Movie Madness (Some of it Genius) for the Holidays

DATE December 21, 2007 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Director David Cronenberg and actor Viggo Mortensen
on their new film, "Eastern Promises"
DAVID BIANCULLI, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli, TV critic for tvworthwatching.com,
sitting in for Terry Gross.

After teaming up on the film "A History of Violence," director David
Cronenberg and actor Viggo Mortensen made another film together called
"Eastern Promises." This time, Mortensen has been nominated as Best Actor in a
Drama by the Screen Actors Guild, and the film's gotten three Golden Globe
nominations, including Best Movie Drama and another nomination for Mortensen.
Also, "Eastern Promises" is about to be released on DVD.

Today on FRESH AIR, we hear from both David Cronenberg and Viggo Mortensen in
a joint interview with Terry from earlier this year. Cronenberg also made
"Scanners," "The Fly," "Videodrome" and "Dead Ringers." Mortensen co-starred
in "The Lord of the Ring" films, "A Walk on the Moon" and "A Perfect Murder."

"Eastern Promises" is a thriller set in London. A pregnant teenage girl
collapses in a pharmacy and is rushed to the hospital where she dies in
childbirth. The nurse-midwife takes a special interest in the orphaned
infant. She takes the mother's diary, which is in Russian, and tries to get
it translated so she can track down the baby's extended family. The diary
leads her to a Russian restaurant she doesn't realize is owned by the head of
a Russian crime family. She also doesn't realize why the Russian mob boss is
interested in the diary. He wants to make sure it doesn't implicate him in
any crimes.

After the midwife's first visit to the restaurant, she's driven home by the
family's driver, a menacing-looking character who also does a lot of the
family's dirty work. The midwife is played by Naomi Watts, the driver by
Viggo Mortensen.

(Soundbite of "Eastern Promises")

Ms. NAOMI WATTS: (As Anna) Have you ever met...(unintelligible).

Mr. VIGGO MORTENSEN: (As Nikolai) I made love to a girl as
called...(unintelligible).

Ms. WATTS: (As Anna) She was pregnant.

Mr. MORTENSEN: (As Nikolai) Ah. In that case, no, I never heard of her.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Ms. WATTS: (As Anna) She died on my shift.

Mr. MORTENSEN: (As Nikolai) But I thought you did birth.

Ms. WATTS: (As Anna) Sometimes birth and death go together. She came in
with needle punctures all over both arms, probably a prostitute at the age 14.
Do you think...(unintelligible)...knew her?

Mr. MORTENSEN: (As Nikolai) I am driver. I go left, I go right, I go
straight ahead. That's it.

Ms. WATTS: (As Anna) So take the next right.

(End of soundbite)

TERRY GROSS, host:

David Cronenberg, Viggo Mortensen, welcome to FRESH AIR.

GROSS: David, would you describe the Russian criminal organization that you
portray in the movie?

Mr. DAVID CRONENBERG: It's a many-headed Hydra, you know. It's very
interesting. I mean, one of the books that I read when I was doing research
for this movie was called "Violent Entrepreneurs," and it was about the role
of criminality in the rise of current Russian capitalism. And in a way, since
the fall of the Soviet Union, what we have seen is a kind--if you're looking
at it just as a social scientist, it's very interesting because you're seeing
the rawest, most virulent form of capitalism possible as it arises out of
Russia. And most of the oligarchs that we have heard about have definitely
had criminal pasts. I mean, there's almost no other way to start your life as
a Russian capitalist without dealing with criminals if, in fact, you aren't
one yourself.

So, to me, that was the underpinning for me. That is, they're kind of ardent
capitalists, really, first, and then they also have this whole past that goes
beyond communism back to the czarist days and the days of Russian prisons in
which there was a bond formed that sort of floated outside of society. It was
a brotherhood of thieves. A "Vory v Zakone," which means "thieves in law,"
literally. It's not really like the mafia, because at that time it had
nothing to do with businesses and having a facade of respectability. You were
a thief, and your thievery was written on your body in tattoos. I mean, it
was obvious to anybody who knew how to read your body like a book who you
were, where you were, what your sexual orientation was, how many crimes you
committed, what prisons you had been in, how much time you did there.

So that's the sort of underpinning of this group, which we have to understand
is a displaced group. This is the Russian mob in London, so not only is it a
strange form of Russian criminality, but it's a kind of an exported kind
that's growing in a very specific way in a different soil. It's not in the
black earth of Russia. It's now in the green earth of England.

GROSS: Viggo Mortensen, you play a member of this Russian crime organization,
a branch that is inland, a branch of emigres there. And you are covered in
tattoos...

