The North side of Iron Mountain, Michigan, with Millie Hill near the top.

The Upper Peninsula of Michigan is a rugged strip of land that juts out of northern Wisconsin like a cocked pistol. The region is surrounded by massive, unforgiving lake systems that amplify both the Winter cold and the Summer humidity. Its climate is so extreme that farming isn’t lucrative and I don’t think it would have been settled at all were it not found to be riddled with metal. So, the area is forever stamped with the physical and cultural legacy of the mining industry. Villages and towns were created (and killed) by the companies that came in, hollowed out the hills and left. I grew up among the exotic ruins of ventilation shafts, was warned about open pits that sometimes appeared suddenly in the forest and would collect discarded shards of ore that give off a violet-blue iridescence in just the right light. It was a good place for an imaginative boy to be.

My brother and I trace our family roots back three generations to my Great-Grandfather, Gust, who immigrated to Iron Mountain, Michigan from Sweden and ended up on the east side, specifically “A” Street, which is nestled just below Millie Hill. That old hill has served as a common playground that links my Grandfather and Father’s childhood with my own. It was a refuge for me in the summer; a place just across the alley where I could be alone and where my brother and I could work out scenarios that would maybe serve as precursors for the stories we tell now. My parents still live on A Street, just a block up from where my Dad was born. Whenever I come home, I always make a point of stepping outside on my first night (regardless of the temperature) and checking out that familiar street again. There’s nothing like a clear northern sky at night to calm the heart, I’ll tell you that.

Stepping out for a view of A Street…

Most of the films I’ve been involved with have been made where I happen to live at the time, and have, on some level, addressed where my head was at in that particular space. For instance, I now see that our western short, Jonas Blake, was in part a response to how exotic the Southwest was for me at the time, and how displaced I felt at that point in my life in such a strange place. Over the course of the 9 years I’ve lived in California, I’ve visited home at least once a year. My love for the area, its people and my family there has never flagged despite the distance, and over time, I felt that it was important to go back and apply what I’d learned while I was away to a creative project that utilized Michigan intimately. When our latest project Northstar was being written, I knew early on that it was a turning point for us as filmmakers, and somehow it felt right to mark that change by going back home to shoot it.

Once that decision was made, everything fell into place. Vague locations that we described in the script began to conform to particular places my brother and I remembered in Iron Mountain, whether it be the Ford Plant, the Braumart theater or a very, very specific spot on the back of Millie Hill that I remembered from some afternoon when I was 11. Looking at my records, I see we began taking Michigan-based pictures with Northstar in mind around December of 2009. At this time, the script had yet to be fully written, so we were definitely taking cues from the land itself to help shape the contours of our story. I know for instance that we rewrote the entire ending of the film to be based around an abandoned airforce base when shooting at KI Sawyer became feasible. So you see, Upper Michigan is now inextricably linked with Northstar. It simply couldn’t be made anywhere else, or we’d lose the soul of the thing.

Now, shooting a movie anywhere comes with it’s own set of logistical challenges that can alter the scale of a given project or even stop it from happening at all. When it comes to making Northstar in Upper Michigan, let’s take a look at some broad facts: Here we are, a bunch of 30 something guys that want to make a sizeable science fiction film in a region where few films are shot and where even fewer resources are available for such undertakings. With the story nearing it’s finished state in late 2012, I decided it was time to reach out to a select list of family friends who might guide our team to parties that would help us figure out if it was even possible to shoot a movie in the area. By the summer, we had a script, and I was ready to present the possibility of making Northstar to the city.

Looking back, I can point to that evening in July as the moment where my intuition about making our movie in the UP was validated. A floodgate of support opened up that in retrospect, I should have expected, but wasn’t totally prepared for at the outset. When news of a possible film production coming to the area started to spread, more people got in touch with us to offer support and resource advice. As Summer eased into Fall, we noticed a quiet but steady flow of people become aware of what we were trying to do in Michigan. I wish I could fully express what this grassroots support has meant to us, especially as we navigate a sometimes discouraging modern film market out here in Hollywood that seems hellbent on producing product without originality, intelligence or soul.

By the end of the year, we felt it was time to introduce Northstar to Iron Mountain with an Open House that was open to everyone. Here we introduced the project, how we planned to make it work and gave local residents a chance to sign up as actors or extras. Beyond introducing the project itself, I think what mattered most to me was reconnecting with the community as an adult. I left when I was 18 and here I am at 34 with a last name that people recognize mostly due to my Father. I wanted people to get re-acquainted with his sons personally. I wanted people to be able to come to us directly and talk about how they might bring their gifts to bear on the project. In this way, we were able to use Northstar as a means of forming a new, mature relationship with our hometown. What a gift this is.

Seth Anderson, Nathan  Anderson and Jason Hagen at the Northstar Open House in Iron Mountain.

In the week after Christmas, I was able to take new photographs of the area for our website. Some new members of our team that live locally were able to provide access to locales that I never would have been able to get to myself and it led to a wonderful string of days were all the hecticness leading up to the Open House (Oh, and Christmas) gave way to the quiet, stark solitude of the forest that inspired me as a kid. There I was, outside with new friends, approaching a feeling I get rarely, but chase continually. For me, the core of what a movie can be is only found once you’ve locked in on what you are trying to say, where you want to shoot it and and who you want to do it with. All three of these things have to synchronize before it feels right. Well, it felt very right up there that afternoon in the hills that surround my hometown. You should have been there with us.

Upper Michigan can be an unforgiving place that demands a hardy type of person. A new friend I made said it best one night at dinner: “You wouldn’t live up here if you weren’t adventurous.” I sometimes get angry when I think about how outside groups or companies have come in to the UP, used its resources and then left many communities adrift. But then I’m reminded of this adventurous spirit that runs through the soul of the land like a live current. The people that remain truly love the area and are finding new and innovative ways to chart a future course. On some level, I’ve always felt it was an enchanted place, and this year I’ve been given continual proof. You don’t just need to look in the sky to see it, or hear the wind fill the trees to know it. You can can feel it in a handshake. You can see it in the eyes. You can hear it in the voices. The land and its people are all one big beautiful thing. If our film manages to capture just a bit of that spirit, well… honestly what could be better?

– Seth Anderson, January 2014.

Seth at home above the trees…

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On Persistence

As I write this, I’m a week away from an Open House (see flyer!) for our film, NORTHSTAR that I will be hosting with Nathan and Jason in my hometown of Iron Mountain, Michigan. This event marks the culmination of a few things. First, it will kickstart the next phase of production, which will throw us into a year-long process of actually shooting the script. Second, in introducing our film to the community in Iron Mountain, I will be realizing a dream I’ve always had of making Northstar in a place I’ve cherished for the better part of my life. Third, it means that I will now have to relinquish a story and a set of characters that have safely existed in an imaginary world that we’ve generated and shared together as a team for over 5 years. As the script goes through the process of being translated into a film, I’m coming to terms with the fact that it will become something others can interact with and possibly pick apart. In other words, it will go from a safe, protective zone in my mind, to something that exists outside of me.

In the last post, I wanted to talk about the process of actually writing this story, but I started thinking about the habits I developed for myself to actually generate the work, and it felt right to share that first. In this post, I’m ready to talk a bit about how deeply I had to dig into myself in order to bring Northstar to life. I won’t go into the story details too much, because that’s something you will have to understand on its own terms when you see the final product.

Northstar started as a germ of an idea that came to me just after I graduated from College in 2003. I was eager to continue making films outside of school and in that summer before I moved to Los Angeles, I was keen to do something that dwarfed my senior thesis movie (which to this day is a monolith that remains basically unfinished). When it comes to the next project I’m going to tackle, I’ve never been able to sit down, look inward and carve out a story idea from nothing.  In that way, creative work for me is not conscious excavation work. New ideas typically arrive in my life, just as new people do, and like with new friends, ideas have a timely way of showing up at the right time. Anyway, in 2003, I started to see images of a family living closely together in a multi-room house that’s been cloistered off from the outer world. I soon realized that something happened outside, and that these people had decided it was best to shut themselves in and rely on each other to face whatever happened. That was the idea in a nutshell, and I’ve been able to sustain interest in that blessed nugget for going on 10 years.

