June 20–27, 1996

icepack

Lasting Egos

Patti Smith, Orson Welles and Joe Queenen.

By a.d amorosi

It's so hard to imagine someone's loss as everyone gain, but in the present tense of Patti Smith — the deaths of her husband Fred, brother Todd and best friend Robert Mapplethorpe — this is very much the case. When I interviewed Smith a few months ago, she talked about her upcoming works with great pride and pleasure: her new CD, Gone Again (Arista), and a book of poems on Mapplethorpe, The Coral Sea (W.W. Norton). Both are works that would have never happened with such understated brilliance if all her troubles hadn't.

Replacing raw punk energy with elegiac grace, yelping with sauntering, youthful ebullience with wise, sorrowful worldliness, Smith has transformed her style to suit her personal transformation. On Gone Again, Smith's challenge is to re-establish her cinematic scope — not with the blood bath inherent in "Rock n Roll Nigger" nor the religious torpor of "Gloria," but by letting in colors heretofore unseen. The music is a quirky but billowy layer of sound laid down by such old Smith stalwarts as Lenny Kaye, J. D. Daugherty, John Cale and Tom Verlaine (as well as new ones like Jeff Buckley and Jane Scarpantoni). It's eerily muted subtle rock, meshed with haunting piano and cello lan, that soaks the music in the passion of life and loss.

On the title track Smith is restlessly searching for God as she has before. This time she's found Him in simplicity: "the braid undone, the child born." On "My Madrigal" she finds Him in the vows of marriage. On "About a Boy" she finds Him in the tortured artist Kurt Cobain. Previous to this the lost tortured souls of Rimbaud, Jim Morrison, Brian Jones, Passolini and James Joyce have haunted her work like the ghosts that roam through Ibsen. Another tortured soul, photographer Mapplethorpe, is the focus of The Coral Sea, Smith's first newly-released book of poetry in quite some time. Smith and Mapplethorpe's life and friendship together in the 70's was documented in a flashy, somewhat salacious manner in Patricia Morrisroe's recent Mapplethorpe biography — a depiction that saddened Smith because "it lacked the compassion, humor and error of youth." To that end, Smith makes The Coral Sea — a seafaring adventure where the traveller, Passenger M, incorporates love and nature into his work and travels — a dedication to the mythological spirit of Mapplethorpe. Passenger M has dedicated himself from birth to a life of the aesthetic —"his delicate eyes saw with clarity what others did not." Had Mapplethorpe (or Smith for that matter) not burned so brightly, would we be talking about him (or her) or his work now?

The celebration of all that is Smith can also be found in a limited (to 4,000 copies) edition box set of all of her previous works: Horses, Radio Ethiopia, Easter, Wave, Dream of Life and Gone Again (all 20-bit digitally enhanced with live tracks, B-sides and rarities). The adventure starts with the box; Gone Again is the calm after the storm...

There are disasters and then THERE ARE DISASTERS. Take Orson Welles. Welles led a life vilified by some, revered by others. The man who authored such cinematic classics as Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons and The Lady From Shanghai never truly recovered from the wrath of "Citizen" Hearst (W. Randolph, about whom Kane's story was built). What truly destroyed Welles, though, was his ego. A much deserved ego, but one so bloated, it often outweighed his hearty appetite. David Thomson, the man who gave us the truly catty, really witty and very honest A Biographical Dictionary of Film several seasons ago, returns with Rosebud: The Story of Orson Welles (Knopf, 462 p., $30). Rather than being slavishly devoted to Welles, the man and his craft, Thomson is brutally frank and funny. He applauds Welles for taking risks by producing Shakespeare and then goes on to make him seem laughable for acting as Willy S.'s better. He treats Welles as a auteur but then slaps him for his sloppiness, his sexuality, his devotion to no one other than himself.

"In all movies, Welles was more interested in, if not horrified by, his won body than in those conventional carnal objects, the actresses," says Thomson. Remember, Welles co-starred with ex-wife Rita Hayworth as well as with Jeanne Morreau, Romy Schneider and Loretta Young. Hey Orssson! This vanity was fueled by a youth wherein his War of the Worlds, his RKO contract, and his Manhattan theatrical group, The Mercury Theatre, was given carte blanche — a genius vision that was never reigned in and perhaps never should've been but nonetheless was seen as a danger to almost everyone around.

The only thing more dangerous than an auteur is a critic-turned-filmmaker. Magazine writer Joe Queenan, a man whose career I truly envy, has made a living out of tearing cinema stars new assholes. In The Unkindest Cut (Hyperion, 310 p., $22.95), Philly-born Queenan, using Robert Rodriguez's $7000 El Mariachi flick as a model, decides to go one (or two) better by making his own film for $6998. That he does so with such biting sarcasm and gloriously empowered film referencing, it's a wonder this guy ain't a winner like Scorsese (or a loser like Bogdonovich). His self-help/murder mystery Twelve Steps to Death deals with the one thing everyone has around — assholes: "a subject with universal appeal. Everybody hates assholes but nobody ever does anything about them."

With his neighbors as actors (they rarely walk off the set, you don't have to pay them, they won't whine about nude scenes. You just have to worry about getting punched in the nose by the actor's better half) and a premise that supposes that all dysfunctional types — chocoholic, sexually addicted, chronically late, binge shoppers, wife-beating guys who write books on how to write scripts — should truly be accountable for their crimes (real and imagined), this film breaks through the wimpy world we live in. The fact that the film (partial script included) got made and won awards at even the smallest film festival shows not only hope for the movie biz but for mankind at large.

SPACEJUNK: Presto-chango-internationale? Hard to Handle management, the Wayne, PA, team comprised of Brit Stewart Young and Steve Barnett, is splitting the area. The company who manages David Lee Roth, Foreigner and AC/DC will be run by Young and will move into NYC offices while Barnett heads to Epic to run their "international" department... DJ Tripp in major Hackeysack accident? Tripp was goin' for a left kick when he spun, dropped and fell on his knees, leaving him stuck behind the turntables with a brace... Jazz guitarist John Vuotto (who just played a big gig at North Star w/ Huffamoose and Keith Brand) doesn't just know how to play a mean six string — as he does so aptly on his very new One Rite Thing CD — he knows how to sell it too. The cover features a very sexy, mysterious cheesecake shot of photog Tracy Hoffman. Send me a dozen there, Johnny... The Literary Cafe at Zanzibar Blue will feature an eve of wild, live gospel music and readings by Derrick Bell in celebration of his book Gospel Choirs: Psalms of Survival in an Alien Land Called Home, Wed. June 26 starting at 5:30.