Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To

Tag: martin scorsese

Thoughts On The Irishman

  • Three of Elizabeth Taylor’s marriages were shorter, and contained fewer lies, than The Irishman.
  • Cuz nothing that happened, happened.
  • The Irishman will have you believe that Robert De Niro committed every crime of the 20th century.
  • Hoffa.
  • Joey Gallo.
  • Albert Anastasio.
  • Judge Crater.
  • Remember when Baby Jessica fell down that well?
  • According to The Irishman, it’s because Robert De Niro threw her in there.
  • Taking only the 45-hour-long movie I just watched as historical evidence, Robert De Niro cut a miraculous and murderous path through the post-war years while interacting with fabulous American personalities up and down the social register.
  • Just like Forest Gump did.
  • Everyone else who writes about this movie is gonna use the phrase “meditation on aging,” but they’re not gonna tell you that the film is a rip-off of Forest Gump.
  • Never trust movie critics.
  • Or movie buffs.
  • Never trust a buff of any sort, actually.
  • Civil War buffs are the worst, I suppose: warped bastards with a gangrene fetish who like to vacation in fields full of dead teenagers.
  • But movie buffs are pretty bad.
  • They always want you to watch Solaris.
  • I don’t wanna watch Solaris.
  • I don’t wanna watch the other Solaris, either.
  • LEAVE ME ALONE AND LET ME WATCH CARTOONS AND KUNG FU MOVIES.
  • Oh, and “elegy.”
  • I guarantee that you will not read a single piece about The Irishman without “elegy” in there somewhere or other.
  • Here’s every single review:
  • “The Irishman is an elegiac meditation on aging, and Scorsese’s best since [INSERT MOVIE THAT IS NOT THE ONE ABOUT THE MONKS WITH KYLO REN AND SPIDER-MAN HERE].”

  • But you will not get that here.
  • What will you get?
  • I dunno; maybe I should just keep typing and we’ll both find out together.
  • (In case you’re wondering: Casino is Scorsese’s last great film, because Casino is his last epic that does not star Leonardo DiCaprio. Plus, Casino features Don Rickles as a character named “Billy Sherbert,” and that’s the kind of attention to detail I enjoy in my motion pictures.)
  • Anyway, Robert De Niro plays the Irishman, whose name I am already forgetting.
  • Joe Pesci’s character was called Russell Bufalino, which is easy to remember.
  • First off, there simply aren’t a lot of major crime figures in American history named “Russell.”
  • And “Bufalino” is a both a cheese I enjoy, and sounds kinda dirty.
  • 60-70% of all Italian names sound like euphemisms for anal sex.
  • (This is not a comment on the Italian people. They’re lovely; tasty bread; fine automobiles. All their names sound like what you’d call butt-fucking if you were discussing the subject in front of your grandmother.)
  • So, Joe Pesci is a bigshot in the Philly mob.
  • A pezzonovante, a real .90 caliber.
  • He falls in love with Mumbles.
  • (I will be referring to Robert De Niro as “Mumbles” hereafter.)
  • They meet in restaurants a lot and dip bread in wine.
  • I guess that’s a thing.
  • Dunking a doughnut in coffee?
  • I’ve heard of that.
  • Hell, they based a whole franchise around the activity.
  • But I never seen nobody dipping no bread in no wine, no how.
  • Joe Pesci says,
  • “I got a job for you. Go whack Big Grande Testiculoni.”
  • And Mumbles says,
  • “Mrphrhpmmphrh.”
  • And goes and kills the guy.
  • About 90 minutes of that.
  • The entire running length of the 1998 documentary A Night At The Roxbury, that’s all that happens.
  • “Go kill Nipples Arrividerci.”
  • “Mrphrhpmmphrh.”
  • Dip dip dip.
  • Repeat until Al Pacino shows up and starts yelling.
  • Wait.
  • No.
  • Excuse me, I’ve made an error.
  • Al Pacino was not in this movie.
  • His over-acting twin brother All Pacino was.
  • Al has been sending All in his stead since the late 90’s.
  • And when you get All Pacino, you get ALL PACINO.
  • You get the shouting, you get the ranting, you get the lines that go from whispers to THROAT-SHREDDING YOWLS in the space of one word.
  • If you were to ask All Pacino where he was on a scale of 1 to 10, he would answer “FUCK YOURSELF” and then take a shit in his own pants just to prove he’s the master of his destiny.
  • Anyway, Mumbles falls in love with All Pacino.
  • This makes Joe Pesci and his enormous eyeglasses jealous.
  • The Irishman is secretly a deeply gay movie.
  • Of course, Mean Streets and Raging Bull were also homosexual love stories.
  • And The Last Waltz, too.
  • You can’t convince me that Scorsese and Robbie Robertson weren’t fucking each other.
  • At the least, they were hand-helping one another.
  • Which is not gay, especially if you do it to a John Ford film.
  • Seriously, none of this shit is true.
  • Read this.
  • Did you not read that?
  • This is from that; look at it:

