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back-and-totheleft · 5 years

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Rider on the storm

“Get out there! Take a chance! That’s what the ‘60s were--the cutting edge! Ride the snake! Now! Now ! Remember that? Go to the limits! Challenge authority! Challenge your parents! See for yourself! Get in touch with your senses!”

That fusillade is being delivered by arguably Hollywood’s most successful protester. Yale dropout, drug-taking, decorated Vietnam vet turned auteur, Stone has delivered take after take on the ‘60s and their children--"Salvador,” “Platoon,” “Wall Street,” “Talk Radio,” “Born on the Fourth of July"--coming at his theme every which way. Drugs! War! Money! Politics! Stone has made movies to exorcise his and his generation’s demons, annoying the industry with his excesses, filmic and personal, earning a round of grudging respect for ballyhooing a 20-year-old Zeitgeist all the way to the bank. He is even a producer these days, taking home a nice percentage of the gross. The Outsider has become Establishment. Hey, Oliver, what’s that sound, everything going round and round? [...]

“Success?” asks the director, slightly startled. “That didn’t become popular as a concept until the ‘70s. Yeah, I have much more freedom to make the subjects that I want, but I don’t see myself as Darryl Zanuck. I would feel bad if I got indulgent. All good films come from people with an independent spirit, those who push. But the power of perception in the world is such that fringe ideas, when they are accepted, become mainstream--that because of their success they become a cliche.

“ ‘Platoon’ was a major innovation in our perception of what that war was. I thought ‘Born’ was a fairly radical statement; it took 10 years to make that picture--everybody passed on it. Once it was made and got eight Oscar nominations, it became a successful Hollywood movie. If it had not been successful, it would have been considered an outlaw film. Now, with the Kennedy film--why haven’t they made that already? Because people were fearful that it was uncommercial. I hope I was destined to make that picture.” [...]

As is well known, Stone made his mark as a movie maker five years ago when he turned his own life into film--"Platoon,” the 1986 Oscar-winning Vietnam War film that chronicled the director’s 1967-68 tour of duty. The movie won Best Picture and Best Director and grossed more than $160 million. Stone has made similar connections in his other less overtly biographical films. James Woods in “Salvador,” Charlie Sheen in “Wall Street,” Eric Bogosian in “Talk Radio,” Tom Cruise in “Born on the Fourth of July,” all played characters close to the director’s “male, Type-A personality,” says Bogosian. “Oliver makes movies about men under pressure.” [...]

It is a marriage of opposites that also fits Stone, who is described by those who know him as intense, passionate and smart, a prodigious director and writer whose early reputation for womanizing and drug taking never hindered an equally relentless work ethic. “He has the curiosity of a child and an incredible drive,” says Kenneth Lipper, an investment banker, author and consultant on “Wall Street.” “Oliver uses his films as an excuse to search out the facts--the truth--of a situation.”

Others who have worked for him say Stone is a masterful taskmaster who will manipulate, taunt and pressure cast and crew into sharing his commitment to the subject at hand. “He likes to do a lot of sparring to challenge you,” says actor Willem Dafoe, who starred in “Platoon” and “Born on the Fourth of July.” Adds Bogosian: “He expects you to be a self-starter and thick-skinned when it comes to criticism. And if he senses you can’t take it, he will move away from you fast. Being on a set with him can be very punishing. But at the end of the day, everyone wants to be around him.” Kyle MacLachlan, an actor best known as FBI man Dale Cooper in television’s “Twin Peaks,” who co-stars in “The Doors,” says simply, “I miss working with Oliver.” [...]

Shying away from risks is the ultimate sin with Stone, the only child of a privileged Manhattan couple, a stockbroker father and socialite mother. Stone wore a coat and tie every day to prep school, wrote weekly essays for his father--who paid him 25 cents each--and embarked on his well-documented fall from grace as soon as he was able. Says one old friend: “Oliver grew up with a lot of contradictions in his life--Jewish father, French Roman Catholic mother who was this semi-Regine-type character. Oliver led this sort of Eurotrash jet-setter’s life--even after his parents were divorced--where nothing was normal.”

“My mother was never in bed before 3 in the morning,” Stone recalls. “She used to take me to France in the summers, and she was a great fan of movies, took me out of school to go to double and triple features. She was this kind of Auntie Mame person. ‘Evita’ would have been my homage to her.”

His parents’ divorce when he was 16 years old, Stone says, “was like parting the curtains of a stage play and seeing what was really there. I found out about a whole lot of things--affairs--I had been blind to. After that, I felt I was really on my own.”

The divorce also coincided with a larger rupture--Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, the de facto starting gun of the ‘60s. “I had no faith in my parents’ generation after that,” Stone says. “By 1965, I was in Vietnam"--first as a teacher and a merchant marine, later as an Army enlistee.

He briefly attended Yale University, his father’s alma mater, which he says he “hated, especially since it was before women were admitted.” Stone dropped out and headed for Vietnam.

He was wounded twice and earned a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart in a tour of duty that was later chronicled in “Platoon.” “He was never a regular GI Joe,” recalls Crutcher Patterson, a former member of Stone’s platoon. “He was pretty green, a loner and moody, always writing things. Whenever we got a break, he would stop and write a little descriptive story about it.” [...]

Stone hasn’t lost his concern for current events: “I’m praying for our soldiers, who are making the ultimate sacrifice in the Gulf War, but I don’t think Bush ever intended to negotiate. There was a military-industrial complex that pushed us into this.” Friends add that the director’s only real interest these days, in addition to making films, “is trying to set up other films.”

Have Stone’s demons finally gone AWOL? “I didn’t say I didn’t miss my old life,” he says with a half-smile. “I love the concept of suburbia, but I also love going to New York and Europe and Asia, meeting new people. My wife and I are different that way. I have a restlessness that never stops.” [...]

Stone does seem to be a man with his eye fixed perpetually over his shoulder, one who keeps a daily diary and who describes the art of filmmaking as giving vent to “that other person that is in you. The shadow self, the one that is always walking behind you. The real you, the deeper you.

“I’m not going to say I’m a lone soul here, wandering through my own soundtrack,” he says. “I enjoy the community of people who love movies. And I like using the power that I have to make things happen. But will I be doing this forever? Maybe I’ll be working in Eritrea or the Sudan, or maybe I’ll become a journalist for Rolling Stone.”

