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When talking about films I saw as a pre-pubescent adolescent, I think one of the most important would have to be Ray Harryhausen’s Clash of the Titans (1981). Now technically, keeping inline with the logic of discussing film, I should have said Desmond Davis’s Clash of the Titans because he was the director, and ever since the 50s and 60s we have gotten in the habit of attributing films to an author, which usually results in naming a director (it can be a problematic habit that I posted about in some detail here ). But Clash of the Titans is not Desmond Davis’s film, it is Ray Harryhausen’s film, and it is sadly his very last film before he retired, effectively closing the chapter on a very rich and personalized contribution to cinematic special effects.

This film holds a special place in the pantheon of formative films for me, and it needs to be contextualized a bit with some details of my experience back in the early 80s with movies, theaters, and long and lazy Summers. This film was released on June 12, 1981, and I saw it soon after that and it was amazing for some very specific scenes that I will talk about shortly. But it wasn’t until the Summer of 1983 that I really was able to “see” this movie. You see, the theater up the block from my house, the Baldwin Century Theater, was one of a classic chain of single house theaters that represents for me everything that was amazing about movie going. It was a huge auditorium by contemporary standards, and by 1983 it was in serious financial difficulty given that movie theaters on Long Island had already begun literally splitting these single screen cathedrals in half to show two films simultaneously. The logic of the multiplex was beginning to supplant the single house theaters all over the country, signaling the end of a movie theater experience that had been around since the depression (the Baldwin Century Theater was built in 1933).

As a result of the larger trend towards cultural sterility and alienation, the Baldwin Century Theater’s economic struggles led the management to experiment a bit with imagining itself as a re-run theater. For the Summer of 1983 they got prints of pre-released films like Clash of the Titans and Star Wars (more on Star Wars in another formative 10 post) and showed them for the entire Summer for 75¢ a pop. That was an admission fee that even an eleven year old could easily afford, and it resulted in my sisters and I going to the theater regularly for almost two months. We must have seen Clash of the Titans and Star Wars twenty times that Summer, and watching the two films together like that was, in retrospect, an interesting juxtaposition of the future and the past of special effects in cinema. What’s more, by this stage of the theater’s rapid decline the management seemed to understand they were finished, so neighborhood kids who were just a little older than me, and that I knew, were effectively running the movie house. It was almost as if it were a fun place for kids to go and hang out, and while I never watched either of these films all the way through after the fourth or fifth time that Summer, there were scenes from each I never missed.

And that brings me to the actual film, which was by no means a great film if one were to examine it in terms of narrative or acting. And while there was no shortage of great actors in the film, including Laurence Olivier as Zues, Maggie Smith as Thetis, and Burgess Meredith as Ammon, the actual screenplay and narrative thrust were not remotely adequate to the British thespian firepower at hand. These actors were just names on a card that meant nothing to an 11 year old (and having seen the film lately the acting is by no means remarkable), what was memorable however was Ray Harryhausen’s fantastic creatures. The film brings to mind for me a phrase Tom Gunning used to define the very beginnings of film: “the Cinema of Attractions.” This concept refers to early years in cinematic history, roughly from 1894 to 1908, when film was in an almost constant state of transformation, and its logic wasn’t so strictly dominated by any one particular sense of narrative or formative style. To quote Gunning:

[Cinema prior to 1908] did not see its main task as the presentation of narratives. This does not mean that there were not early films that told stories, but that this task was secondary, at least until about 1904. That transformation that occurs in films around 1908 derives from reorienting film style to a clear focus on the task of storytelling and characterization.

Rather than using film for outright entertainment purpose, the “cinema of attractions” offers the viewer something different: “the chance to take a journey somewhere else-a place to which he will likely never physically travel…films sought to transport the viewer through space and time, rather than to simply tell a story,” as Lila E. Stevens points out in her discussion of documentary film here. And while Clash of the Titans is anything but a documentary film, and I am admittedly re-appropriating Gunning’s phrase to define the earliest moments of cinema for my own nostalgic purposes. That said, I do think that a number of the formative films in my life have consistently represented a series of scene-based attractions that overpower the the narrative to focus on a moment that captures the dynamic qualities of the medium as a space for wonder. And it’s for this reason that I claim privilege to extend the scope of such a term, or at the very least an excuse for commandeering it.

