Shepherds of Berneray

The Shepherds of Berneray
a film by Allen Moore & Jack Shea
(Canada, 1981, 54 minutes)

Credits:
filmed and edited by Allen Moore
conceived and produced by Jack Shea
narrated by Finlay J. MacDonald
executive produced by Robert Gardner
principal characters: Kate Dix, John Ferguson, Angus Beag MacLeod, Angus and Chirsty Ann Munro, John and Christine Munro


The original Ram's Head, Live - from Berneray!

Last night I was among a handful of cineastes that were treated to a special screening of Allen Moore and Jack Shea's 1981 documentary The Shepherds of Berneray at the Hexagon on N. Charles Street. The event was the latest offering in Miguel Sabagol's continuing "Free Wednesday 16mm Film Series" at the Hexagon, which the Baltimore City Paper named "Best Multi-Purpose Space" in its 2009 Best of Baltimore issue.


Allen Moore

I only heard about the screening because, in addition to being an award-winning cinematographer for Ken Burns and a well-respected film instructor at the Maryland Institute, College of Art, Allen Moore is also a regular patron of the Enoch Pratt Central Library, where he often pops in to check out titles from our 16mm film collection. So when he mentioned last week that he was screening one of his films at the Hexagon, I had to give props to a filmmaker and lenser that I greatly admire. I wasn't disappointed. At the risk of sounding like a hyperbolic fanboy, I think film historians will rightly rank Moore's cinematography alongside that of the all-time great lensmen. And, beyond knowing how to frame and present "pretty pictures," Moore is also an accomplished director and editor, at least from I've seen of his own films.

Small wonder then that the film - made with funds from The Film Study Center, Harvard University, The Highlands and Islands Development Board of Scotland, and The Scottish Arts Council - won a CINE Golden Eagle, a Red Ribbon at the American Film Festival, and a Special Mention of the Jury at Cinema du Reel. Soon after completing The Shepherds of Berneray, which was shot over 12 months from May 1978 to 1979 and took another 18 months to edit, Moore received a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in Filmmaking from December 1982 to November 1983.

So what and where is Berneray? Quickly searching the Internet for a Wikipedia article, I learned that Berneray (Scottish Gaelic: Beàrnaraidh, from Old Norse for "Bjorn's island") is a small island to the north of North Uist in the Sound of Harris, Scotland.



It is one of fifteen inhabited islands in the Outer Hebrides, measuring 2.5 acres with a population (as of May 2009) under 124 permanent residents. It is famed for its rich and colourful history which has attracted much tourism - including Charles, the Prince of Wales, who in 1987 visited the island to live a normal Berneray life as a "crofter" (small-scale farmer). (Prince Charles lived and worked with a crofter for one week and his visit spawned the 1991 television documentary, A Prince Among Islands; he returned to the island in 1999 to formally open the causeway connecting Berneray and Otternich on North Uist). Its main industries are fishing and sheep, but because seafood is a valued export to the mainland, the island's lifeblood is its sheep. Hence the focus of Moore's remarkable film, which documents one year in the life of the sheep and their Gaelic-speaking (and singing) keepers, split into seasonal chapters.


Berneray: Shaped like the headstock on a Fender guitar

The documentary begins and ends with an elderly woman (Kate Dix) speaking in her native Gaelic (thank God for subtitles!) outside her croft, a perfect bookending of the year's journal. Moore's print looked absolutely pristine and flawless, with nary a scratch on the screen. Shooting with a non-synch sound Bolex 16mm camera, he was able to follow the shepherds and their flock through every nook and cranny of the island, capturing both its natural beauty (the gorgeous blue skyline and shoreline in summer, the blooming flora in the spring) and the raw unpredictability of its stormy, wind-swept winters.

I liked his editing touches, little things like the footage at the island's church where the minister reads "The lord is my shepherd" to the shepherds, and the sheep point-of-view shots when they are being dipped into an anti-tic bath.