Stone has spent several hours over lunch, repeatedly waving off his crew, but now his impatience is tangible. “I still don’t like the answer I gave you about the ‘60s, how this film relates to this current generation. I felt stupid. I was doing a lot of ‘ums’ and ‘ahs,’ ” he says, suddenly obsessed with his image.

“I don’t want to believe in generation conflict, but it’s there. I feel distant from my own generation, out of step with the people my age who went to college. I always identified more with the Charlie Sheen generation, that younger group who came up, because it gave me new life. I was able to act out my own history through them, skip a generation and go back to it again. Believe me, that’s exciting, and I’m grateful for that chance because our tribal rituals are the same. It doesn’t have to be Jim Morrison or Vietnam; it’s about going out there and finding yourself.”

-Hilary De Vries, “RIDER ON THE STORM : With ‘The Doors,’ Director Oliver Stone Exhumes the ‘60s in All Their Lurid Excess,” Los Angeles Times, Feb 24 1991 [x]

#oliver stone #los angeles times #the doors #platoon #childhood #talk radio #eric bogosian #the vietnam war #charlie sheen #wounded #purple heart #bronze star #jacqueline stone

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briangroth27 · 6 years

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The Get Down Part 2 Review

I enjoyed the second part of Netflix’s The Get Down and I’m sorry it ended up being the last. This show was exciting, engaging, and completely outside what I normally watch—I’ve never been a big fan of the 70s, disco, or hip-hop—but I loved it and found a new appreciation for all three. I’ll definitely miss these characters and this aesthetic, but I’m glad they found a way to wrap things up in a (mostly) satisfying way. Unlike other reviews I’ve read, I didn’t have a problem with the release structure of this season. Dividing it into “Parts 1 and 2” didn’t throw me at all, first because it’s just branding and second because I always felt Part 1 had a solid beginning, middle, and end. It also had a cliffhanger to leave you wanting more, just like any other show’s season finale. With the new cartoon sequences and the time jump, Part 2 feels so different stylistically that if they had been released together, it would’ve felt jarring and weird.

Full spoilers...

After The Get Down Brothers’ victory at the end of Part 1, they’re reveling in their success while trying to build dream lives for themselves. Zeke’s (Justice Smith) struggle to identify himself in light of his (and everyone else’s) dual lives through his Yale application letter was a perfect encapsulation of this, while also serving as a nice reminder of what happened in Part 1. That duality was a great build off of Zeke giving a speech promoting Ed Koch (Frank Wood), but then immediately running off to perform for the very people Koch was against. The pull between Zeke’s future at Yale/his internship with Mr. Gunns (Michael Gill) and his future as a musical superstar formed a strong backbone to Part 2, and I imagine the looming choice between disappointment now with a good future promised by Yale/Gunns and a dream life granted by music in the present that might have no future is one a lot of people can empathize with. My circumstances aren’t anywhere near as dire as Zeke’s, but I certainly struggle with working towards my dream career or giving up and settling for a routine 9-to-5 job that has financial stability. I think the show did justice to this struggle, but it could’ve been a bit more fleshed out (though Part 2’s shortened episode order may’ve truncated that arc). Zeke’s clear discomfort with navigating the casual racism at the Yale club but still wanting to keep his hopes of college alive despite Shaolin (Shameik Moore) showing up—and then choosing Shao when things got way out of hand—was great to watch. I liked that Zeke stood up for Shao and didn’t rat him out to Gunns, even though it meant giving up his shot at Yale and the internship. That defense made their final split at the end of Part 2 even more heartbreaking, when Zeke discovered Shao had allowed Boo-Boo (Tremaine Brown, Jr.) to sell drugs. It was smart to make their connection to the drugs Shao was pushing not just a way to get rich, like Boo-Boo was trying to do, but a situation that could actually get Shao killed if he stopped, which made it much more complex than Zeke—whose quitting over this felt totally right—wanted to see. Zeke and Shao’s final fight felt perfect and tragic (and was perfectly acted by Smith and Moore), and Zeke scoffing at Shao’s real name when the “kung fu superhero” blinders were finally off was excellent. I feel like Zeke fully understood that even though he’d been best friends with this guy, Shao wasn’t going to stop dragging him into his world (whether it was Shao’s choice to do so or not) and Zeke couldn’t save him, so he had to save himself by cutting Curtis out. I really liked the reversal of the end of Part 1 that the destruction of The Get Down Brothers created: there, he chose rap over the system, but here he bails on his music to go back to Yale.

It would’ve been interesting to expose Zeke to the punk rock scene after Gunns’ daughter Claudia (Julia Garner) discussed it with him. I get him not wanting to explore it after they kissed since it was so closely tied to her, but it would’ve been a neat to at least get his thoughts on it. If the series had more time, rock’s war with disco could’ve made for a good obstacle for Mylene’s (Herizen F. Guardiola) career as well and the musical divide between Claudia’s interests and Mylene’s career would’ve made them direct rivals in an interesting way. That said, I’m glad Zeke came clean about his kiss with Claudia to Mylene instead of trying to hide it for an extended period of time, which helped to defuse the potentially explosive drama it might’ve otherwise caused. Their fight over her saying she was single on TV felt a little too well-worn: it would’ve been more original to subvert expectations and have Zeke understand the demands of public images himself, since he’s somewhat famous too. Regardless of that cliché plot point, the show definitely had me rooting for Zeke and Mylene, even knowing that something tragic was racing at them. Smith and Guardiola had great chemistry and totally sold their romance in both their happy and harder times. Zeke talking Mylene down from Misty Holloway’s (Renée Elise Goldsberry) excellent “Backstabbers” attack was one of those great moments between the two of them. I also loved the knowing goodbye she gave him when she told him she was leaving at the end of the season; that she didn’t repeat “forever” when she said she loves him was heartbreaking. However, the renewed hope that fills Zeke while doing his poetry in his impromptu studio session—the beginning of his recording career, no doubt—was the perfect reaction to his heartbreak. In the end, it was just him and his rhymes, and that’s not only supremely fitting, but a nice segue to the flash-forwards of adult Zeke (Naz) rapping alone on stage. Zeke’s poetry with his future self was very well done (and extremely well-acted) and makes me tear up every time I watch it, while overlaying it with Mylene’s “See You on the Other Side” was a very cool mirror of the Get Down Brothers sampling “Set Me Free” for their battle at the end of Part 1. Reuniting Zeke and Mylene at the very end was extremely fulfilling—I’m choosing to believe that silhouetted trio was the actual Soul Madonnas, not just a tribute—and gave their romance something of a happy ending. Even if that isn’t them, or if it’s not supposed to imply Zeke and Mylene finally got back together, I think he was still waiting for her—and maybe only for her—just like Francisco (Jimmy Smits) waited for Lydia (Zabryna Guevara). No matter what, Zeke and Mylene will always be connected by their music.