Just recently, I found the original script I wrote in 2003. It came to 30 odd pages and I recall the plan was to shoot it with friends on the nicest camera I could find in the middle of a summer that turned out to be unbearably hot. That summer came and went, and I drove out to Los Angeles the following October with my Mom. Lots of life happened that you don’t need to hear about, so we can cut to that Spring. I was with Nate and Jason and we started talking about making films again. After purchasing a beautiful 16MM film camera, we started a 4 year cycle between 2005 and 2009 that ended with us producing two short films that we’re still very proud of (you can learn more about our previous and future work HERE). By the fall of 2008, we decided that whatever we did next had to be feature length, and when we cast about for ideas that were laying around, the story of the family living together in seclusion after the world has ended came back. When I brought it to the guys, I don’t think we ever discussed another option. We just knew this story was it.

Nate’s first sketch of Northstar’s heroine, Noreen. Winter, 2009.

I’m not going into every detail of the 5 years it took to write Northstar. I can give you impressions. As with all stories, it started out radically different. At first I hacked out a 10 page piece of crap that crudely sketched out the story from beginning to middle to bitter end. We had long discussions about that version in our small apartment off LA Brea avenue when Jay came to visit after just moving from New York. I remember thinking hopefully that it wouldn’t take long to write the story after that weekend, but I’d never written a script before and I didn’t know any better. With that version of the story, I could never nail the ending. I wrote and wrote and wrote until I got to some arbitrary terminus. I emailed that rambling mess to the guys with a message tacked to the end of it that angrily read: “Look guys, It could go this way, or that way, or some other damn way, but in the end, I don’t like any of the options, because they feel like ideas others have done, (and done better). This is not the story I want to tell, EVER.”

That dark episode might have happened in the first year, or the second year… I forget. I know that after I wrote that screed to the guys, Nate ordered me to take a week off from active engagement with the writing and I went to bed wondering if we should throw in the towel and go back to the queue of ideas. After all, I’d been writing for years and it didn’t seem like the story was improving despite me throwing everything I had against the wall. It was one baaaad week, let me tell you, but at the end of it, Northstar was still there, battered, but resilient. I’m not sure I can describe the feeling adequately, but when you are engaged in a creative project, after awhile, the notion of giving it up becomes akin to separating from a loved one. At times, it can be more intimate than that — at times, the notion of walking away from Northstar was like contemplating which hand I should cut off. I guess I needed to realize I was that attached to it.

So guys, it’s not like it got any easier once I committed to working on it again. Creative work is still work. Building a story is still building something from nothing. You get up, you devote daily time to it, you push through, you produce the pages. We reformulated everything, I know that. Then, during a winter walk one Christmas, Nate and I struck upon a new plot element to inject in the story that made every other piece come alive. It was as if before that we were putting the wrong current through a set of disconnected circuits, and with that new idea, everything lit up. Moments of insight like that are what you wait for. You mull and meditate over the same story elements over and over, you explore every avenue you can, and then one day, it crystallizes. But you have to give it time.

Nate’s painting for Northstar’s hero, Alex. Summer, 2012

Even after the breakthrough, we still had maybe another year there where we hashed out the details, and even at that point, the final product was an outline of the story that detailed the plot. It was not a finished script with dialogue, it was basically just a cold blue-print. People could read the story in skeletal form, but the skin and bones were still waiting to be laid on. By January of this year, I started translating the plot into a fully articulated script, and the final product was ginormous. 5 years of starting with the germ of an idea, 5 years of sitting daily in a gray creative limbo, 5 years of wrestling with yourself, trying to grab that elusive gem that seems to sit at the edge of your vision, taunting you to quit, while at the same time beckoning you to chase it. 5 years, and then there’s a white brick sitting on your desk. A white stack of pages representing the hard-won manifestation of your imagination.

I’m about to enter a sixth year where this story will continue to dominate my creative life and work. As I’ve worked through this process of chasing a long-cherished goal, I’ve had many chances to stop. I didn’t. That said, the Northstar that we envisioned when we started is unrecognizable compared to the Northstar we have now. We gave it the time needed to explore every nook and cranny that the idea suggested, and many times that led to dead ends that required us to back up and start over. At a critical moment, I realized the idea wanted to find a final form, so I didn’t give up on it. Understand, that if I thought the idea didn’t warrant the work, I would have stopped and moved on to another project.

Know that in life, many voices, both internal and external to yourself will chime in to give you advice. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t listen to those voices, or that you should shield yourself from outside input. Sometimes, I think you really need to listen to people that are trying to help you, so long as their advice rings true to you. In the end, you must always, always adhere to what your heart tells you in those nights when you are at your lowest ebb. Regardless of what others might say to help you correct course, you alone are are ultimately navigating the waters of your life. If someone says something that makes sense, take it in. If they don’t know what they’re talking about, throw it away.

So, that’s that for now. As my Mom says to me every other day, if something is overwhelming you, step back, sit with it and if you can, get a nap in honey. Wherever you find yourself in your work and life, Happy Holidays.

On Keeping the Compass Pointed North

The Morning View from Lullskull West

When I moved out to Los Angeles, my  goals were to get closer to the film industry, demystify how it worked, and from there, formulate a way to make films for a living. Well, I’ve been out here 9 years come this October, and in that time I’ve paired everything down to what matters most to me: making films, period. When I came to the conclusion that the healthiest course was to uncouple the act of writing from the pressure of earning money, it eased a monkey fist of tension that had been balled in my stomach for years, going all the way back to the “where is this all leading?” anxiety that was always dogging me in College. It was only when I realized that I wanted to make films no matter what the financial benefit, that I knew I had to scratch that innate itch until I was satisfied I’d come to a plateau on it. I’m still in the process of climbing up to that plateau, and when we finish Northstar, you’ll have to ask me if I’m still itching for more.

Point is, “Success” by my definition is interchangeable with Growth. It is not some static object. It is not a finish line. What’s more, I suspect you don’t have licence to take a break for the rest of your life after you’ve “made it”.

This post started as a first stab at what writing means to me right now in my life and how that relates to Northstar. Before we get into that, I’m going to take an inventory of habits (for lack of a better word) that have helped me keep my eye on the ball whenever I’ve felt tempted to clear the desk and become a construction worker or something. While this is written mostly with Artists, Writers, Actors and fellow Filmmakers in mind, you could apply these mid-game pulse-checkers to any dream you cherish:

• Show Up: I learned this basic equation during an earlier life when I was pursuing music: show up, practice, stop, think about what you can improve, repeat.  Some days that means getting up early to give that notebook an hour or coming home after work and sitting by a dim light to draw, but I’ve typically found that it was in those moments that I got better. At first, I don’t think the actual work you produce matters as much as the fact that you are making time to engage with it regularly. You’ve simply got to Show Up. Wrestle with that beast regularly and your fear of producing something bad will come out in the wash of a relentlessly obeyed schedule.

• Goal Setting: Once you’ve jumped the mental hurdle that’s stopped you from producing work on a timely basis, you can begin to look forward and consider where it’s all heading. Will all this creative exploration crystallize in the form of a book? A comic? An audition? A movie? A song? When I was a little, an early mind-blower was the story of Babe Ruth pointing to left field and knocking that sucker right where he damn well told you he would. When you direct your attention towards a very fixed point, I think it’s true that you martial a confidence that needs to be there, whether you consciously know you have it or not.

