Chuck Prophet’s Top movies of all time + rock and roll. By Brandon Kim on 10/23/2009

This appears in its original form on IFC.Com here: http://www.ifc.com/blogs/indie-ear/2009/10/chuck-prophets-top-movies-of-a.php

I asked Chuck Prophet if he could list a few of his favorite films for me while he’s finishing up a documentary about the ill timed (swine flu) trip to Mexico he took to make a record.  Read this bad ass list he wrote up and if you need a breather, give a listen to this jam, “Sonny Liston’s Blues,” off his record ¡Let Freedom Ring! - due out Oct. 27.  It’s gonna take an aspirin!  ******************

Chuck Prophet:

These are movies that I’ve lived with and return to again and again. I’ve included a couple of small movies so good that if you’re like me, you can’t help but wonder, “Why aren’t there more movies like this?” I have to root for the underdog. That’s how I’m wired. And remember, in the immortal words of Ray Charles: “It’s easier to bone the President’s wife than to get a movie made.”

Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989)

Cliff Stern: “A strange man… defecated on my sister…”

Wendy Stern: [pause] “... why?”

It’s really two movies: One about a struggling documentary filmmaker (Woody Allen) trapped in an unhappy marriage and in love with a woman who doesn’t love him back.  And in the other, a classic noir story where Martin Landau is a successful doctor who has his mistress (Anjelica Huston) murdered. And gets away with it.

Some of Woody Allen’s later movies have a rather tossed off feel. But this movie is like a can of concentrated orange juice. Concentrated. You know, like before you add the water? It’s almost three movies in one. Thick. Dense. Bullet-proof.

At the end of the film Allen’s character, Cliff, listens to Martin Landau’s character pitch him an idea for a movie. Cliff tells him that in order to make a good film there needs to be some redemption in the story. It’s an achingly sad moment when Landau says to Allen, “You watch too many movies, this is about real life.” Just one of the many moments that stack up to make the torn half of the Admit One worth having.

And remember: “If it bends, it’s funny. If it breaks, it isn’t.”

I’m down for any Woody Allen. I’ll see anything he does. I’m sure people will be quick to disagree but I think Woody is incapable of making a bad movie. The same way Bob Dylan is incapable of being uninteresting.

All The President’s Men (1976)

“Print that baby!”

At one time I wanted to be a journalist. Took a few college classes before I got frustrated looking for parking and starting cutting class and going to matinees. Seeing this movie as a child with my mother probably had as much to do with my romantic notion of journalism as anything. Just the roar of all those typewriters rat-tat-tatting away in unison at the Washington Post hooked me. Or maybe it was the glee in hearing Jason Robards growl: “Where’s the fucking story?” Every scene is a diamond. It’s brief, but the Lindsay Ann Crouse (David Mamet’s first wife) scene where she has maybe three lines, is a movie unto itself.

It’s fascinating to look back at this now as a kind of period piece. As news papers are folding and Investigative reporting is dying all around us. Syndicated articles are passed around like cheap whores and papers can’t afford to keep on a paid staff to do any serious reporting. One more reminder of the apocalypse, now we live in a time where opinion and entertainment rule over truth.

D Tour (2008)

I was really knocked out by this informative rock documentary directed by Jim Granato about Rogue Wave drummer Pat Spurgeon who was born with one kidney that’s failing and needs another to keep living.

I learned a lot. Like being on the organ recipient list for a new kidney is no cakewalk. And being in a touring band while on dialysis is no day at the beach. It’s involved. I won’t tell you how this story ends but it’s a heart wrenching journey for sure. If you haven’t already, you might want to consider checking that box on your driver’s license.

Walking out after watching it, I thought about all the useful things I’ve learned watching movies:

1) Eric Stoltz picking a safe in “Killing Zoe.” You’ve got to have the right tools. You’ve got to have a talent for it. But it can be done if you know what you’re doing, apparently.

2) The proper way to spy on someone and get it on tape. Gene Hackmen following Frederick Forest and Cindy William’s conversation in the middle of San Francisco’s Union Square with a shotgun microphone in “The Conversation.”

