Fifty years ago this month my life changed forever and for the better.
I had transferred a couple years earlier from a private boys school in Winnipeg into the public school system because, frankly, I wanted to be around girls . . . and out of the almost military-school-like life I’d been living.
I didn’t really fit in in the public Junior High (grades 7–9) because all the kids knew each other since grade 1 or earlier and I was coming in from some foreign school of uniforms, regulated haircuts and calling teachers ‘sir.’
And speaking of haircuts — as soon as I left the military school and discovered rock-n-roll, I didn’t cut my hair again until I was well into my 20s!
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For Christmas in grade 7, age 12, 1973, my parents bought me a stereo. In those days, at the music store you’d go into a separate sealed room with all the speakers and they’d play some record for you to decide which pair you liked. When we got to the counter to pay for the receiver, turntable and speakers, whatever it came to, we were still a little less than my dad had planned to spend, so he asked if there were a couple albums I wanted to get. I’d coveted my older sister’s (who didn’t live with us) brown box version of Jesus Christ Superstar so I asked for that. Then the 12-yr-old me asked the sales guy, “What was that album you were playing in the speaker room?” It was Billion Dollar Babies by Alice Cooper. (!) That was one of the serendipitous moments where my life changed. The guy could have put on Led Zeppelin or the Rolling Stones or whatever else was in the pile in 1973, but he played Billion Dollar Babies, and my nearly virginal ears thought it was the coolest thing I’d ever heard! So, I came home with that masterpiece, including the trading cards and poster it came with — and I had my first favorite group.
By the summer of ’75, Alice toured with his new Welcome To My Nightmare album, and actually played the lil’ ol’ Winnipeg Arena . . . and I got front row seats!
I was still only friends with the kids on my block and not the wide swath of teenagers who lived within a couple miles of River Heights Junior High. But with the external factor of rock-n-roll, and the internal changes of hormones, suddenly girls and music became my life.
In another serendipitous occurrence, ‘the cool kids’ hung out outside the school doors closest to my house, so I had to walk past them every day to go into the building. If the hang-out spot had been at the other end of the school, none of the rest of this would have happened.
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But there they were — before school, at lunch, after school — hanging out on the grass and under the trees, performing the revolutionary act of boys and girls talking to each other! . . . which really didn’t happen elsewhere at the start of grade 9. In the main, we were all still too scared to talk to the opposite sex. But girls had suddenly gone from icky to mesmerizing. And we boys sure wanted to talk to them . . . and sure didn’t know how.
But out front at the cool end of school, there were boys & girls hanging like they were lifelong best friends. As I’d pass through them I’d discreetly slow down and eavesdrop on conversations about what they’d done together last weekend or were planning to do next weekend. And they were laughing and extraverted and confident — and when you’d see them in the halls or classrooms they seemed to have a secret language and be in on something the rest of us weren’t.
One of these mornings as I came to school 50 years ago this month, I went in and stopped just inside of the heavy wooden French doors and stood there looking longingly at the pretty girls and confident guys. They were maybe a hundred feet from the doors — but it was untraversable terrain. How could I possibly walk up to them? I didn’t know any of them. And there was no way you could get into this club if you weren’t already in.
As I stood there dreaming in the immensity of it trying to figure out a way to join them, some guy came up from behind and started talking to me. I recognized him as one of them — in fact he seemed like one of the leaders of the leaderless pack. He lived out the other end of the school and had to walk through the whole building to get to the cool kids’ end. He was super friendly, and he knew his music. I had long hair and wore a knee-length patched jean jacket so he figured I was probably at least cool enough to talk to for a minute. I’m sure we riffed on Alice Cooper, and I told him about the concert that summer, and what other bands I was listening to, and somehow I guess I passed the test, because after 5 or 10 minutes of us talking, he said, “Well, let’s go out,” and pushed the door open! Suddenly I was walking across the untraversable ground with Joey Myles, probably the coolest guy in the whole cool kids crowd. Suddenly I was in.
After that, I didn’t have to eavesdrop for the few seconds I walked past them — I could just walk right up and start talking. Girls were no longer speaking a foreign language. Guys with older brothers were telling me about bands I’d never heard of. I suddenly had friends who didn’t grow up on the same block I did. And I could go to their houses and hang in their basements and listen to records really loud. A couple of them had failed a couple grades and were already 16 and actually had their own car! And they knew how to get liquor!
Everything changed forever as I was escorted across that hundred feet of impregnable ground. And I never looked back. The kids I’d built forts with and played ball hockey with never crossed that terrain . . . but my whole world changed.
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A lot of friends from that cool gang are no longer on this earthly plane — but somehow Joey and I both made it this far and still talk and laugh really loud together.
On halloween, one of ‘the gang’ threw the first house ‘shaker’ of a party that became legend and set the standard for what would be years of epic joyous madness . . . that, really, has never stopped for 50 years. But it all began with one hundred–foot walk.
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Halloween 1975 – age 14 – just before Lum’s party
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A couple minutes of a grade 9 reunion in Joey Myles’ kitchen in 2009.
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Or here was a TV interview I did at that 2009 reunion . . .
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And here’s another one . . .
. Or here’s another real-life coming-of-age story from around the same time — about writing a song with Guess Who founder Chad Allen . . .
The PTA Movie We’ve Been Waiting For Since Boogie Nights
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Fifteen minutes into Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After AnotherI jotted the note — “The movie we’ve been waiting for since Boogie Nights!” Sumpthin else I wrote down a couple of times (and thought many more) – “Great cinematic storytelling!” Words like “riveting” … “engaging” … “exciting” … “fast-paced” … “heart-pounding” … “movie for adults” … were also scribbled in the dark.
PTA was born for the big screen — and he’s just getting better at it. I’m not a fan of soap-opera-like storyline-jumping films like Magnolia (as good as it is!), and the subject matter and lead characters in most of his other post-Boogie films haven’t grabbed me despite loving the smart filmmaking with tremendous casts, performances & screenplays.
But this film’s about former ’60s radicals on the run from an out-of-control government — and that resonated with me as I imagine it’s going to with audiences. It currently has an 8.5/10 audience rating on IMDb with over half the voters worldwide giving it either a 9 or a 10, plus 96% positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. And I imagine the Motion Picture Academy’s going to like it, too. Expect nominations for Best Picture, Director, Screenplay, Editing, Original Score for Jonny Greenwood (of Radiohead), Supporting Actor for Sean Penn, and maybe Cassandra Kulukundis in the inaugural Best Casting category (and maybe others). And if there was a category for Best Location Shooting, he’d be in that, too.
In a film-watching rarity for me, my heart was actually racing for a lot of this — watching realistic fast-paced fast-cut chases (often in POV) involving flawed good-guys and even more flawed bad-guys.
PTA started writing elements of this story back in 2000 (!) but couldn’t put all the pieces together until a couple years ago, then finally began shooting it in early 2024. What he envisioned and portrays is a racist U.S. government conducting militaristic raids on immigrants and targeting domestic law-abiding ‘enemies’ for personal reasons. The orange pig & his squealers are gonna hate that this is popular.
PTA and Quentin Tarantino have been compared to each other since Boogie Nights, which led to them becoming close friends. Q was unable to make Inglourious Basterds until he found the multi-lingual Christoph Waltz to play Col. Landa. Similarly, PTA couldn’t make this movie until he found a teenage-looking mixed-race actress for the role of Willa who could carry scenes with Leonardo DiCaprio, which he finally did with the unknown Chase Infiniti (whatta name!), making her film debut.
Then there’s Jonny Greenwood’s often minimalistic but always driving score that’s as much a character as the actors, often with just percussion or piano or classical guitar so it’s never orchestral sweet but always cuts to the chase and the bone. He & PTA have been collaborating on every film since There Will Be Blood (2007), and it’s composed as the film is being shot so the tone and tempo always matches the energy of the scene.
When I saw that it was 2 hrs & 41 minutes I thought, Oh no — Mr. Final Cut probably needed an objective set of eyes — but my gawd this thing flies by at lightning speed. The editing is just masterful — and is one of the reasons I kept thinking this is cinematic storytelling at its very best. There’s no exposition with character dialog — this is all told visually — and quickly. I also jotted a note that I noticed my jaw had been hanging open for most of this movie!
If you haven’t heard, there’s a car chase scene over a river of hills in the desert that’s going to put this on every list of great car chases in film history. His buddy Tarantino made Death Proof to throw his hat in that ring, and now PTA’s joined him.
Oh — one of the passwords the revolutionaries use — “Green Acres, Beverly Hillbillies and Hooterville” — I knew I knew from somewhere, and sure enough in the closing credits they play its source — Gil Scott-Heron’s The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.
This is a fast-paced action film with humor. It’s a father-daughter love story. It’s topical commentary on today’s America. And it’s a filmmaking masterpiece.
Do NOT wait to watch this on your TV at home. See it in IMAX or the biggest screen in your town. This is why the world makes movies and theaters are a place. Do yourself a favor.
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Here’s a great conversation between Steven Spielberg and PTA at the Director’s Guild of America . . .
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Here’s a great recent interview with Paul Thomas Anderson . . .
Here’s a great recent interview with Sean Penn about the movie . . .
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And here’s a great director & cast interview at Lincoln Center . . .
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And here’s another nice director & actor panel after a recent SAG screening . . .
Or here’s another one after a screening at the Regal Union Square . . .
Or here’s a great collage of the actors from the film talking about making a movie with PTA . . .
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Or here’s a fun couch interview with a bunch of the cast . . .
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Here’s a piece about PTA and QT I wrote a couple months ago . . .
Or here’s another recent cinematic masterpiece broken down by scene including a lot of the key dialog and minor characters & songs identified and linked . . .
