| dissention |
08-02-2005 12:45 PM |
Quote:
Originally Posted by David
That slam-bang, disorienting style of editing infected everything: movies, music videos, commercials, even radio (in aural terms). But there was still marvelous work being done in the '80s: Phil Joanou's "Rattle & Hum" in 1989, the live material in Springsteen's video anthology, Michael Apted's "Bring on the Night" in 1985, Petty & Dylan in Gillian Armstrong's "Hard to Handle" in '86, Laurie Anderson's "Home of the Brave" (one of Lindsey's influences), Peter Gabriel's "PoV," Ry Cooder's "Let's Have a Ball" -- & don't laugh, but Madonna's "Ciao Italia" -- & going back a few years before the "Tango" concert are the David Mallet film of Bowie's Serious Moonlight tour & of course the legendary "Stop Making Sense" by Jonathan Demme. All of these films, at the very least, show a respect for the performers, for the songs & for the film audience in a way that the tacky "Tango" in San Francisco doesn't get anywhere near. The sound is better in most of these films, too. You get a real feel for the performers' craft & personalities because the director lets them build a performance the way an actor on stage builds a performance: with natural tempos & energy that arcs in recognizable patterns instead of camera work just carelessly & randomly jumping between the same four or five "techniques" in equivalently timed cuts throughout the entire 90 minutes, until you're disoriented & disconnected from whatever's happening onstage. Watch "The Dance" & then put this "Tango" concert in the VHS -- watch them back to back. That should clarify just what we mean by "good" & bad." In "Tango," the camera even purposely destroys the psychic space between stage & crowd -- it's all just for no good reason. The tricks aren't rotten just because they're being used; it's because they're used for no expressive purpose. You with your powerful identification with emotion & genuineness in art, Johnny, I'm surprised that you respond at all to this noisy claptrap.
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"Stop Making Sense" is quite possibly the best concert film of all time, but it's a bit much to think the Mac could pull off anything as spectacular as that one in terms of a live video. The Mac were not Talking Heads, the Mac has always been about gloss and always will be. "Stop Making Sense" had almost no audience shots, everything was painted one color to avoid anything standing out, had no colored lighting, and no after-the-fact close-up shots. Stevie would be aghast if she was told they weren't going to give her the best lighting money could buy (and the most post-production on her vocals that money could buy). The non-use of audience shots in "Stop Making Sense" was practically brilliant in it's own right. It allows the viewer to judge the performance in their own mind, without seeing shots of the crowd jumping up and down or swaying themselves back and forth. You see Weymouth playing her bass and staring down Byrne without any intrusions from the people that were there. You get to see Byrne peter out onto the stage with his tape player and form your own opinion as to what is going on without seeing the reactions of the people who are there. In Mac videos, the use of audience shots seems cheap, as if they want to reinforce to the viewer that they kick ass and, dammit, there are no two ways about it.
I've always wondered exactly how much input the band had when it came to that atrocious "live" video, because even in those days, the entire affair was pretty darn cheesy. It seems to me that the video was approached as a commercial; they wanted everything perfect to the point where it came across as artificial and when you attempt that, you're not going to establish the personalities of the performers very well, nor are you going to show much respect for the art of live performance because it ends up robbing it of all resemblances to a rock concert. It takes away the rush you feel when you're at one and replaces it with an impersonal, phoney studio product. |
