Passages

[hearthesilence]

Alf Clausen, best-known for composing the music for The Simpsons.

Clausen once explained his musical process on the series: “The basic premise of this whole series is the joke, and the jokes come rapid-fire. An old bandleader friend of mine once told me, ‘You can’t vaudeville vaudeville,’ meaning the joke is much funnier if you play the real situation as opposed to playing the music funny. You pull the audience into the reality of the situation. If you try to ‘Mickey Mouse’ it, or play the comedy, you’re already tipping your hand. So you try to play the reality of the situation as much as you can.”

[colinr0380]

Loretta Swit (Hot Lips Houlihan)

Also great as part of the main foursome in the bizarre mid-70s mash-up of Satanism, paranoia thriller and car-chase actioner Race With The Devil. (I always like Cox's comment in that Moviedrome introduction that "if Howard's End had been made in 1975, it would have had a car chase in it"!)

[GaryC]

Yuri Sokol, Ukrainian-born Australian cinematographer, aged 87. Amongst others, he shot several of Paul Cox's best-known films.

[brundlefly]

Corman collaborator and Terminator instigator Frances Doel.

[Buttery Jeb]

Jonathan Joss, the voice of King of the Hill's John Redcorn and Parks and Recreation's Chief Ken Hotate.

[domino harvey]

That’s a wild article. He had some great line readings as John Redcorn. Had no idea the voice of Dale also died

[Never Cursed]

Joss' husband makes a statement describing the shooting as a homophobic hate crime (statement NSFW).

Absolutely disgusting turn of events.

[hearthesilence]

That’s a wild article. He had some great line readings as John Redcorn.

Yup.

[hearthesilence]

Enzo Staiola. He played most famously, at the age of eight, the role of Bruno Ricci in Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves. Also appeared in several other films including The Barefoot Contessa before growing up to be a mathematics teacher.

[ellipsis7]

Enzo Staiola. He played most famously, at the age of eight, the role of Bruno Ricci in Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves. Also appeared in several other films including The Barefoot Contessa before growing up to be a mathematics teacher.

Morto Enzo Staiola, il bambino scelto da Vittorio De Sica per “Ladri di Biciclette”. Aveva 85 anni. Non era un attore professionista: dopo il ruolo di Bruno nel capolavoro del neorealismo aveva insegnato matematica e lavorato al catasto.

[Sloper]

One of the all-time great child performances - I've remembered the name Enzo Staiola ever since seeing Bicycle Thieves as a teenager, whereas I'm sorry to say I always have to look up Lamberto Maggiorani. So much of the emotional weight of the film is in how Bruno looks at his dad, and Staiola puts Margaret O'Brien levels of intense and complex emotion into those looks.

[Matt]

Edmund White, novelist, memoirist, critic. A titan of gay literature, but surprisingly none of his works have ever been adapted for film or TV.

[hearthesilence]

Bob Andrews, the keyboardist and founding member of U.K. pub-rock band Brinsley Schwarz, and later a member of Graham Parker and the Rumour. He passed away on June 5, at age 75, at his home in Taos, New Mexico, from cancer. Brinsley Schwarz was good - pretty important as well - but Parker and the Rumour were even better. Judd Apatow made them a key part of This Is 40, as part of a joke about aging, but they were indeed an incredible group and for about five years (circa 1975-1980) one of the best in rock music. Three of their albums - Howlin' Wind, Heat Treatment, Squeezing Out Sparks - are among the greatest from that era, and the live documents that survive - promo albums like Live At Marble Arch and Live Sparks or the Rockpalast television appearances - are amazing. (Strangely the one live album that was actually a commercial release, The Parkerilla, is very underwhelming.)

[martin]

Christian Braad Thomsen (1940-2025) Danmarks Radio obituary (Danish language)
Danish filmmaker, critic and writer. Some of his documentaries have had international Blu-ray releases: His Fassbinder documentary was on one of the Arrow blu-rays, and his Karen Blixen doc was a supplement on Criterion’s Babette’s Feast. He has also recorded a commentary track for Criterion’s Lola that seems to be pretty well liked by cinephiles.

He has written a lot of books on films. I have five of his books and my favourite is probably the Fassbinder book followed his book on Danish auteurs. He lived with the Danish experimental filmmaker/writer/artist Jytte Rex for 3 or 4 decades (or more), and his writing on her oeuvre is the most thorough currently available.

But first and foremot he was a critic: Always very vocal about what was going on in the world of cinema, like when Lars von Trier mentioned Hitler at the Cannes Melancholia Press conference (Thomsen defended Trier in the Danish press at the time).

[hearthesilence]

The Film-Makers’ Cooperative mourns the loss of one of the most important members of our community, the brilliant FLO JACOBS (1924–2025). A trailblazing filmmaker and multimedia artist, Flo and her partner of over half-a-century, the great Ken Jacobs, profoundly shaped and forever changed the landscape of American avant-garde cinema. Flo, we are forever indebted to your contributions to this art form, and to the organization, movement, and community that is the NEW AMERICAN CINEMA.

