An Open Letter to G. Barry Golson

I originally posted this piece on another site, on May 24, 2009, to set the record straight. The article in Playboy that I discuss had become the Holy Grail of conspiracy theorists who believed that I was part of a CIA/Zionist plot to murder John Lennon. In the 25 years that the piece had been kicking around, dozens of these theorists had published books and articles that quoted from Playboy, taking as gospel truth the story’s absurd distortions. Yet I'd never publicly responded to the article because no legitimate journalist had ever asked me about it. But when my new book, Beaver Street, was accepted for publication, I wanted to make sure that anybody who searched the Internet for this bit of libel would also find my “open letter,” in which, for the first time, I told my side of the story. Since I published this letter, the incidences of conspiracy theorists quoting from the Playboy article have, indeed, dropped dramatically. In fact, the theory has crossed over into the realm of satire, where it belongs.

What I didn’t expect is how prominently the letter would appear in search results for “G. Barry Golson,” the editor responsible for running the story. And, I must admit, it was satisfying to hear from people who’d worked with Golson in the 1980s. Such an exposé, they felt, had been a long time coming.

Dear Barry,

I’m sorry to interrupt your Mexican retirement, but we need to discuss a bit of unfinished business—something I’ve wanted to get off my chest for 25 years. I know that’s a long time, but there’s no past in cyberspace. There’s only what’s out there now. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned about the Internet, it’s that if you put out information people want, they’ll find it. Take my word for it. Internet killed the magazine star.

Imagine if there were a blogosphere in 1984.

The funny thing is, over the past nine years, as I traveled around the US, Europe, and Latin America promoting my John Lennon biography, Nowhere Man, conducting some 300 no-holds-barred interviews and press conferences, nobody has ever asked me about the Playboy article. It’s almost as if it’s ceased to exist.

But the story is still out there, buried in the dark crevices of cyberspace, like an unexploded bomb left over from an ancient war. And it’s accessible to those who want to find it—like the Zionist-conspiracy theorists who’ve embraced it as irrefutable proof that the Jews murdered Lennon (with a little help from the CIA).

I can no longer pretend that the article doesn’t exist, especially now that every day another story from that long-gone era seems to resurrect itself online, and especially now that the exhibition on Lennon’s New York City years at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Annex has put the past so prominently back in the news. Yes, Barry, I think it’s time to drag the article out into the open and expose it to a bit of sunlight.

The story, as you may recall, was no small matter. It was about 6,000 words and written by a journalist of some repute, David Sheff. It received a great deal of media attention when it was published. But what really gets me is that Playboy still had a reputation for journalistic integrity at the time and at least some people really did buy it for the articles. I was one of them. I believed in Playboy’s journalism. That’s why I sent you my manuscript—the manuscript that would become Nowhere Man. You were the executive editor in charge of interviews and articles.

I remember very well the day we met in your New York office: July 27, 1982—my 30th birthday. You had some nice things to say about my writing; you especially liked my chapter about Lennon’s relationship with Paul McCartney (“His Finest Hour” in Nowhere Man).

We spoke for quite some time, and I told you how after Lennon was murdered, his personal assistant, Fred Seaman, said it was time for us to begin work on the Lennon biography John had asked him to write in the event of his death, using any source material he needed to complete the project. I told you how Seaman gave me Lennon’s diaries, how I transcribed and edited them, and how Seaman then sent me out of town, ransacked my apartment, and took everything I’d been working on. I told you how I had re-created from memory portions of Lennon’s diaries. In short, I told you the entire Nowhere Man backstory—a story that I thought was the equivalent of a rock ’n’ roll Watergate. I also told you that I was in dire financial straits and needed a break.

You then strung me along for the rest of the summer, assuring me that you hadn’t forgotten about the story and that my name was in your Rolodex. But you never gave me an assignment.

