separate the haves from the have-nots, their new dodge is to create entrances that are separate but hardly equal.

Apparently, this sort of thing is a matter of course in London, where class snobbery is nothing new. But a construction project in New York that routes the occupants of the cheap flats to a much more modest door around the corner from the building’s posh entry hall has understandably raised a hue and cry. I was surprised to learn that something similar was recently proposed in West Hollywood, a SoCal city that has long been dedicated to gay rights and the protection of renters. When WeHo housing officials learned that the developers planned to build separate entrances, and also to bar low-income folk from their new project’s pool and spa, they cried foul. Quickly backpedaling, the project’s backers solemnly promised that their building’s amenities (including its main entrance) would be open to all.

In following the controversy, I can’t help thinking about segregation, and its impact on our nation’s movie houses. Veteran TV and movie producer Romell Foster-Owens grew up in San Diego, as part of a large, close-knit African-American family. The weekly ritual for Romell and her siblings was to spend Saturdays at the movies, munching on snacks from the concession stand and generally hanging out. Then, when she was a boisterous eleven-year-old, the family drove cross-country to visit relatives in the Deep South.  It was in Warner Robbins, Georgia, a sleepy town near a large military base, that she learned about life’s realities. She was so excited about seeing Flipper at the  local cinema that her parents let her run in ahead of them. As she recalled to me: “I’m in the lobby and I’m wanting to buy popcorn. And the lady’s telling me, in this very strange accent to me, that I had to go around the back. And I didn’t understand what she was saying, and I’m still being persistent: ‘I would like to get some popcorn and a drink.’ And she’s saying, ‘Nope. Can’t help you. You have to go around the back.’” 

Her parents quickly yanked her aside and explained that she’d have to enter through a side door and climb to a “Colored Only” balcony. Half-way up the stairs there was a niche where she could purchase refreshments. They tried hard to make her balcony seat seem like a cool adventure. Nonetheless “I’m still upset, because I’m sitting up in the balcony, and that’s not where I want to be. And that was probably one of the first times I felt like second-class citizenship.”

Romell Foster-Owens will always remember Flipper, not for the antics of the friendly dolphin, but because of the anger that consumed her that day: "After all I had the same money and had to pay the same price for my ticket as anyone else." But Warner Robbins was hardly unique: virtually all Southern cities relegated blacks to the rafters, and I suspect some Northern ones did too. (Anyone have any detailed info on that?) And it wasn’t just movie theatres. Check out this courtroom scene near the end of To Kill a Mockingbird.




(This is Thalian Wall in Wilmington, North Carolina, where Africa-Americans were relegated to the top balcony. There they sat on unpadded fold-up seats. Hardly separate but equal!)