Wow....
Ya know, I love living in Austin. All the time I get asked about when I’m moving to Los Angeles, when I’ll move to New York or some other... REEL city. And my answer is always the same.... NEVER.
Why I stay in Austin is for many many reasons, but one of them is the Alamo Drafthouse and the program of films and filmic events they show.
For example, instead of ‘just’ showing THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY, when they showed it, they served ‘Franks and Beans’ with the show. When they showed FASTER PUSSYCAT KILL KILL, they brought in not only Russ Meyer, but Go-Go dancers and a groovy stripclub band. When they showed THUNDERROAD, your admission came with a complimentary bottle of THUNDERBIRD.... yeah, sure it tasted like diesel, but ya know... as that liquid fire poured down my gullet and the skanky fumes incinerated my nasal passages... it just felt PERFECT for that moment in time.
That’s what the Alamo Drafthouse does, they create a perfect movie going experience that doesn’t stop with the screen. Whether it’s THE TINGLER with the rubber nurses outfits and insurance forms or the upcoming Bruce Campbell event... well, it’s just super cool.
What I’m writing about tonight though isn’t one of those events, it’s not a revival of some ‘cool’ 1970’s or 80’s flick. It’s part of a program series that the crew at the Alamo Drafthouse has cooked up and been running for about 6 or so months now, and it is AMAZING.
Mr Alamo (Tim) has been bringing into town old silent films. Now, I know that immediately turns many of you people’s interest off, but Tim has added a twist. You see, Austin has a moniker as “The Live Music Capitol Of The World” and well... we have more cool bands in Austin than you could shake a stick at. Usually you can find a good 15 newspaper pages of gigs being played in town a week, and that doesn’t count the shows that are only advertised on telephone polls and shop windows. Austin has a beat, and Tim has decided to let that beat pulse into the silent films he’s bringing to the Alamo.
I’ve seen all three of the events thus far: NOSFERATU, METROPOLIS and BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN.
METROPOLIS came first, and it was of course a natural. ST37 had an amazingly weird and cool ‘trippy’ sound to their score, it worked great in some sequences, but in the tender moments... well it didn’t quite work for me.
NOSFERATU was next, and this was a major triumph. BROWN WHORNET was the band and they scored with fantastic music, beautifully elegant and quite cool and moody at other points. Some of the music was actually ‘spine-tingly’ and sent shivers through the audience. Wonderful experience.
BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN was the last one I saw in this format and it was a bit of an experience. Out of all of the nights it was the most experimental, THE GOLDEN ARM TRIO was the band, and they scored the film with a bit of a Henry Mancini feel. They went against type for the film, and it actually worked wonderfully.
BUT TONIGHT...
Tonight was PERFECTION. Nothing I can say could adequately do justice to how PERFECT the screening of Buster Keaton’s THE GENERAL was tonight.
Here is a film that is 72 years old. SEVENTY-TWO loooooong years old. Generally considered one of the greatest films of all time (unless you look at the AFI list, those bastards!!!).
I saw the film with Father Geek, Johnny Wad and Quint. The four of us range in age from 17 to 27 to 32 to 53. Each of us come from radically different backgrounds. Quint was raised suburban and on cable and Blockbuster video. Johnny Wad was brought up in the backwoods of a small pimple of Texas. Father Geek grew up in the fifties... about as far away from the reality of this film as ya could get. And me, I was raised to be a geek.
All four of us came out ecstatic. GUY FORSYTH & his band were supreme tonight. The score they constructed tonight fit this film like a surgeon’s glove. Perfect, and tightly. Like some sort of RY COODER / MAX STEINER score it blazed it’s way into our hearts. Everything from electric banjo sounds to amazon jungle rain sticks to playing a sawblade to harmonica to a washerboard apron to a slide whistle to guitars and basses and on and on and on.
First off you have a brilliant movie. THE GENERAL is my personal favorite Buster Keaton film. Some prefer SHERLOCK JR, but THE GENERAL is about as perfect a film as you could hope to get. Watching the film you can understand just why JACKIE CHAN stands back in awe of Buster. The great Stone Face is GREAT with this flick. The timing impeccable, the pacing non-relentless, and unfortunately... this is a review less for you, and more to document a perfect performance and exhibition of film.
If I had the money, I would take GUY FORSYTH and his band into a studio, and record their performance with THE GENERAL. Then issue not only an AMAZING DVD that could also have a feature length video of the guys scoring the movie live, but a pristine print of the movie. THEN I would release the score and watch people go nuts for it.
Just so you know, I drank only pure sparkling tap water tonight, no booze, no inebriation. I’m drunk instead on this experience. One of the greatest nights of movie going I have ever had.
Making strong use of DIXIE and the BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC, just as Steiner used the cavalry music and his own original indian themes in THEY DIED WITH THEIR BOOTS ON... and the results were earth-shatteringly great.
When Guy began playing the sawblade... my god, I just started crying at the perfection of sound and silence.
Some purist may yell and scream that it isn’t the way to see the film. That it is akin to ‘dubbing’ a foreign film. To them I have to say... You were not there tonight.
I came away stunned by a movie I have watched perhaps 30 times already. If it had been showing again, I would have lined up again. It was that good. I wish that everyone that loves films could have been with me in that auditorium tonight to simply witness the perfection of the theatrical experience.
I guess I should probably speak about the film a bit, I’m sorry if I feel a bit flabbergasted, but that’s how I feel. I’m shocked by the experience tonight, and when thinking of writing about THE GENERAL... well the same things pop into my head that have been said by a thousand other reviewers and film commentators. It is a pure work of genius.
If it were filmed today, they would have cast an Adam Sandler or Jim Carrey type. The dialogue would have surely been stronger... or would it? You see, in a silent film you are forced to react to the sheer facial movements, the body language.
For example... One of my favorite scenes in THE GENERAL takes place after Buster Keaton has liberated his dear Annabelle Lee from the evil Yankee forces. It is raining, they are sitting upon a log, her head is resting upon his chest and he has that great straight face of his chiseled out of 72 year old nitrate lying atop her head, when she thanks film for being so brave as to come all the way into enemy territory to rescue her. Now we all know that Buster was really after his beloved Train Engine named General, and her rescue was quite by accident. In fact, in the course of the whole film, he never once knew she was in danger.
Well, Keaton looks at some off camera object and realizes... the ummm... advantages that her ‘belief’ puts him in, and with out a dialogue card on screen... and in pure silence, we hear, in our minds, Buster say.... “..........” whatever. I don’t know what he said, but I know the exact intonation with which he said it. From his body language, the way his chin was down and his neck stretched and he sat up straight and beat his chest ever so slightly. Yes.... I know exactly what he was doing, and because it was silent... it was beautiful and not crass. It wasn’t ruined with an exaggerated drawl. It wasn’t hampered by a pause or a lingering ‘rrrrrrrrrr’. I heard the dialogue, and so did every other individual in that theater tonight.
There wasn’t a yawn once. Noone ever looked at their watch, and there wasn’t a single piss trip. Toes were tapping, heads were bouncing and the applause lasted for around 4 minutes solid. Wow... what a night to watch a movie!!!
Surely there must be other theaters out there in the universe somewhere that can go from showing a sold out screening of THE GENERAL with live PERFECT musical accompaniment to 30 minutes later showing Underwater Hard-core Porn Trailers followed by H.O.T.S.... Isn’t there? Is this unique to the Alamo Drafthouse? Is the Alamo Drafthouse the only uber fucking cool theater joint in the United States? God I hope not. But if it is, I’m glad it’s here in Austin.