So I sent the manuscript to Jann Wenner at Rolling Stone, and met with him, too. At least he was up-front with me. He told me that he couldn’t publish the story and that the only way I could “save” my “karma” was to tell Yoko Ono herself what had happened. I met with her in the Dakota in September and told her the story. She then asked to read my personal diaries, and I gave them to her—16 volumes covering more than three years.

You finally called me in April 1983 to say that you’d assigned the Lennon diaries story to Sheff, and you asked me to cooperate with him—neglecting to mention something I didn’t find out until I saw the article in print: Ono had given you and Sheff (who was collaborating with his wife at the time, Victoria Sheff) access to my diaries. Because I thought that this was the only way I’d be able to tell the story, I allowed David Sheff to come to my house and interview me for two hours.

You had my trust, my cooperation, my manuscript, and my diaries, the intimate details of my life. And what did you do? You ran a story in the March 1984 Playboy, “The Betrayal of John Lennon,” that had one purpose only: to silence me by destroying my credibility, my reputation, my career, and my life. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that of the countless articles and reviews that have since been written about Nowhere Man—most of which, I might add, are positive—none of them, not even those written by anonymous character assassins, comes close to the sustained maliciousness and contempt of the Playboy story. It is indeed in a class by itself.

And now, 25 years later, I think it’s time for you to answer a couple of questions.

Let’s begin with my diaries. You had at your disposal approximately 500,000 words that I’d written in the heat of the moment. From them, you extracted about 200 words, including 5 that seem to be the only thing most people remember about the story—the takeaway, so to speak, the line the conspiracy theorists quote over and over. I can assure you that I’d prefer not to repeat my comment about what I saw as Ono’s skillful exploitation of the Lennon legacy: “Dead Lennons=BIG $$$$$.” But I’m not the one who made it public. And it certainly wasn’t my idea to depict the comment as an indictment of my own behavior, portraying myself as a criminal conspirator drooling over Lennon’s corpse.

That was quite an image, Barry. But don’t you think it would have been appropriate to help yourselves to a few more of the remaining 499,800 words and give your readers a more accurate picture? For example, you could have quoted—as I did in the first chapter of the paperback edition of Nowhere Man—from the passage that describes my state of mind the night Lennon was murdered, words about shedding tears in front of the Dakota and thanking John for touching my life. Or you could have quoted the part in which Seaman tells me, two days later, that he’s quitting his job at the end of the week to begin writing a book: “‘It’s what John wants,’ he said. ‘He knew he was going to die and he poured his heart out to me. He knew I was working on a book.’”

I suppose it’s possible that you excerpted only 200 words because you didn’t want to infringe my copyright any more than necessary to tell the version of the story that Ono had dictated to you through her spokesman, Elliot Mintz. But couldn’t you have avoided any additional infringement by using more than 22 words from my two-hour conversation with Sheff—the only direct quote that you allowed me in the story because those were the only 22 words that fit your story line?

Or couldn’t you have simply described my diaries? Nowhere in the article did you mention that the portion of my diaries from which you took most of your quotes was typed on teletype paper—hundreds of attached sheets, like a Kerouacian scroll. But apparently any images of serious literary endeavor were to be avoided at all costs. That would have interfered with the real conspiracy—the one you, Ono, and the Manhattan district attorney had cooked up.

I trust you remember what happened the day the article was published: First I was fired from my job at High Society magazine, where I was an editor. They didn’t want a “criminal” on the premises. Then the DA’s office told me I’d be arrested on criminal conspiracy charges if I didn’t sign a document forfeiting my First Amendment rights to tell the story of John Lennon’s diaries. Ono, as I’m sure you know, had by this time given my diaries to the DA—to use as “evidence” against me.

The DA, however, didn’t know that I’d managed to retain a top-notch criminal attorney, willing to defend me pro bono. His name was David Lewis and, as crazy as this must sound to you, he believed that the Constitution applied equally to everybody.

