DC's

The blog of author Dennis Cooper

River Phoenix Day *

* (restored)

 

‘River Phoenix’s death has startled and depressed everyone I know, even people who had previously dismissed movie stardom as a form of corporate-induced mass hypnosis. About 72 hours after his fatal collapse, a cynical friend and I happened on a recent television interview in which the earnest young actor was laying out his future plans, and we burst into horrified tears. Weird. That’s what we keep saying: Weird that he’s dead; weird that we care so much. Phoenix seems to have been admired by a whole lot of people in relative secrecy- an artist whose work insinuated itself into viewers’s good graces, no matter how faltering its particular vehicle, nor how initially cold-hearted his audience.

‘To wit: As I write this, Hard Copy, hardly a show known for its moral fortitude, is heaping praise on a paparazzi photographer who couldn’t bring himself to document the actor’s dying convulsions. The word on the streets, even in the gossip columns, had always had Phoenix living a pretty honorable and pristine existence relative to the goings-on of his peers- a poetry-reading, vegetarian, open-minded, Democratic life, free of Shannon Doherty’s creepiness, Judd Nelson’s self-destructiveness, Mickey Rourke’s bombast. Occasionally you’d hear about him standing tensely and unsociably on the fringe of some art gallery opening; S/M performer Bob Flanagan, once a member of the improvisational comedy troupe the Groundlings, remembers Phoenix staggering drunkenly onto the stage during one of their skits. But big deal. He was a kid.

‘Mostly he seemed, if anything, too serious, too incapable of relaxing into a benign mindlessness, even for a minute. In a recent issue of Detour magazine, he positively excoriated many of his fellow actors for being ego-driven, and spoke of wanting to move not just out of L.A., but out of this wretched country entirely. Nonetheless, he did continue to live here, and he did apparently die under the influence of drugs at a trendy local nightspot. So it’s hard to know what to think right now. Death always focuses people, even if the demystification process takes years in some cases. It shouldn’t with Phoenix, since his sincerity and forthrightness have never been in question. Ultimately, barring unforseen revelations, his name, his work, will acquire that particular cult holiness that people naturally create to fill in the blanks around the prematurely taken.

‘Phoenix will be our James Dean, just like so many pundits are predicting. Meanwhile, by default, his fellow “outsider” types like Keanu Reeves, Matt Dillon, et al., are stuck being our Marlon Brando, if they’re lucky. And that’s because actors can’t compete with their fans’ imaginations, and the accomplishments we’ll fantasize for a hypothetical mature Phoenix can’t help but outstrip the potential feats of the bona fide middle-aged Phoenix. Life’s funny, and even a little disgusting, that way. Comparisons between Phoenix and James Dean are lazy, not to mention ubiquitous at this point, though they did share several of the qualities that separate great actors from mere signifiers of glamour. Both were extremely attentive to detail yet seemingly incapable of submerging their actual emotions under an artifical personality.

‘No matter how peripheral Phoenix’s role — the scatterbrained junior hippie in I Love You To Death, the poet/Casanova in The Life and Times of Jimmy Reardon, the loyal, spooked son of Harrison Ford’s megalomaniac in The Mosquito Coast — he was always a little more perceptive and soulful- more real- than anyone else onscreen. Even in as offbeat and dislocated a milieu as the Portland street-hustler scene of My Own Private Idaho, Phoenix’s Mike stood out as unusually lonesome- someone who was afraid of, and simultaneously astonished by, his squalid conditions, who desperately sought affection from others while at the same time avoiding sympathizers like the plague. It was a performance that, like most of Dean’s, seemed to distill the confused melancholy of an emerging generation.

‘Phoenix was the son of hippie parents. He sometimes described his acting style as an attempt to represent how he felt upon trading his family’s blanket humanism for the film industry’s hatred of the unrepentent individual. Actress-performer Ann Magnuson, who co-starred with Phoenix in Jimmy Reardon, once remarked to me with a kind of amazement how solid and unspoiled he seemed even then, in the teen-idol phase of his career. As someone who entered showbiz with her own mixed feelings, she wondered how or even if he’d survive its multifarious forms of corruption. Maybe that very struggle explains why, as he aged, his performances exuded ever more sadness and pointed discomfort. His best recent work found him playing overgrown kids who clung for their lives to youthful notions of a perfect romantic and/or familial love. In a profession that divides its young into marginalized wackos with integrity like Crispin Glover and John Lurie, or hipster sellouts like Christian Slater and Robert Downey, Jr., Phoenix was that once-in-a-decade actor honest enough to connect powerfully with people his own age, and skillful enough to remind members of an older generation of the intensity they’d lost.’ — Dennis Cooper, Spin Magazine, 1993

 

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Stills




















































































 

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Further

River Phoenix @ IMDb
‘The Short, Happy Life of River Phoenix’
Rio’s Attic: The River Phoenix Encyclopedia
The River Phoenix Center for Peacebuilding
My River Phoenix Collection, a Fanpage
Thew River Phoenix Blog
The River Phoenix Discussion Group
RIVER PHOENIX WAS HERE Documentary Official Website
Book: ‘River Phoenix: A Short Life’
Peter Bogdanovich interviewed about River Phoenix
‘My Love-Hate Relationship with River Phoenix’
The Death of River Phoenix Discussion Forum
River Phoenix Forever, a Spanish Fan Blog
Fuck Yeah River Phoenix
Fuck Year River Phoenix’s Hair
River Phoenix Lovers’ Journal
A Boy Named River Phoenix tumblr
‘A decade without River Phoenix’
‘The Strange Saga of River Phoenix’s Final Film’

