My new blog home:

www.davecullenblog.com

I feel slightly sad writing this post. I'm at the goofy, old-fashioned entry screen for decrepit old Radio Userland blog software that has bugged the crap out of me for (seven?) years, but . . . it's also the first screen I ever came to create my own first blog.

That was maybe a thousand posts ago. Blogs were pretty novel, and I wasn't sure what I was going to do with mine, or whether I would want to spend more than an hour or two on it, but I sure did.  

And then, just this month, I finally got it up-to-date and swore I'd try to maintain it. But the thought kept gnawing at me: why?

I can't update it from the road--or even from my laptop in my livingroom--because this software works off the hard drive of the computer it's loaded on. And that's an aging computer, and the blog software grinds it to a halt.

Radio Userland is a dying platform, so I don't know what took me so long to jump ship. I always thought I'd have to convert all the old posts to a new blog--which I didn't know how to do--and set up new templates and blah, blah, blah.

I finally decided just to leave the old archives here and point to them, but start fresh. And the new templates are so much simpler than when I coded mine in html way back.

It was way easier than I imagined. It was as easy as a blog should be in this era. In the beginning they had all sorts of technical hurdles, and I was a big goofball to cling to that platform and all its troubles.

Life feels easier already. Change is good.

So the new blog is up and running, and if all goes as intended, this will be the farewell post at this address.

The new address is pretty simple:

www.davecullenblog.com

See you there.

I have been posting in a lot of different places the last year. Here are the biggest places you'll find me, other than this blog, in the order I visit them.

Friend or follow me on any/all:

THIS BLOG: Dave Cullen: Conclusive Evidence of My Existence

I've added them all to the left column.

I've been inactive on digg for awhile, so I never had many followers there. I could use a few.

Thanks.

FEBRUARY 19, 2009 2:04AM

How did I miss The Gaslight Anthem this long?

After that wrenching but wonderful experience with "The '59 Sound," I downloaded a bunch of their stuff and it's been glorious. I listen to it at the gym, and nothing pumps me like they do. It makes me smile, too.

 At first, I thought a lot of it sounded too much alike, but oddly, it's gotten better with repeats. They are clever lyricists, they have a ball--check out the video--and most importantly, they mean it.

Somehow, I continued to overlook "Ida Called You Woody, Joe," my new almost-favorite. (Video below. Lyrics and great insights about them here.)

I paid no attention to the clunky title, hit play and they blast right into it, with the singer taken by another song:

I felt my fingertips tingle, and it started to rain
When the walls of my bedroom were tremblin' around me . . .

. . . and then there's this really familiar chord progression and Brian Fallon sings, "

And this was the sound, of the very last gang in town.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. He's listening to Joe Strummer. "Last Gang in Town" was a great Clash song. My favorite group ever. Joe was singer, songwriter, and rhythm guitarist. (I had to look this up, but he loved Woody Guthrie so much he called himself Woody, for awhile--while he was a young pretentious dork, I guess. Hahaha. That didn't last. He was wonderful.)

The next line, how freaking wonderful:

As heard by my wild young heart,
Like directions on a cold, dark night,
Sayin', "Let it out, let it out, let it out, you're doing all right."

Nice. That's how I heard Joe, too. How many punkers write lyrics that tender?

And how cool for the Gaslight guys to still have wild young hearts, but the wisdom, too, already to see that's how they're absorbing it. How do he know?

One of my favorite Clash-kinda images was actually from the other guy, Mick Jones, in his followup band, Big Audio Dynamite:

I`d wish I could`ve seen you
When you could run wild
I would`ve liked to know you
As an innocent child

I think about so many people when I hear that, including Mick himself, and Joe Strummer. I never saw them play together. They never toured the Midwest once I discovered them in 1979. I saw Mick with Big Audio Dynamite, but the show was lame. I don't care. I still love them.

And I love that The Gaslight Anthem wrote this song for Joe, who died in 2002, unexpectedly of an undiagnosed heart ailment.

This part is sweet:

And I carried these songs as a comfort wherever I'd go.
. . . And I never got to tell him, so I just wrote it down.
I wrapped a couple chords around it and I let it come out . . .

Punkers with heart. Just like Joe.

I've been loving this Boondocks TV series.  

Makes me kinda squeamish sometimes, though. If this were written by a white guy, it would have been cancelled after one episode, and any TV executive involved in greenlighting it fired in disgrace.

