Reel Music 25

[January 16th, 2008]

The highlight of the second week of the NW Film Center’s series isn’t a film at all: It’s a live appearance by Harry Rabinowitz, the film composer who led the orchestras for movies including The English Patient and Cold Mountain . (He speaks at 2 pm Sunday, Jan. 20.) We can’t review that—just recommend it—but we can give you a peek at other entries.

Ornette: Made in America

Shirley Clarke’s 1985 documentary on jazz saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist Ornette Coleman is revelatory, even for those familiar with the artist’s music. Coleman was the revolutionary mind that introduced the world to “free jazz,” a wild re-evaluation of music theory that shook the jazz world into a personality crisis that continues to this day. But unlike luminaries Thelonious Monk and Sun Ra, Coleman is known more for his musical eccentricity than a flamboyant personality or overly peculiar behavior. The seldom-seen Made in America , though, proves that the soft-spoken Texas-born player-composer is just as fascinating offstage as any of his music. In one of the film’s most revealing scenes, Coleman quizzes his 12-year-old son, Denardo, on his “very modern” and instinctive drumming style. “I just want to know what method you use,” he asks the boy. “I don’t know. I don’t have any particular method,” Denardo replies before the filmmaker cuts to a scene of father and son jamming with bassist Charlie Haden. That trio had recorded an album for Blue Note records two years prior. The father-son relationship is observed throughout Made In America , a film that covers roughly 20 years of Coleman’s life. Despite its breadth, though, the film tends to be as freewheeling as its subject, refusing to tell “the story” of Ornette’s career in favor of several fascinating small stories told in the cinéma vérité style. The film’s visual approach reflects that same refusal: several gorgeous sequences are captured, but Clarke often insists on rapid, seizure-inducing edits and downright agonizing camera zooms and pans. But the mid-’80s production theatrics actually prove successful in jarring the viewer into accepting Coleman’s extraordinary musical imagination (coincidentally, if ever there was a jazz documentary to see while high, this is the one). Guest appearances include poet William S. Burroughs, composer George Russell and audio from visionary architect Buckminster Fuller, an early hero of Coleman’s. The film is required viewing for those who plan to catch Coleman at this year’s Portland Jazz Festival. CASEY JARMAN. 8:15 pm Wednesday, Jan. 16.

The Old, Weird America: Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music

When it sticks to the subjects in its title, Rani Singh’s movie tells a compelling tale: how a kid from Portland named Harry Smith turned his collection of 78s into three of the strangest, most haunting albums in American music. But Singh spends too little time with Smith—an authentic oddball with great taste—and instead focuses on a series of live concerts, inspired by the Anthology , featuring Nick Cave, Richard Thompson and Beck. Fine artists all, but they iron the eerie nooks and crannies out of the music. And a concert film, however ably done, isn’t the right approach to Smith’s obsessive brilliance. AARON MESH. 6:30 pm Thursday, Jan. 17.

Knowing All of You Like I Do

The fate of Music Millennium’s Northwest 23rd Avenue location was well documented in these pages, but there’s something terribly poignant about seeing what happened after it closed. First-time filmmaker Ivy C. Lin documents the gutting of the store with spare images—a Primal Scream poster torn down with a claw hammer, a hand-painted sign reading “Please leave all bags at counter” in a spot where there is no longer any counter—that hint at the “friendly ghosts” fleeing the neighborhood. There’s a lovely a cappella performance by WW cartoonist John Callahan of “Purple Winos in the Rain,” a song that fights for room above the sounds of destruction. Northwest Examiner editor Mike Ryerson also stops by, offering a depressing analysis of urban change along with a charming guided tour of the CD labels stuck to the corner trash can. Somehow that tiny monument to Music Millennium seems especially fragile. AARON MESH. 8:30 pm Thursday, Jan. 17.

