The 47th Minute Project IV: The Quest for Peace

The above is the 47th Minute of another one of my favorites: It was a big-budget, major Hollywood studio Christmas release (and because it was a Xmas release, that influenced some of the color scheme of this film: hint!) —that was torn apart by the critics—it only received 46% on Rotten Tomatoes, and big Roger E. gave the film only 2 stars on its release. This movie’s financial failure probably pushed its director on his current (in my opinion) lame streak.

This flick has a growing cult, though, that has always appreciated it, and has kept the flick’s memory alive.

The actor in this frame appears more than once in this film and not always under the makeup he’s wearing here. Maybe he’s planning a caper of some sort?
Maaaaayyyybeeee….

If you've got an idea (any idea!) of what this flick is, please leave any answers, comments or recipes in the comment section.

As For The Previous Entry of The 47th Minute Project…Sorry it took so long…

Gee-whiz daddy, what does full metal jacket mean?

The last entry into the 47th Minute Project was Full Metal Jacket, and YEEEE-HA! Y’all got your kill-faces ON.
It was neat to see all the comments, and to see how many folks have the flick’s dialog seared into their brains.

Private Snible commented first, “Sir... does this mean that Ann-Margaret’s not coming?”

Then there was y’all who recognized the proto-cultural cross-pollination where the dialog from nearly exactly the 47th minute of Full Metal Jacket winds up being, as reader Mary Wolf noted tersely: “2 Live Crew, As Nasty As They Wanna Be, Track 1:”

“Me so horny.”

Otto the Mannix commented, “This scene has that rare distinction of having a phrase which has gone into the collective psyche, such as 'here's looking at you, kid,' or 'you can't handle the truth,' or 'hasta la vista, baby,' or 'i see dead people.' ”

After quoting these infamous bit of dialog—“I bet you're the kind of guy that would fuck a person in the ass, and not even have the god damned common courtesy to give him a reach around,”—Reader Tonya noted, “It was from this movie, as a teenager, I learned what a ‘reach around’ is.”

Same here! I’d never heard that phrase before I’d seen the flick—maybe I was sheltered as a child…


[Kubrick’s flicks have probably been the most parodied on The Simpsons, and I’ve always wondered what Stanley K. thought about that.]

Unfortunately, despite my pathetic pleading, nobody turned me on to a copy of Dark of the Sun, either.

I know I could go to NYC’s Midtown Comics—their bootleg DVD selection is extensive—but about 70% of the DVDs I’ve ever purchased there have had to be returned.
And whenever I’ve asked to have a DVD scanned before buying it, I get the most put-upon, depressive, unhelpful employee glaring at me. Gosh, is my karma that bad? Gosh, have these employees ever had to coat a dock in creosote or been a dishwasher at a greasy spoon? Because those are jobs to make you a put-upon, depressive, unhelpful employee.
Like the protagonist of the Killdozer song “Ted Key Beefs,” if business establishment has wronged me, “I am the fellow who never comes back.” Which is why I won't bother with Midtown Comics' bootleg DVD section.

So I’ll just have to wait to get my Dark of the Sun fix elsewhere. Sigh….


Ladysniff Black Vietnambazo—or, Psychedelia Is Everywhere



The iPod was on random, and immediately after “Hello, Vietnam,” from the Full Metal Jacket soundtrack album, came the raucous and rude “Lady Sniff” by those Texas shamans, The Butthole Surfers. The two songs butt-up, heh-heh, against each other made me laugh and laugh.

Someone, please! Make a mash-up! I mean, I’ll try, but I’ve only got Audacity…
Maybe the dudes at the stupendous and audio-riffic sites RIAA and DJ Lobsterdust know somebody? (BTW, RIAA and DJ Lobsterdust have fun sites really worth checking out.)


And yeah, I was at THAT Butthole Surfers show, the one at the Ritz, where 20 guitars were smashed in the first five minutes. Although I’m not certain if it was the July or April show….
But I was at the Butthole Surfers show where the encore was longer than the "main show." Superb. Sorry if you weren’t there. I missed Led Zeppelin when I was in 7th grade, and the Pink Floyd-The Wall Tour when I was 10, so you’re one up on me.

