I always liked the picture on the back of the Mr. Tambourine Man LP of Dylan playing with the Byrds. Googling it, I understand that he joined them for an encore at Ciro's on Sunset Strip. Have you ever heard this? Do you know if a recording exists? I would kill to hear it. —J DEVON
Eddie Muller, TCM host and film noir expert, answered my question as to why Capote's character was changed or absent in the In Cold Blood movie and he said it's because the book does not contain the author as a character. Fair enough, but actor Paul Stewart's writer/reporter is from New York and that has to be a nod, however distant, to Capote. I think director Richard Brooks, himself an author, cast Stewart as a version of himself instead of handing off the acting chores to someone who resembled Capote, say TV character actor, John Fielding. It need not have been camped up or thrown the movie off it's axis by having Charles Nelson Reilly show up in the middle of a neo-noir and behaving like the Hollywood Squares. Fielding was actually in 12 Angry Men, so he was an accomplished actor and could have just been himself, small and high voiced as he was. It would have been more respectful to the author who appeared on the cover of Life magazine at the time between the two actors, Scott Wilson and Robert Blake, on location during the movie. Blake and Wilson call each other 'honey' and 'sweetie' as they portray the killers and it's always an implied threat and insult. Brooks, the director, wrote a novel The Brick Foxhole, where a WWII era soldier kills a gay man. The resulting movie Crossfire changes it to an anti semetic murder. Hollywood was filled with talented gay men and women during its so-called Golden Age, but the movies usually used veiled gay characters for either comic relief (what 'relief' one asks) or as the evil perp in a noir, think Hitchcock's Rope or Strangers On A Train. Eddie Muller said I was 'barking up the wrong tree' re: In Cold Blood because director Brooks, despite being the typical macho man's man, enjoyed the company of gay men (?) Eddie didn't explain any further and perhaps doesn't know to what extent Brooks enjoyed their company. Burt Lancaster always hired gay males to staff his office and attended parties with Rock Hudson suggesting he was at least bi-curious. Eddie helped Tab Hunter write his biography and helped with the Tab Hunter Confidential documentary, so he knows fully about gays in Hollywood and the hypocrisy involved in those years. Has it changed all that much? Can you name a famous box office star who is gay or a famous male athlete? The more things change as the saying goes, the more they remain the same.
Your reference to John Lennon’s “God” puts me in mind of an exchange Kingsley Amis had with a writer whose I forget. Anyway, his friend asks him, “You an atheist?” and Amis replied, “It’s more like I hate Him.”
My interpretation of “Brown Sugar” is that white men pursuing Black women in the modern era are not terribly different in motivation and spirit from slave owners who used their captives as a harem, and the Stones do not necessarily exclude themselves from this analysis. I’ve come to the conclusion that the Rolling Stones attitude towards this phenomenon appears to be that anything that feeds the libido is a positive public good, and you can take that any way you like.
It has occurred to me that people younger than myself (and I am swinging with Medicare these days) are innocent in a way I am not because when I was young you would still be exposed to Hollywood racism on television, and I am desensitized to it to a greater degree. This phenomenon does seem to have skipped you, of course. At any rate, if the question is which is the natural state, desensitization or sensitization, the anomaly is clearly desensitization. I’m sure something good will come of this, but I don’t see that sensitivity addresses the fundamental civil rights problem, which is that every civil rights initiative runs aground when someone is expected to sacrifice something.
Eddie Muller, TCM host and film noir expert, answered my question as to why Capote's character was changed or absent in the In Cold Blood movie and he said it's because the book does not contain the author as a character. Fair enough, but actor Paul Stewart's writer/reporter is from New York and that has to be a nod, however distant, to Capote. I think director Richard Brooks, himself an author, cast Stewart as a version of himself instead of handing off the acting chores to someone who resembled Capote, say TV character actor, John Fielding. It need not have been camped up or thrown the movie off it's axis by having Charles Nelson Reilly show up in the middle of a neo-noir and behaving like the Hollywood Squares. Fielding was actually in 12 Angry Men, so he was an accomplished actor and could have just been himself, small and high voiced as he was. It would have been more respectful to the author who appeared on the cover of Life magazine at the time between the two actors, Scott Wilson and Robert Blake, on location during the movie. Blake and Wilson call each other 'honey' and 'sweetie' as they portray the killers and it's always an implied threat and insult. Brooks, the director, wrote a novel The Brick Foxhole, where a WWII era soldier kills a gay man. The resulting movie Crossfire changes it to an anti semetic murder. Hollywood was filled with talented gay men and women during its so-called Golden Age, but the movies usually used veiled gay characters for either comic relief (what 'relief' one asks) or as the evil perp in a noir, think Hitchcock's Rope or Strangers On A Train. Eddie Muller said I was 'barking up the wrong tree' re: In Cold Blood because director Brooks, despite being the typical macho man's man, enjoyed the company of gay men (?) Eddie didn't explain any further and perhaps doesn't know to what extent Brooks enjoyed their company. Burt Lancaster always hired gay males to staff his office and attended parties with Rock Hudson suggesting he was at least bi-curious. Eddie helped Tab Hunter write his biography and helped with the Tab Hunter Confidential documentary, so he knows fully about gays in Hollywood and the hypocrisy involved in those years. Has it changed all that much? Can you name a famous box office star who is gay or a famous male athlete? The more things change as the saying goes, the more they remain the same.
Correction, the actor I suggest would have fit the Capote part was John Fielder, not Fielding. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Fiedler
Your reference to John Lennon’s “God” puts me in mind of an exchange Kingsley Amis had with a writer whose I forget. Anyway, his friend asks him, “You an atheist?” and Amis replied, “It’s more like I hate Him.”
My interpretation of “Brown Sugar” is that white men pursuing Black women in the modern era are not terribly different in motivation and spirit from slave owners who used their captives as a harem, and the Stones do not necessarily exclude themselves from this analysis. I’ve come to the conclusion that the Rolling Stones attitude towards this phenomenon appears to be that anything that feeds the libido is a positive public good, and you can take that any way you like.
It has occurred to me that people younger than myself (and I am swinging with Medicare these days) are innocent in a way I am not because when I was young you would still be exposed to Hollywood racism on television, and I am desensitized to it to a greater degree. This phenomenon does seem to have skipped you, of course. At any rate, if the question is which is the natural state, desensitization or sensitization, the anomaly is clearly desensitization. I’m sure something good will come of this, but I don’t see that sensitivity addresses the fundamental civil rights problem, which is that every civil rights initiative runs aground when someone is expected to sacrifice something.