The Last Waltz

One summer, when I was home from college, I went to the Alpha 3 Theater, where I used to work, to see a concert movie called The Last Waltz. Directed by Martin Scorsese, The Last Waltz documented the farewell performance by The Band at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco. At the time, I knew very little about The Band. But by the time the credits rolled, I was a big fan. I went back and saw the movie several times, soaking in every detail, memorizing every moment, savoring every note.

Although I didn't know much about The Band, I certainly recognized the guest performers who appeared with them in the film: Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Eric Clapton, Van Morrison, Muddy Waters, Neil Diamond and others. But even among such stellar company, The Band stood out. They were five very different personalities who came together onstage to create some of the most interesting and influential music during one of the most interesting and influential eras in rock music. They stole the show. Unfortunately, it was their last one.

For some reason, throughout their career, The Band often seemed to be behind the scenes, admired by other musicians and connoisseurs, but never really breaking into the mainstream. Their biggest "hit" was a cover version of The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down sung by Joan Baez -- who didn't even know the right words.

Of course, one reason The Band seemed to be behind the scenes is because they often were. They started out as the Hawks, the backup band for Canadian rockabilly singer Ronnie Hawkins. After leaving Hawkins, they were recruited by the newly electrified Bob Dylan as his touring band -- only to be reviled by Bob's hardcore folkie followers. After the tour, Dylan and the Hawks settled down near Woodstock, NY where they recorded over a hundred songs together in the basement of a pink house shared by three of the Hawks. Bootlegs from these 'Basement Tapes' sessions became legendary among aficionados, but the material was never officialy released until years later.

When the time came for them to record their own material, they chose the name The Band, because that's pretty much what everyone called them. Their first album, Music From Big Pink, named after the house they shared, became a favorite among critics and influenced musicians like George Harrison, Eric Clapton and Robert Plant to adopt a more back-to-basics approach to their music. Dennis Hopper included one of the songs, The Weight, on the soundtrack to the movie Easy Rider, but a cover version was used on the soundtrack album due to contractual issues. The Band toured in support of Big Pink, appearing at Woodstock -- the festival named after the town they'd helped make famous -- but their performance was omitted from the tremendously popular film and soundtrack, once again due to legal complications.

They were fast becoming the most succesfully unknown band in history.

Fortunately, their second album, The Band, achieved a level of commercial success that matched their critical acclaim. After ten years, The Band was finally a headline act. But success and touring quickly began to take their toll. The title of their next album, Stage Fright, kind of says it all -- performing music in the circus-like atmosphere of the rock music scene wasn't conducive to keeping your sanity:

Your brow is sweatin' and your mouth gets dry,
Fancy people go driftin' by.
The moment of truth is right at hand,
Just one more nightmare you can stand.

Following their next album, The Band took a step back from the limelight before teaming up with Dylan again for a studio album and a tour. Eventually they relocated from the east coast to Malibu, where they built themselves a clubhouse/recording studio dubbed Shangri La. They recorded one of their finest albums there and followed it up with a summer tour, but the end was already in sight. By the conclusion of the tour they had announced that their final performance would take place on Thanksgiving at Winterland.

Of course all of this was history by the time The Last Waltz hit the screen at Alpha 3. By that time, the members of The Band had pretty much gone their separate ways. Guitarist and songwriter Robbie Robertson continued his association with Martin Scorcese, creating music for Raging Bull, King of Comedy and The Color of Money. Drummer and singer Levon Helm embarked on an acting career, beginning with roles in Coal Miner's Daughter and The Right Stuff.

The Band reformed in 1983, without Robertson. They toured for a few years, playing smaller venues than in their heyday. In The Last Waltz, Robbie Robertson says, "the road has taken a lot of the great ones... It's a goddamn impossible way of life." His words rang eerily true when pianist and vocalist Richard Manuel was found dead in his hotel room following a show in Florida. Bass player and vocalist Rick Danko, who had continued playing and touring both with the reformed Band and various other combos, died of drug-related heart failure in 1999 just days after the end of a tour.

Levon Helm, whose Arkansas-flavored voice imbued many of The Band's best songs with country soul, died last week after a long struggle with throat cancer. One of the reasons The Band never fully reunited was because of a long-standing feud between Helm and Robertson over songwriting credits. When The Band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Levon did not show. Up to the very end, though, Levon kept on playing music, both on tour and in Woodstock, where he held his celebrated Midnight Rambles, featuring a wide array of guest performers, including Elvis Costello, Donald Fagen, Kris Kristofferson, Norah Jones, and Phil Lesh. The proceeds of the Rambles helped to defray Levon's mounting medical expenses.