This is the band’s Mp3 page, with "Lady Sniff" very easily accessible. (Their site is a good place to catch up on the world of the Buttholes!)


“Hello Vietnam,” written by Dave Dudley (who sang the classic trucker song, “Six Days on the Road”—although he didn’t write it), sung by Johnny Wright, best remembered from its use during the opening of Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket.








Here’s the first few minutes of the film, the song over footage of the recruits being prepped for lobotomy surgery.









I think Hello Vietnam and Lady Sniff go together well, and maybe someone as a radical act could replace The Rolling Stones’ “Paint It, Black” on the end credits for Full Metal Jacket with “Lady Sniff.”

Now hopefully this will be funny to you as a sort of mental exercise: If you’re unfamiliar with these songs, you should go to the respective links and first listen to “Hello Vietnam,” then “Lady Sniff.”

Now turn off any music and read down, keeping the respective tunes in your head. It should be funny! (I hope.)

Hello Vietnam:

Kiss me goodbye and write me while I'm gone
goodbye my sweetheart
hello Vietnam

America has heard the bugle call and you know it involves us one and all
I don't suppose that war will ever end there's fighting that will break us up again

Goodbye my darling hello Vietnam
a hill to take, a battle to be won
Kiss me goodbye and write me while I'm gone
goodbye my sweetheart
hello Vietnam

A ship is waiting for us at the dock
America has trouble to be stopped
We must stop communism in that land
Or freedom will start slipping through our hands
Goodbye my darling...

I hope and pray someday the world will learn
That fires we don't put out will bigger burn
We must save freedom now at any cost
or someday our own freedom will be lost
Kiss me goodbye and write me while I'm gone.
Goodbye my sweetheart, Hello Vietnam.

Lady Sniff by the Butthole Surfers, off of the awesome Psychic... Powerless... Another Man's Sac album:

Yeaaaaah bo!
Heh Heh Heh.

Lady sniff my Twinkie-liquor
Lady walk alone
Lately when I see you baby
Lord I gotta go
Walkin' down that stinky highway
Got to meet my man
Lately when I smell you baby
Woah, my God Damn
Cause I say No, yeeeah, an’ I mean NO
Yeah, and I said no-oooooooooooooo…

Take me back to Detroit, pie-hole!
yeah heh-heh-heh

Lady sniff my broken teabag, Lady walk the road
Lately when I see that teabag, I can't take no mo’
lady walk that greasy gravy, Lordy my good eat
Lately when I eat you baby, Lord I just can't see
An I say NO, NOOO, An I mean NO,
Yeah-eah, baby, no-oooooooooooooo…
—An’ I don’ do that

Pass me some of that dumbass over dere, Hey, boy I tell ya.

Hey-OOOOOO!

he he he heh

Lady walk with furry-burry, animal diggy din
Yeah
Lately when I see you baby, got to have my sniff
Lady walk that greasy highway, stinky holy whore
lately when I see you baby, walkin’ out my door
Cause I say no, yeah I mean no, No oh noooo oh oh oh
Murray! Bring me my bacon, Murray!!??


Lady bowl my wall-to-walls
Oh, what the hell you say?
walk 'em all, those roly-polys, each and every day.
Lady use my stinky pinky, rooty-dooty-doo
Lately when I see you baby don't know what I do.
And I say No—Yeah, no: Yeahhhh I mean No-ooooo—Yeah bo
Hey, wait a minute, Murray!!??

(But then, maybe you had to be there…)

If you don’t buy this product, you rotten little maggot, Ronald Lee Ermey is gonna gouge out your eyes and skullfuck you!

Since we’re on the topic (in a roundabout way) of Full Metal Jacket…

Most people think that Full Metal Jacket is R. Lee Ermey’s first role, and while it is the role that made him a star, his first film (and he actually gets one of those “and introducing” credits in the opening) was The Boys in Company C (1978), finally released to DVD last summer.

Ermey’s a more human character in The Boys in Company C than he was in Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket—not to say that he’s not still a fierce beast, but his drill instructor here is a better rounded character, he’s not a wind-up monster: we know he knows that about half of these kids won’t be coming back, and it bugs him, but this is his job and it needs to be done.

