Marty Feldman: The Biography of a Comedy Legend

Between 1974 and 1976, Marty Feldman was the funniest person on the planet, to me, and to anyone who saw him in Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein and Silent Movie (and, in between those classic comedies, Gene Wilder’s The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Younger Brother, which gets a lot of its chuckles from his contributions). Feldman’s face was his fortune, but a gift for physical comedy, a way with improvisation, and crack timing accompanied those beloved bulging eyes. Watching the Brooks films again on Blu-ray recently, Feldman made me laugh as hard as he did when I was 11 years old. “What…hump?” He kills.

Almost 30 years after his untimely death in 1982 Feldman is in danger of becoming a footnote, particularly on this side of the Atlantic, where his reputation rests on those movies (plus his own The Last Remake of Beau Geste, one of the few films to hold its own against the Star Wars juggernaut in the summer of 1977). Robert Ross pulls him back from the brink with this biography, which can’t help but be a lively read, given the company he kept, and his own effusive personality.

For American readers, this book pretty much begins with Chapter Thirteen, when Feldman leaves a burgeoning TV career in his native England for Hollywood. But Ross, who has written books on Monty Python and the Carry On movies, expertly traces the deep artistic roots of his too-brief life. “Like a clown in kit form,” is how a friend recalls him, yet some assembly was required for the East End-born Jew, a jazz enthusiast and dropout, to embrace his destiny. His admiration of Buster Keaton and vaudeville performers of yore spilled into some dodgy stage acts that he toured England in, and the knocking-about years are fun to read about. That all this was fueled by stress, overwork, and what became a six-pack-a-day cigarette habit, however, took its toll; Graves’ disease set in, and it was thyroid treatments that led to his unique appearance. Feldman, who was now writing comedy, rolled with it. “His popped eye would be the curse and blessing for the rest of his life,” Ross notes.

A blessing, in that it created a “mischievous dwarf” persona that brought him celebrity, and ready cash for his spendthrift ways. And a curse, in that Feldman felt he had more to offer creatively, as a writer, performer, and director, as he moved up the ranks in TV sketch comedy to his own, envelope-pushing, scattershot shows, where he worked with Spike Milligan, the Pythons (Michael Palin and Terry Jones reminisce), and Tom Lehrer while swinging through the 60s. Drug and alcohol problems followed him into the 70s, but Feldman, who maintained a basic innocence and equilibrium even when downing a bottle of vodka at breakfast, had his greatest success collaborating with Brooks and Gene Wilder. “If it’s overnight success it’s been a very long night,” he quipped.

The surprise popularity of his own Beau Geste (in typical, make-the-best-of-it Feldman fashion, he planned a “last remake” of The Four Feathers, but got the properties mixed up) landed him a five-picture deal with Universal, which promptly collapsed with his next and last movie, In God We Tru$t (1980). Ross makes a case for it as a stinging satire of U.S. fundamentalism, with Feldman airing his grievances about American hypocrisy. The trouble was, he forgot to bring the funny–as I can attest, having obliged my parents to take me to see it one bright sunny Saturday, and the three of us sitting grimly in the theater (there’s nothing worse than being primed to laugh, and not laughing). Having bit the hand that fed him, and, worse, having failed at it (a Life of Brian-type success might have opened new opportunities), Feldman’s career was on ice. A comeback was not to be: beset by health problems he died in Mexico City on the set of the posthumously released pirate spoof Yellowbeard (1983), age 48.

Even in his last, depressing patch there were bright spots, notably his mentoring of an eternally appreciative David Weddle, who has gone on to write and produce episodes of Deep Space Nine, Battlestar Galactica, and CSI. Ross’ biography is neither hagiobiography nor hatchet job, and he’s rounded up the right people to comment on Feldman’s short, sometimes chaotic, perhaps unfulfilled–and, more than once, brilliant–life, notably Palin (my goal in life is to become famous, befriend Michael Palin, and, assuming I pre-decease him, have him say observant, affectionate things about me to my biographer) and close friends who were entertained and exasperated by his antics. His best source is the man himself–candid, introspective, and self-deprecating notes Feldman left for a planned autobiography provide a strong foundation. Ross as well deftly recreates the vanished worlds of British theater and TV that loosed Marty Feldman on an unsuspecting planet. In short, a fine tribute to a comedy king.

Which you can read while looking up choice bits of Feldmania on YouTube. Like this one:

A funny thing happened on the way to that presumed disposability, though. The afterlife of TV syndication made the Stooges iconic for generations of young fans even as more “major” talents faded into film history; Buster Keaton’s stock is as high as ever among the cognoscenti, but it’s Moe, Larry and Curly that your nearest ten year-old will recognize on sight.

