#9: Apocalypse Now

A version of this post was previously published in Facebook Notes in 2014 (https://www.facebook.com/notes/10152731573444079/). 

I'm fond of identifying huge moments in my reading, listening and watching life, pronouncing them as absolutely critical. Sometimes it has more to do with finally recognizing that something has had a huge effect on me. And sometimes, it's just true.

Apocalypse Now was a line in the sand. It's the first film that I saw, loved, still love today, and remember it as it really seems to be. What I mean to say is that we went to the drive-in when I was 10 and saw Chinatown. I loved it then and I still quite like it, but when I look at it now I barely remember a single shot or other element of the film that I saw when I was 10.

When I was 13 I saw Star Wars, also at a drive-in. It was such a special moment, coinciding with the second period of my life that I loved comics. I hadn't seen anything like it - who had? - and for the first time everI was conscious of what cinema could be, what it could do for me. I felt like maybe this would define my life.

I started seeking out classic science fiction films  on TV, reading science fiction and fantasy, making SF and comics zines, and checking out every new film in the SF and fantasy genres.

Though fetters of interest remained for a few years, Apocalypse Now blew the whole Star Wars thing away. My father and I saw it at the University Theatre in 70mm. I think it's safe to say from the opening montage (helicopter/crazy Sheen/The End, "Saigon. Shit.”) on, my life changed. Film mattered like nothing else, except maybe rock and roll (and this was a very rock and roll film). THIS is what I wanted films to look like, sound like, and feel like.

Not that I wanted every film to be Apocalypse Now or directed by Coppola, but I wanted films to be the product of personal visions, rendered obsessively, and adding something of value to the world. Films that weren't formulaic, especially when the formula was always to involve what Stan Brakhage used to call a "brain drunk."

From that moment on, I couldn't stand "escapism" in movies or literature: I guess I fulfilled that need with booze and drugs. I had no use for "light", for feel good, for nostalgia, for tuning out.

Admittedly, the powerful experience I had with Apocalypse Now had to do with me being a tabula rasa. When it came out I had seen no more than a couple of dozen films, certainly no more than that at the movie theatre. Maybe if I count all of the Don Knotts-type Sunday afternoon movies it's more, but the list of real movies prior to Apocalypse Now included:

Burnt Offerings

Logan's Run

Rollercoaster

Earthquake

Towering Inferno

Norman, Is that You?

Jesus Christ Superstar

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

(Part of) Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore

The Aristocats

A Three Musketeers movie

The Birds

Wizard of Oz

Jungle Book

Divorce American Style

Oliver!

Star Wars

The Long Trailer

A Carry On movie

Blazing Saddles

Chinatown (a strange story that we may return to)

Here Come the Nelsons

I'm missing a few, but that's where I was at when I was 15watching Apocalypse Now. I saw some other great films prior to it - especiallyThe Birds and Chinatown - but they felt distant and mysterious: after Apocalypse Now provided the benchmark, I had a sense of what I needed from film.

The funny thing is, today I'm not sure that I can watch anotherVietnam film, nor anything that is so obviously spectacular. I'm not qualified to compare the treatment of war in today's cinema, nor the use of surroundsound, visual effects (which had a different meaning in the 1970s anyhow), etc.I got turned off as other cinematic possibilities opened up for me - classicHollywood, avant-garde, verité, postwar French, German and Italian film, etc.Still, what I have to say about the modern trend in spectacular filmmaking fromLucas to Cameron to Jackson can best be described as "contempt prior to investigation," a special form of ignorance that seems to plague me.

No matter how much Apocalypse Now's appeal is at the intersection of the spectacle of cinema and the spectacle of war, that wouldn't have been enough to turn me on and hold me all these years. It was so powerful that it became a kind of ground zero for me:

Ground zero for commercial American filmmaking: like, I know movies can be this good, so what's your excuse?

Ground zero for Coppola's career: the height of a creative career that was preceded by the two Godfathers, which are as good but I didn't see them till later, and that mini-masterpiece, The Conversation. As much as I love many of the films that follow, including the "catastrophe" One from the Heart, which I live, we never get the thrill of Apocalypse Now again. I'm not complaining.

