"You're not just a crazy child, are you?"

I don't know what specific instance was the changing point that transformed my relationship with Karen Black from a familiar acquaintance to a genuine friend. I suspect that by the time, during a repeat visit to my former workplace, she fixed my poorly-knotted tie and suggested that I not wear dark green, we were already there.

As you read through all the expressions of sadness and resignation that have come in the rather shocking announcement of her death, one day after her husband posted a blunt but still uplifting account of her cancer battle, there are roughly two dominant strains of fandom and memory for the great actress - the strain that recalls her period of stand-out performances in challenging '70's movies (CISCO PIKE, RHINOCEROS, YOU'RE A BIG BOY NOW, and a few others you've already heard name-checked) and the strain that recalls her long association with horror films (TRILOGY OF TERROR, BURNT OFFERINGS, HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES) - both of which used her unusual presence to maximum advantage. Both strains, however, also helped to forment a meme that stayed with her until the end, a meme that as early as 1976 she acknowledged in a Photoplay interview with the pull quote, "I truly am a bit crazy." 

From all my memories of Karen, abstract and direct, I could tell this was an identity that she wasn't always happy with, but deeply understood. There would be mercurial moments, such as reacting negatively to David Letterman's ostensibly good-natured ribbing over her then-recent appearance in the Italian-made JAWS ripoff KILLER FISH. Sometimes she could use it to upend convention: aside from the family connection of collaborating with former husband L.M. Carson and her son Hunter, director Tobe Hooper surely made a sly joke to the audience of his 1986 remake of INVADERS FROM MARS by casting Karen as the only adult not under the control of the alien invaders. But in the best moments, her "crazy" allowed all the people on the margins who normally did not get to command a movie watcher's attention to have a surrogate, someone who got them and cared about them, and insisted on presenting such characters with truth and empathy. Celestial happenstance even helped along the way: while her stage name of "Black" merely came from her first marriage, it almost prophesies her long association with dark characters, and considering that her birth name was Karen Blanche Ziegler, one not afraid of etymological puns would say that she literally transformed herself from white to black. It's easy to reason why so many disenfranchised souls...goths, gays, film geeks like me...all the "crazy children"...are feeling an extra sense of loss today.

And besides, if Kembra Pfahler had named her band "The Voluptuous Horror of Piper Laurie," would it have had quite the same appeal? I really don't think so.

"I love playing strong women, even if they're nuts." -- #KarenBlack #RIP
— Carrie Rickey (@CarrieRickey) August 9, 2013

I was friends with Karen for a decade. I helped set up her merchandise table at a horror convention. We talked on the phone about music. During a Q&A at UCLA after a screening of COME BACK TO THE FIVE AND DIME, JIMMY DEAN, I posed one of my usual arcane queries, and from the stage, Karen replied, "Marc Heuck, ONLY YOU would ask a question like that!" I was once late for work because I lost track of time helping her get a VCR up and running in her house, a comical episode which my supervisor failed to see any humor in as he bawled me out. 

She made me soup.

Most memorably, I convinced her to sit with me for a DVD commentary track on her very underrated 1973 thriller THE PYX. For years she was reportedly not pleased with the film, and it took a fair amount of creative talk and cajoling on my end to get her to agree to participate, then it seemed to take months to find a date when she was free to do it. But it was a great day when it finally took place. I picked her up to drive her to the studio, and offered her a bottle of Moxie soda I'd picked up for the occasion, in tribute to her own titular equivalent; she declined, not being a sugar consumer, but appreciated the gesture. It took longer than normal to get started, since the one engineer on duty seemed to be occupying some other chemically enhanced headspace, but once we got rolling...well, you can hear that for yourself on the DVD; aside from an embarrassing amount of "um's" and "ah's" that totally negate all the hard work I spent in that single Toastmasters meeting, it's a great chat that, among other things, brought her around to a new positive attitude on the film. This turnaround meant a great deal to me. It seems so often I meet a performer who, for whatever reason, has sour feelings for something they did that I personally find very good, and I set about trying to help them see it through my eyes and reappraise it. And I felt a very personal connection to THE PYX, because its heroine Elizabeth Lucy, a conflicted soul longing for reconnection with trappings of her lost home while in a downward spiral of sex work and heroin addiction, reminded me all too much of an absent friend of my own. I dare say, when I brought this up in my courtship for her participation, this emotional aspect is what made her decide to take another look at it. For obvious reasons I didn't discuss this in our commentary since we were focused on Karen and production stories, but I don't mind sharing that sentiment here

When we wrapped, we went to dinner to celebrate, and we opted for Mediterranean, a most posh, multi-course feast...which, when I discovered to my then-horror I had to pay the entire tab on it, made me wish juuusst a little that maybe I had chosen her second suggestion of Shakey's Pizza. But then I shrugged my shoulders and laughed and thought, well, how many opportunities does a fellow get to buy dinner for an Academy Award nominee? In retrospect, when I look back on her constantly accepting tiny film projects to keep working, and the recent crowdfunding effort to offset the enormous costs of keeping her cancer at bay and her family at bedside, I would have gladly bought her multiple Mediterranean dinners at the same price. It's not like I've done any better at economizing.

