0 Commodores, "Easy" (1977)

June 25, 1977, #4
(listen)

For me, this is not hard. It's "R&B" because it's on the Motown label, but it's adult contemporary to the marrow, proceeding from the lyrical sentiment and carrying all the way through to the surprisingly hard-edged (yet always tasteful, and tasty) guitar solo. It could not have happened in another era and it was perfect for it. Yes, Jake, I know, it's Lionel Richie. And while I have to acknowledge my lack of regard for him and all his projects (but especially his solo projects)—yes, I am one of those—there is no point in denying how wonderful I find this one. It is beautiful, open, rolling, warm, soft, buoyant, and caressing, floating on its own good feeling. It's charged with a sexuality that's healthy and casual, but incidental to its greatest pleasures, the celebrations of the small, treasured moments. (Or so, anyway, I had always taken it, until I read how it's about a guy at peace with having dumped someone, which puts a different spin on it. But too late now!) I memorably heard it in a grocery store once on a Sunday morning and all my life since I have loved to do my grocery shopping on Sunday mornings. In fact, I will probably go grocery shopping tomorrow morning. I forget this song for years at a time and then I happen to hear it again. At this point it might be useful to bring up Keith Carradine's smaller hit of one year earlier, "I'm Easy," but I don't see why, beyond that both use the same word and also both traffic in country and western stylings. There's no contest on this one. It's the Commodores—it's Lionel Richie—all the way. Play again, please.

Detail: Commodores, "Easy" (1977)

0 Long Time No See (1977)

Another basically solid entry in the 87th Precinct series of police procedurals by Ed McBain (Evan Hunter, which was not his real name either). By this point most of the leading man duties have devolved onto Steve Carella, who is again the primary lead on the single case this is focused on, the murders of three blind persons and an assault on a fourth. It's more of a mystery book riddle (in the "cozy" vein) than procedural, but it goes to some interesting and unexpected places, such as dream interpretation, with an avuncular appearance by a psychiatrist who discusses Freudian theory. All right, but inevitably the dream and interpretation are perverted to the ends of answering a mystery book riddle. Still, I will look the other way because the mystery book riddle is actually done quite well, expertly scattering out its ration of red herrings and dead ends. I had to keep guessing right along, even though I figured out early the basic shape of it—what this serial killer was more or less about. It's a good strategy and produces a book that is fun to read. The focus on the case is pretty tight, with few detours into the various characters and their personalities and lives. I think I like it when there's a little more of that—and I also like a mix of ongoing cases big and small—but there can definitely be too much. So it's nice to see the foray into mystery writing and keeping the tight focus. By this point in the series McBain slips into bantering digressions easily and frequently, so there's that too. I like the pun in the title, I like a case involving a mysterious serial killer (who obviously has a rational motivation) going after blind people, and I like both Steve Carella and Meyer Meyer, so this goes down well. I'm afraid the knife fetish features again prominently—it's basically the manner of the murders. In fact, at one point there is a discussion of the difference between stabbing and incision. Good to get that straightened out for those wondering. So this is not without faults we already know, but overall a worthy effort for the series.

In case it's not at the library.

Detail: Long Time No See (1977)

0 Annie Hall (1977)

USA, 93 minutes
Director: Woody Allen
Writers: Woody Allen, Marshall Brickman
Photography: Gordon Willis
Music: Woody Allen's record collection
Editors: Wendy Greene Bricmont, Ralph Rosenblum
Cast: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Tony Roberts, Carol Kane, Paul Simon, Shelley Duvall, Colleen Dewhurst, Christopher Walken, Russell Horton, Marshall McLuhan, Dick Cavett, Jeff Goldblum, Shelley Hack, Sigourney Weaver, Truman Capote

A lot of things that Woody Allen is good at—tormented narratives shattered by revision, pieces playing just so where they land, tender ruminations buoyed by comfort music and nostalgia and surprising jokes, and streaming patter of gags, to name three—arguably found their best homes in Annie Hall. The fine points of this very fine picture, the easiest and most obvious movie of the year I've had to pick yet and maybe ever, is a very long list as it also includes that indelible chemistry with Diane Keaton, that wonderful self-flattering feeling of grown-up sophistication in the cultural markers (from Groucho to Kierkegaard), that certain casting touch that goes down to the smallest roles, and being so funny generally. But you get the point. It is arguably both the best movie Woody Allen ever made and the best Woody Allen movie ever made, which are not necessarily the same thing.

