Biography Movies They Should Make (my last thread today, I promise)

[westside_eh]

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Okay, one last question. You said it was a German movie. Now, obviously a lot of Germans are very embrassed about their past. So, my final question, is Hitler made to look like a psychopath? Don't get me wrong, obviously he was fcked up, but to dismiss anyting bad as psychotic really bothers me.

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Nope.

Not gonna say anymore you just have to watch it [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]

[ReDeYES88]

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Bob Dylan (the true story)

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only goes to 1966, but great stuff. . .scorsese, even




link

[craig r]

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Bob Dylan (the true story)

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only goes to 1966, but great stuff. . .scorsese, even




link

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I saw it and then ordered the DVD. i was a little disappointed. Not because I didn't like the way it was filmed, but it briefly, if at all, mentioned how orchestrated and concocted his image was. And I think that is important. When I read a biography I remember being so disappointed, because he wasn't who you thought he was. He was an entertainer, pure and simple. in fact, I read the biography when I was 16 and I think I learned then that my music idols should stop being idols. Well, with the obvious exception of Sir-Mix-A-Lot. Don' get me wrong the documentary was very good, but I think it should have pointed out some more of the negative things.

craig

[Blarg]

I read when it came out that there was a big controversy over Dylan's image that Scorcese for some reason left out completely. Apparently some of that image concocting was highly derived from someone else's personality Dylan adopted almost verbatim.

[craig r]

But even the anti-corportate stuff was corporate sponsored. I am talking about his image more than his style. He always admitted that he copied guthrie and others. But, it was more like, he was a lefty with political ideas, but his label made sure he performed in the right places, wore the right clothes, said the right things in press conferences/interviews.

But, he did a very good job of fooling everybody. Even Huey Newton and Bobby Seale thought that he was the greatest singer/lyricist of their generation. Which is a pretty big compliment coming from a militant black group to a tiny Jewish boy.

But, you know, I might be being too harsh. Because part of the reason the Beatles became more political/socially conscious is because of conversations with Mr. Zimmerman (just part; Harrison going to India was a big deal as well).

So maybe the "ideal" doesn't matter and it is just the actions that matter. Yes, corporations made a lot off of Bob Dylan by co-opting his ideas, but this in turn got a whole generation taking action. In some ways, he is like Rage Against the Machine (obviously not as influential as Dylan was), but they are on a major label, and are allowed to discuss leftist ideas. And maybe this does more than somebody like Fugazi, who is fairly large, but not enough corporate exposure (by their own choice). So, in the end the label co-opted Dylan's lyrics (which I guess weren't all his own and he took credit for some), but it also created new ideas.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think Dylan was totally commercial like the hacks Jefferson Airplane (they were the glam rock of the late 60's and early 70's (and eventually They built a city on rock and roll). So, maybe, I should end this rant. But, I don't want to cause I think you dig what I am saying Blarg.

So, I guess with Dylan, there was the Dylan we saw and "idealized" and then the one that was created. And maybe if somebody does a lot of good, we shouldn't worry about the messenger, but the message. It is just kind of disappointing. But, my guess is that most of these "ideals" we have of "rock stars" are just ideals. I don't know why that bothers me.

One last example, this will sound f'ed up, but take Elliott Smith. He wrote sad songs, lyrics, and offed himself. Now I wish he wouldn't have, of course, I liked him a lot, but we know he wasn't lying about his pain. It was real and not concocted. Like, I said, I was very sad when he killed himself.

Another person that was somewhat full of crap, was Allen Ginsberg. He was very influential on the beats all the way up to Abbie Hoffmann. But, he was full of crap. He made people believe that poetry and writing wasn't hard, "First thought, best thought". But, it turns out this isn't true, including for him.

Another person is Abbie Hoffman, gave all his money from his book to the BPP, fought for black rights, trying to elect a pig (pigasus) to the presidency. Yet, he was a coke head who is manic depressive, who had some racist and sexist tendencies.

So, is the "real" celebrity important or the one that we perceive? Or should I just be inspired and not need an icon or leader. In fact, most "leaders" are nothing. It is always the peoople's names you don't know that make big events happen. Like, MLK was nothing without all the no-names supporting him. Anyways I will end this rant, because I am a smart enough guy that I don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

[Blarg]

Humans are basically herd animals. We need leaders to do our thinking for us and embody all virtues, and it's rare even in the smallest settings that someone doesn't get de facto elected even if no one is competing.

Unfortunately, that leads to being uncritical of leaders and well known people on the one hand and idolizing them, and on the other hand to tearing them to pieces if their fame or popularity loses any momentum or if a chink of humanity shows through their armor. It's precisely for their inhumaneness, a quality we are the first to ascribe to them and which many never ascribe to themselves at all, that we adore them. And yet that is the reason we also sometimes come to hate them, as if in their ordinary humanity they have broken an implicit contract with us and let us down, hoodwinked us into trusting and worshipping them and their perfection, when really no one could assign that to anyone except by a perverse act of will.

This is why we have maniacs walking through Central Park in NYC retracing Holden Caulfield's route in Catcher in the Rye. This is actually quite common among celebrity stalkers, by the way. A great number of the really nutty ones are actually supposedly captured with the book actually on them at the time, and often with multiple copies in their possession, one back at their hotel room and such, too. Mark David Chapman, Lennon's murderer, wasn't the only one. His murder of Lennon was because he felt Lennon was a phoney and sometimes did things only for money. Lennon's celebrity was simply mere celebrity rather than some sort of personal perfection or godhood, which was necessary for the vaccuum of the centerless void of a personality like Chapman's to coalesce around. Without an embodied perfection, Chapman was hapless in the world, and an idol's mere humanity was taken as a profound betrayal and a signal reversal of good into evil, a cuckolding of the human spirit. Lennon's death was a sort of reverse crucifixion, a purifying act ridding the world involuntarily of a paramount sinner, rather than saint, to help cleanse the sins of us all -- this time, bestowing the mantle of righteousness back onto the killer, who never should have assigned it to anyone else in the first place.

Where was Lennon in the midst of all this? Living life, often stupidly, but happily coming out with his first interersting album in a long time. He was some dude living in a building who got assigned both godhood and deviltry at random by someone who could have put any celebrity in the pivotal role.

We need leaders and celebrities to worship and destroy rather than merely lead or perform. The rapt attention paid to their every move often seems to put them all on an equal plane, so The Condition of the President's Dog is as worthy of front page news coverage as his nuclear policy, or a star's walking through a hotel lobby gets as much coverage as if he had just released a movie. No human condition can healthily sustain that much undue attention and reverence.

No matter how many celebrities the world is populated with, none of them will live our lives for us or solve our problems. Many do a pretty poor job of handling their own. At any rate, basking in their glory or assigning them undue significance or expectations is a poorly chosen palliative that says more about the person indulging in it than about the public figure stuck without their consent with the responsibility of keeping it going. And an expiration date is inevitable with that kind of medicine.

[CrazyEyez]

Churchill.

[PhatTBoll]

Roger Waters
H.P. Lovecraft
Boadicea