Crazy Heart and Tender Mercies: More Discussion

I'm glad some others remembered Tender Mercies fondly in the visitor comments on yesterday's post. Here's the Betty Buckley link Altadenahiker donated, plus another of Robert Duvall teaching guitar to the son of his landlady and romantic interest, Tess Harper (in the background).



YouTube - Betty Buckley from "Tender Mercies" singing "Over You"

YouTube - Tender Mercies Clip

I might have second thoughts about saying Jeff Bridges is the better singer--might be apples and oranges, though both are certainly country. Maybe some people will return to Tender Mercies and Nashville now that Crazy Heart is getting such acclaim.

Anyone interested in either movie or country music in general ought to look also at the links in yesterday's visitor comments from Paula at Pensacola Daily Photo. Good stuff.

The redhead with the clawhammer banjo is Becky Buller of the band, Liberty Pike.

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CRAZY HEART, movie review

Crazy Heart A-



Crazy Heart deserves its good reviews, but here are some reservations, as well as praise, for a first-rate movie.

First, I can’t help thinking it’s one more story about one more entertainer who’s down on his “luck” because he’s made a series of self-destructive and self-involved choices. These days, I think we might be hearing too much about good people making bad choices. When do we require the character in question to make some bolder, harsher statements about himself?

Also, flawed as our hero is, does he require such a hyperbolic, country-music-outlaw name as “Bad Blake"? My brain burped every time I heard it, and this time I agreed with my brain. (Maybe I’m thinking of the Jimmie Dale Gilmore song, “My Mind’s Got a Mind of Its Own.” Great title, great song. What if the movie's title were, “My Mind Makes Some Bad Choices”?)

I know something about marketing country singers, but "Bad Blake" crosses the line into theater, self-parody, fatuousness. Yet it's our hero’s first choice; he won’t even disclose his legal name to his love interest, Maggie Gyllenhaal (who would be a remarkably lucky choice for a guy his age and in his condition, by the way).

I also wanted more sense of how and why Bad Blake made so many bad choices, more specifics about how and why he gave up on himself and others. Are we supposed to respect the envy he feels toward his big-start protegee? Don't we want to know about the rift between him and his son? How can we be sure Bad Blake is more than a whiner, a 50-something brat?

I’m also bothered by the movie’s debt to Tender Mercies (1983), in which Robert Duvall played a similar role (by the way, Duvall has a supporting role in Crazy Heart). Bridges’ acting range might be greater than Duvall’s, and the conclusion of Crazy Heart might be a touch more realistic. Also, Maggie Gyllenhaal is a more intense actress than Tess Harper was as female lead—though I’ve always thought Harper’s flatness came across as prairie strength, simplicity, focus.

Now that I’ve created a competition between two fine movies, perhaps a bad choice on my part, let me mention that Crazy Heart gets points for Jeff Bridges’ singing; it's surprisingly good, probably better than Duvall’s in the older movie. Ditto the songs themselves, though Tender Mercies had some winners.

In realism and power of setting and atmosphere, in creation of an important, believable world apart, Tender Mercies wins by several points. It has the soul that most country tries to be about, whereas Crazy Heart is more concerned with the evil commerce of the music business and its toll upon humans. It's country music corporate.

Although I’ve emphasized my reservations, I recommend Crazy Heart almost without hesitation. But I do feel it needs to footnote its predecessor in some way; maybe that’s what Robert Duvall’s presence is supposed to do, but it doesn’t seem clear enough.

And nowhere did I pick up on a note of apology for the self-indulgent choice of name for Bad Blake, a protagonist who, though not exactly heroic, does not need to go around announcing himself as a bad blade (a knife blade or a strand of grass? I guess I get the symbolism). After all, it’s just that the guy has made some bad choices, prior to the movie’s present tense. His soul is intact.

And it is, actually; he just has to find it. Most people will end up pulling for him, including me, even though I too often had to say, "Oh, come on now."

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"The Bean Eaters" by Gwendolyn Brooks

The Bean Eaters by Gwendolyn Brooks : Poetry Magazine [poem/magazine] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.


I like the simplicity of Gwendolyn Brooks’ “The Bean Eaters,” but notice also the subtle rhyming and the long last line’s break in structure and expectation, all of which adds complexity and surprise. Why the details Brooks’ selects in that final line? Why this ordering of them? Why end the poem on “fringes”?

Her characters are nothing like me and everything like me—as well as scores of other people I’ve known. We might compare it to Ciardi’s “For Instance” (Banjo52, Feb. 17). Both poems outline kinds of people and patterns of lives, but both works also manage to see their characters as individuals. Don't they?

I don’t think I could care this much about a mere category of human. For some reason—is it the poets’ affection for their characters?—neither poem shrinks its people to types or formulas; they are humans with histories, and they matter, even though they also represent thousands with roughly similar histories.

The Bean Eaters by Gwendolyn Brooks : Poetry Magazine [poem/magazine] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.


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Banjos, a Few More Lines

I admit to pride at catching a pileated woodpecker, but see if you don't also think his inner motor is a banjo.