The Jerry Garcia-directed film “The Grateful Dead Movie” will be back in theaters for one night (Thurs Aug 14th) — and for *the first time* it’s been remastered in 4K for IMAX and remixed for their high-end surround-sound speakers. (!)
Revisiting the film, here’s some deets you may not know … or knew and forgot . . . 😁
— it was shot over five nights – Oct. 16-20, 1974 — at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco — because these might’ve been the band’s last shows. They ended up taking a 19-month hiatus, but at the time it was uncertain if they were going to keep going after nearly 10 years of non-stop touring. In fact, the ticket for the final show of the run was actually stamped “THE LAST ONE.’ They also had the idea the film could play around the country so they wouldn’t have to.
— shows started at 8PM — tickets were $5.00 — and it was produced / promoted by the great Bill Graham.
— just before these shows the band had returned from a 7-show tour of England, France & Germany (September 9th-21st). They had 3½ weeks to prep for the ‘final’ shows and the filming.
— before resuming their live show schedule in June of ’76, they played four one-offs in ’75 — a 5-song Blues For Allah set at the SNACK benefit in S.F. on 3/23/75; another Blues For Allah one-off run-thru at Winterland on 6/17/75; the classic Great American Music Hall show on 8/13/75 that became One From The Vault (in 1991); and a one-set show in Golden Gate Park on 9/28/75.
— the movie was released in theaters in the summer of ’77 (June 2nd).
— Mickey rejoined the group (after a 3½-year break) during the 2nd set of the final show. He showed up because he thought it might be “the last one” ever and he should be part of the wrap.
— opening night was Bob Weir’s *27th* birthday! Jerry was 32, Phil 34, Bill 28.
— this was really cinephile Jerry Garcia’s baby and passion project, and his obsession & indulgence was not particularly popular among his bandmates. As to his vision, Garcia told an interviewer, “I wanted elegantly framed, seamless photography. And I wanted a sort of roughness to the general quality of everything else. That was the only original conception.”
— Leon Gast was the director during the 5-show shoot, then Garcia took over after that and Gast bowed out. The outside editor they brought in, Susan Crutcher, said, “When I came on it they had about 100,000 feet of film to sync up. That alone took six months. What [Gast] did was introduce the television concept of [multiple cameras for complete coverage], which was quite new then. He was hip enough to know about SMPTE timecode, which was a video thing. So we were one of the first movies that ever tried to interface SMPTE timecode and film. It really was kind of the crest of the wave.” Gast went on the direct When We Were Kings about the Ali-Foreman “Rumble in The Jungle” fight that won him the Best Documentary Oscar in 1996. Interestingly, the events of that film also took place in October of 1974. (!)
— the two-years-long editing process, combined with not gigging, their failing Grateful Dead Records label, and a massive theft from the band by quasi-manager Ron Rakow, left the band bankrupt and in debt, with no income coming in — hence the ’76 return to touring and release of Steal Your Face.
— all-told, the movie cost $600,000 to make. Converting 1975 dollars to today, that would be about $3.5 million.
— the 7½ min opening hand-drawn frame-by-frame animation sequence cost more than twice the original filming costs (!) and took eight months to make . . . but it turned out so cool and iconic it’s been repurposed in the futuristic Sphere visuals in Las Vegas. U.S. Blues was chosen as the focused song because when they were making it it was the lead-up to the U.S. bicentennial, and the animator Gary Gutierrez (who’d been animating for Sesame Street at the time) was inspired by Jerry with the Uncle Sam top hat on the cover of the first album to create the Grateful Dead skeleton wearing it. The only ideas or guidance Jerry gave him was the vague idea to make the concert posters come to life, and that “chance” should be part of it — something that showed up in a lot of their songs and manifests in the animation with playing cards, dice & pinball. Garcia & editor Susan Crutcher came up with the audio backing first (Late For Supper / Spidergawd / Eep Hour [from the 1972 Garcia solo album], U.S. Blues etc.) then Gary worked to put visuals to it. Once the animation was complete they went to Jerry’s studio in Marin and he added all sorts of sound effects. Animator Gary would go on to direct the Dead’s first music video for Touch of Grey. In fact, he was the one who came up with the idea to have the skeleton puppets playing and then turn into the real guys. He also did the surreal intro to the CBS reboot of The Twilight Zone in 1985 that Garcia played the music for.
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A pic I snapped at the Grateful Dead exhibit at the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame
— with a musician as the director, Jerry guided the editing cuts to be in synch with the music beats.
— they used a 46-person film crew — with seven cameras shooting in 16mm, including one on a crane — and recorded the shows on two 16-track machines (so they could start a new tape on one before the other ran out, thus capturing it all).
— pioneering documentarian Albert Maysles was one of the cameramen (who focused mainly on the audience); also shooting was the esteemed Don Lenzer, who helped shoot Woodstock and five other Oscar-winning films, doing the excellent handheld work close to Jerry. The cameramen were not on headsets being directed by anybody but rather all just free-flowing capturing whatever moved them.
— Owsley was the band’s soundman that night and Candace Brightman was doing the lights. Dan Healy mixed the music for the movie and Betty Canter also assisted.
— they played the show thru the Wall of Sound — its last-ever appearance on a stage. There’s great footage of the crew setting it up. The band continued on but it was really the famous sound system’s ‘last one.’
— the top of the two microphones was the vocal mic, the bottom being a reverse polarity to cancel out the feedback from the speakers behind. Note there’s no monitors in front of the band. All the sound the players heard came from behind them.
— unprecedented for the time and still rare, the initial idea for the film was to take the viewer to a Grateful Dead show, including entering the venue, talking to people during the set break, looking at the fans around you as well as the band, and to present things as they really were. An early working title was The Grateful Dead: Warts and All.
— the film was featured as the first Grateful Dead Meet-Up At The Movies in 2011, then again in 2017 (for its 40th anniversary), but neither were offered in IMAX as it is in 2025 — the first time any Dead film can be experienced this way. If you haven’t made it to the Sphere, this is the next best thing. This year’s screening will also feature a 15-minute China Cat–>I Know You Rider from the Winterland run that will be shown after the closing credits.
— The Band would stage and film their own farewell Last Waltz concert on this same stage two years later.
— as to the decision to make the movie so much about the fans, Garcia said around this time, “We didn’t invent the Grateful Dead, the crowd invented the Grateful Dead. We were just in line to see what would happen.”
— 34 mins in a Jack Kerouac quote from On The Road written on the wall of Winterland is zoomed in on — “Pass here and go on, you’re on the road to heaven.” No doubt huge Kerouac fan Garcia made sure this shot was in the movie.
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— here’s what Jerry wrote about Jack in 1989 when Rhino re-released his three records in a box set —
— at 35 mins (also probably at Garcia’s direction) there’s a brief capture of the legendary bespectacled San Francisco Chronicle music writer Ralph Gleason in line entering Winterland with all the young Deadheads. He was an influential early champion of the band’s music in the straight press world (as he was for Lenny Bruce and Bob Dylan) and was one of the founders of Rolling Stone magazine. He tragically died of a heart attack just nine months after these shows, but his name still remains in the magazine’s masthead all these decades later.
— there’s an actual Phil bass solo in Eyes of the World! He always played a ‘lead’ style bass, but rarely does he take a featured solo. Once again, I’m sure this was a Garcia call to include this of the many songs they had to choose from.
— it’s a nice change to see the one-dummer band on film with Billy alone powering the engine.
— the comically long pause between Sugar Magnolia and the Sunshine Daydream coda is beautifully & dramatically captured.
— occasional sit-in Ned Lagin can be seen (but not heard due to recording f*ck ups) on keys behind/beside Garcia during Morning Dew and the Johnny B. Goode climax.
— the double live album Steal Your Face was also recorded at these shows.
— a 2-disc DVD of the film was released in 2004 (and re-released on Blu-ray in 2011) including 95 mins of additional concert footage of great performances too long for the film, like a 16-min Other One, a 13-min Scarlet Begonias, a 17-min San Francisco Dark Star, a 15-min China–Rider, and the last ever full Weather Report Suite clocking in at nearly 17 mins — where Garcia goes into a trance and plays maybe the best solo of the film or extras! It also has a 28-min “Look Back” mini-doc with interviews shot in 2004; a very informative 17-min doc on the “Making of the Animation” featuring animator Gary Gutierrez explaining how he created it; a 14-min doc on how David Lemieux assembled the additional footage & Jeffrey Norman improved the audio with 21st century technology; plus a wonderfully informative & fun Commentary version of the original film with its Supervising Editor Susan Crutcher & her Assistant Editor John Nutt all guided by the DVDs producer Frank Zamacona. They mention, among many other things, that when Garcia was not in the editing room he’d sit on the couch in the front of the Film House with his guitar writing Terrapin Station and making notes on napkins and stuffing them in his briefcase. 😁
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Here’s an interview about the movie I did (8/9/25) with the president of Lowell Celebrates Kerouac, Mike Flynn, on WUML, in Jack’s old hometown, and set to some cool visuals . . .
Or here’s an account of being at a Grateful Dead concert in 1982 at the greatest outdoor venue in North America — Red Rocks Amphitheater in Colorado — from my book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Jack Kerouac . . .
Or here’s a feature story on the definitive Grateful Dead documentary Long Strange Trip after an advance screening at the Lightbox in Toronto and post-screening hang-outs with director Amir Bar-Lev and GD archivist David Lemieux . . .
I’ve been on a James Mangold deep-dive recently and this guy needs to be in any conversation about the greatest directors working today.
He’s averaged a new film roughly every two years since his first low-budget indie (Heavy) in 1995, which won a Special Jury Recognition for Directing at Sundance and kind-of jump-started his career. He wrote it under the tutelage of the great Miloš Forman who took the young prodigy under his wing at Columbia. In a way it set the template for what his film oeuvre would be — namely, about relationships — not so much plot, and certainly not special effects. His films are about how people react to each other and interact with one another.