So, there I was, sitting in Lewis’s office, listening to him talk to an assistant DA, Steven Gutstein, on the speakerphone about my diaries, which had apparently provided Gutstein with hours of reading pleasure: His opening parry was a series of one-liners about how often I masturbated—a preview, I presume, of the evidence he was planning to present to the jury. Then Gutstein started talking about the “charges” against me, and I can still recall Lewis’s exact words: “You’re in gross violation of my client’s constitutional rights.”

And you know what? That was the end of it. Lewis called the DA’s bluff and it was shocking how fast he folded. I didn’t sign the document and nobody arrested me. In fact I never heard from the DA again. The case was a total fabrication that would never have stood up to scrutiny in open court. The whole thing was dependent on my not having competent legal counsel. What were you telling people at editorial meetings? “Rosen’s going to be arrested the day the article comes out. What’s he going to do, sue us?”

Not a bad idea, actually. But, as I understand it, your story elevated me to limited-purpose-public-figure status, meaning that if I’d wanted to sue the powerful Playboy corporation, I’d have had to prove that you not only libeled me, but that you did so knowingly and maliciously. Which, of course, you did. But proving it in a court of law was not really feasible on a pro-bono budget.

And it also appeared that the story wasn’t exactly having its intended effect. My friends and neighbors, for example, saw it for the textbook hatchet job that it was. Everybody in my building was wondering why Playboy was going to such extraordinary lengths to destroy the unassuming guy on the fifth floor. That story made me the talk of Washington Heights—a real International Man of Mystery.

And then there was the job offer. I assume you knew, or knew of, Chip Goodman. He was Martin Goodman’s son, and Martin Goodman, as I’m sure you know, is credited with inventing the modern men’s mag, or men’s adventure mags, as they were called at the time. You must have heard the story about how Hugh Hefner wanted to call Playboy “Stag Party,” but Martin Goodman was already publishing Stag magazine, so Hefner couldn’t use the title.

I can’t say that Chip hired me as managing editor of Stag because of the Playboy article. But Chip was no fan of Yoko Ono’s, and he did say that he’d read the article. Our conversation, in fact, left me with the distinct impression that the article was a contributing factor in his hiring decision—the cherry on top of my considerable editorial experience. And yes, I know, Playboy’s a much classier porn rag than Stag could ever dream of being, but at least Stag didn’t pretend to have journalistic integrity. We were an honest stroke book. And it was a pretty good gig for 16 years.

But you weren’t finished with me yet, were you? You had to go ahead and run that letter to the editor—the one suggesting that reading a man’s diaries was a crime as heinous as murder. Do you think John Lennon would have agreed with that analysis? Or maybe you think such notions only apply when “little people” read the diaries of the wealthy and powerful, not when members of the media elite read and publish without authorization the diaries of little people. Yes, that must be it—the Playboy Philosophy in the Age of Ronald Reagan.

Now I ask you, 25 years after the fact: Do you believe that the story has any journalistic merit whatsoever? I.e.: Is it something more than a press release Ono might have written herself if she hadn’t had you and the Sheffs to do it for her? I hope she at least thanked you for a job well done. And what did you hope to get out of it other than the grim satisfaction of currying favor with a rich and powerful woman? Was the article designed to do anything more than repress the story that Lennon told in his diaries and that I told in Nowhere Man? Is there something I’m missing here?

I will offer you a bit of friendly advice: Next time you try to whack somebody, make sure they’re dead before you walk away.

So, Barry, I do hope you’re enjoying your Mexican retirement. It’s a wonderful country you’ve chosen to live in—such warm and gracious people, in my experience. But I must admit, I am wondering if you ever read Proceso, the Mexican newsweekly, though I’d guess the answer is no. It’s not exactly a magazine for “gringo” retirees, is it? The Proceso editors and writers are into speaking truth to power, a concept that doesn’t appear to sit well with you at all. And they did give Nowhere Man the most amazing coverage when it was published there. As you probably noticed, they were hardly the only ones—even Playboy’s Mexican edition gave the book a good review. Jesus, with all those articles and the stuff on TV, you must have thought you were in Bizarro World and that I’d written Harry Potter or something. Too bad I didn’t know 25 years ago how receptive the Mexican media would be to Nowhere Man. I wouldn’t have bothered you with my query letter.