  • Did you look at that?
  • Makes you wanna read the thing it’s from, huh?
  • Horseshit, all of it.
  • Faker than the CG blood squibs that arise from the newly-retired gangsters.
  • The Irishman contains just as much reality as, oh, say, I dunno…
  • Wait for it.
  • …a superhero film.
  • BOOM!
  • GOT YOU, SCORSESE!
  • Some of the movie’s assertions are prima facie stupid for anyone who knows anything about the Mob.
  • According to The Irishman, Joey Gallo got shot by Mumbles for insulting Joe Pesci at the Copa.
  • Which is not how it went down.
  • Joey had just gotten out of jail for starting a gang war, and was now attempting to start another one.
  • Pretty much everyone but Jerry Orbach wanted him dead.
  • (Joey Gallo was good friends with Jerry Orbach. Long story. The 70’s were weird.)
  • WAIT!
  • I FORGOT THE BEST PART!
  • Apparently, we are to believe that Mumbles was part of the Bay of Pigs.
  • He drove the truck full of guns and grenades and whatnot down to Florida.
  • Killed Hoffa.
  • Murdered Crazy Joe Gallo.
  • AND armed the Cuban exiles who disastrously tried to retake their home with the aid of the CIA.
  • I’m shocked that Mumbles wasn’t on the grassy knoll.
  • I am not kidding: Ant-Man is more believable than this pile of well-shot garbage.
  • You heard me.
  • Garbage.
  • Don’t cum in my hair and tell me it’s pigeon poop, Martin Scorsese.
  • Especially the last four hours or so when Mumbles is old.
  • And we’re supposed to feel bad for him.
  • His daughter won’t speak to him.
  • Just because he, you know, murdered all those people.
  • And funded her childhood with blood money.
  • Then–FUCKING THEN–we get a scene where the FBI comes to visit ol’ dyin’ Mumbles.
  • He don’t give ’em nothing.
  • That’s a man, the film tells us.
  • Never opened his mouth.
  • EXCEPT HE WROTE A FUCKING BOOK.
  • No matter which version of the truth The Irishman decides to go with, everyone involved looks shitty.
  • But I’ll give Scorsese this: I watched the whole fucking thing.
  • And I really want to rewatch Casino.

What If The Dead’s Amazon Show Was Written By The Creators Of HBO’s Vinyl?

EXT: “WINTERLAND” – NIGHT

OPEN with a DISTRACTINGLY SHOW-OFFY ESTABLISHING SHOT. There are EXTRAS IN COSTUME everywhere.

People are taking DRUGS, which the camera FETISHIZES.

We find our hero, a MACHO GUY WHO LIVES BY HIS OWN CODE WHOM MARTIN SCORSESE WANTS TO FUCK, doing COCAINE out in open, because he is SO MACHO.

He walks up to TWO STONE-COLD TEEN FOXES with BIG TITS and gives them his business card.

C/U on the CARD. It reads “MACHO SCUNGILLI, PASTICHE RECORDS.”

The foxes are IMPRESSED and show him their TITS because we are on PAY CABLE.

MACHO
Ooh. I do like them titties, girls. But not as much as I love
rock and roll music. And cocaine. And leather blazers. Also, I’m
married, which will be a boring sub-plot.

Macho ENTERS “Winterland” (which is not referred to by name due to rights issues).

INT: “WINTERLAND”

We FOLLOW Macho on the SIGNATURE SCORSESE TRACKING SHOT through “Winterland.”

MUSIC CUE: STUDIO GUYS HALF-ASSING THROUGH A GRATEFUL DEAD SOUND-A-LIKE SONG

On the STAGE is the GRATEFUL DEAD, all of whom are played by MICK JAGGER’S SON.

MACHO
Dig that crazy sound! What these guys need is a
little push from Pastiche Records! They’re jamming
so hard that the place might collapse!

EXT: “WINTERLAND”

The building COLLAPSES.

Macho RISES from the rubble like AMERICAN JESUS and SNORTS ALL THE COCAINE.

MUSIC CUE: SOMETHING BY THE ROLLING STONES.

The Terrence Winter Of Our Discontent

Martin Scorsese, Mick Jagger, Terrence Winter, and a whole bunch of other heavy hitters premiered Vinyl on HBO the other night; I haven’t seen it and don’t intend to (Sound-alike pastiche bands! Terrible fake band names! That Scientologist asshole with the curly hair from That 70’s Show!) but Richard Hell, who was actually in the New York music business in ’73 wrote a great review over at Stereogum about the show. If his paragraphs are too long for you (they are), here’s a sample:

You come to the series looking for music and what do you get? Bulky Italian-American peacocks so crazed by craving for coke that one of them tears the rear-view mirror off his luxury car for a surface to snort from; or two of them excitedly bashing in the head of a vulgar ally before wrapping his corpse in a table cloth and driving it in a car trunk to a dump spot; a prolonged extreme close-up of a fizzingly dynamic cigarette lighter flame against darkness; nonstop soundtrack of rock and roll, soul, funk, blues, punk, and disco pop music. It’s all routine Scorsese shtick, but cheaper. In fact nine tenths of the songs aren’t even the original tracks, but studio imitations. And what’s with the cocaine behavior? I get that coke gives these men the feeling of supremacy they also get from using baseball bats on upstarts and getting blowjobs from showgirls, but it’s just wrong to over and over again show them (usually from above) violently throwing their sweaty heads back grimacing in cross-eyed transport the moment they inhale a flake. Cocaine is not like getting a cattle prod up your butt. Everybody knows that. Cocaine is sweet. A warm smile would suffice.

The ratings weren’t great, either, and I don’t know what this means for the Dead show in development over at Amazon. The new content-delivery services (I didn’t like writing that phrase any more than you liked reading it) such as Netflix or Amazon don’t do ratings–they say–and care more for prestige. They want to have the cool restaurant that people write about, rather than the joint that sells more burgers and clown toys than anyone else.

Who can tell the future? Everything changes, and nothing lasts, but I hope they do a good job: it comes down to the writing. I hope they don’t hire someone who wants a job. They should get an obsessive. Someone who is prepared to start and win arguments about shirts that look fake, and that Actor Garcia isn’t holding his guitar the right way.

I’m not talking about trivia. Or knowing the words to the songs. Or how to spell “Kreutzmann” without looking it up. They need someone who Gets It.

Where would you find him or her, though?