Dark Star
I’ve known Phil Spector‘s musical signature all my life — that “wall of sound” thing that gave such ecstatic echo-phonic oomph to all those early to mid ’60s hits (“Be My Baby”, “Walkin In The Rain”, “River Deep, Mountain High”) and Beatle songs he produced a few years later. But I’d never heard Spector speak or gotten to “know” him until I saw Vikram Jayanti‘s The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector, which will play the Film Forum from 6.30 to 7.13.
And he’s a fascinating man — there’s no getting around that. A brilliant, oddball X-factor “character” of the first order. I’ve known a few guys like Spector. They’re egotists and half-crazy and it’s always about them, but they’re a trip to talk to and share stories with. If you love show business, you can’t help but love how these guys are always sharp as a tack and don’t miss a trick and are always blah-blahing about their genius and their importance. Except Spector’s blah is backed up by truth. He’s a serious maestro who really did shape and inspire rock ‘n’ roll in its infancy, and who touched heaven a few times in the process.
Okay, so he probably shot Lana Clarkson, a 40 year-old, financially struggling actress, on 2.3.03 when she was visiting his home. Or maybe he threatened to shoot her and the gun accidentally went off. Or whatever. And maybe Spector telling a Daily Telegraph reporter two months before the shooting that “he had bipolar disorder and that he considered himself ‘relatively insane‘” was a factor. And maybe he deserves to be in jail for 19 years. The guy is obviously immodest and intemperate with demons galore.
But you can tell from listening to Spector that he’s some kind of bent genius — that he’s brilliant, exceptional, perceptive — and that it’s a monumental tragedy that these qualities co-exist alongside so much weirdness inside the man — all kinds of strutting-egoist behavior and his having threatened women with guns and all of that “leave me alone because I’m very special” hiding-behind-bodyguards crap. Because life is short and the kind of vision and talent that Spector has (or at least had) is incredibly rare and world-class.
That’s why Jayanti’s film is so absorbing, and why the title is exactly right. Why do so many gifted people always seem to be susceptible to baser impulses? Why do they allow bizarre psychological currents to influence their lives? What kind of a malignant asshole waves guns around in the first place? I’ll tell you what kind of guy does that. A guy who never got over hurtful traumatic stuff that happened in his childhood (like his father committing suicide), and who decided early on that he wouldn’t deal with it.
Phil Spector and the Ronettes during a 1963 Gold Star recording session in Los Angeles.
It’s another tragedy that this BBC doc, originally aired in England in 2008, is viewable on YouTube. Perhaps this will affect ticket sales at the Film Forum, or maybe it’s generally understood that you can’t absorb a doc about a music legend unless you see it as a unified big-screen thing with decent sound pumping out of the speakers.
It mainly just needs to be seen, period. Spector’s story encompasses so much and connects to so many musical echos and currents that people (okay, older people) carry around inside, and the way this history keeps colliding with what Spector probably did (despite his earnest claims to Jayanti that he’s innocent) and the Court TV footage and the evidence against him and the thought of a woman’s life being snuffed out…it’s just shattering.
I’m adding Jayanti’s film to my list of the year’s best docs. I’ve seen it twice now and I could probably see it another couple of times. Anyone who cares about ’60s pop music and understands Spector’s importance in the scheme of that decade needs to see this thing. It’s a touchstone trip and an extreme lesson about how good and evil things can exist in people at the same time.
At the same time it’s slightly pathetic that the trailer that the Film Forum site links to is so poorly sized and cropped and has no real focus or intrigue. It doesn’t represent how good the film is. Not even close.
90% of the doc alternates between interviews with the hermetic Spector, taped between his first and second murder trials, and the Court TV footage. But the arguments and testimony are sometimes…okay, often pushed aside on the soundtrack by the hits that Spector produced with the Ronettes, the Righteous Brothers, Ike and Tina Turner, the Crystals, Darlene Love, John Lennon, George Harrison, Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans (that rendition they and Spector recorded of “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah” in ’63). It’s the constant back and forth of beauty and darkness, beauty and rage, beauty and warped emotion — repeated over and over and over.