• Push Your Comfort Zone: Let’s say you’ve reached a goal. Great, now you’ve broken a barrier. An assumption about yourself has been forever demolished.  Where to next? Don’t let old or false notions of yourself hold you back. The more you push, the more the world rebounds back to meet your ambition with fresh options. Even so, I’d still advise paying close attention to what feels right for you. This is tricky, because it could come off as me saying don’t do something if you are afraid, but that’s not what I’m getting at. Being afraid is no reason not to do something incredible. However if doing something doesn’t feel right, obey that impulse.

• Love Your Friends: Life informs. Make regular time to turn off your worries and be fully present with your friends and loved ones. Who knows, that unplanned phone conversation with your dad, that night out laughing your ass off with your best friends, or that string of in-jokes you share with your significant other all day — all of that time with friends could  help you put a finger on some insight you needed. Or maybe not. Maybe you were supposed to provide that insight to someone else. While I’m prone to introversion,  I make every moment I can to be with the people I care about most. With the love of good people in your life, everything else becomes marginal. Everything.

• Surround Yourself with People that Inspire You: This doesn’t mean that you should pad your insecurity with yes-men that don’t care enough to set you straight when you need realistic advice. Again, this can be tricky, because if you have too many people giving you positive reinforcement, you might lose a certain edge. On the other hand, we ALL have known people that are willing, whether they know it or not, to advise without prompting that you should give up and stop. Rely on the bedrock of your intuition to decide which people in your life have a net positive effect on your mental health, and which of those are people that psychically pull you back in the box.

• Patience: This all takes so much time. Northstar itself has taken 5 years of life to realize and I’m still finding new ways to make it better. I don’t think it will always be this way, I just think that NS required us to learn a few new tricks. Now, I’ll be the first to recommend following through until you’ve completed something, but always be open to letting whatever you are working on evolve to match the rhythms of your heart and your life. I don’t think you should continue working on a current project that doesn’t ring true to your present mindset. When you are working on it, this should feel like the bleeding edge state of your art. It’s only when you’re done that I think a work becomes the marker of a moment in your growth cycle. And remember, this is good, vital work. Don’t worry about how long it takes, man.

• Do Not Compare: Ultimately, I think the only way for anyone to know the full scope of his or her capabilities starts with a solid base of self-respect. If someone else in your life is successful, be happy for them. They are on their own path, and you must walk yours with confidence. Pay attention and follow through on where your natural creative inclinations lead you. Trust that you actually have a perspective and that it’s helping you get better acquainted with yourself. As you progress through this inner search, you’ll inevitably trip over new insights that only you can share, and this is how you develop an authentic voice.

• Be Present: Despite all that’s come before and all that might come tomorrow, you can always choose to be your best self in this moment. Try not to think of yourself as the stitched-together sum total of every mistake you’ve ever made. By the same token, the future might be scary, but you can always choose to approach it with a sense of possibility. Whenever you feel overwhelmed by all the issues that could stop you from moving forward, take a second to monitor your steps, count your breaths, or feel the damn air part across your face. Do whatever it takes to step outside of the net of worry over what happened or what might happen. Today, right now, you are so lucky to be alive, to have the mental freedom to chart your own course and to use that knowledge as a means of putting something good into the world. Don’t waste another second in some other moment.

Conclusion and Reading Suggestions

Whoa, that got a little self-helpy towards the end! Oh well! Now that we have all that out of the way, the second part of this post will be a case study on how I applied some of these habits when developing our latest project, Northstar. Below are some books I recommend checking out. As always, consider buying from our favorite bookstore, Snowbound!

Some Good Books for Creative Help

• Stephen King: On Writing
• Brenda Ueland: If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit

Stuff I use for Mental Health

• Jon Kabat-Zinn: Wherever You Go, There You Are
• Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching (Mitchell Translation)

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Northstar: A Suggested Reading List

Northstar “Pulp” Poster by Nathan Anderson

Spinning off from the previous entry devoted to Post-Apocalyptic movies that inspired us as we were conceiving Northstar,  this time around we’re going to take a look at 5 books that were unavoidable influences. When it comes to this list, we didn’t stick as closely to genre definitions as we did with the movies. Post-Apocalyptic films typically use a disastrous setting as some scorched earth setup for redemptive adventure. This fits the film medium well (movies are, after all, more propulsive), but when it comes to literature, we were more prone to come up with books that use world altering events as a springboard to ask sustained questions about where we’re going as a race and who or what is leading us there.

Note: If any of these books pique your fancy, we encourage you to consider buying from our favorite bookstore, Snowbound Books. Located in Marquette, Michigan, the awesome Snowbound staff has been serving the Upper Peninsula since 1984. Links to purchase from their online store are provided below.

1) Brave New World – Aldous Huxley

Reading this again recently, I’m still struck by how plausible the scenario is. The future horror predicted here is hyper-regulated by a small, contemptuous power-base, and the genetically modified people/creatures they lead/manage are thoroughly bred both physically and emotionally to be unaware of their limited life prospects. Huxley believed population growth was the biggest looming threat facing humanity, a hard fact of modern life that in conjunction with the obvious depletion of resources that will come as a result of so many people walking the earth, will also have the added side-benefit of destabilizing governments! The answer? Re-adjust procreation so it runs like a car factory  (the dumb ones are human dump trucks, the brilliant ones are pink porcelained Porsches) and subdivide each generation based on a caste system that completely guts the idea that democracy inherently fosters fairness. Self-medicate anyone aberrant enough to start realizing this is all obscene, and we all come to accept this antiseptic hell by degrees. Yes, I can see how this might happen without many of us even knowing it (or caring).

• Take me to Snowbound!
• See Also: Cat’s Cradle

2) 1984 – George Orwell

Both Orwell and Huxley are dealing with a similar story, in that some of the people they follow through a world of eroded human liberty have come to realize how deeply empty anyone is when they don’t have the right to chart their own course. However, the difference with Orwell (and maybe the limitation), is that anyone that steps out of line in Oceania gets thrown into a cell and tortured in ways tailored to their specific weakness. This is societal punishment via boot to the face, whereas Brave New World side-steps the need for such regulations by erasing society’s urge to rebel in the first place. In 1984, Winston Smith learns to love someone in a world where the very thought of romantic attachment is a crime, where the war industry has become THE industry, and where the leadership watches the citizens like an occupation force. The root difference between Orwell and Huxley, is that fear creates order in 1984, while the Brave New World is held together by an unconscious acceptance that this is simply the way it is. You can decide what is more in keeping with human nature. Both stories attempt to dig into the then modern attempt to take apart the human psyche, figure out what drives it and I dunno, *maybe* heal what ails us? or more likely CONTROL US? Both stories then illustrate how that may or may not be a futile notion given how irascible human beings tend to be. In the end, to me the concept of Big Brother is Orwell’s greatest gift to humanity; a jackbooted warning that there are people in power that will always feel tempted to think of their fellow man as cogs in a machine.

• Take me to Snowbound!
• See Also: The Handmaid’s Tale

3) A Canticle for Leibowitz – Walter M. Miller, Jr.

600 years in the future, a nuclear war has drastically reduced humanity down to a mix of savage colonies (sure), barbarous mutants (awesome!) and… a resurgent catholic church (whaaaaaa???)? Thus begins a book that follows a series of monks as they struggle to preserve the flame of human knowledge across the course of a 1700 year period where humanity reestablishes itself as the dominant species. The mystics that populate the Albertain Order of Leibowitz (named after a Jewish electrical engineer that worked for the US Government and later converted to Catholicism after he survived getting nuked), live out the immediate post-holocaust dark age illuminating holy texts (and I’m not talking about the Bible here guys… the first Monk we follow has spent years tricking out an aircraft blueprint he doesn’t even begin to understand!). From there, we follow this order as the knowledge of Saint Leibowitz survives, comes to be re-understood, and finally helps to re-establish civilization as we know it. But even after this second chance at bat, humanity 2.0 still can’t overcome a a pesky itch to blow itself up again! Leibowitz’s cyclical narrative asks if human beings are capable of learning from their mistakes, or if there’s something inherent in our nature that renders us pathologically suicidal. Miller was deeply religious, and I’m sure the basic questions that prompted his masterpiece were overlaid with the concern of original sin – that taint we as humans might not be able to escape no matter how much punishment we’re subjected to. As it happens, the Apocalypse as divine punishment brings me to the next book on our list!

