The Animation Pimp

S’come full circle already? I always thought that 360° came when you were a geezer. I’m only 36. Was sorta hoping I was at/near the halfway point.

In 1992 when I started with the Ottawa festival, I saw Raimund Krumme’s film, Crossroads. Now at that time, I was a film studies student. I had little interest or knowledge in animation. Then came Krumme. I was blown away. The drawing was nothing special, simple, thick black lines. But the ideas, wowee! All this philosophical stuff jam packed into a six-minute short. I think I like this thing called animation.

1996. Just had my first animation article published about - you guessed it - Raimund Krumme.

So if you’re looking for someone to blame for, you know, the whole ‘me making some folks uncomfortable about their (or my?) existence in cartoonland, then hey, Raimund IS the man to call. In fact, next time you see him at a festival just tell him straight up: “Thanks a lot, Raimund. Thank’s a bunch for encouraging Robinson to join our ranks. Asshole.” And then give him a good ol’ forehand/backhand slap. Tell him I said it was okay.

Rather than scribble something that pretends to be new, I’ve pulled out the article I wrote 8 years ago. I was curious to see how my writing had changed and compare it to how I NOW felt about ol’ Krumme’s films. Kinda like when The Police re-did that song. So let’s have a look at some of the main bits and see how it all reads:

The Powers That Be: Raimund Krumme

First off, this title is awful. Titles are important. They set the tone, direction etc… This is a snoozer. Probably the worst title I’ve ever come up with along with this one.

Given the increasing obsession with technology in animation, it’s refreshing to discover the work of Raimund Krumme. Somewhere between Buster Keaton, Samuel Beckett and Chuck Jones, Krumme turns minimalist line drawings into complex, imaginative, and often humorous meditations on class, power, mass media, and with anironic twist, animation itself. Structured around an allegorical journey, Krumme’s exiled Keatonesque ‘everymen’ travel through barren, absurd, and often cruel landscapes in a quest for self-knowledge. And in Krumme’s work, like that of fellow countryman, Wim Wenders, the landscape also functions as an equation of a character’s state of mind, often reflecting a deeper inner torment.

The key to stabilizing the characters’ torments is through power. But power itself is an ever-changing and often superficial entity….

This is TOTALLY wrong.

…Watching Krumme’s creative manipulation of space is not unlike viewing the films of Buster Keaton, Jackie Chan or Gene Kelly, whose physical manoeuvers and astonishing use of space as a supporting character, defy all reason. While academics can ponder over the sociological and philosophical implications of each scene, there is an emotional element at work, contrary to Krumme’s Brechtian ambitions that are quite simply hypnotic. …

Hmm… holy serious man. Where’s the humour, the self-reflexivity, the swearing? This reads like a guy not far removed from University. Not sure if I agree with the landscape stuff anymore cause Krumme’s films don’t really have much in the way of landscapes. The place they’re WONDERING about (yes…with an ‘o’) IS the landscape itself. The landscapes inside folk’s heads—and of course the landscapes are ultimately taking place in Krumme’s head. But wait..the landscape I see takes place inside my head and the one YOU read takes… oh never mind. Check out all those allusions too! Who else refers to Chuck Jones, Jackie Chan and Bertolt Brecht in the same piece? Pile of crock really, just a reflection of my own tastes at the time. Threw in the Jones reference for the cartoon fans. Oh… yeah… the last 2-3 lines are a small bag of garbage. “Quite simply hypnotic!” Sounds like I’m reviewing theatre for the New Yorker.

Born in Cologne in 1950, Krumme spent his post-student years dabbling in a variety of activities. In addition to teaching, Krumme also illustrated, and produced radio plays for children. Krumme’s entrance into animation was, he notes, “quite by accident”. A company approached him to do drawings for a children’s film. He did the drawings, went to the set, and ended up directing the film, a cut-out piece entitled, Phantomes des Chateaux (1980). Krumme would go on to direct three more films for children, Spaghetti (1981) (about a boy who, forced to eat his spaghetti, instead attempts to build his own world out of the food), Puzzle (1982), and And The Chair Flew Through the Window (1984)….

I didn’t like these films much. Still… I wish Raimund would go back and try different styles.

….Rope Dance was the first film that enabled Krumme to shift from making films for children towards a more personalized style. In the film, two characters (based on Krumme’s relationship with his father) struggle for control of a rope within a continually shifting rectangular plane. While some have viewed the film, in its seemingly negative view towards the father, as cruel, Rope Dance is an innovative and tender meditation on the transference of knowledge, and with it power, from generation to generation. What elevates the film beyond Krumme’s previous work is his marvelous use of the rope and rectangle. The rope, a symbol of knowledge, undergoes continual shifts in the film as the characters develop. Initially, the rope is a series of tracks that the father lays for the son, then just as quickly the rope becomes a means of control as the son becomes a puppet under the unbearing control of the father. For a moment there is peace as the two swing the rope in unison over the rectangle which has now become a well. Later the son attempts to break free of the rope in order to join the crowd, but the father is unwilling, indeed unable to let go. Eventually the son assumes control of the rope, and in the film’s most tender moment, the son returns to lead the now blind father.

Note the polite structure here. We’re gonna go chronologically. Who were those ‘some’ who viewed the film as cruel? I’ve no idea. Actually I’m spot on here. I just re-watched the film and have to say that I agree with the above. Now that I’m a father, the film’s all that more touching. And for a minute I was thinking… “shit Raimund, this is sentimental, romantic fruit loops.” But then I was thinking about my two non-existent fathers—neither of whom I have contact with—and realize that I’m still connected by a thread because of my inability to get over their shitheadedness. So I’m doing a dance with say 2-3 ropes.

…The result of Krumme’s fascination was Spectators, a biting parable about public reaction using the relationship between a film and its audience. Krumme, who admits to finding the power of the masses, “quite frightening”, was also motivated by the importance in Germany at the time to possess uniform opinions….

In Spectators, the cinema becomes a repressive environment where people lose themselves in a series of images and sounds…..

Spectators reveals, like Fritz Lang’s Fury a fear of the often reactionary and over-emotional power of the masses. Krumme’s frantic, dizzying camera reflects the ever-changing moods of the audience, while the refusal of a central character reflects not only the lack of individuality in contemporary society, but also the need to be led (which is nicely illustrated through Krumme’s nod to Animal Farm where the audience turn into rows of clucking chickens). And again, space plays a pivotal role in the film. In contrast to the open spaces of Krumme’s other films, Spectators offers a constricting, claustrophobic landscape that at once bears a close resemblance to a prison…

This aint bad in some ways. I got the personal stuff (festivals) and the politics (german reunification). Note the references: Animal Farm to show the animation folks that I KNOW and Fury, to show that I KNOW MORE THAN YOU. Too many friggin adjectives though. Writing like a tightass, Hiding behind school book names.

It’s kinda funny that I hate the cinema. It’s overpriced, crowded and you’re forced to check your personality in at the door. Everyone has to react and behave the same. No talking. No mobiles. No laughing when you should be crying. All must applaud in unison.

One thing I missed here was the connection between cinema and society. Cinema aint no different than shopping malls, dinner parties, or getting gas. Most folks hide their essence behind a mask of conformity. We repress all that stuff that we’re REALLY feeling. Course if we express every TRUTH at every turn, there’d be fistfights and chaos. I’m still learning how to suppress truth from others. Funny, cause I lie to myself oh-so-very well.

Like Rope Dance, Crossroads features a basic symbol, in this case, an intersection. A man crosses the screen and walks along the frame of the film. The frame soon becomes a tightrope, then a road which leads to an intersection. Now the man must decide which path to take. In deciding his course of action, he must confront the advice of his shadow and three other men. But the man soon finds that each path only leads him back to the center. Soon, all four characters, (echoing the brilliant scene in Keaton’s Sherlock Jr. that finds Buster trapped within the frame and at the mercy of the editor), enter spaces which suddenly change from corridors to walls. What appears to be hopeful one moment turns to entrapment the next. It soon becomes apparent that no matter how hard the characters try, they simply aren’t going anywhere. But inexplicably Krumme’s characters, in spite of the impossibility of their actions, do go on.

