Sometimes, when the character actor is a little deeper in the that-guy barrel, like a W. Earl Brown, a viewer can be forgiven for being distracted until they remember where else they saw him.  “Wasn’t he the bartender in Deadwood?”  (By the way, he was also Cameron Diaz’ brother in There’s Something About Mary if you’re looking for a guy with range.) 

Usually, these actors are a spice or a garnish to a great meal of a movie.  But other times, given a chance to shine, people like Kathryn Hahn or David Thewlis flat out steal the picture. 

Here is a celebration of five great ones.  At times, they got to have a bigger part, and all five of these can do legit drama but each has been absolutely hilarious.  Let’s start the roll call. 

Peter Macnicol
Best Known For: Take your pick among Ally McBeal, Grey’s Anatomy, or early-career co-star of Sophie’s Choice.
My Favorites: He started as a young innocent in film, parallel to a solid Broadway career.  I first loved him in a wildly underrated Ghostbusters 2 where he achieves funny accent nirvana as Janosz Poha.  He’s got one scene as a hotel clerk in Cheers in a Season 11 episode “Look Before You Sleep” that I will never forget.  As great as his whole career is, his greatest achievement might be the foulest, greatest dealer of obscene insults in Veep, which is really saying something (“you sentient enema!”)

David Paymer
Best Known For: One of the two Ben & Jerry characters in City Slickers or the brother and only good part of Billy Crystal’s next movie, Mr. Saturday Night.
My Favorites: His first movie was The In-Laws with Alan Arkin and Peter Falk – and he went on to play a great light-comedy Jew for most of his career.  He’s part of the inner circle in The American President and ends up as a great antagonist as a producer in Quiz Show.  I think St. Elsewhere and State And Main are his best work, except the top spot goes to his recurring role as Larry’s publicist in The Larry Sanders Show where he carved out one of the oddest catchphrases in history, “I’m wetting myself.”

John C. McGinley
Best Known For: Maybe for sheer viewership numbers, Dr. Perry Cox on Scrubs.
My Favorites: He seemed to have a great role in just about every Oliver Stone movie; and he particularly carried Talk Radio as the radio producer.  He had some funny little moments I liked in Wagon’s East and Battle of the Sexes and ultimately has had a great career.  But since my clips are all about comedy gold here, it doesn’t get better than being one of the two Bob’s in Office Space:

Bob Balaban
Best Known For: Christopher Guest movies and Wes Anderson movies – or two-hander scenes with François Truffaut in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
My Favorites: His career is pretty unbelievable, including directing a forgotten gem of a movie called Parents.  His first two movies were Midnight Cowboy and Catch-22.  He co-wrote the Robert Altman movie Gosford Park and was great in it.  Oft confused for fellow “that guy” Charles Martin Smith, I’ve gotta single out his work in Altered States, Prince of the City, the best part of Woody Allen’s decent Alice, a great short one as a film producer on a Season 1 West Wing.  He played real TV network executive Warren Littlefield in The Late Shift and the fictionalized version on Seinfeld as Russell Dalrymple.  But for the comedy spot here, it’s gotta be something from the Christopher Guest canon:

Philip Baker Hall
Best Known For: Video porn producer Floyd Gondolli in Boogie Nights.
My Favorites: Top of my head favorites: Starring as Nixon in an acting clinic of Secret Honor, the handwriting expert in Zodiac, city councilman in the “Woody Gets An Election” episode of Cheers, Dennis Farina’s consiglieri in Midnight Run, and Don Hewitt in The Insider.  Then there’s the P.T. Anderson movies.  He co-stars in Hard Eight, heavy in Magnolia, and in Boogie Nights, he might have the greatest two scenes in cinema history.  With all of that said, my clip needs to be as Bookman on a Seinfeld:

The show transpires on an immaculately polished lightbox-type set, pulsing with data, ambient music, and fancy computer stuff, that bisects the seating area Off Broadway at the Pershing Square Signature Center. For much of the first act we’re looking in on a dinner party attended by old college friends, couples who’ve done well in New York City…but not well enough to think that they might be doing better. They are Ben (Conrad Ricamora), a Columbia professor, and his psychoanalyst wife Suzie (Shaunette Renée Wilson); magazine art director Paul (Joe Tippett) and lawyer Jill (Elizabeth Stanley); and surgeon Barry (Jason Ralph) and house-hunting spouse Mia (Irene Sofia Lucio). Party giver Nick (John David Washington) is a tech bro who has done very well…but he might be doing a lot better should he shake loose some funding from his pals for his latest innovation, a Waze-like hack for life that can course-correct human behavior and make the absolute right choices for us all. Needless to say there are catches–the $500,000 minimum investment is one, the fact that Nick is a flashy, shady character another. (A third is Nick’s partner, Emma Kikue’s coldly analytical, algorithm-like Raven, whose name alone is a flashing red light.) And there’s more to the story, as Nick and Raven are quietly beta-testing the product on the group, who are seduced, ruined, and “reformatted,” as it were, by the experience.

The manipulations should make for a queasy moral thriller, akin to Neil LaBute plays like The Shape of Things. But Stein doesn’t want to wound, as the couples are forced to confront harsh truths about the courses they think they’ve set for themselves, and what they’ve suppressed to stay on their uncomfortably comfortable pathways. A problem with the show, directed with some verve but little introspection by Hersh Ellis, is that nothing that happens to these rom-com-level characters is terribly surprising, as their relationships teeter. (Not always for the worse; one ends up more pleasantly reborn, a relief for her and the audience, who want to strangle her first-act caricature.) You don’t need AI to see most of what’s around the second-act bend, not when so much of the dialogue is soft-edged platitudes glibly expressing anxiety about our media-mediated lives. And I certainly didn’t need the clairvoyance of a lifemaxxing ChatGPT, just Playwriting 101, to foresee one character saying, of Nick’s machinations, “It’s like we’ve made a deal with the devil.”

That didn’t compute. Nor did a change of heart regarding one character, and a last minute switch to pontification after so much burbling. But maybe I’m spoiled–after the excellence of the recent Birthright and The Saviors here I was at a typically mid summer show, neither great nor awful. Playing upper middle class types the cast fulfills the two-dimensional material, and Stanley does better than that in the showiest role. (While Washington is a veteran of the cinematic techno-thrillers Tenet and The Creator he lacks the charisma of his dad Denzel, and his deviltry is toothless.) The busy data center of a set, a collaboration of scenic and costume designer Zoë Hurwitz, lighting designer Reza Behjat, sound designer Caroline Eng, video designer Yana Biryükova, and prop designer Samantha Shoffner, is fun but like the play itself monotonous. In a time of technological tumult Disruption isn’t disruptive enough.

