Sex, drugs, and Robert Duvall. Roy and I enjoy a warm chat about a chilly dystopia, in our conversation about “THX 1138” (1971). Miraculously, the show didn’t simply devolve into George Lucas bashing. Take your medicine, and see for yourself here:
Next week, we’ll continue with the winter of our discontent, when we discuss “The Abominable Snowman” (1957), with the unlikely team of Forrest Tucker and Peter Cushing. You ain’t seen nothing yeti. Join us next Friday evening at 7:00 EST!
IN THE MEANTIME, tomorrow night, Roy will host a visit from actor CARL HELD. Held will talk about his prolific career in classic television, including appearances on “Star Trek,” “The Outer Limits,” “The Invaders,” “Mission: Impossible,” “Perry Mason,” “The F.B.I.,” “The Lotus Eaters,” “The Saint,” “The Big Valley,” “Space: 1999,” “The Incredible Hulk,” “Charlie’s Angels,” and “Falcon Crest,” among others.
Don’t miss this special appearance, on the next Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner. The conversation with be HELD, this Sunday evening at 7:00 EST!
This week on “Picture Perfect,” we’re seeing double.
James Stewart plays Scottie Ferguson, a traumatized police detective who becomes obsessed with the woman he loves – and loses – in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” (1958). Kim Novak portrays both the enigmatic beauty and her spitting image, who Ferguson, rather creepily, attempts to mold. Bernard Herrmann wrote the hypnotic score.
Krzysztof Kieślowski’s “La double vie de Véronique”/“The Double Life of Véronique” (1991) depicts parallel characters living in Poland and France who are mysteriously linked, both of them played by Irène Jacob. The performance(s) earned Jacob an award for Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival. The music, which plays a significant role in the actual plot, is by Zbigniew Preisner.
For the second time in her career, Bette Davis gets a chance to play an evil twin in “Dead Ringer” (1964). The first was in the 1946 good twin-bad twin melodrama, “A Stolen Life.” When asked what the difference was between the two performances, Davis quipped, “About 20 years.” “Dead Ringer” was directed by her longtime friend and “Now, Voyager” co-star Paul Henreid. The music is by André Previn, whose score employs a stock-in-trade sinister harpsichord, yet when he comes to write the love theme, he manages to whip up one hell of a tribute to Erich Wolfgang Korngold.
Korngold scored a number of Davis’ films in the 1940s, though he is principally remembered for his work on the swashbucklers of Errol Flynn. To capitalize on Flynn’s star-making performance in “Captain Blood,” Warner Brothers produced a big screen adaptation of Mark Twain’s Tudor switcheroo, “The Prince and the Pauper” (1937). Flynn steals the show as Miles Hendon, the devil-may-care guardian of Prince Edward and Tom Canty, Edward’s mirror image, played by real-life twins Bobby and Billy Mauch. If you’re a Korngold fan, or an enthusiast of violin concertos, you may recognize some of the music. Korngold recycled the theme for use in the last movement of his Violin Concerto, championed by Heifetz and others.
Double your pleasure with an hour of doppelgangers, twins, and dual identities, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, this Saturday evening at 6:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
I am shocked to learn the critic Terry Teachout has died. Teachout was an essayist, a biographer (of Balanchine, Armstrong, Ellington, and H.L. Mencken), a playwright, and a widely-published journalist, who wrote an awful lot about the performing arts.
He began his career at the Kansas City Star, in his native Missouri, writing about classical music and jazz. Later, in New York, he was an editor for Harper’s Magazine, an editorial writer for the New York Daily News, and eventually the Daily News’ classical music and dance writer. More recently, he served as critic and columnist at The Wall Street Journal.
Teachout also worked as a librettist on Paul Moravec’s operas “The Letter,” after the classic Bette Davis film, “Danse Russe,” about backstage drama during the creation of “The Rite of Spring,” and “The King’s Man,” about Benjamin Franklin in London and Philadelphia.
Seemingly, he could write well about anything, and he wrote a lot of it. Teachout was 65 years-old.
