"Gay marriages." That's what Bob Sheer (of Truthdig.com) said this week in a discussion on KCRW's Left, Right, & Center. It was a bit jarring. I've grown accustomed to hearing people say "gay marriage" in these sort of exchanges. But, his use of the plural revealed a pretty funtamental flaw in the rhetoric. "Gay marriage" is a term for the debate, not the marriages. So, I'm gonna use the plural from now on. Gay couples - Sung and me, my sister and Kriston, Ellen and Portia, Bert and Ernie - should be acknowledged as individual couples and not just an issue.
There have been a handful of books (Winesburg Ohio, The Magic Christian, Switch Bitch), movies (Videodrome, Supervixens, War of the Roses), and plays (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Blasted, Adaptation) that have made a truly indelible impression on me. Stuff that's caught my imagination and compelled me to watch it over and over, to study it, to imitate it.
Recently, Sung reminded me that Little Shop of Horrors was one of those movies. I loved the cartoony ye-oldey look. I loved the music and had the soundtrack memorized. I especially loved the "fun" way the movie combined aspects of death (dark, violent, and slightly obscene conent) with comedy. I'd never seen anything that hit quite that note and still haven't. I mean, this was way before South Park, Beavis, et al.
Then Sung (who might just love this movie more than I do, god bless him) found this online... a reconstructed version of an original, unreleased ending. Unfortunately, the deleted sequences are in B&W with band-aided sound editing and effects. Still, though, it's amazing to see how ambitious and edgy the the project really was. Orson Welles, Tokyo sci-fi, Aldous Huxley, it all comes into play. And how fucking awesome that all those 1980's A-listers - Jim Belushi, Steve Martin, Rick Moranis, Christopher Guest, Bill Murray, John Candy - signed up for it? Not to even mention Alan Menken and Frank fucking Oz. Anyhoo...
(How gorgeous is Ellen Greene's performance? Truly inspired stuff.)
(Oh, and don't write to tell me it was a musical first. Duh.)
I know, I know. Modern-day pirates are sooo passee. But this weekend I listened to to a piece on BBC radio about the modern-day Somali piracy industry. Amazing stuff. There's (apparently LOL) a thriving, self-regulated multimillion-dollar industry of investors, translators, vendors, insurance providers, bankers, etc., working together to get their share of the booty. Anyway, if this topic even remotely interests you, I highly recommend that you check it out HERE.
