The Rise And Fall Of Madchester
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Tuesday, 15 June 2010
The Last Director
Dennis Hopper, 1936-2010. Portrait by Kris de Witte for Sight & Sound
After the success of ‘Easy Rider’, Dennis Hopper took to the Peruvian jungle to unlock the cinema’s own doors of perception in ‘The Last Movie’. Brad Stevens reconstructs the late actor-director’s raw findings
The success of Dennis Hopper’s The Last Movie (1971), his follow-up to Easy Rider (1969), can best be gauged by calculating the extent of its failure.
Apparently intended as a deliberate provocation, an anti-establishment ‘happening’ designed to kill off Hopper’s career as a commercially viable director, the film languished in distribution limbo after Universal refused to release it (despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that it won the Grand Prize at the Venice Film Festival). It turned up for a handful of UK screenings in the early 80s, made two appearances on Channel 4 later in the decade, then once again vanished into the marginal world of illicitly exchanged video recordings and illegal internet downloads.
I was among those Hopper fans who recorded the film off Channel 4, and watched it perhaps a dozen times over the next few years, becoming increasingly fascinated by its structural complexity. I’d not viewed it recently for a decade or more – but a few days ago, for no obvious reason, I started thinking about a sequence in which a shot of Hopper running through the street and collapsing on the ground is seen twice, from two different angles. And now comes the sad news that Hopper has passed away, occasioning a stream of tributes and obituaries in which The Last Movie is dismissed as a drug-fueled disaster: according to Ronald Bergan in The Guardian, “the film, made for the stoned by the stoned, was stoned by the critics.”
As the critical response to Abel Ferrara’s New Rose Hotel (1998) – which ends with 20 minutes of what seem to be randomly assembled flashbacks, continuing well beyond the point where the narrative has been resolved – confirms, any American film existing within the commercial field which attempts to interrogate the dominance of narrative codes is automatically regarded as the product of a miscalculation: surely Hopper and Ferrara were trying to tell straightforward stories, and somehow got it tragically wrong? When Europeans such as Godard or Resnais do this kind of thing, it’s assumed to be the result of a consciously intellectual approach; when Americans do it, it’s assumed they are taking too many drugs. We are all studio executives now.
Dennis Hopper in The Last Movie
If there’s a theme running through the seven films directed by Dennis Hopper, it’s the clash between irreconcilable viewpoints and lifestyles: young and old, hippies and straights, punks and rockers, cops and criminals, artists and hitmen, and, increasingly in the later work, females and males. In The Last Movie, the ostensible opposition is between North America and Latin America.
The plot, insofar as it is comprehensible, has an American crew shooting a Western about Billy the Kid in a Peruvian village. Following their departure, a stuntman referred to only as ‘Kansas’ (Hopper) remains behind, and discovers that the villagers are reenacting the film-makers’ activities as if they were part of some elaborate ritual, with cameras and other equipment constructed from bamboo. Kansas is obliged to accept the role of Billy the Kid in this new ‘film’, but fears that the villagers will genuinely kill him when it comes time to ‘shoot’ the scene of Billy’s death.
What happens next is impossible to say, since Hopper allows The Last Movie to play itself out via a series of disconnected shots whose function is rendered obscure. The sequence I found myself remembering appears towards the end, as the narrative has started to break down (you can see it on YouTube), and begins with two shots of children playing on a hill, in the second of which the camera pans slowly away to focus on a landscape.
The next image shows Hopper running in slow motion past a crowd (which watches without reacting, like an audience at a play or film), then collapsing onto a patch of ground covered in what appears to be chalk; after lying in a crucifixion pose for 15 seconds, Hopper stands up and walks away, rubbing his hands to clean off the chalk as he does so. This is followed by a brief (four-second) image showing Hopper falling on the ground (perhaps a reverse angle of the previous image, though no chalk is visible), then a different take of Hopper running in slow motion, filmed from a slightly different angle and interrupted by some almost subliminal black frames on which the words ‘ripped’ and ‘torn’ are visible: once again, Hopper rubs his hands together to clean off the chalk after he stands up, an ‘authentic’ gesture made to appear self-consciously theatrical by repetition. We then return to previous shot of Hopper on the ground; this time, Hopper sits up and pulls a face at the camera, sticking out his tongue.
The next image shows the villagers’ bamboo film-making equipment, some of which is burning; the camera zooms in and out uncertainly, just managing to catch Hopper, who is moving around at the bottom left of the frame.
A card with the words “scene missing” in black against a white background is inserted at this point, followed by a shot, introduced with a slate on which the title ‘The Last Movie’ and the name ‘D. Hopper’ are clearly visible, of a man sitting on a roof holding a gun; the man stands up, and the camera pans away to focus on some scaffolding, then pans back to show the man, who is clearly responding to offscreen direction, striking various poses with his gun. The sequence ends with a glimpse of the Western we had earlier seen being filmed.
What we have here is a remarkably sophisticated essay on cinematic images, on the ways in which an image’s meaning can be changed or redefined by context and editing – even by a refusal of editing, since it is clear that many of these shots were not intended to play in ‘unedited’ form. Our most basic assumptions about cinema are foregrounded and challenged: our assumption that, if two takes exist, only one will be used in the final cut; our assumption that those slates which appear at the start of each take will not appear in the actual film; our assumption that moments in which actors come out of character will be left on the cutting room floor; our assumption that the ‘scene missing’ cards used in a work-print will not be retained in the version shown in theatres. And, above all, our assumption that films which contain narratives (as opposed to abstract or experimental works) will resolve those narratives rather than abandon them at arbitrary points.
