jürgen fauth’s muckworld

The last time we saw Dawn Logsdon and Lucie Faulknor, we were shaking our bones to Kermit Ruffins and the Barbecue Swingers at the Jazzfest fairgrounds. Now arrives their documentary, directed by Logsdon and produced by Faulknor, telling about a storied New Orleans neighborhood that barely appears in the textbooks — even though in the Tremé , “the sit-ins began in the 1800s, the Harlem Renaissance started before the Civil War, and the roots of jazz music and Creole cuisine were being nurtured every Sunday in Congo Square.” Like everything else in New Orleans, the film was delayed and profoundly altered by Hurricane Katrina; the storm had changed the history of the Tremé and needed to become a part of the film.

It’s muckworld policy not to rate movies made by friends, but it’s worth noting that Logsdon, Faulknor, and writer/narrator Lolis Eric Elie take the exact opposite approach from Ed Pincus and Lucia Small, who headed south after the storm to make The Axe in the Attic without any apparent connection to the city. Faubourg Tremé illustrates all that was hopefully not lost when the levees broke — and the music is kick-ass. My own short movie from April 2006 is on YouTube.

Faubourg Tremé. Dawn Logsdon, 2007. N/R

A few months after Hurricane Katrina, Ed Pincus and Lucia Small went on a road trip though the South to trace the stories of Americans who had lost not just their homes but also their trust in the government in the storm. Along with heartbreaking stories of FEMA trailers, red tape, grief and loss, they also filmed their own reactions to the devastation.

Read my review of The Axe in the Attic on About.com. Here’s the official site. For some reason, there doesn’t seem to be in IMDb entry for this movie.

The Axe in the Attic. Ed Pincus and Lucia Small, 2007. **

Related: my short film from New Orleans and the Ninth Ward, April 2006, and Juvenile’s “Get Your Hustle On”

A few pictures from the city I used to call home, the town where Priscilla met Elvis. More Wiesbaden facts:

• The thermal springs of Wiesbaden were first mentioned in Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis Historia in 121.
• By 1800, there were 2,239 inhabitants and twenty-three bath houses. Among visitors to the springs were Goethe, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Richard Wagner, and Johannes Brahms. In 1900, there were 86,100 inhabitants and 126,000 visitors. In those years there were more millionaires living in Wiesbaden than in any other city in Germany.
• The Wiesbaden synagogue was destroyed during Kristallnacht, November 9, 1938.
• Wiesbaden is home to the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau Foundation.
• Volker Schlöndorff and John McEnroe were born in Wiesbaden.
• Sting, Lionel Richie, and Luciano Pavarotti have performed on the Bowling Green in front of the Kurhaus.
• Wiesbaden’s coat of arms features three times as many fleurs-de-lys as New Orleans.
• More photos from previous trips.

Aki Kaursmäki’s Leningrad Cowboys Go America is the reason that for the last 18 years, I have not been able to buy a bag of onions without smiling. The mock heroic road movie was a formative film for me, but it’s not available on DVD in the U.S. Thanks to the wonders of the Internet, I was finally able to revisit the story of the exuberantly coiffed band “from the tundra” and their tyrannical manager (Matti Pellonpää). Back in 1989, the combination of absurd sight gags and sparse Down By Law aesthetic was unlike anything I’d ever seen before. Come to think of it, there hasn’t been anything quite like it since.

Sent to New York by a communist functionary on the logic that “in America, they like crap,” the Cowboys head off to CBGBs on tractors, pointy shoes gleaming and monstrous duck tails bopping in the breeze. When they get there, it turns out they have never even heard of rock ‘n roll–Madison Square Garden is out, but would they like to play at a wedding in Mexico? Undaunted, the band buys a car from Jim Jarmusch, straps their frozen bass player to the roof, and heads south. Their musical education culminates in a tuba-and-accordion version of “Born to Be Wild” that would make Borat Sagdiyev jump with joy. Marcy’s verdict? “Quite possibly the silliest movie ever made.”

Leningrad Cowboys Go America. Aki Kaurismäki, 1989. ****

• Kaurismäki’s Lights in the Dusk opens in the U.S. next week. The perfect Kaurismäki film is still The Man Without a Past.