Mylene’s journey away from gospel music and into a more sex-laden atmosphere worked really well as a parallel for her growing up and moving beyond the confines of her religious upbringing, even with as blatant as her father (Giancarlo Esposito) being a literal preacher was. I did appreciate and enjoy Mylene finally getting out of that situation with her dad before he died, though, and Guardiola was great at portraying Mylene’s attempts to break free as well as her confidence when it came to taking hold of her group’s future. I also liked the internal drama within the Soul Madonnas that was stirred up by Yolanda’s (Stefanee Marin) concerns about them becoming too sexy, but I thought it should’ve lasted longer. As I’ve seen pointed out elsewhere, her return to the group an episode after ratting out the plans for their sexy show was jarring. I felt like that was a major missed opportunity for Mylene to step up as leader to work out a solution all three of them felt comfortable with while also digging into Yolanda and Regina’s (Shyrley Rodriguez) perspectives more. Personality-wise, Mylene was already a good balance between Yolanda and the more fun-loving, assertive Regina, and it would’ve been great to see her become the balance within the group as well. Seeing her step into a leadership role within the Soul Madonnas would’ve not only given her a new struggle (one that paralleled Zeke and Shao’s fight for the future of the Get Down Brothers, now that I think of it), but would’ve better built her arc towards taking control of her career from Roy (Eric Bogosian). Had Mylene gotten the chance to show him and us that she could handle internal dissension and be a strong voice within the group through the Yolanda incident, it probably would’ve sold Roy agreeing to her terms a bit more. Standing up to him and threatening to walk out of her contract—and Roy caving—may have been unrealistic, as others have noted, but I still liked that she got that moment. Given the necessarily rushed nature of the season, Roy having the sense to keep his talent happy was an emotional win I can get behind, even if it doesn’t make business or real-life sense.

The other thing I would’ve liked to see in regard to Mylene is where she sees her music going. “See You on the Other Side” implies she won’t fully transition to the full-on sexy thing, but is she content to only do ballads? We know she greatly admired Misty Holloway (at least until Ruby Con), so did she want to be the next Misty or something original? Where does her artistic instinct take her, and what kind of music does she want to be making? Would she have considered pioneering a new style? Would she have tried to dabble in punk rock as that started to challenge disco (and rock ultimately defeated it)? That would’ve been a cool way to pit Mylene’s style against Zeke’s (and Cadillac’s (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II)) in a potential Part 3, give her an entirely different sort of challenge as she tries to adapt to that style, and create an entirely unexpected way to wrap Claudia back into the storyline; maybe she could’ve inspired Mylene to try out what’s out there, since early punk rock was inclusive of women. Of course, those all feel like Part 3 developments. In Part 2, I still would’ve liked to see more of her opinion of what her music should be.

I liked that Mylene and Shao fighting over Zeke’s future gave a much more personal stake to the hip-hop vs. Wall Street nature of Zeke’s two potential paths. That the two of them were the most important figures in Zeke’s life and were fighting over him gave that triangle an interesting aspect that could’ve been fleshed out more, but I liked what we got. I could easily buy that Mylene’s barb about Shaolin being romantically interested in Zeke was more than just an offhand insult. So many characters commented on his and Zeke’s friendship as something more than platonic, like everyone was seeing something he didn’t see (or didn’t want to admit) himself, that I think the writers were definitely hinting that he’s gay or bi. Even Fat Annie (Lillias White) gives a knowing smile when Shao says Zeke isn’t his boyfriend. Shao also immediately understood what was going on between Dizzee (Jaden Smith) and Thor (Noah Le Gros), even though when he “caught them” they weren’t doing anything remotely sexual, which to me implies he's been there, even if he doesn’t want to admit it. Though their friendship was real and he definitely depended on Zeke to provide lyrics to his music, so of course he wouldn’t want to see Zeke head off to Wall Street, I think Shao really might’ve loved him. Perhaps the superhero ninja persona he crafted wasn’t just to cover up the fact that he had no one, but to hide his true identity as well. After all, the only person he really lets his walls down for and tells his “secret identity” to is Zeke. Of course, you can share your deepest truths with your best friend just as easily as with the person you love without it meaning you love your best friend too, but in this era it seems telling that Shao’s ultra-masculine alter-ego only comes down for Zeke in a desperate effort to make him stay.

It’s sad that Shao didn’t ever seem to have had anyone and needed Zeke a whole lot more than Zeke needed him. That made their split all the more heartbreaking. The push and pull over who was actually leading the Get Down Brothers—Zeke or Shaolin—worked well to build their growing conflict to the breaking point. Once they were there, I thought it was a beautiful and heart-rending note to have Shao resort to a Fat Annie movie when Zeke tried to walk away from him. Speaking of Fat Annie, Shaolin falling into dealing angel dust was disappointing given how strongly he’d only cared about being a DJ in Part 1. It’s tragic that moving it for Cadillac was the only way to keep his music going, particularly as it directly led to the end of his DJ career. It’s even more tragic that Shao ended up staying with Annie to protect the rest of The Get Down Brothers after getting even Cadillac out of her grasp. As sad as that is (and Moore sold Shao’s defeat perfectly), it felt like an earned end for him and satisfyingly explained why Fat Annie would let Zeke and the others get away. I wish we were getting a Part 3 to show him escape her grasp.

