October, 1978
Assault and Battery from Punography.
tain people cannot handle the gifts that set
them apart; instead they must destroy their
own talent. Mank was one of those men.
Today, Mankiewicz is a symbol to many
of the new breed of Hollywood writers.
There’s hardly a successful scriptcr who
can’t hold a group spellbound with Mank
stories. It’s not hard to understand the Kane
creator’s appeal: He was the best and the
' brightest, and he did the job (when not too
drunk). But he paid the price every Hol
lywood writer fears —a lessening of that ex
clusive but necessary commodity known as
self-respect. For Mank was an honorable
man, with a strong sense of justice and his
own moral code; he never quite resigned
himself to the fact that he could play the
moguls’ dirty games and win.
Much of the territory in Mank is familiar,
including the drinking, the inability to meet
deadlines, the crassncss of the deities who
ran the studios. What makes this book spe
cial is the man himself. They don’t come any
more fascinating than Mank—they cer
tainly don’t come any more brilliant. Would
that talent alone had been enough.
A Most
Important Critic
Walter Benjamin was for too many years a
lost writer. Born in Germany in 1892, he
committed suicide in 1940 after being
told —wrongly it seems—that he would not
be allowed to travel from Nazi-occupied
France to free Portugal. As a German
Jewish writer, Benjamin apparently decided
living in Fascist France was too difficult,
■and.until very recently he was known only to
the rpost devoted scholars of modern criti
cism..,Now this edition of his writings gives
us a comprehensine introduction to the man
Hannah Arendt calls “the most important
critic of the time.”
Reading Reflections, (edited .and with an
introduction by Peter Demetz), it’s easy to
see why Benjamin receives such praise. He’s
truly a compelling thinker. He’s part of that
learned, European tradition of critics that
embraced‘Marxism and then moved even
further along on the evolutionary scale. As a
young man, Benjamin was part of the
idealistic German Youth Movement, a
group that refused to submit to Wilhelmine
German standards. He then managed to sit
out' World War I, reading Kant and the
German Romantics, preparing himself for
bis life-long romance with the philosophy of
language and contemporary linguistics. La
ter, in his 30’s, Benjamin traveled through
out Europe and wrote insightful observa
tio'ns of the Continent’s chaotic social situa
tion, a turbulance so devastating it eventu
ally led to World War 11.
As Benjamin was a communist, it’s par
ticularly interesting to read his comments on
Russia during Stalin’s reign of terror and to
note his obviods distress trying to mesh in
dividualistic thoughts with the creed of
mandatory social realism in art and manda
tory revolution in politics. His essay on Rus
sia is rich in detail and bears the mark of a
man confronted with a reality that is in di
rect conflict with the idealism he imagined.”
Needless to say, Benjamin was not the
first —or the last —communist to find Rus
sia a confusing disappointment. He is also
particularly effective when discussing Bcr
told Brecht’s theory of epic theatre (the two
men were, interestingly enough, great
friends).
■ What makes Benjamin so timely is that he
wrote from a political point of view while
still indulging in a healthy dose of moralism.
Nothing was too high or too low for Benja
min. He was quite at home writing of
whores as well as heaven. He also pioneered
the current fascination with semiotics, writ
ing of the change in language and under
standing wrought by movies, advertising
and other forms of mass communication
which we now lump together as The Media.
Reflections is an important contribution to
the world of modern thought.
Are You Sure
Boston Did It
This Way?
Jacoba Atlas
Just as Scientology has been referred to as
the “fast food” of religions, this $7.95
softbound The Record Producer’s Handbook
(How to make your own record for $500) by
•Don Gere, (Acrobat Books), is the
McDonald’s of record-biz information at the
buyer’s expense. Wait, we take that back! At
least we like McDonald’s. No, we weren’t
jarred by the amateurish appearance of this
volume (but it certainly does 109 k schlock),
or the fatft that at a price of eight samolians
you kind of expect more than only 50 or so
pages of even the most invaluable
advice —which, believe us, this ain’t. And
it’s not just on account of L. Ron Hubbard’s
name appearing twice in the first four pages
either. Really.
