Ashley Clifton

Movies I Loved as a Kid: “Rollerball”

It still amazes me that Norman Jewison, the same guy that directed Moonstruck, also directed Rollerball. I can’t imagine two films that are more different in content, genre, style, and tone. Moonstruck is a rom-com (imho, the best ever made); Rollerball is a dystopian sci-fi movie. Moonstruck is a comedy; Rollerball is a violent, brutal drama.

And yet, when one thinks about it, the twinning of these two movies under Jewison’s visionary eye kind of makes sense. Both are about an individual seeking personal freedom—self-actualization, as the shrinks say. The main difference is that, in Moonstruck, the obstacle is the protagonist’s own self-doubt and traumatized soul, while in Rollerball, it’s an oppressive, corporatist state.

Moonstruck is the better film, by far. But, as a kid, I absolutely loved Rollerball. It came out fifty years ago, in 1975, and it’s hard to describe how incredibly cool it was among the 11-to-14-year-old boy demographic. It checked all the teenage-boy boxes: sci-fi, sports, violence, motorcycles, and sex.

And then there was the novelty of the game itself, a nightmarish blend of NFL football, roller derby, motocross, and MMA. Of these, football seemed to be the primary influence, with the protagonist coming off very much like one of the celebrity quarterbacks of the era (think Joe Namath or Snake Stabler).

So, basically you had a futuristic, ultra-violent sport where Joe Namath got to kill people! How cool is that??? The film also had the appeal of forbidden fruit. A “hard R”-rated movie, its violence was deemed shocking, even transgressive, at the time. This was especially true considering the film’s A-list imprimatur; it was released by a major Hollywood studio (United Artists) with a major star (James Caan) and a major director (Jewison).

In retrospect, the fact that Rollerball was made at all seems a bit miraculous. It’s a good movie, and there is still much to love about it. Set on a near-future Earth where huge mega-corporations have replaced governments, it tells the story of an elite athlete, Jonathan E., who plays the violent, gladiatorial sport of Rollerball. Jonathan is so good that, after ten years in the sport, he is its oldest living practitioner, as well as its best. He is beloved and famous—so famous, in fact, that he worries the reigning cabal of corporate bosses, who use the game as a kind of panem et circenses form of mass entertainment, giving the oppressed masses an outlet for their (potentially revolutionary) rage.

Mr. Bartholomew, the CEO of the corporation that owns Jonathan’s team (and, it is implied, Jonathan himself, bodily, as a kind of company chattel), is especially concerned. He orders the aging star to announce his retirement. Jonathan refuses. Bartholomew orders him again. Jonathan refuses, again. Unfortunately, Jonathan is too famous to arrest or kill, so Bartholomew contrives to make the next few Rollerball matches so absurdly violent, even by the standards of the game, that Jonathan will change his mind, get injured, or get killed.

If this plot sounds familiar, it’s because it is. Rollerball essentially invented the extreme-sports-of-the-future sub-genre of sci-fi, beginning with Death Race 2000 and continuing all the way up to The Hunger Games series. It also anticipated cyberpunk, in which evil corporations have taken over all aspects of modern life, creating an authoritarian hellscape of haves vs have-nots.

In our current, CGI-corrupted age of cinema, Rollerball is especially impressive for its great, practical stunts. Supposedly, the stuntmen got so adept at the titular game that they would play matches amongst themselves between shooting sessions. And the acting is great, too. James Caan’s understated, nuanced performance as Jonathan is one of his best. He was bashed by some film critics for seeming “checked-out” in the role, but I think they were wrong. He’s playing a somewhat inarticulate but courageous character who is trying to make sense of his plight—and find a way to win.

Now that I have said all those good things about Rollerball, it’s time for me to add that it is also an extremely dated film. Alas, it suffers from much of the garishness of the 1970s, as well as a whiff of misogyny that even the patriarchal/fascist setting cannot quite explain. But if you can get past these flaws, it’s a good movie.

Check it out. It’s currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

Friday Night Rock-Out: “Hotel California”

If you’re of a certain age (i.e., over fifty), you probably spent many a summer afternoon in the long-ago past listening to the 45 single of “Hotel California” over and over and over. (You might also have enjoyed a mildly illegal form of herbal, hand-rolled cigarette as you listened.) If you did, you’ve probably read a lot of articles about the song, and heard a lot of interviews by Don Henley or Glenn Frey or others about it, to the point that you probably think you know everything about it. You know, for instance, that Henley and Frey wrote the lyrics in a very short period of time (by some accounts, a few hours; by others, over a weekend). You know that the album cover is a photo of the Beverly Hills Hotel, and that some people think they see a mysterious figure in the bell tower. And you know that the song is really about Hell, or California-as-Hell, or American hedonism, or…something cool like that.