Anyway, that’s my side of the story.

Maybe we’ll talk again someday, perhaps the next time I’m in Mexico on a book tour.

Sincerely,
Robert Rosen

Justice, Texas Style

This post originally ran April 16, 2009.

Dee Roberts (Nicole Beharie) gets a taste of Texas law.

American Violet
Directed by Tim Disney
Written by Bill Haney
Starring Nicole Beharie, Tim Blake Nelson, Will Patton, Michael O’Keef, Xzibit, Malcolm Barrett, Charles S. Dutton, Alfre Woodard, Tim Ware, and David Paul Story

By Robert Rosen

The French news is carried on cable and satellite systems throughout America, and if you ever watched it during the years that George W. Bush was governor of Texas, you may have been struck by the peculiar way the French covered the Lone Star State, particularly on those all-too-frequent days when it was executing (or Texecuting, as some called it) yet another prisoner.

If you didn’t know any better, you might have thought that Texas wasn’t part of the United States. Rather, that big red blot on the map appeared to be a country unto itself—a banana republic ruled by a bloodthirsty and possibly insane dictator, somebody along the lines of, say, Saddam Hussein. Because it was under Bush’s authority that Texas put to death 155 men and women, virtually all of whom were poor, and many of whom were insane, mentally retarded, innocent, a juvenile at the time the crime was committed, or, of course, black.

What kind of barbaric justice system was this? the French wondered. How could such things routinely happen in a country that called itself civilized? You don’t have to be French to ask those questions anymore. And if you ever have asked them, American Violet would be a good place to begin to understand how Texas justice works.

The film, however, isn’t about executions, which are just the most malignant symptom of a justice system run amok. Instead, American Violet is a composite of a number of true stories about a corrupt method of law enforcement that was practiced in Texas frequently and with relish: A district attorney orders the police to carry out a military-style drug raid in an African-American community. Scores of innocent people are arrested, essentially anybody who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. And on the basis of manufactured evidence, these people are given a choice: Accept a felony plea bargain, which would allow them to leave prison immediately but strip them of numerous rights, including the right to vote. Or go to trial defended by an incompetent and corrupt legal-aid attorney and face decades in prison. Most people, of course, take the plea bargain.

American Violet takes place in the days surrounding the 2000 election, as Bush ascends from a mere governor to the president of the United States. It focuses on Dee Roberts (Nicole Beharie), a single mother of four young girls, who works as a waitress and aspires to a better life. Following a raid on her housing project in the fictional town of Melody, she’s arrested when a police informant accuses her of selling crack. She’s innocent, but unlike her neighbors, rather than accept a plea bargain, Dee chooses to fight the system, assisted by ACLU attorney David Cohen (Tim Blake Nelson) and Sam Conroy (Will Patton), a local lawyer who risks everything to do what’s right. When the charges are dropped, Dee, on the advice of her attorneys, sues the local district attorney, Calvin Beckett (Michael O’Keefe).

Beharie is brilliant and beautiful as Dee, a courageous victim of gross injustice who overcomes impossible odds, taking her place in a long line of Hollywood heroines like Norma Rae, Erin Brockovich, and Karen Silkwood. O’Keefe is perfectly sleazy as Beckett, the racist DA. Nelson somehow manages to make you root for his smug and not terribly sympathetic Cohen, which is a good trick. And Patton makes his good-ole-boy lawyer, Conroy, seem real despite his decision to ostensibly ruin his career, and possibly his life, by agreeing to help Cohen.

