Happy 90th Birthday, Willie Nelson

Willie Nelson is, in part, responsible for The Midnight Cafe. At least the name I chose for this blog. In college, me and some friends used to hang out in my buddy Matt’s dorm room late at night. We’d stay up late listening to music, playing poker, eating terrible and cheap food, and talking.

Matt was always the joker. He was one of those guys who thought it was funny to answer the phone with a dumb gag. One night we were having some sandwiches and chips and the like and the phone rang. “Welcome to the Midnight Cafe” he answered, “what can I get you?” The name stuck and that group of friends from then on became The Midnight Cafe. When I was deciding on a name for this blog it only seemed natural to call it The Midnight Cafe. And here we are.

Willie was in regular rotation at the Cafe, and on some nights, when most of our friends had called it a night, Matt would light some candles and put on “Stardust.” We’d sit up into the wee hours talking about life, God, and girls. Mostly girls. Mostly girls who had recently broken our hearts.

Though we’ve gone our own ways, and somewhat drifted apart, I’m still friends with those guys. And Willie Nelson will always have a special place in my heart.

So happy birthday, Willie. Here’s to 90 more years of life and music and friends.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: A Return to Salem’s Lot (1987)

a return to salmes lot poster

‘Salem’s Lot was one of the first Stephen King novels I ever read. It remains one of my favorites. Tobe Hooper made a pretty good TV mini-series out of it in 1979. Apparently, Larry Cohen had originally been slotted to adapt the book, but the executives hated his screenplay and gave Hooper the job instead.

Years later Warner Brothers approached Cohen to direct a low-budget horror film for them and he pitched the idea of a sequel. Interestingly, the sequel was intended as a theatrical film and in fact, debuted at the Cannes Film Festival and saw a limited American release. But the reviews were terrible and the box office a dud and so it pretty quickly went straight to the VHS shelves.

Outside of a few gorey effects, a couple of naked breasts, and a lot of children swearing, the film feels very much like a made-for-TV movie. The budget was clearly small, the acting amateurish, and it is edited within an inch of its life.

It follows Joe Webber (Michael Moriarty), an anthropologist who is called away from studying a native tribe in the South American jungle to take care of his young, troubled son Jeremy (Ricky Addison). He takes him to a run-down house he’s inherited in the small New England town of Jerusalem’s Lot (or Salem’s Lot as it is sometimes called).

Pretty quickly he realizes the town’s inhabitants are either vampires or their human slaves. Actually, they pretty much straight-up tell them who they are because they want him to write a book about them. To convince him to do this they kidnap the boy and get a young vampire girl to sweet-talk him into becoming a vampire as well.

Joe figures this is a good time to hook up with his childhood sweetheart and do a little remodeling of his old homestead. Seriously, the film makes some really odd choices.

Soon enough a Van Helsing-like vampire hunter shows up (played by director Samuel Fuller in a rare acting role) and eventually our heroes get to some actual vampire slaying.

A Return to Salem’s Lot feels like it should have been a mini-series. There are a lot of ideas floating around in it, but few of them get explored. A lot of scenes feel like they were cut short, as if maybe a lot of footage was shot but due to time constraints they had to be cut. Or maybe they just didn’t have the budget to shoot everything in the script.

As it is it feels very disjointed, and unrealized. There are some interesting ideas. The original story is basically ‘what if Dracula showed up in a small American town’ and this one takes that concept and has the vampires take over the entire town. Yet here they are also a persecuted minority. They fled Europe with the Pilgrims for the safety of the new world. They are good Americans. They don’t even kill humans (well, most of the time) but breed cows for their blood needs – and it is quite a scene watching some elderly actors pretend to suck the blood out of cows lying in a pasture.

All of this creates some light satire of American consumer culture, but again it is pretty disjointed and cut to shreds.

Despite all of this I still rather enjoyed it. Cohen knows his way around a low-budget picture and he gives it enough oomph to make it not terrible. Fuller is having a blast playing the crotchety old hunter.

Not a great movie by any means, but a fun one to watch.

Watch Wet Leg Perform “Ur Mum” at Coachella, 2023

Generally speaking, I hate algorithms on Youtube and music sites and the like. They tend to rotate in the exact same things over and over sending you into a insipid spiral of conformity. But every now and again they will produce something wonderful.

I’d never heard of Wet Leg before today. I turned on Youtube looking for something fun to post and randomly clicked on this video of them performing at Coachella. I was instantly mesmerized. This band has something special. I’ve since listened to several more songs and am really digging them.