His Best Picture-nominated Ford v Ferrari wasn’t so much about race cars and an historic development in design history, but rather the relationship between driver and designer. A Complete Unknown wasn’t so much a biopic of Dylan’s young life, but his relationship with those around him at the time. 3:10 to Yuma wasn’t a conventional Western with cookie-cutter good guys and bad guys, but rather about how a ruthless killer and an honorable ranchman could find commonality.
Another thing that puts him high on the ranking of not only contemporary filmmakers but of all-time is how he doesn’t limit himself to one genre over the 13 films he’s helmed. He’s made a couple music biopics (Walk The Line and A Complete Unknown), a men-centric story (Cop Land) followed by a women-centric film (Girl, Interrupted), a Western (3:10 to Yuma) followed by a comedy action picture (Knight and Day), a romantic comedy (Kate & Leopold) followed by a Hitchcockian thriller (Identity), a Marvel superhero movie (The Wolverine) followed by a straight sci-fi film (Logan) followed by a docudrama (Ford v Ferrari) followed by an Indiana Jones movie — and following his hit Dylan biopic he’s in pre-production to write & helm the next Star Wars movie, and is also developing a romantic film (Juliet) about a modern woman who may be related to Shakespeare’s legendary protagonist. There aren’t many directors in history who have that many genres covered in their whole career, let alone their first dozen pictures.
He was recognized in the film world as something of a prodigy early on. He had a development deal with Disney at age 22, Miloš Foreman took him on as his mentor, and his first script of a virtually no-budget indie film about a non-sexy subject (a heavyset insecure chef in a Nowheresville diner) attracted no less than Shelley Winters, Liv Tyler and Debbie Harry.
The young savant was interviewed on Charlie Rose even before he’d made his first film.
Heavy led to his first real-budget film ($15 mil), Cop Land, attracting Sylvester Stallone in the lead trying to break out of his pigeon-holed Rocky/Rambo mold, and a supporting cast of no less than Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, Ray Liotta, Michael Rapaport, John Spencer, Frank Vincent, Cathy Moriarty, Edie Falco and Janeane Garofalo all signing on to an essentially first-time-director’s script and movie — because they all realized this guy was happening.
As Mangold has shared, when he first met Bob Dylan while developing what would become A Complete Unknown, the first sentence to him out of Bob’s mouth was, “I loved Cop Land.”
Here’s a young Mangold with Stallone and Ray Liotta on the Charlie Rose Show just as the film was coming out in 1997 —
. And here’s great little ‘Making-of’ doc about Cop Land —
The film turned a profit at the box office (unusual for a first-time director’s work) and paved the way for his next picture, Girl, Interrupted, where he went from essentially an all-male film to an all-female story. Again he attracted a kind-of unheard-of cast for a young director, including Vanessa Redgrave, Whoopi Goldberg, Winona Ryder, Elisabeth Moss, Britney Murphy, Mary Kay Place, Jared Leto, Jeffrey Tambor, and directed Angelina Jolie to an Oscar-winning performance.
After the success of Girl, Interrupted, he co-wrote and directed a time-travel romantic comedy, Kate and Leopold, with Hugh Jackman & Meg Ryan, but also Liev Schreiber, Spalding Grey, Bradley Whitford, Philip Bosco, Viola Davis, with an Oscar-nominated song by Sting.
I’m writing about Mangold because I recently rewatched his Oscar-nominated 8-times-over A Complete Unknown on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of Dylan going electric at Newport and was reminded again what a cinematic masterpiece that film is. When I first saw an advance screening and everyone was raving (or bitching) about Timothée Chalamet and the story & songs of Bob Dylan coming to the biopic screen, my takeaway, as I shared that night on social media and to friends, was that James Mangold was the story of this movie.
Mangold is a true auteur in that he writes (or co-writes) most of the films he directs, and has a cinematic vision that is present in every genre of movies he makes, from westerns and sci-fi to rom-coms and biopics — and that is character. Early on he developed a beyond-his-years wisdom about editing and cinematic storytelling that has served audiences well. He’s shared one of his early cinematic life-lessons with young screenwriters/filmmakers: “Write like you’re sitting next to a blind person at the movie theater, and you’re describing the movie, and if you take too long to describe what’s happening, you’ll fall behind because the movie’s still moving.” You can hear the whole (highly recommended) 5-minute riff here —
Film lovers are living through a time with a master in our midst who is rarely talked about as such — but certainly deserves to be in any conversation of whoever you think are the greatest living directors. I hope this little riff turns some people onto him because, boy, you’re missing out if you’re not there already.
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This scene-by-scene time-coded breakdown of A Complete Unknown full of quotes and links to every song has proven to be one of the most popular pieces on my site in recent years with scores of people from all over the world still reading it every single day.
I recently stumbled on a Paul Thomas Anderson (PTA) interview about Boogie Nights from 1997 and began revisiting of his work.
I’ve now seen all of his nine written-&-directed films, most more than once, and he’s certainly up there with the greatest of the active mid-career contemporary filmmakers.
Since Boogie Nights he’s been compared to Tarantino, and they became best friends through the process. I think Q is still number one, and PTA is an absolute master, but there’s also Edgar Wright, the Coen brothers, Damien Chazell and others I’ll make a point of seeing anything they make.
Upon its release, Boogie Nights was so often compared to Pulp Fiction that PTA reached out to Tarantino to make sure he knew that the new director wasn’t planting this idea or anything. They became and remain close friends with Q saying that PTA is his competition and that he pushes him to be better, including specifically that Inglourious Basterds was a better film because of There Will Be Blood.
Q and PTA are two of the most influential, respected and successful of contemporary auteurs, with most of their movies getting multiple Oscar nominations including usually Best Picture. It’s no wonder they ended becoming close friends since they share such similar cinematic sensibilities.
One thing I really like about both of them is how wholly original each film is — that they don’t keep plowing the same ground. Of PTA’s most recent films — Licorice Pizza was set in 1973 in the San Fernando Valley, Phantom Thread in the early ’50s in London, The Master after WWII in various U.S. cities, and There Will Be Blood in the early 1900s in oil country in the midwest. Similarly Tarantino’s last few were set in L.A. in 1969, Wyoming in 1877, the slave states in 1858, and war-torn Europe in 1941.
Both grew up in L.A., and I love how neither went to film school, but each simply started writing and making their own movies. In fact, PTA said he learned how to make movies by listening to director’s commentaries on DVDs!
Both are real writers who love the process of isolating themselves away and creating their scripts, and both are masters of the art of ‘mundane’ conversations revealing characters’ identity. Both are known to be sticklers for the execution of their precise dialog — yet both are wise enough collaborative creators to allow for improvisation and incorporating actors’ ideas during shoots. Of the precise scripts, PTA says — “the script is the director” — which I love.
Besides both being word-centric screenwriters they’re also known to be “actor’s directors” in that they respect the process & profession and create an environment where actors feel empowered and can stretch and take chances. Oscar-nominated or winning actors like Tom Cruise, Sam Jackson, Sean Penn, Bradley Cooper, Phil Hoffman, Amy Adams, Reese Witherspoon, Gwyneth Paltrow etc. don’t sign on to PTA’s movies because they’re big paydays — it’s because they’re great scripts.
And speaking of actors, both directors show an eye for older actors Hollywood has cast aside — Tarantino famously with John Travolta, Robert Forrester and Pam Grier, and PTA with Burt Reynolds (leading to his one & only Oscar nomination), and Philip Baker Hall who he used in three major films plus his early short Cigarettes and Coffee.
And both have an eye for unrecognized talent. Tarantino is famous for the career-springboard casting of Samuel L. Jackson, Christoph Waltz, Eli Roth, Margaret Qualley, Austin Butler, among many others, and PTA hired John C. Reilly, Philip Seymour Hoffman & Mark Wahlberg before they were household names, and most recently gave Hoffman’s son Cooper his first starring role (in Licorice Pizza) which has launched him onto the A-list.
One other quirky commonality — they each made one now-classic film about aspects of the film industry — Boogie Nights and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood — and in both cases chose to make a movie (or TV show or documentary) within the movie. They both seem to love making movies so much they just couldn’t help themselves but to make another movie by the moviemaking characters within their movie movie.
It’s fun to appreciate greatness when it’s in the present and not the past. Maybe Q is only going to make one more film, but PTA has no such limitations, and besides, most of the great work by these two auteurs has come in the last 20 years. This isn’t Hitchcock or Billy Wilder we’re talking — these guys are very much part of our 21st century world.
And not fer nuthin but PTA’s next film (in theaters Sept 26, 2025) called One Battle After Another stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Benicio Del Toro and Sean Penn.
Here’s a great conversation between the two of them (filmed in Q’s screening room at his house) talking about The Hateful Eight, 70mm film, and filmmaking in general . . .
Or here’s another great conversation between the two of them right after Once Upon a Time … In Hollywood came out . . . two brilliant directors discussing how a masterpiece was made.
Here’s my master movie page with over 900 great films listed and sorted by Comedies, Dramas, Biopics, Documentaries, Movies About Making Movies, Movies About Politics, Music Movies, Beat Generation Docs & Dramas, Trippy Movies, Disturbing Movies, Made-For-TV Exceptions, and here’s the link cued to the Auteur section.
By the laws of physics, taking a trip while you’re on a trip exponentially amplifies the experience.
Here’s some of the peaks in the weeks with the freaks . . .
The Black Dot
“Sometimes you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right.”
I discovered if you keep staring into the black dot in the middle of the swirling visual, your eyes trip to other places — like starring into those old Magic Eye images — you begin seeing things you never saw before.
It’s the most amazing psychedelic visual I’ve ever seen — and I’ve seen a lot!