Thanks to Gothpunkuncle for broadening my banjo horizons. If you look at the first video, please take the time to let Eddie Peabody move from guitar to banjo. Things get livelier and a little comic. He appears to be much more of a showman than Saturday's Eddy Davis, but both are a great change of pace from what most of us listen to these days:

Dailymotion - Eddie Peabody - Strum Fun - une vidéo Musique

(Left: Ernie Evans of the Liberty Pike bluegrass band)

And in case anyone's forgotten one of the great movie scenes, here is Dueling Banjos from Deliverance.

YouTube - Dueling Banjos Deliverance

Of course you can't say banjo without saying Earl Scruggs, here with Steve Martin:

YouTube - Earl Scruggs & Steve Martin - Foggy Mountain Breakdown (Best



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Eddy Davis & Conal Fowkes: Dated or Timeless?

There's more than one way to skin a banjo, so I hope you'll give this a try. If the upbeat stuff wears you out, or you're short on time, skip ahead to minute 4:00 for "My Foolish Heart."

YouTube - Eddy Davis & Conal Fowkes / Ory's Creole Trombone - My Foolish Heart

A few years ago, a younger friend gave me an album of Conal Fowkes alone on piano with some golden oldies. My buddy said his mother gave him the CD, and he, a serious pianist and student of music, didn't know what to think of it, but a geezer like me might have the lowdown. I loved the stuff, though it also got points for making me think of my Depression-era parents, who, to my clumsy, teenage, male mortification (and envy), actually did the Charleston on occasion.

So I'm glad Conal Fowkes has found a music mate. If you explore on YouTube, you'll see they also play with Woody Allen, though I suspect that's a status thing--I think they sound better as a duo. They look plenty skillful and sound great even if it isn't bluegrass. I hope somebody besides me buys a record. Variety, spice of life, etc.

I think the movie making here is also skillful.

YouTube - Eddy Davis & Conal Fowkes / Ory's Creole Trombone - My Foolish Heart

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Constantly Risking Absurdity by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Which bird is the poet?


(reminder: you can enlarge any photo on Banjo52 by clicking on it)








Constantly Risking Absurdity by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

On the Valentine's Day visitor comments here, Paula spoke apologetically about reading Ferlinghetti; in fact, she was so ashamed that she's changed her icon to a duck. So I'm offering a Ferlinghetti poem that deserves our respect (except for the superfluous, grandiose last two words).

I've mentioned a couple of times a similarity I see between poets and stand-up comics, so why not Charlie Chaplin too? For some reason, "a little charliechaplin man" teetering high on a rope has stuck with me as one of the perfect images for almost every kind of performer, from symphony, jazz, and bluegrass musicians to stand-up comics to acrobats, looking to catch Beauty as their world understands it.

And this month, why not see Olympic athletes like Shaun White in the same light, in the "empty air," spread-eagled for an audience that might secretly be as thrilled about a dramatic fall as they are for the successful execution of a trick.

"Copy that, Danno" for race car drivers and their audiences?

I also like Ferlinghetti's implication, as I hear it in "a little charleychaplin man," that if the poet fails, if he falls or lets Beauty drop, embarrassment will be as awful as injury or death. You can't be a bumbler; you've imposed upon yourself various "sleight-of-foot" requirements so that you look good as you take each step toward "taut truth" and Beauty. After all, any peasant could catch her in a big basket. That's not a performance; that's not art and deserves no audience. That's just staying alive, eating potatoes, paying the rent. We all do that for awhile.

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John Ciardi, "For Instance"

If you’re bumper-sticker friendly, I hope you’ll look into this little company in Minnesota. http://www.northernsun.com/. My car is sticker-free, but some have called me a sucker for tee-shirts and coffee mugs, which I buy to remind me of pleasant places, almost all of which are college campuses.

I wanted something bright or flippant for a photo because today’s poem today is so negative, maybe downright nihilistic. It was a long time ago when I discovered John Ciardi’s “For Instance,” so I wasn’t sure it would have held up for me. It’s almost all generalization and conversational style, which, if you’ve been here much, you know is not my aesthetic of choice. However, if more conversations in poems moved with the brutal efficiency of this one, I might reconsider.

For Instance by John Ciardi : Poetry Magazine [poem/magazine] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.

I wonder too if “For Instance” might be self-indulgent in a way that only dire teens and 20-somethings find appealing or valid. That would be ironic since the poem’s perspective is clearly that of a speaker with some hard years notched on his bedpost.

People who are serious about poetry seem ready to accept its often grim outlooks. Pessimism can seem a more supportable view than its opposite, whatever that might be. In any case, I find that “For Instance” still packs a wallop. Surely we all have moments—if not entire philosophies—like this, and surely it’s true that misery loves company, especially the company of someone who can just nail that brooding, bitter mood, as Ciardi does here.

And it's only an outline, really. We know almost none of the particulars; the poem asks us to accept that the details don't matter, and I'm astonished to find myself inclined to agree--never mind how often I've screamed at students, "The devil's in the details!" Whatever our own experiences or interpretations, however jolly we may wish to be, we have to accept Ciardi’s sketch here as one plausible review of a life. Don't we?

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