S’bout right. Did I mention that the four characters are all part of the same person? Lot of Heraclitus in this here film in the sense that life is a continual cycle: up = down, beginning = end etc… The Keaton reference is okay, but pushing it a bit, but there is a lot of Beckett influence here. If there was ever a man to do a Beckett adaptation…

Passage, Krumme’s most recent film, merges elements of Leo Tolstoy’s story, Master and Man with a dash of Tex Avery, Fred Astaire and Jerry Lewis, to create one of his most explicit and absurd political commentaries. Two men, a porter and his master, have to cross a frozen pond. Fearing the danger ahead of them, each tries to follow the other, leaving their social roles behind. But once the danger is over, everything returns to its original state.

This is the worst passage (heh heh). I’m not saying a damn thing here….and the Astaire, Avery and Lewis comparisons are embarrassing. I mean it’s got some funny moments…but in that Beckett haha we’re all gonna die sense.

Despite the Tex Avery inspired lunacy of Passage, we should not overlook the value of the message underlying the film: hierarchy is culturally, not naturally conceived.

OH PLEASE! Give me a break mr. Preacher. You’re spouting Prof. hand me downs.

The Magic Flute is technically unlike anything Krumme has done before. Working on computer for the first time using TOONBOX, a 2D animation palette, Krumme, like his characters, entered a new and at times frustrating creative environment. While TOONBOX enabled Krumme to do things he couldn’t do by hand (eg. Changing colours) and relieved him from tedious work (eg. inbetweening), it was not an entirely happy experience. Krumme found that he had to compromise a great deal and that he was often forced into a subservient role with the computer. But Despite his overall unhappiness with the final product, he admits that he would like to work on computers again.

Boring! This is filler, folks. I didn’t like Magic Flute cause it didn’t fit in with my ‘thesis’, and hell, it was just plain boring, but rather than just say I didn’t like it I kept it in to keep the continuity and then just talked about the software to avoid saying anything about the film. You could tell that Raimund was having a hard time with the technology.

In 1994 Krumme was approached by producer Ron Diamond to do a commercial for Acme Filmworks in Los Angeles. And while Krumme is the first to acknowledge the financial rewards of doing advertisements, he says that the offer also gave him a chance to work in a new creative environment. …

…Krumme had come to a stage where he felt it was time to leave Germany….Krumme has since completed a number of commercials and will continue to work for Diamond and live in California for most of the year, returning to Germany for a few weeks every summer.

I visited Raimund with some chums in the late 90s. He lived near some gangland area. I was a bit panicky. Then we get to his house and in passing he tells us about some shooting that happened downstairs. For the rest of the evening, I keep my eye on his huge living room window, ready to duck at the slightest sound.

Also, after teaching at Cal Arts for a few years, Raimund headed back to Germany where he remains. He still does the occasional commercial for Acme.

At the moment, Krumme is storyboarding a new film tentatively called, The Message, which addresses the problems of communication. He is also animating thirty minutes of the film “Harold and The Purple Crayon” based on the classic children’s story. In the future Krumme would like to further explore the computer field, and work in live action with artificial backgrounds.

Obviously, Raimund has finished The Message. It’s ok, but not his best work. It feels a bit dated, something that Lenica or Schabenbeck might have made in the sixties. And by the way, the Harold project never happened. Too bad. I mean that cause it was the perfect vehicle for Raimund’s style.

One of the common criticisms of Krumme’s work is that “it’s all the same”. Not only does this criticism imply that an individual aesthetic is defined solely by its technique, it denies story and plot its rightful place within the artist’s style. And while Krumme’s films from Rope Dance to Passage certainly bear an unmistakable ‘Krumme-look’, it is reductive to reduce these complex and varied works to a single style….

Ya know I’m not sure that I agree with me anymore. Sure, Krumme challenges himself conceptually, but he seems content to keep using the same style and I’m not sure I dig that these days. It’s like Pärn, Schwizgebel, Plympton and Mulloy, they’ve all found their cozy little room in the trailer park of art and seem content to stay there. Personally I find that a bit stagnant. I admire folks like, say, Andreas Hykade , Jonas Odell, Mati Kütt Joanna Priestly, George Griffin, and assortment of others for at least trying out new bikepaths.

But perhaps the most important aspect of Krumme’s work is his craftsmanship.

I canNOT believe that I said this. Attention to craftsmanship is turning animation into an ornament – real pretty to look at, but kinda useless.

Unlike today’s technological dynamos who view craftsmanship solely in terms of technique with scant attention to story. Krumme’s work is inspiring because he merges a deceptively simple story and technique into a creative and complex imagining of contemporary society.

OKAY… I sort of redeem myself here. Raimund HAS some pertinent ideas and isn’t obsessed with technique.

And, in what is perhaps his ultimate irony, Krumme’s basic black and white drawings allow us to see that the reality we take for granted is not black and white.

Even some 8 years later, I still get a kick out of most of Krumme’s work—specifically Rope Dance, Spectators, Crossroads and Passage. Many of the ideas I saw then hold true today and I’ve even seen new threads like the determinism vs fatalism at play in his work that I didn’t catch before. The whole power thing though is wrong. Krumme’s characters fight for a power that comes from freedom.

Oh yeah! Check out that nifty final line. I like it. Course it’s a bit of a contradiction because I’m using that line for absolute- no buts-about- it, closure. Why couldn’t I just stop wherever? Hey wait a second, this is all a bit like a

Written for Animac Animation festival in Spain (2004)

Piece done for the Ottawa Xpress in early 2007. My first cover story actually.

Most of you know how a Canadian (Joe Shuster) co-created Superman, but can you tell me who Canada’s first superhero was? Any idea who Dave Sim, Chester Brown or Julie Doucet are?

Yeah, didn’t think so.

Don’t feel so bad. It’s a story that’s become familiar, tiresome and oh-so Canadian.

Faced with an apathetic and relatively modest public in their own country, Canadian artists are forced to seek U.S. markets to earn a decent living. It happens in film, writing, animation, and in the Canadian comic industry, as Ottawa writer John Bell reveals in “Invaders from the North: How Canada Conquered the Comic Book Universe.”

To make matters worse, comics, like animation, are further burdened with the misnomer that they only exist for comic and kiddie purposes. Few people are aware that both art forms produce provocative, poetic and deeply personal works for adults. As a result unique comic artists like Chester Brown, Dave Cooper, Julie Doucet and others, remain unknown to most Canadians.

In “Invaders from the North”, Bell traces the highs and lows of Canada’s comic book history from the early –and rather lame- attempts to create Canadian superheroes (Northern Light, Nelvana, Johnny Canuck) to the more mature and unconventional works of contemporary artists. Along the way, Bell touches ongoing problems that have threatened the industry, notably censorship (including a nice anecdote about how a young Brian Mulroney won a debate contest with his denunciation of comics. Perhaps not coincidently, the second censorship movement emerged during Mulroney’s tenure as Prime Minister), U.S. cultural imperialism, brain drain (i.e. when our artists leave to work in another country), and the apathy of the Canadian public.

Bell’s book is well researched and illustrated (highlighted by a nifty cover illustration courtesy of home boy, Dave Cooper), but his argument that Canada has “conquered” the comic book universe isn’t all that convincing. Certainly, a number of Canadians have excelled and achieved international success (most notably Todd McFarlane), but to say that Canada has had a significant impact on the comic book industry (the way, say, that Canadians have had on the animation industry) might be stretching it. It’s also a shame that Bell doesn’t give us more insight into the work of many of the artists. Too many are given quick mentions. Only Chester Brown receives a detailed critical and biographical examination. Still, these are minor quibbles. Bell’s book is passionate, informative and long overdue. Hopefully, it will kick start more detailed writings about some of Canada’s unsung contemporary comic artists.

Chris Robinson interviewed John Bell via email to discuss his book and the problems facing Canadian comic artists.

When did you first get interested in Canadian comic history and why?

- I started my research on Canadian comics about thirty years ago. At that time, I had read quite a bit about the history of American comics and realized that our own comic-art tradition had been ignored — like much of our popular culture.

You talk a lot about the early attempts to make distinctly Canadian superheroes, but it seems to me that it’s not really in the Canadian tradition to create such a world.

- That’s true. I think that Canadians are too sceptical about power — and perhaps even heroism — to fully embrace indigenous superheroes. Although Canadians have played — and continue to play — an important role in the superhero field, it remains in many ways an American genre.

Is it too late for us to create a superhero? Isn’t it time we just say forget it and embrace Seth, Dave Sim and their ilk?