I never knew that the title of Spector’s “To Know Him Is To Love Him” (which he wrote and performed with the Teddy Bears in ’58) was taken from his father’s gravestone. I’d forgottten that he wrote “Spanish Harlem” — an exceptionally soulful ballad for the 1960 pop market. I never gave much thought to what “Da Doo Ron Ron” meant — I never thought it meant anything in particular — but Spector says it’s a metaphor for slurpy kisses and handjobs and fingerings at the end of a teenage date. Spector also had a good deal to do, he says, with the writing of Lennon’s “Woman Is Nigger of the World.”
There are two curious wrongos. Spector mentions that his father committed suicide when he was “five or six” — he was actually nine when that happened. (How could he not be clear on that?) Spector mentions that line about John Lennon having thanked him for “keeping rock ‘n’ roll alive for the two years when Elvis went into the Army” when in fact Spector’s big period began just after Elvis got out of the Army, starting around ’60 or thereabouts.
Spector mentions that if people like you they don’t say bad things about you, but it’s clear that if he hadn’t been such a hermit and hadn’t acted like a dick for so many years, and if he hadn’t been photographed with that ridiculous finger-in-the-wall-socket electric hairdo, and if he’d just gotten out and charmed people the way he does in the interview footage with Jayanti then…well, who knows? Maybe things might have turned out differently.
Spector is innocent because he’s a creative genius.
He is a genius but he also screwed so many people during his lifetime that its hard to feel any sympathy for this guy.
I went to so much effort to say that Spector is almost certainly NOT innocent but at the same time there’s so much that hits you about how beautiful his music was and so on….and then along comes a glib schmuck like Ray DeRousse, saying what he said. It just takes your breath away. This is what I love and cherish and look forward to in the case of (some) HE commenters.
Can’t wait to see it. Next up: “Merle Haggard – Learning to Live With Myself” …brilliant and affecting music doc.
Quick, someone make a well shot, brilliantly edited, emotionally stirring documentary about Joseph Mengele!
“….there’s no getting around the fact that he conducted horrific, torturous experiments on camp inmates, yet one can’t walk away from ‘A Man of Many Dimensions’ without also seeing a man who dressed stylishly, kept his weight down, had an encyclopedic knowledge of Norse opera and was a loving family man who also had a Wellsian eye for the frauleins…”
Awesome “in the studio” pic, though.
No offense but you’re a sick man, Travis Crabtree. Sick and stunted.
Repeating: “It mainly just needs to be seen, period. Spector’s story encompasses so much and connects to so many musical echos and currents that people (okay, older people) carry around inside, and the way this history keeps colliding with what Spector probably did (despite his earnest claims to Jayanti that he’s innocent) and the Court TV footage and the evidence against him and the thought of a woman’s life being snuffed out…it’s just shattering.”
If you’d get rid of all the weirdos, I could do without the rock’n'roll.
Yes, I am.
(Chain-yanking aside) I do plan on seeing the film. Being the rock historian that I am, it’s a must-see.
I’ve always been 50/50 on the whole Wall of Sound thing. Loved it with the Ronettes, but I felt it didn’t always translate well.
I’m even 50/50 on “River Deep Mountain High”. The Spectorized one is undeniably powerful, yet the Ike-ish, stripped down one also rocks (funks) out, too.
Funny that the two most noteworthy men in Tina’s life were fucked up geniuses.
Crabtree needs to take his troll medicine.
An interesting but dated take on Spector is Nik Cohn’s
The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll
http://www.amazon.com/Rolling-Stone-Illustrated-History-Rock/dp/0394739388
So Phil Spector, despite being convicted of murdering a woman, gets careful, respectful consideration, his dangerously erratic behavior a tragic result of personal hardships and overwhelming creative genius.
Michael Jackson, who was never convicted of anything, “Dead and Loving It”
Gotcha.