Mr. VIGGO MORTENSEN: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: And as David Cronenberg explained, each of those tattoos is supposed
to say something about your past, about who you are. You know, actors always
talk about how the clothing they wear helps them get into character. What did
having all those tattoos on your body do for you?

Mr. MORTENSEN: Well, it was helpful, and it does say a lot. And even if you
don't know what David was talking about, even if you're not a Russian criminal
or an expert in Russian criminal tattoos, old school tattoos, you do feel that
there's something, and there is. There is, symbolically, there is
something--apart from it being either off-putting or, well, certainly
remarkable that you see this person covered and that their fingers have
tattoos and everything else. They're part of the thieves' code, and my body
is, you know, sort of my calling card. My resume.

Mr. CRONENBERG: Your passport.

Mr. MORTENSEN: My passport.

Mr. CRONENBERG: Passport, yeah.

GROSS: I don't want to give away too much of the film, but there's one scene
I just absolutely have to talk with you about, and anyone who sees this movie
will want to hear what you have to say about this scene. There's an
incredible scene in a steam bath where, Viggo Mortensen, your character is
asked there for a meeting, and when the meeting is over you're sitting there
alone, naked, except you're completely covered in these tattoos that we've
been talking about, these tattoos that have imprinted your life story on your
body.

Then, for reasons I won't explain, two fully clothed thugs come into the steam
bath and begin to try to kill you with their fists and with knives, and you're
there completely naked in this fight scene, covered with the tattoos. Your
blood mixes with the ink of the tattoos. It's an incredible scene in so many
ways.

And, I guess, David Cronenberg, let me start with you here. What are some of
the things that you wanted from this scene? I mean, I've never seen a scene
anything like it before.

Mr. CRONENBERG: Mm. Well, I guess it ends up being our shower scene from
"Psycho," you know? I mean, weirdly enough, I think some of the dynamics are
the same. That is to say, how vulnerable can you ever be, and when you're wet
and naked, that seems--and people are coming at you with knives. That seems
to be kind of the bottom line for vulnerability. Of course, it's all set up
on many levels in the movie. It's not just dropped in sort of gratuitously.

But the other thing, too, is that my approach to movies, and in particularly
this movie, is that people come to a movie to live another life. You know?
They come there to be someone else, to inhabit someone else. And I take that
to be physically as well, so I want the audience to be Viggo in this scene, to
be Nikolai. And then that means that the way I shoot it, I want it to be
experienced fully and physically, and therefore I don't use sort of the
"Bourne" movie-type impressionistic quick-cutting, which is certainly a valid
approach to action and has its own effect. But I want the audience to see
everything and feel everything as it really happens, or as close as you can
get making a movie.

So when the stunt coordinator, who was helping the actors work out the action,
talks to me, I say, you know, `I want to see everything. I want it all to
make physiological sense. I want it to be logical. I want it to be hard
work. I don't want to skip over anything. No jump cutting. No slow motion.
I want it to feel real, absolutely real.' Of course, everybody says, well,
`You know, you've got a star who's doing a scene naked and it's not a sex
scene. I mean, this is unusual.' But I say, `Well, you know,'--it was a very
quick discussion. We were working out the choreography and Viggo said, `Well,
you know, it's obvious I have to do this naked,' and I said, `Yeah, OK,' and
that was pretty much it, you know, for that discussion.

Mr. MORTENSEN: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: It's not a scene where it's like, `ooh, it's Viggo Mortensen nude.'
It's a scene where it's like here is this man facing his mortality naked in
the world, and this scene just gives such a powerful sense of the human body's
resilience and vulnerability, and of this one's man's resilience and
vulnerability...

Mr. CRONENBERG: Yeah.

GROSS: And it's just--I don't know--it all--it just seems to me, as how like
you enter the world and you come out of the world...

Mr. MORTENSEN: Mm.

GROSS: ...you know, naked.

Mr. MORTENSEN: Yeah.

GROSS: No matter what kind of stuff you put on, you are finally naked. And I
just think it's a wonderful scene. At the same time, you had to deal with all
the practicalities of shooting an actor naked and making sure that everything
was exposed in the way you wanted it to be exposed and not to call...

Mr. CRONENBERG: You're not talking about...

GROSS: ...not to call...

Mr. CRONENBERG: ...film exposure, are you?

GROSS: No, no. But, I mean...

Mr. MORTENSEN: Right.

Mr. CRONENBERG: No, no, it's actually--I didn't...

GROSS: You didn't want to overemphasize like the genital part of the...

Mr. CRONENBERG: Well, actually...

GROSS: You want it to be there but not overemphasize?

Mr. CRONENBERG: The truth is that I didn't think about those things when I
was shooting it.

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

Mr. CRONENBERG: I mean, that was the freedom that I had with Viggo. You
know, I mean, it would have been silly for him to have a towel wrapped around
him that never moved in a scene like that...