Adding Dizzee as a secondary narrator was an interesting choice, but it would’ve worked better if the show had honestly and more deeply explored his secret life. That would’ve justified and smoothed over the feeling I got that he was so unconnected from the main plot this season. Aside from Dizzee getting yelled at by his parents (Karen Aldridge, Ron Cephas Jones) alongside his brothers, Get Down Brothers gigs, and accidentally taking the tainted angel dust, it felt like he was existing in a slightly different show that didn’t really reconnect with the rest of the plotlines. As I’ve seen pointed out elsewhere, Part 1 had him doing his own thing too, but still made his connection to the rest of the plot a lot cleaner and more important when he introduced “Set Me Free” to the real tastemakers of New York and made it a hit. Here, even when he collided with the subplots of other characters, like taking the supposedly very dangerous tainted angel dust, he just got a little sick for a minute (which was weird in and of itself) and then continued doing his own thing. That said, his narration and the cartoon segments played into not only the heightened reality of Part 1, but the comics and 70s cartoons the guys would’ve been into as well. I like the interpretation I’ve seen elsewhere that (most of) the cartoon sequences are idealized versions of what the characters were experiencing, like the animated scene that follows their victory at the unity concert where all their comic book alter egos are reveling in their success before the real world comes crashing down around them and their dreams. That was probably the most successful use of the cartoons. On the other hand, there were some animated sequences that were literally just a character arriving at/leaving a building, which felt awkward and pointless. There didn’t seem to be any thematic reasoning for those moments to be animated and the transitions between real and cartoon characters were awkward and disruptive when used that way.

The biggest disappointment about Dizzee’s arc this season was how shy the show was about his burgeoning sexuality. I expected much more to Dizzee coming to terms with being either bi or gay and they literally didn’t even dare speak that love’s name, which was a bizarre choice for a season that also featured Ruby Con and numerous drag queens. It was weird that Dizzee and Thor weren’t able to ever kiss, even when they were painting each other. Dizzee inferring that Boo-Boo wouldn’t ever understand what he was going through was perfectly tragic (and it was a very well-acted scene by both of them), but I wish we’d gotten to see him take a chance and tell his little brother the truth. It would’ve opened Dizzee’s arc to the rest of the characters and Boo-Boo (and the rest of them) trying to deal with it could’ve been a solid dramatic arc. At the very least, a scene with Shao giving Dizzee some comforting words (whether Shao is into guys too or not) would’ve been great. Since Dizzee didn’t tell anyone, feeling (and animating himself) as an alien made a lot of sense and worked, and Jaden Smith conveyed the pain of knowing he couldn’t share his secret very well. I thought for sure this Part would do an AIDS storyline given the time period and the impact it had on the gay community and that would’ve been a powerful, important story to tell. I’m not sure I could’ve handled that level of heartbreak given everything else that went down in the finale, but I did go into Part 2 expecting tragedy heading for Dizzee and Thor. However, what the show gave us instead felt pointless and needlessly mean. My impression was absolutely that Dizzee got hit by the train and that was not a satisfying conclusion to his story at all. Not only did they not let him kiss the guy he was in love with, but half the gay couple gets killed? Come on. The two of them never fit into flamboyant stereotypes about gay guys, but “bury your gays” is an even worse cliché. It felt like a cheap shock that didn’t need to happen. I don’t think the series would’ve had any less of an impact had they just been happy together and it didn’t gain anything by (maybe) killing Dizzee.

Comparatively, Boo-Boo and Ra-Ra (Skylan Brooks) didn’t get much to do this season, and that’s a shame. Boo-Boo’s stint in the drug trade was certainly unexpected and it was disappointing to watch him get wrapped up in that lifestyle, even if all three Kipling brothers’ reaction to their parents grounding them for the drugs they found was funny. Like Shao’s predicament, it was tragic that it was the only way he could see to raise his social status. Regardless, Brown, Jr. clearly had a blast as Boo-Boo briefly hit the high life with this dangerous gig. Boo-Boo’s ultimate arrest was sad and shocking; maybe I was “stuck on hope” or looking for a Hollywood ending, but I didn’t actually expect Boo-Boo to end up in prison. Along with Dizzee’s apparent death, that definitely brought the fantastical nature of the show back to the ground with a stark reminder of the realities of life. That could’ve easily upset the tone of the show, but I think it worked.

I liked Ra-Ra thinking about the future and dabbling in making what The Get Down Brothers do truly profitable and long-term. His sojourn into the Universal Zulu Nation territory was a cool introduction of that style and I liked that he wasn’t welcome because The Get Down Brothers had been marked as drug dealers. The positive culture there was a nice counterpoint to what we’d seen so far and I wish the show had time to explore it more via Ra-Ra’s perspective. I wish it weren’t so animated though; if the animated sections are to be considered the characters’ dream worlds, why is the real salvation from Fat Annie the gang finds in Ra-Ra’s trip animated as well? At first that felt incongruous, but perhaps it’s because the guys aren’t really saved from Fat Annie at all. They get out of her contract, but she still gets Boo-Boo arrested and they still break up. In any case, I wish we’d gotten more of Ra-Ra this season. Brooks brought a great, distinctive energy to Ra-Ra and I would’ve liked to see more of that. Trying to woo Tanya (Imani Lewis) on the phone was so funny and sweet, and this half of the show could’ve used a bit more of his innocence and optimism. I also would’ve liked to see where his forward-thinking got him in the future. He’s one of the main characters and deserved at least a hint at his destiny.

Cadillac’s love for video games and disco made for a really fun and unique gangster, while his desire to go to space was a great, unexpected reveal! I’m sure Abdul-Mateen II had an absolute blast playing this character and he’ll definitely remain one of the most memorable parts of the show. It was awesome that even Cadillac felt like he got a complete ending to his arc in Part 2. I liked that the unity concert actually changed Cadillac’s mind and got him to successfully break free of Fat Annie. Agreeing to let the Get Down Brothers go after Shao acknowledged their common bonds of abuse by Fat Annie and their desires to be free was a great moment and I really liked both characters at that point. I loved that he’s going to use his freedom to work on his own music, even if his time as a music producer never felt fully fleshed-out in either Part of the series. However, that may have been the point. His revelation about not ever really focusing on his Super-High Voltage Records label all this time felt like a wake-up call to people with goals everywhere: he’s gotten nowhere on his dream at least partially because he never really buckled down and tried. For me, that was a surprising connection to a character who seemed like he’d be completely nefarious and unrelatable at first! I would’ve liked to see him struggle to make it as a producer as Disco died in a potential Part 3. That said, there were a few bumps in the road for Cadillac’s development. It seemed like there was a bit of disconnect between the end of Part 1 and the beginning of Part 2: I felt like he was far more prepared to get revenge on The Get Down Brothers at the end of Part 1 and thought he already knew where they’d gotten their sound system and records, but that reveal was saved for Part 2. It’s possible I misread his moment watching them perform at the end of Part 1, though. His continued obsessive “love” of Mylene was creepy and didn’t amount to anything, so I don’t know why it needed to persist beyond Part 1 (or even past the pilot). On the other hand, I’m so glad that neither that nor Mylene’s producer Shane’s (Jeremie Harris) somewhat teased interest in her ever became anything. I didn’t need to see her sexually used or abused by some skeevy adult in power.