But it's freaking funny.

And . . . how do you say this without sounding REALLY white . . . ? I'm understanding better.

Thought I understood the race stuff pretty well. Not well enough, apparently.

So I'm loving the show, for a whole lotta reasons. But the Nigga Moment episode--officially titled "Grandad's Fight"--that one was just too much. Grandad gets beaten up by a mean old blind man, and humilated for it. Everyone involved is black, including the narrator, who tells us and grandad about twenty times that it's just a nigga moment--where two niggas find themselves in a situation where they find themselves driven to act stupid, and it always ends badly.

Halfway through I literally felt like I was going to throw up. And all i could think was: I don't care how black the writer is, it's still freaking racist.

And I sure felt racist chuckling at it. And it was hard not to, it was funny. But good lord. Man, did I feel dirty.

I turned it off, but didn't delete it from the tivo.

Came back about a month later and decided to finish. More nigga nigga nigga, dumb niggas, stupid niggas, Goooooooood!

But finally, the episode climaxes with gramps and the blind guy in a rematch that ends horribly, followed by a mini riot among the crowd gathered to watch. Riley--the angry (eight year old?) grandson who set up the whole disgusting fight and took bets and charged admission and then instigated the riot to get the hell out of there when it went sour--stands back, looks at the mostly white crowd acting like idiots, and says, ruefully, "niggas!"

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Wow. Nicely done. Almost sounds heavy handed describing it now, but it sure lured me in. And enlightened me, too. And not just about white people, but about us, too. And the whole idea of niggas. Or one crucial nigga idea, at least.

This is the first show in ages that makes me feel like a nerdy white guy, and/or a white-guilt kinda guy. Discomforting, because I thought I was way past all that, but I guess that means I wasn't.

And it's funny as hell.

(FYI, It's on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim. Sunday at 11, I read at one point, but I have no idea. That's what your tivo is for.)

Taking this quick writing break to spread the good word, announced just in the last hour. Nom list. Press release.

I was happy to see two of my favorite small films of the year, Mysterious Skin and (to a lesser extent) Me and You and Everyone We Know nominated. (Skin for best director for Gregg Araki--quite the coup; and Me & You . . . for best first feature and best first screenplay.)

Most of the big awards were dominated by films also in the running for Oscars: Capote, Brokeback Mountain, and Good Night and Good Luck tied for second (with a couple others) at four noms.

Brokeback Mountain was tied for second : Best pic, actor, director &sptg actress. (Sorry Jake, nothing for you.)

My one shock was that the Brokeback Screenplay was neglected. I thought Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana did the nearly impossible -- took an amazing, award-winning story and improved on it. How often is the movie richer and more complex than the book? (Granted that the "book" was only 30 pages. But in most hands, it would have been fleshed out with pale filler. This version made me wish Annie would have written it much longer.)

This will of course, help Brokeback--perhaps more than any of the other well-known pics, as it has a special credibility problem with straight audiences. This may help ever so slightly to legitimize it as "a great film," instead of just "the big film for the gays." Every bit of cred helps.

And it may help a bit more in the Oscar race, as the only film with more noms, "The Squid & The Whale," is out of serious contention.

Watched Brokeback Mountain last night. Wow. Just about perfect.

Every bit as moving as the short story, and then some. They really fleshed out the characters, and I empathized with them more strongly. Enough that I'm not angry at Ennis anymore. I totally understand why he did it. How he thought he had to.

The problem with preconceptions is that it was hard not to sit there in the first half hour thinking, "Heath Ledger is doing fine, but 'a revelation'? Not quite getting that." (And there was plenty of quiet time to think.) But by the end I had forgotten all about that, and I was just in awe.

And Jake. Jake was just a joy to behold, every moment he was on screen. He really was. And that was his job--that was his character. And what a wonderful character to light up this movie. Would have been so much darker and flatter without him.

The women were great, too, and I'm so glad their characters were fleshed out. The book focuses on two lives ruined, but you get a powerful sense here of it tearing up all four. And to a lesser extent, hurting the daughters as well. Michelle Williams, in particular, is heartbreaking.

Oh, God, speaking of heartbreaking. My favorite scene in the book, hands down, was the reunion on the landing after four years--where they were so overcome with seeing each other, they grabbed each other and kissed passionately in broad daylight.