Sorry, but I consider a pederast — a gentle-voiced predator who invested tens of millions in creating an adolescent fantasy land with which to lure young boys — to be far more loathsome than a egoistic bipolar dwarf with anger issues and ridiculous hair and an idiotic decision to keep loaded guns in his house. Sorry…just the way I see things.
Jeff, I was just kidding around. I would never presume to suggest that you would support someone who is generally assumed to be guilty of murder. Do you have any kind of sense of humor at all??
Jeff,
Are the subtitled descriptions and trivia about the music that appear on the YouTube version also in the theatrical version? While very interesting, they seem to distract from the visuals on screen (especially during the description of the murder) and are a different font than the rest of the titles. It makes me think they weren’t intended by the filmmakers.
Prager…. Oh my god!!! Haven’t you been to the Big Hollywood website in the past five minutes?! Haven’t you seen what those assholes have WRITTEN? They’re so smug!
Oh, what am I sayin’… You’re probably there right now.
Keep an eye on ‘em.
The subtitles are intended. They’re fine. I got used to them.
Tomorrow at 3:00 pst on TCM is “Sunday in New York”, if anyone wants to see the smoking hot, pre-NVA anti-aircraft gunner, hottest 60′s babe of them all Jane Fonda in all her vixeny gorgeousness. Also some great shots of early 60′s-era TWA 707s, too! It’s a win-win!
Having talent does not excuse does not excuse anything. Period.
I’ve known enough creative types, some famous and most not, but there is still no excuse for this type of thing.
Wells, you appeal:
“Why do so many gifted people always seem to be susceptible to baser impulses?”
But I think you already know this is the way you want it:
“Spector’s story encompasses so much… and the way this history keeps colliding with what Spector probably did… ”
“It’s the constant back and forth of beauty and darkness, beauty and rage, beauty and warped emotion — repeated over and over and over.”
“That’s why Jayanti’s film is so absorbing, and why the title is exactly right.”
The doc sounds great. But about the man…
You’re probably sympathetic to the idea that some suffering has to be undergone for art. It’s a popular sentiment. Practically a cliche. But, as you see here and as you saw with the Polanski threads, it’s not as popular (anymore) as you’d have expected.
And the herd are right Jeff.
Fixing psychological fuck-ups makes works better rather than worse. Grayson Perry’s output is a perfect example.
You need to drift away from the narrow idea that trauma is the font of creative genius:
“A guy who never got over hurtful traumatic stuff that happened in his childhood”
and swim back to what you already know:
“gifted people” and “baser impulses”
i.e., creative genius flows from the unconscious (not just the repressed traumas it has to swallow up).
So, there’s no need for the suffering Jeff–especially when it’s not the artist that’s doing it.
Who said talent excuses killing? Who said that? God, the mentality!
Out of the three troubled creative geniuses mentioned in this thread – Specter, Michael Jackson, and Roman Polanski – who do you consider the freakiest/most disturbing? Which do you consider the most talented in their prime?
I pick Jackson for freakiest, and a toss up between Jackson and Polanski. It’s apples and oranges with the talent aspect, but they both used their respective gifts well for a time. The only reason I’d downgrade Polanski is that film is more of a collaboration than what Jackson could do alone.
“Sorry, but I consider a pederast …. to be far more loathsome than…”
Unless they direct movies and only prey on girls, then they are protected by the “Movie Godz Code.”
Takes major cojones to be that big of a hypocrite, so bravo sir.
I only go to Big Whatever when HE or sadlyno.com links to them, but I almost never read the articles. I just want to look at the photo and the bio:
Look at the eyebrows on that guy. What’s up?
http://bigjournalism.com/author/mwalsh/
I found the song commentary (contributed by Spector biographer Mick Jones) pretty annoying myself. “River Deep Mountain High” is a very easy song to love, something Jones says is “impossible.”
Deathtongue, I’m beginning to think your Polanksi obsession is your way of coping for your own guilty feelings over some past transgression. Is there anything you want to get off your chest?