The best ones have a “Whoa” or “Holy Shit” component to them.  The good ones are private jokes between the creator and their core fans.  The great ones tell you something more about the work, no matter the medium. 

We are in a golden age of Easter eggs.  Not Disney animators sneaking in a prurient image in a frame of an animated movie; more like bonus content.  There are so many great extras for modern artistic achievements – there are accompanying podcasts to a lot of media, DVD extras, online special content, interviews and outtakes intentionally leaking online, bonus websites – this is the era where if a creator has an extra idea that didn’t quite make the final cut, it can always live online and get found. 

More importantly, things are rewatched, restreamed, and zoomed in on now to an extent that 1990s filmmakers, writers and TV producers never could have dreamed of.  Let’s look at some of these favorite nested references of beloved works of fiction. 

Music 

Of course, we have to take a nod to classic albums backwards tracks like the “I bury Paul” nonsense at the trippy end of “Strawberry Fields Forever”; shouldn’t be that surprising from a playful and clever group like The Beatles. 

Speaking of which, Barclay James Harvest song “Titles” is just a list of Beatles song titles arranged to be almost an understandable narrative.  Is this an Easter Egg?  Maybe not, but it’s clever as fuck: 

Not to be outdone with a backwards track, Pink Floyd spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in the studio making The Wall and loaded up so many sonic treats.  But the backwards message in “Empty Spaces” is pretty damn strong: 

But when it comes to consistent musical Easter eggs, I’ve gotta hand it to Sting.  Look at this list of lyrical nods: 

• Sting “Love Is the Seventh Wave” has “Every Breath You Take” parody lines like “Every cake you bake, every leg you break” at the end. 

• “If you want to keep something precious” from “If You Love Somebody Set Them Free” comes back with the single from the next album on “We’ll Be Together.” 

• “Do I have to tell the story” and “It’s a big enough umbrella” from The Police’s “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” resurfaces on both The Police’s “O My God” and much later on Sting’s sneaky good “Seven Days”. 

Film 

Not sure if this is just “meta”, an “inside joke” or an Easter egg, but Mike Myers plays a music manager dubious of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” saying it’s not “the kind of song teenagers can crank up the volume in their car and bang their heads to” when that’s exactly what Myers did in Wayne’s World to reintroduce the song to a mass audience in the early 1990s. 

The Coen Brothers and Quentin Tarantino have legit fictional universes over the course of their filmographies. 

Tarantino leans into this strongly, particularly with the fake products.  Red Apple Cigarettes apparently appear in NINE of his movies, and Big Kahuna Burger is a presence in several movies and not just the slurped soda in Pulp Fiction. 

One of the most remarkable blitzkriegs of Easter eggs has to be the endless Coen Brothers references in Noah Hawley’s amazing five seasons of the Fargo TV series.   

In one early episode, a sporting-goods store is called Uli’s, after the nihilist from The Big Lebowski; later, Karl Weathers barricades a door with a bench in the exact sort of useless fashion Walter does in The Big Lebowski. There are even musical callbacks: Fargo uses “Just Dropped In,” “O Death” and “Danny Boy,” all strongly associated with The Big Lebowski, O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Miller’s Crossing, respectively. 

In another, a truck bears the name Treehorn, a reference to Jackie Treehorn from The Big Lebowski. 

Steven Spielberg and George Lucas were friends and collaborators who played a fun game of trading Easter eggs.  R2-D2 and C-3PO are hidden in hieroglyphics in Raiders of the Lost Ark. There’s a costumed Yoda in ET, while in The Phantom Menace the galactic senate features a delegation from a planet of ETs. 

If DVD extras count in what we’re doing, the funniest to me is what happens if you select the Hebrew language option on the Borat DVD.  Get ready for “You have been trapped, Jew!” 

TV 

We gotta give some credit to the producers of Lost for being the first hit show that seemed to be having a conversation with the internet.  With their understanding of how modern TV was unfolding, they know that people would obsessively rewatch TiVO recordings to try to solve mysteries.  “The numbers” are all over the place, you can see Dharma Initiative logos all over the place, and the mindfuck of Season 4’s time travel anomalies is nerd dessert. 

With the advent of the internet, novelty fan sites were great bonus content for television networks to augment their shows with and give something to hardcore fans.  The Pied Piper website from Silicon Valley had plenty of great nuggets for fans: https://web.archive.org/web/20210725124915/http://www.piedpiper.com/.   

But for my money, the Creed’s Thoughts blog from The Office was comedy gold – even just the nutball URL that Ryan set up for Creed to protect web users from whatever Creed wanted to pollute the internet with.  It’s like the even more Bizarro version of Larry King’s old USA Today columns: https://creedthoughtsgov.com/. 

As far as the shows themselves, not extras, two stand out above the rest.  In comedy, Arrested Development has so many self-referential running bits, it’s the ultimate rewatchable show.  Just think of “Her?”, “I’ve made a huge mistake”, Carl Weathers cheapness, Barry Zuckercorn jumping the shark, “there’s always money in the banana stand”, Ron Howard’s snarky comments about other narrators, there’s almost no end to it.  While you’re re-watching, make sure to catch blue smudges everywhere based on Tobias’ understudy stint with the Blue Man Group.  Jesus fucking Christ, it’s good. 

That’s only matched on the drama side by the huge degree of difficulty for Better Call Saul to retrofit absolutely everything in a prequel show to Breaking Bad which honors every little detail of the original series.  Characters, locations, throwaway lines and even tiny pieces of dialogue from Breaking Bad can suddenly take on new meaning when you see where they came from.  The BCS writers seemed like they were successfully completing a five-dimensional crossword puzzle. 

Books 

Books may be the original Easter-egg delivery system, because writers have been sneaking things past readers for a very long time. 

Kurt Vonnegut basically built his own little universe without ever bothering to announce it. His recurring science-fiction hack Kilgore Trout pops up in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, Slaughterhouse-Five, Breakfast of Champions, Timequake and elsewhere, sometimes as a major character and sometimes as a throwaway.  