In the hands of less talented actors, these stereotypical characters would have seemed like cardboard puppets mouthing lines of agitprop. Which is to say American Violet—so titled because of the indomitable qualities of the flower, which Dee cultivates—is by no means a perfect movie. The plot is obvious—you know where it’s going and how it’s going to get there long before it finishes—and the characters’ motivations are just too pat.

But it’s undeniably a powerful, infuriating film that should be seen by anybody who cares about living in a country where a grotesque justice system routinely commits atrocities in the name of its citizens.

Hank Fakes It All

This post originally ran October 13, 2009.

Hank Moody (David Duchovny), of Californication, with his novel, now published by Simon & Schuster.

By Mary Lyn Maiscott

What to make of God Hates Us All, the new—and yet not—novel by, um, Hank Moody. Moody, as you may know, is a Californian-by-way-of-New-York, often blocked writer whose reputation as a brilliant bad-boy novelist rests on God (which was made, to Moody’s soul-blighting horror, into a sappy romantic comedy starring Tom Cruise). And, oh yeah, Moody is fictional, the protagonist of Showtime’s series Californication. The red-white-and-black cover of Moody’s novel has shown up on a few of the series’ episodes, most notably one in which he’s about to give a reading at L.A.’s famous bookstore Book Soup when—naturally, Hank being Hank—he gets into a fight with a man whose wife (ex-wife? it’s hard to keep Hank’s women straight) he’s slept with.

Now God Hates Us All, published by Simon & Schuster, is in real bookstores—is this meta enough for you?—no doubt including Book Soup, complete with that familiar front cover and back-cover copy stating that it’s “a wry literary masterpiece.” Well, who can argue? It’s a bit like the time country singer Garth Brooks took on the persona of rocker Chris Gaines, forcing Katie Couric—though she couldn’t suppress an embarrassed smile—to ask him questions about his devastating (fictional) car accident on the Today show. Next Hank Moody will show up on David Letterman to commiserate about their sexual escapades (hey, Hank, new book title: The Sex Capades). Throw in that David Duchovny, who plays Moody, confessed a while back to being an Internet-porn addict, a problem he (coincidentally?) shares with Charlie, Moody’s agent and best friend, and even your avatar’s head may start to spin.

Curiously, there’s another name attached to God, but only on the title page, and it’s connected to a “with”: Jonathan Grotenstein. Yes, apparently Moody, being essentially nonexistent, needed a little help to write his book, which he received from Grotenstein. I’m going to assume they met at a poker game, because although Simon & Schuster does not acknowledge Moody’s “with” on its Web page for the book, a site search does reveal a Jonathan Grotenstein as the co-author of a book called Poker and subtitled—wait for it—The Real Deal. (I couldn’t find a reference to God on any Web page or profile for Grotenstein, and Showtime holds the copyright.)

So what is the real deal? As “Heather” succinctly posted in a review on God’s Amazon page (#8,069 at the moment, and you know Hank is checking his number, even if he doesn’t let on), “This novel wouldn’t receive the same level of recognition in the real world as within the show, but it’s not bad.” I read it in an afternoon while zonked out on the couch with a virus, and appreciated its easy style. It pretty much zips along like a little Match car, not really doing anything important (belying its nihilistic title) but nonetheless keeping the reader entertained. Unfortunately, its story—confused young man in N.Y.C. with plenty of drugs and a dying mother—can seem like watered-down Jay McInerney, and the Chelsea Hotel scenes pale to vapor in comparison to those in Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland, a true literary masterpiece.

But what does “true” have to do with it? Just as in Moody’s world every single woman—even if she’s married—who comes in contact with him is ready to have sex within about five minutes, in his world every book he writes will be “wry,” hip, and as cool as he is, no matter what the publishers, critics, or anyone else thinks. He may be a bad boy, but his fictional nature guarantees that he will never write a bad book.

A Wilde Ride

This piece originally ran November 19, 2009.