- The superhero genre has certainly faltered at times, but it will persist. It was once aimed at twelve-year-old boys. It now seems to be produced for twenty-two-year-olds. Perhaps this is progress.

Should we just accept that ‘artistic’ comics has and will, like poetry or artistic animation, always have a relatively small, cult audience? Is that really such a bad thing?

This is an interesting point. Comics are no longer a mass medium and must thus find a new audience. However, as Drawn and Quarterly has demonstrated, that audience will likely be found by packaging and presenting comics in a new way and in new venues. The resulting audience will likely be somewhat smaller — but hopefully bigger than that for Canadian poetry (and I say this as a former editor of Arc)!

Few people realize that there’s a long history of animation in Ottawa, can the same be said of comics?

- Dave started working at a very young age with an Ottawa small-press comics creator and publisher named Barry Blair. Blair was later involved with an Ottawa-based alternative-comics company called Aircel. Among the other notable creators who have been associated with the city over the years are Stanley Berneche, Pat McEown, Dale Keown, Denis Beauvais, Ron Sutton, Stuart Immonen, Greg Kerr, Tom Fowler, and Troy Little.

Why don’t you give other artists the same detailed exploration that you give Chester Brown.

In addition to a general survey of Canadian comics history, I thought it would be useful to provide two in-depth studies; one focussed on a theme within our comics tradition, the other on a single creator. Admittedly, choosing one creator was very difficult; however, I decided to focus on Chester because the trajectory of his career encompasses most aspects of the post-1975 revolution in Canadian comics. I also very much admired his dedication to his art and his fearlessness.

Comics have it seems almost swung too far to the adult/mature audience leaving almost nothing for kids anymore.

-For someone who grew up during the fifties and early sixties, when comics were omnipresent, it is shocking to see how few titles are now aimed at kids. This has to have a negative impact on the audience for comics. It’s probably not a fatal mistake, but it is a signficant oversight.

Okay, geek question, who would win a battle of Canadian superheroes?

- Nelvana would trounce all the guys. No question.

Another Ottawa Citizen piece.

K.C and the Sunshine Band closing the Blues Festival!?

It actually makes sense, sort of.

“We were a rhythm and blues/pop band,” says Harry Casey (the “K.C.” of the Sunshine Band) about the roots of a band that was as big (the first band since the Beatles to score four #1 hits - Shake Your Booty, Boogie Shoes, Get Down Tonight, That’s the Way (I like it) - in one year) as you could get in the mid-1970s.

Fortunately – or unfortunately – K.C. and the Sunshine Band got swept into the disco wave that began in the mid-seventies. “There was a little resentment when it first started happening,” says Casey, “because we were really pre-disco. It was our sound that became what disco is today. I thought that when they renamed it they had once again slighted r&b as being something so popular. Even today they call it hip hop, but they won’t give r&b its due.”

But perhaps it’s disco that hasn’t received proper credit. Since the term was first used around 1973 (when it referred to music that was made for discotheques), disco has been slammed and ridiculed as a lame period in music history. For many, the term disco conjures memories of John Travolta strutting on the dance floor in his white suit and button down shirt from the film, Saturday Night Fever, or the shrill voices of the Bee Gees, or, worse still, Rick Dees’ novelty hit, Disco Duck. With its unsightly fashions, cheesy strobe lights, mirrored walls, and exclusive clubs, disco was viewed as a reflection of a crass new conservative and Narcissistic generation.

“Nonsense,” says Will Straw, Professor of Communications at McGill University. “Disco was, in a sense, what happens when city dwellers (blacks, Hispanics, gays) produce a culture which also appeals to white city dwellers, both middle class and working class (e.g., Saturday Night Fever.)”

If anything, disco and 1970s dance culture was an extension, not a rejection of the social movements of the 1960s. It was almost as though the new generation was saying, “look, enough talking, enough protests, let’s just shut up and dance.”

“To me the seventies was a celebration of what everybody picketed for in the 50s and 60s,” says Casey, “for peace, love, harmony etc… the seventies was a celebration of it all finally happening.”

“The late 1960s was all about the so-called rainbow alliance, where all of these groups could be more powerful if they came together and supported each other’s causes,” says Tim Lawrence, author of the acclaimed book, Love Saves the Day: A History of American Dance Music Culture, 1970-1979.

“By the early 1970s,” Lawrence continues, “these radical movements were largely in retreat, and my own sense is that the trajectory of these movements carried on, but in other forms. One of the most important of these was the dance floor, an underground and protected space where people could get on with their thing — express themselves — in relative privacy.”

In a sense, disco and dance culture did what rock, rallies, and protests couldn’t achieve. On that dance floor, race, class and sexual orientation vanished.

By the late 1970s, disco had become so popular that it became, as all things commercial invariably do, the target of ridicule and hostility. A Chicago DJ named Steve Dahl initiated the most infamous anti-disco stance. When the former rock station announced it was becoming a disco station, the Detroit DJ was livid and decided to do something about it. In 1979, Dahl asked listeners to bring their disco records to Chicago’s Comiskey Park (home of the Chicago White Sox) so that he could blow them up and end disco forever. As Dahl lead a chant of “disco sucks”, fans stormed the field and set fire to thousands of disco records. The event did not alone kill disco, but it certainly triggered its death knell.

Disco certainly wasn’t the first commercial craze to hit society, so why was there so much venom and hostility directed towards this seemingly utopian sub-culture? “In part,” says Lawrence, “the backlash was homophobic and racist and sexist — it was about white straight men who normally enjoyed occupying the centre stage of culture and politics feeling that they had been marginalized by a popular culture that was most obviously enjoyed by gay men, African Americans and women — so they wanted to seize back the centre ground.”

But it wasn’t just disco haters who turned on the genre. “DJ and dance aficionados also turned against disco,” adds Lawrence, “because the genre was “exploited” in the aftermath of Saturday Night Fever, when the major record companies jumped on the bandwagon and thought that anything they put out with a four-on-the-floor bass drum would sell records. A lot of it was simply awful music and it didn’t sell.”

These events played out during a testy time in the U.S. which was undergoing a economic recession. Disco provided people with easy outlet for deeper frustrations and fears. Before the decade was done, disco – and with K.C. and The Sunshine Band- put away its dancing shoes.

Disco became big again in the 1990s when a wave of 1970s nostalgia emerged. Casey, who had retired in the mid-1980s, came back just in time. Today, K.C. and the Sunshine Band are a popular touring group, but will anyone admit being a fan? Despite the passing years, disco seems toexist, like candy, as a guilty pleasure. Those who admit to getting down on occasion to “Boogie Man” (and I’m one of them) or “Stayin’ Alive” do so with the wink of an eye. On a cerebral level, we’re aware of how cheesy the lyrics are and how goofy the dance moves were, yet on a purely sensual level, we can’t help but shake some booty to the music. It just feels too damn good.

“Music in the present divided us,” says Straw. “Music from the past becomes everyone’s property, even if we hated it at the time. The surest way to get people dancing at a wedding is to play a popular 1970s disco song. So it’s mostly about how music ages, I think, overcoming polemics and taste war and becoming shared heritage. Disco is easily revivable now because it’s lost the faceless anonymity for which it was criticized in the 1970s.

For Harry Casey, the answer is simpler: “It was great music. You can’t deny it. The music picks you up and makes you feel good.”

Never imagined I’d give this much energy to a show I loathed. Money talks. Originally written for The Ottawa Citizen
If cocaine was the drug of the 1980s, Miami Vice was its TV equivalent. Everywhere you turned in the mid-eighties there it was. Guys with pastel coloured clothes, loafers, sunglasses, and carefully coifed hair. If the high school preps weren’t blasting Jan Hammer’s synth-driven Miami Vice anthems, they were playing pop music from the show. There wasn’t a hit song of the time that wasn’t featured on the show (Phil Collins can thank the show for much of his 1980s fame). Even the two stars, Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas – ala William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy- recorded their own awful records. Miami Vice worship was so intense that my mother even named one of her cats, “Tubbs”.

I didn’t get it then. I don’t fully get it now. Today, removed from it’s original context, Miami Vice comes across as a fusion of the campy Pamela Anderson show, V.I.P and the stylish pretensions of C.S.I. Regardless, there is no denying that Miami Vice was a TV revolution in its time. No TV show before or since has had such an intense and wide spread cultural impact. Fusing MTV, fashion, and Film Noir, Miami Vice turned the tired cop show genre on its rump. Along the way, the show influenced the sounds and fashions of the eighties and made Miami – previously considered a haven for geriatrics – one of the coolest cities in the world.