3) There’s a right and a wrong way to talk to a girl after she catches you tricking her in to touching your penis by burying it like a prize in a popcorn box. Just ask Mickey Rourke! (“see Diner”). If you know what you’re doing she won’t even get mad.

4) The lottery-like impossible odds of transcending your background by playing b-ball (“Hoop Dreams”).

Back to “D-Tour.” Warning: there are enough pretty, open acoustic guitar chords and sweet harmonies courtesy of Ben Gibbard (and a host of celebrated indie rock semi-royalty). Enough of that to send you into a diabetic seizure. So, if you’re hypoglycemic, you might want to enter at your own risk.

Chuck Berry Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll (1987)

Chuck Berry: “Don’t touch my amp!”

Keith Richards and a bevy of special guests get paraded out for Chuck’s 60 Birthday concert. But make no mistake: it’s Chuck’s show all the way. It’s the rehearsals where the real action is. And we get to watch. “Don’t touch my amp!” And take a Chuck guided through St. Louis. Chuck Berry is a complicated dude. This movie is endlessly fascinating. Rock and roll is Rock and Roll. And nobody tells Chuck Berry how to play Chuck Berry. Just ask Keith!

Meantime (1984)

I was torn between mentioning this film or the John Cassavete’s film “Gloria” (1980). Ah…. the 80’s. Movies from the drought.

I can still remember stumbling across this film by chance on BBC 4 one night in my lonely room at the Columbia Hotel in London and being completely riveted. There was something different going on here. What I didn’t know was that I was seeing my first Mike Leigh film. And as a bonus, making the acquaintances of Tim Roth and Gary Oldman, with their screen debuts. Something different was going. These weren’t just actors saying lines. They were the characters. Nobody makes pictures like Mike Leigh.

Badlands (1973)

I once read an interview where Terrence Malick said that the cops and much of the cast in this film weren’t actually actors. Anyone other than principal actors were civilians. He found that real people are less vain, he said. Felt less compelled to act. Naturally, the camera captures that. Knowing so was just one sign of Terry’s gift. Another was his amazing ability to have the audience feel - and feel deeply - for the villain.

And when the deputy delivers his line while Martin Sheen is handcuffed in the back seat magic happens: “I’ll kiss your ass if he don’t look like James Dean.” A scene I simply can’t forget. It’s creepy. Martin Sheen gets my vote for sexiest sociopath since Robert Blake in “In Cold Blood” or Tommy Lee Jones in “The Executioners Song.”

Art can do that. Get you rooting for the bad guys.

As a songwriter always on the lookout for something to steal, and shoe-horn into a song, I can’t help but notice the first line in Bruce Springteen’s song Nebraska is the opening scene of the movie, “Saw her standing on her front lawn, just a-twirling her baton…” Close your eyes or keep them open: it’s Sissy Spacek.

Dylan once said, “Oh yeah? Well why not write a song about that guy who went into a McDonalds and blew all those people away? I bet if he could speak from the grave he’d have a story to tell.”

But can you make us care for him?

Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse (1991)

“We were in the jungle, there were too many of us, we had access to too much money, too much equipment, and little by little we went insane.”

—Francis Ford Coppola

A documentary that follows the making of “Apocalypse Now.” Heart Attacks, millions of dollars in budget overages, lead actors fired after shooting starts. Now that makes for a great movie.

Having gone over budget making records as much as I have, I studied the scene where one of Francis Ford Coppola’s writers talks of quitting the project only to have the director convince him that he was making the first film that could go on to receive a Nobel Peace Prize and like that he’s back on the gig. That’s genius. Worth studying.

It was made by Francis Ford Coppola’s wife, Eleanor Coppola. She said somewhere that she suspected Francis gave her the gig just to get her out of his hair. Turns out “the brains behind pa” made a movie even more fascinating, informative, and intriguing than “Apocalypse Now.”

Ghost World (2001)

Seymour: “I can’t relate to 99% of humanity.”

A coming-of-age teen flick movie that pivots around Skip James’ “Devil Got My Woman” can do no wrong with me. And shouldn’t with anyone else.

Some kind of cosmic coincidence that mirrored my own world: I once heard Lorrete Velvet sing that same song at the Antenna Club in Memphis and also became obsessed. It’s a kind of blues Rosetta Stone. Everything else makes sense after you figure out what language it’s written in. Here’s a movie that was after my own heart.