Photo credit: Christina Foley
The Sphere 400 section rafters — the best place to experience the best venue ever built.
The top of the Eiffel Tower — the best place to experience the view of the party that is Las Vegas,
Wild Nights — front row 200 section Golden Knights vs Minnesota Wild playoff game – where the home team won in overtime!
Virtually on stage with Joe Russo’s Almost Dead (JRAD) and their guests Branford Marsalis & Oteil Burbridge.
The walk-in Stealie on Shakedown Street.
Going to the beach under the Northern Lights at the Arte Museum.
Cirque du Soleil’s Mystere show.
Cirque du Soleil’s Mad Apple and its ‘wheel of death.’
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I’d never given Las Vegas a moment’s thought in my life. I checked in with some cultural colleagues I’ve been jamming the arts with for 40+ years and none of us can remember the city ever coming up for any reason. In fact, it was kind of looked down upon as this superficial wasteland of has-beens trying to prop themselves up one last time in front of drunk white-trash tourists with free tickets.
The one thing that made me even consider the place was Cirque du Soleil doing The BeatlesLOVE show there starting in 2006. Every account of it was an over-the-top rave, and the video snippets made it look like the Sgt Pepper cover come to life with every character morphing into a flying acrobat. The show was created at George Harrison’s instigation and the music put together by George & Giles Martin blending 120 songs and outtakes into an audio-visual orgy. But even THAT couldn’t get me to Vegas thru 18 years of it blowing people’s minds!
Being a concert venue and architecture guy, I’d been reading about the Sphere since before it ever broke ground. It sounded too fantastic to be true, and I remember salivating at the thought, “IMAGINE seeing a Dead show show there!! They are just MADE for this place!!”
Then BOOM! It finally opens (at a cost of two billion dollars!) and sure as shit the Dead are one of the first acts booked to make use of the arena-sized screen in 16k and 167,000 speakers creating a literal surround-sound.
Thus began my deep dive into a town I knew nothing about and its gems have kept revealing themselves like an endlessly-opening lotus.
Heading back in 2025 for my second 9-day residency I figured I’d put some of my findings on a webpage that I’ll add to as new discoveries are uncovered.
These are all things that you can ONLY do in Las Vegas, and this is only scratching the surface, but it’ll give you some good leads for one-of-a-kind mind-blowing fun.
Pro tip — anything you’re considering experiencing in Vegas will have multiple videos of it on YouTube so you can check it out to decide if you want to do it or not.
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Photo Credit: Alive Coverage — and note: there *is* a band on a stage in this photo 🙂
Roughly in order of must-dos . . . [prices & deets as of April 2025]
The Sphere – at a cost of 2.3 billion dollars this is the most technologically advanced venue ever built — with a 16k (!) immersive screen surrounding you — 75-times larger than your average IMAX screen — and 167,000 speakers built in so the volume does not need to be loud but is crystal-clear wherever you are. If any band you remotely like is playing there – GO! Plus there are two specially made films for the Sphere that play there — Darren Aronofsky’s Postcards From Earth and U2’s V-U2 An Immersive Concert Film. Or here’s my Facebook photo album from my first visit there in 2024.
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Cirque du Soleil in Cirque City, as I like to call Vegas. Cirque is to theater what the Sphere is to concert venues. There’s nothing else like it in the world. And in Vegas they’re performing in custom-built theaters — unlike when you may see them touring in a town near you. THIS is the place to experience a Cirque show. Tickets might seem expensive at first blush, but they’re less than half (and maybe a quarter) of what you pay at the Sphere. There’s nothing else like these shows staged anywhere else on the planet. To my eyes, the gymnastics I see at a Cirque show makes me wonder how anyone takes the Olympics seriously. 😅
As of 2025 they have five shows running. Sadly their crown-jewel Beatles LOVE show closed (after 18 years) during the Dead’s first residency in 2024, after which its home at the Mirage was taken over to make way for the next super-resort.
But you can still experience KÀ at the MGM Grand which is to staging what the Sphere is to the screen with a multiple moving platform stages that span 15 stories in height (!)
“O“, the water Cirque, takes place in a 1.5 million-gallon pool in a custom-built theater at the Bellagio with 85 acrobats. It’s also been a hit in Vegas since it first premiered in 1998.
Mystère features multi-genre music played live by a killer jazz-level 10-piece band, and is staged in their first custom-build theater — at the Sphere-near Treasure Island. It’s so stunning it’s been playing nonstop for 30+ years.
If you like Michael Jackson, there’s their One show with 25 of his songs set to actors & acrobatics at Mandalay Bay.
Cirque’s newest show, Mad Apple opened in the New York New York resort in 2022 and brings to life a night out in Manhattan including music (played by a huge super-diverse crackerjack band, as befitting New York standards), comedy, dancing, street performers, sports, magic and the downtown bar scene. We saw it the night before our Sphere run this year and loved the funny magician, the risqué comedian, the guy balancing on about ten rollers twenty feet high, and the climactic ‘wheel of death.’
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The Eiffel Tower 46th-floor observation deck — I find it very helpful to have a firsthand aerial perspective of the landscape I’m living in. The Strip is roughly 4 miles long — from Mandalay Bay to the south to the Strat on the north end — with the Eiffel Tower basically in the middle. You ride up in a glass-walled elevator thru the center of the tower to an outdoor deck with a metal grill screen which has nice holes for taking pictures. Tickets are $25 in the lobby gift shop.
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Arte Museum at Aria is the greatest art space you can experience in Vegas. It’s a dozen rooms with 360º aural & visual sensory immersion of different natural spaces from forests to oceanfronts. Then they have a main “great room” that fills with various installations from Impressionist paintings to playful tributes to Vegas. It uses cutting-edge technology to create moving imagery that’s projected on the floor and all the walls. This is the only place you can experience it outside of Asia. On the oceanfront the water from the waves washes across the floor, and in the forest psychedelic animals appear and disappear. I walked thru the whole thing three times when I first went! Here’s my Facebook photo album with a bunch of images. Tickets are $40 for the early bird entry (10–11:30AM) and $50 from noon to 9PM. You need to buy them in advance here.
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Meow Wolf (aka Omega Mart) is the super-trippy sculpted indoor playground over an acre in size with multiple levels and things to play with. There’s cave holes you can crawl through to new spaces, and wild visual light shows going on everywhere designed for people who clearly see colors vividly. It’s like a surrealdream you had but manifested as a physical place. It’s located in a massive complex called Area 15 (a play on Nevada’s Area 51) which includes all sorts of other trippy attractions like The Illuminarium which is currently featuring a new 50-minute 360º immersive history of rock movie called “Amplified,” plus there’s a big outdoor sculpture garden, numerous restaurants and one-of-a-kind indoor sculptures. It’s open daily 11AM to 11PM and you can/should buy timed entry tickets in advance here for $54. I would plan for a minimum of a couple hours to do this right.
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Fremont Street aka “The Fremont Street Experience” is the original strip in downtown Vegas and the place where the locals celebrate, leaving the regular Strip near the Sphere to the tourists. This is my go-to after Dead at the Sphere shows because the circus is in full swing on weekend nights. It has the largest LED screen in the world covering fully four city blocks — so it’s sorta the closest thing to the Sphere — and on weekend nights they have full bands playing non-stop on 3 different stages, plus buskers and street performers of all sorts from one end to the other. It also has the oldest continuously operating casino in Vegas, the El Cortez (opened in 1941), as well as the original Golden Nugget casino and the famous original Vegas Vic neon sign — the giant cowboy beckoning people into the old Pioneer Club. Put up in 1951 — the year Kerouac first wrote the On The Road scroll and before rock n roll was even invented (!) — it was sort of Vegas’s first Sphere in that it was a pioneering cutting-edge light creation that changed the world sparking the neon signage we take for granted today. There’s also the Golden Gate — the oldest continuously-functioning hotel in Vegas [dating from 1906] which has a bunch of historic artifacts including century-old slot machines and Vegas’s first telephone! Across the street, at the terminus of Fremont, is Vegas’s Plaza Hotel which has a Sand Dollar Lounge with live bands most nights and is always free to get in. Plus there’s a zip-line so you can fly the length of the street for $50 if you’re so inclined. Tickets here. Of course walking the street is free, but it’s a bit like the old Times Square so be mindful of hustlers and pickpockets.
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And don’t miss the largest glass sculpture in the world in Bellagio’s lobby ceiling and their flower conservatorythat’s completely done anew four times a year and features massive sculptures made out of living flowers. Both are open 24-hours and are you-can’t-believe-it kind of things. I have a Facebook photo album on the two spaces here.
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Absinthe is a take-off on Cirque du Soleil but is more of a comic risqué burlesque and adult-oriented show. It’s been playing since 2011 in-the-round in a big 750-capacity tent in front of Caesar’s Palace. It’s sort of a low-budget Cirque show — modeled after a traveling circus, without Cirque’s elaborate sets, music, costumes or death-defying acrobatics. All sorts of interesting people have done cameos in it over the years from Daniel Radcliffe to Olivia Newton-John. You can get tickets here.
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The Cirque shows and Absinthe were born and raised in Las Vegas, but a psychedelic cousin of theirs moved to town and into the Luxor in 2000, Blue Man Group. If you’re into drumming and improvisation and performance theater, this is eye and ear candy for the soul. They do two shows a night seven days a week with lots of tix for $37 n the intimate 800-seat theater.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vchYQ6aJwgs
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The rollercoaster atop New York New York. When was the last time you rode a rollercoaster? Right? Why not do it on the roof of the New York building with all of Las Vegas around you as you whirl past the Statue of Liberty and other New York landmarks? It’s $25, and you get tickets at the site.
