Honestly, I had no idea what the movie was about.

So we’re sitting in Felice’s living room, at about 6:15, and I tell her we have to get out of the house, that we should go to see a movie.

We debated this the weekend before, and Felice said there was nothing playing.  But I’d just finished reading "Entertainment Weekly" and I remembered they’d given "Zodiac" an A.  Nothing gets an A.  So I said we should go see that.

The L.A. "Times" said it was playing at 7:15 at the Galleria.  And if I stretched and showered we’d have JUST enough time.  Call me days in advance and I won’t make a commitment.  But if I have to run the gauntlet like O.J. in those old Hertz commercials, I’m in.

I was a little worried about going to the movies on a Saturday night.  Live long enough in L.A., and you don’t only refuse to go out on Friday or Saturday nights, you won’t even drive in RUSH HOUR!  Hell, it’s got to be REALLY important to leave the house, it’s like living in Sao Paolo, you can’t GET ANYWHERE!

But we scooted down the hill no problem, and after the valet took our car we rode the elevator up to the theatre.

Personally, I like to sit relatively close.  Oh, not the very first row, but I don’t get those people who sit in the back.  You want to be IN the movie, you want to feel like you’re PARTICIPATING, you don’t want ANYTHING else in your field of vision.

So we got almost dead center seats in the front row of the second section, just a few feet above the hoi polloi.  And as the theatre filled up to near capacity, we watched the commercials, and the trailers.

Well you know the business is fucked up when the ads are better than the coming attractions.  Seemingly every trailer was cut the same, fast transitions appealing to the MTV generation and enough plot points included that there was no need to see the flick.

And then, just after the no-talking announcement, the film began.

I was thankful for the no-talking announcement.  I believe movies are a religious experience.  I want to bond.  It’s not about going with a group of buddies and having a party, it’s about letting go and being taken away.  Saturday night, I was taken away.

Now I went to this exhibition in London last fall, about "Twilight".  There was this one photographer, his pictures instantly created a mood. 

Go to: Gregory Crewdson for a look. 

More specifically, click on the lower center picture.  And imagine it blown up the size of a wall.  The mother coming out of the station wagon to confront her ne’er-do-well daughter, with the younger sister still in the front seat, taking it all in. The vibe of this photo, of all of Gregory Crewdson’s photos, taken at twilight, that was the exact feel of the opening of "Zodiac".  The images weren’t fast and flat, but deep and rich, I was right there, in the park with the two young lovers.  When they got shot.

Oh boy.  This normally isn’t the kind of flick Felice likes.  She won’t go to see blood.  And this is the BEGINNING?  We’re in for a VERY long ride.

Yes we were, about two and a half hours.  And I didn’t look at my watch once.

How was I supposed to know this movie was about the Zodiac Killer?  I didn’t live in California back then, when he terrorized the state, in the late sixties and early seventies.

But I was alive in that era.  And David Fincher captured the vibe perfectly.  And depicted the California that was in my mind.

The whole movie had this darkness, like Crewdson’s photos.  Except for the killing by the lake.  That attack was done in broad daylight.  That’s even scarier.  To be confronted with a living nightmare when not a cloud is in the sky, when you’re nowhere NEAR civilization.

And Jake Gyllenhaal was great in that movie with Jennifer Aniston, but I prefer his sister.  Still, his puppy dog quality resonated.  How you are one step removed, witnessing history.

But Robert Downey, Jr…a tour de force!  He may be fucked up, but this guy can ACT!

And Chloe Sevigny.  You might think she’s nothing but a clothes horse, but her wide-eyed want to connect four eyed girl at the initial date with Jake…WHEW!  That’s romance.  Two lonely souls forming sinews in a restaurant booth.  Sure, the models in the news may want nothing to do with you, but there are so many reasonable women out there who want to be open and honest, who want the adventure of a relationship.  Chloe gives the green light, and it’s fascinating to watch.  Especially when the danger and excitement lead her to exclaim that this is her best date ever.

And the movie is LITTERED with names, recognizable faces even if you don’t go to the flicks that much.  But they’re all secondary, to the story.

The Zodiac Killer saying to place his puzzles on the front page of the newspaper or he’ll kill a bunch of schoolchildren.  His demand for a TV phoner with Melvin Belli.

And you’re not sure what’s a blind alley, and what’s real.

You think the film is climaxing, but then it falls apart.

And time is going by.  People are aging, losing their jobs.

But still, the Zodiac is at large.

And the cars update.  And the fashions change.  And the soundtrack?  Come on, what represents angst in ’69 more than Santana’s "Soul Sacrifice".