Let us say, at the outset, that unless you
had absolutely no idea what was happening
.at-all, this book wpuld be tantamount to use
less. (Note the use of big flashy words on the
part of the reviewers. Hey, at ten cents a
Ampersand
word, it adds up, you know?) Don Gere
knows a little bit about recording, but unless
you enjoy the remedial aspects of a check list
every few pages to remind you to cat and
rest and pay your bill, etc. —come on, who
needs this? Of course, this all comes
guy who says he’s seen thousands of dollars
of studio time wasted in the studio by drugs
and alcohol. He recommends cofTee; that
figures.
• What this book says is know your mate
rial, here’s a picture of a real producer,
here’s a few machines, how to copyright
your songs, and how to make an ass of your
self by either selling them to your friends or
pestering some local disc jockey until he
cither plays your record or has his cousin
Guido break your lips. There’s a cute little
post-card simulation in the back that says,
in effect, “Dear Mr. D. J., How many times
have you played my record and if not, why
not? Do you have any suggestions for
me?...”My friends, you just don’t do that
sort of crap. It’s irritating, ya’ know?
' Also, in the event that you can ever really
find a way to manufacture a $5OO record, the
author suggests that you sell 500 records at a
dollar apiece to record stores. (Now why
didn’t Warner Bros, or Columbia think of
.that?) It also doesn’t mention paying any
musicians or singers or unions or anything,
so we must assume that the maximum ap
plication of this volume is to cither stimulate
a “New Wave /No Money” approach or
a “Hcy-weYe-a-band-let’s-makc-a-record”
angle. Listen, send your cash to Flo and
Eddie—we’ll tell you what to do, suckers.
•We’re not discouraging new labels or
bands —quite the opposite—but unless you
only want 600 garage-fidelity Frisbees to
hold in your lap, there is nothing to be said
for throwing good money after bad. Gere
has us spending three hours in the studio to
record tracks, vocals and overdubs on two
■professional-sounding songs, and that’s if
you’re well-rehearsed and do the vocals
“live” and don’t allow any time to change
the entire recording set-up before
mixing—a .necessary little step, to say the
least. It’s a good idea to be a little spontane
ous in the studio too, you know, but the
author, being a Scientologist, doesn’t allow
for any of that “fun” stuff Of course in a
16-track studio' that only costs $2O an hour,
fun is in the mind of the bqholder.
Five hundred dollars hasn’t made a hit
single since “Louie, Louie” (but what a hit
single!). However, if your dad’s rich or your
band is pooling its funds, or you’re just a
bored weirdo looking to impress a lady or a
promoter or a lady promoter, you might
have the money to waste on a naive, incom
plete Ding-Dong School manual on how to
be as studio-wise as the Dead Boys. When
you consider that the author advises paying
only 25# to manufacture each disc, you can
then scientifically put the bite to your friends
for the other seventy-five. We can’t help but
wonder how much this book cost to man
ufacture and research. Not much! But
maybe the profits will buy Mr. Gere another
trip on Ron’s boat.
O.K. It’s time for a quiz. Did you...
Understand the review
Learn about making reebrds
Kill a few minutes
Decide to forget about music as a career—
You see what we mean? Pretty dumb,
huh?
Punning for Gold
The very title (Putwgraphy, Penguin Books,
$2.95) is a pun, and this slender book of
photographs is basically a one-joke volume,
with many variations in which several se
quential photographs illustrate more than a
dozen cliches. Some arc cute, many con
trived (“Buoys will be buoys”is just too la
bored) and a few inspired: “A fork in the
road has —you guessed it a dinner fork lying
in a fork in the road; “Roll with the
punches” shows a dinner roll between two
punch bowls; and “Shooting the breeze” is
illustrated by two grizzled men firing rifles
at the sky.
Photographer Bruce A. McMillan prob
ably had a great deal of fun thinking about
this book, devising clever ways to illustrate
bromides like “Half in the bag” or “Making
a clean breast of it”—more fun, I dare say,
than we have' reading it. But it’s a nearly
perfect gift book, mildly amusing, inexpen
sive, completely inoffensive,-and appropri
ate for everyone...except serious photo
graphers
Flo & Eddie
Judith Sims
by Hay
I)-