Stephen King took the same basic idea and amped up the dial to eleven. His books constantly bump into one another, with characters, places and events from one story resurfacing somewhere else. Castle Rock, for instance, becomes a recurring fictional Maine town rather than merely the setting of one novel, while characters and references from The Stand, ‘Salem’s Lot, It, The Dark Tower and other books increasingly make King’s bibliography feel less like a collection of novels than one enormous, freaky neighborhood; Paul Sheldon from Misery grew up in the Derry neighborhood of IT. 

And then there’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne which was screwing around with the rules of fiction in the 18th century, long before anybody had invented the term Easter egg. The book (and the movie adaptation) are as mindfucky as even Charlie Kaufman’s Adaptation. 

My favorite, though, may be Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire. The book initially presents itself as a 999-line poem by the fictional John Shade, followed by commentary and an index from his supposedly scholarly editor, Charles Kinbote. Except Kinbote’s “footnotes” gradually take over the book where they dominate the pages with maybe just a couple remaining lines of “text.” 

That’s more than an Easter egg. Nabokov essentially hid the novel inside the gimmick. And to think that English was his second language might be the most mind-blowing thing about it. 

Answer: yes, mostly, with some renovation. Unlike the Harry Potter and Stranger Things plays, which embroider upon their well-known sources, Paranormal Activity eschews the series’ central conceit of spooky plots driven by home surveillance equipment. Which is all for the best–video is an excellent tool (as in Jonathan Spector’s Eureka Day and Birthright) but too much in a live environment can be fatiguing. And with the movies lacking the sorts of memorable characters who’ll be missed in the screen-to-stage translation the “ghost” (sorry) is clear for playwright Levi Holloway to do his own thing with the material, which he does…by way of his prior Broadway thriller, Grey House (2023).

Though always happy to see someone explore this genre on stage I was mixed on that one, which had a similar trajectory to the main stem. This time he simplifies a like scenario steeped in angst and guilt and children-related issues as he again focuses on a couple newly arrived at a foreboding home. Garrulous James (Travis A. Knight), who works in real estate, has left Chicago and relocated to London with his newlywed wife, Lou (Cher Álvarez). But unsteady Lou is unable to leave her traumatic past behind, and feels that she’s being tracked by an unseen presence. No amount of anti-psychotic meds can shake her seeming delusions–even if she were taking them and not dumping them into the houseplants, just one of a few secrets she’s hiding from her husband, who has a way of talking at her and not to her. That habit is a flashpoint between them, and it only worsens as the fire alarm mysteriously goes off, the TV mysteriously goes on, and so on up the ladder of genre staples. Adding to the tension are FaceTimed appearances by James’ meddling mother Carolanne (Shannon Cochran, a veteran of the original production of the great stage thriller Bug), who thinks Lou is a bad match for her coddled son as the couple hesitantly talks about parenting…but maybe it’s the other way around? In time a medium, Etheline (Eva Kaminsky), arrives, dispensing the show’s tagline, “Places aren’t haunted, people are.”

And let me tell you, by that time, my teen daughter and I, horror fans both, were. The initially benign manifestations escalate to a crescendo toward the end of the first act, with a great jump scare I don’t dare reveal. I’m not sure the show tops it, but it keeps coming close for two hours (and if you miss something hidden in the recesses of the darkened stage chances are a variation will appear). Director Felix Barrett is a veteran of immersive theater productions like Sleep No More, and my aging heart is relieved that this isn’t one of those, with grabbing hands or whatever popping out during the walkthrough. He keeps the action on the split-level set flowing smoothly, and the interpersonal dynamics are less cluttered than in Grey House, with a smaller, less starry cast fulfilling the script’s two-dimensional demands as relationships and religiosity are plumbed. The performance we’ve come to see, and it’s a corker, is the one put on by illusions designer Chris Fisher, of the Harry Potter and Stranger Things shows. It’s a feast of room-shaking frights from the bedroom to the bathroom, ably supported by Fly Davis (scenic and costume designer), Anna Watson (lighting designer), Gareth Fry (sound designer), and Luke Halls (video and projections design).

One might ask why an embattled couple at their wit’s end would move to rainy, foggy London for relief, and there are other nits to pick. I think, though, you’ll laugh at the show for a bit (Paranormal Activity the play is, let’s face it, a concept to take skeptically), laugh with it…then scream. I believe I saw the spirit of shock movie maestro William Castle up there, helping Fisher dispense the sorts of live gags and gimmicks that made House on Haunted Hill and The Tingler so memorable for Fifties audiences. Arriving in the dog days of summer, Paranormal Activity is a real howl.

The Saviors

For 14-year-old Michael (Ivan Howe) catechism is everything. The play observes him in his rituals, tidying up the sanctuary after mass in advance of a blizzard and chatting about the saints with his BFF Paul (Julius Rinzel). But Paul, a prankish sort given to off-color jokes and behavior, is more skeptical, and weary of Michael’s religiosity and clinginess. The storm, or, rather, a storm, arrives, in the form of Julian (Stanley Simons), a homeless, drug-addled drifter seeking shelter that only the rules-bending Paul, intrigued by the visitor, is willing to offer. Paul and Julian, who has his own ties to the church, converse, and in so doing the boy, resistant to the path Michael is following, is awakened to the larger world and its problems and complications. Anxious that Paul is pulling away from him Michael finds solace with Judy (Crystal Finn), the cheery middle-aged window who runs the church’s youth group (which numbers Michael as its only member). Judy’s son is an African missionary, which in Michael’s eyes makes her a kind of saint, a “church MVP.” But this saint, a sadly human one, has feet of clay.

Playwright Bubba Weiler and director Jack Serio had an award-nominated hit last season with the wrenching Well, I’ll Let You Go. Arranged as a series of two-handers across 90 intermissionless minutes this is a simpler but no less complex piece, as every member of the quartet is forced to address their convictions, resentments, and most painful feelings. “I keep thinking OK, what would Jesus do, but it never says,” Michael admits at one junction, facing the void that faith entails, as Paul wrestles with belief in God. The Atlantic’s last production, Indian Princesses, asked us to believe adult actresses as prepubescent girls, a heavy lift the play never overcame. But Howe and Rinzel are the real deal as the deeply conflicted teens, like watching my own and their friends squabble and make up, a torturous process we’ve all been through. The two of them are simply magnetic throughout, and handle the show’s heartbreak and humor with seeming ease.