 

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Nonfiction


Interview 1987


Interview 1988


Interview 1991


River Phoenix hometown tour


Trailer: ‘River Phoenix Was Here’, a documentary

 

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Juvenilia


A young River & Joaquin Phoenix in ”Afterschool Special: Backwards: The Riddle of Dyslexia”


River Phoenix’s Emotional Performance In ‘Surviving: A Family In Crisis’ (1985)


Very young River Phoenix sings ‘Rock Around the Clock’


River Phoenix in ‘Family Ties’

 

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Songs for and by


River Phoenix singing ‘Lone Star State of Mine’


Japanther ‘River Phoenix’ (live)


Aleka’s Attic ‘Where I’d Gone’


Panter ‘River Phoenix’


John Frusciante & River Phoenix ‘Height Down’

 

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Last Interview

 

A few days before his death, on October 31, in L.A., River Phoenix was interviewed by Premiere Magazine on the set of his last movie, Dark Blood, in Utah. He was 23 years old.

Your movies often contain an important social or political message. Is it a deliberate choice from yours?

River Phoenix: What inspires me first is the quality of the written word and script, and not some strategy. At the time of Mosquito Coast, I didn’t choose my parts yet. I went to a casting and I had the chance to join in such a movie.

Most young actors seem to make more commercial choices than you, is it right?

RP: Maybe some of my movies would have been successful if I hadn’t played in… These commercial stuff, I consider them as a pollution of mind. I don’t want to contaminate my work or my convictions with things that won’t contribute to my growth or to the development of my art.

Generally, how do you deal with a part?

RP: Usually, I write the detailed biography of the character. For me it’s the only possible way. To play a sad scene, many will only for example think of their mother’s death. I consider it’s a mistake for an actor to cross the boundary that separates him from his character. Because then you impose him your own references. That’s why I need to have landmarks that only belong to my character. For example, for My Own Private Idaho I wrote a lot. And once the movie was done, I burned it all.

Why?

RP: Everything was on the screen.

Was this also not to use it again?

RP: That’s right, even if, as an actor, I’m growing richer and learning with each character. And a new character will then be able to raise from this compilation of parts.

You’re vegan?

RP: I’m not eating any animal flesh and I don’t feel having the right to take the soul of any living creature. But the movie character, on his side, belongs to the natural food chain, like Native Americans or Inuit. He’s entitled to live on earth’s natural resources.

Could you describe what you enjoy as an actor?

RP: When you look at the movie history, you realize that there are gaps and missing links. My ultimate goal is to try to give in a competent way a voice to characters who haven’t had the chance to talk yet, those who never expressed themselves so far. Even if I’ve not always been able to do so. For me, the ideal recompense, what really fulfills me, is to create something new. Not only to be original at any cost or to be the first one to do it, but because these blanks need to be filled. Besides, I could play the same character again and again, in a different way each time. As many times as I have atoms in my body.

Are you satisfied with what you’ve achieved at this point in your career?

RP: Honestly, I don’t think this way. I never think of me as an actor. I see all of this as new experiences each time, like as many different lives. As many reincarnations. So when I watch my last movie, I’m unable to judge or to be critical. For me, it’s past, and I don’t feel any connection to it anymore, like if it was somebody else than me that I’m not responsible for. I immersed myself in another life that the character appropriated. He expressed himself through me, not the other way around.

It sounds like you’ve always taken care to separate your private life from your actor’s work.

RP: Absolutely. Quite often, when actors have such a strong charisma in real life, eventually it has to affect the characters they play. For myself I’m not charismatic in that way. I’m not a “performer”. Ideally I would stay mute as River. That’s the reason why, for a long time, I’ve said the opposite of what I really thought. In interviews, I’ve also played to be characters that I wasn’t. I’ve lied and often contradicted myself to dumbfound people. It’s all over now, because I have nothing left to hide. Eventually, I’m quite an ordinary person.

 

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14 of River Phoenix’s 25 roles

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Marvin J. Chomsky Robert Kennedy and His Times (1985)
Robert Kennedy and His Times is a 1985 American television miniseries directed by Marvin J. Chomsky, based on the 1978 Robert F. Kennedy biography of the same name by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.’ — Wikipedia


Trailer


River scenes as Robert Kennedy Jr

Watch the clip here

 

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Joe Dante Explorers (1985)
‘For the children who watched in darkened theaters as Ethan Hawke and River Phoenix flew through space in a tricked out Tilt-A-Whirl carriage, the 1985 coming-of-age adventure “Explorers” was a defining moviegoing experience. The film is about a group of three boys drawn into deep space by media-loving aliens. The family sci-fi film is still beloved by a dedicated, albeit small, group of fans — those who may find it hard to believe that the cult film remains a sore spot with director Joe Dante. “It’s not a movie I revisit much,” the director told TheWrap during a recent interview, citing the film’s bad reviews and abysmal box office performance. Phoenix wasn’t thrilled about playing a geek, Dante recalled. “For him it was always a performance because he was vehemently not that guy,” he told TheWrap. “When a girl would come by he would always take the glasses off.”’ — The Wrap