My fellow Pratt librarian (and fellow film geek) Marc Sober was also in attendance, and I knew the avowed vegetarian was in for a rough viewing experience during the no-holds-barred footage depicting the inevitable killing and eating of sheep (the islanders eat a lot of mutton - they save the tasty lobster for export to the mainland and the $$ it promises in return). As was the Maryland Film Festival's Eric Hatch, another vegetarian I spotted, sitting in front of Marc Sober (I'm pretty sure I saw Eric looking away during the more grisly segments!).

Moore leaves nothing out as far as documenting the sometimes harsh lifestyle entailing by living off sheep on a remote island. There's the birth and death of sheep, branding the flock by cutting off part of the ear, the inevitable wooly-bully sheep shearing, even an "old school" cirmcumcision of a ram by an old-timer who bites off the skins and spits it out! (I'm glad I ate before the screening and not after!).

Remarkable as the natural beauty of Berneray and Moore's cinematography are, the film is more than just a visual record of a remote land and people. Key to its translation of Berneray's culture is the poetic language of its people, which Moore captures not only in the Gaelic monologues of grande dame Kate Dix (who, Moore said afterwards, unfortunately passed away before the film's completion), but in the native folk songs of Mary MacAskill, Duncan MacKinnon and Christine Munro, and the poetry of the Bard of Berneray, Duncan MacLeod of Besdaire (1906-1980).

"Moore has become renowned in filmmaking circles for the way he portrays the intimate relationship of a culture to its environment, a vision he calls primarily poetic," wrote Baltimore Sun critic Linell Smith. He was referring to Moore's award-winning 1990 film Black Water (co-directed with Charlotte Cerf), which documented an artisanal fishing village in northeastern Brazil struggling to survive the impact of industrial water pollution, but he could just as easily have been talking about The Shepherds of Berneray. For Moore is an ethnographer as well as a photographer and documentarian, one just as interested in understanding the best way to present a foreign culture as a lensman is interested in the best way to present images to the human eye. Like his camera, Moore's eye is unflinching, direct, and true. And the impressions he leaves on our eyes are indelible.

Related Links:
Isle of Berneray website
The Shepherds of Berneray @ Internet Movie Database
Scottish Screen Archives
Allen Moore's MICA bio
Allen Moore @ Florentine Films
Black Water @ Icarus Films

Woe is Poe On Film?

Are Poe's short stories best served by shorts?

In today's Baltimore Sun, Chris Kaltenbach penned an article ("Macabre movies miss the mark") about the dearth of quality film adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe's tales. While Kaltenbach liked Jules Dassin's 1941 adaptation of The Tell-Tale Heart (which is available as an extra in Warner Brothers' The Complete Thin Man DVD boxset), he regretted that it was only 20 minutes long, lamenting that most feature film adaptations - usually by Roger Corman during his reign at AIP - missed the mark, though he gave a grudging pass to Corman's Nicolas Roeg-lensed 1964 version of The Mask of Red Death.

It's an interesting debate, one that makes me think that Kaltenbach was onto something. Maybe the master short story teller was best served by the short film medium, and maybe The Tell-Tale Heart was the Poe story best translated to film. In that case, here's a shout-out to my favorite Poe short, the 1953 UPA animated version narrated by James Mason.

The Tell-Tale Heart (1953)
Directed by Ted Parmelee
Narrated by James Mason



This Oscar-nominated short is essential viewing for Poe afficionados. It surprisingly comes from UPA, the studio whose animation style is most often associated with Mr. Magoo cartoons (as well as Gerald McBoing-Boing, for those who remember him!). James Mason's narration is inspired and atmospherically pitch-perfect! It captures the mood, tone and feel of Poe's story perfectly and is an incredible piece of work. Director Ted Parmalee also helmed a critically acclaimed adaptation of Hans Christian Anderson's The Emperor's New Clothes (1953) and went on to direct many TV episodes of The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.

Watch it here:


For some reason this short turned up as an extra on the 2004 DVD release of the feature film Hellboy.

OK, while we're on the subject of Tell-Tale Heart shorts, another of my favorites for your consideration - though it takes outrageous comedic liberties with the Poe tale - is Jill Chamberlain's (much sought after) Poe-meets-Sex-in-the-City spoof The Tell-Tale Vibrator.