David J. Hogan combines the perspectives of the film historian and the ten year-old fan in his exhaustive new reference, The Three Stooges FAQ. (A side note on the title: none of Hal Leonard’s new “FAQ” series of books is actually an FAQ — i.e., a list of Frequently Asked Questions and answers. The name falls into the great tradition of out-of-date Internet references (mis)calculated to appeal to The Kids These Days; we should be grateful, I suppose, that they didn’t call it The Three Stooges Ate My Balls.) He has the latter’s appreciation for a vigorous eye-gouge, coupled with the former’s deep knowledge of the intricacies and obscurities of his topic.

And obscurities there are in plenty. Between 1934 and 1959, the short-subjects division at Columbia Pictures cranked out hundreds of hours’ worth of two-reelers. Shot on the cheap and cast with no-name contract players, most of this material — including a series of Shemp Howard solo shorts — has been out of general circulation for years, viewable only on privately-owned 16mm reels and bootleg VHS. These films, whatever their merits, may never see the light of day again; and even the mighty Internet Movie Database is of little help in tracking their creators.

With the work of the Three Stooges, the situation is made more complex yet by the two-reel unit’s practice of recycling previously-shot footage into new shorts, padded out with pick-ups sometimes filmed years after the fact. (1957′s Guns a Poppin’, for instance, lifts a number of sequences from Idiots Deluxe, released twelve years earlier.) It presents a confounding obstacle to any film historian. But Hogan rises to the challenge, breezily unpacking the tangled shooting and distribution histories of every Three Stooges short, and provides brief but vividly-written appreciations of each, along with profiles of key writers, directors, and supporting players from throughout the franchise’s history.

The Three Stooges FAQ employs an innovative structure; rather than tackle the boys’ career chronologically, Hogan identifies thirteen primary themes in the shorts — sexual politics, Word War II, the American Frontier, class warfare, the justice system, and so forth — and uses them as a framework to examine, one by one, the 190 films constituting the oeuvre of Howard, Fine, Howard And Sometimes Besser. (This book only concerns itself with the Columbia shorts, disregarding the later TV appearances, cartoon shows, or the feature films with Joe DeRita.)

Comedy, of course, has a way of laying bare the prejudices and mores of its time. While the sociological analysis in The Three Stooges FAQ never gets too heavy (and really, this is Moe, Larry and Curly we’re talking about here; how heavy could it get?), Hogan, to his credit, never excuses or shies away from the occasional ugly aspects of the boys’ legacy: the occasional lapses into misogyny, the xenophobia of the wartime shorts, and especially the pervasive ethnic stereotyping. But he presents evidence (convincing, I think) that the Stooges can be seen as an unexpected force for progressivism, playing against the caricatures. The shorts often evoke the old images purely to subvert them. In a characteristic gag from 1953′s Tricky Dicks, an Italian organ-grinder is introduced as Antonio Zucchini Salami Gorgonzola de Pizza — then proceeds to speak the King’s English with the cut-glass tones of an Oxford don. The laugh (and it is a funny bit) comes from floating the familiar stereotype, and then shooting it down.

The Stooges’ grandest subversion, alas, never came to be. After Shemp’s untimely death, Moe Howard and Larry Fine lobbied for African-American comic actor Mantan Moreland to come aboard as third Stooge. Moreland was enthusiastic, but Columbia executives scotched the idea. It remains an intriguing might-have-been. The execution could have been audaciously funny, or disastrously offensive — Moreland, though massively popular in his time, made his name by specializing in the kind of bug-eyed, shuffling servant parts that were denounced by later generations of black performers. We will never know how it might have played out; but the sheer boldness of the proposal suggests that the Stooges were not bound by conventional thinking about race.

That being said, there are some squicky passages in The Three Stooges FAQ — and they come straight from David J. Hogan. His appreciation of the performers, especially the starlets, borders on fetishization, and… well, look at this passage about supporting actress Connie Cezan:

[F]unny, saucy, and — partly through no real fault of her own — faintly disreputable, Cezan was pretty in an aggressively sensual way; her wide-set eyes are enormous, and her mouth looks as if it were designed according to a template associated with the erotic arts.

CONNIE SAYS: Yeah say what now?

And the book is full of passages just like that — tossed-off paragraphs praising the loveliness and allure of the minor actresses, in tones that vary from fond to rhapsodic to downright creepy. Mr. Hogan’s dedication to film preservation is admirable, and his determination to give some recognition to these unjustly-neglected performers — never stars, but professionals, working actresses — is both laudable and long overdue. But sometimes, a healthy growing boy needs to get out of the screening room once in a while and meet some girls his own age. I’m just sayin’.