Excerpt

Watch the film here

 

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Rob Reiner Stand by Me (1986)
‘Until Stand By Me, the only film River Phoenix had appeared in had been the teen flick Explorers; he had yet to really make his mark. But in Chris Chambers, he was able to exude that tenderness, vulnerability and understated cool he would eventually become known for. In a particularly heart-wrenching scene, Phoenix sits at the trunk of a tree, the campfire flickering in the foreground, and has a breakdown because he thinks he’s worthless. It was a tough one to get right. Director Rob Reiner asked the actor to think of a time when an adult had let him down. “When someone that you really looked up to, and really loved, wasn’t there for you,” he said. The next take, he got it. Reiner never did find out what Phoenix was thinking about. “He kept crying after that scene and I had to go give him a hug. It is a hard scene to play and then snap out of.”’ — collaged


Excerpt


Excerpt

 

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Peter Weir The Mosquito Coast (1986)
‘The little Foxes are a rosy brood, and Helen Mirren plays archetypal Mother Fox with an eloquent, Meryl Streepish glow. She and the kids — River Phoenix as Charles, Jadrien Steele as Jerry, and kid models Hilary and Rebecca Gordon as the freckly twin girls — form a perfect family tableau. And Conrad Roberts becomes a part of the extended family as the compassionate Creole boatman who ferries the Foxes to their new tropical home. This fantasy family of pliable progeny never challenges Fox’s increasingly dangerous tyranny. Like Fitzcarraldo before him, Fox is transfigured by the tropics, a stranger in a stranger land. Theroux’s theme is handily adopted by Australian director Peter Weir, who works from Paul Shrader’s strange screenplay. Weir, who also directed Ford in Witness, has reworked the theme of cultural alienation time and again in such films as The Last Wave, The Year of Living Dangerously and Picnic at Hanging Rock. Here Weir wrestles with similar notions, but with an uncustomarily comic touch. So Mosquito Coast is stripped of its significance and deteriorates into an epic spoofed.’ — LA Times


Excerpt


Excerpt

Watch the film here

 

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William Richert A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon (1988)
‘In his first starring performance, Phoenix plays Richert’s alter-ego, a middle-class dreamer in an upper-middle-class suburban world of mansions and country clubs and keeping-up appearances. Goodbye centers on Phoenix’s hapless attempts to scrounge up enough money to travel to Hawaii with blueblood girlfriend Salenger instead of following in his dad’s dispiriting footsteps and attending modest McKinley college in the heart of downtown Chicago. Goodbye belongs to the curious literary subset of fictions concerned with what young men do with their penises. I am, as a rule, not a fan of movies or books about brooding young hunks whose overpowering sexuality renders them irresistible to beautiful women. Yet I found it entirely plausible that every woman Phoenix encounters wants to fuck his brains out. There is a sweetness and a vulnerability to Phoenix’s performance that nicely undercuts the locker-room machismo of a guy making a movie about what a stud he was as a young man. Phoenix makes his character’s serial womanizing—in short order, he lapses into romantic clinches with a coffeehouse pick-up, Baxteresque buddy Matthew Perry’s bitchy girlfriend (Ione Skye), Salenger, and lonely older woman Ann Magnuson—seem like part of a noble search for experience and truth rather than a sleazy bid to score as much tail as possible.’ — Nathan Rabin


Trailer


Excerpt

Watch the Director’s Cut of the film here

 

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Richard Benjamin Little Nikita (1988)
‘Jeffrey Nicolas Grant (River Phoenix), a brash hyperactive high school student lives in a San Diego suburb with his parents, who own a successful garden centre. Keen to fly, he has applied for entry to the Air Force Academy. During a routine background check on Jeff, FBI agent Roy Parmenter (Poitier) finds contradictory information on his parents, making him suspect that all is not as it should be. Further investigations reveal that they may be ‘sleeper’ agents for the Soviet Union with a teenager son, Jeff Nicholas. Unable to arrest them as they haven’t actually done anything yet, Roy continues his investigation, and moves into the house across the street from the Grant family. He warms his way into their confidence.’ — Wikipedia


Trailer


Opening

 

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Sidney Lumet Running On Empty (1988)
‘In Sidney Lumet’s latest movie, Running on Empty, River Phoenix portrays Danny Pope, a. k. a. “Mike Manfield” and several other fictitious names. He is 17, in a state of emotional hibernation, and a mystery to his teachers. Yet he performs Mozart’s Fantasia, K. 497, well enough to move an entrance jury at the Juilliard School of Music to remark, “You are very talented, you know.” The pianism in the movie was the work of local pianist Gar Berke, who coached Phoenix for six months prior to filming. Berke’s rendition of Mozart is slower, more meditative than traditionally performed, but exudes the melancholy desired. While on camera, Phoenix synchronized his fingers with a prerecorded tape of Berke playing. It is an amazing feat by Phoenix, who until Running on Empty never studied piano and yet manages to keep alive the illusion that he’s actually playing for extended periods of time.’ — LA Times


Excerpt


Excerpt


Running on Empty – Interviews: River Phoenix, Christine Lahti, Judd Hirsch

 