The narrative of Clash of the Titans seems to be the occasion for Ray Harryhausen to transport the viewer to a fantastical time and place with his animated creations that themselves mark a point in time that seems irretrievable beyond the celluloid it was captured on. And for me remains one of the most formative films in my early career as spectator for this very reason. I wasn’t at the time so concerned with the some structuralist approach to narrative and story, I was eleven and fascinated by the visual magic that was in motion on the large screen before me. Kinesis in the raw! How can I forget the animated vulture carrying Andromeda’s spirit to meet Calibos in the Swamp of Despair. Or Calibos himself (a Harryhausen original), whose mangled, hybrid form became the symbol for me of the Satyrs I would later read about in Greek Mythology, or the goat-footed balloon man whistling far and wee in e. e. cumming’s “In Just Spring.”

Calibos was a memorable villain, not because of anything he did or said, but because of how he looked and how he moved, how he was animated. Much the same can be said of Pegasus or the three-headed dog Cerebus or the growth hormone spawned Scorpions. But without question the greatest single scene in Clash of the Titans that may in and of itself be responsible for the impression this movie has had on me for all these years is when Perseus encounters and beheads Medusa. Now I fully understand that Harryhausen’s greatest single contribution to special effects in film comes almost twenty years earlier in Jason and the Argonauts (1963) with his animation of the fighting Skeletons scene (I’ve linked to this work of genius below). Acknowledging that, his animated gorgon will forever hold the honor of his greatest work for me. Not so much because I can’t objectively see that is far less complex and innovative than the fighting skeletons, but rather it was a ten minute scene that embodied the idea of movies as a series of attractions, each of which are often far greater and more powerful than a narrative whole.

Medusa Scene from Clash of the Titans

It is the narrative that we are ultimately trained to appreciate when we come to study in school, but the scenes of attraction are likes lines of visual poetry that contain those moments of pure and utter imaginative magic. It was the Medusa scene in Clash of the Titans that turned me on to Piers Anthony’s Xanth novels and got me playing Dungeons and Dragons. It was this scene that ultimately encouraged me to read Edith Hamilton’s classic work on Greek Mythology, and it was this scene that made me re-think the far more contemporary special effects I had been introduced to years before in Star Wars (the Sand People had a somewhat similar effect on me as Medusa had–which is interesting for me to consider). It was also this scene that made me think having a quiver of arrows strapped to your back was possibly the coolest thing in the entire world, not to mention having snakes for hair or being able to turn others to stone with a dirty look.

So, when I talk about Clash of the Titans it’s not so much about a movie as it is about a series of scenes that were meticulously handcrafted in their effect on my psyche. Medusa as a character may even be laughable to all those CGI babies out there, but it suggests one possible aesthetic of many, and a very individualized one with the distinctive marks of its creator. A form of craftsmanship in special effects (a world that has changed drastically) that we aren’t likely to see ever again. And while I may be wrong with this sentiment, the fact that Hollywood is re-making Clash of the Titan—which is slated for a 2010 release date—may allow me to think more closely about the transformation of special effects in cinema over the last thirty years, along with Harryhausen’s place in this history.

Interestingly enough, Harryhausen didn’t retire in 1981 because he was ready to stop animating, but because he was pushed out of the business. No one was interested in his work anymore given the rise of George Lucas’s visual effects house Industrial Light & Magic, the shop that revolutionized special effects in a little film you might have heard of called Star Wars (1977). Which, I imagine, has to be my next formative 10 post given how this one leaves off with a certain amount of unfinished business. But before I end it, here is the Skeleton Fight scene from Jason and the Argonauts, just in case you have haven’t seen it before. Just the way they come out of the ground is simply amazing. Though, you may want to get the DVD, or wait for it to come out in a single screen theater near you. Enjoy!

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Sparked on by encouragement from the great Brad Efford, I decided to finally finish up part 2 of my impressionistic history of Skateboarding series which has been neglected for more than eight months now. If nothing else, I figure part 1 won’t be so lonely anymore and yet another abandoned blog draft will be set free.