Ermey’s scene with Stan Shaw (excellent also) in the D.I.’s office about the need for leadership and camaraderie in a squad are classic. I also love how, at the beginning of the scene, Shaw asks the D.I. to take off his Smokey-the-Bear hat before talking to him. Ermey's character understands, takes off the hat and talks to him straight.

Like Full Metal Jacket, this flick loses some steam when it leaves boot camp, but Full Metal Jacket, despite its flaws, is a more thematically and stylistically cohesive movie.

Unfortunately, The Boys in Company C is saddled with a narration that’s obvious and intrusive (I agree with whoever said 75% of all narration in films should be cut, and yes, I include Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket in that rule); characters with pathetically low learning curves (is the narrator supposed to be as stupid as he comes off?); and the sense that the movie is not sure if it wants to be cynical or cornball: John Boorman or John Ford? Stanley Kubrick or Stanley Kramer?
But Boys in Company C director Sidney J. Furie has had a somewhat schizophrenic career, so who knows? But whatever mistakes the film has made, the widescreen Panavision frame is used thoroughly and is always visually fascinating, with lots of details and eyeball kicks.


All that good camerawork had been lost in the VHS pan-and-scan version, and it’s good that this flick is finally available on DVD in letterbox form.

While not a perfect film, The Boys in Company C is certainly worth a look for any armchair scholar of Vietnam War movies (like me), as well as fans of the “boot camp” sub-genre of war movies.

Sharp-eyed viewers, though, can catch Ermey as one of the helicopter pilots in Colonel Kilgore’s unit in Apocalypse Now—I think Ermey’s actually a pilot, and was hired specifically for that rather than his acting skills.

Interestingly, Gustav Hasford, one of my favorite authors and the creator of The Short-Timers, the novel Full Metal Jacket was based on, did not like Big Stanley K.’s choice of Ermey in the role of the gunnery sergeant/drill instructor, and let the director know that.


Hasford felt that Ermey had taken a pro-war stance regarding Vietnam and didn’t like that about him, and considered Ermey a "fucking pogue lifer."

Meanwhile, R. Lee thought Hasford a goofball and the first part of his novel (set in boot camp) as gobble-dee-goop.





I disagree with Ermey and feel that The Short-Timers’ first section is a unique, sick twist on the usually clichéd vision of basic training, but I can also see where the old war-horse is coming from:
R. Lee’s conservative and very much the alpha-male, and a nihilistic, semi-surrealistic meta-textual reworking of what he probably feels are the most important part of a young man’s life is certainly not his cup of tea.

Personally I prefer the novel’s three act structure to the film’s two—although I understand what Kubrick is trying to do with a two act structure: reinforcing the duality concept, but also pitting the antiseptic controlled chaos of boot camp with the “real” world, where little girls blast a hole through your buddy, and all that training can become unraveled pretty darn fast.




The Short-Timers is one of my favorite books, and its sequel The Phantom Blooper is even better, more savage and anguished, where Joker becomes a POW and then fights for the VC. When Joker returns “home,” it’s just a nightmare. Great powerful stuff.

The books are out of print, but here’s a petition to try and reverse that.

You can also find The Short-Timers in its entirety HERE, and The Phantom Blooper (I’m sorry Mr. Hasford, but great book, awful title) HERE.
BTW, That uneasy gent above is the late Gustav Hasford, photographed in England on the set of Full Metal Jacket.

Random aside: When I watch a Vietnam-era Marine boot camp flick (and its subsequent scenes “in country”), I can't help but think about Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver: he was a Vietnam-era Marine, right? If you think of Bickle as one of the grunts from either The Boys in Company C or Full Metal Jacket, what he winds up doing “later” in Taxi Driver doesn’t seem so strange: it’s a continuation of the madness he’s already been a part of.

And speaking of Taxi Driver and the United States Marine Corps, what about the taxi dispatcher that interviews Bickle? He says, “I was in the Marines.” But I wonder when? Doing what? Was he in Korea? Or guarding sandbags somewhere?
BTW, the dispatcher in Taxi Driver was played by the late, great Joe Spinell, one of the greatest character actors ever.