• Take me to Snowbound!
• See Also: Pax Romana

4) The Stand – Stephen King

Like the “Great Deluge” in Leibowitz,  Stephen King’s highly readable door-stopper uses a crowd-clearing event as pretext to set up a new high-stakes chess game for what remains of humanity. Heck, let’s not keep the influences constrained to sci-fi novels here man – you could go all the way back to John’s Revelation if you want to find the most culturally resonant origin for epic tales like this. Using the Bible as a framework then, the whole point of telling the story is that the initial holocaust is a purge or cleansing. After this divine broom has swept 99.999% of the world into a snot-ridden dustbin (Superflu would be NOT fun), the chosen few remaining have been left for a purpose. Again, like with Miller’s book, King is writing about a group of people that are plunged straight down into the nitty-gritty business of human destiny, where the final man standing will determine the true worth of an entire species. Heady stuff for what is on the surface a quest novel where like, 47 main characters are all drawn across the country to be handed either a white or black hat so they can duke it out in Las Vegas. I kid about the large cast. To be honest, despite the fact that he wrote what feels like a thousand books after this opus, you really only need to go back to The Stand to see why King is so popular. He’s a gifted story-teller true, but his characters are the engines that drive his greatest novels. In addition to Stu and Franny, wayward Harold, shadow-woman Nadine and that M-O-O-N guy, we are treated finally to King’s Cosmic Villain, Randall Flagg, a charming devil that takes on an appropriate guise for an Apocalypse story that is particularly American.

• Take me to Snowbound!
• See Also: Earth Abides

5) Y: The Last Man

For 60 comic issues, writer Brian K. Vaughan and artist Pia Guerra followed what may be the last two males (one would be escape-artist, one helper monkey) on earth after a selective plague has instantly killed every mammal possessing a Y chromosome. In this world where Women have inherited the earth, Yorick Brown and his monkey Ampersand embark on a quest to find Y’s girlfriend in Australia, and in the process encounter a host of new friends and obstacles, all of which offer what might have been in lesser creative hands, either a stale sociological tract or a no-brainer premise for a porn movie. With Yorick, we have what might be called a realistic portrait of the type of man to come of age in the last 30 years or so: over-educated yet physically emasculated, ready to spout a pop-cultural quip to deflate any serious moment, yet unprepared when he comes to realize the greater emotional depths he’s capable of accessing. In this, you might be tempted to say that in addition to exploring the evolution of gender roles in the 21st century, Y uses it’s male-stripped apocalypse to a deconstruct the latest, not so greatest generation of men. But that takes away from what is an effortlessly readable, consistently funny, and often tear-jerking journey where a man, his monkey and his multiple girlfriends learn to navigate a new, feminine planet.

• Take me to Snowbound!
• See Also: DMZ

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Top 5 Post Apocalyptic Movies

Top 5 Post Apocalyptic Movies

Our current movie project Northstar taps into a long tradition of literature and films that are set in a possible future where a devastating event has either stopped or altered the course of civilization. The other day I sounded out the other two Lullskull guys and together we compiled a short list of  movies that inspired the way we’ve approached this genre in our own project. We’re still discovering new films on a regular basis, so please offer your suggestions!

Note: I define “Post Apocalyptic” as a story  where an event, either natural or man-made but always HORRIBLE, has already occurred as the story begins or has happened recently enough to totally mess up the main character’s daily routine. This differs from “Dystopic” fiction, which typically imagines a crappy future that isn’t the direct result of say a Biblical Superflu, a Texas-Sized Asteroid or a Robot Holocaust. Dystopias (think Blade Runner or 1984) are usually just something that happened “naturally”, and I dunno, maybe that’s worse because the implicit message is everyone was lazy enough to let it happen. Now that we’ve got that cleared up:

1) The Road Warrior

In a dried out Australian wilderness, a young Mel Gibson ekes out a hardscrabble (yet devastatingly cool) existence after civilization has literally run out of gas. The Road Warrior delivers just about every trope everyone imagines when they think Post Apocalyptic: It has villains that are a cross between someone you’d see walk of out a Clash show in 1977, and someone you’d still see walk out of a leather club in 2013. It has a group of angelic, shoulder-padded survivalists holed up in a fenced off compound like it’s some cobbled together medieval castle. And finally, it has an iconic hero thrust into the middle of it all with nothing more than a souped up car, a leather jacket and an awesome dog with mismatched eyes. This movie is a no fuss hour and a half of hard nosed action with a twist ending that still feels nearly mythological. The lesson: if the end of the world happens, keep moving. And this movie moves.

2) The Terminator

With The Terminator, we have a Post Apocalyptic scenario in reverse; instead of following the hero after she’s been put through the end of the world wringer, we watch her face down the relentless, red-eyed, heavy metal reality of a nuclear holocaust that hasn’t even happened yet. What’s still impressive is that Sarah Conner’s development as a  character  is just one of the many things you can pick out underneath what on the surface is a taut chase movie through 1984 Los Angeles, where a man from the future travels back to the woman he fell in love in order to help her become that woman (among other spoilery things) in the process. Besides ruthless pacing, dynamic action, and a deft use of time travel, let’s face it, The Terminator is ultimately held together by Arnold Schwarzenegger. This a performance that demonstrates how sheer screen presence can overcome piddly questions like why a robot would have such a thick Austrian accent.

3) Escape from New York

Director John Carpenter has had a deep influence on Northstar, particular with a string of films he made between 1978 and oh, around 1982. The most appropriate for this discussion is Escape From New York, where yet another cooler than cool hero is thrown into a ravaged environment and forced to contend with an overwhelming power structure that is using him only so long as he’s useful. Beyond that, they’ll just blow out his carotid arteries with a miniature bomb! So Kurt Russell’s Snake Plissken is forced to save the President in a New York that’s been cut off into a Manhattan shaped super-max. In a near future where the crime rate has gone up 400% (probably something that was very plausible to urban dwellers in 1981), our “hero” has to stick to a personal code of conduct, even if he himself has crossed the line from hero to petty criminal. Despite being a consistent dick, Plissken sticks to his particular guns; a reflexive selfishness that is maybe the only sane reaction to a world where those in power have gone crazy.

4) 12 Monkeys

Inspired by the gorgeous short film La Jetee, 12 Monkeys asks what the remnants of humanity would do if they had the technological means to reverse the end of the world. But as with other great time travel stories, going back to a better time usually creates more of a mess than actually coping with an unthinkable present. Bruce Willis plays a guinea pig that is sent back multiple times from a ghastly future where an ominous community has devised a time machine that looks like it’s being held together by duct tape (it’s also incredibly imprecise… at one point Willis ends up in World War 1, only to get shot!). His mission is to figure out the origins of a virus so lethal that it’s forced everyone to live underground. As James Cole (Jeeze, Willis’ characters are always sacked with forgettable names) hopscotches across the timeline to discover who released the plague, he interfaces with a bug-eyed Brad Pitt (BTW besides Achilles, this might be my favorite thing he’s ever done), falls in love and ultimately comes face to face with a dream that’s plagued him all his life. Like the Terminator, both time travel and the bulwark of a possible apocalypse are used as a means of exploring how fate and free will determine the course of our lives, and 12 Monkeys has risen over the years as a shining example of original sci-fi that not only entertains, but enlightens.