Olivia Wilde on the red carpet at the premiere for Fix, held at the Tribeca Grand Hotel in Manhattan. Photo by Amanda Schwab.

Fix
Directed by Tao Ruspoli
Written by Tao Ruspoli and Jeremy Fels
Starring Shawn Andrews, Olivia Wilde, Megalyn Echikunwoke, Tao Ruspoli, and Dedee Pfeiffer

By Mary Lyn Maiscott

The movie:
A kaleidoscopic one-day ride. A filmmaker, Milo (Tao Ruspoli), and his girlfriend, Bella (Olivia Wilde), having flown down from San Francisco, pick Milo’s addict brother, Leo (Shawn Andrews), up from jail and then drive all over L.A. trying to raise the $5,000 he needs for rehab, which he must enter by 8 p.m. to avoid going back to prison. Stops along the way—all recorded by Milo’s camera—include a foxy artist’s Venice cottage, a producer’s wife’s Beverly Hills mansion (Leo does well with the ladies), a chop shop, a crack house, and a Chinese eatery with 100-year-old eggs and a stray bulldog. Directed with energy, shot with imagination, acted with wit.

Shawn Andrews, a star of Fix, and Robert Rosen at the premiere afterparty.

The afterparty:
Megan Fox has pronounced Olivia Wilde “so sexy she makes me want to strangle a mountain ox with my bare hands.” Meeting Wilde at the party—held at a loft in Soho—I felt that all mountain oxen would be safe with me, but this took nothing away from the lovely and engaging actress, who was wearing a chic black cocktail dress and punkily studded high heels with matching clutch (and black toenails). She declared Fix “the most artistically liberating thing I’ve done,” adding, “It helps when you’re married to the director.” It occurred to me later that she must have been playing her husband’s ex-girlfriend (or herself?), acting opposite Ruspoli himself, since the movie is based on the director’s experience with his own brother. “We had to be creative and take artistic license while staying true to the story,” Wilde said, explaining that about 25 percent of the dialogue was improvised. The House star also told me that Ruspoli’s real brother had a cameo in the movie: he’s riding a motorcycle next to the car when Leo reaches out from the backseat to transact a drug deal with him. “I thought they were shaking hands,” I admitted. “That’s so naïve of you,” she teased, her blue eyes glinting. (Where do you find a mountain ox, anyway?)

The trailer:

Sarah Palin’s Breasts

October Surprise? Photo courtesy of Luke Ford

Due to creative differences on another blog that we’ve been contributing to, Mary Lyn and I will be reposting here some of our “greatest hits” from that blog. The first is a piece I wrote that originally ran on September 10, 2008, in the run-up to the presidential election.

By Robert Rosen

Having spent 16 years in the porn biz, most of them editing D-Cup magazine, I think I’m eminently qualified to discuss Sarah Palin’s tits. It’s not only that I’ve studied tits commercially, artistically, philosophically, and politically, but in the course of my distinguished career, I had the opportunity to probe the psyches of hundreds of women whose mammary glands had naturally, or with the aid of silicone, expanded to spectacular proportions.

Among those I interviewed (under the nom de porn Bobby Paradise) were Wendy Whoppers, Pandora Peaks, Kimberly Kupps, Candy Cantaloupes, Deena Duo, Letha Weapons, Whitney Wonders, Traci Topps, and Erika Everest. And if I learned anything from these often provocative tête-à-têtes, it’s that every woman who’s ever used her breasts to travel the intertwining paths of porn star/model/beauty queen has, usually at a tender age, exposed them to a photographer.

Normally it’s a boyfriend with a Polaroid or digital camera who persuades the aspiring starlet that it’s urgent to preserve for posterity a graphic record of natural beauty in its ripening fullness. But occasionally it’s a local small-town commercial hack who says he has a good connection at a big New York modeling agency, and at the end of the test-shoot wants to take just one topless picture “for art.” Whatever the case, these photos always exist—and if they don’t, it’s the exception that proves the rule.

