The Michigan Daily-Sunday, Ja Page 2-Sunday, January 28, 1979-The Michigan Daily IAMRLINGS/brian blanehard FILM/owen gleiberman T HERE ARE THOSE who regard letter writing as an art form. Then there are the remaining ninety- five per cent of us, who may care enough about letters to write them but not enough to bother spending more than forty-five minutes (or-half an hour at the typewriter) completing the task. My formula, refined over years of practice, goes roughly as follows: mechanically refer to comments from the last letter received from my friend, then inquire into his or her affairs. Then toss in a general comment about my world, followed by a perfunctory aside characterizing hopes or school problems, another statement on my courses, or a platitude about the state of higher eduction, a joke about my sporadic class attendance record, and any information about myself or com- mon friends (which I can generally state in about one sentence). I always close by apologizing for leaving so much to say, and speculating on when we'll next meet. Love,... Off it goes, into the squat, impersonal box, and I wait for my deserved respon- se-like a retiree who has nothing but the mail and a favorite radio program to mark his days. Once in a while, the anticipation is satisfied by what I con- sider good mail, most often from those who write me "news," calmly describing what they are doing and feeling, and asking me the same. More often, though, I wonder why I take my mail so seriously. An old girlfriend from high school writes me on occasion, and I've come to realize such messy script, but maybe she'll write more soon. Looking for something new, I run my eyes over each sentence-forgiving the brevity, per request-and drop it into a drawer full of such notes. Conpare her formulaic, but con- crete, dispatches to the prose sent to 'I'm as disappointed in the letter-writing efforts of my friends as I am in my own. We can 't even mock, the E.B. Whites and Chekhovs, who spend long lives worrying about who ought to go into their next letters.' since he writes infrequently. Then both write, F believe, to encourge me to think about them and to prompt respon- ses. The same effect could be achieved with bulletins: "25 Janury '79. Still here. Please write. Love, X." I'm as disappointed in the letter- writing efforts of my friends as I am in my own. We can't even mock the E.B. Whites and Chekhovs, who spend long lives worrying about who ought to go in- to their next letters. Correspondents like myself and my friends write only for this generation, and primarily for only one member of it at a time. My friend, after all, does have her bio to do. The problem, I suppose, is that unlike the literati, most of us take more pleasure in the reading than in the writing. My old girlfriend, I know, doesn't want to apper a dilettante, and so refrains from heavy musings. My friend from home, on the other hand, wants to avoid the dry facts, and in- stead lets me know what's really going on in his life. Both, of course, want something back. So I'll keep writing my form letters, and sifting through the mass-addressed envelopes to find the unsatisfying let- ters my friends send, searching for the hidden messages that aren't there. the occasion must amount to a notation in her datebook: "Write B.B., finish calc and bio, do laundry." She's in a terrible rush with so much to do, she writes, and she's not sure what she'll be doing come summer, but it's probably too early to worry about it. On the second colored page, she wonders how I've been and whom I've heard from lately, but she really has to go, she writes in her closing paragraph, and hopes I'll forgive such a short note in my box by a close friend at home. He describes in carefully edited detail the emotional house in which he finds him- self at the moment. And he moves of- ten. He loathes love because it traps him; he's fallen in love because she's set him free. He's sworn off drugs since they deceitfully dominate his life; he's back to drugs-t-hey don't lie. It's tiring. THE FIRST LETTER writer prob- ably doesn't like to write letters; the second seems drained by his efforts Sunday' imaigazine IEIHi P UZZLE Rock and roll onreels -I I I I I G A 2 Q 4~ Q61 Q 9, K 3 2 ^ 4 v 6 G 9 E 4V 51H6 G 26K 278 2 L 50 x 71 R 7 0S C j T10 *J29M 30G 3 K~ 51!z;352E 51 54 55 E 72;D 73 s 74 N 75 B 94T95(V 9, D 9' H 115C t I_117D 118ji3B T 137 W1381K 139jC140{; 14: o 158 K 15.9+I1 60 3 16,1 e. ! - L 1 1 S13 T 32N 33 S34 V jc756 u57 v H, 11 U 111 0 13 E 134 x ~5 0 1 P 92I 14 N 98 B99 P 121 J 1 F 1 C 15 H 16 K 171 1la T 19 H 20 35 A 3 J 3 0 3 K 3 c 40oU 41P P42 C 43 j B 44 &8 o"5D 60 A s6263 e4 ~i 65 78 79 Q 8 L t81J 82 U 33 S84 85V 86 OO 101 E 10 B 10 J 104tDv105 Q 106 J 107 22 112 9 124J 125 I126tP 127,S 128129 L 145 P 14 1 147 H 148'R 1491E 150 m 151 .5 L1661J 16 E16911I6 R170f' F 171 16 !8! i 9yo 9 7 S186 K18 Y18 518E v 199h' l 92!D~~93 P 15E B lPj 163 3 C 183j0 184 3B14 Tr 1-§ 17J H 11 K 178' - i JiOT i 9 164 16 I y5 -i . I- I - BY S TERHEN J. POZSGAI Copyright 1979 