But getting back to Ermey: His foolish dislike of Hasford’s novel doesn’t take away from his great performance, which really was a blast of profane air when Full Metal Jacket first came out. I remember seeing the movie at the 8th Street Playhouse a few weeks after it was released. Ermey’s performance was shocking then—but also incredibly funny.

Darius Whiteplume left a spot-on overall cinematic assessment to Full Metal Jacket in the comments of last entry into the 47th Minute Project: “I don't think I have ever found a movie so balanced in humor and depravity.”

I dig Ermey when he’s not on autopilot repeating his drill sergeant shtick: Movies like Seven and Willard, he’s better than decent in.

Supposedly, Ermey’s fantastic in Dead Man Walking—but I refuse to see that film: I’m no fan of Sean Penn, and every time I give that actor another chance, he goes ahead and ACTS. You cannot watch Sean Penn ever and not see a heap of ACTING going on. God, he’s so boring. He ruined Mystic River for me.

Hey, does anyone remember when Ermey was going around saying that Kubrick said Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman ruined Eyes Wide Shut?

The Screaming Hot Dog Express to Trip City, Track 47—All Aboard!

April 7 is a special day in the United Provinces of Ivanlandia.

April 7 is not only the birthdays of Francis Ford Coppola and Billie Holiday.

Twenty-five years ago today, something special, something magical, something…mind-expanding happened in the United Provinces of Ivanlandia…

Sure, the Anti-Gravity Society had something to do with it, but we’ve never regretted taking the plunge.

Which makes it all the more wonderful that the seventh day in April can be written:
4/7!

[click on the quotes to see who said what]

"Marijuana is the flame, heroin is the fuse, LSD is the bomb. So don't you try to equate liquor to marijuana, mister, not with me. You may be able to sell that jazz to another pothead, but not to somebody who holds some sick kid's head while he vomits and wretches on a curbstone at four o’clock in the morning. And when his legs get enough starch into them so he can stand up and empty his pockets, you can bet he'll have a stick or two of marijuana. And you can double your money he'll turn up a sugar cube or a cap or two. So don't you con me with your mind expansion slop. I deal with kids every day. I try to clean up the mess that people like you make out of 'em. I'm the expert here, you're not."

“I did LSD in the hospital, never on my own. I did it in a controlled environment to try to find things out about myself. A psychiatrist told me I should take some LSD trips.”

According to Easydreamer, the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation put out “Screaming Hot Dog” in 1969. Damn, I wished I’d been a fly on the wall during that pitch meeting…

“I first dropped acid when I was 18…”




"Always that same LSD story, you've all seen it. 'Young man on acid thought he could fly, jumped out of a building. What a tragedy.' What a dick! Fuck him, he’s an idiot. If he thought he could fly, why didn’t he take off on the ground first? Check it out. You don’t see ducks lined up to catch elevators to fly south—they fly from the ground, ya moron, quit ruining it for everybody. He’s a moron, he’s dead—good, we lost a moron, fuckin’ celebrate. Wow, I just felt the world get lighter. We lost a moron! I don’t mean to sound cold, or cruel, or vicious, but I am, so that’s the way it comes out. Professional help is being sought. How about a positive LSD story? Wouldn't that be newsworthy, just the once? To base your decision on information rather than scare tactics and superstition and lies? I think it would be newsworthy. 'Today, a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration. That we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There is no such thing as death, life is only a dream and we're the imagination of ourselves...Here's Tom with the weather.' "



The most beautiful tripper in the universe—I understand what she’s saying; do you?




“The Pranksters had what looked like about a million doses of the Angels’ favorite drug—beer—and LSD for all who wanted to try it. The beer made the Angels very happy and the LSD made them strangely peaceful and sometimes catatonic, in contrast to the Pranksters and other intellectuals around, who soared on the stuff…. The Angels were adding LSD to the already elaborate list of highs and lows they liked, beer, wine, marijuana, Benzedrine, Seconal, Amytal, Nembutal, Tuinal. Some of them had terrible bummers—bummer was the Angels’ term for a bad trip on a motorcycle and very quickly it became the hip world’s term for a bad trip on LSD. The only bad moment at Kesey’s came one day when an Angel went berserk during the first rush of the drug and tried to strangle his old lady on Kesey’s front steps. But he was too wasted at that point to really do much.”