Who, for example, could have predicted in 1984 that Bob Guccione would publish in Penthouse (in the same issue with 15-year-old Traci Lords as “Pet of the Month,” no less) hardcore lesbian S&M photos of Vanessa Williams? She was Miss America, for God’s sake.

Which brings us to our Republican vice presidential candidate, former beauty queen Sarah Palin. I think it’s a given that photos of her naked breasts exist, probably stashed in a shoebox in the back of somebody’s closet. But whose closet? Her husband’s? An old boyfriend’s? A former college roommate’s? Some sleazeball photographer’s? Wherever they are, you can rest assured that at this very moment Hustler publisher Larry Flynt and a number of Democratic operatives are moving heaven and earth in an effort to acquire them. (If they’re not, then they’re not doing their jobs.)

I asked in my “Hypocrisy Now” quiz if Palin’s nudie pix will help or hurt the Republican ticket when they finally surface, and at least one journalist, in Latin America, thought this was an important enough question to write a column about it.

Readers of this blog, as well, have been weighing in with their opinions, and they think that nude Palin pix will help the Republicans—the sleazier they are, the better. And if it should ever come to light that Palin was captured on film getting drilled (so to speak) or deep-throating nine inches, that would virtually insure a Republican victory. Christian fundamentalists would continue to say what they’ve been saying all along: “Love the [Republican] sinner. Hate the sin.” And the rest of America, in its infinite wisdom, would find it irresistibly entertaining to have a genuine rifle-toting, moose-gutting, blowjob queen a heartbeat away from the presidency—Who cares what her politics are?

In fact, if polling begins to show that America’s finally coming to its senses and going big-time for Obama, I think the Republicans will release the pictures themselves...and blame it on the Democrats. That’ll be the October Surprise. If there’s nothing to lose, just watch John McCain roll the dice on Sarah Palin’s tits.

You don’t have to believe me because I devoted the better part of my career to inventing new ways for models to display their mammaries on magazine covers, or because I know every turn of phrase for large breasts in the Queen’s English, from the classic “bodacious bazooms” to the little-known “wobbling wazoobies.”

You just have to be aware that the only real question is if the photos will come out before or after the election. And if they do come out after the election, it’s because somewhere a photographer’s betting that dirty pictures of a sitting vice president will be worth a hell of a lot more money.

Above and Below the Surface

Up against a wall: Welsh teen Oliver (Craig Roberts) tries to keep control of a life that includes the complicated Jordana (Yasmine Paige).

Submarine
Directed by Richard Ayoade
Starring Craig Roberts, Yasmine Paige, Sally Hawkins, Noah Taylor, Paddy Considine

By Mary Lyn Maiscott

“Don’t mix family and bush,” Oliver Tate’s loose-limbed, fast-talking best friend, Chips, tells him, along with other dubious advice. Oliver (Craig Roberts), 15, is doing just the opposite: trying to seduce the quirky, strong-willed Jordana Bevan (Yasmine Paige) while also keeping track of his troubled parents’ sex life (by the scientific method of charting their bedroom dimmer setting). Set in scenic Wales—though Oliver says he doesn’t “believe in scenery”—Submarine is pretty quirky itself: Oliver’s parents (Sally Hawkins, so good in Made in Dagenham, and Noah Taylor) are so tamped-down as to be nearly ridiculous (yet they remain funny and touching); his mom’s former love Graham (Paddy Considine), their new neighbor, is a spiky-haired New Age pseudo-guru whose third eye appears to be a wandering one; and Oliver and Jordana’s dates consist of setting small fires amid industrial debris. With sets occasionally reminiscent of Wes Anderson’s—the Tates eat their quiet meals in the shadow of a giant, bubbling aquarium, and Oliver “decorates” his room with submarine drawings, model planes, and a skeleton wearing an Indian headdress—canny original songs by Alex Turner (the Arctic Monkeys), and some smart camerawork, this literate film (its hero even likes to read the dictionary) could be the one Oliver’s been yearning for: “I have been waiting too long for the film of my life.…There will be slo-mo, but also transcendent moments…” Watch for executive producer Ben Stiller making a brief appearance on a TV screen.