So in that light, Ozzy’s new gig makes a twisted sort of sense. Now “Rock’s Ultimate Survivor,” as he’s billed, is sharing his observations and advice for a life well-lived in the new collection Trust Me, I’m Dr. Ozzy, out today and co-written with Chris Ayres. It’s a hodge-podge of previously published columns and new material, organized thematically and fleshed out with newly-written interstitials and introductions, along with a selection of quizzes and sidebars covering a miscellanea of medical oddities, quack remedies, and farts. It’s the sort of thing you might find in a back issue of Men’s Health, if the editors of Men’s Health didn’t keep their perverse, sarcastic sides so carefully hidden.

The Q and A format suits Ozzy down to the ground. It’s not that he’s incapable of giving a straight answer — his advice is generally precisely the sort of common sense you’d expect from a reasonably well-informed layman — but he’s rarely content with that, instead spinning his answers into anecdotes and one-liners. The fascination of Ozzy’s public persona is that he seems to have no filters. With Ozzy, what you see is what you get, and Trust Me is filled with passages directly referencing his checkered past and personal struggles with substance abuse, anxiety, and depression. He’s well-informed about health issues, he tells us, because he’s a raging hypochondriac; sexual impotence, a side-effect of his regime of antidepressants, is another recurrent punchline. The effect is sometimes a little cringey, but more often laugh-out-loud funny, as with an account of a time in the 1980s when Ozzy cured athlete’s foot by rubbing cocaine on the affected area. Street coke, he reasoned, was cut with so much foot powder in those days that it was probably more worthwhile to put it between his toes than up his nose. “The only problem was the price,” he quips. “It worked out to about three grand per toe.”

Of course, the format wouldn’t work if the questions were simple and straightforward. Fortunately, Dr. Ozzy’s correspondents give him plenty of material to work with:

Can you really get drunk by soaking your feet in a tub of vodka?

I recently swallowed a fly while horseback riding: Will it give me an awful disease?

My doctor told me I have high cholesterol: Does this mean I should stop taking cocaine?

You can’t make this stuff up (although one has a sneaking suspicion that somebody did).

A surprising number of correspondents are in search of advice on love, family, and friendship, and Ozzy does not disappoint. At first blush, he’s an unlikely relationship guru given the televised chaos of his own home and family — but again, appearances are deceiving, and “dysfunctional” is a relative term. Ozzy and Sharon’s marriage has surely been tumultuous, but they’ve stayed together, stayed in love, and stayed friends for a long time now, all while trying to raise their kids to be sane and functional. That’s hard enough for us non-Hollywood types; but they’ve managed it through various health and substance problems, career ups and downs, and a run through the media pressure-cooker. You could do a lot worse.

What’s most disarming about Trust Me, though, is the pleasure that the good Doctor takes in his role. Though he refers to himself (with tongue in cheek) as “the Prince of Darkness,” Ozzy has always understood that it’s possible to make music with an evil edge without feeling the need to be evil oneself. An Ozzy Osbourne show has more pie-wide grins, more positive vibes, more cries of “God bless you!” than your typical Billy Graham crusade. The man loves what he does, and he loves his audience — and in between the laughs, he manages to slip in a little wisdom and a lot of comfort. Ozzy’s black-humored riffs about the failures of his own aging body venture occasionally into “TMI” territory, but their very irreverence lends the reader courage in the face of the worrisome subject of mortality. That’s the upside of taking advice from a rock ‘n’ roll survivor (even if that advice usually boils down to “Maybe you should talk to a real doctor about this”). No matter what you’re going through, chances are Ozzy Osbourne’s been through it first and worst.

And sure enough, Brown’s memoir, Are We Still Rolling? Studios, Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll – One Man’s Journey Recording Classic Albums (dig that brief subtitle!) is chock full of details only the technically obsessed could appreciate – microphones, mixing techniques, tape specs, and more. So many, in fact, that Brown helpfully includes a glossary at the end of the book.

But more than that, Are We Still Rolling? is in fact a compelling account of Brown’s career in music, which began in 1967 as a tape operator for Olympic Studios in London, and continues today. With a typically British sense of detachment and dry wit, Brown recounts his days as an eager teenager working on albums for legends like Dusty Springfield, Jimi Hendrix, and the Rolling Stones. Brown’s sense of wonder is evident, even decades after the fact, and comes across in his writing.

As Brown’s narrative progresses, he transforms from a naive ’60s kid to an experienced ’70s veteran, working along the way with artists such as Nigel Head, Steve Winwood, John Martyn, and Robert Palmer. And finally some bitterness set in during the ’80s and beyond, although Brown still managed to land some high-profile gigs with the likes of Talk Talk and Dido.