What you probably don’t know is that song is, primarily, the creation of guitarist Don Felder, who wrote the melody by himself before he even joined the band. As Marty Jourard recounts in his excellent non-fiction book Music Everywhere: The Rock and Roll Roots of a Southern Town:

One afternoon while enjoying his ocean view and no doubt the general situation, Felder sat on his sofa and idly strummed an acoustic twelve-string, eventually refining his musical idea into a carefully crafted guitar arrangement. Using a Teac four-track reel-to-reel recorder, Felder first recorded his Rhythm Ace drum machine playing a cha-cha beat, then added acoustic and electric guitar and bass, then an idea for two solo guitars. Don Henley listened to a cassette mix of this song and more than a dozen others Felder had submitted for consideration and declared this rhythmically complex instrumental the best, giving it a working title of “Mexican Bolero,” and along with Glenn Frey wrote lyrics that transformed Felder’s music demo into “Hotel California,” the title track of the next Eagles album and its first single.

It’s also Felder’s actual guitar playing, along with that of co-lead Joe Walsh, that gives the song its unbelievably haunting tone and its indelible, dark crescendo. I’m not just saying this because Felder, like his childhood friend Tom Petty, is a Gainesville boy like me. Felder is, in fact, one of the most underrated musician/composers in the history of rock-and-roll.

Of course, I don’t mean to denigrate Henley’s and Frey’s brilliant lyrics, gave the song its cachet among the teenage set of the 1970s (and now, even). One thing I’ve noted about “Hotel California” is that is one of those rare examples of a narrative poem (i.e., it tells a continuous story). Also, it’s written in ballad quatrains, with a rhyming scheme of ABCB. How cool is that?

And, yes, I do see a mysterious figure in the bell tower.

Rock on…

Do I Have the Gall to Post Another Shameless Plug? Yes. Yes, I do.

Just a heads-up…. My Edgar-nominated and Shamus-winning novel, Twice the Trouble, is a Kindle Deal all this month. You can get the ebook for just $1.99. That’s less than half the price of a Starbucks’ latte (and it will last a lot longer)!

Classic Sci-Fi Book Cover: “Babel-17”

I know, I know. This cover is a bit out-there. Not every sci-fi book cover, after all, has a spaceship hovering in a night sky over a plus-size female model in a metal bikini, go-go boots, and mail headdress. (But I kind of wish they did.)

Even so, this cover for Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany is a bonafide classic by the great Spanish illustrator Vicente Segrelles, who has created a ton of great covers throughout his long and brilliant career. It was done for a series of Delany’s novels that were re-released by Bantam in the 1980s, all of which had great, subtle, off-beat covers.

Now, I’ve read a lot of snark about this cover on various chat-boards. Younger guys, especially, find it hilariously bad (and perhaps a lot of girls, too). I think this is because the woman depicted is not the usual, skinny, spandex-clad sci-fi babe. Personally, that’s one reason I like her. I think she’s mysterious, regal, and (yes) sexy.

More importantly, she captures the essence of the novel’s main character, Rydra Wong, who is not only the captain of a spaceship but also a master linguist. When government operatives seek her help in cracking an enemy, alien code called Babel-17, she discovers that it is not just a code—it’s an entire language. She promptly sets-off on a space-adventure to decipher the language, a quest that leads her into a war zone on the edge of the galaxy.

One of the things I love about Babel-17 is the way Delany, even way back in 1966, managed to push a message of tolerance and multi-culturalism. Wong’s spaceship is crewed by a rag-tag group of mercenaries, some of whom are not only transsexual but transhuman, opting for synthetically altered bodies that make them resemble wild animals or fairy tale creatures, and so on. Moreover, Wong’s desire to find the source of Babel-17—and, thus, better understand the aliens who are attacking humanity—suggests a deeper response to the usual fear and xenophobia that was so endemic in America at the time (and is again now, alas).