Skating in the 1980s was predominated by vert skatng, whether it be pools, half-pipes, quarter pipes, or small launch ramps. And while everyone vaguely recognized that the freestyle stuff Rodney Mullen was doing was re-inventing skating for the street (check this video out see just how amazing he was and is), I’m not sure that many kids at the time were that interested. In fact, street skating (as opposed to freestyle) didn’t really emerge as a popular alternative to ramps and pools until later in the decade. To quote Wikipedia’s Skateboarding article:

Since few skateparks were available to skaters at this time, street skating pushed skaters to seek out shopping centres and public and private property as their “spot” to skate. Public opposition, and the threat of lawsuits, forced businesses and property owners to ban skateboarding on their property. By 1992, only a small fraction of skateboarders remained as a highly technical version of street skating, combined with the decline of vert skating, produced a sport that lacked the mainstream appeal to attract new skaters.

It’s interesting that a series of forces came to re-frame skating in the early 90s as an outlawed, low-profile, and anarchic hobby, returning it in some ways back to the late 70s. The difficulty of accessing ramps or the resources to build your own given the risks of lawsuits meant that skating ultimately returned to the street—and that’s pretty much where it has remained ever since—despite the fact that during the mid-90s skate parks were being funded, built and maintained by local municipalities all over the country (fodder for part 3 of this history). An approach to skating as a community recognized sport that is a 180 degree shift from the vilified local response of towns and cities to skateboarders during most of the 80s.

Peralta’s documentary Dogtown and Z-Boyz (2001) nails how skateboarding during the 70s was re-imagined by writers like C.R. Stecyk as an expression of a disenfranchised generation that transformed the existing urban spaces they inhabited into a canvas for the aggressive, momentary art they performed. As we move into the 1980s, we might be able to trace another shift that is framed powerfully in yet another documentary: Helen Stickler’s Stoked: The Rise and Fall of Gator (2004). This film examines the way in which the popular and commercialized era of vert skating transformed skateboarding from a kind of disorganized, anarchic collective of urban youth skating in backyards to a relatively organized, popular sport of cult celebrity. Stickler’s documentary examines Mark “Gator” Rogowski’s rise to cult stardom followed by his quick descent punctuated by a brutal murder. The film is an allegory that provides an interesting “sequel” to Dogtown and the Z-Boyz with a focus on the darker forces at work in the popularization and commercialization of skating. The clip below includes the first eight minutes of this documentary, featuring Gator on the phone from prison apologizing for the murder while examining the impact of skateboarding on his identity.

From Stoked: The Rise and Fall of Gator Rogowski

The documentary goes on to talk about the importance of image during the rise of the vert skating scene during the 80s. And for many this is most powerfully exemplified by Vision Street Wear, a subsidiary company of Vision Skateboards that mass marketed and mainstreamed the “alternative” qualities of skating which helped to turn it into more of a fad and popular trend than a transgressive youth movement (as John Hogan notes in the clip below, skating became somehow more palatable when it could be bought on the racks of Nordstroms). And during the mid to late 80s on just about every street corner you could see a white, red, and black Vision Street Wear shirt which was not only ugly, but all too often a sure fire sign of who was and wasn’t a skater.

Stoked frames the commercialization of skating in the 80s and the exploitation of style and the cult of personality. The clip from the documentary below traces a commodification of the dissent during the mid to late 80s that had distinguished skating during the late 70s and early 80s. As the great Steve Cabellero notes in this clip: the Vision skate team had money, backing, and success, but provided its skaters will little or no guidance. A telling remark that Vision was a parasitic enterprise that was more concerned with exploiting the sport for money than fostering the people that where making it for them.

From Stoked: The Rise and Fall of Gator
 

And as an added bonus, here is a Vision Street Wear TV Commercial from the mid to late 80s, I include it just so that you can get the full effect

But it would be unfair to focus entirely on Vision and Gator here to characterize skate teams and skaters during the 80s. For teams like the Bones Brigade, under the tutelage and direction of Stacy Peralta, was the most important and exciting group of skaters during this period. And Peralta himself was not only one of the sports earlier heroes, but he moved smoothly into the position of championing the sport while at the same time carefully documenting its history. In fact, my own history of skateboarding might be traced alongside Peralta’s early use of low-budget videos to popularize the sport. During the early 80s (circa 81 or 82) my brother and I built or first half-pipe, which was terrible but fun nonetheless. Yet, we didn’t really start skating until we starting building our second half-pipe which we finished in 1983, right around the time we got our first VCR, which immediately introduced us to the world of skate videos. These low budget videos, often no more than 30 minutes, opened up a powerful lens on the world and art of skating for us.