Brown has no interest in acting as an impartial scribe in Are We Rolling?, and his affection for artists like Head and Palmer (the latter of which he particularly adored) is evident. So to is his disappointment with the shenanigans of record execs and acts — for instance, Led Zeppelin makes a brief but unpleasant appearance in the early chapters, and we get to read about how Talk Talk got screwed over by record labels.

Sprinkled throughout the book are details fleshing out Brown’s life outside the studio — his marriage, children, rampant drug use, and subsequent medical problems. Brown seems like a decent guy, but I don’t think his book would be any worse off without these passages. Let’s face it, if you choose to read this book it’s because you want to read some good behind-the-scenes stories. Luckily, most of the book focuses on telling those.

In a way, Brown’s story is that of the record business in general. While record labels were always conscious of the bottom line from the beginning, by the end of the ’70s it seems that money became the only line (well that and cocaine). Art took a back seat to commerce, leaving “relics” like Brown and many others feeling left out in the cold. But despite having every reason in the world to pack it in and retire, Brown continues to work. I imagine that his love for his craft and music keeps him going. It’s also what permeates the pages of this book more than anything else, and it’s why I recommend you give it a read.

Are We Still Rolling? is available now on Amazon from Tape Op Books.

Related articles

• Life in the recording studio with Led Zep, Bob Marley and many more (guardian.co.uk)
• Johnny Boy Would Love This: A Tribute to John Martyn, CD review (telegraph.co.uk)

But it is the songs themselves that draw me in the deepest. From his earliest, self-titled album, Josh Ritter came to the scene to tell stories through his songs. While in college, he created his own major – American History through Narrative Folk Music – and over the years he has composed intelligent stories that run the gamut from sweet love songs (“Angels on Her Shoulders,” “Kathleen”) to haunting songs of loss and regret (“Rattling Locks,” “Harrisburg”) to sprawling epics (“Thin Blue Flame,” “Another New World”) to songs of unbridled optimism (“Good Man,” “Lantern”) to the esoteric (“Lark,” “To the Dogs or Whoever”). He calls his music “rock and roll with a lot of words,” he infuses his songs with literary allusions, historical references, and wry wit, and the best part is that it all works. He is a true chameleon; to give a nod to the consummate storyteller Tom Waits, you believe him when he’s singing the brawlers, the bawlers, and the bastards.

So yeah, I’m a big fan. I was therefore honored to have the opportunity to write about Bright’s Passage, but given all of the above, I also harbored a fair amount of trepidation – would it live up to my expectations? After all, it’s not every day that a musician crosses genres and writes a real novel. Josh Ritter admitted as much in a recent NPR interview; he stated that doing so might be considered by some as “nervy,” but that the story was overflowing in his consciousness and that this was the best medium in which to tell it. As I started reading, questions danced in the back of my mind: Would Ritter’s book carry the same impact as his songs? Would the songwriter successfully cross the divide and fill the author’s shoes? Should he stick to his day job? And would I need a dictionary?

Given Ritter’s self-declared college major, you might expect a novel set in a tumultuous period of American history, and that is exactly what we get. The first world war plays a very important role in this story, setting a somber tone and shaping the lives of the central characters. The story arc is one that encompasses three segments of Henry Bright’s life. As the novel unfolds, we get an intimate view of his childhood in Appalachia, we suffer the atrocities of the great war, and we follow Bright as he escapes the ruins of one life in a desperate search for some peace. What’s more, the novel alternates between these stages of Bright’s life, building steam as we learn more and more details about his fate and that of his son.

We learn right away that the world of Henry Bright is a difficult one at best. Within the first few pages, his wife dies during childbirth, his house burns to the ground, and he is both guided and tormented by a seemingly prescient angel in the form of a horse who refers to Bright’s infant son as the Future King of Heaven. It’s a lot to digest. Then again, the author is Josh Ritter, the guy who crammed references to Jesus, Joan of Arc, Casey Jones, William Tell, Jonas, and Ernest Thayer into a three-minute song. Writing with a similar economy of words, Ritter fits the whole of Bright’s Passage into just under two hundred pages. The advantage here is that nothing is wasted – he chooses his words very carefully, and the reader benefits from those choices.

Bright’s Passage is a novel of motion as much as it is a novel of emotion. In the three segments of Henry Bright’s life to which we are privy, rest is simply not an option. Often Bright is pursued, whether by German soldiers in the war, by a sadistic Colonel and his sons, or by an all-consuming forest fire. The chapters themselves are short – on average around five or six pages – which also gives the reader a sense of urgency and heightened pace. Finally, the war is almost a character unto itself – brutal, fast-moving, and unforgiving. Ritter has a knack for detailed descriptions of the visceral experiences of struggle and gruesome death in the trenches of war, and he fills those trenches with many soldiers (most of them dead). The concept of permanence simply does not exist for our protagonist, and the compact nature of the novel lends itself to a small cast of characters who enter and exit Bright’s life.