GROSS: Right.

Mr. CRONENBERG: And it would have been very restrictive for me if I had to
not show anything from sort of belly button to knees or something like that.
So I actually didn't worry about how we were shooting it. That was the
freedom that I had. Whether things were flattering, not flattering,
attractive, not attractive. I mean, it's like, you know, it's like the
difference between shooting with an actor who is constantly worried about how
he looks. Does he look good? Does his skin look good? And so, you know, and
you have to light him that way and that takes a terrible toll on the mood of a
movie. For example, if you can't light it dramatically because the actor's
wrinkles show, for example. And this was sort of an equivalent of that. It
could have been, but I actually totally didn't worry about it. I shot it the
way I would have shot it if he had been wearing clothes.

Mr. MORTENSEN: Mm-hm.

GROSS: Viggo Mortensen, did you think about that at all?

Mr. MORTENSEN: No. I mean, I was aware of the fact, and we discussed that
in passing when we were working out the fact. You know, he was--because we're
also friends and he's courteous and he's just being practical. So what I'm
thinking, how long it's going to take to shoot, and he shot it in about half
the time anybody would. I don't think if you had twice the budget you would
have shot it any different.

Mr. CRONENBERG: No, that's right. We had lots of time.

Mr. MORTENSEN: Most directors, even not using slow motion and everything
else, with the angles and having to use three rooms and flying around all over
the place, they would have probably taken a good week to do it. He did it in
two days, which--I was glad of that because, you know, I did get a little
banged up. For obvious reasons, I couldn't have pads and things on my knees
and elbows and back and whatnot. And the quicker it was over, in a way, the
better.

And the quicker they moved along in the day, the better because after they'd
say "Cut," you know, I would become a little self-conscious at times. But not
so much. I mean, I played it the same way he shot it, as if I had clothes.
It was just a scene about a particular thing, and I did think, towards the
end, when I started to accumulate a certain amount of bruises that they did
have to airbrush to cover.

Mr. CRONENBERG: Well, they did actually.

Mr. MORTENSEN: I thought it was karmic retribution for what happened to
Maria Bello on the wooden stairs.

Mr. CRONENBERG: Yeah, that's right. That's right. She got--she was the one
who got bruised there, and he got bruised here.

GROSS: They're referring, by the way, for our listeners who don't know, to a
very kind of rough sex scene in "A History of Violence," which is the previous
film that David Cronenberg and Viggo Mortensen collaborated on.

Mr. CRONENBERG: Maria phoned me and wanted to be one of the killers in that
scene of Viggo...

GROSS: That's really funny.

Mr. CRONENBERG: But I couldn't, I couldn't make it work.

Mr. MORTENSEN: The one who kicks me.

BIANCULLI: Viggo Mortensen and David Cronenberg speaking to Terry Gross
earlier this year. More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

BIANCULLI: Let's get back to Terry's interview from earlier this year with
David Cronenberg and Viggo Mortensen, the director and star of "Eastern
Promises." But first, here's another clip from the movie featuring Mortensen
and Naomi Watts. She's just discovered that he isn't just a driver for the
Russian mob, but may in fact be a full blown member.

(Soundbite of "Eastern Promises")

(Soundbite of passing vehicle)

Ms. WATTS: (As Anna) She was 14! Read the diary! She was 14 when he raped
her. You bastards murdered her.

Mr. MORTENSEN: (As Nikolai) (Unintelligible)...is here. Anger is very
dangerous, makes people do stupid things. Please, forget any of this ever
happened. You're in very wrong place, Anna...(unintelligible). You belong in
there, with nice people. Stay away from people like me.

Ms. WATTS: (As Anna) No, no.

(End of soundbite)

GROSS: Viggo Mortensen, you not only had to learn a Russian accent for the
movie, you have to speak with a really commanding presence and sometimes a
very menacing voice, which is totally unlike how you're speaking now. You
sound very soft-spoken, completely nonthreatening the way you're speaking now.
Would you talk a little bit about what you did vocally, both in terms of the
accent but also in terms of the menace that your voice sometimes assumes?

Mr. MORTENSEN: Well, there's one thing that I've noticed, or that has been
brought to my attention, and it makes sense to me, you know. People have
said--I speak Spanish because I was raised in a, you know, until I was 11,
mostly in a Spanish-speaking country, in Argentina, so I speak Spanish like I
do English. And also because of my family and living there I speak Danish,
but when I speak Spanish, for example, people have said to me, `You sound
different. You seem--not just the words, but the tone and your body language
is different.'

GROSS: Hm.