Babel-17 a classic sci-novel with a classic cover. Check it out…

What I’m Reading: “Paperbacks from Hell”

Having had exactly one book traditionally published, I am far from an expert on the world of publishing. Even so, I learned a lot more than I ever expected, and have since become fascinated by the industry as a whole. Also, I am currently working on a supernatural horror novel. So, it makes perfect sense that I would be drawn to Grady Hendrix’s excellent non-fiction book, Paperbacks from Hell, which examines (skewers?) pulp horror literature as it existed in the 1970s and 80s, both as a uber-genre and as an industry.

Let me say right up front that this is a very funny book. I found myself laughing out loud many, many times as Hendrix describes the trends and fads that overtook the genre. Take this passage where he introduces the wildly successful pop writer Robin Cook, whose 1977 book Coma is, in Hendrix’s words, the “source of the medical-thriller Nile.” As Hendrix goes on:

It all started with Robin Cook and his novels: Fever, Outbreak, Mutation, Shock, Seizure…terse nouns splashed across paperback racks. And just when you thought you had Cook pegged, he adds an adjective: Fatal Cure, Acceptable Risk, Mortal Fear, Harmful Intent. An ophthalmologist as well as an author, Cook has checked eyes and written best sellers with equal frequency. He’s best known for Coma (1977)…. Its heroine, Susan Wheeler, is one of those beautiful, brilliant medical students who’s constantly earning double takes from male colleagues or looking in the mirror and wondering if she’s a doctor or a woman—and why can’t she be both, dammit? On her first day as a trainee at Boston Memorial, she settles on “woman” and allows herself to flirt with an attractive patient on his way into a routine surgery. They make a date for coffee, but something goes wrong on the table and he goes into…a COMA!

Hendrix cleverly divides each chapter to a single, overarching trend in the pulp horror universe, with titles like HAIL, SATAN (novels of demonic possession and devil-sex), WEIRD SCIENCE (evil doctors and mad scientist-sex), INHUMANIOIDS (deformed monsters and mutant-sex), and so on. I was especially impressed by the way Hendrix explains each publishing fad as a symptom of a larger societal shift. For example, he explains how the white-flight phenomenon of the 1970s in which white middle- and upper-class families abandoned the big cities and moved to quaint, charming little towns in upstate New York or the mid-west or norther California or wherever, results in a surge of small-town horror novels like Harvest Home (wherein evil pagan matriarchs conduct human sacrifices to make the corn grow) and Effigies (wherein Satan is breeding grotesque monsters in the basement of the local church).

Another chapter entitled CREEPY KIDS, which deals with such diverse plot concepts as children who are fathered by Satan, children are who are really small adults pretending to be children, and children who, for whatever reason, just love to kill people. I particularly love this passage:

Some parents will feel helpless. “How can I possibly stop my child from murdering strangers with a hammer because she thinks they are demons from hell?” you might wail (Mama’s Little Girl). Fortunately there are some practical, commonsense steps you can take to lower the body count. Most important, try not to have sex with Satan. Fornicating with the incarnation of all evil usually produces children who are genetically predisposed to use their supernatural powers to cram their grandmothers into television sets, headfirst. “But how do I know if the man I’m dating is the devil?” I hear you ask. Here are some warning signs learned from Seed of Evil: Does he refuse to use contractions when he speaks? Does he deliver pickup lines like, “You live on the edge of darkness”? When nude, is his body the most beautiful male form you have ever seen, but possessed of a penis that’s either monstrously enormous, double-headed, has glowing yellow eyes, or all three? After intercourse, does he laugh malevolently, urinate on your mattress, and then disappear? If you spot any of these behaviors, chances are you went on a date with Satan. Or an alien.

One the many things I learned from reading the book was how the entire publishing world (not just horror) was permanently changed in 1979 by an obscure tax-law case called The Thor Power Tool Co. v Commissioner. In this case, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that manufacturers could not write-down poor-selling or slow-selling inventory and thus reduce their tax liability. The case was focused on unsold parts for power-tools, but the ruling equally applied to publishing houses, who had hitherto done the same kind of write-down on their slow-selling novels. As Hendrix explains: “Suddenly, the day of the mid-list novel was over. Paperbacks were given six weeks on the racks to find an audience, then it was off to the shredder.” And so, inevitably, came the frantic scramble to find those half-dozen or so “blockbuster” books each season, behind which publishers focused their resources. (A similar “blockbuster” effect ravaged Hollywood in the 1970s, in this case due to the success of summer films like Jaws and Star Wars.) Books got less pulpy and more sparkly, with foil covers and die-cast cutouts like those made famous by the V.C. Andrews novels (which continued to be published, zombie-like, long after Andrews’s death).