The present-day of the novel is post-war rural West Virginia, and doggedly pursuing Henry is the Colonel, a deranged, fierce, grammar-obsessed (yep, you read that correctly) veteran of the Philippine war hell-bent on putting a stop to Bright’s existence. He is perhaps the most fascinating person in the novel in that he is the only major character who is both over-the-top quirky and singularly evil. His sons accompany him on his quest like redneck versions of Crabbe and Goyle, providing some comic relief but also some genuinely scary moments. It is the Colonel, though, who gives a movie-like texture to his own scenes with his terrifying presence.

We do not have enough time to learn enough about Rachel, Henry’s wife and the mother of the Future King of Heaven. She is an apparent ray of light in the story’s bleary backwoods, and just as Henry sees her depart far too soon, we as readers unfortunately do not get the chance to learn much about her. The most enigmatic character is Bright’s infant son. Aside from acting like a typical newborn – eating hungrily, crying loudly, and defecating abundantly – we know only that the child must not be harmed. The angel prophesizes somewhat about the Future King of Heaven’s role and responsibility, but we are left wondering if these prophecies will actually be fulfilled. The child is therefore somewhat of a plot device, unwittingly advancing the story through no fault of his own.

Finally, there is the horse-angel. Gracing the hardcover jacket, he first appears to Henry during the war after a fleeting yet spiritual moment in a bombed-out church. The angel doles out advice to Bright (whether or not he wants to hear it) like a sort of divine Mister Ed. Often the advice is bad, bad enough to be comical even in the face of tragedy. But Bright begrudgingly follows this advice a la the Narrator in Fight Club, kicking and screaming until the very end. The very presence of an angel in an otherwise non-supernatural world brings up questions: Are there other angels out there? Why is this angel seemingly incompetent at times? In the murky world of this novel, there is ambiguity. There are few absolutes and many surprises. There are passages which require second and third perusals in order to fully grasp their meanings. There are stray ends in the loosely-tied bow of a conclusion. In short, there is food for thought – a good sign of things to come if Ritter continues writing.

Bright’s Passage does indeed carry a satisfying lyrical and emotional impact; a fan of Ritter’s music can almost hear his songs lurking in the distance while reading the novel. I presume that it is easier for a songwriter to write a novel than for a novelist to write a song. The art of songwriting requires a working knowledge of both language and music, though some might convincingly argue that there is a musicality to prose’s ebb and flow and that a writer must be a master of rhythm and tonality in order to skillfully wield that sword. To that end, Ritter proves himself to be a damn fine swordsman. This novel is a neatly woven little story with one foot entrenched in the miseries of World War One and the hardships of life in early-20^th century Appalachia and the other foot toeing optimism and hope in the face of it all. Ritter occasionally overshoots his lofty mark, sometimes getting a bit too clever with his wording, but the instances are few and they feel like the rookie mistakes of a future all-star who will shake them off and come into his own. I am certain that his masterful songwriting prowess played a large role in getting this book published, but the story succeeds in its own right, and though there are some hiccups along the way, by and large it is a very enjoyable, well-written tale. My hope is that Bright’s Passage will introduce Ritter to a new crop of fans who will take the time to listen to his music as well as read his words; it seems that his average fan is fairly well-read and has an appreciation for the English language, so this broadening of horizons makes sense. Perhaps that’s Josh’s hope as well, although I suspect that he really just wanted to tell a good story.

And yes, I did need a dictionary.

Related articles

• From stage to page: Musicians trying their pens at fiction (arts.nationalpost.com)
• ‘Bright’s Passage’ filled with Ritter’s lyrical gifts (boston.com)
• For singer-songwriter turned novelist, a cure for writer’s block (boston.com)

As one of the two frontmen for Minneapolis alt-rock legends Hüsker Dü, Bob Mould earned enough respect and recognition to kickstart a successful solo career, which in turn allowed him the opportunity to form the short-lived but much loved Sugar. There’s more to Mould than just his music, though, and his memoir, See a Little Light: The Trail of Rage and Melody, provides a forum for him to open up about his personal life as well as a few of his less heralded career sidebars, such his stint as a WCW scriptwriter.

Yes, really.

This is not to suggest that Mould has never opened up before. In addition to composing many an entry in his now mostly abandoned blog Boblog, his insights proved invaluable to Michael Azerrad’s history of Hüsker Dü in Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground 1981-1991, a tale which Azerrad told so well that Mould selected him to serve as his collaborator on See a Little Light. But while there’s some inevitable crossover between their last literary collaboration, See a Little Light serves as an opportunity for Mould to flesh out the well-established facts about the life and times of Hüsker Dü with more of his side of the story.