Check it out.

Awesome ’80s in April: The Big Red One (1980)

the big red one poster

I’ve talked a little in this series about memory and the movies. Or rather, how this series continually brings up memories of both me watching certain movies or just knowing about their existence in various ways. That probably isn’t interesting to anyone but me, but I find it fascinating, and this is my blog so I’m gonna keep talking about it 🙂

My first memory of The Big Red One, Samuel Fuller’s movie loosely based on his experiences in World War II, is of the DVD cover. I was in Walmart many years ago looking through their movie selection and came across a copy of The Big Red One. It was an evocative cover that was mostly black with a big white outline of a rifle and the title was all in white except for the word “red.” Well, you can see what I mean up above.

I immediately wanted it. I read the back cover and it promised to be a full restoration of Fuller’s lost film. It had lots of extra footage. It was a masterpiece. That sounded great.

I put the film back. I’ve been burned before. The film sounded interesting but I wasn’t ready for another blind buy.

I haven’t really thought about the film since. Oh, every now and again it would pop up on a streaming service or whatever and I’d think about watching it. Then I’d find something else. And now, I’ve finally seen it.

It is pretty good. Unfortunately, I wasn’t paying attention and I watched the original, non-director’s cut which is missing something like 45 minutes of footage. I might go back and watch that version someday. But not anytime soon.

The film follows a man only known as Sergeant (Lee Marvin) as he leads a squad of infantrymen from the 1st Infantry Division (who were known as The Big Red One due to the patch on their shirts.)

It reminded me quite a bit of the HBO series Band of Brothers as it follows this squad From North Africa to D-Day, the liberation of France to a concentration camp. They deal with battles and injuries, death, and replacements. In its own way, it is just as episodic as that series.

It was made on a low budget and unfortunately, it shows. The battle sequences aren’t particularly exciting. There are quite a few characters, but none of them are all that memorable. Mark Hamill is second billed but he gets very few lines of dialogue. His performance is mostly reaction shots. Most of the other characters are indistinguishable. I’d be hard-pressed to tell you any of their names or what they did. Marvin is great and he gets almost all of the screen time. He’s a hard-worn war veteran (in an early scene we see him as a private in World War I), but he’s kind to his men.

There are some really wonderful scenes. One inside a mental institution stands out. And the D-Day landing involves the Sergeant sending his men, one by one, across the beach to try and blow up a barbed wire fence keeping everyone from advancing. One guy goes, gets shot and he sends another. Then another. And another. He calls them out by number, not by name. It is harrowing to watch. These men are literal cannon fodder. More meat for the grinder.

It very much feels like an incomplete film. I’d like to see the longer cut (which was put together from surviving footage based on Fuller’s notes, he was dead when it was done). Forty minutes is a lot of time for these characters to be better filled out and their lives explored.

This version isn’t enough for me to be begging to see even more of this film, and the reviews of the extended cut don’t call it a masterpiece, so I expect it will be a few years before I decide to go back. But it is an interesting film, and I’d be interested to see if any of my readers have seen the longer version.

Steve Earle – European Summer Tour Announcement

steve earle tour

Steve’s “Alone Again Tour: Solo + Acoustic” officially kicks off in Europe this June with special guest Roseanne Reid. Join Steve this summer for an intimate and special night of music.

Get tickets here.