And I’m sitting in the theatre thinking you can replicate the sound at home, but not the image.  Film, projected dozens of feet across, in a dark room.  There’s a religious experience.

I guess I want my art different.  I don’t want it in a club, bumping into a bunch of people.  With me, it’s about bonding with the creation, becoming one.  That’s the essence of a great book, a great movie, a great record.  When I feel if I could only meet the guy or girl who made this thing, my life would work.  That they’d get me.

This is not the kind of art fostered in the mainstream today.  Today’s art tends not to be personal, but bland, to be enjoyed by a large segment of the population, and then forgotten.  Like someone’s gonna hear "Sexy Back" in their automobile twenty five years from now and smile and think of the good times?  Shit, we don’t even want to listen to Eminem, and it hasn’t even been half a decade!

The problem is one less of distribution, but experience.

Mainstream concerts are not about the music, but the choreography, the explosions, as if the music wasn’t enough.

And mainstream movies are about titillation, they’re roller coaster rides to take you away from your mundane life.

But mundane life is the most exciting.  The thoughts that flow through your brain while driving, the analysis of issues that you just can’t get right. "Zodiac" has got all the excitement and disappointment and denouement of real life.  And that’s why I liked it so much.  As did Felice.

If they made more like this, I’d live at the movie theatre.

_______________________________________

Now I have a Hi-Def monitor.  I blew the "Zodiac" trailer up to its 23" width and the vibe, it wasn’t quite as enrapturing as the one in the theatre, but it was on the continuum.

Go to: Zodiac Trailer

Watch the trailer in as much definition as your computer will afford.  I would have cut it differently, but you’ll get a hint of the feeling…

_______________________________________

Notes:

Yes, that is Ione Skye, Donovan’s daughter (although he doesn’t acknowledge her.)

Speaking of Donovan, when you hear "Hurdy Gurdy Man" you’ll be brought right back.  Funny how certain acts, like Zeppelin, Floyd and the Doors, are picked up by younger generations, and others aren’t.  W.C. Fields was a hero to me and my high school buddies, does any teenager today know who he is?

I didn’t know that was Candy Clark until I saw her name in the IMDB.  She was great in "American Graffiti".  Funny how some people make it, and others don’t.  I projected a longer career for P.J. Soles after her turn in my favorite stupid movie, "Stripes", and I expected more of Joey Lauren Adams after her stellar performance in "Chasing Amy".

Speaking of stellar performances…  Did you see Mark Ruffalo in "You Can Count On Me"?  One of my favorite movies ever.  There are similarities to that role here, but he’s more brooding, harder to decipher in "You Can Count On Me".  Want to know who I am, what I like?  Rent "You Can Count On Me", that’ll give you an idea.

I can’t see Donal Logue without thinking of "The Tao Of Steve".

Yes, that is Adam Goldberg with the beard at the "Chronicle".  He was great in "Relativity".  Are Zwick and Herskovitz done on the box?  They made the best TV.

Big egos, none are larger than lawyers’.  Brian Cox gets it right as Melvin Belli.

They nail the bleakness of Riverside and the pulse of San Francisco.  SF might be viewed as second-rate compared to NYC and L.A., but this movie makes it SO appealing, you want to pick up and move there.

David Fincher has finally graduated from music videos.

Read the Wikipedia about the Zodiac Killer AFTER you see the movie.

Could it be that major labels and mainstream media foist endless hip-hop and vapid pop on the marketplace because they don’t know how to SELL the road bands?  In other words, is it 1967 all over again?

Yes, "Are You Experienced" came out in 1967.  Did it have any mainstream traction?  Of course not.  What Top Forty radio station was going to play "Purple Haze"?

People ended up hearing "Purple Haze" and the rest of the first wave of classic rock acts on underground FM radio.  The Internet is today’s underground FM radio.

In order to make it in the Top Forty world of the sixties, you needed a hit.  A hit is a brief, catchy track with immediate hooks, that will not cause a radio listener to tune out.  Today’s Top Forty world is even worse than the one of yore.  For there used to be novelty tracks, even oldster tracks like Frank Sinatra’s "Strangers In The Night", sixties Top Forty was supposedly the best of the best.  Whereas today’s Top Forty is urban and pop.  Oh, there’s an occasional Nickelback, or Nickelback-lite song on the playlist, but that’s an anomaly.  Everybody who does not fit into this paradigm is frozen out.

And the economics of those frozen out is not good.  To the point where the major labels have dropped these acts.  So, you go number one Alternative…how many Alternative stations are there?  Same deal with Active Rock.  You just can’t sell enough records.