Read the rest of this article at Kirkus Reviews!

There are a lot of surprising things about Rob Lowe’s autobiography, but for those who keep an eye open at their local bookseller for the latest celebrity tell-all, one of the most notable things about Stories I Only Tell My Friends is that it’s one of the first times a member of the so-called Brat Pack has dared to put pen to paper—metaphorically speaking anyway—and write the story of their life.

Indeed, only Molly Ringwald has preceded Lowe as an author, and even then, Getting the Pretty Back: Friendship, Family, and Finding the Perfect Lipstick is less a backward glance at her part in the pop culture zeitgeist than a self-help book inspired by her personal experiences as a teenager burgeoning into adulthood.

Lowe, however, looks back and not only fully embraces his place in the Pack but also provides some entertaining and often titillating tales of his life and loves during the ’80s.

After kicking off the proceedings with a discussion of his affinity with and empathy toward JFK Jr., the structure of Stories is chronologically straightforward. For those who think of Lowe’s career as starting with films like The Outsiders, Class and Oxford Blues, the early chapters of the book may prove surprising, as the actor discusses his experiences in television, working on the short-lived sitcom A New Kind of Family and in a couple of Afterschool Specials. It’s the former project where he first finds himself being viewed as a teen idol, most notably during a personal appearance at the fairgrounds in Riverside, Calif. “I don’t know it yet,” Lowe writes of the event, “but I will come to learn that being charged on the African savannah by a rhino is only fractionally more dangerous than being bull-rushed by a gang of fourteen-year-old girls whipped into a lather by hormones, group think, and an overdose of Tiger Beat magazine.”

Read the rest of this article at Kirkus Reviews!

The series ended with more questions than answers, prompting it’s devotees to unseen levels of activism to save the show. Ultimately, it never quite moved beyond their sphere, and Fox was more concerned with the bottom line than investments in the future, a conundrum they’re now reliving with the struggling Fringe. It was, nonetheless, the fervor of the Browncoats that helped get the Universal Productions continuation, this time in movie form, off the ground. Once again, the movie didn’t really break out past it’s initial fandom and was seen as a box-office dud.

The characters have, however, continued to live on in comic book form via Dark Horse’s mini-series and one-shots, and have managed to do a respectable job of it. It shouldn’t be difficult, with the majority of Marvel Comics devoted mostly to the pursuit of advertising forthcoming movies versus being, you know, interesting (Truth time: Whedon had a hand in the script for the upcoming Captain America: The First Avenger and will be directing The Avengers). When plopped next to the hundredth variant Spider-Man cover, the latest Serenity: The Shepherd’s Tale looks almost like high literature.

The story recounts the last day of interstellar preacher/shepherd Derrial Book’s life and then backtracks to uncover certain mysteries about it such as why he seems to have such an impact on some of the meanest characters to cross the crew of Serenity, the ship of outlaws. This was threaded all through the TV series but never fully expounded upon, and this one-shot seeks to remedy that.

Does it? Well, yes and no. I won’t divulge the details but it should suffice to say that we learn more about Book than perhaps we want to know. There was enough implicit information already regarding this man of peace, knowing he was once a man of war, insidious and unlikeable. His transformation, recounted in reverse, has the weird effect of making the reader feel less empathy for the character, and depending on your emotional investment with the series, perhaps a little betrayed. It no longer is a story of redemption, even though it was meant to be as such.

The story was written by Zack Whedon, Joss’ brother, but Joss supplied the details so it all is sanctioned Whedonverse canon. The art, by Chris Samnee, is interesting and graphic — not in content but in style. Samnee seems to aim somewhere between Mike Mignola (Hellboy) and Frank Miller (Sin City) and the design moves the story along. On it’s own merits, The Shepherd’s Tale is a good read. As part of the Serenity storyline, I couldn’t help but feel sad, having learned this character was not the man we thought he was.

I do have one major gripe with the book however. It is about the length of a standard Annual-sized comic book which often runs for less than a fiver. Thanks to the hardback binding, making it seem more like one of those Disney character hardbacks from the 1970′s, the price was steeply elevated to $14.99. I’m often privy to the complaints of the comic industry regarding the declining readership and what measures would be necessary to bring people back to the fold. Fancy packaging of a book of normal length, presumably to give it cache but also giving it a major price-jacking, will do nothing to alleviate the cash register blues…

…Unless they’ve pegged the Browncoats as suckers that will pay anything for their fandom. I hope they’re wrong about that.

