movie-ola

getting ready to trek up to new joisey to see my folks, i missed out on a jam with lee allen's bro lance last night. watched a lotta movies the last coupla wks, including topsy turvy (about, um, the trials 'n' tribs associated with the staging of the debut of gilbert & sullivan's the mikado -- a surprisingly arresting portrayal of the creative process and the different perspectives of the various participants, including the feuding composers, the impresario d'oyly carte, the players, and gilbert's supportive-but-neglected wife) and lou reed: rock and roll heart, a doco 'riginally produced for pbs' american masters series and recommended to me by mc5: a true testimonial filmmaker david thomas when it was new (back in '98, same year he told me "you need to quit your job and come to chicago to help us make this film," sigh).

watching the lou doc spurred several thoughts: 1) how my perception of lou, largely gleaned from st. lester's mid-'70s running verbal battle with the artiste, was prolly mistaken, and that it might indeed be possible for the relationship between an artist and his / her material to be something other than 1:1 (e.g., maybe it _was_ just reportage, imagine that); 2) how lou's instincts re: his own work have been pretty sound, contrary to what his collaborators might have thought (the gtr solo _is_ the most interesting and important part of "i heard her call my name;" legendary hearts _is_ a better record than the blue mask); 3) how his lyrics always scan better 'n those of other songwriters i dig (richard hell, paul westerberg), even when i don't particulary dig the songs they're from; and 4) how lou seemed to start taking his art more seriously and _doing the work_ (rather than just grinding out _product_) around the time his friends (andy warhol, sterling morrison, doc pomus) started checking out.

my ex-g/f was wrong: i never wanted to be iggy; i wanted to be ron asheton. but only because i knew i couldn't be lou reed.