"video views" - duran duran, david bowie, the kinks, elvis presley
TRANSCRIPT
BY FRANK LOVECE
DURAN
DURANS
S'NG
BLUE
S'IVER
Directed
by Michael
Collins.
Concert
portions
directed
Russel
Mulcahy.
Thorn
EMI
cassette. Beta
Hi-Fi,
VHS Hi-Fi.
85
min.
$29.95
ord associations:
Dog?
Cat. Pencil?
Pen.
Duran
Duran?
MTV.
No
other
group
is
so closely
iden-
tified with rock
video
as is Duran
Duran,
and no
other is
so
well
represented
on
tape
and
disc-the
group
stars
in
at least four
titles and
shows
up in
two
or three more.
Small
wonder
critics
tend to accuse
the
synthfop
quintet
of being
a super-
ficial
"video
band." So what
does
the
group
do to help
dispel
this image? lt
releases
a video
documentary-
guasi-documentary,
actual ly.
Thanks
to the
quasi
part,
this may
not
be
a
bad idea. Presidents
and
ter-
rorists
use
television
to change
their
image,
and
Duran
Duran
here
seems
to have
taken lessons
from
Rap-
master Ronnie
himself. ln-between
verite
looks
at
the band's
eatly:84
tour, and
some
quite
cinematic
con-
cert sequences,
the
group
gets
to
plead
its
case with
world-weary
sincerity. lnsists
lead
singer Simon
LeBon, "We're
not
the
kind
of band
created
by a
management
company."
Perhaps
not,
but as
director Blood-
hound
showed
us, Duran
Duran
doesn't
seem
the kind
of
band
created
by a love
of music,
either.
Whether
getting
snapped
by
Scavullo
or taped for ltalian
TV,
whether
screening
call-in
questions
that don't
help
the
image,
or
kissing
cheek with
tour-sponsor
Coke, Duran
Duran
seems
every
bit
the
product
critics
say it is. lronically,
but not
too sur-
prisingly,
shows
the
band
members
now
getting
more
than
a
60 FACES
little annoyed at
getting
little
more
than they
bargained
for.
Part
of the reason
is that Collins, a
rock-video
newcomer,
has
eye for
detail. His
documentary
por-
tions, done with widescreen
masking,
capture
both
the silliness
of
Duran-
mania
and
the
grimness
of crowd-
crushed kids
getting
carted
away on
stretchers, with
lots
of those local
cops
someone
must
rent
to stand
around
and look
disgusted.
Mulcahy's
concert footage, filmed
in
squarish TV
compositions,
neither
adds
to
nor
subtracts from
this
busi-
nesslike image.
The
band
moves
sur-
prisingly
well
on
stage,
and its songs
are
all hooky
and
hummable. Judging
from
the soundtrack,
though, the
audio
seems
to have
been sweetened
considerably
after
the
fact.
This'd
be misleading if Sing Blue
Silver
were
a real
documentary,
of
course, but from
what
Collins
shows
us, it's
also
predictable.
Duran Duran
is
a
video
band,
he
seems to be say-
ing,
and video
allows re-takes.
EIY'S
'68
COMEBACK
SPEC'AI.
Directed
by Steve
Binder.
Media
casseffe. Beta
Hi-Fi
mono, vHS Hi-
Fi
mono. 76
min.
$29.95.
RCA
CED-
format
disc. Mono.
76
min. No sug-
gested
retail.
lvis Presley
was
a
corny
old
fart
l- when I was
growing
up.
The
greaser
hair,
thoie stuplO movies-
molasses
through the
sixties, which
was
hardly
the time
for
it. Come Dec.
3,
1968,
and his first
big
TV
appearance in
years,
my bud-
dies and
I
sneered
(like
Elvis,
we
found
out
later)
at
the
mere
of
watching.
We
shouldn't
have. Everything
'around
him
here may have
been only
fair-to-middlin',
but
Presley
himself
was
greaf.
Story
of
his life,
I
suppose.
Yet
even
after
finally
seeing
this
"comdback"
special
(available
only
on
videodisc
and
quasi-legal
cas-
settes until now),
I'm
still
not
ready
to
pray
at St. Elvis'
grave.