It started with two words: “MTV Cops”. The author was then NBC President, Brandon Tartikoff. MTV had begun broadcasting in 1981 and had become a massive success with young audiences. Tartikoff wanted to figure out how he could bring the MTV style to network television so that he could attract younger viewers with money to spend. He took his piece of paper to a former Hill Street Blues writer/producer, Anthony Yerkovich. Yerkovich, as fate would have it, was working on a movie idea about a pair of Miami Vice cops. Yerkovich (who supervised the first five episodes after the pilot, then left to develop film projects for Universal) was had long been fascinated with Miami. “Even when I was on Hill Street Blues, I was collecting information on Miami,” he told Time Magazine in 1985. “I thought of it as sort of a modern-day American Casablanca. It seemed to be an interesting socioeconomic tidepool: the incredible number of refugees from Central America and Cuba, the already extensive Cuban-American community, and on top of all that the drug trade. There is a fascinating amount of service industries that revolve around the drug trade–money laundering, bail bondsmen, attorneys who service drug smugglers. Miami has become a sort of Barbary Coast of free enterprise gone berserk.” Tartikoff liked the idea and gave it a go.

The TV cop show had traditionally been for an older adult audience. Their protagonists looked, well, they looked like regular cops. They were middle aged, not particularly attractive and didn’t really care about their clothing. Miami Vice changed that. Miami Vice cops would be young, good looking and well dressed. Sonny “James” Crockett (Don Johnson) is an ex-college football star who lives on a boat with his pet alligator, Elvis, drives a Ferrari and wears pastel coloured linen shirts, t-shirts, loafers. Ex-New York cop Ricardo “Rico” Tubbs (Philip Michael Thomas) is more stylish, wearing Armani suits (Typically, the duo wore at least different Ricci, Versace and Boss suits in each episode—always in shades of the show’s approved colours like fuschia, pink, green and peach.) Their clothes and lifestyle immediately stood out. How could low paying cops afford expensive clothes and cars? Well, Crockett and Tubbs weren’t normal cops. As undercover agents, the producers realized that the duo could legally use confiscated material for their work. Besides, if the duo were to play convincing underground drug runners, they had to look the part.

But it wasn’t just the clothes that made the show, there was also something different about the sound and look of the show. With it’s use of pop music of the time along with flashy Film Noir inspired cinematography, Miami Vice looked and sounded like it was a movie. The series was shot on location to give the show an added sense of realism and the music was prominent that it became another character. Inspired by MTV videos – which relied on gestures, looks and music to tell a story – music became another way of conveying the story to the viewer quickly and without words. In the pilot episode –and for many, the most defining image of the series – Crockett and Tubbs drive through the dark and slick city streets of Miami as Phil Collin’s In the Air Tonight plays over the scene. Crockett is exhausted and on the brink of collapse. He’s dealing with a failing marriage, an unhealthly lifestyle, and he has just learned that one of cop friends is leaking information to the bad guys. Using Collin’s sombre song, the stillness of the Miami night, and the dazzling clash between the city street lights and the smooth black chrome of the Ferrari, the producers convey Crockett’s emotions without using a single word.

Miami Vice used both original music and popular songs of the day (which was uncommon on TV because of the high price of buying the music rights). Jan Hammer, a Czech-born composer, who made the music in his home in upstate New York, created the show’s memorable synthesizer drenched score. Accompanying Hammer’s scores were a variety of pop hits that were in regular rotation on MTV. Songs by Tina Turner, U2, Roger Daltrey, Glenn Frey (who also appeared in a number of episodes), Frankie Goes To Hollywood all appeared as musical interludes on Miami Vice. Once the show became popular, musicians were lining up to get heard on the show (Eventually, a Miami Vice soundtrack was released on record. It was an instant best seller - unlike the dreadful recordings by Johnson and Michael Thomas).

Another innovative and influential aspect of the show was it’s multiracial cast. Tubbs and Crockett were the first black and white cop team since The Mod Squad and I Spy. Accompanying them was a cast of Latino cops and villains that reflected Miami’s multiracial population. What made the casting even more modern was that they didn’t stereotype Latinos as the bad guys. In fact, many of the crooks were white guys and Crockett and Tubb’s grim and mysterious boss (played by Edward James Olmos) was Latin American. This was a far cry from the very white world of Adam 12, Dragnet, Streets of San Francisco and most cop shows.
Image didn’t tell the whole story. Underneath this neon pastel glam was a dirty, unsavoury world where druglords ruled and cops routinely sacrificed their lives for lousy pay. In fact, contrary to its MTV inspiration, the Miami police department is a pretty barren and ugly place. The male cops look old and tired in their casual beach shirts and the female cops walk around in hooker costumes. In most cop shows, the lines between good and evil were clearly drawn: cops were good and criminals were bad. It was a black and white world where every crime was solved, every criminal punished. Crockett and Tubbs were different. They weren’t great cops and they didn’t always get their man. Often, they allowed personal emotions to get in the way of their work. It was sometimes difficult to tell if they were chasing a criminal because it was their job or because they wanted retribution (e.g. in the Pilot episode, Tubbs wants to kill the drug lord who murdered his brother). The lines between good and evil often blurred. It was hard to tell who was good and who was bad. Crockett’s wife even tells him in the pilot episode that he’s just the flip side of the same coin and that’s he more interested in the action and style than with good and evil. It would be a common theme throughout the series. In many episodes, cops turn out to be bad guys. In one episode, Crockett suffers amnesia and turns to a life of crime. This was virtually unheard of for a TV Cop show and it certainly inspired later shows like NYPD Blue, Homicide: Life on the Street and The Wire.

When Miami Vice debuted in 1984 it was not an instant hit. It didn’t help that NBC put the show on Friday evenings against Falcon Crest, a popular CBS soap opera. Very quickly, though, people caught on to the show’s glamourous style, explosive action and charismatic leading men. By the summer of 1985, Miami Vice reruns were finishing in the Nielson Top Ten and it was becoming a ‘must see’ show. Before the end of the first season, Miami Vice supplanted Hill Street Blues as the top cop show on television and earned an astounding 15 Emmy nominations.

Miami Vice then exploded off the screen and into the streets. Kenneth Cole introduced “Crocket” and “Tubbs” show. Macy’s opened a Miami Vice section in their young men’s department. “The show has taken Italian men’s fashion and spread it to mass America,” Kal Ruttenstein, a senior vice president of Bloomingdale’s told Time Magazine in 1985. “Sales of unconstructed blazers, shiny fabric jackets and lighter colors have gone up noticeably.” TV Cops had never looked better.

The rest is television history, but as an old pre-Greek philosopher once said, “the way up is the way down.” Given its enormous cultural impact, Miami Vice’s fall came almost as quickly as it rise. Critics complained that the show was all style and no substance. Even one of show’s directors, Lee Katzin, admitted “the show is written for an MTV audience, which is more interested in images, emotions and energy than plot and character and words.” St. Elsewhere producer, Bruce Paltrow (father of Gweneth) was more blunt. “It’s hip and glib, but not very deep.” In 1989, the pink neon sign was pulled and Miami Vice was off to TV heaven.

Twenty-years later, Miami Vice doesn’t hold up too well. In one sense, the show was so influential that much of what it pioneered feels so commonplace and cliché today. The show also relied so heavily on music and fashions of its time that –unlike unfashionable shows like my personal fave, Columbo – it looks dated and tacky. Still, Paltrow was pretty much spot on in his criticism of the show. Despite it’s air and pretensions, Miami Vice is not a deep show. It wants to be in some ways (the moral ambiguity of its characters), but rarely is their any depth to justify the emotions the characters are feeling. In the first season, for example, Tubbs falls hard for the daughter of the drug lord (Calderone) who killed his brother. But there is nothing in the episode—aside from some glossy MTV love scene – that justifies this intense love affair. In the end, Crockett and Tubbs are simply not believable as undercover cops. How are they able to keep going undercover in the same city again and again? How is that the drug guys don’t recognize these two mavericks of style? And if they’re undercover, why are they hanging out at the police station (I asked my ex-undercover cop uncle and he confirmed that an uncover cop wouldn’t be hanging around the station. In fact, most cops wouldn’t even know who is or isn’t undercover.). In the end, Miami Vice was nothing more than a cool looking poser feigning a world weary cynicism and moral ambiguity that it didn’t fully experience, earn, or even understand.