Related articles

• ‘Firefly’ farewell? One Browncoat says a revival would miss the magic (herocomplex.latimes.com)
• Fan Service: Learning When to Let Go (crushable.com)

If you’ve read some of the recent crop of list books, like 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die or Toby Creswell’s encyclopedic but rather lame 1001 Songs, you already have an idea of what Music: What Happened? is all about — basically, Miller took a Web series he’d written about the greatest songs of the rock era and turned it into a book, presented as a series of year-by-year “mixtapes.” It clearly isn’t intended to be comprehensive; it’s just Miller giving you one guy’s opinion, in surprisingly moving prose. This is both a blessing and a curse.

Essentially, your enjoyment of the book will boil down to how you feel about Miller’s taste in music and, to a slightly lesser extent, how you feel about Miller as an author. This is why, for me, Music: What Happened? was a more enjoyable read than, say, 1001 Songs — but it’s also why I struggled with fairly major portions of the book, because like most of us, Miller has a definite generational perspective of pop music, and he (obviously) isn’t shy about sharing it. His tastes are what define the text, but they also lead him into a briar patch of disappointingly dismissive entries between the late ’70s and the early ’90s. Give Miller points for being honest up front (as he says early in the book, “I’m not selling my value as an authority; I’m selling my ability to honestly disclose my real perspective”), but if you don’t think music kinda sucked in the ’80s and you aren’t a huge fan of, say, the dB’s, the book’s back half might be sort of a rough slog for you.

That being said, there’s plenty of great stuff before you get there. Miller starts his survey in 1957, and when it comes to writing about the music of his youth, he’s pretty mesmerizing; he manages to mix chatty first-person perspective with thoughtful analysis like this passage, about “Jailhouse Rock”: “rock and roll at its best is an enlightening synthesis of Western culture that makes life a party that no one isn’t invited to.” Or this one, about Del Shannon’s “Runaway”: “a familiar lost love theme becomes a tangible concern for the well-being of another, and the bittersweet mystery of new beginnings.”

But once we’re out of the ’70s — and out of the golden era for so many listeners of Miller’s generation — his eloquent enthusiasm starts to wane, until he’s issuing half-hearted apologies for including tracks like Tears for Fears’ “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.” That isn’t to say the rest of the book is a total wash. In the chapter for 1999, for instance, Miller includes the Backstreet Boys’ “I Want It That Way,” summing up the entire modern pop/American Idol era neatly: “The passage from a variety show world to a reality show world entails the corollary that we’ve entered an era where there is actually far less demand to see a top singer perform on TV than there is to see amateurs audition for a chance to participate in the star-making machinery that would theoretically result in that aforementioned TV appearance.” Smart, no?

All in all, it’s a decidedly uneven book, but one whose peaks are higher than its valleys are low, and at $15 for the paperback (or a killer $4.99 for the Kindle edition), it’s an entertaining read that doesn’t require a significant investment. Just keep an eye on your wallet when it comes to adding the songs Miller loves to your collection — the bastard cost me at least $10 before he was finished talking about the ’50s.

Related articles

• Fluxblog Interview With Scott Miller (fluxblog.org)

The Art of Hammer: The Official Poster Collection from the Archive of Hammer Films Does Marcus Hearn have the sweetest job or what? I assume someone’s paying him to pen intros and other supplementary material for jaw-dropping collections like this one, a delectable assortment of poster art from Hammer Films, which recently returned from the dead with the superior Let Me In. I grew up on Hammer horror, and this assemblage of blood-dripping posters really took me back, not only to a golden age in movie mayhem, but to a wondrous time in movie marketing. Sure, some of it was pure ballyhoo–I don’t recall as many night creatures in the actual film of that name, or as many extras in She (1965) as in the artwork. What it wasn’t, though, was pedestrian, like so much movie advertising today. These throb with energy, crawl with monsters, and pulse with sex, too; by the early 70s the posters, like the films, had gone topless, at least in certain territories. This is a pleasingly wide-ranging survey, and a must for the Hammer fan in your life.

The Avengers: A Celebration: 50 Years of a Television Classic Hearn once again guides us through another pop culture phenomenon, concentrating on its 60s heyday and omitting the spinoffs and the unspeakable bigscreen version of 1998. Fittingly the foreword goes to John Steed himself, Patrick Macnee, full of praise for his delectable co-stars (we in the colonies remember Diana Rigg, but future Goldfinger Bond girl Honor Blackman and Linda Thorson bookended her iconic tenure)–and, incidentally, recalling just what it was that was being avenged, at least in the program’s earliest incarnation. After that it’s a romp through stills: behind-the-scenes shots, villains, guest stars, and fashions (Rigg grew to dislike her famous leather outfits). A book can’t capture the show’s indelible wit but leafing through it you can’t help but hum Laurie Johnson’s unforgettable theme.