After
hav-
ing
long
ago
given
him
only the
his-
torical reverence
and
occasional
foot-tapping
that a rock'n'roll
pioneer
deserves, seeing
him here-perform-
ing
at length
and in color and not in
ancient
black-and-white snippets-
has, however,
made me realize
in my
gut
just
exactly what Elvis Presley
was responsible
for.
Obviously,
you
can read
anywhere
about
his
taking r&b and
gospel
and
other black
musical
idioms,
and
delivering
them
in
a way
true
to
its
roots and
yet
palatable
to
white
teens.
And
you
can listen
to the
countless
reissues
of his
old stuff,
the
mid-fifties
rock
that must've
seemed
at
the time like Sex Pistols
you
could
hum
to.
Yet
to
appreciate
the
phoenix
in
all his colors,
this
TV
special
may
be
requisite.
Not
the
trappings of the special
itself,
now. Despite
producer-director
Binder's
reasonably
sure handling
of
Elvis-the-approachable-legend,'purt
near everything
else in
the show is
vomitous.
The
dancing
girls,
meant
to
be
sexy, are merely
comical
"Star
Trek"
aliens.
The
wholly
inappro-
priate
orchestra
tends to sneak
behind Presley
and
then strangle him
with strings. Worst
of all
is
toward
the end, an interminable
musical-
production
number
that takes the
worst
of
"Shindig"
and
Las Vegas
and spits it
out
in
one
hairy
ball.
All
this
working
against
him makes
Presley's
triumph
so
much
the
sweeter. His
hits he
tosses
off
sincerely
but succinctly,
under-
standing
the compression
of televi-
sion and
so not launching
into long
instrumental
breaks and repetitious
choruses. And
during
the older,
lesser-known
rock and
gospel
songs,
he
truly
wakes
up
from
his
years-
long,
self-imposed
stupor.
The
show's
best
moments
are
when Presley
and some
of
his
original band
members
sit
on a
VHS Hi-Fi VCR
courtesy GE
small,
square
stage
surrounded
by a
manageable
audience
of,
I
presume,
network-executives'
kids.
Here,
as
no-
where
else
on the
show,
he's
self-
effacing
and funny,
telling
stories,
poking
fun
at
his image,
joshing
with
his warhorse
compatriots,
not
even
taking his
own hits
seriously.
("Love
Me
Tender"
starts
out
with
a
giggle,
followed,
perhaps
prophetically,
by
the
sweetly
sung "You
have/made
my/life
a/wreck-ah
mean
comple-
ete. .. .")
Later,
he
turns a
nervous
stutter into a risque
joke.
Elvis
Presley's
best
possible
audience,
it seems, was
one
of
a
few
intimate
millions.
DAV,D
BOWTES
JAZZIN,
FOR BLUE
JEAN
Directed
by Julien Temple.
Sony
cassefte.
Beta Hi-Fi,
VHS
Hi-Fi.
20
min.
$19.95
THE KINKS:
RETURN
fo
wATERroo
Directed
by Ray
Davies.
RCA|
Columbia
casseffe. Beta
Hi-Fi,
VHS
Hi-Fi.
60
mins. approx. Release
date
unscheduled
at
press
time.
Fl
emember movie musicals?
Fred
ltl'n'Ginger, Bing
'n'
Bob,
maybe
even Dick
'n'
Ruby?
Did
you
think
they
were
merely
quaint
relics
of a
bygone
era?
Think
again.
Just
as
rock videos
are simply 1930s
music
shorts
updated,
now
the movie
musical is back-only
thanks
to that
source-of-all-things, A Hard Day's
Night,
and such recent
post-"Thriller"
developments
as these works
by
David Bowie
and
Ray Davies,
the
movie musical has undergone
a.few changes.
While
Give
My Regards
to Broad
Sfreef is
a more obvious
descendant
of the old school(s) than, say, Pink
Floyd's
The
Wall,
the hallmarks
of
the old
are
being reshaped-though
not redefined-by
the
new. Among
the older traits
is
the
primary
dictum
that the story serves
to
prop
up
the
songs.
Another
is
that the
chalacters
be archetypes,
and
yet
another
that
an aura
of
fantasy
(though
not
necessarily whimsy, i.e., West
Side
Story)
pervade.
Blue
Jean and Waterloo
simul-
taneously adhere
to
and update
these expectations. Bowie's
effort
is
a conventional
boy-meets-girl, boy-
loses-girl
tale
with
a sweetly
cynical
twist
and some hilarious
self-tweek-
ing. Davies'
is
a
serious-minded
alle-
gory
where
songs
punctuate
rather
than
propel.
