Looking For Stiv

Goddamn, I’m a sucker for these things.

In his second punk documentary, filmmaker Danny “Looking for Johnny” Garcia takes a deep dive into the life and legacy of the Dead Boys front man. Included in STIV is some rare footage and lore about Stiv’s surprising career before and after the Dead Boys, as well as the hilarious stories and hijinks one associates with the punk legend who died at age 40 in 1990.

Interview with the director right over here.

And here’s a panel interview from the world premiere a few days ago.

More Scott Walker

I’m pretty sure this was the Walker Brothers’ biggest US hit, maybe their only one.  Catchy chorus.  I heard this quite a bit growing up.

Shit

Scott Walker (born Noel Scott Engel), aged 76. He’s the guy Bowie ripped off for his crooner voice – which Bowie readily admitted.

Is This True?

Yeah, we were told that Elvis wasn’t discovered as such at all! He was just some freaky-looking kid always making a nuisance of himself around Sun Studios and nobody wanted to know him. Like here’s this guy who dyed his fuckin’ eyebrows and dressed in black pimp clothes—and this was the ‘50s in the South, you’ve got to remember—and Sam Phillips and all the session guys thought he was some disgusting little faggot!

However Elvis did have this one piece of luck. His mother, right, had a really bad weight problem and the doctor prescribed her this enormous supply of diet pills which just happened to be… these pills were just pure benzedrine, right, which is a very potent form of speed.

And all those Sun guys just lived on speed, man. So when Phillips found out that Elvis could get bottles of these things, he let him hang around. So, like, here was Elvis every week bringing huge bottles of these pills to the guys at Sun until, as he was the studio’s main source of supply for speed, Phillips was more or less obliged to let him cut a record.

So like, rock ‘n’ roll was born simply because Elvis Presley was Sun Records’ number one speed dealer.

Lux Interior

More Tarantino

I can’t really tell what the story is supposed to be about, but this looks pretty good. Brad Pitt has a way of finding ways to get in cool movies, so I’m going to give them the benefit of a doubt. I’m not seeing Samuel L Jackson, so that’s a minus, but Margot Robbie is nice eye candy. What say you bastards?

Meh, I’ll Probably Watch This

https://youtu.be/YEG3bmU_WaI

Stranger Things, part the third. Being a fan of Stephen King, John Carpenter, and Steven Spielberg, I was completely blown away by the first season. Absolute lightning in a bottle. Honestly, it could have ended there with that perfect little cliffhanger as the cherry on top and I would have been a happy customer.

The second season suffered a bit, in my humble-but-accurate opinion, and felt like your garden-variety sophomore slump. (I’d give it a B-.) Hopefully, the Stranger Things creative team has had enough time to recharge the batteries and recapture some of the magic. We’ll see.

July 4, you sci-fi-loving bastards!