A few days before Levon died, Robbie Robertson visited him in the hospital one last time. Thirty six years have gone by since they shared the stage at Winterland. That's a lot of history. Band members don't always get along so well. There's almost always a clash of egos. What made The Band so special was their ability to put the egos aside when it came to making music. Their differences became fuel for creative combustion. But there comes a time when the differences overwhelm the creativity. Sometimes the best thing to do is just walk away.

But at least we still have the music. Those moments will live on forever. And in The Last Waltz, there are many of those amazing moments, where five very different personalities combine to form one very distinct sound. The sound of a band totally in the groove, tight as a snare drum but loose as a barrelhouse whore. Heavy with the weight of history, but light as pickpocket's touch. Chugging down the line like a mystery train heading across the Great Divide. That was The Band.

And it always will be.

Open Mike

My folk-singer phase began, more or less, about the same time everything in my life seemed to be falling apart. My girlfriend and I had begun a series of break-ups and reconciliations that would eventually lead to my utter destruction. I had quit my well-paying paralegal job to try and make it as a free-lance writer -- in other words, I was unemployed. And to complete the trifecta of ignominy, my band, The Charismatics, had split up, leaving me with no outlet  to express my woes.

There was only one thing left to do: Go solo.

I'll never forget my first appearance in front of an audience all by my lonesome. It was at an open mike night at a pub in Cleveland Park called Gallagher's. At the time I only had one or two original songs, so I played a Talking Heads tune called Heaven and Woody Guthrie's Worried Man Blues. I was so nervous, I could barely remember how to form an open G chord. My voice sounded foreign and distant, like the strange croaking of an alien reptile. When I was with the Charismatics, I had played and sung in front of plenty of people, but without the rest of the band there with me, I felt naked, alone and terrified.

But I got through it. Fortunately,  the audience was kind. Most of them were performers, who knew how hard it was to bare your soul onstage. They applauded my effort, if not my talent. When it was over, I felt a tremendous wave of relief and accomplishment. And I couldn't wait to do it again.

As it turns out, I was in pretty good company at Gallagher's. There was a regular group of talented musicians playing there at the time. Many of them were dyed-in-the-wool folkies, who finger-picked their Martins and Gibsons with mellow precision and sang with smooth sincerity. I was kind of a misfit, banging away on a cheap plywood guitar and squawking rockabilly Woody Guthrie songs. But they made me feel welcome, and I became a regular, too.

In those days, the host of Gallagher's open mike was Mary Chapin Carpenter, who was pretty well-known to just about everyone but me. She had a solid voice and opened each session with a few of her Joni Mitchell-esque "confessional" style songs. I didn't really care for her songs that much, but she was an excellent performer. I found out later that she had gotten a record deal and was working on her first album, Hometown Girl. Some of the songs on that album were probably first heard at Gallagher's open mike.

Meanwhile, I was working on my own songs. I was steeping myself in the folk tradition, collecting records by Muddy Waters, Jesse Fuller, Leadbelly and the like. Learning songs from the Alan Lomax collection, reading books about Woody and Dylan and Elvis. I tried writing a few songs for the Charismatics, but I never really had a rock'n'roll voice. I'm not sure what kind of a voice I had, but that's the great thing about folk music: Anybody can sing it.

I started writing a new song every week. Then I would go and play it at Gallagher's. It was a great way to learn the craft, because you really get to know what works and what doesn't when you try it out in front of an audience full of singer-songwriters. But I needed more time on stage. Playing two songs a week just wasn't cutting it. I started looking for other open mike nights. As it turned out, I didn't have far to look.

I lived in a row house in Mount Pleasant that started out as a group of guys with quasi-government jobs who liked to play live rock music down in the basement. One of the reasons I moved in was because they need a drummer to fill out the house band. Over time, the original guys moved out -- on to better paying quasi-government jobs; the band morphed into the Charismatics -- with a much better drummer; and the house became a kind of haven for those who favored 'non-traditional' lifestyles. And most of them worked at a restaurant called Food For Thought.

Food For Thought was an institution that defied institutions. The last hippie, left-wing vegetarian restaurant left standing -- even though nobody I knew who worked there was a hippie, or political, or vegetarian. It was a good place that served good food and had a stage with an open mike night.

I started showing up at FFT every week to try out my new material. The open mike was run by a guy named Phil, aka "Philvis." Philvis was a far cry from Mary Chapin Carpenter. About as far a cry as you could get. Philvis opened up the sessions with a few of his darkly sardonic post-punk tunes, accompanied on his hand-painted electric guitar. The audience was a mix of idealistic proto-yuppies, old guard burnouts and assorted malcontents. There was a whole different set of performers at FFT, not a lot of folkies, some rockers, some poets, some punks, and one pretty crazy homeless guy named Robert Adams who wailed his deranged rants while slashing away on a battered guitar that hadn't been tuned since Jimmy Carter left town. But he was amazing.

