“Movies Rock” Turns Down Its Musical Connection

anono | December 7, 2007 11:05 am
billmurray.jpg

And now it’s time for another installment of Rock-Critically Correct, in which the most recent issues of Rolling Stone, Blender, Vibe, and Spin are given a once-over by an anonymous writer who’s contributed to several of those titles–or maybe even all of them! After the click-through, he examines the Conde Nast Movies Rock supplement:

“Well then,” YB thought once he noticed that recent issues of both Vanity Fair and GQ included a standalone supplement titled Movies Rock, “so much for those ‘Music Issues’ Vanity Fair put out every year!”

This year has seen VF publishing a “Green” issue and a Darfur-themed issue, but the annual issue devoted to musical figures that interest editor Graydon Carter–inevitably featuring a lavish group cover portrait by Annie Leibovitz–was absent in 2007. Perhaps, since the “recording arts” component of the mainstream culture industry is quadruple fucked, Mr. Carter has little incentive to lend his imprimatur to it any longer. If Vanity Fair is going to go to any trouble emphasizing music, it must be now tethered to Hollywood, Mr. Carter’s favored constituency. Apparently, publisher Conde Nast intends put out Movies Rock annually, and it will round out what would be Vanity Fair‘s 13-issue year.

So, then! Apparently, “Movies Rock”! And, according to a cover line, “Hollywood Turns Up the Volume.” And evidently because movie people “rock” and because Bill Murray will be in the upcoming film City of Ember, a cover image captured by Mark Seliger presents Murray portraying the Vegas Elvis, mid-karate chop. Movie stars “rock” so much that it’s better that an actor who has lately served as muse to YB’s least favorite filmmaker ever–rather than a musical artist–should appear on MR‘s cover.

Similarly, “Double Threats,” one of two “photo portfolios” that VF typically includes in themed issues, includes images of musicians acting in recent movies, like Charlotte Gainsbourg, Chris Brown, Corinne Bailey Rae, and in one shot seemingly every rapper who has been in a major film in the past four years. Otherwise, you have portraits of musically inclined actors like John C. Reilly, Billy Bob Thornton, and celebrated songstress Minnie Driver.

Carter’s point-man for MR is Mitch Glazer, a producer/screenwriter (he produced Lost in Translation but, more importantly, he also wrote Scrooged, starring… Bill Murray!!!) who’s married to Kelly Lynch (the hawt, non-Heather Graham junkie from Drugstore Cowboy), was a Crawdaddy stringer in the ’70s, and is now one of Carter’s Hollywood cronies. Probably not coincidentally, Glazer and Lynch were picked as one of VF‘s “best-dressed couples” earlier this year. Glazer labors mightily in his editor’s letter to reinforce the idea that 2007 is a big year for musical cinema, citing La Vie en Rose, Sweeney Todd, and I’m Not There (“hey,” he half-jokes, “maybe this isn’t crass ad scam after all”) before teasing many of the articles in the mag. One of which is “Soul Survivors,” his own gee-whiz essay recounting his role in the creation of Martin Scorcese’s Shine A Light, which captured two Rolling Stones shows at NYC’s Beacon Theatre, a 2,800-capacity space Glazer describes as a “small, sweaty venue.” Glazer never describes what his specific contribution to the film was, busy as he is with hosannas to Scorcese and the Stones.

So off we go! In a front-of-book featurette titled “LA Rock City” we learn which Hollywood clubs actors and actresses have been known to frequent. In “When Stars Record,” David Cross and Demitri Martin critique the music of Bruce Willis, Jennifer Love Hewitt and Dogstar, thus shooting fish in a barrel; Cross, as ever, is smug in the manner common to many fortysomethings secure in the belief that culture has been on a downward spiral ever since the demise of Hüsker Dü. We also revisit 1992’s signal stoner parlor trick in “Dark Side of Oz”: VF staff writer Jim Windolf proposes new film/music mash-ups, including Gone With the Wind/James Brown’s Revolution of the Mind and Idiocracy/ Britney’s Oops!… I Did It Again. Leaving aside Windolf’s cutesy conceit, YB always wondered why folks did flips over the Floyd/Oz synchronization, since the film is an hour longer than the record: are you supposed to put on Animals or Wish You Were Here for the remainder?