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Steven Spielberg Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
‘It was a touch of genius on the part of Steven Spielberg to cast River Phoenix as the young Indiana Jones. The director needed a youthful actor for a clever sequence explaining how our favorite archaeologist got his trademark hat, bullwhip, chin scar, fear of snakes, etc., so he enlisted the 19-year-old Phoenix for the role. The actor was fresh off of Little Nikita and Running on Empty, so it must have been pretty exciting to leap into a beloved adventure series. Mr. Phoenix was quite excellent as the young Indiana Jones, delivering a performance that was half of an homage to Harrison Ford and half just plain ol’ heroic derring-do. It’s a clever and very likable little performance, and one that indicated a little “action hero” potential from the young actor.’ — Scott Weinberg


Excerpt


RP in ‘IJatLC’ documentary

 

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Lawrence Kasdan I Love You to Death (1990)
‘While the action takes us where we might expect — both to the hospital and to jail — its resolution does not. Joey emerges from his ordeal a changed man and refuses to press charges. “Somebody puts a bullet in your brain, it makes you think.” In reaching for a climactic coming-together, the filmmakers seem quite consciously to be reaching for that Moonstruck feeling. But here Kasdan doesn’t show Norman Jewison’s precision-grip sense of timing and structure. I Love You to Death is both pleasing and baffling. It’s a movie oddly out of touch with itself, simultaneously anarchic and flaccid. You can laugh at it, even love some of it, but just as likely, you’ll slip off to a dreamy world all your own.’ — The Washington Post


Excerpt


Excerpt

 

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Nancy Savoca Dogfight (1991)
‘River was an absolute pleasure to work with and to be around. He bought a banged up Volvo wagon (his weekly per diem matched my weekly salary!) and chauffeured all his fellow “Bees” and me around town when we had days off. He picked up dinner tabs and made life at the Warwick hotel amusing and unpredictable. One night he and his younger brother, then known to all of us as Leaf (now Joaquin), showed up with motorized toy speedboats that we proceeded to take down to the hotel pool and put to the test. If my memory serves, Rob Lowe was in the vicinity (jacuzzi), dating – and eventually marrying – our makeup woman at the time. River was thoughtful and sweet, not an ounce of territorial actor neurosis, a rare quality. He was also pure as the driven snow, a quality that scrambles like an ant down a drain in a stiff rain in Tinseltown.’ — Lars Beckerman


Trailer


Excerpt

Watch the film here

 

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Gus Van Sant My Own Private Idaho (1991)
‘It’s been 20 years since River Phoenix’s death, and Gus Van Sant’s 1991 road movie My Own Private Idaho is still almost unbearably sad to watch. It isn’t just that Phoenix’s charisma and promise are on full display, though Idaho ranks alongside Running On Empty and Dogfight among his best roles. It’s the way Van Sant’s script leaves Phoenix in a state of constant vulnerability, like a turtle without its shell. At times, his character’s narcolepsy—in which he suddenly, unpredictably falls into a deep sleep—feels like a narrative contrivance, an ongoing deus ex machina calibrated to pivot the story in whatever direction Van Sant decides to take it. But it’s really more a metaphor for a lonely, loveless drifter who has no defense against a world that can take his money, his heart, and his life. Phoenix and his character aren’t one and the same, but they share an openness and sensitivity that’s keenly felt in My Own Private Idaho. They’re prey for a rapacious world.’ — Scott Tobias


Excerpt


Excerpt


‘My Own Private River’: film constructed of ‘Idaho’ outtakes

 

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Phil Alden Robinson Sneakers (1992)
‘Written and directed by Phil Alden Robinson (Field of Dreams) Sneakers is a slightly dated, yet engrossing and humorous thriller about computers, cryptography, espionage, secrets, deception and betrayal. An industrious person could make the argument that this little-known gem – that came and went from theaters without much fanfare in the fall of 1993 – was a sign of things to come! Five techno savvy guys, led by Redford, who has been wanted by the feds since the early 1970s, are called upon to recover a black box that contains an array of computer chips that allow any computer or program to be cracked. This was one of the last films to feature the unbelievably talented River Phoenix, who died of a drug overdose on October 31, 1993, roughly a month or so after the film was released in theaters.’ — collaged


Excerpt/commentary


Excerpt

 

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Peter Bogdanovich The Thing Called Love (1993)
‘In Phoenix’s first scene, it is obvious he’s in trouble. The rest of the movie only confirms it, making The Thing Called Love a painful experience for anyone who remembers him in good health. He looks ill – thin, sallow, listless. His eyes are directed mostly at the ground. He cannot meet the camera, or the eyes of the other actors. It is sometimes difficult to understand his dialogue. Even worse, there is no energy in the dialogue, no conviction that he cares about what he is saying. Some small part of this performance may possibly have been inspired by Phoenix’s desire to emulate James Dean or the young Brando in their slouchy, mumbly acting styles. And maybe that’s how Bogdanovich and his associates reassured themselves as they saw this performance taking shape. After all, Phoenix came to the project as one of the most promising actors of his generation, and perhaps somehow an inner magic would transmit itself to the film. It does not. The world was shocked when Phoenix overdosed, but the people working on this film should not have been. It is notoriously difficult to get addicts to stop their behavior before they have found their personal bottoms, and so perhaps no one could have saved Phoenix, who was not lucky enough to find a higher bottom than death. But this performance in this movie should have been seen by someone as a cry for help.’ — Roger Ebert