INSTRUCTIONS Guess the words defined at the left and write them in over their numbered dashes. Then, transfer each letter to the cor- responding numbered square in the grid above. The letters printed in the upper-right-hand corners of the squares indi- cate from whatsclue-word a particular square's letter comes from. The grid, when filled in, should read as a quotation from a published work. The darkened squares are the spaces between words. Some words may carry over to the next line. Meanwhile, the first letter of each guessed word at the left, reading down, forms an acrostic,'giving the author's name and the title of the work from which the quote is extracted. As words and phrases begin to form in the grid, you can work back and forth from clues to grid until the puzzle is complete. Answer to last week'siuzzle: "Whoever denies the existenee of the uncon- scious is in fact assuming that our present knowledge of the psyche is total and this belief is cleary just as false as the assumption that we know all there is to be known about the natural universe." Carl ° Jung, Man And His Symbols 0 NE OF THE transcendent mo- ments in rock and roll is the opening drum riff of the Ronettes' "Be My Baby," a resounding figure that beautifully ushers in Phil Spector's luminous world of teenage roman- .tidism. The powe of that moment is augmented when, at the beginning of Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets, it is played with the visual accompaniment of Harvey Keitel, sinking back on his pillow and escaping into the dank bluish light of his dreams. It is a vision of extraordinary power, drawn directly from the music-from the emotions of the song itself, and the way that image at once affirms and belies those emotions. Mean Streets certainly wouldn't adhere to anyone's strict definition of a "rock film"-the story is a cinema verite'nightmare about Mafia hoodlums in New York's Little Italy-yet it reverberates with the voluptuous energy of rock, with the music's rebellious arrogance, spon- taneity, and promises of liberation, like few works I've encountered in any medium. Scorsese's film is but one example of a paradox surrounding the meeting of rock and roll and the movies: the degree to which films evoke any of the revelatory spirit of rock often bears tenuous relation to how directly they treat the subject. On the other side of the coin from Mean Streets is FM,. a story of a rock radio station with as much musical vitality as a documen- tary on the inner workings of your neighborhood post office. When you think about it, rock and roll and the movies are so made for each other that the wave of rock films that graced the theatres last year barely scratched the surface of possibilities. We got films about radio stations (FM), the birth of rock and roll (American Hot Wax, The Buddy Holly Story, I Wanna Hold Your Hand) disco flicks (Saturday Night Fever, Grease-that's right, disco-. Thank God It's Friday), and Sgt. Pepper, which seems un- classifiable except perhaps as some heretofore undiscovered form of sewage. Yet few of these movies contain what I like to call rock epiphanies, magical moments in which music and celluloid fuse'in rebellious celebration. I'm talking about moments like the "Be My Baby" sequence in Mean Streets, the scene with John Travolta guzzling beer and squealing his car tires with Ron- stadt's salty version of "Heat Wave" in the background in Carrie, Jimmy Cliff shaking to the seductive reggae beat as he sings "The Harder They Come," or the sequence in Saturday Night Fever with Travolta swaggering down a gritty Brooklyn sidewalk to the insistent beat of "Stayin' Alive." A LL THESE scenes are rooted in their sociologicalrcontexts, but the music sets them afire. Because a soundtrack, however, is only a soun- dtrack without the creative impulse of a director, the current outpouring of rock films divides itself into two cateories: those that simply use rock (or the "world" of rock) as a setting, and those whose creators have been shaped by the music and explicitly deal with its implications. Of the films mentioned Owen Gleiberman is co-editor of the Sunday Magazine. above, FM, Sgt. Pepper, I Wanna Hold Your Hand, Thank God It's Friday, and Grease all belong to the former category. The rest attempt, in one way or another, to amplify their soun- dtracks visually, by exploiting elemen- ts of the sound and-this is what takes real talent-treating it as thematically and spiritually integral to the story. Certainly, as a collection, these films have not distinguished themselves as any sort of definable "genre"; there is more spiritual' continuity between Mean Streets and Saturday Night Fever than between Fever and The Buddy Holly Story. Yet there is no Your Hand, although an interestin footnote to that is that the actual titlec the Beatles song is "I Want To Ho Your Hand"-a rather negligent slip-u in the title dept., I'd say. The remainin pictures-The Buddy Holly Story American Hot Wax, and Saturday Nig Fever-regardless of their failings an