Mr. MORTENSEN: And it's something that--the language informs you, the sounds
you make and the ideas behind them, the sort of concepts that are particular
to a culture and a language change the way you present yourself, even without
you realizing it. And with Russian, there are sounds in that language that
helped me, that did a lot of the work for me.

GROSS: What were some of the sounds within the Russian-accented English you
had to speak that helped you get the power that you needed for the role?

Mr. MORTENSEN: Well, I wasn't conscious of them, and they come under that
thing of well, I don't want to analyze it. I don't want to kill something.

GROSS: Sure, yeah. OK. Go ahead.

Mr. MORTENSEN: I just felt different. It was like you talked about earlier,
you know, when the actor first tries on his wardrobe or his costume and starts
to get used to it and, you know. Like I like to, you know, can I borrow the
watch and can I borrow those shows and break them in and make them my own so I
feel comfortable? It helps you. It does a lot of the work for you. And the
language in this case really helped. And there are, you know, I had the
advantage from speaking some Latin language that certain R sounds or hard J
sounds, I could get to them easier. But there are some vowel sounds or
combination of sounds that are particular to Russian and also Ukrainian, which
I speak a little bit of in the movie, although you wouldn't know that there's
a transition into Ukrainian briefly that a Russian would know--or
Ukrainian--but those sounds were a little harder to get, you know, the ones
that are very specific. But we eventually got there.

It was the effort of getting there that also--I just found myself moving
differently and seeming different when I was concentrating on getting those
sounds right. I can't explain it exactly, and I don't know that I'd want to
know, break it down completely. I mean, I just know that it made things
different, and it was as important to me as the clothing, as the car that I
had to drive in my occupation as chauffeur for these underworld types.

GROSS: David Cronenberg, Viggo Mortensen was best know for his roles in "The
Lord of the Rings," and is still probably best-known for that. But you saw, I
think, a different quality in him, and I'm wondering, why did you want to
start working with him? I think what we see of him in "A History of Violence"
and in your new film "Eastern Promises" is just kind of different than what
we're used to seeing.

Mr. CRONENBERG: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: And what did you see in him and how did you notice it? How did you
know you wanted to work with him?

Mr. CRONENBERG: I just thought he was really quite interesting visually and
in presence and obviously had a good ear for languages, a musical ear. It
didn't surprise me to finally realize that he spoke fluent Spanish and Danish
and pretty good French and some Italian, some German, maybe. Also, for both
movies--more for this one, but even for "History of Violence"--accent,
language, was a key thing...

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

Mr. CRONENBERG: In a weird way "Eastern Promises" is about language. And to
a lesser extent, but still important, "History of Violence" was, too. Now,
Viggo's really doing two accents in "History of Violence" because the sort of
Indiana accent is not his natural accent, and it's very subtle. And then
there's the Philly accent that comes later that is, you know, also extremely
subtle but really important.

And then once we had worked together, I realized that he wasn't just good, he
was great, I have to say. And so then, of course, he was a marked man for me.
Because now I want him to be in every movie that I do. When I was reading
"Eastern Promises" and reading the role of Nikolai, it reminded me that Viggo
had always seemed to me to have a Slavic element to his looks, to his face, to
his cheekbones, and I don't know whether that's Danish and some great
grandmother was messing around with Russians, or I don't know. You never
know.

And I had thought that when we were shooting "History," because a director has
a relationship with an actor that's really quite bizarre and not much known
which continues beyond the actor's actual physical presence. You know, I'm in
the editing room and I'm obsessively looking at my actors' faces...

GROSS: Oh, sure, yeah.

Mr. CRONENBERG: ...looking for the best take, the most subtle intonations of
their voice, and sometimes I'm even taking sounds from one take and putting
them in the mouth of another take. So you become incredibly sensitized to an
actor's face and physical presence and voice, and so all of that that I'd gone
through with Viggo in "History of Violence" really made me feel that he was
absolutely the perfect guy for Nikolai.

GROSS: Well, I want to thank you both so much for talking with us.

Mr. CRONENBERG: Well, thank you. This has been a lot of fun.

Mr. MORTENSEN: Thanks, Terry. It's been a really nice conversation.

BIANCULLI: David Cronenberg and Viggo Mortensen speaking to Terry Gross.
Their latest film together, "Eastern Promises," is about to be released on
DVD. I'm David Bianculli, and this is FRESH AIR.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Review: Kevin Whitehead with gift recommendations for jazz fans
DAVID BIANCULLI, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli.

For his holiday gift suggestions for jazz fans this year, critic Kevin
Whitehead recommends a couple of smaller CD box sets by veteran bebop
musicians and some historical jazz on DVD.

(Soundbite of music)

Mr. KEVIN WHITEHEAD: Drummer Roy Haynes, 1961, with Stan Getz on strings.
For six decades, Haynes has been a drummer of choice for jazz stars like
Lester Young, Charlie Parker, Sarah Vaughan, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane
and Pat Metheny.