What we have is a pinnacle, controlled by the major labels and mainstream media, and then a vast valley, far below, where everything else resides.  You’d think major labels would look at HBO, and see how they grew shows from left field.  But no, the majors are only interested in network television, they want the most eyeballs.  Which they gain through endless hype of lowest common denominator, formula stuff.

But the public has alternatives.

Oh, the elite in power will ask you to tell them one hit act that has been broken on the Net.  But doesn’t that question beg the point?  That maybe it’s not about asking what acts have broken through to wide public consciousness, but what is the definition of a hit?

Is a hit a track?  Is it an act?

Hit tracks turned out to be a costly business.  No one believes in the act, there’s no longevity, you’re constantly reinventing the wheel.  But, if you have an act that can generate capital for years, you can make much more money at a far reduced cost over a long period of time.

The majors don’t have this time, but the new indie acts do.  They create MySpace pages, they allow live taping and trading and they go on the road.  They’re building an enterprise based on them, not on a specific song.

And the songs these acts tend to write…  They’re not three and a half minute ditties.  They’re akin to that underground FM music of the sixties, completely counter to the system, new and different.

The big time purveyors still believe that there’s one mainstream, that everybody adheres to, that everybody is interested in the antics of Jay-Z and Britney.  And there are those who pay attention.  But a great segment of the public has tuned completely out.  They want something more real.  And they turn to the Internet to get it.

They comb Websites, they participate in newsgroups, they go anywhere and everywhere, instantly all over the world, to find like-minded people who will turn them on to stuff that appeals to them.  And when they find it, they support it.  They’re not about ripping off the bands they embrace, they’re about buying all their merch and turning their friends on to them.

We definitely have two worlds.  Flummoxed by the new game, the old powers refuse to participate in it and rail against it.  Decry file-trading all you want, but so many of the new acts give their music away for free, stealing isn’t an issue for them.  And, interestingly, their fans ultimately buy the CD as a badge of honor, to support the act!

Will superstars emerge from the Net world?

Interesting question, but not the point.  The point is the changing percentages.  The major sector is declining, and the indie sphere is growing.  And the indies don’t want to play in the majors’ world.  They can do it via their own systems.  Oh, maybe a new enterprise will emerge that groups and markets these indie acts, but it won’t look like a traditional label, and the deals won’t be the same.  Terms will be straightforward and honest.  Accounting will be transparent.

Some might say the lunatics have taken over the asylum.

I say thank god.  It’s time a new generation dominates, one with different values, one that is not beholden to the blow ’em up on TV paradigm embraced by those running the major labels today.  These new players are about the music, and the culture.  Elements way off the radar of those making quarterly reports.

Give people something to believe in and they’ll give you all their money.  Hell, isn’t that what religion is about?  Think about your act as a religion.  Gain adherents.  They’ll spread the word.  And guard your core principles very closely.  The more honest and trustworthy you are, the more people will flock to you.  And the slower the build, the longer the career.

1

My favorite record store was Granny ‘N Grammy.  Every Friday afternoon, after Evidence, I would drive my car to Westwood and prowl the streets looking for a parking space.  Even though Westwood in the seventies was the Third Street Promenade, CityWalk and Hollywood & Highland COMBINED, I could always find a spot.  This was when you could still drive to the Valley on a whim, before gridlock had you pondering whether to even leave your home.  I’d put a quarter in the meter and then stride up Gayley to the dark hole in the wall aside the fading supermarket, right up the street from the sporting goods store.

My first stop was the new release bin.  I’d comb through a hundred or so albums catching up, removing what I needed to buy.  And then I’d slide down the right-hand side of the store to the promos.

This is where I bought my copy of Karla Bonoff’s debut.  And Alan Parsons’.  For $1.99 at first, and eventually $2.99 as the years went by, I would find not only what I desperately needed, sometimes replacing the full price discs I’d pulled from the new release bin, but gems that I didn’t know I’d love until I played them, like "Modern Music" by Be Bop Deluxe.  And every once in a while, there’d be a record in the promo bin that would elate me, that I’d reach in and grab before anybody could beat me to the punch, like Blondie Chaplin’s "Rock + Roll".

I discovered the Beach Boys at Nutmeg Bowl.  The forty alley emporium below the discount store Topps where we went bowling every Friday during sixth grade.  After our two strings, before the bus arrived to retrieve us, there would be enough time to buy some french fries and listen to the jukebox.  As the year wore on, the Beatles hit.  But before they arrived, I was hooked on the Four Seasons’ "Dawn (Go Away)" and the multiple 45s of the boys from Southern California.