5) Children of Men

A more recent film in the genre to really shake things up is Children of Men, where civilization is on the brink of total collapse after 18 years of global infertility. Interestingly, the UK seems to be the last governmental structure to stay intact (in a great moment, background newspaper headlines tell everyone the US basically nuked itself), but I guess Escape from New York didn’t teach us jack, because Parliament took a page from Hitler’s rule-book and now London resembles 1939 Berlin. Starring as a former activist that’s been whittled down to a hollowed out wisp of a man, would-be Bond Clive Owen is quickly forced to escort the only pregnant woman alive through a hellish countryside where multiple, highly armed factions vie for the future of humanity. There’s much to love when it comes to this film, from it’s desperate portrayal of power, to the apathy many would succumb to as a result of an apocalyptic scenario that is out of anyone’s control, but what really strikes me is how uncompromisingly brutal this world is. There’s violence in this film that sticks with you. The film ends with a brilliantly executed race against time through a prison camp that collapses into to a chaotic mess of surreal urban combat. As Owen’s Theo does his best to escort an utterly vulnerable woman with child through a hail of bullets, it’s hard to imagine a better image of hope in the face of overwhelming odds.

The Classics: Brave New World

I first read Brave New World directly after my first, exhilarating rush through 1984. I was maybe 17, and the only scene I recalled before coming back to it now in my 30’s was the boardroom sex-ring ritual that culminates in a term that’ll stick with any teenager: Orgy-Porgy. Yeah. So given the stories I’m writing lately, I earmarked Brave New World as one of the first books I’d actually re-read. I’ve never deliberately done this before, except maybe with comics where the commitment isn’t too involved, but in this instance it’s turned out to be a good thing, because other than a vague notion of what the book was about, I didn’t remember anything.

The five stars I’m giving this book come with a caveat that needs to be unpacked a bit up front. Let’s face it, at times, the characters in BNW read as personifications of the argument Huxley is trying to outline with the entire piece. At times, dialogue and scenes can be poked as being on the nose. Yet the author’s argument, despite having been written in an era where Henry Ford was still a celebrity, despite positing a future-history that features some kind of chemical apocalypse due to the fact that the Huxley had no notion of the coming atomic age – YES – despite even the lack of character depth and a certain anachronism that couches everything from the viewpoint of the industrial era – despite all those things, Brave New World still speaks to someone living in the 21st century.

In a cultural moment where many of us willingly give up just about every element of our private lives without questioning where this information goes and how it’s repurposed, Brave New World still stands as a warning. The over-organized civilization, where the cogs of progress are managed down to the genetic level, where free will is broken down at an early age via subterranean messages that reinforce the system’s norms, where citizens needs and wants are codified to the point where they don’t even question it… Servitude rendered acceptable to the enslaved via creature comforts. A culture where anxiety, depression and the possible self-examination that may result is drowned out in a wash of meaningless amusement, rampant sexualization and medicated release…

Despite my earlier knock, I do think there’s something to chew on when we follow how these characters navigate their situation. Lenina is basically the showroom model of her culture, yet she’s innately attracted to the weirdos. Bernard, the lonely nerd that rejects his plight internally like an angsty bitch, yet betrays himself and others when given an inch of acceptance. Helmholtz, the writer with a rare self-command that comes from full access to the world’s pleasures, and comes to realize (with an intriguing impotence) that there’s more to be known. Mond, the master of this fake-ass universe, the one who truly knows the horrible dimensions of this joke yet accepts his role in the farce, because well, he’s in power. Savage, the true counterpoint to this hellscape – neither accepted by his adopted culture nor willing to dive into a city that’s entirely ready to screw his exotic bird brains out.

As Savage returns with Bernard to the New World after growing up in a fenced-off human zoo where the people have been left to contrive an alternate culture that mixes primitivism with what I guess is a form of Christian cosmology (It seems to me Huxley isn’t necessarily saying this hodgepodge religion is a fitting replacement for what we already have going. It’s just… the best they could do), he falls back on a Puritanism that’s like Greek to these genetically specialized dipshits. I like how John’s only bedrock for navigating the world are Shakespeare and Jesus. This terminally adolescent dude is put through quite the test when it comes to Lenina, and I guess we have to understand his extreme resistance to this promiscuous culture as something that was ironically ingrained in him early on when he saw so many use his mother like the town whore. As a side note, I find Linda’s story to be kind of funny. This hapless pink creature from sex-world breaks her ankle during some safari and ends up getting stuck for 20 years in tribal South America (Michael York’s version of her BTW, is hilarious).

So Savage ends up meeting with Mustapha Mond (shades of O’Brien), and the two cultures have their final conversation… and what should seem like a stiff illustration of Huxley’s themes, literally the moment where our characters spout the very thesis of the book, is actually working for me. It’s just so damn harmonious with the way power seems to work at its most reptilian level. Mond says it best when Savage tries to argue for the value of Othello (or any art that helps us understand the human condition): You can’t expose this Brave New World to tragedies kid, because the very existence of tragedy means there’s social instability. No, no! This civilization is based on unending happiness, and while Mond admits he’s found happiness to be overrated, he’s in agreement with his overlords that it’s still a supreme means of control. When Savage claims his right to be unhappy, it’s an inherently human response to the man-made void that Huxley’s thrown his protagonist up against.

Yet, how many people will read that, agree with it on paper and yet forget it when life throws them a curveball? We do seek happiness as some sustainable thing that can be had as an object, and our civilization feeds on this desire. How many “Savages” out there have the presence of mind to accept sadness as a pre-condition that helps us fully understand happiness when it finally arrives? Freedom in other words, comes from our unrestricted, personal access to the entire spectrum of human experience and to utilize that empowerment as a means of self-realization. Individuality is what Huxley holds dearest here. Unfortunately for Savage, self-knowledge proves to be of no solace in the end. Even when he manages to find momentary solitude in that world, the public soon corners him like an exotic animal, and a poignant cultural misunderstanding leads to a fate I don’t really want to give away. The shiftless image of the future described in the last paragraph is basically perfect.

Finally, as an early indication of how science fiction would go on to mature as a genre in the mid-20th century, Brave New World is also pretty notable. At it’s best, SF can trace out the heinous trajectory of societal trends, can unearth the toxic waste that underlies cultural signposts we may be taking at face value, and thereby work to push us out of harm’s way before we hit a dead end as a species.

Jane Eyre is one of those must-read classics that I never got exposed to early on, and so for years it’s always fallen behind more obvious western canon bucket listers. I think the reason it took so long is because I thought of the Bronte sisters as more of an “advanced reading” thing you graduate to after you’ve tackled first wave 19th century titans like Dickens or Austen. Thankfully, my mom gave me the excuse to read it with her, and what good timing!

Starting with an early life section that feels sorta like what you might expect from the era (an orphaned smart-mouth urchin grows to become a chilly governess until Lord Byron shows up to melt her face with sex appeal), the story pivots into a vastly entertaining middle-section that tracks one woman’s dogged battle to attain self-hood in a patriarchal world. By the time you get to the central crisis of the book (I went 30 odd years without knowing Jane Eyre’s big time spoiler… how the hell?), all of it culminates as you might expect, yet… with Jane at the reins, you’re never quite sure it’ll work out! In other hands, this might have been a shallow romance where a woman finds her destiny thanks to an opportunity some GUY gives her (this is not an indirect jab at Austen… not quite). Instead, the book you get follows someone who is constantly fighting against these parameters in order to find a life she can accept. You DO get your sweeping love story here, but you also get this oddball protagonist that’s constantly arguing with each step as she progresses through it and is at one point willing to SLEEP IN THE DIRT if she deems circumstances aren’t up to snuff. Sometimes it felt like Jane was this incredibly well-wrought character placed in a world/story that didn’t deserve her attention. But that’s a nitpick.