All of them appear on "A Life in Time: The Roy Haynes Story," a new anthology
spread over three CDs and a DVD. It's less a showcase for aggressive drumming
than a reminder of how much great and good music Haynes contributed to as a
team player between 1949 and 2006. That makes this the rare drummer's
retrospective that may leave you wishing for more drum solos. He's that
tasteful and creative.

(Soundbite of music)

Mr. WHITEHEAD: Roy Haynes did get a bit waylaid in the 1970s, unsure where
to turn next. Trading in bebop's odd bass drum accents for disco's relentless
thump proved not to be the answer. Happily, that phase didn't last, and
Haynes went back to the bop-based music he still plays. The DVD includes a
recent performance with his quartet, a vintage drum solo and Haynes talking at
length about his life and music. All in all, "A Life in Time" is a winner.

So is another anthology devoted to a great veteran still going strong in his
80s: tenor saxophonist Von Freeman. But this set--two CDs and a DVD--starts
in 1996, when Von was already 73.

(Soundbite of music)

Mr. WHITEHEAD: "The Best of Von Freeman" on Premonition comes from the
Chicago label that's made documenting this hometown hero a priority. There's
plenty of bebop and blues, a couple of lovely unaccompanied tenor ballads and
fine support from pianists Richard Wyands and Jason Moran, drummer Jimmy Cobb,
guitarist Mike Allemana, and others.

The DVD includes a long public interview, worth it just for the 15 minutes
Freeman spends talking about bandleader Sun Ra. There's also a hilarious
verbal improvisation, Von making a few remarks in 2002 when a stretch of
Chicago's East 75th Street was named for him. His comments include some pet
licks and unexpected detours, kind of like a saxophone soloist's.

(Soundbite of "The Best of Von Freeman")

(Soundbite of people laughing and talking in background throughout clip)

Mr. VON FREEMAN: Jazz music, it's not above anybody, but it does take some
kind of brains to understand it. No, I don't mean to say it like that.
It's--that seems to be putting down somebody. But it does take a little
musical intelligence. No, I don't mean to say that, either.

Unidentified Man: Work with it, baby! Work with it!

Mr. FREEMAN: What I'm trying to say is that it takes a little caring about
music that you might not understand. Thank you.

I don't try to play over anyone's head. I don't try to say jazz is greater
than any other music in the world, because I come up through all the music. I
come up through ragtime, Dixieland, on the swing, on the bebop, on the free,
on the avant garde, and now nobody know what I'm playing.

(Soundbite of music)

(End of soundbite)

Mr. WHITEHEAD: Chicagoans would throw themselves on a hand grenade for Von
Freeman; with this set, the rest of the world can know why.

Of straight jazz DVDs this season, the obvious gift choices are the second
batch in the Jazz Icons series. These concert and studio performances from
the '50s and '60s were filmed or taped for European television, which features
way more jazz than American TV has since the '50s.

There isn't a loser in the bunch; guitarist Wes Montgomery bounces off the
rhythms of Dutch drummer Han Bennink on one disc, and John Coltrane mixes it
up with fellow saxophonists Eric Dolphy and Stan Getz on another. There's
singer Sarah Vaughan in her late-'50s/early-'60s prime, and Dexter Gordon,
Dave Brubeck and Charles Mingus, all in fine form.

If I had to choose one, it would be Duke Ellington's orchestra caught on a
very good night at Amsterdam's Concertgebouw in 1958. But any of these shows
should make a jazz fan's eyes light up like some kind of festive, decorated
tree.

(Soundbite of music)

BIANCULLI: Kevin Whitehead teaches English and American Studies at the
University of Kansas, and he's a jazz columnist for emusic.com

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Interview: Producer Joel Dorn, from 1991, on Night label of live
jazz recordings
DAVID BIANCULLI, host:

Record producer Joel Dorn, a respected, influential figure in both pop and
jazz music, died this week of a heart attack. He was 65. Dorn worked at
Atlantic Records for nearly 15 years. He produced Grammy-winning recordings
by Bette Midler and Roberta Flack. In the jazz sections of the company, he
produced albums with Les McCann, Eddie Harris, Rashaan Roland Kirk and Mose
Allison.

After leaving Atlantic Records, Dorn started a number of specialty labels
which focused on live or reissued recordings. His Night label featured live
club recordings, like this one with Eddie Harris.

(Soundbite of music)

BIANCULLI: Eddie Harris, recorded live in San Francisco in 1978. Joel Dorn's
Night label featured recordings which were made when the musicians had no idea
they were even being recorded, tapes made by amateurs and club owners, tapes
never intended for commercial release. Terry spoke to Dorn after he launched
the label. She asked him how he found some of the tapes.