Spanish Harlem -
There is a rose….in Spanish Harlem.
A red rose..up in Spanish Harlem.
It is a special one…it’s never seen the sun.
Brilliant, beautiful song making. Not just the lyrics, but the staggering of the rhythm.
Why is so much artisitic brilliance coupled with insanity? and……let it be said that Phil and the music knew no racial boundaries back when it wasn’t so cool (or safe) to cross the line
Jeff….3rd attempt here.
When I post – anything at all – I get locked out of viewing any other HE entries. This is the 3rd attempt to alert you to the problem. I don’t know if it’s typekey or if the problem lies elsewhere, but frustrating, it is.
Sheriff Prager’s in town.
Does the doc tell the story of how he supposedly held the Ramones at knifepoint (gunpoint?) when they were recording End of the Century?
Other than the fact that for years I bought into the myth that the rape was just a case of not asking the age of a girl at a drug fueled Hollywood party, nope no skeletons in the DTG closet over this.
It is flattering that my name catches your attention apparently – as you will find many Polanski threads (or threads where this came up) do not contain any posts from me.
But as Jeff has decided to stand with the child rapist as HE’s Apologist in Chief, it does catch my attention when he excuses said admitted rapist while castigating one who was never convicted.
“Sorry, but I consider a pederast — a gentle-voiced predator who invested tens of millions in creating an adolescent fantasy land with which to lure young boys.”
You do realize that Roman Polanski was actually convicted of the very same crime that accuse Michael Jackson of perpetrating. Except Jackson was exonerated and found innocent while Polanski was not.
Polanski LURED a child to his home under the pretense that he could make a model out her, them he drugged and raped her. What’s the difference? The difference is Michael Jackson didn’t make movies and was found innocent. That’s it.
Jeff, do you actually think Jackson is worse than Polanski and/or Spector? Honestly? And if so, how?
Because Jeff doesn’t like his music.
That’s a wrap.
Jeff, you are clearly lacking in the intellectual nuance department. Your obvious disdain for Jackson and simultaneous love for Polanski undermines your credibility in allatters realted to both parties. simply because you believe one is more talented than the other, you let one off the hook will celebrating the death of another.
Like this, and in most other matters, you viewpoint is ridiculously tainted. You simply cannot be trusted to give an honest, objective, non-biased opinion about anything.
Ray DeRousse: “I pick Jackson for freakiest, and a toss up between Jackson and Polanski. It’s apples and oranges with the talent aspect, but they both used their respective gifts well for a time. The only reason I’d downgrade Polanski is that film is more of a collaboration than what Jackson could do alone.”
I’m with you on MJ being the most fucked up of the three, but his standing is just as much a result of collaboration as Polanski. Without Quincy Jones’ production skills on Thriller and Bad, we probably wouldn’t even be talking about him anymore.
Also, Jackson only had writing credit on three songs from Off The Wall, just half of Thriller (though to be fair he did pen Billie Jean and Beat It alone), and his “signature song” Man in the Mirror was written by other people as well. Plus, I don’t think he played instruments on any of his recordings, unless there were some keyboard contributions.
So his legacy is hardly the work of one man, just as Polanski had help from cinematographers, writers, actors, etc.
I thought I’d read that Jackson played drums on Billie Jean.
Wells’ mind is already fried from all that iPhone 4 radiation.
Thanks Jeff for alerting us to “The Agony and The Ecstasy of Phil Spector.” Poor Lana Clarkson may have been struggling at the time of her death, but I seem to recall she still had a promotional website up. Maybe a comeback was just around the corner. One of my favorite Spector stories goes back to when he produced Leonard Cohen’s “Death of a Ladies’ Man album. Unpredictable Phil approached Cohen with a bottle of red wine in one hand and a 45 in the other. To quote Cohen: “He put his arm around my shoulder and shoved the revolver into my neck and said, Leonard I love you. I said, I hope hope you do, Phil.”