While we regularly read Thrasher and Transworld, video opened up some new possibilities for seeing and studying the tricks and getting a sense of each skaters individual style. In this regard, the VHS tape was truly amazing. We lived on Long Island, far, far away from the skating center of the world in Southern California. The skate scene in New York was somewhat smaller and quieter, even though there were local spots in the city like the Brooklyn Banks that were relatively famous and made all the better when kids started telling stories about NYC legend Harry Jumonji (who back in the day was said to be able to ollie a trash can, which was nothing short of amazing to me). Nonetheless, there was no infrastructure of skate parks and ramps like they had in California with the likes of Del Mar and Upland, or even in place like Virginia Beach with Mt Trashmore or the metal half-pipe in Texas (can’t remember the name). So video was our way of living vicariously though that scene, and we would watch them over and over to see how they did the tricks. So, like any good piece of nostalgia worth its salt, by memory of skating is deeply dependent on videos, and the video that has stuck with me more than any other is the Bones Brigade Video Show (1984), which encapsulates the best elements of skating during the 80s, and makes for a great 30 minutes history.

The logic of the video is simple, it follows Lance Mountain around the streets of Los Angeles for a day. He travels around Santa Monica and Venice on his skateboard and his peregrinations give way to features all the Bones Brigade skaters as well as the popular forms of skating at the time. What’s most memorable about the video for me is Lance Mountain’s street skating journey, which is probably what is most laughable or forgettable for anyone who came to skating much later.

Part 1 of The Bones Brigade Video Show featuring Stacy Peralta taking a skateboard from a TV, and lance Mountain skating the streets and pools of LA:

For Mountain’s tricks would be considered basic by today’s standards, yet his aggressive style and fluid grace are what make him and Steve Caballero (along with Neil Blender) my favorite skaters of the period. And while Tony Hawk’s technical genius is undeniable (particularly at Del Mar in the end of part 3 and the beginning of part 4 of the videos below), his style back then was somewhat robotic (compare it with the grinding fluidity of Steve Steadham, who is the other skater in this scene).

Parts 3 and 4 of The Bones Brigade Video Show featuring Rodney Mullen’s Freestyle skating, Lance Mountain’s street skating, along with Tony Hawk and Steve Steadham skating the Del Mar Bowl:

Watching Steve Caballero, Mike McGill and Lance Mountain skate a half pipe in this video, particularly Caballero (see part 6), was certainly the highlight for me because they were teaching me how to skate my ramp. The focus was more about grinding the space and aestheticizing the tricks with power and style, rather than becoming too focused on the technical acrobatics that came to dominate the logic of vert skating throughout the decade with trick like the 540 and 720 aerials, which kinda of equated skating with high diving twists.

Part 6 of The Bones Brigade Video Show featuring Steve Caballero, Mike McGill and Lance Mountain skating a half-pipe:

Now that scene may be four minutes of the best skateboarding ever: honest, aggro, and beautiful all at once. And more than that, it highlights the modest reality of a few skaters in their backyard (albeit these guys are professionals) skating within a communal space trying to encourage one another, push the envelope, and generally have fun. It was a scene and a moment I deeply identified with and tried to reproduce again and again in my own backyard (and on a few occasions with some moderate success).

Bonus Footage:

If you skated during the 80s, then Chris Miller’s slam at Upland might be one of those terrible memories you keep with you.

Vision Psycho Skates, a 30 minute video with some great footage of early 80s vert skating

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Fifteen seconds into this clip comes one of my favorite lines from one of the best films of the last century, Night of the Hunter (1955). The other eight and half minutes is just a bonus

BEN HARPER: “What religion you profess, preacher?”
HARRY POWELL: “The religion the Almighty and me worked out betwixt us.”

I could go on all day about this film, it is a masterpiece on so many levels. But I’ll spare you the verbiage (at least for now), and encourage anyone who hasn’t yet seen it to get it, and anyone who has to watch it once again. It never disappoints.

As a side note: Interesting how the annotations for this YouTube video were used to let the viewer know that Part 1 of of the film was taken down.