In Theda Bara’s Tent Diana Altman, author of the non-fiction Hollywood East: Louis B. Mayer and the Origins of the Studio System, saw my coverage of Turner Classic Movies’ Moguls & Movie Stars series on the Cineaste website and sent me a copy of her new historical novel, in which Mayer, here a struggling 22-year-old theater owner, and a plucky nine-year-old orphan, Harry Sirkus, begin an odyssey that will take them to dizzying heights in Hollywood. What happens in Theda Bara’s tent? I’m not tellng, except that it may help to know who Theda Bara is before reading. Or maybe not–Altman, the daughter of the MGM talent scout who discovered a galaxy of stars including Joan Crawford and James Stewart, knows this milieu inside and out, and brings it to vivid life for TCM addicts and newcomers alike in engaging and entertaining fashion. Sample observation: “It was a myth that the cigarette-smoking, short-skirt-wearing, free-love-talking girls of the Jazz Age were promiscuous. They were as prudish as their mothers.”

Screen World and Theatre World Time waits for no reviewer; I had the previous editions of these on my desk when the latest showed up. What’s changed are the years under consideration: Screen World Vol. 61, by Barry Monush, offers you a ticket to last year’s cinema attractions, while Theatre World Vol. 66, co-edited by Ben Hodges and Scott Denny, gives you an aisle seat for 2009-2010 on the American stage. What hasn’t changed is the impeccable quality that has distinguished these must-have volumes for decades–web schmeb, it’s easier and more fun to find what you’re looking for in these books, amidst a handsome selection of black-and-white photographs. Contents include introductory essays, lists of highlights and awards, full credits information for hundreds of films and productions, and obituaries. Oh, and my name’s on page 371 of Theatre World Vol. 65, as a Drama Desk board member. Mom’s copy is on its way.

Robert Bresson: A Passion for Film If you saw 127 Hours and thought “WWBD?” (“What would Bresson do?”) this is the book for you. (The answer can be found in one of his greatest films, A Man Escaped–he would have stayed with its protagonist through every step of his confinement, no fancy ways-outs for him or for us via editing.) I’m only being a little facetious with my reference; for some critics the French filmmaker is a kind of Christ figure, whose work burns with aesthetic purity. Tony Pipolo, a Cineaste contributor, brings us a filmmaker fascinated with “faith and doubt,” and offers extensive critical commentary on all of his movies, none of which are likely to be remade (though Pickpocket greatly influenced the career of Paul Schrader, particularly his Taxi Driver screenplay, and Au hasard Balthazar has been mentioned in conjunction with Steven Spielberg’s upcoming War Horse). This is a book as uncompromising as its subject, “a highly personal response to these films and to the artistry of their maker,” Pipolo writes, and an excellent guide to your own exploration. (Pickpocket and Balthazar are both Criterion Collection titles.)

Broadway: The American Musical PBS’ excellent, Emmy-winning 2004 history of the same name could use an update (and a rebroadcast), hint hint. While we wait the show’s creator, Michael Kantor, and co-writer Laurence Maslon have revised their equally accomplished companion volume. Besides bringing us up to date through the 2009-2010 season this trade paperback edition has a new foreword by Julie Andrews, who, synergy in action, narrated the program. “They’re wondrous things to pull off,” she remarks. “A great musical is something to be cherished forever. The cast album becomes a friend.” So will this gorgeously appointed book, rich with photos and quotes and backstage info-nuggets–the stories behind Oklahoma! and West Side Story, to name two classics, are page-turners– and welcoming The Light in the Piazza, Spring Awakening, and In The Heights to the fold.

Broadway Musicals: The Biggest Hit & The Biggest Flop of the Season, 1959 to 2009 There are lots of “wondrous things” in Peter Filichia’s cheeky, exuberant survey, like The Sound of Music and Oliver! and Jersey Boys–but if you’re like me you’ll dive deep into the lower depths, where you’ll find shows so unsuccessful some of them died in out-of-town tryouts, or racked up dubious distinctions. (The ill-starred Breakfast at Tiffany’s musical, from the 1966-1967 season, was the first to close in previews, helped to its doom by a book penned by that noted light comedy writer Edward Albee.) If Stephen Sondheim is tired of his endless 80th birthday celebration and all those reminders of his genius, he’ll appreciate Filichia’s popping of his celebratory balloons–three of his shows, Anyone Can Whistle, Merrily We Roll Along, and Wise Guys, are among the tone deaf. (For all his great and innovative work he’s never had an outstanding hit.) The $65 million-and-counting question hanging over the current season, one that Filichia will no doubt answer in a future edition: which side of the ledger will Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark wind up in?