Exorcist Essay radio broadcast on 89.7 WUWM Milwaukee

Press play to listen to my essay broadcasted on 89.7 WUWM's Lake Effect program on June 20, 2011.

Still Haunted: The Exorcist Thirty-One Years Later

Recently, I saw a man dressed like Johnny Depp’s Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland.  He had the white makeup, the frizzy orange hair and the oversized bow tie, and looked kind of creepy, but not nearly as creepy as a different image the costume jolted from my memory: that of Linda Blaire as the possessed girl in The Exorcist, a film regularly voted as the scariest movie of all-time.  You’ll get no argument from me.  I haven’t seen the film in over thirty-one years, but I’m still afraid of ouji boards, furniture that moves inexplicably and pea soup. 

For reasons I can’t quite understand, CBS chose to air an edited version of the 1973 thriller on primetimeTV in February of 1980.  I was eleven, and edited or not, the horrific images I witnessed on our 19-inch Sony scarred my little brain enough to haunt my dreams for the next three decades.  I still can’t think about the movie without feeling like Satan is nipping at my heels.  My sister, who had watched the movie two doors down at a friend’s house, was so terrified to come home that night, my mother had to stand on our front porch and shout out, “It’s okay, Ellyn.  I’m right here.  You’re almost home!”

I’d first been made aware of The Exorcist when I was six.  My family lived in Menomonee Falls, and the nearby Victory Drive-in Theater on Lisbon Road was showing the film uncut, in all its devilish glory, which was fine for those who chose to pay their hard-earned money on a two-hour fright fest, but not so fine for the unfortunate residents of nearby Honeysuckle Lane and – get this – the eerily named Blair Lane (talk about omens!).  These two roads bordered the back property of the drive-in theater, which meant that families who stepped outside to enjoy a warm summer evening were instead greeted with a giant possessed girl’s spinning head and projectile vomit – all from the comfort of their own backyards. 

I imagine parents tucking in their children that summer saying, “Sleep tight.  And whatever you do, don’t look out your window.”  Had I lived in one of those homes, I’d probably be reading this essay to you from an asylum. 

Why my mother allowed me to watch such a disturbing film is a topic probably best left for my therapist, but in my mother’s defense, I should come clean and admit that even though I was petrified after watching The Exorcist on that Tuesday back in 1980, that didn’t stop me the following night from watching the network debut of a different movie.  You guessed it.  The Exorcist II.

To be Fourteen and Inspired

In a New York Times opinion piece last week, David Hajdu wrote about how the music we’re exposed to as fourteen year-olds correlates with the creative output of tomorrow.  Fourteen is an age for developing personal tastes, and as artists like Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Paul McCartney and Brian Wilson turn seventy, it’s interesting to see how rock and roll’s infancy influenced and inspired these great artists when they were fourteen, allowing them to envision a world that up until then didn’t exist.  One minute they were listening to Perry Como and Nat King Cole with their parents, and suddenly Elvis burst onto the scene, forever altering the musical construct.

A friend of mine with whom I graduated high school pointed out this article to me, and then made mention of who was big when we were fourteen years-old.  He wrote facetiously, “Other than Juice Newton and 38 Special, I just don’t see it.”

Perhaps, though when I think back to 1981 and 1982, “Queen of Hearts” and “Hold on Loosely” aren’t the first songs that come to mind.  I’m thinking more like “Subdivisions” by Rush, “Shock the Monkey” by Peter Gabriel, Joe Jackson’s “Steppin’ Out,” Prince’s “1999” and Duran Duran’s “Rio.”  But you could just as easily think of “Back on the Chain Gang” by the Pretenders, “Should I Stay or Should I Go” by The Clash or “Blister in the Sun” by the Violent Femmes.  There was plenty of stuff – both good and bad – to capture the imagination of a young pimple-faced soul at the time.

You could make the argument that after the initial rock revolution, there were so many genres and sub-genres of music that it was difficult for a particular band or artist to be life-altering the way, say, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis or Buddy Holly were back in the day.  If you ask a hundred 70 year-olds to name the influential artists of 1956, I bet you’ll get the same answers nine times out of ten.  On the other hand, try asking a hundred 43 year-olds to highlight the music of 1982, and I bet you’ll get ninety different answers.  There was just so much to choose from, and so much of it could have been considered trailblazing at the time, inspiring future artists to take up a guitar, a synthesizer or a saxophone, but none of it was MOMENTOUS (with the possible exception of Thriller, though I’d happily exclude this from my playlist).