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One from the archives for all you fathers out there today. A scene taken from the 1986 classic At Close Range, starring the great Sean Penn, Christopher Walken, and the sorely missed Chris Penn (his death in 2006 hit me kind of hard ’cause I always imagined my older brother was like Sean Penn, and I was more akin to his younger sidekick Chris Penn –and I was very happy with that equation!).

The film’s tagline: “Like father. Like son. Like hell.”
As usual, warning, warning, naughty language Enjoy!

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I had the great pleasure of re-watching one of my favorite films of all time recently with Shannon during our lunch hour. We saw the The Ultimate Director’s Cut version of The Warriors (1979) released in 2005, which I had not yet seen —and I must say the digital transfer of the film is quite beautiful. Walter Hill takes a couple of strange liberties with his classic though, which add nothing in my opinion.

The first is an appended introduction read by Hill that presents the story of a band of ancient Greek soldiers trapped deep in Persia. They had to travel 1,000 miles through hostile territory to get home. Drawing an overt relationship between the mythical Coney Island gang and the the storied struggles of antiquity. Secondly, this version adds several comic book like transitions between scenes which unnecessarily reinforce the unreal elements of this near future urban jungle film. And while they did not cut or re-edit any scenes, the intrusive introduction and comic book animations are rather facile in their not so subtle insistence on Hill’s inspiration for creating the film (which in many ways seems more like a retrospective reading to me). The video below features two brief examples of the additions:

Shannon suggested my annoyance with the added features may have everything to do with an unhealthy attachment to the “original” or “true” version of the film I saw back in the 80s, and an essentialist insistence on some kind of purity….fair enough–she’s probably right, as she so often is. That being said, how do additions like these add anything to the narrative by so awkwardly insisting on these roots? I’m not sure, but the film itself stands up beautifully regardless (this print made me once again realize what a cinematic masterpiece many shots in this film are), but given the choice I would much rather see a print like this without all the slick comic transitions and overly earnest Greek frame —does everything have to be explicit to the point where the director feels the need to actually leave his reading on the frames of the film post-facto? The trend in Hollywood to cannibalize itself for ideas and inspiration seems to be moving forward at a breakneck pace, for like Escape from LA (that duck) The Warriors is set to be re-made in LA by none other than Tony Scott. [Wince!]

My bitching and moaning aside, seeing this movie again has inspired me. So much so that I will finally start the formative ten series I promised a while back, which will not follow any particular chronological order, strict posting time line, or generic logic. The Warriors is definitely part of my formative 10, and there were a few things that struck me watching it this time around that might help me think about why this movie was so remarkable to me growing up.

First a quote from a footnote in Frederic Jameson’s The Geopolitical Aesthetic, which while a bit dense when tracing a theory of cognitive mapping and the idea of imagining global space in cinema (I imagine the real point of the book ), has a bunch of interesting readings of some great movies. I particularly liked Jameson’s reading of Cronenberg’s Videodrome (1983), which might be a very interesting film to re-watch these days to think about the questions of media, power, control, and psychotropic conspiracy. He also has a great reading of the paranoia films of the 70s, with an intriguing discussion of filming the spaces of power and capital using Pakula’s All the President’s Men (1976) as a fascinating example. Anyway, the footnote in question is a throw away thought Jameson had, that I found interesting:

I have here omitted gang war films, which, at least during a certain period might well have been read as visions of internal civil war, see, for example Escape from New York (Carpenter, 1981), The Warriors (Hill, 1979) Fort Apache, the Bronx (Petrie, 1981). On my view these films shade over into what is called, in Science-Fiction terminology, ‘near future’ representations and this distinctive genre in its own right, its form and structure sharply distinguished by the viewer from ‘realistic’ verisimilitude or immanence. (The Geopolitical Aestheic, Pg 83 note 15)

I think this quote initially struck me because it references three movies that I loved. And more than that, it gathers them together as a particular genre with the suggestion that they may reflect a vision of “internal civi war” in urban centers like NYC. In fact, it is the idea of an internal civil war that Jameson suggests here, that has informed the way I think about much of the urban jungle films made from the 70s and 80s through the 90s and up and until now. They often reflect a kind of struggle at work within the invisible underworlds and subcultures of any given city, that is akin to a city at war with itself, factions of power (wealthy developers, the agents of gentrification, the minions of capital) versus those being marginalized, displaced, and dis-empowered.