Critiques aside, Miami Vice’s cultural impact cannot be denied. The show breathed fresh air into a dead Television genre by moving away from the simplistic preachiness of cop shows towards the more shadowy and contradictory world of Film Noir, and also spawned a new breed of hollow buddy/action films (from Bad Boys and Rush Hour to, ironically, the new Miami Vice feature). While the show’s dark tones were inflated and superficial (much like C.S.I. today), it’s willingness to explore darker themes did open the door for more complex cop shows like Homicide: Life on the Street, NYPD Blue, and The Wire. For that alone, I’m almost willing to forgive Miami Vice for littering my late teens with Jan Hammer, pink shirts, loafers and a housecat named “Tubbs”.

Almost.

Originally conceived this for Chunklet Magazine, but finally ran in The Ottawa Citizen in 2006. Neglected to plug Jack Benny and Phil Silvers, two of the pioneers of TV asswipes.

Let’s call them, err, ‘AH,’ and follow
Chris Robinson as he charts their rise on
the small screen,
and reveals what it says
about each of us

When Nate Fisher bit the dust on the final season of Six Feet Under, the
reactions were astonishing in their venom. Many Six Feet Under faithful
(mostly female) were delighted that the “a–hole” had got what he deserved.
Sure, Nate had his dark moments: he cheated on his pregnant wife with his
sort-of stepsister. But otherwise he was a normal guy. He had good and bad
days, and that’s precisely what made Six Feet Under a powerful, poignant and
honest show.
It’s also something that HBO, more than any network, has done best. On shows
like Six Feet Under, The Wire, and in particular Deadwood and The Sopranos,
we’ve been introduced to characters who are not your typical TV cardboard
cutouts. Characters like Tony Soprano and Al Swearengen are so complex and
unpredictable that our allegiances constantly shift. One minute we loathe
them, the next we empathize.
Even after all these years of television, we’re not quite sure how to react
to the AH.

Archie Bunker
and The rise of the asshole

Television has always had its share of AHs. Among the pioneers are Jackie
Gleason (The Honeymooners), Archie Bunker (All in the Family), Basil Fawlty
(Fawlty Towers), and George Jefferson (The Jeffersons). Add Fred Flinstone
to the list: AHs can be animated.
With the exception of Bunker, the men were playful caricatures mocking the
myopic dimwit within us all. Their actions were tempered by supporting
characters (usually their patient and forgiving wives), who provided a more
agrarian perspective.
Archie was the most profound.
See TV on Page F2

Continued from Page B1
Through his bigoted and misogynistic behaviour, the show’s creators offered a
reflection of white American working class men, who having grown up in the
prosperous and orderly 1950s now found themselves in a world they could no
longer comprehend. Women wanted to work. Blacks wanted equality. Children
questioned their parents.
The voice of this new generation was provided by Archie’s daughter, Gloria
and her hippie liberal husband, Mike (more famously, “Meathead”). In almost
every episode, Meathead and Archie clashed over race, class or gender.
Through these dueling characters, All in the Family captured the growing
complexities and disappointment of post-1960s America.
With the exception of a handful of AHs, including the entire Ewing family
(Dallas) and Family Ties’ Alex P. Keaton - the inverted offspring of Bunker
- television of the Reagan era was primarily littered with saccharine fare
like Alf, Facts of Life, The Cosby Show and Who’s The Boss?
That changed by the end of the decade with a new, animated sitcom about a
dysfunctional family, The Simpsons.
TV comedy in the’90s -
Seinfeld, The Simpsons
Homer Simpson was a return of sorts to Bunker, a loud, opinionated lout with
little care for the thoughts and feelings of others.
Unlike Bunker, Homer is the modern emptyman; a man of little education,
ambition or beliefs, and blissfully ignorant. What little he does know comes
to him through television. As much as his intellectual daughter, Lisa, tries
to challenge him to “wake up,” Homer dwells in Plato’s cave, seeing only the
shadows of things, not the things themselves.
While many episodes end with Homer coming to a new realization about himself,
his family or the world, his awareness is short lived. By the next episode
he’s forgotten everything, and back to his immature and facile ways.
Seinfeld (1990) was the first sitcom with an entire cast of AHs. Jerry,
Elaine, George, Kramer and most of the secondary characters (Newman,
Peterman, Puddy etc. ) were selfish, petty and occasionally nasty people
with little concern for others.
Of the numerous examples, the two most infamous were when the gang reacted
ambiguously to the death of George’s fiancé, Susan. George had a difficult
time hiding his relief that her untimely death - she was poisoned by licking
cheap envelopes that the miserly George insisted on buying for their
wedding invitations - saved him from marriage. Then, in the series’ finale,
Jerry, Elaine, Kramer and George were sentenced to a year in prison for
standing by idly while a man was being robbed.
In many ways, Seinfeld was an extension of Family Ties and The Simpsons in
that it was a portrait of a solipsistic generation. And like those shows,
Seinfeld excavated unsavory characteristics that existed within all of us
and took them to extremes.
Seinfeld’s co-creator, Larry David, took things up a notch with his follow up
series, Curb Your Enthusiasm (2000). The show’s premise was simple. It
followed a day in the life of Larry David, the wealthy co-creator of
Seinfeld. Naturally, there was more. Larry, the inspiration for Seinfeld’s
George, routinely gets into petty arguments and fights with friends, family,
colleagues and strangers because of his often insensitive and brutally
frank opinions. Larry David is the AH within us all - or at least some of
us.
If Bunker was a poster boy of post-’60s intolerance, Homer , David and the
Seinfeld gang - not to forget other misanthropic comic masterpieces like The
Larry Sanders Show and British import I’m Alan Partridge - became a release
valve from the stifling effects of late 20th century political correctness.
Through these characters, our most brutally honest thoughts and feelings
were brought to the surface. The characters said the things we would never
dare to speak.
“That’s the guy that I wish I was,” said David in January when asked if he
was like his character. “I love that guy. This is the guy (pointing at
himself) I can’t stand. But … I can’t get enough of that guy. That guy
does things I wish I could do. He behaves the way I want to behave.”
We tolerate and even admire these AHs because they are harmless. They are
taken to extremes that would not be tolerated in the real world. The people
who, for example, humour and feed David’s misanthropic neuroses in Curb Your
Enthusiasm would in reality ignore him, or perhaps beat the crap out of him.