Despite all of those memories, for some reason, I couldn't bring myself to make contact with her or her family after yesterday's announcement, when there was still a chance to get a message to her. Maybe I thought there was still too much going on for them to be receiving messages, or that I wasn't a close enough friend to be chiming in on this family time. Naturally, I regret that. Our mutual friend Ronee Blakley, who has logged more years of friendship with Karen, thankfully did get in touch with her one last time, and received this reply:

"Thank you darling! Message comes at a good moment!"

The statement contains as many layers as her best characters.

Where normally, one would post in closing some classic glamour shot, I've chosen to offer this image her family made public when keeping contributors to her fundraiser abreast of her treatment. Look at her smile, her gaze, her pose, even her choice of clothes (She really did know people's colors): it's as elegant as any library still of her available. I was debating whether or not to crop the intravenous from this photograph, initially thinking it would intrude on the vibe, but as I listened again to our PYX commentary, she talked about her research into addiction, of how the woman she studied and interviewed talked of learning to love the needle. Now look at that smile again. If she hasn't learned to love that needle in that moment, she's damn well *acting* like she does. 

Which means Karen Black returned to the white on her own terms as best as possible.

A Thousand Tears Can't Make This Metal Rust

One of the most pleasant surprises of 2009, not to mention one of the Best Films of that year, was Sacha Gervasi's hilarious and heartwarming documentary ANVIL! THE STORY OF ANVIL!: a movie that singlehandedly brought together the headbanger and the hearing-aid contingent, and taught both suburban parents how to overcome their fear of studded leather and suburban rockers how to overcome their fear of man crushes. It also brought a long-overdue fourth act to an already colorful career, by giving the band of the gleefully-redundant title the golden ticket to the biggest visibility of their lives, providing songs for video games, performing on such august venues as "THE TONIGHT SHOW," and headlining stadium-size audiences all over the world.

The band is currently in Los Angeles recording tracks for their highly anticipated 14th album, JUGGERNAUT OF JUSTICE, which is due next spring, and tonight will be appearing in Westwood to conduct a Q&A with director Gervasi in tandem with a one-night revival screening of THE STORY OF ANVIL. The band had graciously agreed to a short interview with me to promote the show; however, recording overruns and other show business vagaries got in the way. As such, I figured I would use this opportunity to refresh your memory on what makes the film worth repeat viewing, either at tonight's screening, via DVD, or the multiple airings that VH1 has given and will likely continue to give.

In case you haven't had access to cable TV or a major entertainment magazine, here is the structure of ANVIL! THE STORY OF ANVIL! Director Gervasi, a working screenwriter, recalls his misspent youth as a roadie for the band in the early '80's, amidst the high popularity of heavy metal music in its various guises, and after cold contacting the band's website, he discovers that despite going into their 50's, founding members "Lips" Kudlow and "Geza" Reiner are still together and performing. He joins up with them and films them slogging away at any and every humble gig they can find, while working equally humble day jobs to support their families. Most of what is captured is so comically tragic as to seem fictional, such as a European tour that consists of missed trains and tiny audiences, all arranged by girlfriend of the band that has a tenuous grasp of management and the English language, while other moments depict the clucking tongues of family and friends alike who feel the boys should have hung up their studded jackets a long time ago. Yet through all of the misfortune, Kudlow refuses to give up the dream that he and Reiner had as teenagers, of playing their music and becoming stars.

And it is the decades-old friendship between the two men that becomes the real story of the movie, and what holds the key to its repeat value. The more time we spend with them, learning about their histories and their struggles, the higher our affection increases. They have people in their lives who love them but don't quite get them, but these two guys truly see each other. Their friendship is fraught with arguments and tantrums and tearful making-up sessions, carrying the kind of drama that a dozen Oprah's Book Club selections promise but don't always deliver. And unlike the oft-times self-pitying tone of SOME KIND OF MONSTER, the other acclaimed heavy metal confessional documentary on Metallica, there is never any doubt in the genuine love and hope these two carry for each other: when Lips states that in his dark moments he could have jumped from a cliff, and Geza dryly replies that such an attempt would fail because he'd stop him, it inspires mist and giggles in every viewer. It is the epitome of bromance long before the word existed, or got co-opted by the douchebag contingent.