The Meaning of Melanie

Melanie performs "Lay Down"/"Give Peace a Chance" at B.B. King's.

By Mary Lyn Maiscott

How strange to suddenly see someone you knew (I use the word loosely) as a young person when she is, if not old, well into middle age. Melanie—she of the brand-new skates, candles in the rain, and fucked-up song, Ma; she of the brown bangs, huge dark eyes, and hippie clothes—played the B.B. King Blues Club in Times Square last week. I was there, more than 30 years after seeing a show of hers at Lincoln Center. The bangs had been replaced by a thick grey braid, the eyes were still large but not as dominant—only the hippie clothes, in this case a long multicolored dress complete with fringed bag and glittering headband, remained the same.

Aging is an odd thing. While everyone’s face changes, some people retain a certain essential look, the decades notwithstanding. When Donna Summer materialized as if by magic on an NYC disco stage three years ago—remember the summer/Summer anthem “Stamp Your Feet”?—she’d gained weight but was completely recognizable. Melanie, on the other hand, seemed so different that I was having trouble wrapping my head around it, even after I heard that familiar timbre in her voice, that unique Melanie sound, as though she were a sui generis songbird.

For her, there’s a lot of water under the bridge (I’m mixing metaphors, but maybe that bird is perched on a bridge?). Her husband of 44 years, Peter Schekeryk—the producer who instantly heard the hit when she played him a Cajun-style “Brand New Key”—died suddenly in October (she did a show only three days later), and she seems to be virtually on her own with her career; she said she has no PR company and that she needs money to get to the Glastonbury festival in England for the 40th anniversary of her famous appearance there. (“We’ve got a tip jar,” joked George Wurzbach, the keyboard player.) She called her latest CD Ever Since You Never Heard of Me, released last fall on Arpeggio Records.

At B.B. King’s, Melanie, who grew up in Queens as Melanie Safka, played mostly new songs, and her themes have not changed much: togetherness (“Angel Watching over You”), difficult relationships (“Live One”), being a musician (“I Do It for Love”). Between songs she complained about being constantly called “cute” when she was starting out, and I wondered if I was actually missing that youthful elfin quality. Yet when I later watched a few early videos, I was struck not so much by that as by the toughness that came through in her voice (“She sang her diminutive guts out,” wrote a witness at the 1971 Glastonbury Fayre) and her aggressive guitar-playing. Not to mention the sly subversiveness of some of her lyrics, as with “Baby Guitar.”

Melanie did “give birth to a baby guitar”: her son, the fleet-fingered Beau Jarred, who played intricate guitar licks behind her strumming. He looked just as you’d expect the son of Melanie to: dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, a handsome face, a sweet smile. (After meeting him after the show, a man wrote on an online forum, “He seems like a great guy, and he’s very muscular.”) Watching Beau, who looked so proud of his mom, I wondered if he could be the baby brought onstage at the show I’d seen all those years ago.

Melanie, still so evocative of peace-and-love, did perform some of her old hits, most notably “Brand New Key” and “Lay Down (Candles in the Rain).” Unfortunately, she chose to tell us about her life, interesting though it certainly is, during those fantastic songs, interrupting their flow. (She claims the skate song just popped into her head when she went off her vegetarian diet at McDonald’s.) Still, many of us in the audience couldn’t help but lift our table candles during the stirring “Lay Down,” just as my fellow blogger Bob Rosen predicted we would! (How could we ignore the fact that she’d started the candles/lighters/matches trend at Woodstock?)

Do we still need her, now that she’s 64? Look around. Of course we do.