I don’t think it’s a particularly good film, but the interview footage is, as they say, fascinating. Spector is a complete whack job with a bizarre Tony Bennett fixation, and absolutely his own worst enemy. As despicable as he is (and he really is thoroughly despicable), there’s something sickly poignant about him as well; he’s a profoundly damaged individual who could not only never face up to it, but whose compulsions drove him to indulge that damaged side until it led him to the unspeakable act that he is deservedly serving jail time for. The whole affair has potent elements of both tragedy and farce. The film only skims the surface of it all, and not particularly adroitly.
He also treated Ronnie real well, from what I’ve read. What a guy.
@ lazarus – Yeah, I completely agree about the collaboration thing. Quincy Jones had a huge hand in Jackson’s initial successes. I guess I’m just saying that Jackson could step out onto a stage alone, sing with that tremendous voice, and dance like the dickens. Polanski’s talents were of a different variety.
I dunno. I’m not much of a Polanski fan anyway, so I’m bound to say that Polanski didn’t use his gifts as well as Jackson did, even in light of Jackson’s 15 year flameout.
Well, Jackson certainly stood out from his peers more than Polanski did, but I’ve never cared much for him, and don’t find his vocal delivery or recordings to be all that great, aside from a few tracks. I’m a much bigger Prince fan.
I think Knife in the Water, Repulsion, Chinatown, Rosemary’s Baby, Tess, The Tenant, The Pianist, Oliver Twist, and The Ghost Writer is a much more varied and impressive list than Off the Wall, Thriller, Bad, Dangerous, and Invincible (the most ironic album title ever?).
I like shoes more than I like Thursday.
Wow, why the confusion? Phil is a genius and a disturbed man.
1) I don’t know why everyone harps on Jeff TIME AND AGAIN for this kind of thing. He ACKNOWLEDGES like umpteen times Spector’s probable guilt and massive issues. He’s also saying he’s a RIVETING, FASCINATING FIGURE. As a subject of a film, as a piece of history. Why is that so SHOCKINGLY offensive? Why is celebrating the filmmaking genius of Polanski so beyond the pale on a MOVIE BLOG?
Shit, if this was a football blog and someone wanted to sing OJ Simpson’s praises for his running back prowess or ability to run through an airport in a Hertz commercial, have the hell at it.
I’ve said this before, but if we all knew how many underage chicks our favorite musicians had (gang)banged, or how many women our favorite athletes had slapped around or coerced, or how fucking wasted high-drunk our favorite movie stars drive every weekend…. some of you Moral Police holy-rollers would be all out of heroes.
And actually… why is it so hard to entertain the notion that someone who was in the public eye for decades and has countless cultural and historic contributions has a certain pathos, artistic value, and sociological importance than some street-corner junkie shooting up a convenience store, or a flasher in the park DOESN’T?
That doesn’t condone anything ANY of these people did, and it’s a nice bullshit Utopian thought and all that CELEBRITIES SHOULD PAY FOR THEIR CRIMES JUST LIKE THE COMMON MAN, but do you guys honestly get THIS high on your horse when they arrest some schoolyard flasher in MISSOURI that you’ll never meet, ever? Is there just SOME part of you that wants to stick it to somebody big and successful out of some class-envy “eat the rich” bullshit?
Put it this way… If your wife, your brother, your uncle, your dad, committed a crime. Say a DUI or an aggravated assault, a statutory… dollars to donuts, every single one of you would still go to visit them, petition the court, sing their praises, say “Oh, that’s Uncle Louie, he screwed up ONE TIME.”
How many of you would be actively ROOTING for their death-row demise and laundry-room salad-tossing? None of you. Because it’s all different when it’s suddenly YOUR family. Every guilty, imprisoned dude in the country still has family that comes to see him. It’s like in sports when there’s a 50/50 questionable call by a ref, and TO A “T” everyone in the home audience thinks it’s AWESOME it favors them, and to a “T” every visitor thinks it’s total bullshit.