The Tell-Tale Vibrator (1999)
Written and Directed by Jill Chamberlain
(USA, 9 minutes, color)

"Let's just say that the title says it all in this provocative and extremely funny film"- RISD Film Festival catalog

I first saw this at the MicroCineFest in 1999. It played the festival circuit that year, winning the Jury Prize for Best Screenplay at the Atlantic City Film Festival and Best Short at the Saguaro Film Festival. As the title suggests, this humorous short tells the story of a single woman who, when her parents come to visit her in her new apartment in New York City for the first time, becomes unnerved by the tell-tale, albeit familiar, buzzing sound coming from her bedroom bureau.

Does anyone have a copy of this (hmmmm, Skizz?)? I remember it being really funny.

Related Links:
UPA's animated Tell-Tale Heart (YouTube)

American Psycho: The Mix Tape

"Hit play baby!"

I watched American Psycho (2000) when it was on TV a few nights ago. It's a fun film, as far as over-the-top black comedies based on novels by Brett Easton Ellis go, with a number of great quotes - like Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale)'s Worst Pickup Line Ever ("You're a fucking ugly bitch. I want to stab you to death and then play with your blood" - c'mon, has this line ever worked, fellas?) - but what was most memorable to me wasn't all the severed heads in Bateman's fridge or all the bodies hanging on meat hooks in his closet. No, the most shocking aspect of the film (and book) was Patrick Bateman's music library: Phil Collins, Huey Lewis, and Whitney Houston. Yes, I know: surely this is tell-tale signs of a sick and twisted mind!

To see a video montage of all of Patrick Bateman's monologues about his favorite musical artists, click here.

And here, for all you text lovers, I give you the American Pyscho Mix Tape, a Populist Manifesto of Song:

1. Genesis - "Susudio"
(from the 1986 LP Invsible Touch)



Patrick Bateman: Do you like Phil Collins? I've been a big Genesis fan ever since the release of their 1980 album, Duke. Before that, I really didn't understand any of their work. Too artsy, too intellectual. It was on Duke where Phil Collins' presence became more apparent. I think Invisible Touch was the group's undisputed masterpiece. It's an epic meditation on intangibility. At the same time, it deepens and enriches the meaning of the preceding three albums. (Christy, take off your robe.) Listen to the brilliant ensemble playing of Banks, Collins and Rutherford. You can practically hear every nuance of every instrument. (Sabrina, remove your dress.) In terms of lyrical craftsmanship, the sheer songwriting, this album hits a new peak of professionalism. (Sabrina, why don't you, uh, dance a little.) Take the lyrics to "Land of Confusion." In this song, Phil Collins addresses the problems of abusive political authority. "In Too Deep" is the most moving pop song of the 1980s, about monogamy and commitment. The song is extremely uplifting. Their lyrics are as positive and affirmative as anything I've heard in rock. (Christy, get down on your knees so Sabrina can see your asshole.) Phil Collins' solo career seems to be more commercial and therefore more satisfying, in a narrower way. Especially songs like "In the Air Tonight" and "Against All Odds." (Sabrina, don't just stare at it, eat it.) But I also think Phil Collins works best within the confines of the group, than as a solo artist, and I stress the word artist. This is "Sussudio," a great, great song, a personal favorite.

2. Huey Lewis and The News - "Hip To Be Square"
(from the 1987 LP Fore)



Patrick Bateman: Do you like Huey Lewis and the News?
Paul Allen: They're OK.
Patrick Bateman: Their early work was a little too new wave for my tastes, but when Sports came out in '83, I think they really came into their own, commercial and artistically. The whole album has a clear, crisp sound, and a new sheen of consummate professionalism that really gives the songs a big boost. He's been compared to Elvis Costello, but I think Huey has a far much more bitter, cynical sense of humour.
Paul Allen: Hey Halberstram.
Patrick Bateman: Yes, Allen?
Paul Allen: Why are their copies of the style section all over the place, d-do you have a dog? A little chow or something?
Patrick Bateman: No, Allen.
Paul Allen: Is that a rain coat?
Patrick Bateman: Yes it is! In '87, Huey released this, Fore, their most accomplished album. I think their undisputed masterpiece is "Hip to be Square", a song so catchy, most people probably don't listen to the lyrics. But they should, because it's not just about the pleasures of conformity, and the importance of trends, it's also a personal statement about the band itself.
[raises axe above head]
Patrick Bateman: Hey Paul!
[he bashes Allen in the head with the axe, and blood splatters over him]
Patrick Bateman: TRY GETTING A RESERVATION AT DORSIA NOW YOU FUCKING STUPID BASTARD! YOU, FUCKING BASTARD!