Whether you’re a writer or just a pulp-paperback fan, Paperbacks from Hell is a great read. Check it out…

Friday Night Rock-Out: “Natural One”

Don’t let the name fool you. There is nothing “folksy” about The Folk Implosion, nor about this song. In fact, “Natural One” has a slightly demented, sinister quality to it that I really like.

This skewed quality might be due to the deliberately off-key, jangly sound of the lead guitar, which is the main hook of the song. It’s also, I believe, an example of musical dissonance. (I’m not sure of this; please correct me if I’m wrong.)

Also, don’t be fooled by the graphic for the video above. Those are not the band members. Rather, the image is taken from the poster of the 1995 film Kids, for whose soundtrack the song was composed. I haven’t seen Kids, but I’m told it’s a powerful, brutal depiction of alienation and apathy in a group of suburban youths in the drug-soaked 1990s.

Which means this song is a perfect fit.

Rock on…

BONUS! Here is a really cool video about musical dissonance.

Why Do Movies Get Remakes, but Books Don’t?

If you’re a liberal-arts nerd like me who thinks about culture all the time, you have probably pondered this question: why do people remake movies, but not books?

Yeah, I know. On the surface, this seems like a silly and even naive question. Movies, after all, are a popular medium. They belong primarily in the category of the performing arts, like theater and ballet and classical music. And, as we all understand, no one over ever gives the “final” performance of Hamlet or Don Giovanni or The Jupiter Symphony. Yes, there are certainly “classic” performances of all these works—some of them, made in the past century, have been recorded for the ages—but none is ever the last performance. Each generation must have its own Hamlet, Don Giovanni, etc.

Okay, so we’ve settled that question.

Or have we?

Why Modern Movies Feel “Flat” (Literally)

I was surfing the YouTube this morning when I stumbled upon this really cool video essay about the (diminished) immersive experience of modern films as opposed to old, classic ones. The author echoes some of the ideas I sketched out in a similar post from a few years ago called Whatever Happened to Open-Form Films?

Please check-out the video and the post if you are interested.

Friday Night Rock-Out: “Passion”

I must admit that I had never heard of Awolnation until a few years ago when my son played me a couple of their songs. This song, in particular, has a big, anthemic sound of the sort one doesn’t hear very often in alt-rock. I really like it. Even the soft parts sound really, really loud. And lead singer Aaron Bruno has the vocal range to pull it off without sounding like he’s screaming.

“Passion” is from Awolnation’s 2017 album Here Come the Runts. Rock on…

Ten Things I Love About “The Day the Earth Stood Still”

Well, over a week has passed since Halloween, and I’m still working through the classic horror and sci-fi movies that I rewatch every year around this time. One of my favorites (heck, one of everybody’s favorites, as far as I can tell, assuming that everybody is a nerd of a certain age) is Roger Wise’s 1951 classic The Day the Earth Stood Still (henceforth, TDTESS). Here are ten things I love about it….

1.) The Opening

This movie doesn’t dick around. It opens with the frantic calls of radar operators across the globe tracking an ultra-fast UAP as it enters the earth’s atmosphere. Word leaks out to press, generating a world-wide media frenzy—the “media,” in this case, being radio. Wise cast several then-famous, real-life radio broadcasters to play themselves, and I simply love hearing their great, precise modulated voices as they simultaneously try to inform the public without causing panic. It’s hard to believe there was ever such a time when journalists were so revered and appreciated, with good reason.

2.) The Music

From the title sequence onward, the film makes great use of Bernard Herrmann’s brilliant score. Hermann notably employed electronic instruments, including a kind of stone-age synthesizer called a theremin. It’s the theremin that gives the score that haunting, weird quality that has since become synonymous with atomic-era sci-fi movies.

Speaking of atomic-era stuff, this leads me to my next item…

3.) Analog technology

I don’t know why, but I am fascinated by how the movie gives the viewer a glimpse—almost a cross-section, really—of the analog technology of the day. We see radio transmitters, of course, but also phone switch boards with dozens of (women) operators frantically switching lines, and people yelling into telephones. And, of course, we have all the accoutrements of World War II, which was still a recent event: tanks, jeeps, motorcycles, rifles (yes, rifles). There is something soothing about all this old-fashioned stuff, especially when it is contrasted with….

