In Which Everything Thinks That It Goes Away With Age

You Are Such A Charming Older Person

by ALEX CARNEVALE

Nancy Meyers' new film It's Complicated begins with the most remarkable of conceits - a woman meets Alec Baldwin at an orgy. Known for her extraordinary skill at deflecting attention from the aging necks of Hollywood's finest, Meyers' second film, What Women Want, reimagined a decrepit oldster as a sex symbol who for some reason wished to press his wrinkles up against Helen Hunt's forehead.

I reminded someone recently about how much money Grumpy Old Men made, just before reflecting on how much I'd like to bathe in that money. Well, What Women Want is the most lucrative film ever made by a woman before Twilight.

Like Rob Schneider's classic The Stapler (seen below) the wacky uninspired Freaky Friday-esque premise of What Women Want explained part of its success. The magnificent Marisa Tomei's Italian sexuality was a key peripheral component, but the gimmick certainly helped.

Yet just as crucial a reason for What Women Want's success was glorifying the essentially horrifying presences of Mssrs Mel Gibson and Helen Hunt. These two partially mutated ad executives were truly the most unappealing people in film until Andrew Bulgaski movies. And yet Meyers was able to resurrect them as likeable fops that got ruined by that week's dry cleaning.

Much hay has been made about how men age more lucratively than women do on the screen, but thankfully technology has leveled the field. Everyone except for Keira Knightley and Morgan Freeman looks absolutely horrible up close in Blu-Ray. Haven't you wondered why Brittany Murphy's been laying low lately? Our secretary of state looks like she spent the last two months in the Sudan.

Meryl Streep is the charming protagonist of It's Complicated. In other roles she's rarely permitted to depict what she actually is - a woman with an earthy sexuality and flirtatious demeanor. In contrast, Steve Martin, Alec Baldwin, and Jim Krasinski are only able to portray themselves or characters perilously close to themselves. Even though Krasinski was playing a character other than Jim Halpert, he still looked at the camera at the conclusion of every scene.

The key to Meyers' success is that she is better than anyone else at creating characters very close to how we imagine famous movie stars would act if they had slightly different occupations and personalities. (Otherwise instead of a debonair, Diane-Keaton loving Jack Nicholson, we'd see the Roman-Polanski enabling, abusive alcoholic Jack Nicholson). This is a particularly difficult straddling act in the case of the repulsive Alec Baldwin. In It's Complicated he plays a former minister with a passion for blondes who charms Streep's character into committing a deadly murder. Martin plays his Rain-Man autistic savant brother.

Wouldn't this actually be an amazing plot for a film with the title It's Complicated? Although I have watched the preview for It's Complicated over seventeen times, I can make no actual sense of the plot. In this way it resembles the most misogynistic film of the '00s, Meyers' Something's Gotta Give. The previous record holder for most generic film title prominently featured the crumbling carapace of Jack Nicholson lurched his body on top of Diane Keaton's torso. This is the same Keaton character who says no thanks to Keanu Reeves' face and penis in her life and fancies herself a famous playwright named Erica. Somehow this is more believable than Rain Man meets Before the Devil Knows You're Dead?

Casting directors go through slumps just like baseball hitters. Nobody has the balls to tell someone to dye their hair or insert Botox. Sometimes wrinkles have a good day. Other times, they add to the savagery of the intercourse. Usually they just gross me out.

clint's last scene alive, R.I.P.Maybe we will learn to appreciate age the way we have death. I'm proud of the way America has honored the filmmaking efforts of Clint Eastwood, who passed away at some point during Unforgiven. His movies about how other white people are racist both move and disturb my childlike sense of wonder.

Alex Carnevale is the editor of This Recording. He tumbls here and twitters here.

is it true you're the grim reaper and that's why you made 'bridges of madison county'?"Tweeter and the Monkey Man" - The Traveling Wilburys (mp3)

"End of the Line" - The Traveling Wilburys (mp3)

"Margarita" - The Traveling Wilburys (mp3)

In Which Rufus Wainwright Throws Himself Away Not Even Trying

the iTunes playlist: Rufus Wainwright

Rufus is a Mad Lib for us all to enjoy. He would have been so huge twenty or thirty years ago. He is always falling in love. You can now fall in love as well, this time with his iTunes playlist. Best wishes go out to Rufus' mom Kate who has cancer.

"My Man's Gone Now" - Nina Simone

This is a Gershwin song from Porgy & Bess. The reason I chose this piece is because I really think it is one of the most incredible piano performances ever recorded. It was instrumental in inspiring me to write songs for the piano and sing - you know, accompany myself, and be as dramatic as possible.

"Sans Souci" - Peggy Lee  

I just think it's funny because I recently wrote a song called "Sanssouci" which is on my album. My song is about the palace in Potsdam, which is near Berlin, and I think hers is more about being at some crazy party.

"Talk to Me of Mendocino" - Kate & Anna McGarrigle (mp3)

This one's by my mom. It's written about a trip she took once to a town in Northern California. It's really one of her signature works and every time I hear it, I cry and think of her and how much I love her.

"B.M.F.A." - Martha Wainwright (mp3)

There's some swear words in the title. This is by Martha Wainwright, my great sister, and it's a song that she released as a single which was very, very, very brave of her. Martha is one of the great singers of our age, and also has her own proper career, which thank God happened, otherwise we would have been killing each other.

"Hammond Song" - The Roches (mp3)

I've always loved them. It's my dad's second wife, but I'm a big Roches fan and I think their sound is really amazing and this song is one of their greatest.

"La Boheme, Act I, Che geilda manina" - Jussi Bjorling (mp3)

This is from the opera La Boheme. It's the big tenor aria and this version is by Jussi Bjorling who is probably one of greatest tenors who ever lived. This song was always played at the house when I was a child and my mother would actually sing it herself on the piano after many drinks. It's one of the greatest musical pieces ever written.

"Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow" - Carole King (mp3)

Carole King wrote it...the version I love is by Roberta Flack. This is something I would always play when I was extremely lonely and in need of good old fashioned romance as opposed to some sort of casual fling. This song represents wanting more out of a relationship and needing actual human contact for the sake of humanity as opposed to, you know, testosterone, so yeah...it's about love.

"Trains and Boats and Planes" - Dionne Warwick (mp3)

This song is by Burt Bacharach and sung by Dionne Warwick. One of the greatest experiences of my life was getting to play with Burt Bacharach. I got to sing with him and do a few shows with him, and, needless to say, it was the apex of this portion of my career. I felt like it was my Dusty Springfield moment and this song, 'Trains and Boats and Planes' is just one of his many classics.

"Pirate Jenny" - Lotte Lenya (mp3)

I don't know if this is the name of it, but I call it, 'Jenny the Pirate.' Jenny, the character...it's sung by Lotte Lenya and it's Jenny's main song from Threepenny Opera by Kurt Weill. I just love it so much because when I was a teenager I used to pretend to be Jenny (ha ha) and get naked in my dorm room and put pearls on, stare at myself in the mirror, and lip sync to this.

"Sanssouci (live)" - Rufus Wainwright (mp3)

"If Love Were All (live)" - Rufus Wainwright (mp3)

"Leaving for Paris No. 2 (live)" - Rufus Wainwright (mp3)

"Rules and Regulations (live)" - Rufus Wainwright (mp3)

In Which We Read of William Gass' Splendid Idea

The Division of Zero

According to Arthur Saltzman, William Gass's response to a request from Washington University to collect his papers "has attained folkoric dimensions among those associated" with the collection. He even did drafts of the response, which are now housed at the university. Now enjoy this crafty bit of American correspondence:

gass' self portraitDear Miss Van Duyn,

The Lebowitz do sweet irrational things.

Certainly Stan did mention the matter of my mss to me, and your library's interest in collecting them. I remember some of the names that were on the list he gave me, and I was there all right, lying between Ralph Ellison and John Hawkes like a valley squeezed between two foresty knees. Barth and Powers squared the ends off, and Bellow and Nabokov had their thumbs up. Well naturally it was very funny and fitted Boswell's Elkin perfectly; for whom, in his own person, could Elkin solicit now but the uncelebrious, the drearily non-famous, and the sorrow middle-knowns? I could hear him slap his golden thigh with glee when his fellow conspirator at your library, to whom he told me to address myself, showed him how the hook had drawn my gizzard through my teeth. I wrote him as much.

barth

But you seem to be in earnest. I can only conclude that you are all mad, for I could not bring myself to approach some Lolly Hankins and a simple such as I am, though he were the father of a hundred, puddinpassled, barky pekineses, and deep plumdumplings, even in the high front line of duty, to make this kind of request, unless I had been seized with a Hettie Green-like bibliomania. As a futures list, too, Elkin's wore a certain antic look, warning me against swallowing. Ford's a lively dead old master. Beckett's no bet - he came home first, paid off handsomely, and is, I hope, stuffing himself in the stable.

It is certainly a splendid idea - put peaches in thy mouth, money in thy purse, peace in thy soul, honey in thy horn, and papers in thy vault - but its success depends on your guessing right at least some of the time. It will scarcely distinguish you to have the largest - and only - collection of Solly Wallow in the country. So I must tell you that there is at least one lame horse on your list. My agent, a determined and dedicated lady, has been trying to find a publisher for a number of mss. of mine, both short and long, without any success whatever.

Indeed, I haven't had an acceptance in two years. My production, never voluminous, has meanwhile ceased. It will begin again when my time yields some spaces, but circumstances have forced me to consider my writing the idlest of hobbies. You would no doubt find it embarrassing to withdraw your suggestion, so perhaps I should do your predicting for you and say no. I am pleased, naturally, that someone should make such a mistake in my favor, but consider - I have no proofs of books because I have no books; there are no translations for there are no translators; I have no letters from writers about my work because writers do not write me; I have no letters from editors, either, except those that say no; I have made no tapes, attended no workshops, conferences or symposia, and I have made only one public appearance; all I possess are dull and repetitious sheaves of typed or pen and pencilled papers representing my staggery attempts to cross a paragraph - and then imagine how many "scholars" are going to nose the gates of your vaults throating for an eyeful of the building of my prose (the Pharaoh passes in the distance wearing a cardboard hat and carrying a stone, a shovel, and a hose); and won't it be confounding to us all when your appraiser values my wads at $5.67 or whatever they might bring per lb? I'd fire both Leibowitz - charming but confused - and start over.

Of course you are welcome to the things I have, and to all of it if you want it. It would consist primarily of worked over drafts, and there is probably quite a lot considering the slenderness of what's emerged. Measured absolutely, however...I don't know. And would you want it decently arranged? Some sort of order can be given to it, but beyond a certain point I doubt that I can even imagine what version was the original and what came after that, and what after that, and so on.

I'll make a tape if you wish, though you've heard me read.

Putting restrictions on the use of such papers would be like dividing zero.

I am very interested, though, in the progress of your plan. Think of my scratches, filed alongside Ford's, receiving radiation. Ford's mss would be a great thing to have and I hope you get them, and since you seem to want them, I hope you get all the junk you're asking for.

Give my best to all of Washington's good people. I think I remember almost everybody.

Bill Gass

Images by Frank Di Piazza.

photograph by frank di piazza

"Twisted" - Colt Ford (mp3)

"Tailgate" - Colt Ford (mp3)

"Gangsta of Love" - Colt Ford ft. Bonecrusher (mp3)