Simons’ Playbill entry notes that both boys have more stage experience than him. The indie film actor is fine as Julian, a woebegone drifter raging against organized religion, which further sparks Paul’s nascent rebellion. But the twist Weiler knots for him is both obvious and unconvincing, and the spell the play casts over us dissipates when it leaves Paul and Michael. Faring better is Finn, a veteran stage actor, who is believably frazzled as a den mother type challenged and exasperated by Michael, who holds her in such impossibly high regard he wants her and not his parents to be his confirmation sponsor. But the material for the adults is lesser (and the first scene between Paul and Julian too darkly lit, eye-straining, for too long a time).

Before The Saviors begins we hear from the unseen parish bishop, whose voice booms across David Zinn’s truly immaculate set. He gives an upbeat talk about living with kindness and respect and standing up for and loving our neighbors, all elements of the good life that the play shows is difficult to actually live. It’s not a polemic, however, and it was refreshing to see a show about Catholic values and not church issues like abortion and child molestation. It took me back…and Howe and Rinzel transported me. Off Broadway audiences tend to be more reserved than Broadway ones and, dismayed that the two of them didn’t get a richly deserved standing ovation, I led one myself. What they’re doing up there, creating achingly vulnerable stage magic, is fantastic, and despite a few flaws they bring The Saviors to an absolutely devastating conclusion. Everybody on their feet!

Spector begins in 2006, a few weeks after six young Americans about to graduate college have returned, giddy, refreshed, and gossipy from an educational, and eye-opening, Birthright heritage trip to Israel, an experience open to all Jews. Alona (Molly Ranson), who’d fallen for an IDF soldier, plans to return, but a concerned Chaya (Zoë Winters) has gotten the group together to convince her otherwise lest Alona upend her life. (Chaya, in whose home outside D.C. the play unfolds, is the unofficial, and as we will see sometimes unwelcome, mother hen of her peers.) All have prospects of their own: the politics-obsessed Noah (Eli Gelb) has launched one of those new-fangled “blogs” at the dawn of social media. (Changing tech is how Spector connotes changing times throughout.) Izzy (Molly Bernard) is contemplating a law degree. Lev (Hale Appleman) is just contemplating, his head filled with the teachings of Jewish scholars and considering rabbinical school. Everyone has some notion of what to do next except Emerson (Nate Mann), who is drowning his sorrows a little too liberally now that his bandmates have kicked him out of their promising indie act. Spector’s dialogue adroitly captures the strain of a thrown-together group, united mostly by a life-changing experience, trying to keep it light as tensions surface. (When they do it’s into the backyard hot tub they go, as Chaya’s mom Deborah, a cheerful busy body played by Liz Larsen, pops up to crack wise.)

In Act II the group reconvenes a decade later, eagerly awaiting the election of America’s first woman president. Needless to say we’re still waiting, as cracks turn to fissures in that hopeful moment. Alona is set to marry an Israeli, but the rehearsal dinner was marred when one of her uncles said that a vote for Hillary was akin to a vote for an ayatollah. From there everything tumbles, as the group confronts the death of family members, the fallout from a painful divorce, and the dashing of Obama-era dreams. Chaya and Izzy, who find themselves divided over support for Israel in their professional and personal lives (both are enmeshed in politics) skirmish.

David Bengali’s projections were a highlight of Eureka Day, conveying its most outrageous scene. Their use here is initially more subtle until they explode in the third act, set after the Hamas massacre in 2024. One character has died, making the clash between Chaya and Izzy all the more fraught. Everyone else goes to their phones, bringing up evidence of antisemitism, ethnic cleansing in Gaza, the abuses of Netanyahu, and the horrors of Hamas in a dizzying cascade. It would all go slack, however, a collection of position papers, if we weren’t fully invested in these people, and if Spector stacked the deck in favor of any one position. He doesn’t.  The agony of “purity tests” administered by the rising generation is a particular bone of contention for Chaya, who has felt their sting, but Spector gives us the bad news straight. The air explodes, then clears.

What a rich show this is, directed with a sure hand by Teddy Bergman. It had to have taken a lot of shaping to get this right, and everyone played their part to get it to the finish line, as moving an ending as I have seen in its sorrows and hopes. The design is immaculate, with scenic designer Scott Pask making changes to the house over twenty years, Natasha Katz wringing laughs from a backyard light with a motion sensor in the second act, and skilled gradations in looks and styles from Clint Ramos (costumes), Robert Pickens (hair), and Nikoletta Skarlatos (makeup).

As for the ensemble, sublime, all of them, in their deeply flawed, deeply felt humanity: Winters (from Succession, keeping everyone else on their toes while not trying to lose her emotional equilibrium); Bernard (a worthy opponent always spoiling for a fight for her causes); Ranson (who knows the terrain from the equally epic Prayer for the French Republic, searing in her divided loyalties); Gelb (a Stereophonic alum with a yen for Chaya as he bumblingly tries to make peace); Appleman (charismatic, enigmatic); Mann (deftly handling a major third act change); and Larsen (finding something radiant in what looks to be mom shtick). I’m sure this play will have a vibrant afterlife once this production closes in late August, so whether now or in the future anyone concerned with one of the most pressing issues of our time should be sure to seek out Birthright, which covers 2,000 years of Jewish history and asks a plaintive question: “How the fuck did we get here?”

This had to happen and I’m glad it did.  From a personal standpoint, this completes my collection of The Bongos and Bongos-related items on CD.  It’s an album that I’ve enjoyed immensely over the years, since I first bought it at Pier Platters in Hoboken in the ’80’s.  My copy is well-worn, having been played frequently (especially by my then-girlfriend, rest her soul) and it’s been a long time waiting for a clean, digital-age edition to finally be available.  I’m also happy for James and Richard, as these songs are beloved by all who know them and they deserve to be heard again (and hopefully embraced by new, younger fans).  As a collector, I really enjoyed the liner notes that accompany the package and tell the story of the album’s evolution, which add up to youthful exuberance.  But enough opining – here are my takeaways:

“I’ve Got A Secret” is still one of my favorite songs; I’ve seen Richard perform this numerous times, including a blistering version done by The Bongos at Maxwell’s in autumn, 2009.  It’s as catchy a song as one could ever hope for or desire to write – simple, straightforward, hooky and melodic; pop perfection.  And, truth be told, even I still do it on occasion in my acoustic set.  This always screamed “radio single”!

“Flew A Falcon”, which many know from Mr. Barone’s majestic 1987 Cool Blue Halo live album makes its original appearance here.  A confessional of sorts, it’s dramatic, eloquent and mysterious, which makes it all the more enjoyable.