Mr. JOEL DORN: I have a friend named Bernard Drayton who is black. When he
was young, which was the late '50s, early '60s, there were no black recording
engineers in the studios in New York. There just weren't. But he wanted to
be a recording engineer, so he bought his own little Radio Shack level remote
equipment. We're talking about a tape recorder, a microphone, a mixing board;
prevailed upon the jazz musicians in New York--he was one of those kids, you
know, he was always backstage or trying to get in clubs or stuff--prevailed
upon the musicians that when they worked their gigs not in Manhattan out at
Birdland or The Village Gate or those places, but when they worked out in the
burroughs--Brooklyn, The Bronx and these little tiny clubs--when they would
get their material together for their recordings for the New York jazz labels,
they let him record these gigs under the--the set of rules for it was you
could never release it. And it was just, you know, basically was give a
brother a break, you know. They were letting him record these gigs so that he
could learn how to become a recording engineer.

And he did it with the understanding that he would never release them or play
them for anybody else. Boom. It's 30 years later, I'm sitting in his office
in November of 1986, and we had talked about these tapes off and on for years,
and I went--we had a meeting about something else, and casually said to him, I
said, `Bernie, maybe we should do something with those tapes of yours. Now
it's 30 years later, let me see if I can go get the clearances.'

TERRY GROSS, host:

Did your friend Bernie Drayton record the Eddie Harris record?

Mr. DORN: No. We got those tapes from Eddie Harris. We got some stuff from
San Francisco, some stuff from Chicago, we called it "A Tale of Two Cities,"
yeah.

GROSS: Now, on the Eddie Harris record, one of the tracks has him doing
basically like an impersonation of Billie Holiday, but he's not singing, he's
kind of doing it into his saxophone.

Mr. DORN: That particular cut was done in San Francisco at the Keystone
Korner, and what he does is he does an impersonation of Billie Holiday through
some kind of electronic thing that he does through the saxophone, so he evokes
that Billie Holiday sound without actually ever saying words; it's vocalese.
But the strings and the piano, he plays them, too, and they're operated by
foot controls. So he stands on stage alone with a saxophone. It looks like
he's playing it, but he's singing into it. With his left foot he controls the
piano, with his right foot he controls the string orchestra. And he just does
it.

(Soundbite of Eddie Harris performing)

GROSS: Who recorded the Rashaan Roland Kirk sessions that you...

Mr. DORN: Once again, that was done in San Francisco at Keystone Korner, but
also in New Orleans and also in Paris. A variety of sources. We listened to
178 tapes to get, I think, 53 minutes of Rashaan.

GROSS: One of the things that Kirk used to always do at conferences was play
three horns at one time, three saxophones at a time.

Mr. DORN: Right.

GROSS: And you have an example of him doing that on the record.

Mr. DORN: Right.

GROSS: Why did you want to get an example of him doing that live?

Mr. DORN: Well, number one, it was kind of the thing that people spoke
about. When you speak of Rashaan Roland Kirk, they'll say, `Well, he was the
blind guy who'--and they'll always say, `played three horns at once.' That was
his, you know, kind of his trademark. I remember the first time I saw it was
here in Philadelphia at the Academy of Music in 1961, and I was watching
backstage. When he put those three horns in his mouth, the first time I saw
him he was imitating the Ellington horn section. And in absolute--watching
him do it and looking out from backstage and seeing the audience react, it was
like--we're on radio, so opening my mouth doesn't make any difference, but
everybody, you know, was like gasping.

(Soundbite of music, people cheering and applauding)

GROSS: Cannonball Adderley on the record with him.

Mr. DORN: Yeah.

GROSS: There's a beautiful recording of "Stars Fell on Alabama."

Mr. DORN: Yeah.

GROSS: Tell me something about this recording and why you included it.

Mr. DORN: Well, I listened to 520 tapes to get the Les McCann record, 60
tapes to get the Eddie Harris record, 178 tapes to get the Rashaan Roland Kirk
record. One tape to get the Cannonball--two tapes, I'm sorry, to get the
Cannon Adderley. It just jumped out of the--it was just one of those nights
where everything was right. We got those tapes from Las Vegas, a disc jockey
who moved there from New York who had done some live radio shows at The Half
Note. I was always a big Cannonball Adderley fan. I was thrilled. And
interestingly, that was a very rare period for Cannon. It was just before he
became a big kind of like pop jazz artist, and it was just at the end of when
he was a major commercial jazz and artistic jazz success, kind of on the cusp
of careers.