Yet what made this sequence lodge itself so deeply in my memory is surely its elegiac quality (underlined by the mournful John Buck Wilkin song Only When It Rains, used on the soundtrack): the sense that this deconstruction of traditional film-making practice is being undertaken more in grief than anger.
Perhaps the real conflict of irreconcilable viewpoints upon which The Last Movie was constructed is that between old and new Hollywood. But it is striking how Hopper’s film contains none of that gleeful joy in the destruction of conventions one finds in similar works by European film-makers, such as Jean-Luc Godard’s Le vent d’est (1970) or Marco Ferreri’s Touchez pas a la femme blanche (1974). Seen from this perspective, Hopper’s return to more traditional forms of storytelling in Colors (1988), Backtrack (1989), The Hot Spot (1990) and Chasers (1994) makes perfect sense. This child of the the studio system – who acted for Henry Hathaway, George Stevens and Nicholas Ray – may have been both that system’s greatest enemy and its most passionate champion.
Brad Stevens @'bfi'
Monday, 14 June 2010
Memories...
wolon Mr Momus, due to soundtrack a film soon, waxes lyrical over the synthetic-orientalist music in the first porn film he saw http://imomus.com/ 
exilestreet @wolon Remind Mr Momus that the Classic Grand in Glasgow was known to one and all as the Classic Gland back then! Kode9
Kode9 is one of the single most influential people in dance music context, thanks to his expansive DJ sets, his flagship label Hyperdub, or his own productions. His A&R abilities alone-- finding and encouraging Burial, Zomby, King Midas Sound, Ikonika, LV, Cooly G, and nearly half a dozen more-- suggests he has rare and consistently accurate vision. As a DJ he also sets the bar for many of his peers, so the arrival of his second studio mix CD-- a volume for !K7's DJ-Kicks-- is no small event.
His first mix was Dubstep Allstars: Vol. 3, released in 2006 in what felt like a very different era. Back then his vision was much more singular, finding the space between dark, synth-lead dubstep and grime instrumentals, interlocked with a raft of bassy DMZ dubplates. Dubstep was just showing the signs of growth to suggest that it wasn't going to remain the tiny niche community it had been for six years.
Fast forward to 2010 and Kode's vision is far more expansive. "I just wanted to do a snapshot of some of my sets from the last year and the range of music I've been playing," he explains. "Once I'd put the tracklist together, I realized it was a bit tense, so I added the interlude in the middle for a bit of fresh air."
As the interlude suggests, it's a mix with different phases and tempo plateaus, yet it is eclectic without falling into jumbled, aimless "anything goes" freestyling. The first half is quickly-mixed UK funky and UK funky-influenced tracks from Ill Blu, Cooly G, Grievous Angel, Scratcha DVA, and Sticky alongside his own "Blood Orange" and "You Don't Wash (Dub)". It's an overview of the driving, percussive seam of UK funky that has proven such a revelation in the last two or three years, swinging the pendulum away from grime and dubstep halfstep plodding back toward danceable grooves without falling into 4x4 stiffness and techno-sterility. There's even a touch of dancehall and South African flavors, from Natalie Storm and Majuva respectively.
The interlude to which he alludes is a bridge of R&B and soul influenced tracks from Morgan Zarate, Rozzi Daime, and J*DaVeY, which hint at Kode's longstanding love affair with acts like Sa-Ra and his links to Flying Lotus and L.A.'s beat scene. What's notable about this diversion is if you look at Kode9's musical path over the last 15 years, from jungle through UK garage, dubstep, grime, and UK funky, they all are local, London-based genres, so it's telling that Flylo and Kode9's musical dialogue and transnational friendship was founded abroad and nourished by a shared international outlook.
"I met Flying Lotus in Melbourne, Australia in 2006 I think, and we've just stayed in touch," explains Kode. "He's got a musical vision which is rare and not just stuck in his own city. All the Brainfeeder crew are an amazingly talented bunch of freaks, and what is cool about the nights, whether the crowds like it all or not, is that, in quite a focused way, really anything goes."
Like his relentless global DJ schedule, the mix soon moves on, upping the tempos and building momentum. For some parts of this phase, he revisits some of the ideas of Dubstep Allstars Vol. 3, finding the synergies between low percussive dubstep (Digital Mystikz' "2 Much Chat" and "Mountain Dread March") and synthy jams (Zomby) or mid-driven grime (Terror Danjah). Also blended here is a very 2010 sub-section, with Addison Groove's pivotal "Footcrab", Kode9 vs. LD's "Bad", and Ramadanman's juke-influenced "Work Them" suggesting new energetic possibilities at 140 bpm, without having to stray into the world of wobble to generate an impact.
Overall it's a very coherent and forward-thinking mix for someone who recently categorized his musical surroundings as a full of "mini micro sub-niche[s]" and in a "holding pattern before something else comes." As complex and fragmented as this sounds, the suggestion that bass-driven music is currently fragmented seems accurate, so a broader question then follows: Is it impossible for audiences to be truly inspired and blown away by this "holding pattern" of "niches"-- in effect a long tail of smaller but collectively inspirational musical mutations-- or does that effect of being "blown away" instead require the coherence that only comes from one core larger scene, with unity of purpose and relative sonic definition?
"Well I'm not blown away by much to be honest," he admits bravely, perhaps a reflection of his famously high musical standards "Although I crave that fix, and that's what drives me to discover music that I haven't heard before, new and old. Most people that make music or DJ have experienced at least one musical movement that embodied an energy that was singular and that inevitably things get measured against, even if you don't listen to that music anymore or make it. Until that kind of singularity comes that reshapes everything, it all just seems like a fun, but an ultimately transitory mess to get lost in. The point is to create something fresh in the process of getting lost."
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