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The Neon Sign Boneyard Museum is the home to over 800 neon signs from throughout Vegas history, 250 of which are on display in “the boneyard.” The La Concha Motel donated their entire shell-shaped lobby which became the visitor’s center. You can walk among prime historic pieces (dating back to the 1930s) of hand-blown light-as-art which eventually evolved into the Sphere and the 4-block LED screen covering Fremont St. There’s also a 40-min. 360º audiovisual show called “Brilliant” that re-animates the old signs and history of Vegas using 3D-sound and 3D photogrammetry to bring everything to life. This started as just a ‘graveyard’ of old neon signs, but people kept wanting to come and see them, so it grew slowly and organically into a ‘museum’ for visitors which now number 200,000 per year. It’s open from 3PM till 11PM and tickets are $35 after 6PM when you want to see it with the signs lit up. You can get the tickets here.
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A photo-op at the iconic “Welcome To Fabulous Las Vegas” sign is a cab/ride-share away in the median of Las Vegas Blvd South at the southern tip of the Strip just past Mandalay Bay. Erected in 1959, it was designed by Betty Willis who also did the famous Moulin Rouge lettering marquee that’s now in the Neon Sign Boneyard. And in more cool news, all the bulbs on the sign are lit by solar power. 💖 There’s a parking lot right there in the median where you can be dropped off & picked up. And if there’s a line to take pictures there’s often a photographer who’ll take your pic unnoticeably off-center for a tip and you can skip the line. It’s another one of the cool Free things to do in town — except for the cab rides and the tip. Also — always have cash to pay for the cabs/ride-shares. There’s an automatic $3 surcharge (that tourists don’t know about) if you use plastic.
Red Rock Canyon — time & distance: 30 mins / 20 miles West. Can be both a driving and/or hiking experience. Timed reservations are required – one-hour entry time-slots — available here. $20 per car.
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Valley of Fire — time & distance: 45 mins / 45 miles. Kind like Bryce Canyon in Utah with Aztec sandstone outcroppings and 2,000 year old petroglyphs. It’s free to go to the State Park, but many of the trails are closed from May 15th to Sept 30th due to the desert heat.
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The Seven Magic Mountains — time & distance: 15 mins / 10 miles South — large free outdoor art installation by Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone — seven large cool colorful 30-foot-high monoliths in the desert just south of town.
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Restaurants:
Peppermill Restaurant & Lounge has got a lush, surreal, positively psychedelic interior design. It’s become an institution in Vegas in its 50 years for huge helpings of great food, and is a setting for lots of movies & TV shows. When Jerry Seinfeld met up with his old friend George Wallace in Vegas, the Peppermill is where they chose to go. Scenes in The Cotton Club,Casino and Showgirls were shot there, and is where Penn Jillette & Paul Provenza “thought out, laid out, planned, budgeted and scheduled” their movie The Aristocrats. It’s on the strip one mile north of Treasure Island / the Palazzo.
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Blueberry Hill FamilyRestaurant — A family-owned and operated Las Vegas institution known for its great home-cooked food. The main location is just a little bit east of the Strip at 1505 East Flamingo Rd — and is open 24 hours! Here’s the menu.
In-N-Out Burger — The famous family-owned California burger chain has a location on the fun & active pedestrian promenade in between the LINQ and the Flamingo.
I’ve heard there’ great Chinese food in Chinatown but I’ve yet to hit it. If anybody has any specific tips, lemme know.
This is a scene-by-scene breakdown ofthe Dylan biopic masterpiece A Complete Unknown co-written and directed by James Mangold. Besides being one of the best living filmmakers, Mangold was undoubtably tapped because of how well he handled the Oscar-winning Johnny Cash biopic Walk The Line.
After Jeff Rosen and Bob’s management team optioned the Elijah Wald book Dylan Goes Electric in 2017, the movie was in development for a couple years when Covid hit. Just prior to the lockdown, Mangold and Bob’s team were at an impasse. Mangold and his cowriter Jay Cocks (who’d helped Scorsese with his No Direction Home documentary about the same period) had written the script that basically became the movie we know. But Bob’s management team were saying they didn’t like how it focused on his personal life and wanted it more about his songwriting. Mangold maintained that a movie is about people and relationships. Neither side was backing down.
Then Dylan’s 2020 tour got canceled due to the lockdown. Suddenly Bob was unexpectedly sitting around, and asked his office to send him the script. To their surprise (and embarrassment) he loved it. Of Mangold, Bob told his office, “He doesn’t have an agenda.” And added they should ask the director if he wants to meet up.
Thus began a series of five full afternoons they spent together. As Mangold tells it, the first meeting, he was expecting it to last maybe an hour, but Bob just wanted to keep talking movies and filmmaking all day.
They went over the script line-by-line multiple times, with Bob adding lines and context and background. They even did a table read together with Bob reading all the lines we heard Timothée Chalamet deliver, and Mangold performing all the other parts.
The movie turned out to be a biopic masterpiece — and it’s gotta be the only one in history that the subject had such a direct hand in creating. And . . . it’s Bob frickin’ Dylan’s hand!
I created this breakdown because I wanted to understand how they did it. It gave me cause to look up some of the songs we only hear briefly in passing. I transcribed a bunch of the dialog so I’d have a record of what exactly was said on screen. And I time-coded it so I could go directly to any scene I wanted to re-investigate.
I also did this in an even more detailed way for Peter Jackson’s historic The Beatles: Get Back. That’s turned out to be one of the most popular pieces on my website which has nearly 300 stories on it. Many people read that piece every single day, and I’ve heard from both college professors and high school teachers in both the U.S. and the U.K. who’ve told me they’ve used it in their classrooms. So I figured this might be something others would find useful.
2:25 – inside the Kettle of Fish Bob asks the bartender where Greystone Hospital is (where Woody is a patient). Dave Van Ronk walks up to the bar and tells him it’s in New Jersey.
3:10 – Pete Seeger in court – actor and Kerouac aficionado Peter Gerety as the one-eyed judge.
9:30 – Bob sings Song For Woody– masterful – every song in the movie is played live on camera. The long note he holds at the end was unplanned and caught everyone by surprise including Chalamet.
12:00 – Bob riding in car with Pete. Bob asks to play the radio, identifies Little Richard’s Slippin’ and Slidin’ as the flip side on Long Tall Sally.
Bob: “If you’re talkin about rock n roll specifically, you gotta be talkin about Buddy Holly.” Pete doesn’t care for it, and Bob says “Yeah, but sometimes they sound good.”
13:30 – Arrive at Pete’s house, meets his wife Toshi. They set him up on bed in the living room. Pete to Toshi in bed: “He played us a hell of a song.”
14:15 – Bob next morning playing what he’s written so far of Girl From The North Country – Pete & the family listen. “Good start,” says his daughter, cutely. 😀
16:15 – Pete Seeger on stage at a Town Hall type venue, Bob watching admiringly from the wings.
Pete comes off stage and promises Bob: “I’m gonna get you out there. I am.”
17:25 – Joan Baez seen from behind walking along the sidewalk to Folk City. She goes into the dressing room, Albert Grossman is waiting, she tells him to leave.
21:30 – Pete Seeger introduces Bob – “A month or so ago Woody and I met a young man. He kinda just dropped in on us, and he sang us a song. Well, it fairly struck us to the ground. And Woody and I felt that maybe we were gettin’ a glimpse of a new road. This young man has been playing around town a bit, but I thought it was high time he took the stage at Folk City. So, I want you to give a warm welcome to Bob Dylan.” Bob on stage: “How ’bout that Joan Baez, folks? She’s pretty good. And she’s pretty. Sings pretty. Maybe a little too pretty.” then laughs at his own comment.
24:50 – Bob shows up late for his recording session. Albert reads him the Robert Shelton New York Times review in the elevator. Bob doesn’t like it until Albert reads, “… but when he works his guitar, there’s no doubt he is bursting at the seams with talent.” Bob: “Hey! What?” and he grabs the paper from Albert. 😀
25:40 — Bob in the Columbia Studio A recording studio. John Hammond at the mixing console. Bob plays Fixin’ To Die (by Booker T. Washington/Bukka White) 26:35 – Albert to John Hammond: “He has originals, too, you know. And they’re really good.” Hammond: “Traditional repertoire for now, Albert. We’re putting a younger face on folk.”
30:50 – Bob & Sylvie in diner after seeing movie. Sylvie: “What do you want to be?” Bob: “A musician. Who eats.” Sylvie: “Well, I like your songs.” Bob: “My record comes out in a couple weeks.” Sylvie: “Some of the songs you played today on your record?” Bob: “It’s mostly covers. It’s traditional stuff. Y’know, folk songs are supposed to stand the test of time, like Shakespeare or something. They say no one wants to hear what a kid wrote last month.” Sylvie: “Who’s ‘they’?” Bob: “The record company. My manager.” Sylvie: “I’m sorry, but, Where Have All The Flowers Gone? is not Shakespeare. There was a time when the old songs were new, right? Someone at some point had to give the songs a chance. I mean, there’s a civil war going on down south. The biggest military buildup in history. Nuclear bombs hanging over us. It’s not all about the Dust Bowl and Johnny Appleseed anymore.”
32:35 – They walk on nighttime sidewalk to Sylvie’s subway stop, talk of CORE, she gives him a (writer & Partisan Review editor) Dwight Macdonald article. “He’s contrarian, like you.” She gives him her number.
33:40 – Bob in a neighborhood record store, Joan Baez’s Silver Dagger is playing, he sees her albums selling out of the bins.
34:15 – Sylvie takes Bob to a Black protest rally.
34:35 – Bob & Sylvie arrive at their apt. Mailman catches them. “Package for Zimmerman.”
34:50 – Bob up in the middle of the night writing songs.