Trailer


Excerpts

Watch the film here

 

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Sam Shepard Silent Tongue (1994)
‘Enough with the Rehashing of how River Phoenix, 23, overdosed on cocaine and heroin last Halloween outside the Viper Room, in L.A. Either Phoenix is reduced to another drug casualty for the just-say-no crowd to duck over, or he’s romanticized into pinup martyrdom – a James Dean for the ’90s. Phoenix’s talent and memory deserve better. He was an actor, an uncommonly gifted one. Evidence of that can be found in Silent Tongue, a haunting tale of love, death and shame in the Old West. It is Phoenix’s penultimate performance: The last film he completed, Peter Bogdanovich’s sweet but silly Thing Called Love, went swiftly to video. Silent Tongue, a mesmerizing mess written and directed by Sam Shepard (no acting this time), is a more apt swan song. It shows Phoenix at his ambitious best.’ — Peter Travers, Rolling Stone


Trailer


Excerpts

 

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George Sluizer Dark Blood (2012)
Dark Blood is a film directed by George Sluizer, written by Jim Barton, and starring River Phoenix, Judy Davis, and Jonathan Pryce. The film wasn’t completed due to the death of Phoenix shortly before the end of the project and remained unfinished for 19 years. Dark Blood consisted of roughly five weeks of on location shooting in Torrey, Utah and was scheduled to complete three weeks of filming interior scenes in Los Angeles, California on a sound stage. Filming was never completed due to Phoenix’s death on October 31, 1993. Production halted while insurers and financiers tried to determine if the movie could be completed, but with important scenes still needing to be shot the film was abandoned on November 18, 1993. For the 2012 release, these missing scenes were replaced with Sluizer providing narration.’ — collaged


Trailer


Excerpt


the entirety

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** Adem Berbic, Thanks for the tweak. I’ll pore over it. Baudrillard has never been a biggie for me, so this’ll be good to maybe enlarge what I know and think. All the luck needed in the world for your tonight. Being the center of attention is always really stressful, but, when it pays off, the effect is pretty killer. Let me know how it went obviously. politekid’s book is supposedly in the hands of my concierge, so I’m about to go bug him for the handover. ** _Black_Acrylic, In that late 60s period, you really could be an eccentric stylist with a pop song and wind up top ten. Nowadays if you do more than tweak the formula a little, you’re doomed to cult status. Amazing about Monday. Man, that’s such good news. I hope the place is as accommodating and fruitful as your imagination needs. Yay. ** Tosh Berman, Hi. Right? And he was still performing his stuff complete with intact falsetto into his eighties, mostly in Vegas, of course. Happy weekend, Tosh. ** Carsten, AC is still considered a luxury here, but I think the French are starting to wise up. Okay, yeah, major understanding about trying to time your trip here when the summer is acting normal. It does act normal here occasionally for four or five days spurts. Yes, I haven’t seen you in a billion years, man. Will be great whenever it happens. The sound of the World Cup broadcast is basically the muzak of Paris right now. Cool head is a challenge, but I do like a tough challenge. You too. ** Steve, I think the World Cup is perhaps unusually (?) vis-a-vis the US a big deal in LA, and not just because it’s partly happening there. Or so I’m informed. The heat is the deciding factor in my weekend plans of course. I was going to go to a reading last night at After8, but that place boils inside when it’s hot, so skip. Today is supposed to be the ‘cool’ day meaning it’ll only be 94 degrees, so maybe I’ll risk venturing around. ** laura w, Yeah, Paris used to be famous for magically evading EU heatwaves and staying weirdly fresh, but apparently not anymore. People here are literally panicking. It’s trippy. And awful. I did see ‘Obsession’. I liked it. I didn’t like it as much as ‘Backrooms’ because it’s more kind of a better than usual horror-adjacent movie as opposed to a kind of weird film that happens to be horror adjacent, but I thought it was pretty smart and well done. I totally get why it’s exciting filmgoers. You liked it, right? ** HaRpEr //, Lou Christie is kind of a minor visionary in the formulaic pop song genre, I think. Or a bull in its china shop. I think ‘Younger Than Yesterday’ would be a perfect album if it didn’t have ‘Mind Gardens’ on it. I would say the Byrds’ weirdest and arguably best album is ‘Notorious Byrd Brothers’ maybe. I should get that complete Sarah Kane book. Noted. Yeah, she’s really something. ** Laura, Have fun. With LC. My shitty AC is saving my life or at least brain so far, so I’m nothing but admiring of it. Acceptable, yes. Me, I want an igloo with an ice machine inside it. ** Caesar, Hi. I am overheated but okay. No, the heatwave is still in its infancy. It’s going to get much worse starting on Sunday or Monday, they predict. I would kill for winter. Almost literally. RT isn’t a genre film. I think people who haven’t seen it mistakenly guess it’s a horror film, but it’s really not a horror film at all. The new film is going to be even less genre though. Hopefully people will have a hard time describing it in a word or two. Wow, crazy about the one day sell out! That’s wild. Uh, I don’t think I really have a type, or maybe I mean I don’t know if I could create a description of what my type is if I have one. I think my novel’s have a type, but my novels are just a piece of me. Do you have a type? Enjoy not being excessively heated this weekend. ** Right. I thought I would let you luxuriate in the performances and being of River Phoenix this weekend. See you on Monday.