In today’s fluid society, where air travel is affordable to everyone, distant states are no longer a dream.  You just pick up and visit.  But to an east coast boy in 1963…California might as well have been Japan.  It was where all the TV shows and movies were made, it was where it was sunny all the time, it was where you could surf and it was home to this exquisite music.

The first Beach Boys album I bought was "Surfin’ U.S.A."  Then I went back and purchased the first.  And then I got into the present with "Today".  And just before I filled all the holes, the apotheosis was released, "Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!)", containing the absolutely perfect "California Girls".

I proceeded to buy every Beach Boys album thereafter.  Didn’t matter if nobody else did.  I loved their take on "I Was Made To Love Her" off "Wild Honey".  "Cabin Essence" on "20/20".  And then suddenly they switched to Warner and were coming BACK!

But they didn’t.  Oh, you should listen to "Sunflower".  It was better than the ultimately more successful "Surf’s Up".  But the Beach Boys could not be hip in an era of drugs and destruction, even though Brian Wilson wrote the book on those topics.  It looked like they bottomed out with "Carl and the Passions/So Tough", which contained only one listenable track, the airplay deserving but exposure denied minor masterpiece "Marcella", but then they found the track that put them back on the map, "Sail On Sailor".

Supposedly Brian Wilson wrote it in an afternoon, when Warner demanded a single.  Then again, historians dispute this, saying it had been laying around for years.  But this track, it had the magic of the songs of yore, of the sixties, and it stuck.  Maybe not on Top Forty radio, but the song crept into the public consciousness, the hipsters knew it.

"Sail On Sailor" was sung by Blondie Chaplin.
 

2

I didn’t take my records with me after finally leaving the east coast for California.  I was footloose and fancy free, I was traveling sans baggage.  Well, not completely, I carried twenty six cassette tapes, every note of which I can recite without them even playing.  But my archives, my history, I left behind in my parents’ house in Connecticut.  But after two years of itinerant living, summers in L.A., winters in Salt Lake City, I settled down permanently in a dark one room apartment on Carmelina Avenue in West L.A.

My first purchase was a stereo.  Components of which I still have.  Buy the best and it lasts forever.  And with this stereo, I needed discs.  My first foray was to Music Odyssey up on Wilshire, where I bought Joni Mitchell’s "Hejira", Little River Band’s debut with "It’s A Long Way There" and six other discs.  And when I played those out, I went to Grammy ‘N Granny.  Where I became a regular, where the soft-talking proprietor and his two lost in life employees greeted me as I walked in the front door.  It was my home away from home, my refuge from law school, where no one understood me.  As long as I could shop at Grammy ‘N Granny and listen to my purchases on my new stereo, I could get through.  I’d play the records until I knew them, and then I’d sing them to myself until I could get back to my apartment and play them again.  Theoretically, I could have taped them, but I couldn’t afford a deck.  I’d sacrificed both FM and recording ability for JBL L100s and 110 watts of Sansui power.

I tried to make friends, but I couldn’t.  These people took law school seriously.  I was going because my father agreed to pay and I had to get out of the hole I’d found myself in, living with ski bums with no direction in Utah, with the world’s worst case of mononucleosis.  I would have dropped out, but it was the worst snow year in the history of Utah, and who was going to pay the bills if I walked, certainly not my father.  So I soldiered on.  Believing that I wasn’t really enrolled, that really I was living a rock and roll fantasy.  And a key element of that fantasy was Blondie Chaplin’s "Lonely Traveler".

It was the first cut on the second side.  It started out quietly, but then thirty seconds in Blondie went almost falsetto, a piano appeared, and then…this clavinet, some kind of keyboard, that was positively MAGICAL!  Just the SOUND of this record made my life work.

I remember I tried hanging with this classmate Steve, who didn’t live far away.  One day in his Dasher I told him about this fantastic record by Blondie Chaplin.  I took it to his house but he wasn’t really listening.  The album never broke through.  It was a personal favorite.  But in 1977, that was enough.  You didn’t need to have cohorts in belief.  Because you were dedicated to the artist, you had a special bond, and that was enough.

3

I was rescued from despair by a woman.  Who was reluctant to divert her attention from her studies, but whom I convinced to live a life of movie viewing and concert attendance.

That lasted through the bar exam.  Actually, about a year thereafter.  Then I was thrown into the wilderness.  True despair set in.  This legal life, this was not what I was cut out for.  Not because it was so much work, but  because it was so boring!

I switched to the movie business.  Eventually got into the music business, got a big job with Sanctuary Music and then got fired.  About the same time I met my ex-wife.