In fact, this struggle brings me to one of the most important and powerful elements of The Warriors, and what I firmly think marries a revolutionary message with an unbelievably cutting edge and imaginative aesthetic that reflects the times. The gangs make this movie, when I first watched the Warriors in the early 80s (made available for multiple viewing for the entire family thanks to the VCR) we were all intrigued by the gangs and their crazy get-ups. There was something for everyone: the Turnbull ACs were the skinheads; High Hats played Soho artist thugs; the Gramercy Riffs married Black Panther militarism with some impressive kung-fu (long before the emergence of WuTang); the Baseball Furies whose psychotic face paintings were only outmatched by their Yankee pinstripes and Louisville Sluggers; and we shouldn’t forget about the Lizzies who were a band of badass chicks who my four sisters immediately related to and started imitating. The gangs’ outfits, their territorial presence, and the fact that the beginning of the movie brings them all together in one place, frames the hopeful, revolutionary moment of this internal civil war, just in case you forgot, let’s review Cyrus’s speech to the nine delegates from all of the cities gangs in Van Cortland Park.

Sixty thousand soldiers, and only 20,000 police in the whole town. This is a call for organized civil war, this is a grass roots movement to take over New York City, the disenfranchised of NY who “got the streets” realizing their power, an coming together under the great Cyrus who realizes the problem of the past, “the man turning them against one another.” It is a remarkably revolutionary moment in this movie, Cyrus as a political revolutionary hearkening back to the major political figures and orators of the 60s titans like Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., Robert and John F. Kennedy with some engaging rhetoric like “Miracles is the way things ought to be!” (which makes this video featuring the speech from Cyrus on top of images of Obama that much more intriguing).

There is also Cyrus’s insistence on counting, math, and the power of numbers, not to mention his ability to succinctly put his finger on the gangs’ historical problems of the past rooted in their limiting logic of turf, property, and those 10 square feet in front of them. What this scene also does brilliantly is recognize that figures who foment political transgression and social organization must ultimately be assassinated. I think this scene alone ranks this as one of the best films ever, as reference back to the real violence of the 60s (despite all the peace and love talk) and the mathematical argument that the street people could be more powerful than the institutions. An entertaining and revolutionary scene all at once, informed entirely by the uniquely different gangs that coalesced into a larger force of self-aware power.

But let’s face it, that self-awareness doesn’t last, and the struggle to get back home to Coney frames a majority of the action, the run-ins with various gangs, and the compelling narrative thrust to make it back to home base safe and in one piece. There are many great scenes along the way, and I could list a whole ton of them, but in fact Jameson’s idea of internal civil war, and the emergence of an organized network of disenfranchised working together to rule New York is in many ways a truly poetic moment. And while I’ll focus on that currently, I guess in the end the reason why I saw this movie so many times to reflect on that scene so often has everything to do with the gangs and their identities, reflected in everything from their race, ethnicity, gender, clothes, credibility and carriage. So before I end this one, let’s remember why we watch The Warriors again and again, it’s all about the gangs, as the trailer knew all too well at the time of its release.

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I don’t know why I even attempted to find a musical anthem, it just ain’t my strength. So I am going to turn to something I am a little more familiar with: bad movies.

[All sorts of expletives in the following clip, you've been warned.]

Used Cars (1980) beautifully captures the DIY spirit of EDUPUNK, I mean come on, $12.95 for a pacemaker? You can’t beat it with a stick, or even a fire hose even.

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Here is a great scene featuring a preaching teetotaler (Reverend Wainscott) from Sam Peckinpah’s brilliant The Wild Bunch —definitely in my top five, maybe top three films of all time.

Man I love the way this reverend talks. It is such a melodic, syncopated idiom, almost song-like. I will do a presentation with this accent and intonation at some point soon. I love the way this reverend preacheth. The transcript is below if you couldn’t make it out, it’s a bit hard because it seems so antiquated.

Do not drink wine nor strong drink, thou nor thy sons with thee least ye shall die. Look not thou upon the wine when it is red and when it bringeth his color in the cup when it moveth itself aright. At the last, it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder. Now folks, that’s from the Good Book. But in this here town, it’s 5 cents a glass. Five cents a glass. Does anyone really think that that is the price of a drink?

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