Lou Christie, a refresher

 

‘It was almost as if the public could only take Christie’s intensity in short, concentrated bursts. Christie was one of the few acts in the 60s who genuinely confused people – Was he serious? Was he gay? Why was he urging us to go Back to the Days of the Romans? – without it being any kind of put-on. He cut one of the finest records Phil Spector sidekick Jack Nitzsche ever produced, a teen psychodrama called If My Car Could Only Talk, which was such an involved and enigmatic tale that MGM felt the need to print a picture sleeve with the lyrics on.’ — Bob Stanley

‘One singer/songwriter who is due a major scale rediscovery by hard core serious pop fans is Lou Christie. He made records that combined the polar opposites of bubblegum pop and a Scott Walker-esque grandeur. I can’t think of anyone else in 1965 (not even Brian Wilson or the Beatles) who made singles and album cuts that were so ahead of the game, were so inventive and packed so much into just 3 minutes as Christie did with a series jaw droppingly brilliant singles. This is a weird and wonderful, complex artist with a soaring multi-octave vocal talent.’ — Morrissey

‘While Lou Christie’s shrieking falsetto was among the most distinctive voices in all of pop music, he was also one of the first solo performers of the rock era to compose his own material, generating some of the biggest and most memorable hits of the mid-1960s. In the early 60s, he made the acquaintance of producer and arranger Jack Nitzsche, who helped sculpt the odd, distinctive sonics of Christie’s songs, and Twyla Herbert, a classically trained musician and self-proclaimed mystic some 20 years his senior; they became songwriting partners. In 1966, he scored his biggest hit — the lush, chart-topping “Lightnin’ Strikes.” Christie’s next hit, 1966’s “Rhapsody in the Rain,” was notorious for being among the more sexually explicit efforts of the period. After brief stays with Colpix and Columbia, he next moved to the Buddah label, scoring one last Top Ten hit in 1969 with “I’m Gonna Make You Mine.” Drug problems plagued Christie during the early ’70s, and after getting clean at a London rehab clinic, he dropped out of music, working variously as a ranch hand, offshore oil driller, and carnival barker.’ — allmusic

‘Lou has shared the stage with many of the greats of Rock ‘n’ Roll including The Rolling Stones, The Who, Neil Diamond, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Little Richard. Elton John, John Lennon, Madonna are among the music legends upon whom Lou has had an effect. Elton John played piano for LOU during LOU’S ‘London Period’ in the early 70’s and recorded LOU’S song, SHE SOLD ME MAGIC. John Lennon repeatedly pointed out in his interviews that “LOU CHRISTIE was one of my influences”. And, Madonna thanked LOU in the liner notes of her ten million selling Immaculate Collection LP. Over the past decade, Lou has led the resurgence of Rock ‘n’ Roll heroes performing through out the world. LOU’S fans recognize his distinctive vocal and writing performances in major motion pictures. Many distinguished directors are also fans. Films that feature Lou’s songs include Barry Levinson’s -RAINMAN, Whit Stillman’s – BARCELONA and THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO, Tony Bill’s – A HOME OF OUR OWN, Richard Linklater’s – BEFORE SUNRISE, John Hughes – DUTCH, Michael de Avila’s – BURNZY’S LAST CALL, and Oliver Stone’s TV mini series – WILD PALMS.’ — TLCB

 

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Further

Lou Christie @ Wikipedia
Lou Christie: Lightning is Still Striking
Lou Christie Obituary
Lou Christie Discography
Lou Christie has been a trucker, a roughneck, a carnie – and a maker of sublime pop

 

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Interview

 

Q – Lou, you were asked about the Rock artists of today and you said “They are so much more aware. I mean there are so many turkeys out there who are not so dumb. No one is as innocent as we were in the old days.” Are you saying that today’s rockers are more savvy when it comes to business than you were?

A – Savvy? A four year old is more savvy than we were. We came from an innocent era; a period where it really was Mom and Pop and the Catholic Church for me. Being Italian, that ethnicity was such a big part of my family, of my upbringing. Of course, I was also raised on a farm. I was raised out in the country. My Dad had about 109 acres. It was mostly crab apples and trees. But, we had the garden. Sometimes we grew soybeans and we had a big vegetable garden and corn. We had chicken and goats and pigs and pigeons and ducks. When I say we had chickens, we had 200 chickens. I was raised in an entirely different way than the kids of today are. The sophistication level was pretty much nil. (laughs)

Q – One good thing about being in the country, at least the neighbors wouldn’t call the police if your band was rehearsing.

A – I didn’t have a band. I never sang with a band until I cut the first record. That was the first time I sang with a band, when we cut “The Gypsy Cried”. I always had singing groups. I was always dragging my sister into my life to sing with me or be in one of my great productions, whatever it was. (laughs) I usually had two boys and two girls in the group, the vocal group. It was an all a cappella type thing.

Q – You actually threw away a Classical music scholarship to pursue Rock ‘n’ Roll, didn’t you?

A – Absolutely. (laughs)

Q – Where was the scholarship to?