3. Whitney Houston - "The Greatest Love of All"
(from the 1985 LP Whitney Houston)



Patrick Bateman: Did you know that Whitney Houston's debut LP, called simply Whitney Houston had 4 number one singles on it? Did you know that, Christie?
Elizabeth: [laughing] You actually listen to Whitney Houston? You own a Whitney Houston CD? More than one?
Patrick Bateman: It's hard to choose a favorite among so many great tracks, but "The Greatest Love of All" is one of the best, most powerful songs ever written about self-preservation, dignity. Its universal message crosses all boundaries and instills one with the hope that it's not too late to better ourselves. Since, Elizabeth, it's impossible in this world we live in to empathize with others, we can always empathize with ourselves. It's an important message, crucial really. And it's beautifully stated on the album.

The Greatest Mix Tape Ever

That there independent music the kids are listening to nowadays, seriously...you would never understand. I'm going to ride my fixed gear bike to the copycat - Vol. 1
A Tophat Production (2009)

My friend Chris Schatz just made me the best CD "mix tape" ever, the sarcastically named That there independent music the kids are listening to nowadays, seriously...you would never understand. I'm going to ride my fixed gear bike to the copycat - Vol. 1. It's great because this two-disc compilation saves me the headache of deciding which of today's Generation YouTube bands I need to check out, as I only know three of the bands in Chris's superlative mix, specifically Of Montreal, Dengue Fever, and MGMT (and the latter only because their "Time To Pretend" is used as a theme song on cable TV's Sundance Channel). But with a primer like this, I'm ready to jump on the listed bands' respective bandwagons.

Thanks, Chris! You rock!

Here's the song tracking - and beautiful accompanying packaging - of this epic Photoshop production. I've only listened to the first disc so far, because I like to listen to stuff over and over until I get sick of it, but so far the standout tracks to me are The Faint's "The Geeks Were Right" (from their debut album, Fasciinatiion), Be Your Own Pet's "Becky," and twee-twangers Tullycraft's hilarious "Georgette Plays a Goth."


That there independent music - Vol. 1, Disc 1


That there independent music - Vol. 1, Disc 2


"They are young and on the edge of this extraordinary Baltimore..."
That there independent music, inner sleeve

The Fat Mattress

Hey, I forgot to mention in my Globe Poster posting an important detail about this Jimi Hendrix poster...namely, the band listed in the lower right as the support act: The Fat Mattress. Despite the dumb name, which sounds like some jam band, the Fat Mattress is actually a rather significant band for Hendrix completists, as it was the folk-rock side group Noel Redding formed during his time as the bassist in the Jimi Hendrix Experience.

According to Wikipedia, Redding formed the group in 1968 in Folkestone, England, with vocalist Neil Landon. Redding played guitar and also sang, with the band rounded out by multi-instrumentalist Jim Leverton and drummer Eric Dillon. The band released two albums, Fat Mattress (1969) and Fat Mattress II (1970), before splitting up in 1970.



According to a reviewer of their first album on Amazon,

"What the listener got with Fat Mattress was a solid, sometimes folky/woodsy, sometimes mystical rock band - very English and very stripped down, without pyrotechnics or pretensions. Songs like "Mr. Moonshine," "She Came In the Morning" and "All Night Drinker" (with Chris Wood of Traffic fame lending his flute, giving the song a style similar to early Jethro Tull) could have been staples on FM radio had the album been properly promoted. If you're at all into this type of music and wish to hear some of the little post-Experience music available by the late Noel Redding, you owe it to yourself to dig for this one."