After the movie, the Leningrad Cowboys took on a life of their own: I saw them play the KUZ in Mainz, there was a sequel, Leningrad Cowboys Meet Moses, and a concert film, Total Balalaika Show. The official site lists 2007 summer dates. There is no shortage of YouTube clips, including “Born to Be Wild” from the movie and “My Way” with the Red Army Ensemble and Ballet:

How not to do local color, y’all. Director Jim McBride lays on the Louisiana stereotypes in this Southern cop romance. From the first “Where are you at?” to the last gumbo party, the New Orleans details feel second-hand to me–and I’m just a German boy who happened to live there for a little while. I do know what Tipitina’s looks like from the inside, and that studio set wasn’t even close.

No matter. A Disney World version of New Orleans will serve just fine as backdrop for a steamy 80s love affair. Ellen Barkin, that strange and fascinating creature, plays a principled but inexperienced prosecutor who comes to investigate corruption in Dennis Quaid’s NOPD. There are murders to be solved, but never mind the plot. Quaid is all easy come-ons and grins as wide as Lake Pontchartrain, and you can’t wait for Barkin to let down her hair and be seduced while the Neville Brothers sing. With John Goodman, Ned Beatty, and Grace Zabriskie as “Mama.”

The Big Easy. Jim McBride, 1987. ***

• The Big Easy at Wikipedia
• Movie Screenshots has an entire series of Ellen Barkin’s sweaty Iko Iko run by the canal.

From the secure, undisclosed New Jersey location where we’re weathering the storm, here’s a muckworld roundup, covering the triumphs, marriages, deaths, drug convictions, and ambivalent critical reception of five artists so famous their first names are enough.

Jami
I have neither video nor photos to prove it, but an exquisite literary time was had at KGB Bar on Friday, where Jami Attenberg celebrated tax day and the release of her Instant Love paperback together with Pauls Toutonghi (Red Weather), Darin Strauss (Chang and Eng and The Real McCoy) and Min Jin Lee (Free Food for Millionaires.) Jami read a story about anonymous sex with accountants. Darin Strauss played the Dobro, and Anya Ulinich sang the Internationale. I have it on good authority that less than half of those in attendance actually recognized the song, which indicates that it’s been a good long while since everybody was angelic and sentimental about the workers. The dustbin of history, indeed.

Kermit
Finally, good news from New Orleans: Kermit Ruffins got hitched! I realize St. James Infirmary isn’t quite appropriate, but it’s the best Kermit on YouTube. Congratulations, and thanks for all the BBQ. (And thank you for the tip, Robbi Jeanne.)

Kurt
“If you read Kurt Vonnegut when you were young — read all there was of him, book after book as fast as you could the way so many of us did — you probably set him aside long ago,” begins Verylin Klinkenborg’s piece in the Times. I followed her advice and just picked up Cat’s Cradle for the first time in 15 years, and it’s even better than I remembered. Around 1999, I saw Vonnegut speak, but at that point, he wasn’t my wavelength at all and just seemed like another bitter old Luddite griping about how superior the post office was to sending email. My friends Dusty and Kathleen enjoyed hanging out with him afterwards, so perhaps it was me who was bitter. Either way, Kurt could write. John Leonard in The Nation: “God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut.” Mourning at Metafilter and on Maud Newton.

Quentin
That Cleopatra rant was my last word on Grindhouse, but there are a few more pieces worth pointing out: Filmbrain, whom I had the pleasure of meeting last week, thinks Quentin needs a girlfriend, and the Looker agrees with my assessment that Death Proof is just way dull. At The House Next Door, Keith Uhlich and Matt Zoller Seitz have a debate that’s twice as exciting as the actual movie–and almost as long.

Trey
Trey pleads guilty. IANAL, but five years probation with mandatory prison in case he slips sounds like a tough deal. Hang in there, Trey. We love you. Push on ’till the day and don’t you listen to that evil Amy Winehouse. A video of better times:

A pro-shot video from my favorite concert of the year, Bruce Springsteen closing out the first weekend of JazzFest. More from the Times. Previously.

“Sometime, somewhere, a more dramatic and exhilarating confluence of music with moment may have existed,” wrote The Los Angeles Times’ Randy Lewis. “But in nearly 40 years of concert-going, I haven’t witnessed one.”

That Times-Picayune link is dead, but now there’s YouTube!

NYT Article