I became a regular at FFT, playing my growing repertoire of original modern folk tunes. Eventually, I even got to play regular gigs there. They weren't exactly paid gigs, but you got to pass the hat between sets, so I did make a few bucks here and there. One night, I was playing one of my scathing political protest songs and I saw Martin Sheen sitting at a booth with legendary homeless activist Mitch Snyder. Sheen was playing Snyder in a movie about Snyder's battle with the Reagan administration to create a homeless shelter in an abandoned Federal building. To me that moment kind of captured the essence of FFT. The Hollywood actor and the militant crusader having dinner in the most low-key setting, going almost completely unnoticed by those around them. Between sets, I stopped by their table with my tip basket. It seemed a little weird to be begging for change from Mitch Snyder, a guy who'd spent half the eighties on hunger strikes. On the other hand Sheen was doing alright. He tossed me a couple of bills.

It was while playing at FFT that I started to find my voice as a performer. Part of the experience of playing original songs in front of an audience was discovering exactly who I was as a writer and as a singer. Folk music is about authenticity. I didn't have the talent to fake my way through a song. The only thing I had going for me was honesty. If I could tell the truth in a way that sounded like I actually knew what I was talking about, then maybe I could make a connection with the audience and capture their attention for a minute or two. Playing full sets to an audience that was generally more interested in their stir-fry than the caterwauling emanating from the stage forced me to find out exactly what it was I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it.

After a while, I added two more open mikes to my agenda, bringing my total to four a week. Every week. With new songs every week. It was a crash course in paying my dues. I learned to play harmonica to add a little showmanship to the program. I was writing, rehearsing and performing all the time. One night, at the Tucson Cantina open mike, I was the only person who showed up to play. I ended up playing the whole night by myself. Eventually, I ran out of songs and started taking requests. I was amazed at how many songs I had learned. I had come a long way since that first night at Gallagher's. I was now totally at home on the stage, playing song after song without a hitch. It was a blast.

Those open mike nights really kept me going through those difficult times. After my relationship ended for good, I tried to stick around DC for a while. But, finally, I had to get out of there. I moved to Brooklyn, where I played at an open mike in an unheated, condemned building on 7th Ave. in Park Slope. The audience would bang coffee cans filled with bottle caps on the tables as a kind of makeshift percussion section. One night Mandy Patinkin showed up and tried to get me to accompany him, but we couldn't get the guitar and piano in tune.

These days I don't get to the open mike as much as I used to. There's one at the Kibitz Room at Canter's Deli on Fairfax, which I've been to a few times. But you only get one song, and it seems like a lot of trouble to go through for that. It's easier just to make a video and put it on YouTube. Which reminds me. I've got a whole bunch of songs piled up and I need to get them recorded. And, who knows, maybe I'll wander down to the Kibitz Room at some point. I'm starting to feel the need for a smelly old mike, a bad PA, and an audience who couldn't care less. There's nothing else like it.

Annie Hall

Back when I was an usher at the Alpha 3 Theater in Louisville, one of my favorite parts of the job was changing the marquee. The Alpha 3 was tucked away in one corner of the Holiday Manor shopping center, but it had a free-standing marquee out in the parking lot that could be easily seen from the road. I had to climb a ladder to the catwalk beneath the marquee while hauling up a canvas bag filled with foot-high wooden letters. I always tried to reuse as many letters from the old movie's title as possible, because the bag could get pretty cumbersome.

I loved being up there by myself at night in the light of the big sign, rearranging the letters to spell out the new title. The marquee was like a beacon, sending out an important message that could be seen from far and wide. And I was the beacon master. I'll never forget the night I put up the title of the latest Woody Allen movie. I felt so cool, like I was taking part in something historic. The movie was Annie Hall.

I have always been a big fan of Woody Allen movies, especially the early, funny ones. I learned much of what I know about comedy from Woody. And his recurring theme of the short, scrawny nebbish who consistently winds up with amazing, beautiful women was very inspirational. I have used this theme as the basis for most of my screenplays.

Speaking of amazing, beautiful women, my most favorite part of working at Alpha 3 was being around Christy, who worked the box office. She and I had known each other for years -- we'd been in classes together all through high school -- but we never really spent much time together. We came from different sides of the social divide. Christy hung out with the preppies and I was one of the nerds. But, senior year we ended up working side by side at Alpha 3 and, just like in the movies, we fell in love.

