The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Thursday, February 22, 2018 — 5
“Sometimes we just look at each
other and ask, ‘What would Big
Bird do?’”
This is the question Pete
Holmes, creator and star of HBO’s
comedy show “Crashing,” and his
writers ask themselves when they
don’t know where to go with his
character — a clean and somewhat
naïve version of his younger self,
navigating life and laughter in the
brutal world of show business.
Holmes recently talked to The
Daily via a conference video chat to
discuss the show’s second season,
his experience in comedy and
what it’s like to relive his own life
through the show.
The loveable “Sesame Street”-
esque
aspects
of
Holmes’s
character
are
what
makes
“Crashing” special among other
shows of the same “comedian’s
life” type like “Louie.” He’s
completely genuine as a person,
fallible and sometimes not even
that good at comedy. But these
chinks in his armor are integral to
the show’s overall flavor, bringing
a fresh perspective to a story many
comedy fans are already aware of.
Holmes is really good at telling
bad jokes, making his character’s
newbie
status
on
the
scene
believable and infusing a youthful
bounce into the show. “Crashing”
follows this fictionalized version
of Holmes through his struggles as
a comedian coming up in the New
York scene after his wife leaves
him, literally crashing on other
comedians’ couches as he tries to
make it in the tough club scene.
Holmes says he “wants to take the
struggle of doing stand-up and
add on top of it as many relatable
jokes and situations as possible.”
The show definitely achieves this,
making the difficult journey up
comedy’s ranks understandable
from an outside perspective and
focusing in on the humanity of it
all.
The first season of the show,
which came out last spring, laid
the foundation for an interesting
look into the realities of a young
comedian’s life. Holmes’s own
experiences are the basis for
“Crashing” — a series of emotional
and professional ups and downs
that keep the viewer engaged
and invested in the show’s plot.
He created “Crashing” with the
guidance of co-producer Judd
Apatow (“Knocked Up”), who
helped to balance the show’s
narrative to create something
unique. After his first endeavor — a
talk show on TBS called “The Pete
Holmes Show” — Holmes says he
asked himself, “What is the story
that is kind of the most personal to
me, that only I could tell?” His life
was somewhat of a rollercoaster,
Holmes reflected.
“Well, I was raised religious.
I got married when I was 22.
My wife left me when I was 28,
and then I really started trying
to become a stand-up. I was like,
‘That sounds like a Judd Apatow
idea.’” Holmes flew out to New
York for what he says was “15
minutes” with Apatow while
he was filming Amy Schumer’s
“Trainwreck,” a meeting which
would prove integral to the show’s
creation.
The balance between drama
and comedy is what really stands
out about “Crashing,” especially
in its new season, which currently
airs on Sundays at 10:30 p.m. EST.
Holmes says Apatow is the real
master behind this equilibrium.
“I basically tell him what really
happened in my life and he figures
out how to make that funny,”
Holmes said. “I’ll tell him for
example, ‘There’s a lot of solitude
and eating Chinese food,’ and he’ll
be like, ‘OK, you can do that for like
a scene, but you have to work at
Cold Stone Creamery.’ So I’ll give
him credit on that one.”
The second season of the
show tackles more existential
and serious topics than the last,
exploring addiction with frequent
guest star Artie Lange (“The
Howard Stern Show”) in the
episode “Artie” and the battle to
maintain faith in the spotlight
with magician Penn Jillette in
the season’s premiere “Atheist.”
These themes of self-discovery
and realization give a new edge
to Holmes’s character, bringing
him from “Big Bird” to something
else — a poignant representation
of what it means to change while
pursuing your dreams.
Pete Holmes on reliving
his own life on ‘Crashing’
CLARA SCOTT
Daily Arts Writer
HBO
MUSIC ALBUM REVIEW
In a trend of music videos
that have literally nothing to
do with the song, The Chain-
smokers’ video for “You Owe
Me” starts off with two solid
minutes of mundane house-
work. Singer Andrew Tag-
gart vacuums, washes dishes
and mops a spotless expanse
of tile while staring blankly
into the camera as Alex Pall,
the other half of the duo,
wipes a suspicious splotch of
blood off of the stairs outside
and irons a pair of pants.
What’s the deal? Some
greater commentary on how
EDM-pop musicians are
normal people too? Pall sets
down a footstool, then deftly
uses it to right a crooked pic-
ture. Taggart lights candles
slowly and robotically, all
the while gazing at the
viewer with that same blank
stare. A wide shot shows
viewers that he’s standing
behind a table filled with
MUSIC VIDEO REVIEW: ‘YOU OWE ME’
“You Owe Me”
The Chainsmokers
Disruptor Records
DISRUPTOR RECORDS
The
end
of
Feb.
and
beginning of Mar. are always
nostalgic for me. The sky is gray,
the snow is melting, the green
that’s been hidden all winter is
slowly beginning to make its
resurgence. Everything seems
melancholic, but hopeful.
I first listened to Lorde in
the backseat of my best friend’s
mom’s
Honda.