“My Sin” rocks along in a powerhouse fashion – four on the floor steady rhythm that kicks and has you stomping your foot along in time.

“Five Years Old” is a liquid, time shifting piece with Richard’s impassioned vocal delivery.

“Lost Like Me” – the closest to a “traditional” Bongos track on Richard’s side.  I’ve often wondered what this would have sounded like if it had been part of the Cool Blue Halo set, but that’s just personal conjecture.

“Jacob’s Ladder” is an instrumental and is very much of its time, which is what makes it so much fun.  Hypnotic grooves abound!

“Time Will Tell” is James at his pop mastery best; there are so many elements to this wonderful, warm moment; acoustic guitars, a cheerful keyboard frame and nifty harmonica punches.

“Dizzy” is, indeed, the old Tommy Roe hit from the ’60’s and while I wasn’t crazy about the original, James’ delivery feels much more personal – the update sound is probably why I would only listen to this version.

“Angel In My Pocket” is frenetic, taut and definitely has the feel of a “Bongos” track, but it carries you off at 100 miles an hour, which I love, because it’s a jolt.  The guitar figures are absolutely stellar.

“Jamais” is my other favorite on James’ side.  Its quirkiness wrapped in melody is, again, perfection.

“No One Has To Know” is simply beautiful; it’s a perfect ending to this collection.

I’ll bypass the bonus tracks because I want to focus on the original album.  Having said that, this is still a triumphant moment by two gifted and compelling songwriters/musicians.  I think Nuts and Bolts has greater poignancy for me today to listen to in one sitting because of time having passed and it, confessedly, has brought up so many emotions from then to now.  Which says this album still does its job – to move you; make you think – make you feel.

Even forty-plus years later, that’s quite a feat.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED – essential

Nuts and Bolts is currently available (again)

https://iconoclassicrecords.com/album/nuts-bolts/

I always think of an old Albert Brooks observation: people now spend more time looking at box office grosses and researching whether to see a movie than the movie itself would take. At some point, you just have to say it’s two hours and five bucks, roll the dice. 

The attention we naturally give in a theater where nothing but the screen is visible is in itself a great experience – no matter the crowd size.  There’s nothing better than seeing a great comedy or horror picture in a full theater.  Conversely, catching a matinee with practically nobody else in there is a unique experience that feels like getting away with something.  

At home, things are completely different. Flipping off the TV or changing channels is constantly on the table. Phones ring, doors knock, microwave beeps, dogs or children need something.  It’s hard to really focus on a movie at home, and too easy to turn it off.  

So, walking out is definitely a thing.  And how early you walk out is important. Skipping out at the beginning in a multiplex to see something else is a smart move if you can tell you’re not gonna like it. But quitting near the end when you just can’t take it anymore?  Ouch.  

Over the years, I’ve walked out of movies for noble reasons, ridiculous reasons, technical reasons, and at least once because I was 10 years old, and there was a video game in the lobby.

Kingpin (1996) – Wasn’t my idea to walk out, I was seeing it with my mom and aunt. Mom wasn’t particularly conservative about culture but I think it was the scene with landlady that pushed her over the line. I ended up going back to see it within a couple of days without family.  

The Addams Family (1991) – I was with the same aunt from viewing Kingpin; we weren’t offended by anything in this one, though we weren’t amused by it either. That movie was about tone, and it didn’t get it. We looked at each other with 10 minutes left, both frowning and decided to call time of death on the afternoon at the movies.  

The Lemon Sisters (1990) – This walkout was kind of accidental. The movie hung together so poorly that there was no sense of where we were in the story. So I went to go to the bathroom thinking there was 20-30 minutes left.  Upon leaving the restroom, my girlfriend was there in the lobby with everyone else. She said the movie just kind of ended.  

The Replacement Killers (1998) – A somber Chow Yun Fat action movie with Mira Sorvino in it for something. I think we quit about 30 bored minutes in so we could see something else. We slipped into Sphere which wasn’t great but still an upgrade.  

Holmes & Watson (2018) – This was bad from the start. It really hurt as a huge Ferrell, Anchorman, Talladega Nights guy but I just felt embarrassed to be in the theater. I don’t think I even got to another movie in that movieplex, there was a barbecue place nearby, and that was good enough.  

Laserblast (1978) – By far the worst movie on this list, print ads made it seem like a Star Wars ripoff, if only. Just low budget small town desert setting confusion. My sister took me in her Pinto, and we left soon after.  The Ford Pinto was the cherry on the 70s sundae.

Don Juan Demarco (1994) – Totally different circumstances, there were technical difficulties there with a high-pitched squeak, which sounded exactly like a tea kettle. In all of his scenes, it seemed like Marlon Brando was actually listening to a tea kettle boil over and responding to it. We got our money back at the box office window, and there was no point to see anything else because it could not have been as funny as doing Brando impressions of him listing various flavors of tea, which we did for the next three hours 

U-Turn (1997) – Somehow, Oliver Stone made lurid violence completely boring. I was solo for this one, and I know I left early because it was before it even ran into whatever incest storyline was apparently in there.   

Bean (1997) – Something that I kind of liked as a light, PBS comedy that felt like a comic strip on television, while on the big screen was way too loud and mugging.  Just a garden-variety feeling of: I gotta get out of here, this is embarrassing.   

Man in the Moon (1999) – Maybe the best movie I’ve walked out of, I liked it a little more watching on the small screen at home. With 15 minutes left, I walked out only because I had to pee, but while I was at the urinal, I was reminding myself how annoyed I was by all of the stilted biopic dialogue and just walked to my car.  

The Robe (1953) – I was at a kids birthday party around age 10 and his very religious family took the whole group to see this crucifixion of Jesus in a “revival”. Looking back, I still wonder: what the fuck were they thinking, taking a bunch of other people’s kids to see a crucifixion movie?  The same question my mom angrily asked the next day. About 75 minutes into this one, I found a video game console in the lobby. Great choice by me. 

Funny About Love (1990) – A lame Gene Wilder movie I was seeing with my girlfriend in Indiana on a great cross country trip. The only thing I remember about it was a weird cameo from the Knicks’ Patrick Ewing.  What really hurt was when we were walking out I saw that another theater in the multiplex was showing Goodfellas, which had just come out and I had not seen yet. I am not normally a volatile boyfriend, but I was pissed    

The Real McCoy (1993) – So that’s one in Montana with my friend Steve, and we instantly found the jewel heist setup really boring filmmaking. Another early rip cord to switch to another movie, which was the Stephen King adaptation Needful Things, which was a lateral move.  