And it’s a long, arduous story with too many downsides, but then I was rescued, by the Internet.  I could communicate with like-minded souls via the Internet, I could download all my old favorite songs via the Internet.  Just about everything except for Blondie Chaplin’s one and only Asylum album, with "Lonely Traveler".

But today, I got a package from Blondie.  With his new CD.  And a burned copy of his debut disc.  I went from the doldrums to elation instantly.  I stuck the CD in the drive of my Mac and started listening to "Lonely Traveler".  And started researching the man, where he’d been.

You can read his story if you scroll down on his MySpace page: Blondie Chaplin.  Yes, the tale of how music rescued Blondie from the world of apartheid, a life of despair, how it opened doors, how it gave him a life.

My law school classmates were looking for safety.  I guess a part of me was too.  But with me, it didn’t take.  Because safe is not in my DNA.  I don’t intentionally take the other road, I’ve just got no choice.  But not until I got on the Internet did I find there were so many other people who were on the same path.  I’m a lonely traveler no more.

What kind of crazy fucked up world do we live in where a vile sycophantic punk like Brian Grazer, based on success in the entertainment business, mostly appealing to a lowbrow audience, is given reign over the L.A. "Times" editorial section?

Last time I checked, newspapers were supposed to be a cut above the "Mike Douglas Show".  Yup, let’s get a co-host so we can gain eyeballs/readers, fuck the news, fuck the truth, whatever it takes to move the product.

Grazer is a tireless self-promoter who was not only the beneficiary of a "New Yorker" profile, but his position high on the entertainment totem pole delivered his wife a book deal.  This nepotism/elitism is what the Internet is AGAINST!  Yet the L.A. "Times" sinks ever lower into oblivion.

In case you missed the memo, the L.A. "Times" has been in turmoil ever since the wall between advertising and editorial was torn down in the name of profits.  Yes, way back in ’99 the paper shared the revenue of a special section on the Staples Center WITH the Staples Center.  That’s what Philip Anschutz needs, breaks, like he doesn’t have enough money.

And if it’s not bad enough that the paper was sold to interests in Chicago, the editorial page was turned over to Michael Kinsley, who lived in SEATTLE!  And his great breakthrough?  Participatory editorials on the Web, where the public could weigh in.  Which they did, in pornographic fashion.

God, the more we learn about the power elite, the more we find out that they’re clueless powermongers oblivious to the interests of the proletariat.  And the proletariat is now watching.

You want to know one of the richest men in California?  That’s Jerry Perenchio.  Ever drive past that wall in Malibu, with all the greenery on the other side?  That’s Jerry’s private golf course.  Jerry’s policy? NO PRESS!

Yes, he did break his rule once, when he was selling Univision, agreeing to participate in a story in the aforementioned L.A. "Times".  But in that same story, he told how he fired an employee for breaking his rule about talking to the press.  Didn’t matter that the ultimate story was positive, he broke the RULE!  And why does Jerry have this rule?  Because once you raise your head above the fray, you’re gonna LOOK BAD!

It’s one thing for the inane Hiltons and Lohans of this world to party and puke all over the media, but you’d think those in power would be a bit wiser.  But they’re not.  Even though they’re on the other side of the camera, all they can say is LOOK AT ME!

Brian Grazer is no Orson Welles.  He’s not even in the league of Sam Goldwyn.  But his network of friends complicit in profit cut him breaks.  Because they want to be included, because they want to get rich too.

Should this game be ported over to the NEWSPAPER??  Are you kidding me?  Where truth is supposed to be divined from facts?  Shit, if you talk to these entertainment honchos you’ll find out they believe they MAKE the facts!  They’re not rich and powerful enough?

Used to be education was revered.  As was making an honest living.  To be a newspaper reporter was an honest job.  Before Judith Miller metaphorically slept with the Bush Administration, and Brian Grazer got control of the voice of one of America’s largest dailies.

This is a big deal.  What you’re seeing here is old media imploding.  Making mistake after mistake.  All of which are now visible to the public.  And so many made in an effort to keep up with technological change.

One thing is for sure.  The old bosses are not going to rule in the new world.  Because they don’t get the new game.  Truth, honesty, transparency, they’re key.  If Andres Martinez is too stupid to see that his relationship with Kelly Mullens compromised the choice of Mr. Grazer for this position, then he should be blown out.

Thank god he walked the plank.

Give credit to the publisher, David Hiller, for refusing to print the special section.  That’s the role of a boss.  To keep everybody playing by the rules.  No man is bigger than the institution, the institution lives on.  This has been true with colleges and universities.  Will the L.A. "Times" live on?  Not with blunders like this.

Los Angeles Times Editorial Page Chief Quits