"There is no tragedy in the death of an old man..."

"There is no tragedy in the death of an old man. Forgive him his shortcomings, and thank him for all his love and care." --from Robert Altman's A Prairie Home Companion, 2006

I remember waking up in my frat-house cell in early 1999, turning on the tube and learning of the death of Stanley Kubrick. His final, tarnished Eyes Wide Shut was due for release that summer, a project I had been anticipating throughout the years and years of its gestation. His first film since 1987's Full Metal Jacket, EWS would prove one of his most divisive films, opening amid rumors of extensive recutting by Certified Non-Genius Tom Cruise and a skirmish with the MPAA over an orgy scene that played as something more Disney than debauchery. I got a little choked up that morning upon hearing the news, mostly for all the films that the notorious perfectionist may have had left in his still-vibrant, 70-years-young mind.

So there was a similar choking-up this morning when I read that Robert Altman died yesterday at 81, until I recalled the above line from his latest work. Altman left us with an oeuvre far more extensive than that of Mr. Kubrick, and for that we can be grateful. His work during the 1970's was some of the most exciting filmmaking of that Golden Age, and his most recent entries (with a couple of exceptions) showed that his ear heart touch had not waned in the intervening decades. Altman's deft direction, his uncanny ability to coax from unheralded actors performances worth remembering, his eye for talent and ear for the subtleties of natural dialogue and its overlapping and interweaving, his ability to shift focus not only with his camera but with the microphones as well, have influenced every filmmaker worth his salt who has attempted to catch more than four people in a frame since 1970's M*A*S*H.

Like Kubrick, Altman never failed to make me wonder How'd he do that? His films employed none of the trickery we associate with most cinematic trailblazers, none of the explosions or fast cuts or CGI or other such recent flash-and-bang. What was remarkable about his films is the way that he managed to be the fly-on-the-wall, immortalizing mercurial, minute exchanges between actors within the infinite confines of a working movie set. He was one of the first directors to deploy zooms on his cameras and radio-mic every actor in a scene while still using booms to capture the soundscape of any given filmic landscape. He could do the long take like nobody in the business, and the sound editing on his films was nothing short of perfection. To watch Altman's work is to view the detonation of a tactical nuclear strike, to see the explosions of a moment amid the controlled chaos of everything surrounding the blast. And "controlled chaos" might be the best description of the man's best films. He was a master conductor on a grand stage, an illusionist orchestrating a celluloid medium in a way that always seemed orchestrated, never as haphazard as so many films nowadays, and yet the haphazardness of his famously improvisational sets was what made the orchestrations all the more apparent in the final product. And all the more amazing to witness.

In the days to follow, you will be able to read see hear any number of tributes to Robert Altman. Perhaps the greatest tribute will be evident in the many points on the broad spectrum of talent and age and The Public Eye that the sources of these eulogies will inhabit. Kevin Kline and Lindsay Lohan and Elliott Gould and Neve Campbell and Donald Sutherland and Shelley Duvall and Ryan Phillippe and Meryl Streep and Robin Williams and Liv Tyler and Tom Waits and Julia Roberts and Tim Robbins and Robert Duvall and Julianne Moore and Clive Owen and Jennifer Jason Leigh and Warren Beatty and Julie Christie and Steve Buscemi and Tara Reid and Rene Auberjonois and Lili Taylor and Richard Gere and Kate Hudson and Tim Roth and Helen Hunt and Kenneth Branagh and Farrah Fawcett and Robert Downey, Jr. and countless others will doubtless all have their say as to Altman's legacy. And that's just a small sample of the casts he put together over the years, and only the actors still living to pay tribute. Most will credit him as the greatest director they ever had the privilege of working with, call it an "honor" and cite either a long friendship or a sadly foreshortened collaboration, but one fact remains: Anyone who could find the time, the patience, the wherewithal to put all of those names into the same career had something special that the casual observer might easily overlook. The fact that his casting call has hit its end doesn't leave me with regret the way Kubrick's did, but rather with the knowledge that any tapestry as rich in detail as Robert Altman's filmography will always stand up to multiple viewings.

R.I.P.

Sometimes Titles Don't Quite Cut It.