35:10 – Bob at Woody’s room in the hospital singing him Blowin’ In The Wind. An orderly comes in and tells him to stop singing – Bob bolder now – speaks up. Orderly: “There’s another gentleman in this room and he’s trying to rest.” Bob: “Yeah, he’s been resting for six months. I don’t think it’s working.” 😀 Pete arrives, “Well, I guess every deck come with two jokers, don’t it?” 😀
36:30 – party in Bob & Sylvie’s apartment. Dave Van Ronk talking to Bob & others: “You can call it country or blues or rock ‘n’ roll – we all keep rewriting the same songs.”
37:25 – Bob watching Johnny Cash on TV (singing Folsom Prison Blues) while Sylvie is packing for her 12 week trip to Rome. Sylvie says she wants to get to know the real Bob. Sylvie as she’s leaving: “You’re ambitious. I think that scares you.” She tells him to write his own songs. Of his debut album, “It’s all other people’s music.”
People freaking out on the streets expecting war. Cronkite on TV in the Seeger home. Joan in her Chelsea Hotel room trying to reach her family on the phone.
42:20 – Joan walks down sidewalk – the city in panic, people trying to evacuate. She hears Bob playing Masters of War in the Gaslight. Bob & Joan make out at the top of the stairs.
44:45 – Joan wakes up the morning after in Bob’s apartment. Turns on TV, Cuban Missile Crisis averted. She looks at his desk, there’s a copy of On The Road and lots of lyrics.
46:30 – conversation about how Bob learned guitar. Joan: “Who taught you to play?” Bob: “I taught myself, really. Picked up a few licks at the carnival.” Joan: [in disbelief] “At the carnival?” Bob: “Oh yeah, there was singing cowboys that come through teach me all sorts of funny chords. They’d pass through doin’ shows in Kansas or Dakotas. These chords I learned from a cowboy named Wigglefoot.” Joan: “You were in a carnival? (pause) You are so completely full of shit.” 😀
Bob: “You try too hard. To write. Sunsets and seagulls, smell of buttercups. Your songs are like an oil painting at the dentist office.” Joan: “You’re kind of an asshole, Bob.” Bob: “Yeah, I guess.” 🙂
52:35 – outdoor Village street photo shoot of Bob & Sylvie for Freewheelin cover.
52:55 – Joan in a theater singing Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright. The camera pans over to recording / broadcasting equipment & engineers.
53:30 – photo shoot in Bob & Sylvie’s apartment. Bob preparing to fly to the west coast. The audio of Joan singing Don’t Think Twice in concert (above) is continuing in the apartment on the radio. Sylvie senses the connection between Bob & Joan.
Albert: “You’re in the shot, sweetheart.”
54:55 – Bob on motorcycle to Joan’s house in the country.
The Jaguar in the driveway is accurate to the car Joan owned at the time. Warm reception. Joan: “The new record is beautiful.” (Freewheelin’)
56:10 – Monterey Folk Festival 1963 (May 17-19) Dylan’s first ever performance on the west coast. (Jerry Garcia also played at it with The Wildwood Boys, including Robert Hunter on upright bass (!), David Nelson on guitar & Ken Frankle on fiddle. Janis also sang solo on a second stage!) Bob & Joan lovely smiling duet on Girl From The North Country.
57:30 – Bob picks up fan mail at Columbia Records He gets a check for $10,000 and a letter from Johnny Cash. Success is happening. Johnny voiceover from his letter: “Your Freewheelin’ album is my most prized possession. Thank you.”
Mangold got copies of the real letters between the two from Bob’s archives to use the exact wording in the script.
58:55 – Bob walking on a Village street reading the April 13, 1963, NY Times positive review of his Town Hall performance.
59:05 – Bob gets recognized and chased by fans in the Village — fame is happening – conveyed in 2 mins.
59:10 – Bob plays at the March on Washington – August 28, 1963. Sylvie sad in apt. watching it on TV realizing Bob is getting bigger than them in the Village.
59:30 – Bob leaves a gig, mobbed, gets in back of car, homage to Don’t Look Back scene.
59:45 – Bob on plane writes to Johnny Cash. Cash writes him back — first time we see Johnny – on a plane writing letter. (According to director Mangold they used the text of the actual letters from the Dylan archive.) Bob: [in voiceover reading the letter he’s writing to Johnny on the airplane] “Dear Johnny, Thanks for that letter. I am now famous — famous by the rules of public famiosity. It snuck up on me and pulverized me. To quote Mr. Freud, I get quite paranoid.” Johnny Cash: [in voiceover reading the letter he’s writing back to Dylan on a plane.] “Bob — Got your letter. Tonight I sit in the wake of one more hard rain. I was in New York last week. Saw a bunch of folk singers that couldn’t hold a chigger on your ass. Well, I’ll see you in Newport come spring. Until then, track mud on somebody’s carpet.”
1:00:35 – Bob playing A Hard Rain’s A’Gonna Fall in a Town Hall type theater. Albert says to Pete – “This is your dream — folk music reaching everybody.”
1:01:20 – Pete at Woody’s bedside, saying he’s going to go on a world tour. Woody wants Pete to give Bob his harmonica. The one scene in the movie I think is tonally off – too slow, somber for this point in the flow.
1:02:40 – JFK is killed – Nov 22nd, 1963 Bob & Sylvie sad in apartment taking in the news.
1:05:25 – Cash goes on stage – sings Big River Johnny: “Let’s get these beatniks out of their seat real quick and tie one on.” 😀
Cut to closeup of Bob’s face studying Johnny on stage with his band. Example #10,000 of why this is great filmmaking.
1:06:40 – Johnny introduces Bob as his pen pal. “Sometimes when I read his letters I think I can see his brain. [to Bob] All I know is you better sing about that rooster crowin’ till the break of dawn cuz I need to learn those damn words.”
1:07:15 – Bob says, “Here’s a new one” – sings The Times They Are a’ Changin’ Pete, Toshi, Johnny, Leventhal, Grossman, Lomax, Peter Yarrow, Odetta in the wings in awe and smiling. Joan is reserved – perhaps in awe, perhaps seeing the future he’s moved onto without her. Sylvie’s sad – that he’s moved to some realm beyond them – we see her thinking he’s singing about their relationship & future – “The present now will later be past.”
At the end Pete looks up to the heavens and goes “Phew!” like he can’t believe what’s happening.
* GREAT final long powerful stare by Bob into the audience – almost menacing – a man in complete control – with the conviction and power to change things. One of the most perfect & powerful shots in the whole movie. .
SCREEN GOES BLACK
1:10:08 — “1965” — title card — the movie TOTALLY changes This begins the second half with a different tone and pace and new rock ‘n’ roll conviction.
1:10:15 – Bob bursts out of the Kettle of Fish – walks down MacDougal Street – wearing shades and full head of tussled hair.
Hears Chris Ducey’s That’s The Way The World Has Got To Be (II) coming out of the Gaslight. Walks past a hippie van with doors open and people singing Puff The Magic Dragon. Spots a whistle for sale. Street vender: “You got kids?” Bob: “Yeah … thousands of ’em.”
Drops a $5 bill on his table – which would equal a $50 bill in 2024 dollars.
Takes off on motorcycle thru Village streets
1:11:20 – Harold Leventhal‘s fancy fundraising party. Bob arrives with Becka (Black, British girlfriend of the moment) Allen Ginsberg character seen in the background of several shots also a Peter, Paul & Mary trio Alan Lomax: “The word on the street is you’re making quite a noise down there at Studio A. Listen Bob, you don’t have to compete with the Beatles, okay? You’re better than that shit.” Harold Leventhal pressures Bob to play at the party. Pete brings guitar for Bob to play.
Great contrast from when young Bob showed up at Pete & Toshi’s house just a few years earlier. They look the same, and he’s a shades-wearing rock-star center-of-the-party.
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1:14:05 – the great elevator scene with Bobby Neuwirth
Bob: “Two hundred people in that room and each one wants me to be somebody else. They should just fuck off and let me be.” Bobby Neuwirth: “Be what?” Bob: “Excuse me?” Neuwirth: “They should fuck off and let you be what?” Bob: “I don’t know. Whatever it is they don’t want me to be.” Neuwirth: “Y’know, I’m not a horse, so … I don’t like carrying other people’s weight.” Bob: “Yeah, well, I got a hundred pounds on me that don’t show on the scale.” Neuwirth: “How do you sing then?” Bob: “I put myself in another place. But I’m a stranger there.”
1:15:05 – Bob asks Neuwirth’s name on the sidewalk. “Bobby. Like you, man.” He says he’s going to play a gig at McCann’s in the East Village.
1:15:30 – Bob & Becka scene on sidewalk Becka: “I love you. Is that scary to you?” Bob: “I just met you. So, yeah.”
1:16:10 – Neuwirth in bar playing Irish Rover with Irish band – sort of the film’s ode to the Clancy Brothers. 1:16:50 – Bob gets recognized. When he tries to leave a girl says she wants to see his eyes and grabs his glasses off his face. When Bob grabs them back and says “Get off,” her boyfriend punches Bob in the eye and he falls to the ground. Neuwirth helps him up & out of the bar.
1:17:15 – Bob goes to Sylvie’s apartment 4AM because of the punch to face. Great confessional moment to his old love: Bob: “Everyone asks where these songs come from, Sylvie. But then you watch their faces, and they’re not asking where the songs come from. They’re asking why the songs didn’t come to them.”
1:18:45 – Bob in recording studio at upright piano working on I’ll Keep It With Mine (not released until The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3 in 1991) Bob writing at typewriter in his apartment Bob blowing new whistle in bathtub * 1:19:15 – Bob rushes in apartment with Like A Rolling Stone lyrics
1:19:30 – Bob on phone with Albert demanding Mike Bloomfield. Bob: “Not Mike Bloom*feld*, Albert, Mike Bloom*field*, he’s a Chicago blues guitar player.” Albert: “Okay, I can’t get him tomorrow. I can get another guitar player.” Bob: “No! I don’t want any of your old session musicians, man. I want young guys with hair on their heads. A guitar player, and a bass player, an organ player and a drum player.” Albert: “I’m gonna try my best but I can’t guarantee that we’re gonna get him tomorrow.” Bob: “I don’t wanna hear it. Get it done.” Bob slams down receiver.