Related Links:
Richie Unterberger's Bio of Fat Mattress (allmusicguide)
Fat Mattress (Wikipedia)

Everybody Is Stupid Except For Me

and Other Astute Observations


Everybody Is Stupid Except for Me and Other Astute Observations
A Decade's Worth of Cartoon Reporting for Reason Magazine
by Peter Bagge
112 pages, Fantagraphic Books (2009)
peterbagge@earthlink.net

I've loved Peter Bagge ever since I started reading his Buddy Bradley and Hate comics back in the Nineties when Seattle's hipster grunge scene was reigning supreme. Post-Hate, Bagge dropped below the radar for a while, had kids, and became a libertarian ("the other 'L' word" in his words). But regardless of his politics or life situation, Bagge has always maintained a critical eye for pretentiousness and pomposity - whether it be from the left or the right - as this collection of comic rants from his Noughties stint at Reason magazine ("the magazine of free minds and free markets") makes clear.

The book is organzied into thematic chapters of comtemporary American stupidity - Stupid Sex, Stupid War, Stupid Business, Stupid Arts, Stupid Politics, Stupid Tragedy, Stupid Boondoggles - culminating in "Our Stupid America." Bagge is even-handed enough to follow-up a dig at war protesters (with whom he sympathizes in idealogy if not execution) with an even harsher lambasting of pro-war zealots, and he even takes his libertarian chums to task - including his beloved Ron Paul ("In Search of the Perfect Human Being") - but what struck me most was his take-down of modern art and artists in "'Real' 'Art'" (Reason magazine, August/September 2004). They already made a movie out of Daniel Clowes' lampooning strip "Art School Confidential" but had Terry Zwigoff elected to make a documentary instead of a narrative film, he might well have used Bagge's cruel observations as source material. Brilliant stuff. I'm sure the old school folks at Baltimore's Schuler School of Fine Arts would be proud!


Real Art, page 1


Real Art, page 2


Real Art, page 3


Real Art, page 4

The Long Goodbye

directed by Robert Altman
MGM, 1973, 112 minutes
Cast: Elliott Gould, Nina Van Pallandt, Sterling Hayden, Henry Gibson, Mark Rydell

It's Fall, my favorite season and the time of year when I revisit the things I love most...like Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe novels. Spying a new edition of Chandler's best, most mature work The Long Goodbye (1953) at Daedalus Books & Music, I quickly devoured it. It was one of the few Marlowe novels that wasn't pieced together from short stories Chandler had previously published in pulp magazines (a cherry-picking technique he called "cannibalizing" his own narratives).


Chandler's late great masterpiece

The following week at Daedalus, I saw the DVD reissue of Robert Altman's 1973 adaptation of The Long Goodbye, starring Elliott Gould at the height of his anti-Establishment, anti-hero popularity (Little Murders, Getting Straight, Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, M*A*S*H), and picked it up, remembering only that I liked it when I saw it some 20 years ago. It's a command performance, Elliott's favorite in fact, but with Chandler's rich prose still fresh in my mind from reading The Long Goodbye, I was somewhat irked at the liberties taken with the source material.

Style Over Narrative

Then I realized that Altman, like Chandler, was always someone more interested in style - and especially language and characterization - over narrative. For his part, Chandler even admitted as much when, during the filming of The Big Sleep (1946), a confused Howard Hawks (besieged by his head-scratching script-writers William Faulkner and Leigh Brackett) contacted Chandler to ask who exactly killed whom and the author famously replied that he himself wasn't sure! Likewise, Altman was only attracted to the script of The Long Goodbye when he was given the assurance that he could cast Elliott Gould as Marlowe and that he could tack on his own, anti-hero ending. So, purists beware, if you want adherence to Chandler's novels and dialogue, watch Bogie in Hawks' The Big Sleep or Dick Powell in Edward Dmytryk's Murder, My Sweet (1944). (Interestingly enough, The Long Goodbye and Hawks' The Big Sleep shared the same scriptwriter, Leigh Brackett - though she passed away before Altman's film was released in 1973).