So taking the “family” argument in mind, why is it just SO IMPOSSIBLE to believe that if Spector, or Polanski, or Jackson, or WHOEVER, meant something personal and important to you for 20, 30, 50 years as a fan and student of music, movies, football, whatever, there wouldn’t be the SLIGHTEST inclincation to wish for them to be afforded just a hint of a break. Not denying their trespasses, not saying that didn’t do it… just some basic empathy for them as a person, same as you would if your dipshit brother stabbed a guy in a bar fight.
2) I saw Jennifer Lawrence’s toes in person tonight.
Jeff –
For someone who is coming down so hard on restropo for “lying by omission”… I’m surprised that you don’t come down hard on this doc. Spector lies throughout the film, and they director doesn’t correct them in any way. Comically the interviewer asks about his famous giant jewfro wig, and spector spins some tale about fixing his hair all night in preparation. he never admits he’s wearing wigs. Yet, of course, his prison booking picture tells the truth.
The interviewer never seems to ask him about all the stories by people like joey ramone and even lennon that spector would waive guns around all the time. I mean at the worse they could have used court footage of others claiming this stuff and put it in the doc… assuming that he didn’t want to freak out spector by asking him the questions himself.
The movie is as carefully conceived as restropo and you should recognize it as such.
That said, thanks alerting us to it’s presence on youtube (though you’re right, it should be seen on the big screen). It was thoroughly fascinating….
Wells to LexG: That’s one of the best written and most perceptive rants you’ve ever written on this site. I’m constantly muttering and seething at the Damning Thomases who wag their fingers and tut-tut me and say what a morally deplorable sad case I am for advocating a measure of sympathy or understanding for gifted artists who’ve done morally offensive things and/or committed crimes, and your rant explains PERFECTLY what’s faulty or at least questionable about their rage. Very, VERY well said.
Wells to Lazespud: Perhaps sensing that going the tough-inquisitor Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes route might shut Spector down emotionally and result in a termination of their interview process, Vikram Jayanti clearly decided early on to be as gentle and soft as he could. He didn’t try to nail Spector on ANYTHING. Notice how he girds himself and starts with “I have to ask you this” before asking Spector how he’ll react — how he’ll respond in his head and his heart — if he’s found guilty and sent to jail. That’s not what anyone would call a “tough question” but Jayanti seemed to think it was, and was apparently a little bit fearful that he might “lose” Spector if he asked it. Like I mentioned above, even the innocuous matter of John Lennon having said that Spector “kept rock ‘n’ roll alive for the two years while Elvis was in the Army” — Jayanti doesn’t even challenge Spector on the obvious inaccuracy of that.
Wells to Kenny: I said over and over in the piece that the way Jayanti handled his end of it — getting to know Spector in conversation, sensing his brilliance and at the same time his malevolence and clearly showing this, and mixing this in with the history of his musical achievements and the facts that were presented at his two murder trials — is what makes this film an essential thing to see. It isn’t the greatest piece of filmmaking I’ve ever seen, but you have to at least credit Jayanti for making an awful lot out of the basic elements he had to work with. And one of those basic elements is that Spector is not, as you say, “a complete whack job” — he’s a whack job when his furious mind and emotions take him down that path, and he’s a funny, shrewd, tough-talking know-it-all when he wants to be that person as well. You say there’s something “sickly poignant about him as well,” [being] “a profoundly damaged individual who could not only never face up to [his issues], but whose compulsions drove him to indulge that damaged side until it led him to the unspeakable act that he is deservedly serving jail time for” — fine, you’re not wrong. And you’re also not wrong in saying that “the film only skims the surface of it all,” but as I said above, Jayanti clearly decided upon a back-rubbing, hand-holding, friend-of-Phil approach in getting Spector to talk to him, and I think he got some genuinely gripping stuff with this tactic, and he manages an awful lot both content- and theme-wise (devils and angels inside the guy, recognition of Spector’s tragedy, teasing out stories that reveal his winning aspects) within the film’s running time of 102 minutes.
