{"id":9011,"date":"2011-09-01T09:00:47","date_gmt":"2011-09-01T13:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/?p=9011"},"modified":"2011-09-01T01:13:04","modified_gmt":"2011-09-01T05:13:04","slug":"what%e2%80%99s-the-scarface-of-rock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/what%e2%80%99s-the-scarface-of-rock\/","title":{"rendered":"What\u2019s the <em>Scarface<\/em> of Rock?"},"content":{"rendered":"<iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/f7Jw2F77GCI?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><p>I believe yesterday was some slightly hyped release date of the Blu-Ray edition of the <strong>Brian De Palma<\/strong>-directed, <strong>Oliver Stone<\/strong>-written, <strong>Al Pacino<\/strong>-starring 1983 movie <em>Scarface<\/em>. What do you think of that flick? I couldn&#8217;t stand it when it came out. I walked out of the theater two thirds of the way through. I can&#8217;t stand it any time I&#8217;ve tried to watch it since. For me it marked the point of no return for Pacino, when he amped up his performance to cartoonish levels and never came back to the remotely human, slow-burning level that he showed he was capable of nailing in the first two <em>Godfather<\/em> films.<\/p>\n<p><em>Scarface<\/em> confirmed my belief that De Palma was, for the most part, a hack. I don&#8217;t think I knew who Stone was at the time, but years later it was clear where he was headed in his cry-for-help of a Hollywood career. I also remember, while fidgeting through the movie in the theater, being disappointed that De Palma couldn&#8217;t at least have gotten the young actress who played Pacino&#8217;s girlfriend, a young <strong>Michelle Pfeiffer<\/strong>, to succumb to one of his patented exploitive, kinky voyeuristic scenes. Jeez!<\/p>\n<p>Years later I so dislike <em>Scarface<\/em> that I honestly prefer De Palma&#8217;s piss-poor flipside of his own film, <em>Carlito&#8217;s Way<\/em>. At least that movie tells its overblown morality tale from the point of view of a character as nerdy and pathetic in their latent quests for danger as I imagine De Palma and Stone to be. There&#8217;s a sense of atonement, too, in Pacino&#8217;s willingness to play the relatively straight man to <strong>Sean Penn<\/strong>&#8216;s suddenly unbridled, geeky Jewish lawyer. I bet Pacino took some secret joy in watching the proud Penn stoop to the director&#8217;s heartfelt fantasies. I bet the director took some secret joy in knowing that he could get his new, unknown actress to take her top off for his edification. I <em>know<\/em> I took great joy in seeing this crew stew in the slop De Palma and Pacino created 10 years earlier.<\/p>\n<p>Today, critics are willing to make <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/2011\/08\/26\/139913728\/scarface-over-the-top-but-ahead-of-its-time\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;50,000 Elvis fans can&#8217;t be wrong&#8221; excuses<\/a> for the brilliance of <em>Scarface<\/em>. Yeah, yeah, like so many other &#8217;80s pop-trash vehicles that require critics to earn their pay by reviewing their shiny, new Blu-Ray releases, the movie anticipates the fall of a cinematic era and the rise of popular expressions of grand notions of the American spirit as framed by the Reagan Era. <em>Zzzzzzzzzzzz..<\/em><\/p>\n<p>So all this got me thinking: What is the <em>Scarface<\/em> of rock &#8216;n roll, that is, the populist trash album that music lovers are strongly divided over that marked the beginning of the end of an artist&#8217;s golden age and that served as a vehicle for extreme fantasies of powerless, ordinary folk?<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->One album that immediately came to mind, even though I actually like it, is <strong>Bruce Springsteen<\/strong>&#8216;s <em>Born in the USA<\/em>. Some old-time Boss fans may rally around that suggestion, but I don&#8217;t think that&#8217;s a work of a hack or an album that served as a vehicle for extreme fantasies of powerless, ordinary folk, no matter how many politicians who&#8217;ve used the title track to introduce themselves at public appearances wishes it were the case.<\/p>\n<p>Another album that came to mind, that I also like a bit (being the longtime non-fan and only mildest appreciator of) is <strong>Pink Floyd<\/strong>&#8216;s <em>The Wall<\/em>. Because I don&#8217;t feel anywhere near as strongly about that album, pro or con, as some might, I have trouble fully backing that suggestion. This is why I need your help, your input in seeing if there&#8217;s any merit to my thoughts on <em>Scarface<\/em> and the possibility that such a work exists in the music world. The album you suggest need not be from the period of <em>Scarface<\/em>, it can mark the beginning of the end of its own creative era.<\/p>\n<p>I acknowledge that some of you may love <em>Scarface<\/em> and can cite an album that is the <em>Scarface of Rock<\/em> for positive reasons. That&#8217;s cool too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I believe yesterday was some slightly hyped release date of the Blu-Ray edition of the Brian De Palma-directed, Oliver Stone-written, Al Pacino-starring 1983 movie Scarface. What do you think of that flick? I couldn&#8217;t stand it when it came out. I walked out of the theater two thirds of the way through. I can&#8217;t stand <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/what%e2%80%99s-the-scarface-of-rock\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[76,34,215,52],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9011"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9011\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}