Besides, Mylene’s father using her was enough. As blunt as a man of God trying to keep his daughter holy was, it was cleverly twisted by Ramon trying to exploit Mylene’s career to increase the standing—and the trappings—of his church. I liked that his ambitions became just as gaudy and “godless” as he feared Mylene’s career and soul would become, hurting himself and those around him in the process. His presence even actively drove her to the drugs he feared her fame would expose her to, like when she used cocaine to calm her nerves when he showed up at the Ruby Con. As strong an example of how much impact he had on her as that was, however, it was a somewhat bizarre one-off moment (perhaps in an expanded season, she’d have her own drug problem to parallel what Shao and Boo-Boo were doing). On the other hand, his controlling nature extending into beating his wife felt cliché and unnecessary. I hated him so much in the end that I didn’t care he died; in fact, I was happy to see him go. That said, I wish there’d been more fallout to his suicide than Mylene overcoming it as a survivor (though a strong Mylene is always a good thing). While Ramon probably became the villain of his own story without realizing it, Fat Annie reveled in her ill-gotten empire. She was a great villain and the implication that she’d been abusing both Shao and Cadillac made her feel evil in a far ickier way. I’ve seen people say killing the cat was too much, but I think they did it to prove she really would kill more kids. Perhaps the writing could’ve given her some more dimension and motivation, but she never felt like a one-note character to me (possibly because her performance was so entertaining). I liked that Francisco was finally revealed as Mylene’s actual father and the fact that he “slept alone” since 1960 was sweet. Though it was a little rushed and sidelined, his end felt earned. I feel like we should’ve gotten more of Lydia’s reactions to everything happening with the two men in her life, as well as her daughter’s career, in far more detail than we did. I also would’ve liked more from Jackie Moreno (Kevin Corrigan) than the couple of songs he wrote for Mylene and his support in the contract renegotiation scene. He seemed like such a presence in the first half the series that it was odd he was so sidelined here. It would’ve been nice if more had been done with the three kingdoms of Hip Hop pioneers—Kool Herc (Eric D. Hill, Jr.), Grandmaster Flash (Mamoudou Athie), and Afrika Bambaataa (Okieriete Onaodowan)—as well before they came together to save the kids from their contract with Fat Annie. If we’d known them better, seeing them unite for this moment would’ve felt like a bigger deal.

I liked the way the teens’ success in Part 1 segued into the manipulation of that success by the people behind Zeke and Mylene in Part 2. That made for a surprising (if inevitable) bittersweetness to their wins at the end of the first Part while giving them new battles to fight that didn’t feel like retreads of the first half of the series, even if many of the same players were involved. For example, the dance/rap-off between the Get Down Brothers and Cadillac’s disco music at Les Inferno was really entertaining and a great restructuring of Zeke and Cadillac’s dance-off over Mylene in the pilot. Fat Annie’s record contract for the Get Down Brothers worked well as a plot for me and I liked that the final rap battle wasn’t just about freeing themselves from that contract, but about proving that using a band just isn’t the same. That said, I really liked the gut-punch reveal at the end that the first hip-hop record did use a band. That sort of historical irony played really well, and had the show continued it seems like that sort of thing might’ve been the battle of a potential Part 3: as I saw pointed out on IGN, it’s ironic that Mylene is such a disco revelation too late in the game for that genre, while The Get Down Brothers arrived on the hip-hop scene a bit too early. I would’ve liked to see the characters navigate the changing trends in music and it’s a shame we won’t get to see more of their stories. Having so many of the main characters meet bad ends was sad, but felt real (even if I’ll never buy that dark/depressing is inherently more “realistic”).

Although I liked a lot the new songs, none of them matched “Set Me Free” or The Get Down Brothers’ winning mix from the end of Part 1 except “See You on the Other Side.” That one had a lot of emotion packed into it and was perfectly used to wrap up the show. The remix of Gonna Fly Now (the Rocky Theme) was cool too; it’s also used directly after they win the Unity Concert and right before their dreams are crushed; like Rocky, they go the distance but don’t really get to win. I loved the heightened reality this show lived in, while the Soul Train-type show Platinum Boogie was a fun bit of 70s atmosphere and I loved how outlandish the Studio 54-esque Ruby Con nightclub was, both thematically and design-wise. The truly creepy and unnerving intro to Episode 4 was very effective and surreal; so effective that I’m not sure the rest of the club or the episode lived up to what the intro promised, even if it still mostly worked. The use of stock footage from the real-life 70s intercut with the glossier night clubs and modern film quality still plays very well too. This world was so unique and well-constructed that it feels like we lost something special with the show’s cancellation.

I’m going to miss The Get Down, these characters, and this world. The actors were excellent across the board and I can’t wait to see more of them in their future projects. Despite some missed opportunities for exploring the characters more (mostly caused by the truncated season), this was a great, satisfying conclusion to the show. In regard to actual events, these 11 episodes may be fictionalized and softened (from what I’ve gathered from other reviews), but they’re still an entertaining insight into an aspect of history I never knew about. If you never gave The Get Down a chance, it’s definitely worth checking out!

Check out more of my reviews, opinions, and original short stories here!

#the get down #netflix #justice smith #zeke figuero #mylene cruz #jaden smith #get down brothers #soul madonnas #Shameik Moore #herizen guardiola #shaolin fantastic #Skylan Brooks #ra-ra #tremaine brown jr #boo-boo #dizzee kipling #yahya abdul-mateen ii #cadillac

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Text

Rider on the Storm

Oliver Stone--Hollywood outlaw, cinematic high priest of the lost generation, America’s reigning Angry Young Man--has dismissed the haplessly out-of-touch: those within earshot as well as those not in sync with his favorite decade.