I love the scene where Thora Birch’s character Enid after buying a blues compilation LP from Steve Buscemeis’ character at a garage sale takes the record home and hearing Skip James sing Devil Got My Woman” becomes totally obsessed and returns the next weekend to the garage sale. Asking Steve Buscemi’s character: “Do you have any other records like that?”

He says, “There are no other records like that.”

Last I heard, the writer (Daniel Clowes) was banging out a screenplay about three Mississippi kids who spent a good seven years in the 1980s making a shot-for-shot remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark. That’s mystifying. Anyway, “Ghost World.” It’s sad when friends grow apart, especially if your best friend is Scarlet Johansson. This movie nails that feeling.

Bonus: This is where we got the expression Blues Hammer. I don’t know how many people saw this movie but Blues Hammer is now part of the musician’s lexicon. It’s part of the vernacular. Like “gig-atoni”.

Rumble Fish (1983)

“California’s like a beautiful, wild… beautiful, wild girl on heroin…”

This is the movie that turned me on - made me aware what cinematography is or what it could be. Francis Ford Coppola was interviewed in a local rock magazine here called Bam Magazine when this came out. It was there I learned about the lengths they went through to make this movie look the way it looked. They actually painted the shadows on the ground. Lots of slo-mo rolling clouds, smoke and tweaked out Foley. It turned me on to moving making, to understanding that they’re made.

If you read the S.E. Hinton novel, you’d know that the Motorcycle boy was deaf. Explains why all the sound is muted when our soft spoken hero Mickey Rourke speaks. It’s disorienting.

Matt Dillon as Rusty James, Tom Waits as Benny. Diane Lane? Dennis Hopper? It’s a feast. The soundtrack by Stewart Copeland and Stan Ridgway is brilliant as well. Really ahead of it’s time.

Der amerikanische Freund (1977) The American Friend

“What’s wrong with a cowboy in Hamburg?”

This is Wim Winder’s take on “Ripley’s Game” Starring Bruno Ganz and Dennis Hopper as the sinister Tom Ripley, a loner cowboy making his way around Hamburg dealing in forged paintings, consumed with existential angst and all the freak you’d expect in this sideways take on classic noir.

And the soundtrack is right there, “Too Much On My Mind” by The Kinks. Bruno’s character Jonathan is humming it to himself while he works building frames in his little shop. It’s a beautiful moment. Counterfeit as art and art as counterfeit. Fucking rock and roll.

The Object of Beauty (1991)

“I’m worth it.”

Commodities broker, Jake, has just lost his nest egg. Now he and Tina (Andie MacDowell) are slumming it in a chic London hotel they can no longer afford. Or at least not willing to admit they can’t afford it. They get it on, and Andie MacDowell’s character takes forever to get off—but says, “I’m worth it.” Who’s to argue?

I’m not sure I’d want to hang out with these people. They’re nasty. But they’ve got each other. Even if they bounce a check here and there,—one has to do what one can to keep his gal in designer threads. But it’s a rare film. They don’t make movies about these kinds of people very often. Maybe we’ll see more of these recession blues films in the future. If I’m to believe what I read on the web, I hear Carrie Bradshaw’s new husband Big runs into financial trouble in the currently-in- production Sex and the City sequel. But heck, what would I know about that?

Paris, Texas (1984)

“What the hell?” (First line of the script.)

“Paris, Texas” came later for Wim Wenders. That was a kind of John Ford ass-buster for my generation. And here another European gently reminds us what’s great about our culture and nails it to a t-bone steak. Back then, I don’t know what they called this kind of thing. I guess they call it Americana now. I suppose this movie is really just a western. It ends with our hero Travis played by Harry Dean Stanton walking off in to the sunset, and those four notes Ry Cooder plays over and over? ‘Nuff said.

Michael Jackson visits Recycled Records - by Andrew Rush

Last night after we closed the doors at the record store, three men came to
the door. Two looked like rich gay guys dressed in dark clothes and moussed
hair, but the third guy was dressed up like an Arab sheik, covered from head
to toe. He had sunglasses on and he had a cotton veil pulled across his
face. He was in all white. One of the guys was asking us to let them in. We
began to brush him off, but then he insisted, “It’s very hard for him (the
sheik) to shop.” Anyway, it was starting to seem weird, so Mike, my
colleague, let them in. It almost felt like we were going to be robbed.