Okay. So I’ve seen some pretty fucked-up shit in my day. When I was working my first Mardi Gras on Bourbon Street, a guy walked in at like five in the morning with his scalp hanging over his left eye, cranium visible, sat down at the bar with blood streaming down his face and ordered a Hurricane. I called security, gave him some napkins and sent him to the street. Don’t know how that ended up. When I lived on Magazine Street three blocks from the St. Thomas Projects, gunshots were a nightly occurrence until they razed the complex. I always knew the bullets weren’t intended for me. And there was the time in Lexington this May when I was across the street having a drink and talking with a gangsta rapper from Louisville (of all places, and how gangsta I still don’t know), when somebody at the club next door decided to unload a magazine at a truncated high school graduation party. Gangsta L dropped to the bricks and took off his Wayfarers for the first time that night, while I turned around (a little looped for the Hennessey we were drinking), stood up, and wondered what was going on. Great moment for ignorance and Dutch Courage, me walking around the patio for a better look while thirty people shouted at me to get down with them behind the brick walls surrounding the joint’s sidewalk space. Kids ten years younger than me, growing up in my safe whitebread suburbanized hometown and yet knowing people who fire guns in crowded parties were scattering through the streets like so many…um…frightened children running for their lives from bullets that recognized no names. But none of that compares to what just happened outside our house in the DOT.

That’s Dorchester, Massachusetts. East Coast, represent. Or something.

So I’ve just gotten in from a long night of nothing at the Indian restaurant where I work. Mondays are the cruelest month of the week. Strangely enough, however, I found that my place caters the Wu Tang Clan’s shows when they play Boston. Apparently Meth, Ghost, and GZA love the spicy curry. Who knew? So I’m talking Wu shit with the owner’s son, who has been tight with the Clan for a few years now, been backstage while Meth smoked a pound of bomb grass, been close enough to Ghostface Killah to see that he’s bald underneath the shaved head, been driving lead when the Clan’s driver didn’t know how to get from the Needham location to the show that night. I mention all of this simply because the gangsta beginnings of the evening play into the eventualities that dropped mere moments ago.

Walking home from the T, I’m doing something I never do. I’ve been dropping verses with S. all night while we rehashed the career arcs of RZA and the gang and lamented the untimely (and yet completely predictable) demise of ODB, and I’m walking back through the deserted DOT from Savin Hill reciting “Winter Warz” from Ghostface’s first album, the unfadable Ironman, which I know by heart and haven’t truly appreciated in years. So the first verse is mental, all inside the noggin, and then I realize that ain’t nobody up, ain’t nobody out, it’s Monday night and it’s cold and I might as well drop a rhyme or two on the out-loud tip. Pardon the jargon. It’s a mood. Before I know it I’m rapping out loud, complete with the gaps in comprehension that come with the territory inhabited by the Wu and appropriated by pasty white boys walking through Dorchester, and I’m feeling good. When I reach my door I’ve just finished Cappadonna’s final verse and it all seems ordained to be so. Upstairs I go, out of the workies and into the sweats, and not ten minutes pass before I hear the screech of tires and the breaking of glass outside on the street.

Whitby Terrace is a dead-end, and apparently the folks coming up our way from Godknowswhere didn’t know that much. All I know is that the guy in front was driving a grey mid-90’s sedan and pulled into the driveway next door when he saw that the hill stopped past our house. Behind him came an older, blue/black pickup with room in the bed for a full-size pitchfork. How do I know the size of the bed? Because the motherfucker had a pitchfork. And he was using it.

So Pitchfork Johnny is holding his weapon like a bat, hands clasped just above the tines, when I get to the window to see what’s the rumpus. There’s already been a window smashed (don’t know whose), and he’s beating the hood of his own car with the handle while shouting at the woman who is apparently attached to the dude driving the sedan. The dialogue goes something like this:

Pitchfork Johnny: I know you got my FUCKing money. Gimme my FUCKing MONEY!

Woman: You ain’t nothin’ but a bitch, muthafucka, just a muthafuckin’ BITCH! You lucky my man don’t come out and fuckin’ KILL yo’ DUMB ASS!

PJ: Oh, so the CRACK’s working, huh? You fuckin’ CRACK whore you nothin’ but a CRACK whore with a fuckin’ CRACK WHORE FUCKin’ husband you fuck—

W: Fuck YOU!

Dude In The Sedan: Yeah, FUCK you you punk-ass—

PJ: You’ll be lucky to get out alive you FUCKin’ BITCH. Just SHUT YOUR FUCKIN’ MOUTH or I’ll fuckin’ put this shit right through your fuckin’ EYE!

So at this point the tines are pointed at Dude In The Sedan, whose relationship to Woman and PJ is unclear. Seems like PJ might have picked up Woman at a bar, gotten her high, and wanted to fuck. Then Dude In The Sedan comes in, claims Woman, rolls out. Evidently things did not end amicably at their Place Of Worship, as Whitby Terrace became a vehicular Ground Zero for the further goings-on.