So many of the movies that we seek for comfort food and multiple viewing rest upon great friendships...Rick, Sam, and Louie...Walter and Hildy...Romy and Michelle... and no matter how well we know the story, we want to watch and rewatch someone have someone else's back, join them in a half-cocked plan that every sensible person thinks can never work, and tell them in deeds what most can never say in words: I love you. And you get that here, with the added bonus of the proceedings being true and the participants being real. And when most "reality" stories are about people who "aren't here to make friends," it's nice to see two guys who want nothing but that. And in the final moments of the film, when our heroes run about Tokyo like teenagers, and later return to their neighborhood at sunset in tandem like boys going home to dinner and bed, you receive the uplift of what it's like to have a swell pal in your corner for life.

Steve "Lips" Kudlow, Robb "Geza" Reiner, and director Sacha Gervasi will all be appearing at the Landmark Regent theatre in Westwood, Los Angeles, tonight, Thursday November 4th, at 10 p.m. to introduce ANVIL! THE STORY OF ANVIL! and take questions afterward. Tickets are still available at all major online ticketing websites and at the door. If you're in the area, put on a fingerless glove and slap some leather with the boys and tell them the Heuck sent you.

UPDATED! LIPS OPENS UP!

A few hours after posting this essay, Lips found a window for us to speak briefly. Here's the transcript of our chat:

First off, congratulations on your enormous post-movie success! Headline tours, TV and movie appearances, video games...In the wake of the popularity of THE STORY OF ANVIL, aside from obivous details like visibility, audience size, budget allowances, what are some of the changes you've noticed both in performing on the road, and especially in your lives at home?
In performing because we've been playing so much, we are in top form. As far as family life not much has changed. The biggest change is that I'm not home very much. The money I have been making is directly from Anvil and not from a day job anymore.

Lips, you made it known that your sister got paid back all the money she loaned for the album recording. What was that like? Was there, say, a ceremonial party when you handed her the check to celebrate the good fortune?
The moment was quite uneventful. I knew before asking for a loan we would have little or no problem paying it back and she knew that as well. It was recouped within the first 2 months of the release. I wouldn't have asked for money unless I knew for sure that I could cover it.

What are some of the most favorite compliments or things you've learned from people you've met in the last year?
Most if not all compliments are about people saying they have been inspired. I've learned that most people haven't got a close friend like I have. What I may have taken for granted people would give anything for.

Dare I ask, but do you still do any of those low-profile day jobs back at home when you're not touring?
NO DAY JOBS!!!

What's the most impractical but fun thing you've been able to do after years of frugal living?
I haven't made enough money yet to become impractical. I'm still fighting for survival and success on every level.

Is it safe to say that you're enjoying what could be called a second childhood with your increased activity?
I'm going through my second childhood for the third time!!! This has been a huge blessing and a perfect answer to a long vicious journey.

There's no doubt lots of people, whose dreams in the arts have been frayed and battered for years, myself included, chose to hold on and keep going after seeing your story. If we should be graced with the same late-bloom success you found, what is your advice for us now, on the other side?
You have to have real authentic desire for success...it's never quite what you think it's going to be. Show me a someone with a million dollars and I'll show you someone with a million worries. Careful for what you wish for...

Picture Book, When You Were Just a Baby, Those Days When You Were Happy, A Long Time Ago...

On August 14th, 2004, I met Leticia Blake. She was a writer, model, photographer, activist, public health volunteer, code writer, a familiar presence in the L.A. avant-garde scene. She also did porn, under the name Eva Lux. We clicked in person almost immediately that night, spending hours in conversation, first at a Heidi Calvert art event at Bluespace, then later that evening at a friend's apartment until almost sunrise. 

A few weeks later, relations with that friend went downhill, and she moved in with me for a spell. She was a good houseguest - we watched lots of movies, went to dinner, had long talks about deep subjects. 

She also had an active heroin addiction at the time, which she was working hard to quit. After a few weeks with me, she moved down to Costa Mesa to get clean. And she did it. It was hard, there were lapses and run-ins with the law, but she went through the steps and the discipline and the halfway houses and the mandatory tests and it was working. 

 A year later, Leticia came into L.A. one weekend in September on a 48 hour pass. She was hanging out at a mutual friend's home, with some people who liked the smoke. Having been well-behaved for months and keeping the big demons at bay, she took a couple hits from the joint. 

And then she remembered that coming Monday there was going to be a drug test. Failing it would have been a violation of her probation, and she would have been facing a mandatory 25 year to life sentence...for the non-violent crime of heroin addiction. 

I will never be 100% certain whether what followed was merely an "let's go all-in" gut reaction or a glumly rational final solution, but the outcome renders those details moot: Leticia overdosed on heroin, went into a coma, and died on September 20, 2005. Today would have been her 37th birthday. 