The interesting thing about "Stars Fell on Alabama," if you listen to it--or
an interesting thing to me--is that was done New Year's eve in 1967, or New
Year's '68, however it goes, in New York. And musicians traditionally hate to
play New Year's. It's the worst time. Everybody's drunk, nobody cares,
they're just out to scream and yell, you know, get loaded. The audience is
barely paying attention to him, if you listen. There's a lot of noise. You
hear all these conversations going on, and through all of this, on the worst
night of the year for any musician, you just hear Cannon rise to this
magnificent level. I thought that was a--he's recorded that song twice, and I
heard him play it in person maybe a dozen times, and he sounded like if Johnny
Hodges and Bird had a son, it would've been Cannon that night. I thought it
was a real touching performance.

(Soundbite of "Stars Fell on Alabama")

GROSS: Let me ask you, are any of the musicians getting angry at the people
who recorded them without letting the musician know it was happening?

Mr. DORN: Sometimes. I would say there are two instances, in the four and a
half years we've been doing it, where people got livid. At that point, we
gave them the tapes, said, you know, `Sorry if you're bugged. They're yours.
Talk to you later.'

GROSS: Yeah.

Mr. DORN; Here's what I've found. When I first went into this, one of the
reasons I approached it with some kind of trepidation was people used to get
livid when they found out they were recorded in an unauthorized manner. It's
30 years later. A lot of times that's the best work they ever did, or that
period's never coming back again, or they, instead of getting angry they say,
`Man, I thought I'd never hear me playing with so-and-so.' Or `That was a
great period.' You know? So it's different now. Is it all peaches and cream?
Absolutely not. But I'd say 85, 90 percent of the time, people go, `Great,
man,' and love it.

GROSS: Joel Dorn, I want to thank you a lot for talking with us.

Mr. DORN: Oh, thanks.

BIANCULLI: Joel Dorn speaking to Terry Gross in 1991. He died this week at
age 65.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Review: David Edelstein on movies to see during busy holiday
season
DAVID BIANCULLI, host:

There's no shortage of movies in the theaters this holiday season. Our film
critic, David Edelstein, has been frantically seeing them all and has a
round-up of the movies playing now or about to open up.

Mr. DAVID EDELSTEIN: How can anyone keep up with all the movies opening this
time of year? I can't, and it's my day job. Between the popcorn flicks and
the kiddie stuff and the art films that need to open before December 31st to
qualify for the Oscars, it's madness. I tell you, madness. I've already
praised on this program "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," "The Savages" and
"No Country for Old Men." Let's take the rest, from my least to most favorite.

"The Golden Compass" is deadly.

"I Am Legend" is a decent thriller, with Will Smith as the last human in New
York against bald, feral vampires. The best thing is seeing a metropolis
depopulated, a lovely fantasy if you've been fighting holiday-shopping crowds.

"Atonement" has the Oscar buzz. It's a faithful adaptation of Ian McEwan's
novel that crams in all the big themes, the shifts in perspective, and the
final act of narrative rug-pulling that knocked me for a loop. Well, it did
on the page. The movie is a more arm's length experience. But as a
working-class martyr, James McAvoy will certainly make millions of teenage
girls and teenage girls at heart sob almost as hard as they did when a certain
ocean liner went down.

"The Kite Runner" is brisk and bland, but if you've read the novel, you know
it has a great melodramatic hook. As a boy, the Afghan narrator stood by and
did nothing when his little friend, the son of his father's servant, was raped
by bullies. As a grown-up, he has a chance to redeem himself by returning to
Kabul to rescue his friend's son from Taliban rapists. The link between
totalitarianism and homosexual aggression is provocative, to say the least.
The uplift comes in the closing scene, the camera soaring and swooping along
with the kites.

It's back to Kabul again in "Charlie Wilson's War," based on George Crile's
book about a congressman, played here by Tom Hanks, who got the funding for a
covert CIA operation in Afghanistan. That helped the Afghans devastate the
Soviet occupiers, which helped precipitate the fall of the Soviet empire,
which led, ironically, to al-Qaeda getting its hands on a lot of American
weapons. It's momentous stuff, told by writer Aaron Sorkin and director Mike
Nichols in a lickety-split style that makes the history lesson go down easily.
Philip Seymour Hoffman steals the show as the CIA guy who hates commies and
his clueless bosses in equal measure.

(Soundbite from "Charlie Wilson's War")

Mr. TOM HANKS: (As Charlie Wilson) Do you drink?

Mr. PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN: (As Gust Avrakotos) Oh, God, yeah.

Mr. HANKS: (As Wilson) Well, should we try this scotch or is it going to
release sarin gas when I open it?

Mr. HOFFMAN: (As Avrakotos) Well, I don't think so, but open it over there.

Mr. HANKS: (As Wilson) How'd a guy like you get into the agency?