That fusillade is being delivered by arguably Hollywood’s most successful protester. Yale dropout, drug-taking, decorated Vietnam vet turned auteur , Stone has delivered take after take on the ‘60s and their children--"Salvador,” “Platoon,” “Wall Street,” “Talk Radio,” “Born on the Fourth of July"--coming at his theme every which way. Drugs! War! Money! Politics! Stone has made movies to exorcise his and his generation’s demons, annoying the industry with his excesses, filmic and personal, earning a round of grudging respect for ballyhooing a 20-year-old Zeitgeist all the way to the bank. He is even a producer these days, taking home a nice percentage of the gross. The Outsider has become Establishment. Hey, Oliver, what’s that sound, everything going round and round?

After nearly two decades in the business--writing or directing about a dozen films, earning five Oscar nominations, including two awards for Best Director--Stone has mastered the art of turning the counterculture into a mainstream, bankable product. Today he is Hollywood’s most consistent practitioner of point-of-view filmmaking, yet one who just as consistently falls on his own sword.

His films, lofty in their intent to capture the New Left values of the ‘60s, frequently come up short with undistinguished if competent craftsmanship and an in-your-face moralizing. Critics regularly fault his work. The New Yorker’s Pauline Kael wondered in a review of “Platoon” whether Stone was “using filmmaking as a substitute for drugs. . . . There are too many scenes,” she went on to write, “where you think, It’s a bit much. The movie crowds you; it doesn’t give you room to have an honest emotion.” If Stone disdains such caviling as aesthetic elitism--"Critics say that; audiences don’t. I won’t ever make boring movies, ever!"--he nonetheless has his sharpshooter’s eye trained on his place in American film history. Stone still hungers for the imprimatur of artist.

“We don’t practice repression in this country, we practice triviality,” the director says, standing in a Hollywood sound stage on an early winter afternoon. “I try to make films that are bold and on the cutting edge, with ideas that are greater than me--and I try to serve those ideas.”

Now, Stone is set to unveil his latest homage to his generation--"The Doors,” the much-anticipated movie about the legendary ‘60s band, starring Val Kilmer as Jim Morrison, the band’s charismatic lead singer and lyricist. It is Stone’s first film since “Born on the Fourth of July” won him his third Oscar three years ago, and at $30 million it’s his most expensive production to date. It is also his least overtly political--something of a first for this filmmaker who is regularly accused of being anti-American--but one that is not without risks.

With few exceptions--such as “The Buddy Holly Story"--movies about the music industry are notoriously poor box office. And with “The Doors,” Stone is bringing to market a glossy tale of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll come round again in a new age of conservatism. It is a film for the ‘90s, with a controversial protagonist who practiced a particularly lethal brand of hedonistic nihilism; Morrison died of an apparent heart attack in Paris 20 years ago at the age of 27. Stone has taken a calculated risk in opening “The Doors” in today’s sexually nervous and unexpectedly jingoistic climate--the AIDS crisis and the country embroiled in its first real war since Vietnam. “I think we all feel on the edge of imminent disaster,” says Stone about his film’s upcoming release. “One always has that feeling.”

Even by the ‘60s’ break-the-mold musical standards, the Doors were considered sui generis--a home-grown Los Angeles band whose organ-rich, Eastern-sounding melodies, combined with Morrison’s vicious but poetic lyrics and undeniable stage presence, captured the growing alienation of an entire generation. From their first album--"The Doors” in 1967--to their last--"L.A. Woman” four years later--the band’s raspy mysticism and intellectual lyricism embodied the dark side of the ‘60s.

At the center of the band’s appeal was Morrison, the pouty, drug-ingesting “Lizard King” who became something of the Prince of Darkness in an era that did not lack for antiheroes--a figure extolling themes of undeniable attraction for Stone. “Look, I’m in my 40s,” the director says. “So I suppose this film is about the formation of our generation--the values we shared. People were out there, experiencing things, changing things. There were no limits, no laws. . . .”

Brian Grazer, an executive producer of “The Doors,” perceived two outlaws well-matched. “Oliver was my first choice as the director,” Grazer says. “He does what nobody else does--he takes dark, difficult subjects and turns them into hits.”

But hit making, as Stone likes to maintain, is not his goal. Rather, he single-mindedly goes after what he thinks of as the truths of his generation, wherever that search takes him: Vietnam, Wall Street, rock ‘n’ roll, even the Kennedy assassination. He describes the J.F.K. murder, the subject of his next film, which he will begin shooting this spring, as “the most covered-up crime of our era.” Although risk-taking and possibly radical in their intent, Stone’s films are increasingly mainstream, made with ever-larger budgets and more prestigious producers--Hemdale, Carolco and now, with the Kennedy film, Warner Bros. Success, for Stone, is a double-edged sword.

Those who know him suggest that Stone is indeed struggling to reconcile his renegade past with his current role as emerging power broker. “Oliver is conflicted about his success,” says one industry executive. “He hasn’t allowed his political sensibilities to get in the way of taking large amounts of money, and he struggles with that.”

“It isn’t about getting successful and having a career,” Stone says. “Going against success as a formula and embracing failure, like Morrison, where death becomes the last limit. . . . You mustn’t let money or power corrupt. I don’t feel in any way that I have compromised. I want to stay truthful to my era.”

STANDING HERE IN THE CAVERNOUS SOUND STAGE, Stone is putting the finishing touches on “The Doors.” While ostensibly another ‘60s film, “The Doors,” colleagues say, is actually a further cinematic echo of the director’s own persona as self-exiled prodigal son. As one actor puts it, “Although Oliver’s films seem to be about social issues, they are really about him.”

In conversation, Stone is by turns boyish, combative, thoughtful and overheated, one who seems to delight in spewing hyperbole as much in person as he does in his films. A husband and a father, he insists that his one regret is, “I didn’t sleep with all the women I could have.” A former drug user once busted in Mexico, he now calls cocaine “the biggest killer I know” but still salutes hallucinogenics as “fascinating.” A relentless advocate of the ‘60s, he disparages Woodstock as “a bunch of Boy Scouts getting together.” A most famous veteran, he is nonetheless disdained by some members of his old unit as a self-righteous blowhard with little sense of humor and a skewed perspective. (“He is very opinionated, over-generalizes the facts and bad-mouths people who have different points of view,” says Monte Newcombe, who served with Stone in Vietnam.)