I don’t know, JW, but when you start to count LexG as your backup, well…
Read the words. He said it brilliantly.
I have my own review to write, so I don’t wanna blow all my material; suffice it to say until I post that, I think that the filmmaker made some staggeringly poor choices, particularly in his handling of the courtroom material.
One side note: in the film Spector claims that the white piano he’s sitting in front of for the interview is the John Lennon “Imagine” piano. This struck me as rather odd, as when I interviewed Yoko Ono in the apartment she shared with Lennon at the Dakota, in 1993, I saw in one room off to the side a white piano that I assumed was the iconic one, as why wouldn’t it be. Kurt Loder was at the screening of the Spector film that I attended, and I brought this up to him, and he drolly noted, “There are possibly two dozen of them extant, like the James Bond Aston Martin from ‘Goldfinger.’” I myself prefer to think that Spector’s making stuff up.
Anyway, Jeff, I dunno. Granted Spector’s wildly intelligent, and he does have moments of lucidity and wit, but every time he goes off on Tony Bennett, I’m thinking, here’s a guy who’s plainly lost it and ain’t getting it back. You’re about to go on trial for murder, and you’re obsessing about Tony Bennett’s cocaine use in the 1970s, and why people aren’t more upset by THAT; I dunno, if you need more than that to define “whack job” I’d like to know what that more is.
Glenn: Does he talk about holding The Ramones at gunpoint while producing them? That’s a classic yarn, of course.
Wells to Kenny: Spector wasn’t asking why people aren’t more upset by Tony Bennett‘s cocaine use than by his murder trial.
He was making the point that because people have always LIKED Tony Bennett they never talked shit about him and never mentioned his “problem” when it was an issue, but they’ll always talk shit up & down & around the town about people they DON’T LIKE, like himself. That was what he was saying.
Oh, and the film’s basic theme? “Hurt people hurt people.” Actually the real theme is “hurt people who refuse to heal themselves (or at least make an effort to shed light & understand & move on) inevitably pass along their hurt to others, and usually with interest.”
@ LexG and Jeff – I’m certainly not in the same camp as a lot of the people here when it comes to berating people for “supporting” people like Polanski or Specter. I agree that these people have done wonderful things and ugly things, just like everyone else.
I think the real problem many people have with these celebrity cases is that justice is so often not served correctly against these people because they’re rich and/or famous. O.J. can cut heads off and walk, Michael Jackson can pay off little boys and walk, Robert Blake can shoot his wife behind a restaurant and walk, etc. etc. etc. These celebrities live a priveleged life of wealth and fame (something you, Lex, have ranted about quite often) that excuses their “mistakes” when they make them, unlike that flasher in Missouri or uncle Joe.
Too often, celebrities think they’re above the law to the point that they let go of some of the moral boundaries that the law naturally reinforces in the common man : do something wrong, and you’ll be punished to ruination.
I think that, more than anything, fuels this one-sided anger against people like Polanski or Specter or Jackson. If any one of us committed crimes like these, we’d be dead in the water. Celebrities, however, have a great chance of getting away with it.
Antagonistic attitudes towards the priveleged have been around for centuries (see: Marie Antionette), and should really surprise no-one.
Ray D said: “people like Polanski or Specter. I agree that these people have done wonderful things and ugly things, just like everyone else.”
@RayD: With all due respect, NO. the two people you mention did not do “ugly things, just like everyone else.” They committed crimes hat they should both be locked up and serve teir time. Everyone else does not commit murder or anally rape underage girls.
Not taking offense at what you posted, but I think some clarification is needed. Yeah, people do dumb shit all the time, but there is “dumb shit” and then there are things that only true, soulless monsters do.
It is the duty of society to see htat they are punished to the full extent of the law. Without laws, we’re all just monkeys scratching around.
But I think that the filmmakers could have structured things differently to both honor the clear and obvious fact that he had to absolutely handle Spector with kid gloves, and still provide a corrective to his never-ending trail of bullshit.