The summer after senior year was idyllic. Christy and I went running together, we swam at her country club, we went to movies and parties. We watched fireworks, held hands, sat under shady trees, walked along the riverside. We worked together, played together, dreamed together. We saw Annie Hall together, and loved it.

That fall, we went our separate ways. She went to North Carolina and I went to Connecticut. Our relationship did not survive the distance. I made a grand and romantic gesture, hitchhiking down to North Carolina in an attempt to win her back, but it was a miserable diaster. I had lost her to a guy wearing plaid pants. I was a wreck.

At the end of Annie Hall, Woody tells an old joke about a guy who goes to a psychiatrist because his brother thinks he's a chicken. The doctor says, "why don't you turn him in?" The guy replies, "we need the eggs." Woody says that's how he feels about relationships: "They're totally irrational and crazy and absurd but, I guess we keep going through it because, most of us need the eggs."

Annie Hall is filled with moments like that. There's a joke, but at the same time there's a nugget of truth. It's funny and serious at the same time. Kind of like life. Woody breaks every rule in the book in Annie Hall, and invents some new ones in the process. Woody talks to the audience, he enters into his own flashbacks and interacts to the characters from his past, he lets takes roll for three to four times longer than in conventional movies, he uses subtitles, animation, voice-over, split screen. It's a tour-de-force of stylistic gimmicks. But it all works. And it's all funny.

Annie Hall won four Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay.  That's a pretty rare achievement, especially for a comedy. So many moments in the movie have become iconic: the scene with the duelling psychiatrists, the subtitle scene, the lobster scene, the coke sneeze, "I forgot my mantra." Woody's comparisons of New York and LA have been the basis for standup comics' routines for decades.

So what do you do after Annie Hall? Well, if you're Woody Allen, you make another movie. Then another, then another. Woody went on to make Manhattan two years later and Hannah and Her Sisters a few years after that. Hannah also won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. Woody has made over 40 movies and received 23 Oscar nominations, 15 for screenwriting -- more than any other writer. This year he is nominated once again for Midnight in Paris, for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay. And, at the age of 76, he is currently working on his next movie.

I recently saw a documentary on PBS about Woody that provided a fairly comprehensive overview of his long and highly productive career. Woody started out writing jokes for money when he was in high school and hasn't stopped working since. He still uses the same Olympia typewriter he bought when he was 16, and has written every one of his screenplays on it, along with several books, plays, and hundreds and hundreds of jokes.

Woody graduated from gag writing to writing for TV, working with Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, Larry Gelbart and Sid Ceasar. He then made the move to standup comedy at his manager's insistence -- to make him a household name. In furtherance of this strategy, Woody wrote a part for himself in his first screenplay, What's New Pussycat? But Woody didn't like the way the movie turned out, so on his next movie he asked for, and received, complete control. And he has maintained it ever since.

Woody's "early, funny" movies, like Bananas, Sleeper, and Love and Death, were broad comedies filled with slapstick and farce. But Annie Hall was a gamechanger. In addition the array of stylistic innovations, Woody infused the comedy with serious undertones and a startling sense of honesty. He raised the bar for all romantic comedies to come. He really showed us all how well it could be done.

Toward the end of my idyllic summer with Christy, we were coming out of the Alpha 3 one night and Christy asked me to join her in her car. It was an orange AMC Hornet, parked underneath the marquee out in the parking lot. I got into the passenger seat and she handed me a present. I didn't know what it was for. She just said, "open it." I unwrapped it, opened the box and found an egg inside. I must have looked confused, so she explained, "you know, 'cause we need the eggs." Maybe she was trying to tell me something, but I just thought it was really cool.

In one of the final scenes in Annie Hall, Woody is watching a rehearsal between two actors who look a lot like him and Diane Keaton. Their lines echo his final breakup with Diane from a previous scene, except for one major difference. In the play version the actress jumps up at the last minute and tells the actor that she loves him and doesn't want to leave him.

Woody turns to the camera and says, "you know how you're always trying to get things to come out perfect in art because, it's real difficult in life." I guess that's true. In almost all of my screenplays the nerdy guy ends up with the amazing girl at the end. In real life, though, they always seem to get away. I haven't seen Christy in years, but I'll never forget that idyllic summer, or watching Annie Hall with her, or her giving me that egg.

There's an old joke... two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of them says, "Boy, the food at this place is really terrible." The other one says, "Yeah, I know; and such small portions." Well, that's essentially how I feel about life -- full of loneliness, and misery, and suffering, and unhappiness, and it's all over much too quickly.