Emulsional Problems

I had a Steinway Grand upright piano, a marvel of instrumentality, better than playing an actual grand, where strings are parallel to the ground. Once the top of a grand piano is opened, the sound all goes off to the player's right. This is better for the audience but worse for the player. With my Steinway, the strings were perpendicular to the ground, so if you took the front panels off, which I did, the sound all went directly to the pianist. It was like playing piano IN a piano, and anyone else around who wanted the full impact of each note had to stand behind or sit on the bench right next to the player. Any musician who ever entered my house was drawn to it immediately. John Belushi brought Van Dyke Parks over and I'll have to stop right there. You know who John Belushi is and how he got to my house , but Van Dyke Parks, wow, Van Dyke was a hero, scorer of films ( The Two Jakes and Popeye ), Brian Wilson's writing partner ( Heroes and Villains ...

It's completely personal. Between me and him. Karl Malden fucked up my life, he really did. No matter how much I dig his talent - and I certainly do, he's a Strasberg acting God, and I studied with Strasberg in New York in 1970 where he was treated as such, so I know - Malden is still the premiere putz in my professional life. Or was. He's dead now. Great. Now I get to be pissed off at a dead man.  I know you're sick of celebrity obituaries in this horrible week of death and chaos, but this one's different. At this point I've got to pin you to the wall like a drunk in a Hollywood bar, slurring my speech, hot breath in your face, "You don't understand, no matter how good he was in Baby Doll, I'm glad he's dead, that bastard..." Luckily, I'm not that drunk. Here's what happened 20 years ago. The 80s was my decade as film critic for the L.A. Weekly. While trashing their films in print, I met most of...

With the help of Ken Yas, whom I met through David Jove, and Robert Roll, a fixture on New Wave Theatre whom I introduced to David, I managed to borrow a camera and make a ten-minute home video called Contemporary Extemporary, which won first place in Video Review Magazine's contest for the best home video ever, the prize being a state of the art RCA home entertainment system (that turned out to be a prototype of a new system they never released to the public, making repairs impossible, but cool nevertheless.), plus an all-expenses paid trip to New York City to accept the award. The judges were Andrew Sarris, Molly Haskell, Jeffrey Lyons, Neal gabler, David Hajdu, and Glenn Kenney. The accompanying article by Ron Goldberg read... Although the judges agreed on the overall quality of the entries, picking specific winners took a little doing. However, after several lively rounds of debate and discussion, a clear victor was chosen for the Grand Prize. It was Mich...

by Michael Dare Carl Gottlieb put it best, though the tape wasn't rolling, we were just hanging out, having bagels on Fountain, so all I've got to give you is my lame memory of what he said. You've got to believe me that Carl put it better because he's one of the greatest writers in Hollywood ( Jaws , The Jerk , WGA hotshot) so he should know. He tried to explain to me what the relationship was between a producer and a writer, or a book editor and a writer, or a newspaper editor and a writer, ANY relationship in which someone is paying someone else to write. The writer knows what he's supposed to be doing, writing, and if he's a writer, he knows how to do it, rain or shine, writing will happen. But his boss? Whoever's PAYING him to write? What do they have to do to encourage the emergence of the best possible writing from their employee? To discover the answer, all you have to do is create an analogous situation, another job where someone is hired to b...

Where were these shots taken? Christ, it was at least 30 years ago, none of these people were famous yet, and I was bombed out of my mind, every night a new club, a screening, an art opening, something new to snort, smoke, or consume, another body part to commingle with someone else's body part. It started when I went to the Troubadour, on Santa Monica Blvd. at the entrance to Beverly Hills, to see Melissa Manchester. Please don't ask me when it was. What did I say? 30 years ago? Let's leave it at that.   While waiting in line, I saw a big black '50s hearse pull up to the front of the Troubadour. Out popped this scrawny beatnik with a goatee and a shabby suit who went straight into the theater. I got out of line and looked in the car. It seemed that whoever that beatnik was, he was living in a hearse. There was no casket in back, just piles of junk and empty alcohol containers, while the front seat was covered with books of poetry by...

New Wave Theatre was a show on the USA Network in the early eighties, the very start of cable TV. For a brief while, it was the most vital, cutting edge show coming out of Los Angeles, showcasing dozens of local bands like the Blasters and the Dead Kennedys who didn't have a chance of exposure anywhere else. The show was hosted by Peter Ivers, a singer/songwriter performance artist whose biggest claim to fame was having composed " In Heaven (The Lady in the Radiator Song)" from David Lynch's Eraserhead . He wore outlandish clothing and spouted intellectual Zen Buddhist philosophy in between the punk bands, asking them questions like "What is the meaning of life?" instead of "Tell us about your latest recording." He came off a bit smug, so the bands tended to hate him, but his peaceful rantings lent an interesting yin to the extreme violent yang of the music on the show, which was written, produced, shot, directed, and edited by a madman named...