Today, now that the digital revolution has firmly taken hold, music is even further diluted.  I recall hearing stories about how in 1967 St. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band could be heard up and down college campuses, and any summarization of my freshman year of college wouldn’t be complete without mentioning The Joshua Tree leaking through every doorway of my dormitory.  But today, I’m not sure there’s an artist that could command that sort of widespread appeal, not due to a lack of artistry or genius, but due to a fundamental change in the music industry.  My daughters turn fourteen this year, and there isn’t an artist that appeals to their class on the whole – tastes are all over the place.

So what about 1981 and 1982?  Did those years inspire the great artists of the next two decades the way 1955 and 1956 did?

Well, they must have made an impression on someone, because here are the artists who turned 14 during ’81 and ’82:

Kurt Cobain

Dave Matthews

Thom Yorke (of Radiohead)

Billy Corgan

Liz Phair

David Grohl

Gwen Stefani

Perhaps not in the same league as McCartney, Dylan and Simon, but still, not too shabby.

Broadening My Lexicon essay broadcasted on 89.7 WUWM Milwaukee

Press play to listen to my essay broadcasted on 89.7 WUWM's Lake Effect program on May 13, 2011.

A Tale of Two Movies: A Lousy Winner and a Fabulous Loser

I had the great misfortune last weekend of watching what has got to be among the worst Best Picture Oscar winners ever: Chariots of Fire, 1981’s victor in a field of forgettable movies (Raiders of the Lost Ark notwithstanding).  Ask my family to trust me again with a movie selection and you’ll likely start a fist-fight. 

I’ve been trying to get the five of us to watch films none of us have seen before, and it seemed reasonable that a PG Oscar winner with a hummable theme might fit the bill.  After all, we all saw The King’s Speech at a theater a few months ago with great success (albeit with a bit of restlessness from my son), so I know that my kids are able to handle a movie that doesn’t offer explosions, wizards or fart jokes.  And my first attempt to expand our horizons, 1973’s Paper Moon, while not a resounding success, was deemed enjoyable enough to allow me another crack at picking a movie.  Unfortunately, not only does Chariots of Fire not have explosions, wizards or fart jokes, it also doesn’t have Tatum O’Neil and lacks what I deem to be essential in filmmaking: a reason to be filmed. 

My daughter’s summation of 1981’s Oscar winner: “It wasn’t about anything.  Nothing happened.  There wasn’t even a main character, really.”  Well, there kind of was a main character, but why we should care about him is beyond me.  The guy has to overcome anti-Semitism, which you would think might offer just a hint of interest for a Jewish family, but…um…no, actually.  And the synthesized music clashes with a period piece that takes place in the 1920s, and not in a cool, ironic “Moulin Rouge” sort of way, but in a “man, this music is just plain awful” sort of way. 

Lousy film.  If I’m being generous, I give it a two-stars on a four star scale, four on a scale of one to ten.

On the flipside, I had the pleasure of re-watching a film that didn’t even make the Best Picture category in 1989: Do the Right Thing (and no, I didn’t watch this one with the kids).  Viewing it for the first time in twenty years, I was amazed at how this movie still cuts to the core of race relations.  When the film was originally released, some reviewers were critical of the tumultuous ending and the motives behind it, and at the time I was probably among those who agreed with these criticisms.  Viewing it again, however, made me appreciate how deftly Spike Lee illuminated multiple sides of racial divide, exposing prejudices and failings of all people while humanizing the characters with witty and biting dialogue. 

The biggest flaw in this film is the same as it ever was: Radio Raheem, whose death incites a riot, isn’t shown to be a fully fleshed out character, but rather a cardboard cutout of a man.  We don’t particularly care when he dies because we’re not given a reason TO care about him.  But never mind.  When Kim Basinger announced at the Oscar ceremony in 1990, “The best film of the year is not even nominated and it's Do the Right Thing.” she was spot-on.

So add Do the Right Thing to the ever-growing list of notorious Oscar snubs.  And is Chariots of Fire the worst Best Picture winner ever?  Well, I still haven’t seen Gladiator, so it’s hard to say.  But I’ve read that Spike Lee likes to refer to 1989’s winner, Driving Miss Daisy, as Driving Miss Motherf***ing Daisy.

So I guess we know what Mr. Lee’s vote is.