1:19:55 – Bob and new band in recording studio playing Subterranean Homesick Blues John Hammond listening in the control room: “Well, this is gonna piss some people off.” 😀
1:20:15 – tense planning meeting for Newport ’65. Theodore Bikel at planning table. He lists the players for Saturday night: Ian & Sylvia, Odetta, Donovan, Johnny Cash, Jim Kweskin & his Jug Band . . . Peter Yarrow advocates for the Paul Butterfield Blues Band – cites Mike Bloomfield. Alan Lomax being a jerk – dismissing Butterfield and insulting Peter Yarrow. Pete tries to make peace among the organizers. “We don’t need to be dogmatic.” … “We can work it out.”
1:21:50 – Bob and band recording Highway 61 with whistle.
1:22:55 – abrupt cut to — Pete’s local B&W TV show at NJU with old black blues guy Jesse Moffette (the only purely fictional character in the movie) — played by Muddy Waters’ son (!) Big Bill Morganfield – in his first & only film appearance! Jesse starts playing an original blues tune written by the actor (Bill Morganfield) Down In My Heart.
1:24:40 – Bob & Neuwirth show up at the TV studio.
1:25:30 – Bob joins Pete & Jesse at the table on the TV set. Jesse: “Look here, how close were you watching me?” Bob: “I was watchin real close, Jesse. I got these special binoculars, right? And they allow me to see into your soul.” Jesse: [laughing] “Really?” Bob: “I could see exactly what you were playing. It’s like a tiny little microscope, right?”
1:27:45 – Bob goes to the Chelsea Hotel to find Joan, knocks on various doors (can’t remember her exact room) 1:28:40 – Joan opens hotel room door Joan: “Do you want me to catch up with you or something?” Bob: “Yeah.” and slips past her into the room 1:29:15 – Bob in hotel room in dark writing It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) Great mirror use 2-shot as Joan confronts Bob and throws him out.
1:31:55 – Bob & Joan on stage in a theater – acoustic duet – All I Really Want To Do Bob wanders away from the mic singing Gates of Eden to himself. He and Joan clash – Bob won’t play Blowin’ In The Wind Bob: “It’s not a request type concert. If you want that, go see Donovan. Pick something else, Joan.” 🙂
She starts playing Blowin’ In The Wind again. Bob says his guitar is broken and won’t play. 1:34:20 – Joan starts singing Blowin’ solo.
1:34:30 – Neuwirth arrives at recording studio with Bob’s new electric guitar he bought in London. He starts playing & singing the traditional Railroad Bill. Dylan appears out of the darkness playing harmonica . . . then switches to the upright piano.
1:36:10 – Mike Bloomfield arrives 1:36:20 – Al Kooper arrives … Bob: “We already have a guitar player, man, Mike Bloomfield. And he’s really good. To be better than him you’d have to be Blind Willie McTell.”
1:37:30 – Kooper starts playing the organ intro to Like A Rolling Stone. Bob smiles.
1:37:50 – Bob & Al Kooper in Village clothing store, sees Pete Seeger thru the window. Bob groans.
1:38:00 – outside store, Neuwirth & band loading trunk of car. Pete & Bob talk outside store – Pete wants to know how Bob’s gonna close Newport Sunday night. Bob kinda blows him off, saying “Let’s talk at Newport. I’m sorta living day-to-day these days, y’know?”
Pete looks dejected … that his former protégé has moved on.
1:38:40 – Bob arrives on motorcycle at Sylvie’s apt, calls up, asks her to come to Newport. Sylvie seen pondering the question while in her painting smock in apartment. They ride off on motorcycle together to the sounds of Mr. Tambourine Man.
1:40:00 – arrive at the artists’ motel in Newport. Bob sees Jesse the blues player. Bob & Sylvie check into their motel room. Dylan does the light two cigarettes routine from Now, Voyager. Neuwirth brings in guitars – “Choose your weapon, general. You got this guesting with Joan in a half-hour.” Sylvie says she wants catch Bob sitting in with Joan.
1:41:30 – arrive at stage, Joan on stage singing Bob’s Farewell, Angelina Joan gives Bob the finger.
1:43:00 – Joan brings Bob out – “Just fuck off and sing.” Beautiful duet on It Ain’t Me Babe. “It ain’t me you’re looking for, babe” and “I’m not the one you want, babe, I’ll only let you down” seems to resonate with Sylvie. She realizes they’ve lost each other.
1:45:15 – Sylvie freaks out, runs from stage, Neuwirth runs after her, catches her by taxi. She wants to go home – Neuwirth tells her she has to go to the ferry. Bob & Joan duet on Bob’s Mama, You’ve Been on My Mind (written & recorded in 1964, but not officially released until The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3 in 1991)
1:46:14 – in motel room Bob tells Al Kooper to take off the polka dot shirt they just bought, “Take that shirt off. You look like a god-damn clown.” 1:46:17 – Bob asks where Sylvie went, Neuwirth says she went to the ferry — “if you hurry you could catch her.”
1:46:26 – “The posse of purity” (Alan Lomax, Harold Leventhal & Theodore Bikel) come in the motel room door to talk to Bob.
The Kinks’ All Day and All of The Night is playing in the room.
Bob: “Where’s Pete? He’s not in on this?”
Lomax: “In on what exactly?”
Bob: “This posse of purity.”
Lomax: “Alright, let’s just cut the crap, Bob. Are you gonna be playing noise like this?”
Bob: [disgusted & dismissive] “This is The Kinks.” 😀 Alan Lomax verbally attacks Bob: “It was the Newport Folk Festival then, Bob, and it still is the Newport *Folk* Festival! Not the teen dream, Brill Building, Top Forty British Invasion Festival – a *Folk* festival. Do you even remember folk music, Bob?” Bob: “No, what’s that? Maybe you could sing me something.”
1:47:35 – Bob rushes on the motorcycle to the ferry to catch Sylvie. Climactic scene btwn Bob & Sylvie at the ferry fence — Sylvia: “It was fun to be on the carnival train with you, Bobby, but I think I gotta step off. I feel like one of those plates, you know, that the French guy spins on those sticks on the Sullivan show.” Bob: “Oh, I kinda like that guy.” Sylvie: “I’m sure it’s fun to *be* the guy, Bob. But I was a plate.”
Bob lights a cigarette and passes it to her through the fence and asks her to stay. Sylvie quotes Now, Voyager: “Don’t ask for the moon. We have the stars.”
The final day of Newport ’65:
1:50:00 – Pete Seeger annoyingly comes in Bob’s motel room at 7AM!
Bob: “Let him tell his story, Al. C’mon, give it to me good, Pete.” Tells the parable of the teaspoon brigade. Pete: “Imagine we got a seesaw. One end of it, it’s anchored firm to the ground cuz it’s got a basket full of rocks on it. The other end, it’s floatin’ up here, way up in the air, and wishing it could come down, but all its got is a basket that’s half full of sand, and the sand is leakin’ out all the time. Now, we see this situation and say, Maybe we should do something about this. And all we got with us is some teaspoons, but we take ’em out, and we start puttin’ sand up into that basket, and it’s runnin’ out as fast as we can put it in. There’s all kinds of people, they’re lookin’ at us, and they’re laughin’ and sayin’ Geez, you’re wasting your time. But, every day, a few new people show up, and they bring their spoons, and they start pitchin’ in. You know why? Because one of these days enough people are gonna put sand in that basket at the same time that the whole damn thing just goes zoop! and we level things out. Newport, we built it for the purpose of sharin’ traditional folk music. We started it six years ago, and every year since then more and more people have been showin’ up, and they’re bringing their teaspoons. Teaspoons for justice, and teaspoons for peace, and teaspoons for love, and that’s what we do. And, gosh, you showed up, Bobby, and damn it, if you didn’t bring a shovel.“
Pete: “And tonight if you could just get up there one more time and use that shovel in the right way …”
Bob: “In the right way?”
Pete: “You could level things out, Bob.” Bob: “I sent you an advance of my new record.”
Pete: “Yeah, sure, I got it.”
Bob: “Did you ever listen to the music you’re telling me not to play?”
Albert to Pete: “You’re pushing candles and he’s selling lightbulbs.” Bob walks out.
1:54:45 – Bob bumps into Johnny Cash at his car that’s blocking in Bob’s motorcycle.
Johnny: “You playin’ tonight?” Bob: “Yeah, that’s what the program says … but I’m not sure they wanna hear what I wanna play, Johnny.” Johnny: “Who’s ‘they’?” Bob: [sarcastically] “You know, the men who decide what folk music is.” Johnny tells Bob – “Well, fuck them. [whispers in his ear for emphasis] I wanna hear it. Make some noise, B.D. Track some mud on the carpet.“
1:56:40 – Bob, Neuwirth, Albert & band leave motel.
Fan: “It’s sold out — we can’t hear it.”
Bob: “I’ll sing louder.” 😀
1:57:10 – Hammer Ring by the Texas Prison Worksong Group – chopping wood on stage.
1:58:15 – Lomax goes on stage – introduces Dylan: “You want him, you can have him – Bob Dylan.”
Mangold said the entire electric performance was always filmed all the way thru each take.
1:59:00 – Bob & band start (I ain’t gonna play on) Maggies Farmno more — his declaration of independence song. Angry audience reaction. Pete & Joan frowning in the wings. Albert smiling.
2:00:15 – Alan Lomex gets really angry — goes to soundboard to force them to turn it down. Neuwirth stops him. Albert & Lomax have fistfight (really happened).