Did I mention that the first motherfucker had a pitchfork? Yeah.

So PJ is chasing Dude around his car--wait…I’m getting ahead of myself. So there’s shoving going on between PJ and Woman, she’s getting right up in his face with full fist-pumping fury, he’s shoving her out of his face and keeping her at arm’s-length with the handle-end of the pitchfork. Some more skirmishing breaks out, and Dude gets out of his sedan and tries to break things up. No dice. PJ chases him back into his ride with the tines pointed at him. Dude rolls in the passenger side, slams the door, slides over to the driver’s seat, starts the car and PJ moves around the sedan methodically, stops in front to put the tines (on the third pass, the first two skittering off the glass like water from the proverbial duck’s back) through the windshield. PJ hops over to the driver’s side-—

--and at this point I’ve already dialed 911 on my cell, which patches through to the Staties. They connect me to Boston Metro PD, who ask me twice to confirm that I’m talking about a dude with a pitchfork and not just a knife. I confirm twice that I’m talking about a fucking pitchfork. I’m on tape somewhere, and I’d really love to hear it again sometime. But anyway—-

--and smashes out the window swinging the tine-end of the pitchfork like Big Papi. Dude rolls out the passenger side from whence he came. All the while there is shouting and screaming and people using words like Fuck Bitch Crack and Cunt. Oh, and Whore. Not sure how they all strung together, as I was on the line trying to describe the situation to the proper, incredulous authorities. Can’t blame ‘em, really. The authorities, that is. So…

At this point PJ is chasing both Dude and Woman around both vehicles, his pitchfork held in front of him with the totally-business-end pointing forward, and there ensues a game of Round Robin. They loop a figure-eight or two around both vehicles before PJ decides he’s had enough and stops, slamming the tines down on his own truck to emphasize his own consternation. And yes, I’m dressing up his mood in highfalutin’ terminology. Muthafucka was pissed. AND he was carrying a fucking pitchfork. Did I mention that? Yeah.

So at some point between me hanging up with 911 and the minute-or-so that the whole chasing-around-the-cars-shit happened, I’m realizing something that really sets me off. While I’m not consciously thinking of the fucked-up shit that I’ve seen, I’ve got some kind of moral compass twirling about inside me that winds up pointing towards revulsion. I realize that I can read horrible shit (B.E. Ellis’ American Psycho) and watch dramatized horror (Eli Roth’s Hostel and the like) and be subjected on a daily basis to the fucked-up goings-on in Iraq (3000 American boys dead and Saddam gets a death sentence, but from Gee-Dubs that’s like a Tic-Tac) and generally assume myself to have a pretty high tolerance for the bad shit that the world throws one’s way. But there was a moment there, as I was watching the happenings from the safety of my third-floor window, when I thought I was going to see at least one person impaled by a fucking pitchfork. Maybe two people. And I was shaken, stirred, moved. There was a moment of stark mental daylight at one in the morning when I saw that this was something I did not want to see. It’s strange how human nature operates, how--no matter what you've seen or how jaded you feel walking through the sevenday--your subconscious can clock in and reiterate that none of the monkeyshit floating before your eyes is monkeyshit to which you need to bear witness. I knew that I didn't want to see some sad motherfucker die on a pitchfork. At least not tonight, and certainly not before I had a beer to quell the nausea that would most certainly ensue. Honestly, that feeling was refreshing. Even if it has since deprived me of much-needed sleep.

To cut the long version somewhat shorter, the two parties involved (Dude and Woman, and Pitchfork Johnny) eventually peeled out down the street when they heard sirens roaring their/our way. By the time the cops arrived and 911 called back to have me walk downstairs and explain my seemingly absurd emergency call, the kids in question were probably no longer in the same ZIP. The cops seemed kind of miffed, too, like they missed something they could tell everybody at work and trade off of for like weeks. When I was walking back up Whitby and the cops were backing down the street, three people gave me shouts from open windows in the 35-degree cold to see what happened, who was it, what was being done. Nobody recognized the Dude or the Woman or Pitchfork Johnny. The guy two doors down on the third floor put it well: “They ain’t even from the block. I said to ‘em, ‘Not ‘round here you don’t. Not ‘round here.’”

ADDENDUM: It bears mentioning here, as I draw to a close and am still wired and probably won’t sleep much or well but might still try, that all the parties involved in the fracas this early morning were white and pasty as my Scots-Irish ass. It might be easy to assume differently, depending upon what you know of the DOT and what you assume from any of the reconstructed dialogue above. Don’t. Assume, that is.