They wanted to know right away where the spoken word section was. I showed them to the back of the store and when the veil came away and the sunglasses came off and I saw that incredible face, I thought it was a gag. His facial hair looked like stage hair and he had a bandage on his incredibly thin nose. But, when I heard that voice ask, “Do you have any more Edgar Allen Poe,” I knew that it was really and truly the King of Pop, Michael Jackson. When I returned to the front of the store, his companion said to us, “I think you know who it is by now” Anyway, that began an hour and a half of my night with Michael Jackson a night in which I shared with him some of the songs which I love the best and he shared with us his inimitable sweet, boyish presence. I still feel really weird, but I assure you, I shit you not!

I’ll just have to get to the memories randomly, as the magic really hasn’t had time to coalesce in my mind. He kept singing that line from “The City of New Orleans” by Arlo Guthrie, “Good morning, America, how are you∑” He smelled kind of like a Catholic priest. They all were wearing cologne. But Michael had the scent of the super-rich, reclusive count. We played one of his favorite songs for him at his friend’s request: “Lightning Strikes” by Lou Christie. We didn’t have any records by the band that does his favorite song, The Cowsills. He asked for Free Design but we didn’t have it. He also wanted 101 Strings. He bought a lot of Harry Belafonte, Sarah Vaughan, Shirley Temple, boys’ choirs, Disney stuff, and a lot of 60’s pop.

I asked him at one point if he wanted a Smurfs record and he said, “No, thank you.” He said, “Do you have that song “Paper Cup” by the Fifth Dimension?” He also bought a bunch of old nude stuff-clipped out pictures from nudist magazines and old shots of posed nude women. I asked him if he wanted any of these old TV theme paperbacks we had and began to read off the titles. “I’ll take the Brady Bunch!” he said. He also bought a big poster of Burt Bacharach. His friend wanted only sealed records, but Michael didn’t seem to care about condition or which issue it was. In fact, he didn’t seem like a record collector at all. He just seemed like he was buying a bunch of records on a lark. At one point when we had taken him down to the basement to look through all of the junk, he turned and asked me, “Do you like Diana Ross and the Supremes’ music?” I said that I did and I asked him what his favorite song was by them. He said “Stop In the Name of Love”, I think. I told him that mine was “I Hear A Symphony”, and he said that he loved that one, too. He said he thought it was a shame that their reunion tour that was supposed to happen didn’t because they couldn’t get along.

At that point, he told me that he really wanted an old portable record player and I said that I had one at home that I would sell to him. He asked me, “Can you get it?” So, I ran home to get it and brought back a Wandering Stars CD to give him, as well. He asked me how much I wanted for the record player. I asked, “How much do you want to pay me for it?” He said, “Well, you have to name a price.” I told him $15 and it was a deal. He paid with a $100 bill. All he had were $100 bills. Then he asked me, “Does it work?” I told him it did and he asked me, “Can you plug it in?” The crazy thing was that I had run most of the way home and it is practically a 90-degree angle straight uphill. So, when I got back to the store, I kept coughing and I thought to myself, “I gotta cool it, or Michael’s not gonna want to be near me anymore!” Because at that point, I had touched him. I had gently held his arm as I had directed him toward the stairs when we were going down to the basement. But, he really didn’t seem like a germ freak at all. He was really normal in that respect. In fact, he wasn’t imposing at all. He was a guy who you just wanted to be nice to! I played him Bertha Tillman’s “Oh My Angel” and Walter Jackson and “Can You Hear Me” off of David Bowie’s “Young Americans.” I called him Michael and he would avert his eyes and smile. When I gave him the WS Cd, he asked, “Is it copyrighted?” I said yeah and he said, “Good.”