2:01:15 – It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry Audience continues hostile reaction, throwing stuff. Pete says, “It’s enough. Enough!” 2:02:10 – Pete goes to soundboard to tell them to turn it down. Temporarily causes sound feedback distortion.
Soundman: “Open your fuckin’ ears, man!” Pete looks at power cables then the gospel act’s axes. Toshi stops him.
2:03:00 – audience member yells, “Judas! You’re Judas!” Bob: “I don’t believe you.” (famous exchange heard on the British bootleg)
2:03:15 – Bob: “Play it loud.” Like A Rolling Stone – Kooper’s phat B3 riff. Audience throws stuff at the stage — but others are standing up and cheering & dancing.
Odetta in wings swaying like she’s enjoying it.
Johnny Cash congratulates him: “Bobby! You broke it down and blew my mind!” Peter Yarrow goes out to microphone – tries to cool the audience down. Albert to Bob: “Maybe you wanna go back out there and let out a little steam.” Bob doesn’t want to. “We just ended the show, man. It’s done. Pack up.”
* 2:05:40 – Johnny Cash holds up acoustic guitar for Bob to take it. Says to Bob after he takes and heads back to the stage, “Go get ’em, killer.”
2:06:05 – Bob on stage acoustic – It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue — and the ‘folk singer’ phase of his career certainly was.
2:06:55 – Pete to Lomax: “We’ll pull this back together.” Lomax: “Together’s done, Pete. Your boy just tore it down.”
2:07:10 – Albert to Neuwirth: “How fast can we get him out of here?” Neuwirth: “Like he was never here.” Albert: [pause] “Not that fast.” 🙂
Joan watches plaintively & poignantly as Bob sings “The vagabond who’s rapping at your door is standing in the clothes that you once wore.”
2:08:00 – song ends, audience applauds, Bob leaves stage. Bob & Neuwirth leave in car.
2:08:35 – Pete & Toshi arrive back at motel – huge balcony-filling party underway.
2:09:10 – Maria Muldaur moment. She tells Pete, “I loved the show.” Pete sees Bob in motel room all alone and somber while big party’s raging outside; he decides to leave him be.
2:09:35 – the morning after: Joan comes to her motel room door, sees Bob leaving.
2:10:00 – Bob gets on his motorcycle Joan approaches: “Let go of it Bobby, you won.” Bob: “What did I win, Joan?” Joan: “Freedom from all of us and our shit. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
2:10:40 – Bob drives off — pauses to watch Pete folding up chairs. As motorcycle starts to roar away, Pete looks up to see him driving off.
2:11:15 – Bob in Woody’s hospital room – Dusty Old Dust (So Long, It’s Been Good To Know Yuh) – the song that opened the movie – is playing on the record player – Bob plays harmonica to it. Bob tries to give the harmonica back to Woody, but he pushes it back to Bob – somber solemn moment between the two. Bob walks out to “So long, it’s been good to know yuh” playing. Woody looks out his window to see Bob driving off.
2:13:10 – Bob seen riding motorcycle down the highway – foreshadowing a major plot point upcoming in Bob’s life.
If you want more background on the movie, there’s a feature story on my site that goes into how it got made with lotsa production details, quotes and videos.
On this weekend 17 years ago — in the heat of the Democratic primary of 2008 between Hillary & Obama — I started BrianHassett.com.
Every month since then for 17 years I’ve written at least one new piece for the site.
“17” has been a weird number that’s followed me around my whole life from my hockey team jersey as a kid through the books I’ve written to today’s anniversary – a date I never think about, except this year I did . . . on the 17th year!
From my book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Jack Kerouac . . .
Strangely enough, the piece more people click on year after year is Famous People Who Don’t Have Kids! This page was started back in 2010 when someone made a smart-aleck comment that anyone who had kids was superior to anyone who didn’t. I thought it was so ridiculous/repulsive that I jotted down a list of some influential folks who didn’t have kids. It’s continued to grow over the years and is now over 500 people from Jesus to Janis, and is still read by people every single day.
Crazily enough the second most popular piece in the site’s history was last year’s Why I Love Joe Biden because it went viral when not that many people were coming out and saying it.
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The third most read is one I’m particularly proud of because it took a lot of work — The Beatles: Get Back – Time-Coded and Annotated. When Peter Jackson’s epic documentary came out in 2021, it was so overwhelming that I started my own cheat-sheet to be able to find songs and quotes and stuff within its 7½ hour span. That just kept growing with each time I’d watch it, and I realized this would be valuable to others, so I really filled it in with every deet from every scene and transcribed whole passages to get the quotes in print. Over the years I’ve heard from both college professors and high school teachers in both the U.K. and the U.S. thanking me for doing it because they use it in their classes.
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Six & seven were also both recent but maybe not as surprising — Taylor Swift, The Grateful Dead and The Beat Generation, and Taylor Swift from a Deadhead’s Perspective. They both got another huge bounce in readers this past weekend when Bob Weir & Taylor were photographed together at the Grammys and it went viral and all these Deadhead Swifties came out of the closet. I thought the connection between the two artists and their fan bases was obvious from the get-go, but it’s nice that it’s now a bit more of an accepted fact.
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The tenth is something that keeps coming up so keeps getting read — Beat versus Beatnik. It was written after years of having to beat back (ha-ha) self-appointed know-it-all-wannabes saying that if someone ever used the word ‘beatnik’ they were either doing it as an insult or because they were uneducated about the Beats. I had to correct this nonsense so many times I decided to just write one piece that could be used as needed. Turned out to be a super popular idea.
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There’s now nearly 300 pieces on the site — articles, features, reviews, book excerpts, firsthand Adventure Tales, some fiction & poetry — but those are the Top Ten most read. .
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Here’s some that didn’t make the Top Ten but were close and maybe shoulda . . .
The Northport Reportabout the Big Sur reading on Long Island in 2001 with the Cassadys and a cast of thousands.
One of the nice things about living in Manhattan — you often bump into and sometimes get to talk to really smart people on the sidewalk. When they’re famous, mostly you just nod acknowledgment and smile — like seeing Robin Williams walking and playing with his son on Fifth Avenue, or Timothy Leary in line at a street vender, or Colin Powell walking on the double military-straight in his uniform near the U.N.
But one of my favorites was seeing Arthur Miller crossing Third Avenue near my apartment on 70th Street. I was going one way and he was coming the other and I looked up and, “Oh my gawd, that’s Arthur Miller!” He was kinda looking at the ground and seemed lost in thought, so as usual I respected his space and didn’t bother him. But I stopped on the other side of the avenue and turned back to soak in what was happening.
I’d studied the hell out of Death of a Salesman. Maybe it’s obvious and too-often stated, but it’s the greatest American play ever written. What Huckleberry Finn is to American novels.
I saw a production of Salesman back when I was a teenager in Winnipeg. It was one of those moments when the lightbulb went on and you suddenly appreciated some great work of art that adults always praised but you’d been too young to understand.
When I moved to Washington Square North in Greenwich Village, I started going to plays and reading them. The legendary actress Uta Hagen & her theater school founder husband Herbert Berghof lived in the apartment next door, and Phyllis & Eddie Condon’s apartment where I lived was a library of the greatest books ever written. I went deep down rabbit holes of Tennessee Williams and Eugene O’Neill and bought and saw a ton of Sam Shepard. But Salesman was always in a class of its own.
I was in the orchestra for the Broadway production with Dustin Hoffman, John Malkovich, Kate Reid, Stephen Lang & David Huddleston, and they made a televised version for CBS which I taped on VHS and played over and over again, unconsciously memorizing whole passages. Different lines have come back to me over the decades in all sorts of situations.
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I stood there looking at him from the other side of the avenue thinking about all this stuff and how much his art meant to me. He’d stopped and was looking in the window of one of the little stores on the Upper East Side back when there were still places like shoe repair shops and hardware stores. It was still a little neighborhood like any Main Street in any little town in America.
I thought of the story Kerouac tells of his architect friend Ed White suggesting he carry a notebook like architects do to sketch things he sees, and Jack stopping at a storefront and sketching in words what he saw. And there was the wordsmith Arthur Miller mentally sketching a little old-world storefront on a quiet summer afternoon in Manhattan. He was in no hurry. He was already on Mount Rushmore. He had nuthin left to do in this lifetime but enjoy the view.
After the light changed back to green I thought, “There’s Arthur Miller. I gotta go talk to him and thank him.” So I crossed back over the avenue and he was still standing on the empty sidewalk in the quiet afternoon sunshine looking into this small storefront window. I walked up, and said hi, and he was a tallish fellow, and there was Arthur Miller’s big bald head above me, looking exactly like every picture I’d ever seen. .
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My dad had recently passed, and sadly he was something of a Willie Loman, and we’d never really gotten along. But when he was getting near the end, I remembered the Salesman’s mother’s impassioned admonition — “Attention must be paid.” .
It comes in her powerful Act One monologue — “I don’t say he’s a great man. Willy Loman never made a lot of money. His name was never in the paper. He’s not the finest character that ever lived. But he’s a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid. He’s not to be allowed to fall into his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a person.“
That passage about respecting a low-man’s passing guided me through the final scenes of my father’s drama — and it was this very playwright a million miles away from the Canadian prairies who wrote the motivation for how we played out our final act. .
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So I told the smiling gentle face, “I just thought you should know how your words helped my family through a difficult time before it was too late.”
“Well . . . you’re welcome,” he smiled in his giant Buddhistic beatific way. “Thank you for saying that,”
It’s not all that often that an artist changes the life your family lives — and it’s even rarer that you get to thank them. I’m forever grateful to the Great Spirits that this moment happened, and that he stood there appreciating a simple storefront so I could tell him how much I appreciated him wrapping up my relationship with my father with respect.
