THE MOVIE COACH

Robert McKee is the screenwriting guru, the undisputed king of screenplay workshops and the drill instructor at Hollywood basic training. He's written books (the highly influential "Story") and conducted expensive workshops all around the world extolling the virtues of his method--a deep analysis of film structure and application of craft to storytelling. McKee has a parade of successful followers extolling his virtues and throwing rose petals in his path. If movies are just a popcorn conveyance system for you, this may not be interesting, but if you've ever thought you could write a movie better than the one you just sat through you could do worse than listening to Coach McKee. He'll tolerate no fools. With a stern bearing, he'll run you through a rigorous obstacle course that includes serious study of successful films, and breaking down story structure like a cheap watch--so if you don't want movies "demystified" or are afraid to lose the magic that sweeps you away (i.e., the plot points that play you like a flute) than you might want to skip McKee. However, if you truly love movies and want to know more about the process of creating a moving story, than listen up. Don't be a rube on the midway. Learn some of the tricks. This is interesting stuff.

KING OF SURF GUITAR

Dick Dale is the King of Surf Guitar. Born in Boston, May 4, 1937, of Lebanese and Polish / White Russian descent, Richard Anthony Monsour combined musical elements of his European background (think balalaikas and mandolins) with the California beach scene (his family moved to LA when he was young) to create Surf Rock. He may have been forever linked to the sixties surf scene, just another track on a mixtape, if Quentin Tarantino hadn't used his edgy instrumental "Misirlou" in the film "Pulp Fiction." Suddenly, his music hit an entirely new generation of listeners, including folks who didn't know surf from turf. This is summer music. Picture yourself shooting the curl or just sitting on the beach enjoying an ice cold Corona. Enjoy!

NOUVELLE VAGUE

Jean-Luc Goddard was a firebrand of the Nouvelle Vague--the New Wave--of french cinema, a movement of the late fifties and early sixties that also included Francois Truffaut, Claude Chabrol, Eric Rohmer and Jacques Rivette. Perhaps the most experimental director of the bunch, Goddard made films that were discussed like revolutionary tracts and high art by cafe intellectuals and students in the early sixties. Some of his films made it across the pond to US art house theaters and college campuses. Edgy, playful, occasionally breaking down the fourth wall and winking at the camera (literally), his films influenced many directors worldwide. Probably most famous for "Breathless" (À bout de souffle, 1960), in which a sleepy-eyed Jean-Paul Belmondo played out film noir fantasies with an easy coolness--with a slouched hat and a perpetual cigarette dangling from his giblet lips--and became the Bogart of the New Wave.

Belmondo and Jean Seberg in "Breathless"

Godard was political, and used film for art as well as agit-prop, especially later. He sided with students and workers in the 1968 May uprising, and chronicled the cultural revolution as well. Film had a new language, he seemed to say, and can--and should--be more than merely entertaining--it can aspire to art. It can be humane and urgent and challenging. It can abandon the old conventions.

Jean-Luc Goddard

The film clip is from Bande à part ("Band of Outsiders," 1964), a film about a heist, ostensibly (more like a film about film, you might say), in which a trio of young people hang out, flirt, smoke, ride around Paris, and plan a robbery. This scene comes in the middle of the film, a set piece that Godard toys with, removing the sound, adding a voiceover, allowing it to go on for a long time, commenting on itself--but these couple minutes capture the louche life of these wannabe criminals. Cool, young and in love. Daring. Taking risks. Smoking. No wonder other directors were influenced by Godard. Watch the dance sequence in "Pulp Fiction" (1994) and you'll see Goddard all over it. (Tarantino makes no bones about it, and named his production company after this film.) Look at the films of Jim Jarmusch, particularly "Stranger Than Paradise" (1984), and see Goddard. Look around you.

A story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end... but not necessarily in that order. -- Jean-Luc Goddard

THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT & FASCISM

Chris Hedges is a war correspondent, a journalist and the author of some very good books. If you haven't read "War is a Force That Gives us Meaning" run out and pick up a copy. In this interview, Hedges argues that the Christian Right is a fascist movement--and he doesn't use the term lightly.

HEATWAVE!

This is one of the greatest summer songs of all time, "Heatwave" by Martha and the Vandellas. What exactly is a Vandella? The announcer finally gets to the bottom of it. Relieved to have some kind of answer, this starched shirt finally gets out of the way and lets them sing. The song sizzles like Georgia pavement. School's out, summer's here, and you feel like dancing. As far as heatwaves go, we're getting tired of the one we're stuck in. Our fans are working overtime. Last night it was too hot to sleep. Today you'd better steer clear or be ready for a wall of crankiness. Consider yourself warned.



A totally different song for a heatwave. Instead of a dance beat, this song has the sluggish tempo of an overhead fan when it's too hot to sleep. Dylan captures that long dark night of the soul. His sense of humanity has gone down the drain. Time has worn him out. You get the feeling he hasn't failed to write a pop song--the world has failed him. This is his testimony concerning a sickness. More Camus than Motown, this tune comes on the radio when you're laid up with a fever in Algiers wrestling with meaning and nothingness.

Shadows are falling and I’ve been here all day
It’s too hot to sleep, time is running away
Feel like my soul has turned into steel
I’ve still got the scars that the sun didn’t heal
There’s not even room enough to be anywhere
It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there

STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN

An overplayed staple of classic rock radio, loved and loathed in equal measure for its overwrought theatrics and pseudo-Tolkien lyrics, "A Stairway to Heaven" is now impossible to hear objectively without conjuring up the drug-addled excesses of the 1970s, the TV-tossing antics of royally rich rockstars, the queasy stream-of-consciousness juvenelia-filled notebooks of adolescence, the metal spandex ratted-hair spawn the song inspired, and the loyal legions of hollow-eyed fans higher than paper kites weeping laughing flashing weirdly playing air guitar and pondering the inscrutable lyrics as the drugs kick in.

"If there's a bustle in your hedgerow don't be alarmed now..."

WTF does that mean? Nobody really knows. Bearing that in mind, and anticipating some initial resistance, let's revisit this swaybacked warhorse once again and try to ride it to greener pastures with the help of an unlikely rocker, Dolly Parton. Dolly is cool, and she does a cool version of the song (along with every cover band in every bar in America). Listen, children, as if for the first time, to this classic performed by a simple country gal from Sevierville, Tennessee, and then by the big bad band that made it famous in the first place. Dedicated to Wendy, with love.

ADVICE

Kurt Vonnegut offers some sage advice--ostensibly about writing, but really about life--in a lecture entitled, "How to Get a Job Like Mine." Vonnegut was a tricky writer, a conjurer of worlds and a secret sharer. He was a lifelong pessimist who somehow offered hope. And he knew about semicolons. Don't use them.



And so it goes.

For the rest of this great speech, look here.