In “The Doors,” Stone evinces a similar fealty to Morrison, a contemporary of the director’s and a man also known for not tempering his excesses. “Jim had a thing where he went to the limits--women, drugs, alcohol, the law,” says Stone, who plays down some of Morrison’s excesses and recut parts of the film to make Kilmer’s character more likable. “His lyrics were earthy--snakes, fire, earth, death, fear, eros, sexuality. But he was also close to the French symbolist poets--Apollinaire, Rimbaud and a little Dylan Thomas. That combination--the high end and low end, black and white, vulgar and refined--I liked that contrast.”

With so many of the director’s oft-related demons so readily on the surface, so out there, it is a challenge to sift through the rhetoric. Ask Stone what he is looking for in his self-inflicted Sturm und Drang , and he scorns the question as “so obvious. OK, the 49ers to win.” But in the next breath he turns philosophical, cribbing from Milan Kundera, the celebrated Czech novelist: “the ‘Lightness of Being.’ We’re all looking for equanimity of our souls.”

HE IS TALL, ABOUT 6 FEET AND JUST SHORT OF formidable, with an arresting collision of cultures--French-American, Jewish-Roman Catholic--etched into a face that is all but haggard from years of hard living and late hours. Bleary-eyed, dressed totally in black, Stone is sandwiching in an interview in the midst of back-to-back editing sessions for Friday’s release of “The Doors.”

Surrounded by his editing crew, he holds court in a room that seems the extension of himself as both polemical filmmaker and erstwhile Peck’s Bad Boy--everything state-of-the-art and bigger-than-life. Extra-large leather sofas, screen the size of a football field, giant neon clock ticking off the frames. The sequence being edited this day is quintessential Stone. On screen, Morrison, played by Kilmer, heaves a television set at the head of Doors’ keyboardist Ray Manzarek: MacLachlan in flowing locks. The result--exploding glass and screamed epithets.

Stone flashes his signature gap-toothed grin. “There was a sound vacuum, and it’s making me crazy,” he says about the morning spent laying down extra decibels of breaking glass. “Sound abuse. I’m accused of that all the time,” he says. “But this is the noisiest film I’ve ever made. I have to gauge how much the audience can take after two hours and 15 minutes.” In Stone’s hands, “The Doors” is less an illustrated history of the band’s genesis or Morrison’s peculiarly tortured life than a visceral recreation of the world of ‘60s music. The approach is similar to the sensuous verisimilitude the director achieved in “Platoon,” the first Vietnam War film made by someone who had served. “I don’t want to reduce the ‘60s to a formula or say this is all-inclusive,” Stone says, “but it is about the texture of the ‘60s . . . how music was the big common denominator.”

Producer Grazer says the film is less linear and narrative than “a film made from a real rock-music point of view. Oliver has made a movie that shows that world as dangerous and erotic. It has a real feel for the period.”

Much of that feel comes from the director’s personal affinity for The Doors’ music, which he first encountered in Vietnam. He found the band “visceral and mystical,” Stone says. “The Doors were not a mainstream band like the Beatles or the Rolling Stones. Jim hated that whole teeny-bopper thing. There were decency rallies held against him.”

That Morrison’s grave site in Paris still has the faithful trekking to touch the headstone has only burnished the mystique of the tortured songwriter with the Kennedyesque jaw and the black leather pants that would, on occasion, not stay zipped. A well-known abuser of alcohol, drugs and women, Morrison was arrested in 1969 on obscenity charges after exposing himself during a Miami concert. “He was a pirate, a free soul, an anarchist,” Stone says. “I loved his spirit--a combination of James Dean and Brando, sexiness combined with sensitivity and rawness.”

Morrison’s persona transcended not only his performances but also his death in 1971, which Stone recalls as “like the day Kennedy died.” The revival of so-called Doorsmania, as Rolling Stone magazine referred to it, began 12 years ago when director Francis Ford Coppola used the band’s Oedipal song, “The End,” in his 1979 Vietnam film, “Apocalypse Now.” In 1981, the lurid, controversial Morrison biography, “No One Here Gets Out Alive” by Jerry Hopkins and Danny Sugerman, the singer’s manager, was published. That same year, “The Doors’ Greatest Hits” was released and made it into Billboard’s Top 10. By 1981, Rolling Stone had Morrison on its cover with the headline, “He’s Hot, He’s Sexy . . . He’s Dead.”

Hollywood chased the Morrison story for nearly a decade while the Morrison estate and the surviving members of the band battled over the movie rights. Eventually, Grazer’s Imagine Productions held all the cards--a hefty $2-million development package--largely through the assistance of veteran rock producer Bill Graham, who shares production credit on the film. Grazer took the project to Stone--who had just passed on the on-again, off-again “Evita"--and Mario Kossar’s Carolco Productions, which had signed the director to a two-picture deal.

For Stone, directing “The Doors” brought several new challenges. “It was a very complicated screenplay to write,” says Stone, who shares screenwriting credit with J. Randal Johnson, who had done an earlier draft. Using his usual reporter’s approach, Stone plowed through “250 transcripts from people who had known Jim. It was like ‘Citizen Kane’ in a way--everyone had a different point of view.” Stone shot the film last spring with 30,000 extras for concert scenes in San Francisco, New York, Paris and Los Angeles, including the L. A. clubs Whisky a Go-Go and The Central, which doubled as the old London Fog.

Recreating The Doors’ sound on film proved more difficult. Kilmer, a baritone like Morrison, was cast after Stone interviewed hundreds of actors. Perhaps best known as Ice Man, Tom Cruise’s nemesis in the film “Top Gun,” Kilmer had been so eager to land the role that he recorded an entire Doors album, substituting his own vocals for Morrison’s. In a similar move, Stone decided to obtain the rights to The Doors’ master tapes minus Morrison’s lead vocals. He then spliced the original soundtracks with performances by the actors--Kilmer, MacLachlan, Kevin Dillon and Frank Whaley, who learned to play instruments for the film. The film’s final cut contains 25 Doors songs, including such classic hits as “L. A. Woman,” “Crystal Ship,” “Light My Fire” and “The End.” The music was recorded with “a little bit of Jim Morrison’s vocals--and in the concert scenes I have mixed in the actors’ voices, and I defy you to find the difference,” Stone says.