A – Well, there were a few of them that had come by the wayside. When I was in high school I was like student conductor of the choir, because I sang almost every solo there was to sing every time there was a Christmas holiday or Easter or whatever it was. I won a couple of scholarships just to take vocal things. I wasn’t even driving then. I must’ve been about 13 or 14. The whole idea was; my mentor, Frank Cummings wanted me to obviously continue and pursue the more Classical, semi-Classical end and sing that way. My octave range is like four octaves. So, I was the lowest bass we had. I have this other voice that I really couldn’t use that much. That’s where he was pushing me, in that direction. I just kept passing on it. I wanted to get in on Rock ‘n’ Roll ’cause Bandstand was happening at the time. I had to get on American Bandstand. I wasn’t going to do it singing some Classical song. The only way I could do it was to cut a record and I did. I kept pursuing that end of it.

Q – What kind of recording equipment did you have in your basement in 1960, that allowed you to record “The Gypsy Cried”?

A – Oh, it wasn’t even in the basement. I didn’t have any recording equipment. I cut the thing on a little two track machine. That was up in someone’s place in Pittsburgh. Then we went to a four track machine…”Two Faces Have I”. That first album was on a four track. There weren’t things like punching-in and all those little terms they use today. Everyone sang and played together.

Q – It was one take or start again.

A – Yeah. That was it.

Q – How did you land a deal with Roulette Records?

A – Well, “The Gypsy Cried” was released on a small local label in Pittsburgh. They were distributing other records and one of the labels they distributed was Roulette Records. The man who owned that was Morris Levy. He had the End label, the Gone label. He had Frankie Lymon and The Teenagers, The Flamingos, The Chantels, Jimmie Rodgers and Tito Puente. This distributing company that distributed records throughout the tri-state area in Pittsburgh had a gentleman, Nick Session, who loved falsetto voices. I talked him into helping me cut this record. We cut “The Gypsy Cried” on a little label called Co and C, and it started being a hit in Pittsburgh. I was doing record hops and doing the Clark Gray Show, driving my Dad’s car out every weekend or having someone drive me to do record hops with some of the local disc jockeys. The record started taking off. It started spreading from Pittsburgh to Ohio to Cleveland to Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Then, it jumped out of San Francisco and started spreading around the country and that was it. Roulette Records picked it up and said I think we got a hit here. And that was the beginning of how I got on Roulette.

Q – How long did it take you to write “The Gypsy Cried”?

A – About 15 minutes. It was one of those things that just happened. It was so easy. Then, when it was a hit, we thought oh my God, now what do we follow up with? And we wrote “Two Faces Have I”. As you go on, you learn more and in one way you become more secure and insecure at the same time. It was like a double-edged sword. You had to write something better than the last record and then you started learning how to write songs. You kept learning as you went along. It was all self-taught. It was instinct. I went truly by my instincts and that’s always the best…for me anyhow. I guide my life by my instincts. If there’s a lesson to learn I guess it’s follow your instinct and then learn the lesson.

Q – You did the Dick Clark Cavalcade of Stars tour. From what I gather, you weren’t too fond of the touring. In fact, you were going to write a book called The Stench Of Dick’s Bus. Did you ever write that book?

A – No. I loved those tours. I had a great time on them. Are you kidding? I was sitting on the bus with Diana Ross. She was sitting on the seat next to me. She and I were bus buddies. I always put it that way. It’s best that way. Here I was, sitting next to all those people who, six months ago I bought their records and watched them on American Bandstand. Now, all of a sudden I’m one of them. There would be Brian Hyland. We roomed together. Brian and I shared our hotel rooms together. Then I was with Gene Pitney and Johnny Tillotson, The Supremes, Paul and Paula, Dick and Dee Dee, The Crystals, The Ronettes, Fabian, Frankie Avalon. To me, this was my graduating class and still is today.

Q – How long did you do those tours?

A – I did them for years. Some of them we would do for 32 one nighters in a row and see a hotel room every other night. We’d sleep on the bus every other night. So, that was grueling. It was hard, but we were young. I had nothing to compare it to. They didn’t have VCRs and televisions, even bathrooms on the bus the way they have today. We sat up the whole tour on the bus…the band, Dick Clark and all the acts.

Q – You believe that at the time of the British Invasion, the Teen Idols were going down the tubes. Tell me why you believe that.

A – Oh, they went. They started disappearing. It was so interesting that I kept going. I hit the end of that whole era. I’ve always been between the cracks of Rock ‘n’ Roll, I felt. The missing link. Someone wrote about me being the missing link of all this Rock ‘n’ Roll. We had the Teenage Idols. We had Frankie Avalon. We had Fabian. That thing was just about closing down when a lot of my records started hitting. I guess one of the last of that era between the late ’50s, early ’60s. Then, they all disappeared, but my records kept going through that English Invasion. I had the biggest record of all time with “Lightning Strikes” in the middle of the English Invasion. I remember we were on tour and Paul and Paula had just come back from England and they said there’s a group over there called The Beatles. That was 1963. They hadn’t even landed in the States. They started telling me all about this group.

Q – What did you think when they started describing The Beatles and the reaction their music was getting?

A – I didn’t think much of it. It was interesting, but we were always hearing about the new group or the new song.