So what to say? It's going on 40 years now and the template that Annie Hall established for romantic comedy has positively dominated since then, replacing the slightly shopworn screwball model, which had gotten to be a little stuffy or inane or both since its own heyday. Woody Allen brought more genuine emotional engagement to the enterprise and obviated the whole idea of matrimonial happy endings, replacing them with the much more expedient joys and frustrations of connection (or lack thereof), which in turn grounded and made it more appealing. Remember (spoiler alert), Annie Hall does not have a "happy ending." As Alvy Singer (Woody Allen) mentions in the first minutes of the picture, the breakup is already in the past. Yet it rarely leaves me anything less than happy, tickled, pleased as punch, or downright joyful. It has a very good energy, as the saying goes, from beginning to end.



There's always trading in trivia, courtesy IMDb. Diane Keaton was born Diane Hall, and went by "Annie," for example. You probably already knew that. The working title was Anhedonia, but Allen couldn't convince the producers to go along with it—that intrigues me both because the first two syllables mimic the ultimate title and because "anhedonia" is the last thing I would associate with anything to do with this particular movie. More: The first cut ran an additional 50 minutes. Marshall McLuhan was not Allen's first choice for the famous inspired cameo—he first approached Federico Fellini and Luis Bunuel. The winner of the Truman Capote lookalike contest is actually Truman Capote. The average shot length is 14.5 seconds. Danny Aiello and Brooke Shields both had parts that didn't make it into the final cut.

And more: Allen remains mostly disappointed with Annie Hall (also Hannah and Her Sisters, which tells me anyway what I need to know about how much credence to give this), telling interviewer Eric Eisenberg just last year, "The relationship between myself and Diane Keaton was all anyone cared about. That was not what I cared about.... In the end, I had to reduce the film to just me and Diane Keaton, and that relationship, so I was quite disappointed in that movie."

It was originally conceived as more of a murder mystery (perhaps accounting for much of that original extra 50 minutes). For whatever reasons, Allen dropped it but finally developed the thread for 1993's Manhattan Murder Mystery, which interestingly, by circumstance, involved working again with Diane Keaton, who stepped in after Mia Farrow pulled out during the welter of the tabloid scandal.

Now I want to say a few words about Diane Keaton here, because she really made that latter movie, it's one of the few sparkling points for me in Allen's filmography since 1980 and the last great movie he made. And a lot of that, it's plain to see there and certainly in Annie Hall, is how good Diane Keaton is and how good she makes Woody Allen on film. It's a chemistry they have, they just draw it out of one another. Love and Death is worth seeing for that alone—I think it's his best straight comedy. She is the star of Annie Hall and Annie Hall is the landmark movie's most interesting character by far. She not only nails a certain upper Midwest personality type, but more broadly a whole way of being alive and sensible in the '70s, which was not an easy decade to navigate. Oh and also plus, the camera loves her.

Pieces of Annie Hall have systematically been torn away and imitated and grown cliché, and then enjoyed revitalization themselves again—several times over now. Did you see Frances Ha yet? Did you see (500) Days of Summer? Did you see When Harry Met Sally...? It is also a tremendous technical achievement, in terms of editing and shot setups. I love, for example, those long static street scenes with the line of the street running from lower left to upper right, which start as voiceover conversations until finally, long minutes later, the characters emerge within the frame, walking down the street, approaching the camera, which then begins tracking back with them once they are in medium. I love the ruminating nostalgic passages too, remembering Brooklyn and his childhood and family. Allen is very good at this type of filmmaking, as he would demonstrate later in Radio Days, but here it is casually sprinkled in for effect, powered by an energy of discovery.

Ultimately, I think, that may be the single greatest pleasure of Annie Hall, which is saying something. It brims with the energy of discovery. Examples: Opening and closing on jokes that are stale yet canny and resonant. Opening on Alvy Singer addressing the camera directly. Putting the rememberers in frame with the memory, and then enabling them to interact, sometimes in sly, nuanced ways. Allen is comfortable, and bold, with theatrical "fourth wall" exercises, and he's pretty good as well in Annie Hall at turning that fourth wall edgewise for cinematic split-screens, which are scattered across the film, used in slightly different yet always perfectly apt ways. It's also a really beautiful bittersweet romantic story, poignant and touching, and very funny too. A great one, that's all.