[Never Cursed]

Pippa Scott, at the age of 90. Best known as John Wayne's extremely ill-fated niece Lucy in The Searchers (her first film role), Pegeen in Auntie Mame, one of George C. Scott's lovers in Petulia, and as the lost first wife in Twilight Zone episode "The Trouble with Templeton." She was not, however, the last surviving billed actor in The Searchers, as Vera Miles, Patrick Wayne, and Lana Wood are still with us.

[Gregory]

Czech cinematorapher Vladimír Smutný (Kola, The Painted Bird)

Polish actor Ewa Dałkowska (Without Anesthesia, Korczak)

[hearthesilence]

Pippa Scott, at the age of 90. Best known as John Wayne's extremely ill-fated niece Lucy in The Searchers...

Immediately bringing to mind Ethan Edwards screaming "What do you want me to do? Draw you a picture?"

[hearthesilence]

Sly Stone who made an incalculable impact on popular music through Sly & The Family Stone.

[FrauBlucher]

Wow. I wasn't aware he was still with us

[Matt]

He had been extremely reclusive (and troubled) for decades, but he did publish a well-regarded memoir a couple of years ago.

[Caligula]

Frederick Forsyth

[Lemmy Caution]

In a better world, Sly Stone would have become a cultural touchstone, advertising Corona and such, iconic a la Snoop Dogg. But the 80's and 90's were not so forgiving. The connection came to mind as both were musical pioneers, quirky characters, with their own style and worldview. Sly evinced a playful, enigmatic soul, full of wordplay and wit. A true original.

For a few years Sly & the Family Stone were the black (and white) equivalent of the Rolling Stones. There's a Riot Going On album up there with Marvin Gaye's What's Going On as capturing an era, encapsulating an ethos. Sly got derailed by fame and drugs. But his legacy is great. His music and fashion a precursor to funk. And as he aged, he sported some wild style, including a large blond floppy mohawk. Check out pics of Sly from 1990 on.

When Sly covered Que Sera Sera in 1973 a rumor started that he was dating Doris Day,
I saw him perform once at the Beacon Theater circa 1985. A Bobby Womack concert with Sly as special guest star, out on furlough from a Florida alcohol rehab center. And Sly came out all in leather, big fro, big grin jamming on guitar. Place went wild. Womack and Sly went way back.

Sly was a musical prodigy. Got started as a SF deejay which exposed him to a variety of sounds and led to producing some emerging SF artists just as the scene got interesting circa 1965. So Sly learned how to use the studio to create the sounds he wanted.

An interesting look at early Sly can be found on the compilation Sly Stone - Precious Stone - in the Studio with Sly Stone 1963-65 Kent 539 - (Ace). Starts off trying to cash in on the dance craze (Don Covay had a similar start), moves to girl group tunes, dips his toe into Impressions style Chicago soul, plus some soul efforts. But the most interesting are the half dozen collaborations with Billy Preston at the end, presumably 1965 endeavors. Life of Fame and Fortune sounds like a Jagger ballad, same with As I Get Older. Take My Advice is the gem, a catchy Sly tune, with a loose recording style. I think most or perhaps all of these are demo recordings. Can't You Tell I Love Her is also recognizably in the soon to be formed Family Stone mode. The Sly-Preston output reminds me of the Larry Williams-Johnny Watson collaborations.

I'd be interested to know who Sly considered his primary influences? Little Richard and Ray Charles perhaps? I'm not sure. Sly did know his music history and indeed the title of his masterpiece album derives from and repurposes for a new era the refrain from The Robins 1954Riot in Cell Block #9.

Along with Sly's 2023 memoir, which has gotten good reviews, there's a 2025 documentary Sky Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius) produced by Questlove.

[hearthesilence]

Snoop's debut sold 7 million copies in the U.S. and he had nine platinum albums overall while Sly has three platinum albums, only one of which went multiplatinum, a compilation (which to date has sold 5 million copies in the U.S.)...but Sly's influence is immeasurable. In that regard, Snoop isn't remotely in the same league. Sly's struggles ensured that his legacy would rest on a very modest number of records - three genuinely great non-compilation albums, plus a handful of singles that anyone would put on the same level - but you can't underestimate their importance. Funkadelic/Parliament, Prince, pretty much all of the most important figures from the golden age of hip-hop all credit him as a massive inspiration. It's not unlike the Velvet Underground's modest output in terms of how deep and far-reaching their impact has been, where it continually evolved into new strands of music (though unlike the VU, Sly didn't have to wait for belated commercial success).

FWIW, David Letterman's official YouTube channel has uploaded his rare interview with Sly (and he does ask him about Doris Day - long story short, Sly met her through the late, great record producer Terry Melcher who was her son, and no, they didn't date). I highly recommend Greil Marcus's book Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'N' Roll Music, the first great - and perhaps still the greatest - book of rock criticism, as one of its main chapters is about Sly & The Family Stone.

And here's an episode on the birth and evolution of funk from the WGBH/BBC series on the history of rock n' roll - the late, great musicologist Robert Palmer was the chief consultant, and they do a fantastic job showing the lineage between James Brown, Sly & The Family Stone and Parliament/Funkadelic, the holy trinity of funk.

I love Sly's explanation as to why the title track of There's a Riot Goin' On is 0:00 - because he didn't believe there should be riots, so that track had to be a flat zero.

[domino harvey]

Brian Wilson