Q – Did they tell you about the hair?

A – Yeah. They said they had long, shaggy hair.

Q – Did you know what they were talking about?

A – No, not really. They were using the terms Mod and Mop Tops. I thought what the hell are they talking about? Here we are traveling through the South. I was considered having long hair, but it was nothing compared to what the Beatles were. Of course, we wore these pompadours. That was our claim to fame.

Q – Did you hear their music at the time?

A – I remember hearing one of the songs…”She Loves You” or something like that and I thought it’s kind of different. And then all of a sudden it was, Oh my God, this English Invasion has started. That was pretty much the end of the people I was traveling around the country with. We were in teen magazines together. We were sort of the cat’s meow there for all those years as being teenage idols, teenage princes and princesses.

Q – You played with David Bowie. Do you recall where that was?

A – I don’t know if it was Albert Hall or the London Palladium. It was before he went into his Ziggy Stardust. It was fascinating to go over to Europe and be a success there.

Q – Were you ripped off by your record company and business team?

A – Of course. Isn’t that the old story of everyone? You know, I can tell my story of what happened. By the time I was 21, I had made a million dollars and had lost a million dollars.

Q – But, if you never had it, how then could you lose it?

A – That’s right. The same thing happened a couple of times in my life. When I was a little older, it happened again. I was 27. Only that time I had two children and a wife, so starting over at that time wasn’t easy. The ups and downs in this career have been just unbelievable and maybe someday I’ll write about it when I feel I’ve lived enough. My life has been very interesting…very interesting.

 

__
Gig


‘Cryin’ in the Streets’


‘Rhapsody in the Rain’


‘Jungle’


‘Trapeze’


‘I’m Gonna Make You Mine’


‘She Sold Me Magic’


‘If My Car Could Only Talk to Me’


‘Have I Sinned’


‘Two Faces Have I’


‘Big Time’


‘Cryin’ on My Knees’


‘Tears on My Pillow’


‘Self Expression (The Kids on the Street Will Never Give In)’


‘Shake Hands and Walk Away Crying’


‘Lightnin’ Strikes’
—-

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** Adem Berbic, Well, gosh, thanks. And for the Baudrillard link. I’m a little nervous to accept a download from a place I don’t know, and it might be in French anyway. But I’ll dream up what I imagine he says. ‘Kaspar Hauser’ is your top? My fave Herzog is ‘Stroszek’. which has the same dude in it at least. ** _Black_Acrylic, Nice advert. A skeleton that doesn’t just clack clack clack! ** Carsten, Great news about your chapbook! I only file taxes in the US. You don’t have to file taxes when you’re on a French visa, or least the visa I have. Okay, keep me posted. Maybe you can plan an in-between heatwaves trip if there is an in-between. I have to say sleeping under a humid blanket sounds like suicide at the moment. I think I’ll stick with the thinnest possible sheet. I’m itching wildly to start the stressful producer, hunt but Zac hasn’t given his final sign off on the script yet, so I’m just nudging him every day. All’s good except for the hell that is the current outdoors and its indoors encroachment. ** Bill, Heat came back with a vengeance. What can you do? The sky runs the show. That’s so true about Evenson’s prose. I wonder if Lutz knows and likes his work. It might a little too ‘regular’? I wonder. ** Steve, Based on yesterday, the current shitty portable air conditioner is a true help, but we’ll see if it’ll last out this heatwave, which is supposed to go on for two weeks! I don’t know that Chris Jolly film, huh, and I doubt it’s hiding in plain sight out there, but I’ll look. ** HaRpEr //, I think I do like memoir titles that sounds like the names of country music songs for some reason. Sometimes porn’s intended function breaks through my studious approach, and that’s very interesting. I hope your heat is a wee bit lesser than the one over here. That’s all I’ll say. The tiresomely and relentlessly mentioned heat is making writing and such things a bit like trying to read a text without my glasses on, so not much on that front over here. ** ⋆˚꩜。darbbzz⋆˚꩜。, I haven’t been to Dollywood, but the word on it is very, very positive. 7-11! Don’t get held up. Like you have any control of that, I know. Enjoy the shrooms and we can speak logically later. ** laura w, Compared to LA, Paris is humid. Compared to, oh, Tokyo or even New York, it could be worse. I only remember the World Cup when I’m walking outside and see all the French soccer team t-shirts that are currently the viral fashion statement here. ‘Birth’, okay. I think I can manage pointing and clicking and sweating with dazed eyes all the same time. Thank you. ** Laura, Hey, hey. You seem to be rising out of the muck! You’re still totally you. I guess you cant help it. Self-enforcing hopefulness feels the right thing to do even when I’m wrong. My shitty aircon worked enough yesterday, but, as I said up above, the heatwave is supposed to last a long time, so I might start window shopping just in case. As I also said somewhere above, I’m waiting for Zac’s final sign off on the script, and I’m pushing him to give me that as hard as I can. Any day now. although I’ve been saying that for weeks. It’s too hot to kiss and pet anyone or anything, even a script. Maybe it and I can have an ice cube fight. ** Okay. I have this feeling that a bunch of you probably don’t know the work of the very idiosyncratic and peculiar 60s pop song auteur Lou Christie, and I thought it might be good to give you the opportunity get his stuff under your belt. See you tomorrow.

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