In researching the music for tonight’s discussion of “THX 1138” on Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner, I was interested to note Israel Baker among the film’s musical personnel. In addition to working in the movies, Baker made many recordings for Columbia Records (now Sony), with the likes Jascha Heifetz, Bruno Walter, Glenn Gould, and Igor Stravinsky.
At different points of his career, he was concertmaster of Stokowski’s All-American Youth Orchestra, a member of Toscanini’s NBC Symphony (where he would have played with flutist Carmine Coppola – father of Francis Ford Coppola – also listed among the “THX” personnel), leader of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and concertmaster of the Columbia Symphony. In addition, he led the classical and jazz ensembles at Capitol Records.
Baker was Stravinsky’s first choice to record his Violin Concerto, but Columbia overruled in favor of the more marketable Isaac Stern. Alongside his work in the film and classical music fields, Baker appeared on hundreds of recordings by artists such as Benny Carter, Ella Fitzgerald, Johnny Mathis, Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Mel Tormé, Sarah Vaughan, Tom Waits, and The Dameans.
Perhaps his most notorious contribution to film was as concertmaster at the recording sessions for Bernard Herrmann’s score to Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho” (in which capacity he played in the infamous shower scene). Baker also worked with Alfred Newman, Franz Waxman, André Previn, Elmer Bernstein, Maurice Jarre, John Barry, John Williams, and – in the case of “THX 1138” – Lalo Schifrin.
He died on Christmas Day, 2012, at the age of 92.
Baker plays the opening of “Scheherazade” with Erich Leinsdorf and the Concert Arts Orchestra
Stravinsky’s “Pastorale”
The dream team of Jascha Heifetz, Israel Baker, William Primrose, Gregor Piatigorsky, and Leonard Pennario, in César Franck’s Piano Quintet in F minor
Playing Schoenberg with Glenn Gould
An interview with Baker at the age of 90
More about tonight’s discussion of “THX 1138”
PHOTO: Baker with his frequent duo partner, Yaltah Menuhin, sister of the famed violinist Yehudi Menuhin
Before Indiana Jones… before “Star Wars”… before “American Graffiti”… there was “THX 1138” (1971).
Under the guidance of Francis Ford Coppola, Lucas expanded a 1967 student film into his first feature, an eerily-prescient piece of sci-fi dystopia, in which a faceless corporatocracy controls every aspect of human existence. Productivity, consumption, and subservience are all strictly enforced, through drugs, dehumanizing entertainments, and if necessary, android police. Personal relationships are forbidden and citizens – shorn of their hair and their individuality – are all identified by serial numbers.
This is hardcore sci-fi, the way it used to be. “THX 1138” may feel a lot longer than its 85-minute running time, but there’s a kind of excitement to be found in a 25-year-old director exploring the power of the medium in an era when people still really cared about film. What “THX 1138” lacks in narrative excitement, it makes up for in believable world-building. It’s fascinating to speculate what kind of artist Lucas might have been had he not devoted most of his career to reediting “Star Wars.”
Definitely don’t go into it expecting any joyrides on souped-up space freighters, witty repartee, or lightsaber battles of a kind that marked a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. This one cuts awfully close to the bone.
Roy and I will be doing our best Donald Pleasence impressions, on the next Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner. Let your holograms do the driving in the comments section, as we livestream on Facebook, this Friday evening at 7:00 EST!
ROY’S TIE-DYE SCI-FI WEEKEND BONUS! This Sunday night, Roy’s special guest will be actor Carl Held. Held’s television credits include appearances on “Star Trek,” “The Outer Limits,” “The Invaders,” “Mission: Impossible,” “Space: 1999,” “Perry Mason,” “The F.B.I.,” “The Lotus Eaters,” “The Saint,” “The Big Valley,” “The Incredible Hulk,” “Charlie’s Angels,” “Falcon Crest,” and many others. He’ll be talking about his career and taking your questions. Don’t miss this special appearance by Carl Held, this Sunday night at 7:00 EST!
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