And Altman, who wasn't interested at all in faithful adaptations of someone's else's work, was more interested in the idea of what it would be like for an Old School '30s and '40s-era hard-boiled romantic like Philip Marlowe (for that's what Chandler considered him and Marlowe even describes himself in The Long Goodbye as "a romantic...I hear voices crying in the night and I go see what's the matter") to be placed into the middle of the sexually liberated, New Agey hippie landscape of 1970s Southern California. In fact, "Rip Van Marlowe" was his working title for The Long Goodbye. And he gave Gould, like all the actors he worked with in his career, free reign as far as improvisation. "I make them do the work...do what they're trained to do, to act," he said.

So after Elliott Gould has been finger-printed at the police station and wipes the ink all over his face while doing a blackface impression of Al Jolsen, it's a total ad-lib. Gould's Marlowe is an update for sure, but his sarcasm and attitude are firmly in the Marlowe tradition of the '30s and '40s. But even in his day, Chandler considered his P.I. a throwback, a "man out of time" who is out of synch with the values surrounding him - or in Chandler's words, "this strange and corrupt world we live in." "Nobody understands me," Marlowe tells Mrs. Loring in The Long Goodbye. "I'm enigmatic." Another character in the novel, the Latino thug Mendy Mendez, seems to sense this too when he refers to Marlowe as "Tarzan on a big red scooter" - that is, someone out of his element, stubbornly clinging to his archaic vine (and values) in a mechanized modern age.

And the rest of the casting is inspired as well, with Nina Van Pallandt as the blue-eyed ice-princess wife Eileen Wade, Sterling Hayden as madcap alcoholic writer Roger Wade (a second, but excellent, choice following the death of Altman's good friend Dan Blocker), the menacingly meek Henry Gibson as the quack Dr. Verringer, and former Major League Baseball pitcher (and Ball Four bad boy author) Jim Bouton (great '70s Jiffy-Pop bouffant!) as Terry Lennox. But Altman's most brilliant casting coup was signing Mark Rydell to portray the loony sociopathic Jewish mobster Marty Augustine (this character was a complete Altman-Brackett invention, standing in for and expanding the novel's Hispanic gangster Mendy Mendez). I love Rydell's first encounter with Gould when he tells him he "should be keeping shabbos" instead of wasting his time with a schmuck like him. And, of course, the scene in which he and his thugs take their clothes off - while attempting to force Marlowe to - so that no one has anything to hide behind in their interrogation (a scene also featuring a non-speaking but pectoral-flexing, cameo by Arnold Schwarzenegger as a bodyguard!). I wonder if Gould's quip in this scene - after Rydell says he used to be self-conscious about taking his clothes off because he didn't get his first pubic hair until 15 - about how Marty must have felt like one of the Three Little Pigs, was also an ad-lib. Hilarious scene and vintage Altman.



And speaking of traditions, the Hollywood studios have a long one of mis-marketing their releases. The Long Goodbye was no different. When the film opened in Los Angeles and Chicago, the original poster for the film showed Gould holding a gun and looking like a classic Bogart-era gumshoe with the tagline "Nothing says goodbye like a bullet." It was an anachronistic pitch to a genre (and audience) that just wasn't happening in the post-Easy Rider 1970s American cinema.

Another poster showed Gould with a cat on his shoulder and cat food in his hand, a gun sticking out of his pants and a ciggie stub sticking out of his mouth, and Nina Van Pallandt walking her dog in a doorway. The tagline was "I have two friends in the world. One is a cat. The other one is a murderer." This tough guy neo-noir pitch tanked with audiences as well.


The cats, dogs, gats and blondes poster

Altman complained about the posters and the producers came up with the idea of getting Mad magazine's legendary cartoonist Jack Davis to come up with a hipper poster. One that reflected the irreverent, sarcastic "no heroes" spirit that Elliott has mastered in th early '70s. The result, shown below, was used for the film's New York release where, suddenly, the film "killed," in Altman's words.


Jack Davis' poster for "The Long Goodbye"
ensured its cult status

"We did great box office but by then it was too late." And so The Long Goodbye missed out on being a commercial success but gained its long-running status as a cult film in the process. Thank you, Jack Davis!