4.) Singularity Technology

When the UAP finally lands (in Washington D.C., naturally, near the Capitol), we see that it represents a kind of futuristic tech that is the diametrical opposite of the local analog, atomic-era tech. The ship is all smooth silver metal until a seam appears, and the seam opens smoothly to allow a ramp to extend. A door forms in the same way, and the alien pilot Klaatu (Michael Renne) emerges, dressed in a silver suit and a helmet that, one assumes, is made of the same silver metal. All of this seems magical, even now, and also presages the later sci-fi tropes of nanotechnology, lasers, force-fields, atomic energy, computers, etc. etc.

Of course, Klaatu’s most impressive piece of tech is….

5.) Gort

Why is Gort so damned cool? Because he’s terrifying. As a giant, lumbering robot, he evokes the golem myth of implacable, supernatural force that has no emotions and no fear. And, with his single, death-ray emitting eye, he also reminds us of another mythic archetype—the cyclops. And in the way he suggests enormous power, barely held in check, he anticipates The Terminator films of three decades later.

6.) Michael Rennie

As with most classic, once-in-a-lifetime performances, Michael Rennie’s portrayal of Klaatu is so good that it’s now impossible to imagine anyone else doing it. With his smiling, gentle, athletic demeanor, he projects a firm but benevolent presence. He genuinely wants to help humanity escape its seemingly inevitable fate (i.e., being destroyed, either at its own hand or that of Gort). Also, he seems genuinely curious and likeable, especially in…

7.) Klaatu’s Interactions with Danny

I love the scenes where Klaatu and Danny, the little boy whose boarding house Klaatu finds himself in, go on a site-seeing tour of Washington D.C. They are the emotional core of the movie. After all, in our world, Klaatu is very much like a little boy himself. His sense of wonder is almost as strong as Danny’s.

8.) Patricia Neal

Instead of casting some bombshell scream-queen in the role of Helen, Danny’s mother, Wise chose the formidable and mesmerizing Patrica Neal. She was a great actress who would later hold her own against Paul Newman in 1963’s Hud. As Helen, she exudes an intelligence and moral strength that not only saves Klaatu from capture and death; she saves the entire planet.

9.) How Much you Don’t See

I could write an entire post on the paradox of old thriller movies whose lack of CGI effects (TDTESS was made thirty-three years before Jurassic Park), was actually an advantage. The film is actually made stronger by how much Wise doesn’t show on-screen. That is, we don’t see how Klaatu stops all electrical stuff from working on the titular day. We don’t see Gort walking across D.C. on his way to liberate Klaatu’s body from its jail cell. You know, stuff that would be easy to render in the CGI era (and which would also be rather boring). After all, the ultimate special effect is the human imagination, which happily fills in the blanks better than any whiz-bang effect.

My favorite example of this in the film is when Danny secretly follows Klaatu to his spaceship one night. He watches as Klaatu uses a flashlight to wake-up Gort, who then knocks-out the two G.I. ‘s guarding the ship. The genius of this scene is that we don’t actually see Gort do this. We just see him lumber over to the two dudes. Then, at the last moment, the camera switches back to Danny’s horrified face as he watches the moment of (rather mild) violence. Then, the camera switches back to Gort as he stands over the crumpled, unconscious bodies of the soldiers on the ground. Brilliant.

10.) Multiculturalism

It’s important to remember that TDTESS is a cold-war era movie, produced at the very height of the Red Scare and its attendant paranoia and xenophobia. It also came out just a few years before the start of the American Civil Rights movie. So, I am always amazed, and even a bit moved, by how progressive Wise’s vision is. In the opening scenes, we see people from other countries—France, India, China, and even Russia—depicted in a sympathetic light, human light. At least once in the film, Wise goes out of his way to show some genuine, actual Black people in the crowd watching Klaatu’s spaceship land. (This might seem trivial, now, but it was momentous decision back then.) And, of course, the climax of the movie comes with a miniature U.N. assembly, arranged by Professor Barnhardt (wonderfully played by the great Sam Jaffe, incidentally), full of people of all ethnicities and cultures. The message is clear—it’s only by cooperation and friendship that humanity can survive. And it’s a message that is just as relevant now as it was back then, perhaps even more so.

See also this cool post from another blogger (from whom I stole one of the screenshots above)…

“The Day the Earth Stood Still” (1951): 70 years later, and still standing… – Musings of a Middle-Aged Geek