Besides, every comedy needs an ass. That’s the legacy of comedy, whether it
is Buster Keaton, Jerry Lewis, Abbott and Costello, Phil Silvers or Stephen
Colbert. “Good is not funny,” David said in the same interview earlier this
year. “The bad thoughts are funny because they’re unexpressed. I’m letting
these thoughts that go unexpressed - that we all have, all the time - to get
out. It comes from a place inside that somebody else is expressing and that
we can relate to.”
But, what happens when the AH is no longer so funny? Case in point, the
British version of The Office.
Yes, the show is funny, but Ricky Gervais’ David Brent is so utterly
unbearable, pathetic - and, worst of all, real - that that show approaches
tragedy.
Unlike the other AHs, there is no relief from, or for, Brent. We are watching
a miserable human being who is unaware of who he is and how others perceive
him. Brent is a man without an identity. Every gesture, thought, or word is
pinched from some facile fragment of pop culture.
Unlike a similar character like Homer, Brent evokes pain in the viewer
because we not only know people who are like him, but his actions are so
familiar that we find ourselves wondering if we do the same things.
The Office goes farther than any previous sitcom by revealing a side of
ourselves that we don’t want to acknowledge.
THE NEW AH
Although there have been AHs in earlier TV dramas (e.g., NYPD Blue’s Andy
Sipowicz, Homicide’s Frank Pembleton), HBO was the first network to give
viewers a new form of the AH, a multifaceted and inconsistent creature who,
depending on his mood, attracts equal amounts of disdain and empathy.
The most notable examples are Nate Fisher (Six Feet Under), Jimmy McNulty
(The Wire), and in particular, Tony Soprano (The Sopranos) and Al Swearengen
(Deadwood). Another strong example is Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis), on the
20th Century Fox series The Shield.
The mob boss Soprano is haunted by the past, a man who wants desperately to
believe in old-world values like loyalty and family even as they crumble
around him. He expects others to live up to values that he himself is unable
to uphold. Even as Soprano begins to understand his life better through his
psychiatrist, he reveals how difficult it is to simply toss off the shackles
of habit and rhythm. As such, he often contradicts himself or undermines
the very lessons he appears to learn in his psychiatric sessions. A recent
example came when Tony told his son A.J. that family is the only thing he
count on - only to be shot by his own uncle, to whom Tony had remained
fiercely loyal despite the warnings of most others. Beyond the mob boss
exterior lies a simple, conflicted man.
Deadwood’s Al Swearengen is even more beguiling a creation. When Deadwood
began our stand-in was Seth Bullock, the Etobicoke-born ex-sheriff headed to
the new frontier town of Deadwood to open a hardware store. Initially, the
lines between good and evil are clear. Seth is a stern, upstanding, somewhat
self-righteous hero. The villain is Al Swearengen, the proprietor of the Gem
Saloon and unofficial dictator of the town. Swearengen is a despicable,
ruthless and foul-mouthed creature. He’s also responsible for the slaughter
of an innocent family of settlers.
However, we soon discover inconsistencies in the men. In one episode Bullock
is ambushed by an Indian, whom he overwhelms and viciously beats to death.
Bullock, we realize, is a complex man with a great capacity for brutality and
intolerance. He finds that his notions of good and bad are seriously
challenged by the realities of the frontier. Throughout the series, Bullock
struggles between doing what is good and what is necessary to survive.
Our view of Swearengen takes a similar detour near the end of season one. We
get quick glimpses into his tortured soul when Reverend Smith, who suffers
from a brain tumour, is rapidly deteriorating. In one poignant scene,
Swearengen watches the reverend stumble down the street madly preaching
aloud to animals. Swearengen is clearly pained by Smith’s condition.
In the same episode, Swearengen discovers that Trixie, one of his
prostitutes, has been intimate with Seth’s partner, Sol Starr. Swearengen,
angered by Trixie’s apparent betrayal, confronts Sol and demands he pay for
Trixie’s services. “I’m not paying you,” Starr says. “It wasn’t to do with
you, it wasn’t business.”
Swearengen’s reply is the first of many tortured soliloquies that give us
insight into the complexity of his character: “Don’t you think I don’t
understand. I mean, what can anyone of us ever really f–kin’ hope for, huh?
Except for a moment here and there with a person who doesn’t want to rob,
steal or murder us? … Everybody needs that. Becomes precious to ‘em.”
Led by The Sopranos, Deadwood and Six Feet Under, we see television maturing
and moving away from outmoded ideas of good and bad towards characters and
situations that are not readily definable. What makes the hostile reactions
towards a character like Nate Fisher both surprising and refreshing is that
such shows give viewers the freedom to make their own judgments about the
characters.
It’s through this process that, whatever our opinion, we realize these
morally ambiguous characters can no longer simply be called assholes. They
are far more complex creatures called human beings. And, ideally, through
this attempt to understand Nate Fisher, Tony Soprano, Al Swearengen, Larry
David,or David Brent, we become a bit more enlightened about ourselves.

Jack Benny Show cast

Cast of the Jack Benny Show. From L-R (cast names): Rochester Van Jones, Dennis Day, Phil Harris, Mary Livingston, Jack Benny, Don Wilson, Mel Blanc

Seinfeld_051205113923469_wideweb__300×375.jpg

Seinfeld cast: George, Kramer, Elaine, Jerry

I was going to post an old piece called The Evolution of the TV asshole. While I was writing the intro and acknowledging that I’d neglected a few people, most notably Jack Benny, I started to get obsessive about the common traits between The Jack Benny Show (which ran on radio from about 1933-1955 and then had a successful run on TV from about 1950 to the mid-1960s) and Seinfeld.
Like Jerry Seinfeld, Jack Benny played himself (or a variation of himself). He was Jack Benny, radio (and movie, if you asked him) star. He was cheap, petty and narcissistic (While Jerry was a neat freak and even went to extremes to lower his pant size with a marker..Benny was infamous for being the stingiest man alive and for never revealing his real age. Every year, he remained 39).

The show took place in a variety of settings. Sometimes it was on stage during the production of their radio show…or it was backstage, or at the local diner. They also often met at Jack’s home for parties and rehearsals.

Jack’s regular cast:

He had his Elaine in Mary (Mary Livingston– Benny’s real life wife)who played an uncertain role on the show. She wasn’t Jack’s girlfriend yet they dated and flirted and she often talked about other men.

Phil Harris, the drunk, horny, illiterate (really..his illiteracy was a regular joke) orchestra leader was sort of the Kramer of the show.

Dennis Day, the show’s singer, played a dimwit of a man-boy who lived with an overbearing mom. He was a constant thorn in Benny’s side. Although he and Jack were by no means friends, Day did have a lot of George (ie. idiot, loser) qualities.

Rochester, Benny’s personal assistant, was a cross between Newman and George. Although Benny was his boss, Rochester never shied away from taking on his boss and repeatedly chastising him for being cheap.

Don Wilson was the show’s host. He was sort of like the anchor or straightman (although it can be argued that Benny was actually the straight man. He was a generous comedian who often let his cast get the big laughs at his expense). Wilson was a constant target because of his weight, but perhaps his most notable contributions (aside from his often hyperbolic, sarcastic Benny intros to start the show) were his often clever ways of working plugs for the show’s sponsors into the show. In this sense, the show does anticipate Seinfeld where products were sometimes worked into the storyline (notably the Junior Mints episode).

Supporting Cast

Most of us know all about the remarkable supporting cast on Seinfeld. Through it’s 9 year run, many bit/supporting characters stole the show (Soup Nazi, Kenny Banion, Micky, The Costanzas, J Peterman, Newman etc…..). The Jack Benny show also had a steady stream of outstanding supporting characters who often got more laughs than the star.

Mel Blanc- The famous Warner Bros. cartoon voice actor was on Benny’s show for years doing a variety of bit parts and sound effects. His most notable characters included Benny’s tortured violin teacher, Professor Leblanc, the suicidal department store clerk who is haunted by Benny every xmas, Benny’s parrot, and he was the ‘voice’ of Benny’s beat up old car.

There was the loony old Mr Kitzell, Dennis Day’s bully mother who repeatedly abused Benny, poor Ed guarded Benny’s vault which was located miles beneath his house. Ed had not left his post since at least the U.S. civil war., real life comedian Fred Allen had a long standing fake feud with Benny. Benny even devoted an entire episode to mocking Allen’s show. There was Mabel and Gladys, the incompetent, gossipy Telephone operators who dated Benny a few times. Tough guy actor Sheldon Kearns had a recurring role as the hilarious ‘racetrack tout’. The character would pop out of nowhere and hassle Benny in a menacing, tough guy whisper: “Psst… hey bud.. watcha doin?” He’d then offer Benny advice on everything but horses (eg. in one bit he told Benny what candy to get from the snack machine). There were also many celebrities who appeared. The most famous was Oscar winning actor Ronald Colman who had the misfortune of living next door to Benny.
Probably the most famous bit player was Frank Nelson who played the infamous “Yeeeeeeessssssss” man (The Simpsons’ played a few homages to Nelson over the years). Nelson was in some ways, the Newman of Benny’s existence. Whether he was a waiter, train ticket seller, department store clerk, he existed to make Benny’s life miserable. He was constantly rude and sarcastic to Benny. Their heated interactions often made for some of the show’s best comedy. The show even had recurring characters who were–with a few exceptions– unseen and unheard. The most famous was Frank Remley, the guitarist in Phil Harris’ band. Remley was always late, he dressed poorly, drank a lot, chased skirts, and often ended up in jail. In fact, the entire band were routinely mocked as being half-assed musicians and drunken, criminal misfits.

It would be naive to suggest that Seinfeld is a direct descendant of the Jack Benny show (we can’t overlook the influence of Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David’s own experiences along with other old comedy shows like Sgt Bilko and Abbott and Costello–which were directly mentioned in one Seinfeld episode. In fact, the conversations between George and Jerry were often like the absurd and abusive exchanges between Abbott and Costello), but there’s no doubt that the Jack Benny show, with it’s steady diet of cynical put-down comedy, self-reflexivity (the Benny show performed live and they became famous for making light of their flubs), dysfunctional characters, and a humour that often quietly traipsed the border of the risque, was a major influence on not only Seinfeld but - for better and worse - on many modern sitcoms.