Top 10 of 1977
I think the glories of the decade may be more in the past starting with 1977, though the year certainly has some very bright flashpoints in the first three (or four) on my list, which is not even to start on the problem of Star Wars. I ended up relegating Star Wars to the "didn't like so much" category even though it is the only Star Wars movie that I like at all, and actually sometimes have liked very much. Call it blessing with faint censure. It's just that kind of year. I don't see that many significant gaps but by the lower echelons of my top 10 we are into recent finds and sentimental favorites, and meanwhile I kind of like some of the movies in the "didn't like" list. Even I can see that Between the Lines is not really that good. That leads me to believe it's just a weak year. Your opinions?
1. Annie Hall
2. Close Encounters of the Third Kind
3. Saturday Night Fever
4. Suspiria
5. 3 Women
6. Looking for Mr. Goodbar
7. Slap Shot
8. Killer of Sheep
9. The Kentucky Fried Movie
10. Between the Lines

Didn't like so much: Fun With Dick and Jane; Julia; Martin; New York, New York; Star Wars

Gaps: The American Friend; The Duellists; The Goodbye Girl; Hitler: A Film From Germany; That Obscure Object of Desire

Detail: Annie Hall (1977)

0 The Public Burning (1977)

Robert Coover's weird, contemporaneous "novel" about Richard Nixon and the Rosenbergs trial was an interesting study for me in levels of reading difficulty. I use the scare quotes because, while it is plainly fiction, it is steeped in historical events to such an extent that it knowingly blurs lines we are trained to keep distinct. Although it runs over 500 pages, the language is perfectly clear, even exquisite in a self-consciously American way. I was often amazed at the levels on which Coover operates—drawing on American mythology and vernacular both (along with a profound sense for how the American mind thinks and feels and acts), it hits some real heights of expression, satire, and plain sardonic observation. Perhaps the single most amazing aspect, out of a handful or more of them, is not only how spot-on Coover is in capturing the interior voice of Richard Nixon—it sounds just like him! or I believed it anyway—but how well he succeeds in making Nixon a sympathetic character, without changing a jot of the man's ridiculous and painful self-pitying narcissism (nor his instinctive bent to be a crook). It's plain amazing, I tells ya, and the half of the book narrated by Nixon is the best part. My problem—and one I suspect puts me squarely in the camp of middlebrow, where I belong—is that I knew basically from page one how the story ends, with adjustments for Coover's flights of fancy, such as moving the Rosenberg executions to Times Square, the intrigue Ethel Rosenberg has with Nixon (and where it takes them here), etc., etc. I appreciated the language, the detail, and the humor. But it does get a bit dense. I should say something about the things everybody talks about. It is indeed an odd novel in the way it so directly involved a living, well-known personage, Nixon, in a historical setting that many readers likely remembered well at the time the book was published in 1977, over which extravagant fabulations are lathered on with heavy hand. It is so bitter as to be startling. Because the Rosenberg case and execution happened before I was born, and I'd never heard much or read up on it, much of the book was instructive (though I had to consult Wikipedia now and then to verify or debunk specific plot points). In fact, I kind of got mad all over again for the first time about it. As (peripherally) guilty of espionage as the Rosenbergs may have been, they were hardly major players in getting crucial nuclear information to the Russians, and they certainly did not deserve death sentences. It's a sad chapter in American history. But it's only incidental to what I think Coover is mainly up to here anyway. Obviously this is as much about Watergate as it is about the Rosenberg executions. Even more than that, it's about the American character, which sounds a bit vague and inflated until one sees how well Coover has put together so many baffling and infuriating quirks and conflicts that are all at once so familiar. I must say it goes beyond the pale for me in the last scene with Nixon and Uncle Sam, but I chalk it up to Coover wanting to make sure we got the point. There are actually some very funny things here along the way, even laugh out loud funny. But this book is not for the laughs.

In case it's not at the library.

Detail: The Public Burning (1977)

0 Brian Eno, "King's Lead Hat" (1977)

(listen)

Honestly I never figured out until I saw it the other day in Wikipedia that the anagram of the title is "Talking Heads." Gratification. Relief. At long last. Why didn't anybody ever tell me?! Robert Christgau's review of Before and After Science alluded to it, and I don't know why I didn't get it. I'm usually pretty good at anagrams. I guess I got stuck on "death"—I thought it had to include "death." But no, just some greeting from afar to a musical relationship that was about to take off like rockets. "King's Lead Hat" was always my favorite song on the album. Much like "Third Uncle" on Taking Tiger Mountain, my other favorite album by Eno, it's about as hard as Eno was ever going to rock, in the context of albums that were themselves as rocking as he was ever going to get ... more or less. But he really pours everything into this, with a wall of sound affect that swarms like all 17 musicians listed on the credits could have chipped in. It fades up quickly to full-scorch groove and continues from there, with Eno yelping along with a nursery rhyme kinda melody on top of the stone groove, and it breaks wide open at the chorus, goes a little robo-loopy at the bridge, pirouettes and drops to a knee. It's fun, it's ecstatic, and there's a feeling of discovery about it. I see that it was released as the only single from the album and never did anything, even in the UK. So I will have to acknowledge that in many ways Eno's entire '70s catalog (heck, the whole career) is on the order of a cult level of operations. I want to sign up to be a priest in this cult.

Detail: Brian Eno, "King's Lead Hat" (1977)