Blues Brothers 2000 (1998) – I loved the original so much but I imagine this was just because I hated the drop off. The music was still OK but all of the timing was off, and Macaulay Culkin is a junior Blues Brother?  I distinctly remember, leaving during the “Funky Nassau” number, despite my fandom of Paul Shaffer.  

Suicide Squad (2016) – We took my girlfriend’s son Edward and his friends to this for a birthday party; how bad could this superhero movie be?  I wasn’t gonna pull the group out of this, but I left a little over halfway in and just took a walk instead. Pointless. To this day, Edward is impressed that I walked out of a movie.

Sometimes I love falling asleep to one of these if I’ve seen it a bunch of times; I find the talking soothing and the lack of explosions easy to sleep with. But when I’m paying attention outside of the bedroom, these conversation films are more compelling to me than most heist films, road trip pictures, action comedies, horror movies, and certainly the worst of the superhero-saving-the-world movies.

What IS a “People Talking in Rooms” Movie, Exactly?

It’s not as easy to pin down as one might think. Yes, a courtroom drama is a lot of talking but it doesn’t qualify. When you think about it, rom-coms are two people doing a lot of talking, but the action and tension is what they’re not talking about.

Great scenery or getting outside of rooms most of the time is enough to bump from this category. Before Sunrise is both a rom-com and largely outdoors. Office Space is indoors but the plot revolves around Peter and co.’s actions instead of words. Even the interior world of Searching for Bobby Fischer is tempting, but chess is the engine as much as the talking (though I’m gonna have to write about that one soon).

I guess that’s where I’m defining this: The actions or interactions or conflict between characters in these movies are about what they say, not what they do.

Other made-up definitions here:

• Dialogue is the engine of the story.
• The important scenes occur in a limited number of interior spaces.
• Characters change each other’s minds more often than they change the physical world.
• Tension comes from persuasion, revelation, deception, confession, negotiation, or argument.
• If you removed the conversations, there’d be almost no movie left.

Who Coined the Term?

Filmmaker Mickey Reece has described his own style as “people talking in rooms,” and some critics have picked up the phrase. I’ve heard it said on a couple of podcasts, liked it, so I’m stealing it here. So, if you like the category, you can go ahead and start saying that I made it up if you need to attribute it to somebody.

So, strap in for some low-budget yet high-stakes drama. And yes, lots of these are gonna end up as plays. By the way, I’m trying to limit to one per director and screenwriter, otherwise we’d have about 8-to-12 David Mamet movies here. Apologies to 12 Angry Men, I went with Network for a Sidney Lumet masterpiece.

I’m not making this a countdown because it’s not science, I don’t have a scoring system, and most of all, I respect you enough not to pull a clickbait or longer-engagement gimmick on you. And speaking of no gimmicks – here we go:

1 – Michael Clayton
So many people are outright schooling each other just through conversation: Michael to the hit-and-run driver, Arthur’s episode in deposition, Arthur telling Michael he fucked up and he’s a bag man, Tilda Swinton ordering a murder, lots of people telling Michael the trouble he’s in (his boss, his mob creditor, his cop brother, his poker buddies). Every conversation is a hammer.
Signature Conversation: Michael winning in the end by taping a conversation. “I’m not the guy you kill. I’m the guy you buy! Are you so fucking blind that you don’t even see what I am? I sold out Arthur for 80 grand. I’m your easiest problem and you’re gonna kill me?”

2 – Margin Call
Please tell me you’ve seen this movie. If you haven’t and you’re reading this, it’s for you. The credit default swap disaster financial crisis of the late 2000s explained, but if you don’t get it, that doesn’t even matter. This is all about power dynamics in every conversation. The only “action” is selling toxic assets over the phone. Jeremy Irons, Kevin Spacey (I know), Stanley Tucci and others bringing the heat.
Signature Conversation: I love the Tucci bridge-building monologue and Spacey’s pep-talks but Jeremy Irons in the boardroom is gold. “ There are three ways to make a living in this business: be first, be smarter, or cheat.”

3 – The Insider
Not only is this smart people talking in rooms but about 50% of that is smart people talking on phones. Russell Crowe is great and on a low simmer the whole time but Al Pacino is eating everybody’s lunch in every conversation.
Signature Conversation: The CBS debates with the legal department … [chef’s kiss]. “ And Jeffrey Wigand, who’s out on a limb, does he go on television and tell the truth? Yes. Is it newsworthy? Yes. Are we gonna air it? Of course not. Why? Because he’s not telling the truth? No. Because he is telling the truth. That’s why we’re not going to air it. And the more truth he tells, the worse it gets! ”

4 – The Big Kahuna
An indie gem of a 3-hander featuring Danny DeVito, Peter Facinelli, and Kevin Spacey (I promise, his second-to-last appearance here). These three salesmen sell industrial lubricants and talk about life, about when/how to make their pitch, and then about how this kid blew it by proselytizing instead of selling. Maybe the least known movie here but the best example of what I’m talking about.
Signature Conversation: DeVito’s character defends Larry then turns the holier-than-thou kid on his head. “ The question is do you have any character at all? And if you want my honest opinion, Bob, you do not, for the simple reason that you don’t regret anything yet. I’m saying you’ve already done plenty of things to regret. You just don’t know what they are. ”

5 – Glengarry Glen Ross
Our list goes from the soft sell of The Big Kahuna to the hard sell of Glengarry. The play is maybe as good as any I can think of, and each actor gets their turn to act the crap out of their scenes. But then they added the most iconic talking just for the movie, the Alec Baldwin reading of the riot act and the new rules for the sales contest. This is toxic masculinity failing in front of our eyes and talking us through all of it. Toughest part is that Jack Lemmon (Shelly) will make you as sad as Willy Loman.
Signature Conversation: I could have picked any scene, but Alec Baldwin turns this movie up to 10 right away with the stakes and it stays there. “These are the new leads. These are the Glengarry leads. And to you they’re gold, and you don’t get them. Why? Because to give them to you is just throwing them away. They’re for closers. I’d wish you all good luck, but you wouldn’t know what to do with it if you got it. ”

6 – Network
World-class talking (William Holden, Faye Dunaway, Beatrice Straight) and shouting (Peter Finch, Robert Duvall) and Ned Beatty doing both. It’s a cliche to say this script and movie are “prescient” about reality TV, modern media, and late-stage capitalism, but that doesn’t make it untrue. Everything you need to know about how the world works is said from one character to another.
Signature Conversation: The whole movie changes when mad prophet Howard Beale runs into Ned Beatty’s corporate education and slapdown. “There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today.”