Ground zero for any film about Vietnam. I always have to compare, even and especially the other great Vietnam films from that period, The Deer Hunter and Coming Home.

Ground zero for anytime I hear someone argue that films are never better than the literature they adapt. I'm not saying Coppola's better thanConrad and Eliot, but in this film he's as good.

Ground zero for any film that attempts to weave rock and roll into it so seamlessly. It's not my favourite in that regard, but it set a new standard, almost surpassing American Graffiti and Mean Streets (but not Scorpio Rising).

Ground zero for any discussion of film sound.

Ground zero for understanding Brando's career. This is the End, and what an end. He appears to have gone as loopy as Kurtz himself. Whenever I watch him in A Streetcar Named Desire or The Godfather, On the Waterfront, Guys and Dolls or anything else really, I am aware that he is Kurtz. I hear Stanley Kowalski, 1st Lt. Fletcher Christian and Don Vito Corleone all mutter, "the horror, the horror."

Ground zero for Martin Sheen too. Mention The Exorcist and my mind goes to Linda Blair, then Sweet Hostage, Martin Sheen, and then"Saigon. Shit."

Ground zero for Duvall. I don't care if you say Tender Mercies, my brain conjures up:

"You smell that? Do you smell that? Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed, for twelve hours. When it was all over I walked up. We didn't find one of 'em, not one stinkin' dink body. But the smell! You know - that gasoline smell... the whole hill! Smelled like... victory. (Pause) Some day this war is going to end..."

Ground zero for intelligent filmmaking.

#8: The Four Horsemen

Back in grade 11, our Canadian Literature class was bussed to a conference at a community college. This was either in 1979 or 1980. I don’t remember the overall theme, but a performance by The Four Horseman was my first introduction to sound poetry. 

As much as I enjoyed the performance, I didn’t realize that it would be the moment that I was able to fall in love with poetry. The avant-garde craziness of this quartet, both as a group and in their other pursuits, allowed me to get past all the emotional and intellectual roadblocks that I had experienced trying to “understand” poetry prior to that fateful performance. Suddenly I was able to understand that poetry could be an act of performance, and that the sounds, timing, the montage of voices, the improvisational gumbo, and the enigmatic tension between erudition and dada nonsense could all be called upon to create a vital form of poetry. Well, whose life wouldn’t be changed by all this? 

After that performance, I went to more Horseman performances, saw all of the readings that eventually comprised Ron Mann’s Poetry in Motion - a who’s who of performance poetry, from bill bissett to John Giorno, and Anne Waldman, discovered small press poetry, attempted to write my own small press poetry and start my own imprints, and learn about concrete poetry. I met and befriended individuals who were writing, reading/performing, publishing, and otherwise making independent poetry happen in Toronto, people that I now consider legends, like Stuart Ross, Lillian Necakov, Mark Laba, john curry, Paul Dutton (he of the Four Horseman), the late bpnichol (the greatest genius of the sound poetry and concrete poetry in Canada?), Nicky Drumbolis, Paul Venright, Charlie Huisken and Dan Bazuin of This Ain’t the Rosedale Library, poetry organizer Elliott Lefko (who would hire me to help out), Crad Kilodney (not a poet, but a key figure on the scene and in my life back then), Kevin Connolly, Lynn Crosbie, and countless others. 

There’s a great little pocket book collection of the Horsemen’s poetry, Horse d’oeuvres (http://www.doullbooks.com/?page=shop/flypage&product_id=106172). 

And here’s an excerpt from Ron Mann’s Poetry in Motion, a very fine performance by the group. You will either hate it or love it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=843O0bTVKHQ

#7: Donald Judd's Chinati Foundation

“It takes a great deal of time and thought to install work carefully. This should not always be thrown away. Most art is fragile and some should be placed and never moved again. Somewhere a portion of contemporary art has to exist as an example of what the art and its context were meant to be. Somewhere, just as the platinum iridium meter guarantees the tape measure, a strict measure must exist for the art of this time and place.” (Donald Judd, 1987) 

In 1992, while driving across Texas with my friend Wilma Sanson, we made the very long and, to us, very scary trip from San Antonio to Marfa. I knew that Marfa was the town where Giant was shot and, subsequently, Come Back the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean. Marfa had the famous “Marfa lights”, which I didn’t really see, but we were there to see Donald Judd’s famed Chinati Foundation, “a contemporary art museum based upon the ideas of its founder, Donald Judd. The specific intention of Chinati is to preserve and present to the public permanent large-scale installations by a limited number of artists. The emphasis is on works in which art and the surrounding landscape are inextricably linked.”