Besides a lot of wonderful and bittersweet memories, Leticia left me her Canon PowerShot S230 digital camera. While I had taken photography as part of my college courses years ago, I grew disenchanted with the practice of taking pictures. Maybe I didn't think my photos were good, maybe I began to believe that the act of taking pictures means you're stepping out of a moment and not truly living in it, maybe I just got self-conscious over the fact that I hate to be photographed because I'm 40 lbs overweight with a double chin so to not be a hypocrite I'd leave my friends alone...there are plenty of possible reasons I stopped keeping images. 

But this year, something stirred in me, and I picked up Leticia's camera, bought an uploading device, and little by little, started trying to get in the habit of taking a few snaps of things I liked. If I can succumb to a mushy screenwriter's poetry, I treated this as my way of keeping her with me as a surrogate eye - what I'm snapping, she's seeing. So here are some of the things she saw for me in the last few months...

Lab-fresh uncut 35mm prints of BRIGHTON ROCK and THE THIRD MAN;

  DJ Sallycat: mixing artisan, go-go dancer, sometime ROCKY HORROR Trixie, and proprietress of the Hang The DJ blog;

  The unusually heavy L.A. rains this past couple months brought waterfowl to my building's pool. Luckily, having studied my Steve Martin, I knew what to say when the ducks showed up.

  One day in my parking lot, I was downright dumbfounded - how many fucking grey cars in a row can there be in one complex?

  Julia Marchese, hands-on Girl Friday of the New Beverly Cinema, and star of Marion Kerr's GOLDEN EARRINGS, at her birthday/off to England party;

  Taylor Locke and Chris Price of Taylor Locke & The Roughs, rocking out at their second show ever, at Cinespace on Hollywood Blvd. There will be more photos to come. 

So thank you, Leticia, both for giving me so much to remember...and the means and motivation to find more to remember...

 

"The boatman has heard, it has bound him..."

Among the many reasons why I have championed Nickelodeon's short-lived "THE ADVENTURES OF PETE & PETE" as not merely a fun artifact of the early '90's but possibly one of the best family sitcoms in modern history is its understanding of the importance of small moments in a growing child's life. Much as the more heralded Judd Apatow's "FREAKS AND GEEKS" understood that a teenager's great moment was not necessarily taking the Homecoming Queen to prom but just mustering the nerve to ask any girl to go in the first place regardless of her reply, Chris Vicardi and Will McRobb knew that things we gloss over as grown-ups (especially if we have joined the ranks of the International Adult Conspiracy) are quite significant in our pre-teens.

A prime example of this is the first-season episode "A Hard Day's Pete." Little Pete Wrigley, who like most middle-schoolers is more interested in grosseries and gossip than art, starts a typical morning furiously biking to school to avoid being late. But on his ride, he hears a garage band playing a song, and for reasons unknown, it stops him cold and he must sit there and listen...

Little Pete has experienced an important rite of passage: his first favorite song. He doesn't even know its name or who sang it, but it's been immediately branded on his soul. And if he doesn't find out how to find the song again, it will be heartbreak on a grand scale, a loss equivalent to Mr. Bernstein's lament for the girl with the white parasol. What can be worse than to know that you loved something, and not even be able to summon up the means to remember or describe it?

A favorite song is one of the most important things we acquire in our lives. Sure, there are thousands of songs we can load into a player that will elevate us, make us happy or melancholic, take us back to an earlier time or help us see a possible future. But at some moment of our lives, we discover That Song.

And how is That Song different from all other songs? It just is. A deity enveloped in chords found you at a pivotal moment and you saw each other.

Consider John Peel, a man literally responsible for exposing over a thousand songs to millions of grateful listeners like a flesh-and-blood iPod. Even a man with such an expansive palate knew in his heart That Song, what captured in verse and guitar his soul, and would accompany him to his final rest.



Maybe your mother sang it to you just as you were forming words in bed. Maybe it told you to put that knife away and just have a good night's sleep instead.

Or, like me...maybe you were not yet in double digits...you didn't know about sex but you did know of pretty girls and how wonderful it was to be around them...you saw the adult world for both its hedonistic promise and its boring reality...you loved Top 40 radio and your 45's so much you dreamed of owning a real jukebox...and one night you stayed up past your bedtime to watch "DON KIRSHNER'S ROCK CONCERT" (or was it maybe "THE MIDNIGHT SPECIAL"?), and somehow you missed the announcement of who was performing next, and you saw a blonde lorelei sing a deceptively upbeat tale of romance gone bad...



You knew you would die if you never heard that song again. And today, you know you want to hear that song one last time before you die.