It was just as powerful on film, but topped by several others. I guess that says something extraordinary right there. The far-and-away best scene of one of the most beloved stories I have ever read, was bested about three times in the film. Would hardly have thought that possible.

The second night they get together out on Brokeback was . . . well, like nothing I've ever seen before, but only in the sense that I've never seen it with men. Picture one of the all-time great romantic moments on film, and then imagine it finally challenged by something just as beautiful, complex and tender with two men. Finally. First time ever ever ever I didn't have to imagine a stand-in for the woman up there.

It was just amazing. They had "gotten together" in a late-night drunken situation that Ennis was completely unable to deal with in the morning. Or the next evening. He tells Jake he's not queer, that it was a one-time thing and that's that. But he can't stick to it. When he comes into the tent, he's completely at war inside. Trying desperately not to do it, but his heart begging him to finally accept what it feels. It is so hard for him, his struggle is so palpable, and Jack is so perfect with him. God me balling again just remembering.

And their last climactic scene together and what comes after: that is just so intense, slammed me in the skull so hard so many ways one after the other after the other.

Just devastating.

And I'm not going to say a whole lot here, but I do believe Heath's finest moment comes when Ennis visits Jacks parents and gets some news from his mom. What he doesn't say. What he works so hard to hide. God. That poor, poor man. How can you possibly blame that guy?

---

So a strange thing happened to me after the film, while Ang Lee was interviewed onstage. (Streaming video and a news story on it here -- Thanks Mark. And FYI, Annie left early from the book signing, so I missed here. Didn't talk to her or Ang. Damn. But they sat across the aisle from us, and during the credits I got a chance to at least walk over and thank Larry and Diana for doing such an amazing job. They really fleshed this incredible story out.)

So the interview was great. To listen to him is to know you are in the presence of a true artist, whatever you think of this particular film. (Or The Hulk.) Late in the discussion, the Denver Post critic brought up they gay question a couple times, dealing with the gay issue, the gay this the gay that. It was oddly jarring for me. So weird to hear it called a gay film or a gay love story or gay anything. For the last two hours, I had just been lost in an exquisite love story.

I know, I know, I have scoffed right here about people saying it's not a gay film: What! It's two men in love having sex. That's called gay. The entire story revolves around the forbiddenness of their love--because it's gay--the whole tragedy is centered on the problem of the men being gay.

Yeah, I have said all that. And it's all true. In that sense, it is a gay film, in two distinct and crucial ways. But I'm now seeing the other point of view, too. It's also an aching love story between two people who just happen to be gay.

The other great romantic movie of the decade--Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind--was also a gripping love story of two people fighting desperately both for and against their problematic love for each other. But it wasn't a film about a memory-erasing device was it? That was just the vehicle, the problem to present for these two people to fight madly for the love being ripped away from them.

Exactly the same thing here.

All I know is, that in spite of knowing full well for the two-plus hours that it was the revulsion of homosexuality that was driving these two tragic lovers apart, I truly forgot about it being a gay thing. The love story was just too intense. It didn't matter what was driving these two guys apart, it was just about the intensity of the love between these two guys.

So I was literally startled to hear her using the gay word while I was still basking in that afterglow. Maybe because the concept of "gay love" is offensive to some part of me that is sick of hearing it distinguished from "love." It's exactly the same. For two hours I had not been watching gay love, I had just been watching love.

It didn't feel like a gay film. It just felt like home.

---

Update:

You guys kept adding so many comments (thousands), that long after this post, we started a whole Brokeback Mountain Discussion Forum.

And for links to everything imaginable, see our Ultimate Brokeback Mountain Guide.

Friday, The Hollywood Reporter published this wonderful piece, Ang Lee's 'Brokeback' explores 'last frontier'. It opens like this:

There's no doubt that a $13 million quality movie like Ang Lee's "Brokeback Mountain," which has wowed festivalgoers and reviewers in Telluride, Venice and Toronto, will play well in big movie markets around the country. The question is, how broad will it go?

No one knows that answer, because no one has ventured into this territory before. The movie is a groundbreaker. There's never been a homosexual cowboy movie, and while the indies have been supplying gay romances to the art house circuit for years, and gay series like "Queer as Folk" and "Will & Grace" have been pulling big numbers on TV, there hasn't been a mainstream gay love story since 1982's "Making Love," which bombed and was blamed by many for damaging Harry Hamlin's career. "It's the one last frontier," says Lee.