Chinati is a going concern, a pilgrimage destination that everyone interested in contemporary art should consider taking. When we went it was barely open. We lucked out in that Judd’s nephew was around to open up the gates and show us the various barracks and fields filled with stunningly installed works by Judd, Dan Flavin, David Rabinowitch, Claes Oldenburg, Carl Andre, John Chamberlain. I might be misremembering the Oldenburg and Andre works - they may not have been there yet - but I was definitely impressed that a formidable Canadian sculptuor, Rabinowitch, was included. 

Chinati was possibly the single most important in my art education. There are a few other contenders, but that trip was clarified so much for me, so much so that sometimes when I see single works by Judd or Chamberlain in a museum, they feel a bit sad to me, like monkeys in those old fashioned zoos. I’m being a bit childish, but really just honouring that moment when, all of a sudden, I had a strong intuitive experience with work that had hitherto only been known to me academically, work I wanted to like but was never as powerful for me as its counterparts in minimalist music or structural film.

#6: Gratis

When I was 14 years old, I started a comic book fanzine. With an original cover of Cerebus the Aardvark by Dave Sim on the cover of issue #1, I was already more interested in independent comic producers than Marvel and DC. In fact, I was more interested in zines than comics I think. I co-edited four issues of Gratis with Scott Hutchison, now a high-powered lawyer, though I haven't been in touch with him in over 30 years. I think they all came out in 1978, and then I went on to science-fiction zines and something called amateur press alliances. By 1981 I was putting out punk/new wave fanzines, and getting interested in small press poetry and other forms of DIY publishing. 37 years later, I'm still fascinated by small press publishing and continue to be personally involved in that world. Just a reminder that it always starts with rock and roll for me: it was KISS that led to Howard the Duck that led to comic zines, then to science-fiction zines, then punk/new wave zines, then small press poetry, then everything that I'm doing in my life today. I'll return to this theme over the next 494 entries. 

#5: Howard the Duck #12 + #13

The story goes like this. Back in the mid 1970s I was into KISS for about 30 seconds. My friend Bruce Sorozan (spelled wrong I’m sure - my apologies) was getting into comic collecting and told me that KISS were doing to appear in Howard the Duck #12, and then in a full-fledged way in #13. I went to our local variety store (“John’s” or Neighbourhood Variety) and Lloyd Monaghan, who was a comic collector and son of John Monaghan, sold me a copy of Howard the Duck #12. 

I dug Howard the Duck and I still do, though I’m a pretty passive fan now. I have an original page from #12 (I’m willing to sell it if if you are interested). I liked the rebel-duck without a cause vibe, and my interest in comics was always toward the marginal: underground comics, parody, EC/Mad, Eisner, Spiegelman, Crumb, existential water fowl from Cleveland: Howard the Duck #12 was the gateway drug. 

My interest in comics comes and goes. I worked at four different comic stores. I worked at comic conventions. I showed my comic collection to Prince Phillip (honest) at one of those Duke of Edinburgh Prize visits he used to make (I believe were in the conference centre of the Hotel Toronto/L’Hotel/The Hilton). I collected thousands of comics. I sold them all. I regressed during the del Toro exhibition and installed about 1800 comics in our exhibition. I made sure we had a run of the original Howard the Duck series. 

The KISS comic came out (“printed with real blood!”) and it was pretty good, with better paper, printing and finishes then typical Marvel and DC fare. By then I was into punk, new wave, and many things that weren’t KISS. 

And I got into zines (next!). 