compromises, emerge with enoug formidable rock and roll power to b considered healthy seeds of a genre-t be. Both Hot Wax and Buddy Holly hav few evident qualms about tamperin with. history. American Hot Wax turn the rather slimy figure of Disc jock Alan "Payola" Freed into a ro messiah, in much the same way Fre did to himself when piecing togetherf g the parents a of panic and shc d like wild a ip maniacal enei ng scene carries y, similar scene ht where a reco d young rhyth h everyone in ti be exuberant jam o- ATURDA ve best ficti g with rock and ns the best ever). ey since the title ck at first to deny ed fide rock film el their words, t but liked the always thoug board anywa rumble, gang Stephanie all have been a into the ferve kids in the sev But John Tr and the interm of John Badha commercial t began as a p package-con music, and a h ploited to deal ferocious pa powers of roc picky and cla "Night Fever Woman" are p easy vulgariz and roll. But t like all three t part of the fi Saturday N unquelchable their cataclysi 2001 Odyssey,i or "seventies uniformity of In fact, an & the rabid a bothered to ex a modern gen fustrated actir spite of) the si mass culture. listened to Li their parents rebellion with er erasing gener er codes. The s k people a relati sonal freedon ie focused, perha n tainly brimmi er early rockers n e The security re our culture i when a grou mass robotiz c Saturday Nig a the lips of ev 9. shops for rec r- n force of ind to Travolta's ec: ut Saturday Nigh e picture's awk e bittersweet re ve of salvation f d- compromise. Although in mn sensibility, Ho ly realized the i ', youth market Fever have. V 'k See A. Questionable; malodorous B. Futility:ineffectuality C. Sea monster D. Lasting; established E. Science (2 words) F. Modify; replace G. Straighten H. Triangular pyramid I. Producina effects J. Allow for extra expenses or cutbacks (3 words) K. Closed; dense 24 61 36 79 67 25 1 44 94 98 103 119 135 144 164 169 43 63 158 116 140 9 15 183 56 - - -- - -- - - - -- - - - 60 105 23 54 87 97 120 118 147 131 193 73 4 72 103 88 124 134 150 191 53 168 12 165 171 179 14 L-Blotter; sponge M. Scienceofmetaphysics N. Cigarette butt 0. Desert refuge P. Body cycles 0. Interval between on order and its delivery (2 words) R. Nihilist:vandal S. The appearance or semblance of truth T. Having two equal sides U. Trying to look wise V. Movements that break with tradition (2 words) 11 50 92 145 160 81 166 76 177 22 30 130 151 188 163 101 70 33 157 75 138 98 38 59 8 133 155 42 61127146 162156 113174 89 55 68 80 90 31 106 129 47 153 7 21 149 49 192 415 143 170 136 78 62 13 34 52 74 84 141 112 128 189 161 175 185 100 32 10181 19132 66 95 108 137 57 182 111 41 83 45 5 35 58 172 69 190 86 96 46 91 denying this eclectic group a unifying spark, which may someday burgeon a genuinely innovative style in motion pictures. And at least several of these movies offer viable proof that rock is as salable on celluloid as it is on vinyl. One film I consciously omitted from the list is The Last Waltz, the Band's final concert, directed by Mean Streets director Martin Scorsese. For one thing, both Scorsese and the Band are independent enough from their per- spective establishments to qualify the film's appearance last summer as unrelated to that of the other rock movies. But beyond that, The Last Waltz, widely praised as "the best rock concert movie ever made" and Scor- sese's "most personal film"(!), is an overblown failure, a welterweight con- cert recorded with lax, glossy camerawork that fails to bolster the music with anything strikingly cinematic. As for the other films, I think we can easily dismiss FM, Grease, Sgt. Pepper and TGIF as disqualifying themselves for serious consideration on the basis of ineptitude alone, not to mention vainglorious Stigwoodian hype tactics. I haven't seen, I Wania o 2 184 186 26 40 cheapo rock flicks like Mist Rock'n'Roll during the fifties. Th Buddy Holly Story takes some rath inexplicable liberties with the roc pioneer's biography: where in th movie Buddy courts his future wife ui der relatively ordinary circumstance the real Holly actually proposed to h the day they met-a ready-made piec of Hollywood tomfoolery if ever then was one. Despite its smaller quotient of a curacy, American Hot Wax is smoother, slicker piece of filmmakin The Buddy Holly Story is a medium rare patchwork job from beginningt end, with the'exception of Gary Busey crackling intensity in theltitle role. Bt both films capture the flavor-if not th essence-of their music's explosiv spontaneity. In the opening of Budd Holly, Buddy and his group are broa casting a country number locally fro a roller rink when the camera sudden jets around them and they ignite a ve sion of "Rock Around With Ollie Vee. What ensues is fairly commonplace f tijsort.f,scene.the kids go beser 6 16 20 148 48 65 71 28 176 110 121 18 126 93 152 117 85 123 37 29 77 104 107 125 142 82 122 167 173 180 3 17 109 27 39 51 64 139 154 187 178 159 s ? t.. . . .4 . . .....t#e4k '# ,* ..k+.... . .fR_ .... ..--< r . npk * py