I’d say the one real problem I had was in the plotting — it’s something that boils down to the author’s Christian worldview, and I’ve come to accept it as a part of the book’s general statement. Let’s just say, I didn’t like the coincidental way Jane came to realize her connection to St John and the two sisters. But even after taking issue with the totally out-of-nowhere random way she finds that house, I can also backtrack and recall how Jane came to them after an agonizing decision to leave a man she loves deeply. I understand the spiritual point: in providentially finding the home she always yearned for, Jane first had to commit an awesome act of self-denial. In the end, I admit it’s a fairly deft illustration of how free will can work within the scope of a divine plan, and I can accept this as part of the universe Jane inhabits. Maybe that’s the pass I can give it… Anyways, it’s not like Charlotte was going for realism here.

And yet… I’m still wondering how Bronte might have defined the ideal Christian life. On the one hand, you see her grappling with the poisonous results of dogma in the form of Brocklehurst, and on the other you get this troubling grey area with St. John. In the latter case, Bronte definitely holds this young minister up as someone to be admired for the Pauline lengths he’ll go to deny worldly desire, yet I can’t help but think him despicable when he won’t let Jane off the hook for deciding not to marry his stodgy ass. Here Bronte sanctions St John’s behavior as a “way to live” — a credible life path that simply isn’t Jane’s path — yet the whole time I’m reading this and thinking “this dick shouldn’t be jabbing her as a hell-bound sinner for not doing what he arbitrarily demanded. His “path” can stick it.” This is a personal disconnect I might not be able to mend when it comes to Bronte’s take on Christianity.

Finally, with Rochester, we get the romantic goods. Of course, it speaks to the book’s complexity that we can take Rochester’s love for Jane sincerely after all the shit he tries to pull on her. No, he needed to be taken down a peg before we could think of him as the equal to Jane effing Eyre. And here, in the end, we have a pretty messy love story, right? Jane finds the life she truly wants, but there is a cost included that will make things a little difficult on an operational level (for the man of course, Bronte lets Jane stay pretty much unscathed… one of many forward-thinking elements you’ll find as you read closely), but provides Jane the satisfaction of knowing she didn’t betray herself. Say what you will about how Jane gets to this final moment, I still think the main thing to take away for anyone is that she came to it with her eyes open and her integrity intact. Would that we all held ourselves up to such a brave standard.

Retrospectives: James Bond (Part 1)

You know, as years go by, it’s becoming very difficult to name a high-concept film series that I haven’t seen.  But here I am, finally getting around to all those Bond movies they put out for 50 years. I’ve thought quite a bit about why it took so long. Maybe the thing with James Bond is that you’ve got to get into him early. Even now, I clearly recall my 8-year old eyes glazing over when I tried to follow the stolen nuke setup for Thunderball. Fast forward to age 22: I’m in the UK for the first time, watching TV at the end of a perfect anglophiliac day, and a classic Connery is playing. You would think this would be some synchronous moment of clarity: here I am in a country I adore watching her greatest champion as played by her favorite Scot. But no, it just didn’t take.

Was it that Bond has always seemed, I dunno… dated?  Well, it’s not like I’ve ever had some snotty aversion to anything made before 1977 or something. If anything, after watching all these movies, I’ve noticed some tonal similarities to the Peter Sellers’ Pink Panther series that I watched endlessly when I was very little. I might then argue that Bond doesn’t naturally appeal to children, which sort of rings true in that he’s not at all whimsical (or funny) and comes laced with a layer of sexual aggression that probably would have terrified me as a kid (and Bond’s rapeyness still sort of does). Even so, the womanizing doesn’t totally cut it either because I could handle all 7 Police Academy movies at a too-young age without registering half the crap that was going on.

No, I think it really comes down to the fact that Bond’s world of espionage simply wasn’t otherworldly enough. Even as a very young child, I became immediately attached to any film or book that contained striking, or otherwise alien visuals. Yeah Bond had kid-friendly gadgets and he got into all kinds of trouble against the backdrop of some of the most exotic places on earth, but at the end of the day, he was a posh dude in a tuxedo… and I’ve never been attracted to that aesthetically. His fancy ass Grey-Poupon Ashton Martin was no Batmobile, his pea-shooter PPK was nowhere near as cool as Han Solo’s blaster, and I’m sorry, but an arch villain dressed in a silver Kim Jong Il pantsuit just didn’t register that high on the defcon 4 threat level when set beside the Wrath of Khan.

Rediscovering Bond

So this being 007’s golden anniversary, I somewhat reluctantly decided to watch every Bond movie (plus some outliers). These little essays will hopefully help me process the mixed bag of feelings I’ve come back with after watching so much media in such a concentrated period.

Right away, I can say that my understanding of what Bond represents for his genre has definitely benefited from having read (and loved) Graham Green and John le Carré in my 20s. Now that I’ve seen Bond’s comparatively lighter take on the ins and outs (hrm) of international espionage, this whole retrospective has rekindled an abiding interest in Spy Fiction and I can’t wait to discover more books and movies in this vein. Personally, I’m more attracted to the interior worlds explored in stuff like Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, as opposed to the externalized, action-packed landscape that Bond inhabits. 007’s missions are not comprised of cat-and-mouse minefields where the winner is the guy that is brilliant (or lucky) enough to think one dimension beyond his opponent. No, in the movies that shit don’t play, so Bond has to karate chop, incinerate, harpoon, or ski his way out of a problem. And that’s how I’ve come to appreciate, and even love many of the Bond films.

However, if there’s one deep sin the Bond series is truly guilty of, it’s that they became very formulaic, very fast. After a creative buildup that culminates in the glorious Goldfinger, the filmmakers ride the momentum of a fresh genre pretty well into a secondary peak with On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Afterwards, Roger More serves as an admittedly charming guide through a gradual creative nosedive that grinds on and on through the entirety of the 70s and ends with a brief, violent shakeup in the 80’s when Tim Dalton flares out after two films. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, we get an exciting opportunity for revitalization with Pierce Brosnan in the role, but oddly, Roger Moore’s well-coiffed ghost returns to drag the series back into his silly-ass world. With Daniel Craig, Bond is reset into an amalgamation that crosses Lazenby’s vulnerability and Dalton’s brutality. I think it was the best (and maybe only) way to go.

Before diving in, I’m going to tell you straight-out that of the 25 Bond films that exist (counting 1 parody and 1 soul-crushing remake) the hard fact is that only 10 are really worth watching more than once, and honestly, only 6 of them truly justify the goodwill that has surrounded the Bond franchise all this time. You might think that’s a bad attrition rate, but mentally you have to set aside that there are 25 of these damn things and then ask yourself this: how many movie franchises can you name that have 6 or more solid entries?

Ok, enough preface. Let’s list some crap off! Starting with the crap!

The Bad Bonds

These stinkers mostly come about during that previously mentioned decade-plus string of films that were relentlessly pumped out like sausages. As I was sitting down to watch, it got to be like plug and play after awhile! Each film had the same 2 and 1/2 hour plot beats, you always had 2 bond girls (the first one always dies), an exotic henchman, a disfigured villain, a brightly lit lair to stage the endgame and something topical to vaguely freshen up the old lurching corpse. With a few notable exceptions (which I’ll get to, I promise), that was the Bond experience from 1971 to 1985.

But in all fairness, with so many films produced over the course of 5 decades, most coming at a clip of about every 2 to 3 years, the root “problem” is that these movies have always made an obscene profit based on a brand that basically became indestructible after Goldfinger. It’s a testament to the strength of the character that audiences were willing to put up with so many movies the featured the same GF-inspired, boilerplate of a plot. I don’t even think you can argue that it was some dip in the numbers that ultimately led to the creative shakeups… Bond has remained eternally popular, and whenever he’s been absent, it’s usually been due to a battle over who gets the money. It says a hell of a lot that MGM was willing to give up Spiderman to Sony in order to retain the rights to 007.