You’re Gonna Miss Me

If Roky Erickson never achieved the iconic status of fellow ’60s rockers Jim, Janis and Jimi, it’s because he had the dubious fortune of staying alive after his martyrdom. (You may never have heard of Erickson, but you’ve heard his music: The 13th Floor Elevators’ chart-topping single “You’re Gonna Miss Me” is the raging caterwaul that opens High Fidelity .) Instead of dying, Erickson spent years in a Texas mental hospital, undergoing shock treatments and playing in a band with rapists and murderers. And then he was off to a slow decline in Austin, Texas, with his controlling fundamentalist mother vying for space in his head with the voices of aliens. That’s where director Keven McAlester found him. The resulting documentary is more than just a Roky horror picture show; it’s a mesmerizing study of drugs, mania, religion and therapy, tied together with haunting, jagged music. McAlester’s chief achievement unites the strengths of Capturing the Friedmans and The Devil and Daniel Johnston : He manages to evoke sympathy for a strange and corrosive family, even when its members cling to ugly memories like shards of a shipwreck. And he picks up the first hints of Roky’s revival—a comeback from mental illness that led to his performance at MusicfestNW last August. AARON MESH. 9 pm Friday, Jan. 18.

Runnin’ Down a Dream: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

About halfway into Peter Bogdanovich’s four-hour documentary, a British journalist asks Tom Petty about his influences. “The radio, and, umm, the ’60s,” he responds, without a hint of irony. Petty’s songwriting has always been simple, but the film about his 30-year career arc loses control when it aims for bigger things. During the first half of the film, Bogdanovich mostly avoids falling into familiar rock ’n’ roll tropes: you know, drugs, booze, trying to make a second record. Despite his best attempts at ditching the bored Behind the Music rise and fall, the latter end of Runnin’ Down a Dream halts any momentum forged by the young, hungry Petty. Vintage footage and home videos are replaced by a montage of praise from other aging rockers (Stevie Nicks, Eddie Vedder, Dave Stewart), and the film buys too much into the myth of Petty the rock star, losing sight of the original narrative: that he’s really just a normal dude from the South who writes really catchy pop songs. When Petty says, “We had a slogan: Don’t bore us, get to the chorus,” you want to scream at the director for not taking his advice. Just get to the good stuff. MICHAEL MANNHEIMER. 2 pm Saturday, Jan. 19.

Soul Deep, Part I

The first three hours of the BBC’s mammoth Story of Black Popular Music are by far its most focused: Beginning with Ray Charles and the dawn of Rhythm&Blues, the first section of Soul Deep offers what Ray did not: commentary from the inimitable Charles himself (including his lovable, beating-around-the-bush proclamation that white people are, well, square). The second hour offers a look at gospel’s place in soul music through the endless charm of Sam Cooke (it seems that damn near every song, from Cooke’s own “Lovable” to Ben E. King’s “Stand By Me,” started out as a religious number), while the third part outlines the hit-making business savvy of Motown Records and its somewhat out-of-touch founder, Berry Gordy. The best part of all, however, comes in the first 15 minutes, when music critic Stanley Crouch likens a band “losing the groove” to “a [guy’s] johnson falling out.” “They can go back in,” he says, “but it’s not the same.” AMY MCCULLOUGH. 7 pm Sunday, Jan. 20.

Soul Deep, Part II

It’s pretty easy to forgive the second half of Soul Deep for being a bit all over the place, as the popularity and breadth of soul music began to spread like wildfire—especially after Sam Cooke proved it was OK to strive for success beyond the gospel circuit (his not being struck down by the Big Guy for going “pop” was a honest relief to his fellow crooners). From Stax Records stars Otis Redding and Isaac Hayes (the former is covered in far more depth here) to the funk of Stevie Wonder—who apparently recorded in a sort of spaceship-looking studio with two giant, afroed Martians...er, white dudes...as techs—to Bootsy Collins and George Clinton’s quest to deliver listeners from their dreadful, “unfunky” lives, the second half of Soul Deep covers Southern soul and funk pretty comprehensively. But the last hour, which focuses almost entirely on Mary J. Blige, falls a bit short. Sure, she’s a convincing figurehead for hip-hop soul (and she makes a fine point about the transition from blacks striving to appeal to the white audience to artists like Justin Timberlake copping black culture), but resting the whole post-funk body of black music on one artist’s shoulders seems a bold move—and it’s one that (somehow, after six hours) leaves you wanting more. AMY MCCULLOUGH. 7 pm Monday, Jan. 21.