#4: Johnny Cash's Greatest Hits Volume One

Memories are unreliable, filled with condensations, displacements, distortions, and outright errors. Nonetheless, my first memory in life seems to be hearing this record, one of the few LPs in my parents’ collection in the mid-1960s. “Ring of Fire” is my clearest memory. I loved it so much that in kindergarten, when we were asked to teach songs to the other children, I sang “Ring of Fire”, not “Itsy Bitsy Spider” or anything along those lines. I didn’t see the humour in it, because I was in love with that song, that album, and with music. 

My love of all of the above has never wavered. 

Back in 2007, in the early days of my 1000 Songs Facebook Group, I wrote about “Ring of Fire” (https://www.facebook.com/notes/1000-songs/song-19-ring-of-fire/10150202361111451/):

I don't remember anything before "Ring of Fire." This might quite literally be true. My earliest memories in life include listening to music on my parent's "hi-fidelity stereo" system. We had certain records (mostly 45s) that could be played on the "record player" and others (mostly 33 1/3 LPs) that could only be played on the stereo system. Now, I remember my dad actually getting the stereo system so we must have been playing the Cash albums on something before that, but it's all a bit of a blur. "Ring of Fire" was recorded in March, 1963 and I was born six months later so it's understandable.

But I couldn't have heard it, in fact, until 1967 when Johnny Cash's Greatest Hits Volume 1 came out, an album that my mother played incessantly, as did I, once I was trusted with the stereo system (and later when I got my own copy). We only had a handful of albums and this was one of them, as well as at least one other Cash album that we got the next year, the classic live album At Folsom Prison, and I believe its brilliant sister album, At San Quentin.

I loved every cut on the Cash albums we had and, as it turns out, had memorized the songs word for word. So, when I got to kindergarten and was asked to sing a song to the class, instead of "Itsy Bitsy Spider" or something like that, I sang "Ring of Fire" to the class. I just loved that song and still do today. And, despite the fact that the Sun years aren't well represented on the collection (it's all material from 1959-1966, mostly Columbia but, for some reason, at least some Sun-originated material like "I Walk the Line"), and that I now also love so much work that followed, including the miraculous Rick Rubin-produced albums, my understanding of Cash was really formed with this pantheon:

Jackson (though the At Folsom Prison version is the classic)

I Walk the Line

Understand Your Man

Orange Blossom Special

The One on the Right is on the Left

Ring of Fire

It Ain't Me Babe (my first Dylan song? Or possibly Peter, Paul & Mary's Blowin' in the Wind?)

The Ballad of Ira Hayes

The Rebel - Johnny Yuma (I have memories of a "Yuban" commercial being set to this song - that can't be true, can it?)

Five Feet High and Rising

Don't Take Your Guys to Town

Wow! What an amazing collection of songs.

"Ring of Fire" itself was penned by June Carter and Merle Kilgore and was Cash's biggest hit single. The song is about June's falling in love with Cash, now immortalized as a cliche in the film Walk the Line (I'm not a fan but I want to stay as positive as possible in my postings! I won't always succeed). The original recording of th song was by Anita Carter, June's sister. Cash heard it and claims that in a dream her heard the song accompanied by Mexican horns and decided that his version had to be rendered thus, with mariachi horns.

There are tons of cover versions. The first one I remember hearing was by Wall of Voodoo about 35 years ago (or more... I'm getting old!). It was goofy but I still like it.

Social Distortion did a punk-ish version that was a minor hit (it's OK). Frank Zappa did a parody (not his strongest moment). I have a nice version by Elvis Costello (and someone else - can't remember off the top of my head). There are many 1960s versions I've yet to hear by Kitty Wells, Jerry Lee Lewis, Dave Dudley, and Tom Jones (! - released in 1967). But the song is so inextricably Johnny Cash's that I'm not sure it's ever going to become a "standard" in that sense.

#3: Innis Film Society, 1985-1994

(I wrote this for the record, before my memory is completely shot. Let me know if there are details I've misremembered, or whether you notice any egregious omissions.

The Innis Film Society was born of out of love, ambition and opportunity.