Kilmer describes Stone as “a person of vision and integrity. He has lived triumph and horrors. And I can tell you his life does not pass unexamined. Look at his body of work. It pulls from his introspection, knowledge and vast intuition.”

Indeed, ask Stone what he hopes the reception for his film will be, and he launches into another paternalistic eulogy for the ‘60s. “A lot of people will want to see this the way they wanted to see Tom Cruise in ‘Born,’ so they can be given an alternative way of looking at things,” he says. “These kids have grown up with Travolta and disco, the high-tech world of the ‘80s, and maybe they have never even seen that there is a different, an alternative, lifestyle, a world we’ve lost touch with.”

“WHAT WAS YOUR FAVORITE BAND OF THE ‘60s?”

Stone is asking this over lunch of Thai soup--hot as napalm--set out for him and his guest in an upstairs conference room. With Stone, that isn’t an idle question; it’s a password, a test of character, sort of like the soup he’s ordered--beyond an ordinary mortal’s standards. “Come on, it’s good for you,” he says laughing at his guest’s discomfort. “It puts hair on your chest.”

He briefly attended Yale University, his father’s alma mater, which he says he “hated, especially since it was before women were admitted.” Stone dropped out and headed for Vietnam.

During his brief Army career, Stone abandoned the idea of being a writer--he had written a novel at 18--to become a filmmaker. “Being there was a very sensual experience, and I started thinking in visual terms,” Stone says. “In Vietnam, all your senses were awakened. You had to see better, smell better, hear better. It was very sensual, with the jungle six inches in front of your face. You couldn’t think along abstract lines--you had to become more animalistic or you wouldn’t survive.”

He bought a still camera and started taking pictures even before he left for home. Once Stone returned to New York, “I got a super-8 right away and started making home movies.” He enrolled at New York University’s film school, where he studied under director Martin Scorsese, drove a cab, married Najwa Sarkis--an official at the Moroccan mission to the United Nations--and made “short, crude 16-millimeter films that were really screwed up,” Stone says. “They were arty, kind of abstract poems with a touch of Orson Welles and the French New Wave filmmakers--Goddard, Resnais, Bunuel. I was trying to get away from a normal narrative line.”

He was also pursuing a similar line in his personal life. Arrested for marijuana possession in Mexico 10 days after his return from Vietnam, Stone became well known for using drugs, an experience that later informed his screenplay for Brian DePalma’s “Scarface.”

“I started smoking cigarettes on the plane going over to Vietnam,” says Stone. “Once I got there, the guys I liked best had been around drugs for ages, and I started doing acid and marijuana. I also got into the music. I had never heard Motown before then. Jefferson Airplane and the Doors. Jim was the acid king. It was all part of the Zeitgeist. “

It was a taste for substance abuse, topped off with an appetite for pursuing women, that Stone, newly divorced, took with him to Los Angeles in the mid-1970s as an aspiring screenwriter. He soon had a reputation notable even by Hollywood’s standards. “He always had a million women in his life,” says one female former friend. “I don’t think he missed too many.”

In Hollywood, Stone wrote “Platoon,” and although it would be more than 10 years before he would get it made, the script earned him attention as a writer of unusual force.

“I was looking for a writer for ‘Conan’ ” recalls Ed Pressman, an independent film producer who worked with Stone on “Conan the Barbarian” and several films since, including “Born.” “His agent showed me ‘Platoon,’ and I was very taken with it. His script for ‘Conan’ was a great screenplay. Like Dante’s ‘Inferno.’ ”

The success of that film led to other screenwriting assignments--"Midnight Express,” “Scarface,” “Year of the Dragon” among others--all white-hot, unsubtle stories, the type that increasingly became Stone’s signature. He won his first Oscar for “Midnight Express,” which led to his first directing opportunity--"The Hand,” a marginal thriller starring Michael Caine that failed at the box office and temporarily stalled Stone’s directing career. Eventually, he was able to make the low-budget “Salvador” through Hemdale Productions, followed by “Platoon,” a $6-million film that Orion picked up from Hemdale and that saw grosses in the hundreds of millions. After that, Stone was admitted to the big leagues--directing Michael Douglas in “Wall Street” and Tom Cruise in “Born on the Fourth of July.” The latter film, based on Vietnam veteran Ron Kovic’s life story, won Stone his second Best Director award but lost out for Best Picture to the crowd pleaser “Driving Miss Daisy"--a loss that Stone took particularly hard. “We made over $60 million with that film--an incredible success. I guess it was just not meant to be.”

Today, Stone has remarried and divides his time among homes in Santa Monica, Montecito and Colorado with his wife, Elizabeth, a former nurse, and their 6-year-old son, Sean, who plays young Morrison in “The Doors.” Stone hasn’t lost his concern for current events: “I’m praying for our soldiers, who are making the ultimate sacrifice in the Gulf War, but I don’t think Bush ever intended to negotiate. There was a military-industrial complex that pushed us into this.” Friends add that the director’s only real interest these days, in addition to making films, “is trying to set up other films.”

Indeed, as soon as “The Doors” opens, Stone is off to Dallas to begin shooting his version of the Kennedy assassination, a film that Stone describes as “the untold story of a murder that occurred at the dawn of our adulthood. It’s a bit like ‘Hamlet.’ You know, the real king was killed, and a fake king put on the throne.” Suggest to Stone that some of Camelot’s luster has tarnished since 1963, and the director says quietly, “There has been an incredible disinformation campaign put out about him. A lot of misinformation. I am using everything I have to get this film made.”

Ask Stone if he likes where he is positioned now in the industry and he laughs. “Oh, this is the part where you’re going to quote me, right? The outlaw director.”

If Stone is cagey about self-definition these days, friends seem equally divided. Some, such as Pressman, who produced “Blue Steel” and “Reversal of Fortune” with Stone, say the director “is at the top of his game. I was always mesmerized and excited by his personality, but now he is much more comfortable with himself and a lot easier to work with.”

But another Hollywood executive suggests that “Oliver has not changed much. He really hasn’t mellowed. He is conflicted about his ‘financial’ success. But that’s how Hollywood respects you--they pay for what they respect, and his movies now make money.”

-Hilary de Vries, “RIDER ON THE STORM : With ‘The Doors,’ Director Oliver Stone Exhumes the ‘60s in All Their Lurid Excess,” Los Angeles Times, Feb 24 1991 [x]

#los angeles times #the doors #oliver stone

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