Strangely,
it
is
the un-
conventional
Bowie's quite
conven-
tional
piece
that
works
out
the
better.
ln it, Bowie
plays
the
dual
roles
of
a Ziggy Stardust/Screaming
Lord
Sutch-type
glam
rocker
called
Screamin' Lord
Byron,
and
of a
Woody Allen-ish
billboard
paster
named Vic.
ln
the
course
of
trying
to
impress
upon
a royal
blonde
bitch
that he's
close
buddies
with
Screamin' Lord
B, Vic
humiliates
and
embarrasses
himself
to half-comic/
half-pathetic
effect.
It's hard to
feel
sorry,
though,
for
a
boob
like
Vic,
who
did weave himself
into the
whole
mess. lt's
also doubt-
ful
Bowie
(along
with
co-scripters
Terry Johnson and Julien Temple)
really
wants us
to.
While
Bowie
may
be reflecting on
what
life might have
been
like had he not
become a rock
star,
he's
not
delving
any
deeper.
This
thin
slice
of baloney is
just
filling around
Bowie/Byron's
nicely
visual
performance
of
"Blue
Jean"
and
the
characters, while realistic,
are still
archetypes:
The
girl (Louise
Scott)
is
even
listed
in
the credits
simply
as
"The
Dream."
Davies'vision,
on
the other
hand,
is serious, serious
fare;
heavy,
as we
used
to
say.
The
plot,
such as
it is,
concerns
a
middle-aged
middle-
manager on
his ritual morning
train
ride.
Archetypical ly, writer-director
Davies
calls him
"The
Traveler."
Fan-
tasy
and
reality intermingle:
Punks
and accountants
get
on
and
off,
Monty
Pythonesque
old
ladies
read
tabloid
accounts
of a rapist
The
Traveler
resembles,
and
The Traveler
himself
tries
to see his
runaway
daughter
in
every
young
blonde.
Davies
presents
us
with
themes
at
once significant
and
overly familiar:
the loss
of innocence,
conforming
to
authority,
mindless
competition,
day-
to-day
drudgery.
This
is
deliciously
ambitious,
more
akin
to tragic
opera
than
to movie
musicals.
And
the
film's four
songs
are
excellent,
sum-
ming
up
points
far
more
coher-
ently
than
does
the rest
of this work.
H is
stream-of-consciousness
narr a-
tive
starts
out
with
immense
prom-
ise,
though, as Davies
draws
a
deft il-
lustration
of
rabbit-frightened
middle-
class
nightmares. Yet
he soon
loses
his
grip
on the narrative's
multiple
times, locales
and
characters,
and
his
platitudes
start wearing
thin
once
you
see
that
neither
his
plot
nor
his
people
are
going
anywhere. That
may
be
the
point,
but
a storyteller
should
be
able
to create
a boring
or inflam-
matory
character
without having
to
bore
or
inflame
his audience.
This is
strange. Davies is neither
stupid
nor naive,
and he's
long
proven
himself
both a master
story-
teller and
a
pop
craftsman able
to
give
mass
audiences what
they want
and elevate
them at
the same
time.
I
suspect,
then,
judging
from
both
the
punk-rock
chick who slides
into
a
limo,
and the
wispy
blondes
that
overrun this effort,
that all is
not as it
appears. Davies
seems to be working
out both his first
marriage and
his
relationship
with Chrissie Hynde
in
a
f ree-association
tour through
his
brain.
Pop
art-art
intended
for
the
masses-should
be,
however,
acces-
sible. Art intended
only as
personal
vision
can be, but
cannot be limited
in
order to be. When a
popular
artist
puts
a film such
as this on a mass-
market
videocassette
and
on
TV,
this
informs
us
that
it is meant for mass
consumption. So what
else can it
be
but frustrating when
Waterloo
hides
its real
purpose-a
workout
for
Davies' id1
ego and superego-
behind a
camouflage more
artsy
than artful?
Music
video
is
still
pubescent,
though,
and
these two
works-
Bowie's
trying
to make us laugh,
Davies'trying
to make us
think-are
done with
such sincerity
and
commit-
ment
that even
Davies
isn't any more
misguided
than Columbus, who
never
did
find
China.
#
FACES
61