We
were
approaching our sophomore
year of high school, a time I
now refer to as the summer of
“Royals.”
“You know,” my best friend
said, “she’s only a year older
than us.”
“Royals” played on repeat
for
the
entirety
of
that
summer,
through
poolside
speakers and the car radios of
the upperclassmen who drove
us around our small suburban
town to bonfires and 24-hour
Coney
Islands.
It
became,
to me — the naïve, careless
15-year-old that I was — an
anthem for the things I could
not articulate.
Pure Heroine came out that
Sept. My best friend and I
danced around her bedroom
in our homecoming dresses to
“Ribs,” shouting over the music
that we should’ve ditched our
dates and gone to the dance
with each other. We played “No
Better” at every party, drunk
off of wine coolers purchased
by somebody’s mother.
That Oct., I fell into a
youthful, foolish kind of small
town love that only a 15-year-
old could fall into. He was two
years older than me and the
captain of our high school’s
soccer team: the quintessential
teenage daydream.
He and I didn’t have much
to do but drive around and go
for milkshakes at 3:00 a.m.
Somehow, though, this was
enough. It was magical. It
was a feeling I couldn’t put
my finger on until I heard
“400 Lux,” a song that, then,
explained all of the magic
in our naïve relationship’s
mundanity; and now, it makes
me feel 15 with butterflies in
my stomach again.
Four years later, which might
as well have been a lifetime,
I listened to Melodrama for
the first time in the backseat
of a taxi. I was leaving New
York City, the place I’d called
home for the summer and had,
in turn, fallen terribly in love
with. I listened to the album
in order, and then over again.
I cried hysterically the whole
time.
I cried because Melodrama
was the first album I’d ever
considered mine — one that
validated
feelings
that
I’d
felt
on
a
conscious
level,
and
simultaneously
pulled
feelings that I’d never felt out
of the depths of my 19-year-old
psyche.
Each song was a masterpiece.
Each song held a piece of me
in it. Each song made the
messiness of what it means to
be my age OK. Every time I’d
become infatuated with the
wrong person, every inevitable
end of a relationship, every
night that ended in a failed
quest for belonging — it was all
OK.
Lorde’s music has carried me
through my naïve adolescence
and
is
still
carrying
me
through my messy transition to
adulthood, through backseats
and boyfriends and long nights.
I’d never quite understood that
music has the ability to save
someone. But at this moment, if
there’s anything that I can say
that I understand completely,
it’s that Lorde’s music saves me
every single day.
I recently witnessed a professor
of
music
accuse
a
famous
20th-century composer of having
“ruined music.” The class was
discussing important orchestral
works by 20th-century composers,
and a student mentioned Boulez’s
“Le Marteau sans Maitre,” a
blistering avant-garde work filled
with rhythmic and harmonic
dissonances. The professor claimed
that he hated Boulez, that Boulez
should not be studied as he had
ruined music.
Boulez has always been a
controversial
figure
among
20th-century
composers
and
critics. His death in 2016 left
behind
a
controversial
legacy
for musicologists, scholars and
classical
music
aficionados
to
pick apart. As a conductor, Boulez
went through periods in which he
conducted music primarily from
the classical era and periods in
which he conducted music almost
exclusively from the modern era.
As a writer and critic, Boulez
published articles both in defense
of Stravinsky’s “The Rite of
Spring” and in condemnation of
Schoenberg’s (radical) late works.
His life as a critic and conductor was
riddled with these inconsistencies.
As the composition professor
explained to the class, Boulez
“ruined music” in that he advocated
for a complete rejection of the study
of the Western canon of classical
music. His famed summer program
in Darmstadt was conceived almost
entirely in this vein: He refused
to
study
any
non-modernist
compositions, claiming that the
modernist
movement
required
a
rejection
of
the
historical
legacies of classical music and the
use of radical new forms based
on emancipated rhythmic and
harmonic dissonances.
Boulez’s
infamous
article
“Schoenberg
Is
Dead,”
for
example, represents some of his
most
scathing
condemnations
of anything but the most radical
modernist
music.
Schoenberg’s
late explorations of tonal music,
Boulez asserted, had “went off in
the wrong direction so persistently
that it would be hard to find an
equally
mistaken
perspective
in the entire history of music.”
Schoenberg’s
was
erroneously
attempting “to construct works of
the same essence as that of those in
the sound-universe he had just left
behind,” a practice which “led to
the decrepitude of the larger part of
his serial oeuvre.”
“It is time to neutralize the
setback,” Boulez exclaims, and
“grasp the serial domain as a
whole.”
Though
Boulez
may
be
among the strongest examples of
modernist and rejectionist artists,
this idea of rejecting historical
forms is the true mark of an avant-
garde artist. This is the modern
legacy of the avant-garde music: the
desertion of artistic customs that
had developed over generations,
the constant need for radical
innovation and separation from
historical precedent.