He autographed a record for each of us that worked there. Mine was “Thriller.” When Mike, my colleague, held up a copy of the soundtrack to “The Wiz”, one of Michael’s companions (one who said they had been friends since they were 12 years old) said, “I know a very talented young man who was in that movie he played the scarecrow.” At this, Michael smiled shyly. Another time, this same guy was showing Michael a CD by some female vocalist. I couldn’t see who it was. Anyway, he was saying, “Remember, we were on stage and she was holding you and she wouldn’t let go?” Michael didn’t seem to remember and his friend continued, “Remember, we were there with Liz?” Michael then said, “I’ll have to see the tape.”

You know, his skin was very white. He was wearing makeup, like foundation. And, his eyes were really wide. He was wearing jeweled, woven black leather shoes. I couldn’t really see his hair, but it looked pretty long and straight. The crazy thing was indeed, that we were hanging out with Michael Jackson, but even more, that he was dressed up like a sheik the whole time! Also, we were really hanging out with him. It wasn’t like we just shook hands backstage or something. I was bugging him about whether he liked the songs that I wanted him to like just like I do my friends! Super. He was super sweet—hard to stress that enough. When they were getting ready to leave, they asked for wet paper towels with a little soap to wipe off their hands with. I said yes, I have to wash my hands about twenty times a day working in a dirty record store. Michael said, “You should get some HandiWipes; they’re really great. Better yet, Baby Wipes.” Anyway, I’ll probably remember more, but I will say that after they left, they were going to a Mexican restaurant in Hayward.

Mexico City

http://twitpic.com/3ojg6 - In 1951, a doped to the gills Burroughs recklessly shot and killed his wife here behind this black door. 3:44 PM Apr 20th from TwitPic

Steve says I should make an Elmo, rather than Emo record—“it’s just one extra letter and there’s a built-in audience”.2:17 PM Apr 19th from web

. Listening to Ezra Furman and compiling my big fat 1979 new wave sack of sh*t mix tape for my journey. 5:15 PM Apr 20th from web

Chuck Prophet is in Mexico City. Three hours away by plane, but might as well be the other side of the moon. 10:43 PM Apr 22nd from web

. Staring out the window at the cars passing back and forth. I lose count of the VW Bugs. It’s an endless sea. 9:33 PM Apr 23rd from web

is talking to himself in the bathroom mirror. The recording gods are angry. What have I done to upset them? 10:23 PM Apr 24th from web

. Mexico City cancels all public events to fight flu. It’s a ghost town. Justin says: tell those interns to wash their hands twice(!) 6:28 AM Apr 26th from web

Deadly flu virus, power goes out mid-take, studio blows up two hard drives. All in all I’m a charmed SOB. 6:47 AM Apr 26th from web

Out here half past nowhere Mexico City. The “big shitty”. Used to think w/ tape rolling I was a desperate mother. I ain’t done yet. 6:54 PM Apr 26th from web

Can I have an outside line? http://tiny.cc/X0mbB 8:28 PM Apr 26th from web

Bordering on paranoia here. But I do my part and dutifully don the mask. Relax, Mexico introduced chocolate to the world! 7:12 PM Apr 27th from web

More power failures, and 6.4 earthquake mid take. Stellar day. Recording gods smiling down. Taco’s on a picnic table in the courtyard too. 7:24 PM Apr 27th from web

Last night lay sleepless. Swarm of bats flying out my brain like some Goya etching. Tonight smiling like an idiot. I’ll miss this place.10:46 PM Apr 28th from web

. Tight band. Great feel. Time: I’d like to find the dude that invented that, and see what he’s working on now. 8:29 AM Apr 30th from web

. Cutting the last song: “Leave the Window Open” right now. Please no more jokes about ‘avoiding Mexico like the plague’. 2:41 PM Apr 29th from web

. Pass the Colgate. This mask doesn’t smell so hot. Christ, what a guy has to do to fit in down here. 2:58 PM Apr 29th from web

. Chuck’s Excellent Adventure heads to the Airporto. We hear they’re screening folks, taking their temperatures. 6:38 AM Apr 30th from web

. Andy told Dan Penn I went to Mexico. Dan says: What for? An upholstery job? 7:19 AM Apr 30th from web

  I’ll miss staff at Estudio 19: The humor, smiles, kindness, glasses of water, and perfectly timed coffee’s in the booth. Da whole enchilada .about 2 hours ago from web