“…more important than reading the Bible six times…”



“That was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary’s trip. He crashed around America selling ‘consciousness expansion’ without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait for all the people who took him too seriously…. All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit. But their loss and failure is ours, too. What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole life-style that he helped to create…. a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody—or at least some force—is tending the Light at the end of the tunnel.”

"I don't like any of the stronger psychedelics. I would never take LSD... I hate it…I've tried it. I just hate it. I don't like the feeling.... It makes me nervous. My coordination isn't good and there's a metallic taste in my mouth and there's nothing I like about it. I've taken mescaline, psilocybin. The only one I've been able to use with consistency is cannabis."


Watch this one all the way through, it’s worth it.



"If God dropped acid, would He see people?"

“The whole LSD, STP, marijuana, heroin, hashish, prescription cough medicine crowd suffers from the Watchtower itch: you gotta be with us, man, or you're out, you're dead. This pitch is a continual and seeming MUST with those who use the stuff. It's no wonder they keep getting busted.”

A classic—check it out. I miss EBN.
EBN: Psychoactive Drugs
Watch this one all the way through, it’s worth it.



“Psychedelics had become an issue of general interest. Black-market LSD seemed to be readily available in all parts of the country and for all age groups. Self-experimentation with psychedelics flourished on university campuses, and many large cities had their hippie districts with distinct drug subcultures. The casualties from the psychedelic scene were making newspaper headlines; almost every day one could read sensationalist reports about psychotic breakdowns, self-mutilations, suicides and murders attributed to the use of LSD. At the same time, the psychedelic movement was profoundly influencing contemporary culture - music, painting, poetry, design, interior decorating, fashion, movies, theatre and television plays.”

“I think that in human evolution it has never been as necessary to have this substance LSD. It is just a tool to turn us into what we are supposed to be."

What do Peter Fonda, Vincent Price and Jackie Gleason have in common?

They’ve all played characters that have dropped acid in movies!
(The Trip, The Tingler, Skidoo)


Personally, I feel every fan of Psychotronic movies or the Cinema of Weirdness needs to see Skidoo: it’s like the hajj to Mecca—everybody’s gotta do it at least once. Just because.

Don’t bother watching Skidoo on pan-&-scan like some bootlegs do it and how it was broadcast on TCM in January: In fact the film really needs to be seen in a theater, so you can feel you’re in it—maybe one of those new giant home video systems could reproduce that feeling—because the framing of each scene is important, and the widescreen allows room to breathe.

Of course, all this is tough as Skidoo is not on DVD, and rarely screened. I’ve been lucky enough to catch Skidoo twice in a theater, once at the Museum of Modern Art (no lie), and then at the Film Forum—where they screened the flick’s workprint, grease pencil marks and all. That was weird—and utterly fascinating.

Skidoo is hardly flawless, but so what? It’s great.
Skidoo is earnest in its misguidedness: these are Hollywood squares trying to make sense/fit in/appreciate/make a buck off of the youth culture…and failing so spectacularly that it falls through the anti-matter universe and returns pure gold.

The whole endeavor is like the document of some South Seas cargo cult—they understand how much of these strange gifts work, but they’re not sure why.

I mean, Carol Channing’s striptease makes you want to throw up—it’s a scene that’s painfully long—and that’s brilliant!

The Trashcan Ballet is also long—but because it keeps getting layered with weird opticals and winds up being just so gosh darn sweet, you wish it wouldn’t end.

The scenes of hippies hanging out have a real documentary quality to them—but “spoiled Hollywood brats playing hippy” documentary feeling.

I love, love, love the intense close-ups of Jackie Gleason when he’s tripping: the Great One, indeed!

And not only are the credits by Saul Bass (or a very good lookalike style-wise, since he’s not credited), the flick’s got a whole soundtrack by Harry Nilsson! Slap your forehead, what else do you want?!?