(Soundbite of liquid poured into glass)

Mr. HOFFMAN: (As Avrakotos) What, you mean a street guy?

Mr. HANKS: (As Wilson) You ain't James Bond.

Mr. HOFFMAN: (As Avrakotos) You ain't Thomas Jefferson, so let's call it
even.

(Soundbite of snickering)

Mr. HANKS: (As Wilson) Deal.

Mr. HOFFMAN: (As Avrakotos) Since there's no other reason I should be here,
let's assume it's because I'm very good at this.

(Soundbite of glasses clinking)

(End of soundbite)

Mr. EDELSTEIN: John C. Reilly plays the title character in "Walk Hard: The
Dewey Cox Story," a broad satire of musician biopics like "Walk the Line,"
that proves, A, the conventions of biopics really are lame, and, B, you can
get a lot of laughs out of basically one joke if your lead is John C. Reilly.

He has a stronger singing voice than the stars of "Sweeney Todd"--Johnny Depp
and Helena Bonham Carter--but Tim Burton's film of Stephen Sondheim's
masterpiece is spellbinding anyway. Most directors open up Broadway musicals,
adding meaningless busyness to make them more cinematic, and they end up
diluting them. Burton constricts the space and concentrates the melodrama; he
finds the perfect balance between the funereal and the ferocious. He scales
"Sweeney Todd" to his stars, almost fetishizing their ghoulishness with his
close-ups. And oh, the blood. Against the black-and-gray monochromatic
backdrop it geysers out, phosphorescent. It's Burton's way of cackling,
`You're a long way from Broadway, folks!'

Paul Thomas Anderson's "There Will Be Blood" is even freakier. It's a
psychodrama with the epic scale of an Old Testament parable. It wouldn't work
without an actor as intense and magnificent as Daniel Day-Lewis, who plays
Daniel Plainview, a monomaniacal oilman. Day-Lewis looms as large as the
derricks that dominate the unruly central California landscape. He wears a
thick, curly mustache, and his face is long and straight, like a Balinese
mask. His eyes are slits; they sparkle only when he trains them on his
principal antagonist, a self-styled young preacher named Eli Sunday, played by
Paul Dano, who sees through Plainview's ruse to buy the Sunday family farm to
hunt quail.

(Soundbite of "There Will Be Blood")

Unidentified Actor: (In character) The Lord has sent this man here, Eli?

Mr. DANIEL DAY-LEWIS: (As Daniel Plainview) Yes, I believe he has. My offer
to you is $3700.

Mr. PAUL DANO: (As Eli Sunday) What is it that brought you here, sir?

Mr. DAY-LEWIS: (As Daniel Plainview) The good Lord's guidance. Now, of
course, within that we would...

Mr. DANO: (As Eli Sunday) What about...

Mr. DAY-LEWIS: (As Daniel Plainview) ...develop a lease.

What's that?

Mr. DANO: (As Eli Sunday) What about our oil?

Mr. DAY-LEWIS: (As Daniel Plainview) What about it?

Mr. DANO: (As Eli Sunday) We have oil here. That's worth something.

Mr. DAY-LEWIS: (As Daniel Plainview) Do you have someone who can drill for
it? You think there's oil here.

Mr. DANO: (As Eli Sunday) I know there is.

Mr. DAY-LEWIS: (As Daniel Plainview) It's very expensive to drill, to get it
up and out of the ground. You ever tried that before?

Mr. DANO: (As Eli Sunday) How much is it?

Mr. DAY-LEWIS: (As Daniel Plainview) Costly.

Mr. DANO: (As Eli Sunday) Well, our oil sits right up on top of the ground.

Mr. DAY-LEWIS: (As Daniel Plainview) I believe that's called seepage.
Doesn't necessarily mean there's anything underneath.

Mr. DANO: (As Eli Sunday) What would you give us for it?

Mr. DAY-LEWIS: (As Daniel Plainview) I don't know.

Mr. DANO: (As Eli Sunday) Something you don't know.

Mr. DAY-LEWIS: (As Daniel Plainview) That's right.

(End of soundbite)

Mr. EDELSTEIN: That voice. It's like John Huston's. And Day-Lewis could be
playing an up-and-coming Noah Cross, Huston's monstrous mogul in "Chinatown."
In "There Will Be Blood," his lust for oil corrodes every family tie. The
movie is transfixing, with an astounding classical score by Radiohead
guitarist Jonny Greenwood that steeps you in bad karma. The showdown between
Plainview and Eli had preview audiences hooting in derision. I think it's
bonkers but brilliant: the sick-joke fate of a capitalist titan. Anderson
has made a mad American classic.

BIANCULLI: David Edelstein is film critic for New York Magazine.
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