* as a bit of postscript, if anyone knows the clever kid’s TV program, Jack’s Big Music Show, the show is littered with Jack Benny references. The main characters are called Jack, Mary and Mel. They had a southerner named Phil on once (Phil Harris came from the south) and there is the regular appearance of the Swartzman Quartet, barbershop-style singers directly based on the Sportsmen Quartet who regularly appeared on the Benny show.

There are hundreds of Jack Benny’s radio shows online that you can download and You Tube has some nifty archival film footage of the gang performing in the 1940s.

Gee, now that I’m in TV geek mode, maybe I’ll sit down and write my Columbo-Socrates piece.

This musing on fraudulent James Frey was my first piece for The Ottawa Citizen and Arts honcho, Peter Simpson. February 2006, I think.

Since the summer of 2005, a few friends have suggested that I should read James Frey’s A Million Little PIeces. I had a semi-memoir called Stole This From A Hockey Card published in 2005 that dealt with addiction and identity. Being an addict, my friends naturally felt that Frey’s book was perfect for me. I had no interest. I’d lived my own battle and spent the last few years confronting it through writing. I didn’t need to read about it any more.

Then, in early January, Frey’s book was brought to my attention again. This time it was being reported that the guy might have made up a big chunk of the book. My first reaction was “so what?” all memory is by nature fiction. There are parts in my own memoir that might be untrue to my mother or stepfather (who are minor characters in the book). At times I even ask myself in the book if the things I’ve experienced are genuine or have they become unconsciously confused and distorted over the years. I write about my memory of watching some hockey games in the early 1970s as a kid, but then wonder if I really did watch them at that time or if they entered my memory through television replays I saw in later years. Besides, not to get too philosophical, but what is truth anyway? Plato, for one, believed that those who relied on their senses instead of their intellect were living in caves. These people see only the shadows of things (opinion), not the things themselves (knowledge). I prefer to think of truth has been a bit more murky and subjective. My truth, for example, might not necessarily be your truth.

For example, in Nick Tosches’ brilliant biography of Dean Martin called Dino, there are many segments that involve Tosches’ writing about Martin’s inner thoughts. Obviously, Tosches couldn’t have known what Martin was thinking. It doesn’t matter. Those poetic moments conveyed more about the essence or truth about Dean Martin than any amount of facts. And what about the scores of writers who have oh-so-thinly disguised their own lives behind the mantle of fiction? The list is endless: Marcel Proust, Jack Kerouac, Richard Meltzer, Charles Bukowski, Philip Roth etc… Would Kerouac’s Big Sur or Bukowski’s Ham on Rye, for example, be any better or worse if the reader knew that they were reading fact, not fiction? At the end of the day, I felt, Frey wrote a book about recovery. Clearly the book inspired many readers. Maybe a few of them sought help for their addictions. So, what’s the big deal if Frey embellished an arrest or sixteen?

In short, I didn’t see what all the fuss was about.

Then came Oprah.

When it came out that Frey not only fabricated a number of parts of the book, but that there appeared to be no good reason for doing so – other than to make the author seem like a real tough, big balls, bad ass – then I started to get annoyed. It was also revealed that Frey had actually initially submitted the manuscript for A Million Little Pieces as fiction – only to have it rejected approximately seventeen times. This was now more than a simple case of poetic license or unconscious error. Frey very consciously made-up parts of this book for no reason other than to paint himself in a more heroic fashion.

That’s when I got angry. Here I am writing books that put my “stuff” on the line as I seek some semblance of truth about myself and my life while this schmuck makes a mockery of it all. Frey’s notion of truth appears to be that which makes him more likeable and wealthy. Wait, there’s something familiar about that… someone who says something that they don’t necessarily prescribe to, but stand behind because they think other people will buy into it: politicians, speech writers, advertisers, celebrity endorsements, exercise and diet gurus (e.g. Weight lost/exercise peddler Suzanne Somers had liposuction). Let’s not overlook so-called “reality” TV shows like Survivor and The Amazing Race. They are so heavily dramatized and manipulated that fake “reality” shows like Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Office come off as far more factual and honest.

Why no outrage over these on-going equivocations? Must we rely solely on Oprah to show us what is truth?

I’m now reading the book. Naturally, it’s difficult to read it objectively. I’m constantly questioning every part.
And this leads to maybe the biggest truth about honesty and addiction. For years, people were cautioning me about my drinking, but I didn’t really listen and it wasn’t until I finally confronted myself that I stopped drinking. Maybe it’s the same case here. Should it matter to me, you, Oprah, or the readers if Frey is lying? Should any of us be relying so heavily on one voice to find our truth? In the end, as with life, you encounter and sample different experiences and voices and at the end of the day you decide what suits your life best. You find your own truth.

-

Meantime, Frey carries on. Despite appearing rather daft on Oprah and Larry King (you’d think that Frey could hire a media assistant to help him lie with more credibility), his book sales (which Oprah likely sees a percentage of) continue to climb. Could Frey’s next project be a memoir about writing a fake memoir? Better still, he could write a fake memoir about writing a fake memoir.

In the end, I guess I’m the schmuck. Instead of writing honest and un-heroic tales of dysfunction and addiction so that I could try and sort out my life, I should have juiced it up a bit with more lurid and juicy tales of gunplay, drunken fistfights, sex abuse, suicide attempts, and root canals. Might not have been my truth per se, but I’m certain it’s someone’s truth. In the end, it’s all works out. The reader gets an epiphany, and I get a great big bag of cash and fame. Everyone feels better.

What more is there?

-

There is a beautiful moment of irony about midway through James Frey’s book. After a former rock star visits the treatment to discuss his battles with addiction, a cynical Frey becomes angry at the musician’s apparently outlandish claims of abuse: “Were I in my normal state of mind, I would stand up, point my finger, scream Fraud, and chase this Chump Motherfucker down and give him a breathing. Were I in my normal frame of mind, after I gave him his beating, I would make him come back and apologize to everyone for wasting their precious time.”

Later on the same page, Frey writes: [T]o make light of it, brag about it, or revel in the mock glory of it is not in any way, shape or form related to its truth, and that is all that matters, the truth. That this man is standing in front me and everyone else in this room lying to us is heresy. The truth is all that matters. This is fucking heresy.”

He said it, not me.

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We will never really know what is or isn’t true in Frey’s book. Like dealing with an addict, there’s only so much we can know about the validity of his words. Only James Frey knows his truth and, in the end, he has to live in his skin, not us.

The weather network pisses me off. No, it’s not because of their very existence. Yes, the fact that we even have a weather channel speaks volumes about the cozy state of things in North America, but then again, if we can have an all sports highlight channel, why not a channel about the wind?

And no, it’s not because getting local weather (unless you’ve got Satellite TV) is a pain in the ass because you never know when it’s on and usually you have to sit through pollen commercials, inane weather history (did you know that in 1975, a storm disrupted an outdoor market in Burnaby? Did you care?), marine forecasts, or that David Suzuki of weather, David Phillips (you know, the genial looking guy who could pass for Bob Rae’s pops). No, what gets me is the increasingly alarmist tendencies of our Weather Network.

Perhaps in need of a rating’s boost since other newscasters have jumped on ‘apocalyptic’ weather stories, the Weather Network seems to have modeled, in their modest way, the sensationalist style of CNN and FOX. When a storm is approaching, the Weather Network screen goes red. Now, it’s always done that, but it was my understanding that it used to happen only when a serious storm was approaching. These days, it seems to go red for any and all storms. Not only that, but now every storm warning comes with a small text that cautions that storms can turn into tornados! That’s like saying all humans are at risk of getting Fairbanks disease (a rare disorder that effects bone growth). In other words, it’s possible, but highly unlikely.

Do we really need an alert for every storm that passes? Seems to me that we lived with storms long before the network came along. Besides, I’m sure I’m not alone in the fact that I love a good downpour. So what if I get drenched on my bike? So be it. It’s life kids. In our neighbourhood, many of us sit out on our porches to watch and listen to the rain. It’s really a pleasant and serene experience. The kids love it too. Sure, there’s a risk of danger with a storm, but is it any greater than crossing the street, driving on a highway, or breathing?