And check out this site to witness a true Skidoo-head.

The film is not “so bad, it’s good”—Skidoo is great because it is what it is. Dig?

It’s one of late artist David Wojnarowicz’s favorite films (I was told by a friend of his in conversation), and that’s a fact I find awesome—and makes some level of sense if you’re familiar with Wojnarowicz’s work.

And then a flick like The Tingler is not a LSD movie, per se—but it is a film whose characters take LSD. And then a weird lobster crushes your spine—unless you scream, SCREAM, SCREAM!!!

Of course there are flicks, like Yellow Submarine or El Topo or 2001 that many say seem like they were made by and for regular LSD users—but that sort of reductiveness is counter-productive in the appreciation of art and weirdness for its own sake, I feel.

Besides, the truth be told, all films can be said to be made by and for regular LSD users, right? It’s the old false reality/Plato’s cave/are-you-watching-the-screen-or-is-it-watching-you whammy.

LSD has had, in contemporary society, quite the Jekyll-and-Hyde reputation, first being touted as a great psychiatric cure-all (and in the espionage world as the ultimate truth serum), then, after its criminalization, as a chromosome-damaging mind melter.

Meanwhile, taking LSD combines three aspects of genre movies: sci-fi (ingesting some new strange chemical to discover something new), fantasy (the trip itself), and horror (reality, or, on the other hand, what the trip does to you, blah-blah-blah-mom-&-dad-were-right).

Although entertaining and gratifying, films about taking drugs never seem as satisfying as films that were either influenced or appear to have been influenced by drugs. Like humans, films should only use LSD as a means to an end.

And as cool as they may be, can The Trip, Psychedelic Sexualis, and Psych-Out stand up against 2001, Apocalypse Now or Videodrome? Against Watchmen? I haven’t seen that movie yet, but it sure looks lysergic.

And the best—i.e. consistently entertaining, timeless—flicks specifically about LSD made at the time when acid was making headlines tend to be the ones that are violently, almost psychotically anti-drug, like those two great Dragnet episodes about acid, “The LSD Story” (usually known as “Blue Boy”) and “The Prophet.”

Now those are far trippier than Psych-Out could ever hope to be. But of course, that’s because Jack Webb had a philosophy.

Not to say that diamonds can’t be found here and there…
In Psych-Out, there’s a great moment where Jack Nicholson confronts Dean Stockwell. Their characters are both in the same rock band, with Nicholson playing the ambitious stardom chaser, and Stockwell as the one who’s sick of it all, especially the “plastic hassle” of the fame game.

Take a step back now. They’re both playing themselves as they were at that particular moment of history:
Nicholson’s star is rising, but so far it’s just been B-movies and the occasional bit part on The Andy Griffith Show, and
Jack knows he’s got to keep working hard to grab that big brass ring.
Going back to Neptune City, New Jersey, a failure is not in his game plan.
(But isn’t it neat to think that Jack Nicholson grew up on Neptune?)

Meanwhile, Stockwell is tired, his career waning; he’s been a child star, a teen idol, and as an adult (like pal Russ Tamblyn), he’s now only taking these funky roles that allow him to keep his long hair and act all freako.


Forget it Jake, it’s Tokyo
Horrors of Malformed Men, sort-of recently released to DVD, also sure looks like it was made by folks who’ve dropped some acid—but that’s neither here nor there: as with Yellow Submarine or El Topo, this movie is beautiful weirdness.

It doesn’t matter if a movie doesn’t make sense as long as it keeps your interest, and Horrors of Malformed Men is one of the most unique exploitation movies ever. The script is convoluted and crazy, but there’s a psychedelically lurid visual style, and plenty of nudity and violence to keep your attention.

Lysergically schizophrenic, that’s what this movie is.




Basically, if you’re interested in the films of Alejandro Jodorowsky, John Waters or David Lynch, check out Horrors of Malformed Men.
Director Teruo Ishii is called an “exploitation auteur,” and I was grateful.

Watching Horrors of Malformed Men, I realized that in the hands of a “serious artist,” this movie would have probably been dull and ponderous—that you need the B-movie maniacs and weirdos to keep things hopping.