7 – Six Degrees of Separation
Another stage adaptation, perhaps I should just see more plays and fewer movies. Will Smith was never as talky as this again. So many people are being convinced of things in every interchange, not just Paul’s lies. There’s an Inception level of conversations recalling conversations which recall other conversations.
Signature Conversation: Ouisa stopping the characters and the audience from thinking social chatter is so charming. “And we become these human jukeboxes spitting out these anecdotes to dine out on like we’re doing right now. Well, I will not turn him into an anecdote; it was an experience. How do we hold onto the experience?”

8 – Spotlight
Maybe the talkiest Best Picture to ever win an Oscar. This movie is almost a magic trick how it showed reporters reading, interviewing, and writing and is still compelling. Mark Ruffalo is the only guy who even raises his voice. Michael Keaton belongs in the People Talking in Rooms fictional Hall of Fame.
Signature Conversation: This movie goes or slows down depending on Robby (Keaton) pressing the gas or the brakes. “ We’ve got two stories here: a story about degenerate clergy, and a story about a bunch of lawyers turning child abuse into a cottage industry. Which story do you want us to write? Because we’re writing one of them.”

9 – The Odd Couple
Jokes are talking, too. There are suicide threats, divorce, sincere apologies and yet it’s one of the funniest plays and movies of all time. I’m just wondering if Oscar’s late-movie silent treatment of Felix still counts in this category.
Signature Conversation: The back-and-forth arguments are great, but when Walter Matthau is more sad and frustrated than angry is where it’s not all banter but actual friendship. “You leave me little notes on my pillow. Told you 158 times I can’t stand little notes on my pillow. “We’re all out of cornflakes. F.U.” Took me three hours to figure out F.U. was Felix Unger!”

10 – Carnage
Two sets of parents arguing about responsibility for their sons’ argument at school. Directed by Roman Polanski – good God this list has been problematic behind the scenes. All four leads (Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly, Kate Winslett, Christoph Waltz) are world class talking actors. Particularly Waltz, who talks in rooms better than anyone in Inglourious Basterds. The only action really taken here is dropping his BlackBerry into water, which ironically promotes more conversation.
Signature Conversation: Finally, late in the film when people stop being polite and start getting real; Kate Winslet lets it fly. “We come over here to work things out with them and they, they insult us, they browbeat us, they lecture us about being good citizens of the world! I am glad our son kicked the shit out of your son and I wipe my ass with your human rights!”

11 – The Spanish Prisoner
Maybe it’s not the David Mamet directed movie you would have thought; I hated leaving State and Main off the list, but too many things actually happen in that one. A feature-length movie with an elaborate con and twisted plot, it’s all done with talking. Steve Martin and Campbell Scott say plenty in their elliptical conversations around each other, but it’s Ricky Jay’s character who has the wisdom of a fortune cookie in every line.
Signature Conversation: The con artist is a misdirection artist, pointing out someone else for what HE’s doing. “If they are indebted to you morally but not legally, my experience is they will give you nothing, and they will begin to act cruelly toward you.”

12 – All The President’s Men
Seems weird to have this well below Spotlight when the Watergate movie was the O.G. of reporters doing their work movies. Almost every interview Woodward and Bernstein do is a master class in how to break down somebody’s defenses. And then the chatter among the editors at The Washington Post are perfect depictions how professionals who are great at their jobs talk to each other.
Signature Conversation: These are great lines from Ben Bradlee but also the point where the editors start believing in their young reporters. “He really said that about Mrs. Graham? [nods] Well, I’d cut the words “her tit” and print it. [“Why?”] This is a family newspaper.”

13 – The Big Chill
Great, deep cast, and while there are group talking scenes, I think every conceivable pair of characters each have their own one-on-one conversation. Maybe it’s a little dated or on the nose about the fade of the Sixties but it’s damn good. Come for the dancing around the kitchen making salads to Motown songs, stay for the discussions. There is another Lawrence Kasdan talking movie I need to advocate for: Mumford, check it out.
Signature Conversation: Looking back on this one years later, I’m agreeing most with the most cynical character. “I don’t know anyone who could get through the day without two or three juicy rationalizations. They’re more important than sex.” “Ah, come on. Nothing’s more important than sex.” “Oh yeah? Ever gone a week without a rationalization?”

14 – Carnal Knowledge
A zag from me in Mike Nichols catalog. Yes, we all know Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is about the most uncomfortable conversations that people have ever had to overhear on film, and the film turns on the innocents not being that innocent. But I gotta ride for Carnal Knowledge which is sexist Jack Nicholson discussing sex and sexist ideas with his slightly less sexist buddy Art Garfunkel. Amazing talking movie because of how long the talking scenes are. Even in the weird ending, Jack’s character has scripted what his prostitute says back to him.
Signature Conversation: At the end of a rough talk between Ann-Margaret and Jack about how they don’t talk, it all eventually erupts. “I need a life.” “Get a job!” “I don’t want a job! I want you.” “I’m taken, by me!”

15 – The Hateful Eight
With the late action in this one it might seem like I violated my rule. But if you skip the third hour, this is two great hours of talking. Lots of Tarantino movie charm is just talking about something mundane; yes, in something like Pulp Fiction you’ll get a great riff about what to call burgers in Europe, but it’s only two minutes later that Sam Jackson is going to fire a huge gun. This is almost like murder mystery chatter with gathered suspects, like in Agatha Christie or Knives Out.
Signature Conversation: Tim Roth’s character almost argues against frontier justice (the point of the movie) by accident “The man who pulls the lever that breaks your neck will be a dispassionate man. And that dispassion is the very essence of justice. For justice delivered without dispassion is always in danger of not being justice.”

16 – The Queen
Not only is this all talking, but I don’t think anybody ever raises their voice. Just as Peter Morgan went on to make one of the two best Talking In Rooms television series ever (The Crown and the other being The West Wing). The British royals never disappoint from keeping their voices down, even in life and death situations. We’ve been focusing on the talking, but not very much about the rooms in these movies; it’s hard to beat Buckingham Palace and the castle at Balmoral for quality drawing rooms.
Signature Conversation: The Queen doesn’t read the room properly for the first 80% of this film, evidenced by quotes like this. “I doubt there is anyone who knows the British people more than I do, Mr. Blair, nor who has greater faith in their wisdom and judgement. And it is my belief that they will any moment reject this… this ‘mood’.”