There had been an Innis Film Society since at least the mid-1970s and, while it was similar to typical student film societies at the time, Innis College was and is home to the Cinema Studies Programme at University of Toronto, so the programming tended to be a mix of art film, Hollywood classics and the occasional avant-garde film. Think Truffaut, Welles, Snow. In 1985 there was a leadership vacuum, so it was possible for a small group of us who were interested in augmenting the avant-garde content to take the reins. There was also a healthier than usual budget from the student society so we were able, in the 1985-86 season, to begin to establish a new identity for Innis, attracting enthusiasts of avant-garde film and not just university students.

Of course, that was still a transitional time, so if memory serves me well, the premiere of Bruce Elder's Lamentations, shown over two nights in the fall of 1986, was followed the next week by Munster Go Home, and probably a Max Ophuls double bill after that. However, we became increasingly interested in becoming a showcase for avant-garde cinema, especially the "classics" that we read about but had almost no opportunity to actually see, and as a place for "artists with their work" presentations, featuring both local and traveling filmmakers. We believed we could offer something different from the Funnel and the AGO, the only other regular forums for avant-garde film at the time.

In the of spring of 1985, the Innis Film Society was principally Jim Shedden, Paul Della Penna (now a senior librarian with the Toronto Public Library system), Mike Zryd, and Bart Testa as our faculty advisor. During the 1985-86 season we were joined by Kate MacKay, Susan Oxtoby and Lisa Godfrey. Dave Morris joined the group in the fall of 1986 and became a very prolific member, and a maker of a series of fantastic super-8, and one 35mm, films. He disappeared from the film scene altogether and now teaches philosophy at Concordia.

Over the years, the following were also either members of the IFS board, or helped make it happen in other ways: John Kneller, John McCullough, Elizabeth Yake, Alexa Frances Shaw, Amy Bodman, Tracy Jenkins, Melony Ward, Chris Eamon, Art Wilson, and Holly MacKay.

The Film Society showcased a huge representation of films from the CFMDC's collection, while also drawing on all the university libraries, the public library, specialty libaries, and private collections. When our funds were better, we broadened our reach to include MoMA's Circulating Film Library and Canyon Cinema, and we even broke down the Film-Makers Coop's resistance to sending films across the scary Canadian border. Favorites emerged, including some oddball films that we would take any opportunity to program, including Maltese Cross Movement (Keewatin Dewdney); Cosmic Ray (Bruce Conner); On the Marriage Broker Joke As Cited by Freud in His Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious, or Can the Avant-Garde Artist Be Wholed? (Owen Land); and anything by Paul Sharits, David Rimmer, Hollis Frampton, Marie Menken, Kenneth Anger, Robert Gardner and Joseph Cornell. Andy Warhol joined that list when MoMA started making new prints of his films available. Showing Chelsea Girls, a life-changing film when I saw it at the Funnel in 1981 (82?), was a highlight of our programming.

Innis Town Hall, our primary venue, was built in the 1970s and seated 200 people on groovy orange benches. They were replaced with proper theatre seats in the mid-1980s, making it a little more comfortable, but taking away a bit of its soul. At that time there were only 16mm projectors, which wasn't a problem for avant-garde cinema. Eventually 35mm projectors were installed and we inaugurated them by showing a beautiful step-printed 35mm print of Brakhage's The Dante Quartet, the first time we brought him to Toronto. The film was so beautiful that we decided to show it again. That's when it was revealed that our union projectionist (not Kate) had gouged the print adding a deep green line to the film. We all got over it, but you could smell the anxiety (mine) in the theatre that night.

A big three-gun video projector was added to the mix around 1989 but we avoided it like the plague. Even if we'd been interested in video at the time (and we were very dogmatic cinephiles in those days), we wouldn't have used it. One had to wheel it into place every time it was used, thus throwing off the calibration and making the image look even more hideous than it would have otherwise. A few years ago the theatre was completely renovated and, to my mind, is one of the best places to see film in Toronto. Given that they have great 16mm and 35mm projection, along with a stunning Christie DLP. The theatre is well used by the independent media arts community today, as is Room 222,  small film theatre that was renovated at the same time. A collective that I co-founded, ad hoc, uses the space on a regular basis. 