Reaches its most hopeful here:

Brokeback Mountain could be the mainstream gay romance that many people have been waiting for. One Toronto wag called it "the gay 'Gone with the Wind'." "Of all the gay-themed films I've watched," says Damon Romine of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, "this is the first one I've seen about two men in love, told in a way that straight people can relate to. People don't have to be gay to understand loss and longing and unrequited love. Hollywood churns out endless variations on the theme of forbidden love. This is a new take on that genre, a film that has tremendous potential to reach and transform mainstream audiences."

And gets serious about the marketing plan here:

Focus will release "Brokeback" in limited situations through the holidays -- as the big studio guns play themselves out -- and widen it in January. Since the trailer went out, Focus has placed a registration page for advance sales on the "Brokeback" Web site. The initial marketing push is to women and younger moviegoers. "You're looking for people who are empathetic," says Schamus, "and able to reach their emotions. And younger folks are way out ahead on this stuff. Overall, they are not worked up about gay issues." Becoming an Oscar contender should push "Brokeback" into must-see territory, as it did "Philadelphia."

And this morning, Newsweek unleashed a similar story: "Forbidden Territory".  (It was incorrectly ID'd all over the web as their review. Author Sean Smith is their entertainment reporter, not their film critic. He writes pieces about the business of Hollywood, trends, analysis, so forth. The review will come soon, probably from David Ansen.)

More heartening words there:

The film, written by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, is a near-perfect adaptation of Proulx's work. It has already earned the top prize at the Venice Film Festival and is almost certain to be an Oscar contender. More than that, though, "Brokeback" feels like a landmark film. No American film before has portrayed love between two men as something this pure and sacred. As such, it has the potential to change the national conversation and to challenge people's ideas about the value and validity of same-sex relationships. In the meantime, it's already upended decades of Hollywood conventional wisdom.

And this fascinating take on the marketing, expanding a bit on the HR's take. There's more to it than this, but you'll get the gist:

That discomfort would seem to make the movie difficult to market. When the trailer plays in theaters where there are a lot of young men in the audience, it's often met with snickers or outright laughter. How do you get those guys to see the movie? You don't. "If you have a problem with the subject matter, that's your problem, not mine," Schamus says. "It would be great if you got over your problem, but I'm not sitting here trying to figure out how to help you with it." In an early meeting, Schamus told Lee that, from a marketing standpoint, they were making this film for one core audience. "Yes, of course," Lee said. "The gay audience." No, Schamus said. "Women."

When it came time to design the poster for the film, Schamus didn't research posters of famous Westerns for ideas. He looked at the posters of the 50 most romantic movies ever made. "If you look at our poster," he says, "you can see traces of our inspiration, 'Titanic'."

I'm skeptical that it can attract huge numbers of straight women, much less inspire them to drag their boyfriends. But it doesn't need huge numbers. Modest numbers for an arthouse film would be a nice start. Actual crossover success would be wonderful. I'm sure hoping.

And you can do your part by spreading the word. And organizing a group for opening weekend in your town. Advance group ticket sales here.

Anyway, the big, gay AMERICAblog posted a somewhat curious take on the Newsweek story today, which provoked a spirited and often interesting debate in its lively comments section.

Wildly divergent views there--and elsewhere--about how it will play to mainstream America.

Personally, I think it wll have modest success, beating most expectations, but well shy of a blockbuster. (Who knows, $30-60 million gross. I realize that's a big range. Hoping toward the high end, but would be satisfied with the low.)

Here's the thing: like most big cultural-moment movies, the number of people who actually see it at theatres will be a small fraction of the national population. But EVERYone will hear about it, read about it, end up talking about it or at least sitting silently and having to listen about it.

It will change the national conversation. How much it changes, that's the question. It won't make gay-love acceptable in southern Baptist churches next month. But it will leave the conversation changed.

And all the answers will start trickling in soon.

And I will see it in six days.

Till then, got to buckle under on my book. See you next Sunday.

Update:

You guys kept adding so many comments (thousands), that long after this post, we started a whole Brokeback Mountain Discussion Forum.

And for links to everything imaginable, see our Ultimate Brokeback Mountain Guide.