"No Direction Home"

Last week I went to my parents' house and borrowed No Direction Home from my dad. I watched the whole thing that night and I liked it a lot.

First off I wanna say: I really impressed myself- when an old clip from a performer was played their name wouldn't come across the screen until well into the performance. Still, right away, in almost every case, I knew who it was. Even Odetta who I had never seen or heard before. I'd only heard her mentioned by the beatniks in John Water's Hairspray.

Joan Baez was amazing- they show her young and singing a song about Jesus (by the way, is she singing, "Think I'll call him 'save-you'"? Is she saying savior and I'm just hearing her wrong? Anyway...), she's so pretty and her voice is beautiful.

It's funny how chubby Dylan is when he first comes to NYC, at least in his face. Baby fat.

And the British concert-goers cracked me up. One serious-looking guy says "I think he's prostituting himself". And it's funny that they hated the "rock" half of the show and still they werte also bored by the "folk" portion.

That Pete Seeger guy came across as a douche when it came to the story about how he wished he had an axe to cut the cables during a Dylan show because there was too much distortion and he couldn't make out the words.

What I really liked, because Dylan doesn't interest me much, is just the description of Greenwich village in the 1960s. It seems like a very romantic, exciting time. If I could time travel it would be cool to spend a day and night there.

I finally saw it

After my last post I went to youtube and caught about 6 minutes of Letterman's interview with Leaf Phoenix. It was pretty much what I expected.

I never liked him to begin with. He's not even a lesser version of River; they're nothing alike and if not for the last name you'd never know they were related.

Now, the big thing is that Leaf is quitting acting for a career in hip-hop music ("Sounds like something a rabbit would listen to"*) and Casey Affleck is following him around making a documentary- some people are saying the whole quitting acting/ hip hop thing is a hoax. I don't know.

But the Letterman interview was fun to watch. I think Dave was nice to him. Over the years I'm sure he's had plenty of drugged-up guests, and not just Farrah & Crispen. So even though he got some good jokes off he was basically gentle and good-natured.

Leaf wore sunglasses (by the way, the show was taped indoors, and typically, even though there are bright lights onstage, most guests go unprotected) , plus he had a big scruffy beard. Some news reports called him aloof and I guess he was. To me he seemed rude more than anything else. I hate when people go on those shows and have to be drawn out. Usually it's just because they're nervous, but in some cases, they act like being there is a chore.

It was even worse than that with Leaf. His attitude seemed to say "Hey, why are you making jokes? What's so funny? I just wanted to sit here in my sunglasses for 10 minutes, why are you talking to me?"

Part of the reason I wanted to watch No Direction Home this week is because the Leaf/Letterman reports reminded me of the 10 minutes of it that I'd caught at the time.

Let me say- I like Bob Dylan. I've got Blonde on Blonde, Highway 61, and my favorite, Nashville Skyline. That last one I picked up on vinyl for $1 and I used to play it at my old apartment on the 4th floor at night when it was snowing. "Tell Me That It Isn't True", "Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You"-great songs. I wish I was listening to them right now. But as good as I think he is, I don't quite see him as the genius that everyone says he is. He's very talented but even he admits that a lot of his songs are literally cut & paste jobs. But anyway...

In the scene I saw, Dylan's at a press conference and a bunch of reporters are asking him questions, clearly making fun of him and trying to piss him off, and he's sitting there (in sunglasses if I remember right) answering, clearly annoyed. Reviews that I read at the time mentioned these press conferences and talked about how they felt bad for Dylan being hounded by a pack of "square" reporters who "couldn't comprehend the power of his poetry", ect.

I remember watching and being completely on the side of the reporters. Dylan was sitting there as if the press conference was taking precious time away from his job of saving the world when, really, all he did was write radio-friendly folk songs. He was being pretentious, and the reporters, in their own lazy way, were calling him on it.

So I guess that's the problem I have with Leaf Phoenix. He's an actor. Some say he's a great actor. A powerful actor, one of the greatest actors of our generation, mesmerizing, fearless. But come on, there's no reason to act like that.





* rabbit quote from Marcia in the Brady Bunch Movie.