17 – My Dinner With Andre
Maybe it’s unfair to omit indie talkfests like Coffee & Cigarettes or Smoke off the list and keep this, but at least this dinner is just two people the whole time, Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn. They achieved something almost inconceivable here, Andre is the outside-the-box guy while Shawn more prosaic New Yorker, they argue over the nature of existence and yet seem like real friends who genuinely want to hear what the other wants to say.
Signature Conversation: Andre Gregory is supposed to be the more intellectual of the two, but Wallace Shawn seems to make the better points. “I’m looking for more comfort because the world is very abrasive. I mean, I’m trying to protect myself because, really, there’s these abrasive beatings to be avoided everywhere you look!”

18 – In The Loop
We shouldn’t ignore comedy and this one, like the series it was based on (In The Thick Of It) and the one it inspired (Veep) it’s the fastest comedy you’re ever gonna see. Yes, it’s prime political satire. But it also raises a special kind of talking, swearing, to an absolute art form.
Signature Conversation: As great as the Veep actors are, nobody swears better and dresses somebody down better than Peter Capaldi in this movie. “Within your ‘purview’? Where do you think you are, some fucking regency costume drama? This is a government department, not some fucking Jane fucking Austen novel! Allow me to pop a jaunty little bonnet on your purview and ram it up your shitter with a lubricated horse cock!”

19 – The Social Network
David Fincher films are indeed visual feasts but let’s face it, this movie is mostly talking in rooms. Yes, there’s a lot of coding and typing but somehow they keep speaking while they’re writing software; something I’ve never been able to pull off. Zuckerberg is detached and seems to be talking because he loves the sound of his own voice, while everybody else is speaking to change somebody’s mind.
Signature Conversation: Sean Parker seducing Mark Zuckerberg, at least in the movie version, is where everything changes. “A million dollars isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? A billion.”

20 – Remains of the Day
Leave it to the English to make the perfect movie about things that go unsaid. There’s plenty of intelligent talking, and there aren’t many better than Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson at this sort of thing; but all of the talking is about everything except what they’re feeling.
Signature Conversation: Finally, Miss Kenton lays all of her cards out on the table and Stevens STILL can’t be honest with her or himself. “I am a coward. I’m frightened of leaving and that’s the truth. All I see out in the world is loneliness and it frightens me. That’s all my high principles are worth, Mr. Stevens. I’m ashamed of myself.” “Miss Kenton, you mean a great deal to this house. You’re extremely important to this house. Miss Kenton.”

It’s the seemingly endless band names and song names with “cute”, “funny” or “anti-establishment” capitalization and spacing.

I’m sure without prompting that you can think of 5-10 examples I didn’t include. Lower-case, removing spaces, numbers inside words, special characters.

I can’t decide if I’m annoyed by the practice or simply bored by it.

The more important question is: Why do artists do this? What’s being gained here?

Do people think this makes them interesting? Are they sticking it to “the man” and “Big Grammar”?

Period.

Recently, I reviewed RAYE’s new album “THIS ALBUM MAY CONTAIN HOPE.” with all caps then extra period. The same for all of the songs, e.g. “I WILL OVERCOME.”

Writing that review made my AI-assisted spell-check and proofing tools overheat. Yes, it became a little tedious over the course of that article; but that’s just a mildly annoying writer’s problem.

Artists should have artistic reasons for their decisions. I’m not saying they need to be brilliant reasons, just reasons. “Wouldn’t it be cool if we called our album ‘lowERcase’?” is not a reason.

Maybe the first writers, artists, and musicians to trade on offbeat punctuation or capitalization were proving a point – and it was saying something. But now???

When There Was a Point

E.E. Cummings used lower case for effect in his poetry, then his publisher listed his name as “e.e. cummings” on a couple of titles against his wishes. Singer K.D. Lang preferred the lower case “k.d. lang” stating that she was a fan of “E.E. Cummings” who’s lower-case was a false premise – so, then we’re off to the imitative races.

Prince moved to a symbol for a reason – a dispute with his record company; and it was newsworthy for about two weeks as setups to bad comedian punchlines.

But the artists copying the artists who copied the artists who were copying those original artists are treading in some pretty tired waters.

Yes, copycats are a part of every art form:

• Faux Tarantino dialogue about hamburgers
• Delay pedals as shorthand for mood after U2 perfected it
• Auto-tune after T-Pain
• Found footage movies after Blair Witch Project
• Mockumentary interviews after Waiting for Guffman.
• Undisciplined meth-head run-on sentences after Jack Keruoac.

A wise man could have said, “Don’t borrow the artifact if you don’t understand the impulse that created it.”

Think Before You Misspell

The practice of being unfettered by correct spelling or capitalization would be more convincing if half the industry weren’t doing the exact same thing.

And while I’m trying to give advice to bands and authors who are not reading this, the practice is a terrible unforced error in the modern marketplace. Making your artist’s name, album title, or songs unsearchable in lots of popular search algorithms can reduce fans’ odds of finding you. Hope it was worth it.

Who are these bands rebelling against? Apple Music? The Chicago Style Manual?

My Only Unusually Titled Experience

One of my favorite collaborators has been Spud Davenport in our musical project, Leaders In The Clubhouse. He was adamant that our song be titled ‘LawnChairs’ instead of ‘Lawn Chairs.’ I never completely understood the reasoning, but I also didn’t think it mattered much.

When reviewers occasionally wrote it as two words, I just couldn’t bring myself to care. If someone liked the song enough to mention it, that seemed like the important part.

My bigger artistic style regrets were swearing for little to no reason in a couple of early songs I recorded. Did that make us edgy? Or did it just make us go through a pointless hassle of putting an “Explicit Content” label on the record?

Conventional Can Be the Most Unconventional Move

The artists and thinkers I admire most often looked remarkably conventional on the surface.

Joseph Campbell and Tom Wolfe are heroes of mine, and partially because they proved the most revolutionary can do their thing under the cover of looking totally conventional. They didn’t need eccentric branding, or visual gimmicks to signal originality. The work did that for them.

I hate to sound like a defender of conventional thinking – and I’m not. I’m defending convention, not conventional thinking. The more buttoned-down types usually are the ones that last longer; normalcy is a Trojan horse for revolutionary art.

If somebody wants to write or record something outside of the mainstream, save it for the actual art instead of the punctuation.