I’m not saying it should be a gotcha thing; where point by point he brings up additional facts refuting what Spector says. Just a few things that might have gently refuted what he had to say to give the viewer a clue that perhaps this is all part of the spector mythos; his perpetual fantasy internal life and knowing this won’t necessarily detract from your overall picture of the guy. Otherwise you are left at just taking what he said at absolute face value.
It reminds me of what happened with Erroll Morris when he did his first cut on “Mr. Death: the life of Fred Leuchter” about the holocaust denying capital punishment expert. Morris thought that by just presented Leuchter’s insane statements, the audience would be shocked by them and have the appropriate revulsion towards the guy. Instead, they actually started to agree with Leuchter, nodding their heads at what he said. So Morris had to do something he’d never really done before; put on talking heads to specifically refute what Leuchter said so the audience would realize his statements were bullshit.
This kind of thing can be taken too far; case in point the incredibly annoying liberal radio talk show host that appears through Jesus Camp telling us that the pyscho bitch running the Christian kids camp is, in fact, a psycho bitch. But in the Spector doc’s case, it is clearly needed for no other reason than to show that the filmmaker understands that there is a bigger madness at work.
If you’ve ever heard Joey Ramone and others interviewed about Spector pulling guns on them… they were absolutely 100 percent terrified. None of these people were the least bit surprised that spector killed someone (yes, I know Ramone died before Clarkson’s death). Prior to the death of clarkson, there were essentially two things an average person might know about Spector: he was the “Wall of Sound” guy, and he was constantly waving guns around. Don’t you think this warranted some kind of exploration?
Again, it didn’t have to be gotcha journalism and it could have been handled in way that still preserved a sense of spector’s genuis AND madness, as well as honored what it took to secure the interview. But to NOT have explored these issues makes the movie come across as almost a hagiography.
Compare this to Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired. Supposedly this movie was very pro-polanski and part of an effort to call into question the original prosection. Well the only thing it did to me was become even more convinced that Polansk was a sick pederast; such was the good job it did of presenting a full picture of the case.
But I’ll bet an eloi seeing this british doc might be left with the impression that Spector is a genius that got caught up in some random and rare confusing situation where a woman ended up dead. The simple fact is that the reason that he was holding a gun at her that night; some woman that he hardly knew, is the CENTRAL question of Spector’s life. And the movie just danced around it; pecking at it here and there, but never, ever really dug in.
I actually really liked and appreciated what Jeff had to say about this movie, but I also very much look forward to Glen Kenny has to say too.
Well, let’s get to an essential problem with one of Lex G.’s points:
“If your wife, your brother, your uncle, your dad, committed a crime. Say a DUI or an aggravated assault, a statutory… dollars to donuts, every single one of you would still go to visit them, petition the court, sing their praises, say ‘Oh, that’s Uncle Louie, he screwed up ONE TIME.’”
The commenters here with more knowledge of Spector and his past know that the Clarkson case wasn’t a matter of Spector screwing up this ONE TIME but see it as the culmination of decades of Spector playing in the tinder box of firearms. They know he essentially held Ronnie Spector hostage in that castle for 20 years, wouldn’t let her record “Don’t Worry Baby” because of his insane hardon for Brian Wilson. They know about the gunplay with Cohen, the terrorizing of the Ramones. They know about the selective madness: the shit he would pull on certain artists but never on, say, Lennon. Thus they can infer that rather than this being a “ONE TIME” thing that it was the culmination of an obsession he could never let go of, that his gun fixation had to climax with his finally pulling a trigger. Yeah, he’s totally earned his sentence.
@ Deathtongue – For the record, they’re only defending creative genius pedophiles who rape little girls. Creative genius pedophiles who rape little boys are disgusting, and do not deserve such sympathy. LOL
Wells and Lex sittin’ in a tree…natch.
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Love the article, keep it up!
Love the article, keep it up!
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