So it’s about the character stupid, not the story, right? Well, that being the case,  if you are planning on doing a Bond retrospective, you can safely avoid the following movies. I’m serious. If you buy the boxed set, these stinkers can remain wrapped in dusty shrinkwrap forever. Really. I don’t think you ever need to see these movies in your life.

• On the fences: Live and Let Die

If you grew up with Moore as your Bond, I can see why Live and Let Die, might have big-time appeal, especially for kids. There’s a few things to recommend it: A great theme song (which might also be the best Wings song if there ever was one), an absolutely radiant Jane Seymour, an early section in 70’s Manhattan that’s straight out of Super Fly, and a hilarious escape sequence with a series of strategically placed alligators. For me, the primary point of interest is that it’s Roger Moore’s first take on Bond, and while this long-lived replacement for Connery is definitely svelte, he gives no indication of the teeth that should always be lying underneath 007’s worldly veneer. God bless him, Roger Moore just doesn’t have a ruthless bone in his body! That basic problem with the character’s portrayal is compounded by the fact that the movie has unbelievable pacing problems. So yeah, I’m borderline on this one. If you are really curious about Moore as Bond, you could basically skip his first two films and go straight to The Spy Who Loved Me.

• The Merely Boring One: Diamonds are Forever

It might turn your head because they bring back Connery, but give this sucker a few minutes and you’ll quickly realize that Sean forgot to bring his charisma back. He’s basically just a warm body taking a healthy paycheck (which to his credit, he turned over to charity. Blah, he’s still a wifebeater.) and the most disappointing thing about it all is that the preceding movie (On her Majesty’s Secret Service) could have ended his era on an emotional high note. Other than a somewhat interesting elevator fight and a decent theme song, this one feels like the most obvious rip-off of Goldfinger in the series and ultimately wasted everybody’s time, seeing as how Connery wasn’t going to come back anyway and Moore was waiting in the wings. The most interesting thing about this era is that they were already eyeing Dalton for the role. What could have been?!?

• The Utterly Pointless One: Never Say Never Again

Don’t!!! Don’t line up to get kicked in the teeth again by the promise of a returned Connery! Ok, so they brought him back in the 80’s due to a legal loophole that the co-writer of the Thunderball doggedly chased for like 20 years (everything I’ve read about this Kein McClory dude makes him seem like a greedy dick. I mean he threatened to re-do Thunderball a third time in the late 90’s with Dalton! What kind of obsessive weirdo does that?) Well, he finally got to stick it to EON (which I don’t necessarily disagree with) and Never Say Never is the grey sludge we get as a result. Never watch! I know how attractive it might seem too! Irving Kershner directing right after Empire Strikes Back? Holy crap, yes! Kim Basinger just before Batman 89? Ok! 50ish Connery vs 50ish Moore in the same year? Is there a choice?!? Well… there is. It’s called Octopussy. Ugh. Nobody won in the great Bond wars of 1983.

• The Two Dregs:

Finally, you know I could be mean and list off like, the rest of Roger Moore’s movies, and while I wouldn’t reckon most of them as being particularly good (or even watchable all the way through), I still found something I could lock on to in many of them, be it a Bond girl, a certain setting, or some tidbit of character growth that made me smile. Still, both Moonraker and View to a Kill are highly representative of Bond as stomach-churning product and really would count as a waste of 5 hours you could use someplace else in your life.

To be continued with my top 5 Best Bonds! I promise to be more positive!

Goth Rox III + Top 5 Goth Albums

Here we go guys! It’s the 2012 Lullskull Goth Rox Mixtape!

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LET’S PLAY GOTH ROX III!
(right-click to download)

Or:

Goth Rox III by Lullskull on Mixcloud

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Artist/Tracks

Intro: Michael Boyd and Gary Remal Malkin – Unsolved Mysteries

The Mission – Wasteland
The Black Angels –The Sniper at the Gates of Heaven
The March Violets – Snake Dance
Ss-Say – Care
Miranda Sex Garden – Peep Show
HTRK – Eat Yr Heart

Interlude I: Eartha Kitt – I Want to Be Evil

Type O Negative – My Girlfriend’s Girlfriend
Skinny Puppy – Deadlines (Edit)
The Cramps – Human Fly
The Cure  – A Night Like This
The Danse Society – Somewhere
Killing Joke – Love Like Blood
Deerhunter – Like New
Siouxsie and the Banshees – Cities in Dust

Interlude II: Goblin – Sighs (Edit)

The Church – Under the Milky Way
New Order – Ceremony (Original Version)
Cocteau Twins – Kookaburra

Outro: Dead Can Dance – Severance

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BONUS (?): Seth’s top 5 Favorite Goth Albums!

Before going into the listage here,  I should maybe suss out what my definition of Goth Rock is. My brother and I have been listening off and on to bummer music since we were really young. As I started broadening out in my late teens, the entire post-punk period centered around the UK from about oh, 1978 to 1982 really crystallized into what is still my favorite musical era. It was a very durable moment where a bunch of art students got their hands on affordable gear and deeply influenced the next 30 years of what I guess we call indie music now. An indelible and at times genuinely original strain to come out of that fertile period is what we now call Goth or Death Rock.

As with most genres, Goth got completely codified when it hit its mainstream peak in the mid-90’s with Marilyn Manson’s first three records. Afterwards, Columbine made it totally not cool to dress like a spook. There has been some recent trends in indie circles towards a reclamation of the original look and feel of early goth and industrial music, but for the most part, as far as your bros are concerned, Goth is as socially repellent as comic books. So what was I saying… Oh yeah, if you want  my personal definition, Goth Rock is basically Post-Punk fused with Glam-Rock, minus the color. Ok, fine, whatever. So here’s this:

5) The Sky’s Gone Out by Bauhaus

Bauhaus was recommended without hesitation by just about every lurker in the AOL chat rooms when I started seeking out classic goth albums in my early teens. Since it would have been a miracle to even find a Love and Rockets CD in the small town where I grew up, I randomly chose this album on a microfiche listing at the local sam goody where I worked, and special ordered the damn thing. I still remember the first echoed blast of Third Uncle (which had the eternal side-benefit of also providing my first indirect introduction to Brian Eno) and loving how the song managed to build a certain intensity by simply repeating the same refrain (“…and then there was you”). Can’t say I’ve become a lifelong fan of Bauhaus overall though; something about Murphy’s monochromatic voice has never quite gelled for me (give me Daniel Ashe instead), but this album, from Silent Hedges, to Exquisite Corpse does cohere, and is still my personal favorite.

4) Juju by Siouxsie and the Banshees

This was tough, because whenever I periodically revisit Siouxsie and the Banshees I’m never quite convinced they managed a knockout album all the way through. Listening to it again recently, I found myself wishing I could merge Juju with Kaleidoscope somehow, even though Juju’s production and creative intent is more sure-footed. That said, aside from Robert Smith, I believe Siouxsie has one of the most original vocal attacks I’ve ever heard. That sonorous, frantically energetic, and oddly british moan she drenches over every song is either obnoxiously busy on a bad day, or effectively dramatic on a good one. Like other all-time favorites I’ve listened to regularly in my life (Depeche Mode, The Smiths, and yes, even my beloved New Order), I’ve typically regarded them as a “singles” band, which doesn’t mean Juju should not be regarded as a classic. It is. Seriously, there’s nothing like Spellbound.