Then we come to “The 50 Greatest (Mostly) Rock Soundtracks of All Time.” YB has to disclose a conflict of non-interest, due to the fact that he’s never had any affection for the “my mix-tapes are representative of my superlative taste” aesthetic of the Pulp Fiction (No. 4), Rushmore (No. 11) and Garden State (No. 43) soundtracks. So he’ll just say that nothing therein will give Conde Nast readers pause–although, in a soon-to-be post album era, it may have made more sense to come up with a list of top music moments in film, or something similar.

Finally, we get to the feature well, which, given that deeply reported longform journalism and think pieces are VF‘s bread and butter, seems half-baked. James Wolcott, a trusted VF contributor and a gifted critic, takes on Ken Russell’s 1975 film Tommy in “Tommy Dearest”; he admits that he hadn’t seen the film until this year, discloses his Who fandom, notes Russell’s aesthetic inclinations, mentions that the idea of a revolutionary “rock messiah” didn’t seem far-fetched in 1969, concludes that Ann-Margret is the true star of the film, and otherwise carries on as if the piece needed to be written very quickly.

Seeing as YB believes that the film isn’t very good at all (he doesn’t think much of the entire Tommy franchise anyhow), he thinks a better subject for Wolcott would have been the entire subgenre of phantasmagorical “rock” films that probably involved rather a lot of cocaine use on set: not just Tommy, but Nicholas Roeg’s The Man Who Fell To Earth, Alan Parker’s The Wall, Sidney Lumet’s The Wiz, Brian DePalma’s Phantom of the Paradise… fuck, throw Michael Schultz’s infamously shitty Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in there!

That said, YB very much digs two deeply reported features: Sam Kashner’s “Fever Pitch” explores the creation, production, and aftermath of Saturday Night Fever, and James Kaplan’s “The King of Ring-A-Ding-Ding” tells the story of Jimmy Van Heusen, the co-songwriter of “Love and Marriage,” “Come Fly With Me,” “High Hopes,” and “All The Way,” as well as Frank Sinatra’s lieutenant in all things involving booze and broads. Both are excellent: Given that each is concerned with Hollywood lore, is packed with insider-y dirt and are otherwise rigorously detailed, it seems likely that both were commissioned for Vanity Fair itself and not a fly-by-night supplement designed to attract additional ad revenue. Read ’em!

Easily the most useless piece herein comes from the pen of a woman who has Frankenstein-stitched P.R. tidbits for Vanity Fair for years, resulting in a column that makes Larry King’s legendarily static USA Today commentary read like fookin’ Hendrik Hertzberg. Yes, dahlings, it’s Lisa Robinson, the Liz Smith/Cindy Adams of rock!

Many moons ago, this woman palled around with Mick Jagger on the New York Post‘s dime, and she has since proffered her artless assemblages in VF. In “Rock and Reel,” she notes that a bunch of rock biopics are in production and also that pop artists are involved in upcoming films; each citation gets generally one sentence each, and to call her ability to craft a prose transition “rudimentary” would be far too generous. She also mentions that Bono appears in Julie Taymor’s Across the Universe, which came out three months ago. YB wonders if Robinson or a proxy has registered the domain name “2girls5donkeys1VFeditor1cup.com,” anticipating a time when Mr. Carter ever decides to call time on her far-beyond-phoned-in claptrap.

As it happens, several hours after this review’s publication, CBS will broadcast Movies Rock, which was held in Los Angeles last Sunday and features Beyonce, Fergie, Usher, will.I.am, Carrie Underwood, and Mary J. Blige all singing movie songs. None of these artists appeared in the issue. If a representative of Conde Nast Media Group doesn’t much care for YB’s musings, that rep should take solace in the fact that he notified many readers of a televised event that seems very underpublicized.