April 22 – Grand Ole Opry – Nashville, TN
May 7 – Wavy Gravy’s 87th Birthday at Herbst Theatre – San Francisco, CA
May 14 – Rehearsal Show 8th Annual John Henry’s Friends Benefit @ The Loft at City Winery – New York, NY
May 15 – The Town Hall – New York, NY
w/ David Byrne, Kurt Vile and Terry Allen
May 27 – Grand Ole Opry – Nashville, TN
June 2 – Café de laDanse – Paris, France
June 3 – De Oosterpoort – Da Groningen, Netherlands
June 4 – Poppodium 013 – Tilburg Netherlands
June 5 – Tivoli Vredenburg – Utrecht, Netherlands
June 7 – De Roma – Antwerp, Belgium
June 9 – Grand Opera House – York, UK
June 10 – PLAYHOUSE Whitley Bay – Whitley Bay, UK
June 11 – Queens Hall Edinburgh – Edinburgh, UK
June 13 – Galway Folk Festival 2023 – Salthill, Ireland
June 15 – Azkena Rock Festival 2023 – Vitoria, Spain
June 17 – Birmingham Town Hall – Birmingham, UK
June 18 – Black Deer Festival 2023 – Tunbridge Wells, UK
June 19 – Buxton Opera House – Buxton, UK
June 21 – Liverpool Philharmonic Hall – Liverpool, UK
June 22 – St. George’s Hall – Bristol, UK
June 25 – Barbican Centre – London, UK
June 27 – Ulster Hall – Belfast, UK
June 28 – Knocknarea Arena – Sligo, Ireland
June 29 – Vicar Street – Dublin, Ireland
July 1 – American Music Festival 2023 – Berwyn, IL
July 6 – The Heights Theater – Houston, TX
July 7 – The Kessler Theater – Dallas, TX
July 20 – Neptune Theatre – Seattle, WA
July 21 – Mount Baker Theatre – Bellingham, WA
July 22 – Revolution Hall – Portland, OR
July 25 – Mystic Theatre – Petaluma, CA
July 27 – Golden State Theatre – Monterey, CA
July 28 – Fremont Theatre – San Luis Obispo, CA
August 12 – Big Top Chautauqua – Bayfield, WI
August 17 – Eagles Theatre – Washburn, IN
August 26 – Point of the Bluff Vineyards – Hammondsport, NY
September 5 – Camp Copperhead – Big Indian, NY

Links of the Day: April 26, 2023 – Wilco, Martin Scorsese, and Lucinda Williams

It has been a while since I’ve done one of these. Google changed the way they send me their alerts and it became a bit of a pain. But I’m trying to do lots of things to make this site interesting again just to see where I can take it. So hopefully I’ll do links posts more regularly.

Photo Gallery: Wilco at the Classic Center: Flagpole

Timothée Chalamet and Martin Scorsese Rode the Subway: Curbed

Lucinda Williams and her suitcase full of songs: NPR

Lucinda Williams on her soul-baring memoir: The Independent

See Faye Webster Join Wilco For Stirring ‘Jesus Etc.’ In Athens: Jambase

Lucinda Williams Bit Ryan Adams and Other Big Reveals in Her New Memoir: Rolling Stone

Awesome ’80s in April: The Final Countdown (1980)

the final countown

I used to be really fascinated with time travel. I guess I still am, but I used to spend a lot of time pondering whether time travel could ever be real. One of the questions I raised was that if you could travel in time then wouldn’t you try to kill Hitler? Wouldn’t you find a way to stop the Holocaust from happening? But then maybe there is such a thing as fixed points in time. Certain events have to happen and you simply cannot stop them.

Or maybe time travel is real, but it isn’t invented for many thousands of years in the future. The Holocaust is one of the more terrible events of the last century, but for those removed from it by millenea it might just become a footnote in the history books.

Or something. I’m not smart enough to understand the complications of time travel. But I still enjoy a good time travel story. The Final Countdown is about an aircraft carrier from 1980 accidentally traveling back in time to 1941 just one day before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. The ship’s crew must then decide if they will try to stop it from happening.

That’s a pretty cool idea, but the film doesn’t seem to know what to do with it.

Kirk Douglas is the captain of the ship. Martin Sheen is a civilian observer on board to make suggestions on how to improve efficiency. Charles Durning plays a US Senator from 1941 who just happens to be taking a leisure cruise on his yacht along with his assistant – played by Katharine Ross – off the shores of Hawaii on that fateful day.

The Senator is important because in real life (or at least the film’s version of real life) because he was someone who had warned of the Japanese attacking Pearl Habor and was in a position to become Vice President before the attack. But he mysteriously disappeared on that day. If the ship can save him it would impact history in unknown ways. Destroying the Japanese fleet would impact history too, of course, but there is a question of when they should attack. If they hit the Japanese before they hit the US then that could be seen as a sign of aggression, an act of war. But if they don’t then American lives will be lost.

Again all of this is interesting, but the film never makes it exciting. It is too busy moving to the next scene to allow time for the characters to chew on the dilemmas.

One of the difficulties for a film like this is how to end it. If they change history then we, as an audience, know the film is a fraud. It feels fake somehow. All cinema is fake, but alternate histories feel even faker. But if the characters wind up not changing history, then what’s the point?

I don’t mind so much when the film is good. But I found The Final Countdown to be rather dull. It doesn’t help that they gained full cooperation from the US Military and in return the film is filled with a lot of footage of the ship’s crew going about their work. If you like to see planes take off and land on a carrier (and it is technically impressive) then this film is for you. If you want some real action or drama, then you might look eslewhere.