I love knowing that a storm is coming, but if we’re going to have an advisory for every dark cloud, can’t it be more jovial” Maybe the screen can flash as dancing clouds, rain drops and wind jaunt across the screen? Perhaps they can use party horns or kazoos to make thunder and lighting noises? Oh wait, how about the opening of AC/DCs weather opus, Thunderstruck? The choices are many (perhaps we can use our interactive TV buttons to create the storm party screen of our choice?) but whatever your preferences let’s make storm advisories more celebratory and fun.

The same goes for snow days and power outages. People still talk fondly about the blackout of August 2003. Suddenly we were free from our technological shackles. The children played in the streets. Neighbours spoke to each other, had parties and barbecues. Sure, it wasn’t so fun for everyone, but I think there are many who would relish an annual blackout day when for a few hours, we step outside our insulated lives.
Seriously though, what does this alarmist nature say about our society? Are we being treated like babies? “Oh, the poor things need to be careful in the rain.” Have we become a society of wimps? What is perhaps even more telling is that we appear eager for something exciting and threatening to happen. Our lives have become so mechanized, complacent and insular that we appear desperate for any type of action or threat, something that will show us that we’re alive and have something to fight for.

But, it’s a storm. That’s it. That’s all. It’s not a reason to race out to Canadian Tire to stock up on emergency gear in preparation for the apocalypse, but it is a good reason to grab the family and neighbours and sit together outside to enjoy a communal moment.

What happened to the saying throw caution to the wind? Today, caution is the wind.

August 2007

I’m pleased to reveal my sensitive side in these poignant tributes to former pets.
Bitch killed the bitch

My mom killed my dog.
She pissed on the floor, Too many times
I say neglect:
“Maybe the dog wouldn’t piss on the rug
if someone took her for a fucking walk.”
Next day I come home from school
No dog. No mom.
The bitch is dead.

Crap
Baby crapped in the diapers.
I took them off.
They were empty.
Out of my eye
I saw the dog
Licking the floor

Piss
I don’t know why
But when ever anyone
Comes to our house
The dog pisses all over the floor

Fish
Big red is dead
That’s what I said.
Big red is dead
He got bloated
Stuck out like a pinecone
Next day he flipped over
Now he’s dead.

Experimental piece I wrote for the Holland Animation Festival in 2000. They rejected it.

A blank screen. A portion of space. You anticipate time visible.

Pierre Trudeau (former Canadian Prime Minister) once said, “The world is evolving as it should.” A cop out? Time becomes timeless when you are the master of the space. We used to have a PM/honcho who got advise from his dog and his dead mama (k/not dada). He remembered time and so did his mutt.

Time. Not the magazine, a stranger to time. Not talkin’ Morris Day time (ie. The Time from that Prince film). Morris was wrong. His was day time (now no time). I’m talking more then day time, or time. I’m talkin’ TIME(S). Time surrounds us, swallows us, defines us, drips off us, then fucks us (we DEAD). For centuries, state(s) and church(es) battled for control of time and space. Domination of the calendar led to ( t + s=c/p). Did ya ever look at a Fed Ex (temporal/spatial reduction of Federal Express) box (“The world on time”)? Whose time?. Their time. Gets there next day, but only within the framework of their time (before 9/before 12 (noon) ). T & S dissolve. FedX becomes the message. Sundays. Once god’s time. Now Gap time. Never our time. Church time now business time. But what is our time? Only recently did Ol’ Dirty Bastard demand: “take the white man’s clock off your wall.” Billy (reduct.) Faulkner called time a tomb of hope and desire. Is time so singular and stagnant? The time it takes to write (type) these words (digitized manipulations of space?) differs from you’re reading (scanning?) frame. The world I write (type) about itself spans eighty (80) years (itself a pre-defined, compartmentalization of time in which I’ve lived thirty-three (33)). You will always read it in a different time. Time organizes times. Even here, it restricts and colours (1200 word max.) what I can say. Everything, as Eddie Hall noted, happens in a time frame. How does this relate to René Jodoin? I dunno, but I guess it’s time I got to the . (pt.).

René Jodoin has sparred with time a long time. He spars because he knows the main event is lost. Ever step in, gloveless, gainst Sonny Liston (Tyson’s a pussy)? Ya just don’t. Jodoin is no fool. Jodoin knows there will be no parade. Jodoin’s work is about (re)thinking time. Time and space have been taken from us (see above) as we move less and less within our timeless interior plug-ins. Unbalanced.. Jodoin reminds us, as person/artist/producer, of our/his past. He attempts to make time visible if only to shatter it into possibilities, uncertainties, freedom. Just check out Alouette (1944), the early singing film with McLaren. Words and body parts explode across the screen. Words for the folks to read to sing to take time/space and fill their blank distant landscapes. Put Cecil Taylor on valium (or better yet listen to Taylor after inhaling) and you begin to grasp the films of Rene Jodoin. Slow, deliberate, harmonious spurts of energy, space, movement. Kinda like smoking thyme. Time slows down (try watching Jodoin’s early abstract pedagogical work (Introduction to Jet Engines) with a jazz score). Be U Tea Full! At times, time is assumed. Just watch Jodoin’s latest work, Entre Temps et Lieu (Between Time and Space, 1999). The objects move off the screen (I guess). They return (well, they re-appear/returning assumes a continuation). We don’t see the between. Time and space are assumed. Modern? society assumes/ignores time for space. Watch it with different jazz soundtracks. Each produce variables of time (s). In Rectangles and Rectangles (a punk rock film that trashes concepts, a word the Pistols ‘be ‘ard pressed ta de fine ), time is made visible through a blazing flash of colours and tempos. Then of course there’s da famous (legendary) zoom shot from Notes on A Triangle that rivals of the awesome tension and anticipation of the synth bridge in Won’t Get Fooled Again. While sad, tipsy Strauss bangs on the bar room ivory, flatness becomes an ongoing dimensional space as Jodoin’s camera moves in/through space. Time moves. Nothing special on a computer, but the guy cut them out!

“All time is a concept,” says Jodoin. “It doesn’t exist. Duration fits better because it doesn’t have a direction.” Paradoxically, duration requires time. “Duration is like a tempo. It’s melodic and almost has a rhythm. It’s almost like time de-activated.” Or time within time since time itself is timeless. Duration is our ruler of time. Remember the blank screen (see above)? Well once you’ve put something in it (on it?) you’ve already created laws (duration). The problem is where to go next. In Dance Squared, a briefly blank screen. A square tumbles then shatters. Infinite possibilities within seemingly limited options. Space/Time as flexible not restrictive. Let’s take Spheres (1969). Like a mime, McLaren made a movement (itself a moment), Jodoin imagined what the next movement (moment) would be. A guided temporal/spatial random (dis)placement that itself took two decades (in our time) to complete/abandon/guide.

Jodoin is out/in time. He loathes the myth of the artist as GOD. At the same time (actually, it’s not the same time, it’s later in the interview), he cautions the technical geeks. “Skill by itself is boring.” Skill alone is present minded. Problem of our time? Where is the individual? We are in a time(s) of the negation of the individual(s). Individual time(s?) is/are absorbed by large infrastructures and with it fade the individual/personality. People seek meaning through corporations. Sure the NFB was an infrastructure, but individuals like Jodoin, Grierson, McLaren, Dunning, Lambert, McKay, Ladouceur, and Munro (just to mention animation) defined the NFB. Corporations are not like that today. They are predefined spaces. Maybe this is why Canucks have always resisted definition. Always in-between, free-floating, always in the process of defining, refusing to be defined. This is our strength. We are neither “who are we?”whiners nor the beer drinking slugs that slur aloud “I yAM CA NA DeAN” before pukin up that swill (not ‘real’ Canadian beer).

Computers. Time’s discount? Time eater? Internal/ (over)External space. No more (need for) room. Corporate expansion (inspansion?) within us. With a computer, Jodoin works towards a new (? or ‘nother) way of creating/imagining. Computer artist as writer and/or adventurer. A re-balancing/thinking of time/space. “The computer offers you a mode of doing which relates to what it is. You can do what you’re saying. It’s like working your head vertically in time. It might not be good, but you don’t have to keep the material in your brain anymore.” The medium of the century is within the palms of the hands of those not too busy holding the monkey while downloading ‘the beast of the revelations’: mediocrity.com.

Jodoin is like a butterfly. A flurry of colours and movements in space with no seeming direction that always gets to the right place. Where? Dunno, but be a shame to see him there. Butterflies look better in process.