3) Treasure by Cocteau Twins

I rate this album so highly not just because Cocteau Twins are probably my favorite band, but also for the fact that this particular record has to be the quintessential 4AD object. Right off the bat, from the confidently quiet opening to Ivo, you get the pleasure of hearing an entire album by a band (and a label) that has stumbled into a complete world to play with of its own. No one, not even fellow 4ADer Lisa Gerrard (who I love just as equally), sounds like quite like Liz Fraser, and somehow the stars aligned to put her into a collision course with Robin Guthrie. Now, while I do think Fraser is a unique talent that can stand alone in any genre (Massive Attack basically used her to launch into orbit), there’s something so deftly PB&J about how she glides above, below and through Guthrie’s walls of sound. After Treasure, the Twins achieved many equally great moments, but this album not only defined a band, it mythologized a record label and arguably spawned an entire genre (4AD=Proto-Shoegaze?). It may sound superficially dark (it is safely gothy), but I’m still amazed at how with later albums they managed to innovate, strip-down and re-invent the initial pay dirt they hit here with Treasure.

2) Faith by The Cure

I have a very clear, happy memory of when I first heard one of Robert Smith’s compact, melodic and all-around likeable songs coming from my brother’s room. I think it’s good that most people know The Cure from their more pop-oriented 80’s hits, because I think in that material, you find Bob’s truest gifts to the human race (and all lovers of pop music). However, this is a Goth list, and I’ve got to drag us back to a more sobering time when the makeup was less Mommie Dearest and the hair was (slightly) less the tangled rat’s nest we now see covering a pair of terrifying raccoon eyes. Yes, there was a time when The Cure were the next logical step for Goth Rock as it progressed beyond 1980, and maybe it should have ended there. Pornography gets all the play (and really, 100 Years may be the only goth song you ever need to hear in your life if you’re just casually curious), but if you ever want to subject yourself to the musical equivalent of having a heavy weight pressed down on your soul by an indifferent Universe, play the second half of this record from All Cats Are Grey all the way through to Faith (omg, that bass-line is clinical depression). Then, seriously, hit your system with a speedball of Love Cats stat.

1) Closer by Joy Division

I dunno, I remember hearing all these great things about Joy Division, but I couldn’t get past Ian Curtis’ voice for the longest time. I think this is where listening to an album all the way through can really change a person’s perspective on a band when considered as a unit. Closer is such a complete effort, with a chilled, restrictive sound that has become the sonic signature of the darker synth music that took off later in the 80’s. I don’t want to believe that Curtis was burning through every last idea he had about what influenced him, and where he thought rock music could go. I remember reading (or maybe watching it in one of those biopics) that he said his only ambition was to create one album and when he had achieved that with Unknown Pleasures, he was pretty much done. I have had that thought in my life. Maybe it’s the thought every creative person has when they are trudging up that uphill road to a peak where they will hopefully find their voice. The thing about Closer is that he evidently had more in him, because his second album was even better than the first. I guess you can’t make people want to live if they’ve simply decided there’s nowhere else to go. His band-mates were obviously keen to keep the momentum up, and in many ways, they went on to prove that life can be filled with many more peaks if you keep moving.

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Letters From the Earth

In the last year I’ve taken great care in crafting my reading goals towards something that will satisfy my need to be a more thoroughly educated guy. I’ve been an avid reader since my early teens, and as a byproduct I’ve gained a relatively good grasp of many key books. However, lately the gaps in my education have really become a bother. It is with that said, that I put forward Mark Twain as exhibit A: Letters from the Earth is my first substantial introduction to him. I think I read Tom Sawyer when I was really young, but I mention it mostly as a limp attempt to save face. And wouldn’t yo know it, instead of obviously starting there, I begin with a collection of unfinished stories, sketchy essays and other miscellaneous material that was published posthumously. But maybe starting this way is a good thing. This work represents Twain at his most mature and also maybe his most honest. I couldn’t help but think while I was reading it, that this may be the best way to get to know him as a thinker before I get to know him as author.”

In the primary set of “letters” that share the book’s title, Twain meticulously eviscerates the logical underpinnings of Christianity. While reading it, I found it difficult to ascertain how far Twain’s anger goes. He saves most of his wrath for humanity, but the ultimate nature of God doesn’t get away unscathed either. Near the beginning, his portrait of God during creation as witnessed by the three angels is kind of funny but not without a hint of reverence for divinity. However his distinction between Biblical law and the “law of God” offers little hope for a universally just creator. Man’s nature, if it can be traced to a divine origin ultimately does a disservice to both parties if the two are mirrors of each other.

Then again, maybe Twain is simply illustrating that when it comes to this subject, humanity simply has to give up trying to codify the unknowable. This to me is somewhat confirmed by the tone of Satan’s curiosity. It’s like he saying “get a load of these dumbasses!” when he describes biblical theology as a backwards set of moral rules that uniformly contradict human nature. Man is wired to enjoy sex, yet the Bible says we are to deny its gravitational pull on us. Heaven is a Christian’s ultimate goal, yet it seems devoid of any intellectual value whatsoever. Heaven in Twain’s estimation is a world where people sing and play harps in what amounts to some celestial blast of idiotic white noise.

I don’t think the letters should be seen as a tract against humanity’s natural inclination towards the spiritual, nor do I sense that it’s ultimately saying the most reasonable path is all out rejection of God. No, this is a renunciation of an institution for the most part. Perhaps the most scandalous part of it all is the particular angel Twain chooses to take the potshots. Strangely, the Satan here doesn’t refer to the fact that he is basically Earth’s cosmic villain. This is a Satan that is simply reporting back to his buddies; he is stripped from his dark side in the same way Twain is stripping God from the Christian framework. The God that remains after this split is still problematic, but also more honest.

The rest of this collection is mostly taken from the last 20 or so years of Twain’s life. The Papers of the Adam Family offer excerpts from the diaries of the first family on earth, the most interesting of which are Eve’s entries. Her portrait of Adam as the humble first scientist and her notes on a crumbling civilization in the years before the flood were some of my favorite moments in the entire book. I also enjoyed Letters To the Earth, where heaven issues an itemized receipt of answered prayers to a miserly coal baron. Cooper’s Prose Style is a hilarious but maybe mean-spirited attack on James Fenimore Cooper’s literary crimes. The Damned Human Race takes on the notion that we are the pinnacle of evolutionary development, and demolishes the idea that our sense of morality makes us better than animals. Finally, the unfinished novella “The Great Dark” is something altogether different from everything that comes before and it’s a real shame that it’s basically a rough draft that is ultimately abandoned. When it’s really working at first, you definitely gather an H.G. Wells vibe in this story about the veiled nature of ultimate reality.

So who is this Twain I’ve finally taken the time to meet? I hesitate to make a broad assessment because I have not read one sentence from any of his biographies, nor do I plan to sit down with the newly published Autobiography until I’ve read more of his material. Let’s just say that he ultimately comes across as bitter in this instance. You sense he is very frustrated with how inconsiderate, hypocritical and vile people are to one another, and how our primary religious structures seem to only amplify these traits. This is not a book for someone that is offended easily, because his critiques are venomous in certain passages, and I must admit I was mildly surprised at how far he was willing to take his arguments. Maybe this says more about my preconceptions of Mark Twain going in, and perhaps as I read more I will decipher a better understanding of his overall outlook.

Quotes:

“It is most difficult to to understand the disposition of the Bible God, it is such a confusion of contradictions; of watery instabilities and iron firmnesses; of goody-goody abstract morals made out of words, and concreted hell-born ones made out of acts; of fleeting kindnesses repented of in permanent malignities.”
– Letters From the Earth; Letter VI

The Biblical law says: “Thou shalt not Kill”
The law of God planted in the heart of man at his birth says “Though shalt Kill”
– Letters From the Earth; Letter X

“Susy: ‘Papa, I should think you would take pupils.’
No, I have no desire for riches. Honest poverty and a conscience torpid through virtuous inaction are more to me than corner lots and praise.””
– A Cat-Tale

“No work of art can be intelligently and enjoyably contemplated unless you know about tone and feeling; unless you know all about tone and feeling, and can tell at a glance which is the tone and which is the feeling.”
– From an English Notebook; Old Saint Paul’s