Eventually the Innis Film Society became a not-for-profit corporation, trading university funding bodies for arts councils and the like. This had both positive and negative consequences, though today it just seems like it all had to happen. It allowed us to view Innis College as just one possible venue, and to experiment with places like the Rivoli, the AGO's Jackman Hall, the Addiction Research Foundation, and CineCycle, when it was at Spadina and Cecil, behind the LCBO. CineCycle became my favorite venue, despite its obvious shortcomings. 

Various members also got in the habit of hosting informal screening salons in their living rooms, and it was there where we able to further establish our connection to the music, literary and visual art communities. Interdisciplinarity was one of Innis's core values, so over the years we were able to feature writers, composers, musicians, scholars, and others whose practice would enhance the presentation context. We featured events like the delirious, 31 hour reading of Finnegans Wake held at CineCycle, and we published Spleen, an avant-garde zine, though it only lasted two issues.

Looking back, one of the most satisfying aspects of putting on the Innis Film Society programs is just how entrepreneurial we had to be. As a result, we collaborated with a huge range of organizations, including some odd bedfellows. I don't remember them all, but they included New Music Concerts, the ROM, the AGO, Harbourfront Centre, the Goethe-Institut, LIFT, the CFMDC, Pleasure Dome, Public, various organizations at U of T, York, Ryerson, the Italian Cultural Institute, the British Council, the Toronto Bloomsday group, and many, many others.

Ultimately, I think the most important thing we did was be a fairly consistent venue for traveling filmmakers. We became a default venue for a certain kind of filmmaker, and Pleasure Dome for another. To caricature it a little bit, the "art for art's sake" filmmakers tended to hosted by Innis, whereas the "subversive cinema" types were more likely showcased by Pleasure Dome. Guests featured by Innis over the years included: Chris Welsby (Australia); Cantrills (Australia); Ernie Gehr; Brakhage; Carl Brown; Marjorie Keller; Sandra Davis; Yann Beauvais; Klaus Telscher; Abraham Ravett; Richard Kerr; Chris Gallagher; Istvan Antal; Barbara Sternberg; Mike Cartmell; Bruce Elder; Michael Snow; Stan Brakhage; Phil Hoffman; Ken Jacobs; Kenneth Anger; Warren Sonbert; Phil Solomon; Carolee Schneemann; Paul Sharits; Pat O'Neill; Alain Fleischer; and Peter Kubelka.

The Film Society lost its momentum in 1992, and had its last screening in 1994. There were a number of factors leading to its demise but its principle players all went on to significant film programming activities elsewhere, or took up various creative pursuits that had their seeds in the Film Society. I went on to be a curator of film at the AGO, and an occasional maker of documentaries about avant-garde filmmakers like Brakhage and Snow. Susan Oxtoby went on to program film for Cinematheque Ontario, and is now the senior curator for the prestigious Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley. Kathryn MacKay joined her there as a curator a couple of years ago. Mike Zryd is a Professor of Film at York University, specializing in avant-garde cinema (he is completing a book on Hollis Frampton). Bart Testa became a prolific film programmer, and author of many texts on avant-garde cinema. Lisa Godfrey is a senior producer at CBC, currently working on the legendary Ideas series.  Tracy Jenkins runs the Lula Lounge in Toronto, a mecca for great music of the world. 

#2: Richard Scarry's Storybook Dictionary

A Giant Golden Book that came out in 1968, it wasn't my first book, but it's the first one I remember. I remember Bossy Bear, Dilly Duck and her ducklings, Happy Rabbit, and Paddy Dog, and many other characters. I remember the fabulously inventive drawings and the primary colours (plus brown). I remember feeling at home in Busy Town, perhaps my first image of "The Urban", with its chaos, diversity, street life, and enterprise. This book was a total gateway drug for me. Opening it up today I am still charmed, and I still want to live in Busy Town. 

#1: I Drink

A feature-length documentary made with Peter McAuley about alcoholism, addiction generally, and recovery. We are subjects in the film, as are many friends and family members on a similar journey.