Composers such as Boulez chose
to break entirely with conventional
musical forms, writing pieces with
purely abstract titles in which
no note occurs more frequently
than any other note. These pieces
are hard to palate and harder
still to learn to love, especially
for those audiences that do not
have an extensive background in
contemporary classical music.
The same can be said of many
of the avant-garde periods most
famous plays, particularly Samuel
Beckett’s
famed
“Waiting
for
Godot”; while the play has been
frequently cited by playwrights
and other theater buffs for its lack
of plot and intriguing ambiguous
meaning, few modern companies
can sell tickets to productions of
this work.
Modern
artists,
however,
are beginning to find new and
intriguing means of responding
to and shaping this rejectionist
legacy. For many, this involves
using the language of the pre-
avant-garde styles in avant-garde
forms and structures. For others,
this involves using the language of
the avant-garde in pre-avant-garde
forms and structures. In both
instances, however, the influences
of the avant-garde and the pre-
avant-garde are broken up and
juxtaposed, sparking the formation
of unprecedented yet familiar
works.
Modern playwrights are finding
new ways of using nonlinear or
other non-standard forms to depict
classic subjects. Stephen Adly
Guirgis’s “The Last Days of Judas
Iscariot,” for example, used an
undeniably avant-garde influenced
plot structure to reference Biblical
messages
about
the
human
condition. Though these messages
were conveyed through the guise
of a purgatorial trial, they were
conveyed in the language of the
decidedly pre-avant-garde.
Modern composers are also
finding new ways of using non-
standard formal structures as a
means of reinterpreting Classical
concepts and forms. Ted Hearne’s
“The Law of Mosaics,” for example,
uses humorous juxtapositions to
deconstruct standard pieces of the
string orchestra repertoire. The
result, Hearne explains, is a “law
of mosaics” in which the meaning
of the work is derived not through
the standard idea of development
but through the piecing together of
different pieces “in the absence of
the whole.”
Modern opera also shares many
of
these
tendencies,
although
the avant-garde period has had
significantly less of an effect on the
genre. John Adams’s many operas
about recent historical events, for
example, use standard operatic
form and convention to interpret
previously non-operatic thematic
material.
Jonathan
Dawe’s
“Cracked Orlando,” on the other
hand, does the opposite — Grazio
Braccioli’s libretto, used in Vivaldi’s
opera, is fragmented using fractal
geometry into a series of ideas
between onstage and projected
dancers and singers that interact
throughout the work.
Our modern idiom is best
described as an idiom lacking a
defining characteristic: an idiom
derived entirely from fragmented
ideas taken from other historical
idioms. Unlike the avant-garde
period, we are no longer obsessed
with the creation of new forms
or the rejection of old forms. We
are obsessed, instead, with the
deconstruction of old ideas into
new forms.
It is the nonlinear narrative, I
believe, that will be the defining
legacy of the 21st century. Just as
the 20th century was the century of
“rejection,” the 21st century will be
the century of juxtaposition. Just
as Boulez “ruined music,” so are
today’s artists de-contextualizing
and
reinterpreting
historical
practices to the point that they
cannot be recognized for what they
were originally intended to do.
Our century, furthermore, is
defined by benefits of the internet
and the many different types of
music that we can all access. Music
cannot be ruined because it can no
longer be strictly defined. While
Boulez and the avant-garde artists
may have pushed the performing
arts in a radical new direction,
the internet has allowed us to
experience both new and old art
— the rejected and the radically
new. We are experiencing a radical
democratization of art: A period in
which the artists and artistic work
that we consume is defined almost
entirely by our own taste, not that
of an artistic program director or a
museum curator.
Boulez may have changed music
but he did not “ruin” it. The same
can be said of every artist that
came before him, and the same
will be said of every artist that
comes after. He did redefine art,
however, and we are still struggling
to understand the full implications
of the avant-garde movement he
propagated.
The Man who Ruined
Music
DAILY COMMUNITY CULTURE COLUMN
SAMMY
SUSSMAN
MUSIC NOTEBOOK
On Lorde, love & spring
JENNA BARLAGE
Daily Arts Writer
The balance
between drama
and comedy
is what really
stands out about
“Crashing,”
especially in its
new season
already blazing candles — a
séance? Some sort of weird
Ouija ritual?
The video’s bloody cli-
max reveals that dinner
guests are in fact the dinner.
Funny. A bit overplayed,
maybe. Kind of like a blood-
ier version of The Ready
Set’s music video for “Love
Like Woe” from 2010. We’ve
gotten to the point where
blood has almost lost its
shock value, and although it
makes for a relatively light
hearted spin on what might
otherwise be a drawn out,
overdramatic piece about
mopiness and vengeance, it
isn’t exactly unique in the
grand scheme of music vid-
eos. “You Owe Me” itself is
smoother and slower paced
than a lot of the duo’s pop
hits, including the obnox-
iously infamous “Closer.”
Maybe this video heralds a
new era for The Chainsmok-
ers: less of that snappy four
chord progression primed
for radio release and more of
something different. We’ll
have to wait and see.
- Sam Lu, Daily Arts Writer
TV INTERVIEW