At the Movies with Governor Tom: Better Off Dead

"Two. Dollars. I want my two dollars!"

This was one of the best events I've ever been to. Didn't I just say that a couple weeks ago after the Crazy Heart-Big Lebowski double feature with Jeff Bridges in person? Yeah that was definitely awesome. Hard to say which I enjoyed more. They each tapped into a different part of my movie-loving brain. Certainly Better Off Dead isn't as well made as Crazy Heart or Lebowski, but it is pretty hilarious, even twenty-five years after it came out. Indeed that's why it was screened tonight, the quarter-century anniversary. Just as much as the comedy, my having grown up with this film is obviously another reason I knew tonight would be awesome. Nothing like nostalgia. I never did see Better Off Dead on the big screen when it came out. I wasn't old enough to follow movie release schedules and the critics' reviews, but tonight I learned that, while Better Off Dead started strong, it crashed and burned like Lane Meyer on the K12. The movie made up for that, though, by being on cable all the time, which is how I, like most people, discovered it. It seemed like it was on HBO every other day. I'm not sure, but I think my brothers and I recorded it.

So anyways, I'm sure the nostalgia factor is what brought a lot of people out to watch this on a Sunday night. Although I should say how surprised I was to see a lot of teens and young adults in the crowd. No shit, a lot of folks tonight looked young enough to have been born after this came out. That's interesting as hell. I wonder how they discovered it? I have satellite with some movie channels but haven't come across Better Off Dead very often. Of course they could be John Cusack fans and/or eighties fans. At any rate, interesting. And a pleasant surprise too. Sometimes it seems like only the people who were around when a movie came out are the ones who come to see revivals of it, last Thursday's screening of Dog Day Afternoon being a perfect example. If anyone under, say, my age was in the audience, I didn't see them.

But wait, I haven't gotten to the gravy of tonight's event yet. A whole bunch of people from the film were there in person. Well, four specifically: Director Savage Steve Holland, Curtis "Booger" Armstrong, who plays Lane's best friend Charles De Mar, Diane Franklin (Monique), and rocker girl E.G. Daily, who at the time went as Elizabeth Daily. She's in all of one scene, that high school dance in the middle of the film, performing onstage with her band. She's credited as "herself," which is interesting. I didn't notice that at the time, or if I did, I probably wasn't sure what to make of it. I knew who she was, though. She was Dottie from Pee-wee's Big Adventure. That was the first time I saw her. I had no idea she was a rocker. When I saw her in Better Off Dead, I remember thinking how random and peculiar it was that she'd just show up with such a small role as a singer at a high school dance. Now I get it: Rock'n'roll was, and still is, her main gig. So she was there tonight, which was cool because Big Adventure is another of my favorite eighties flicks.

But wait, I still haven't gotten to the most awesome part about tonight. While they did do a Q&A after the film, they also did commentary during the film. Now that was a first for me. I've watched DVDs with commentary, but to see a flick in the theater with people from the film sitting up front with mics providing commentary? Now that was something special. As with the DVD commentary, you should only do something like this with a movie you've seen a lot. I have a feeling some of the folks in the audience, like the younger folks I mentioned above, had never seen this before. They must've been the ones who were like, "Turn it up!" The Aero staff had turned down the sound somewhat so we could hear the four up front. It was kind of awkward at first. Even with their mics, it was sometimes hard for me to hear them, and mind you I was sitting only a few rows behind them. Eventually, though, after some fiddling, they found the sonic sweet spot. It was an awesome time, I have to say. This one woman in the back kept saying how awesome the soundtrack is every time another song played in the film. That's cool because I had this soundtrack on vinyl in the late eighties when I lived with Mom in North Carolina. I wore that thing out.

If you haven't seen Better Off Dead, well, where have you been? If you're over forty, I suppose it's possible. You have your own childhood movies. But if you're my age (or younger, judging by tonight's audience), this movie's hard to miss. Story's simple enough. It's set in this fictional Northern California town called Greendale. Lane's in high school, a senior, I think, although it's never said. He's got a seven-year-old kid brother named Badger, who's far more intelligent than he is and much better with women. Dad's played by the brilliant David Ogden Stiers. I think he's supposed to be an attorney. And there's Mom played by Kim Darby, whom I haven't seen in much else, although she was in a season seven episode of The X-Files, so that's cool.

The plot kicks off at the trials for the high school ski team. The captain of the team is this blond stud named Roy Stalin. I didn't appreciate the significance of that name at the time, but I sure do now. Roy Stalin. Love it. Anyway, Stalin intentionally puts down the wrong time for Lane at the trials to keep him off the team. And then he steals Lane's girlfriend Beth. Lane had been dating Beth for six months and was head over heels for her. This is established from the get-go with how Lane sleeps with a picture of her and has a photo of her on every hanger in his closet. I shouldn't say Stalin steals Beth. She dumps Lane because Stalin's better looking, skis better, and drives a nicer car.

Thus ensues Lane's quest to win her back, which includes facing up to the K12, this one mountain that's like the local Everest. Only a few people have dared ski it, and most of them were hurt pretty bad. Along the way Lane meets Monique, the French exchange student across the street living with the Smiths. At first he's completely blind to her attraction to him, he's so focused on winning Beth back, but I think we all know where it finally goes. No, it's not exactly an innovate plot. Yes, some of the characters are stereotypes, like Beth and Stalin. But we don't watch stuff like this expecting Citizen Kane. Like most romantic comedies, it's middle of the road, but the comedy itself is gold. "Now that's a real shame when folks be throwin' away a perfectly good white boy like that." See? One of the best lines ever. I should point out, though, that those stereotypes exist for a reason. When I was growing up, I knew one or two Roy Stalins, these good-looking guys who felt cocky and confident enough to make fun of other people and who, despite being flaming pricks, always landed the hot blondes. Todd and Amber were the Stalin and Beth in sixth grade for me. Assholes.

Let's get to the commentary and Q&A. I learned a lot of interesting stuff tonight. For starters, speaking of Roy Stalin, that guy who plays him, Aaron Dozier, now lives in Florida and teaches yoga. I looked him up on IMDb. He guest-starred on a TV show just before Better Off Dead. Then he did that, and then he dropped off the map. Savage Steve Holland, who was a great talker and very humble, said that at the time he auditioned for Better Off Dead, Aaron was working as a busboy at Gladstone's, this really nice seafood restaurant in Malibu. "Best busboy at Gladstone's," he told Savage Steve at the audition. He also briefly dated E.G. Daily. She talked about that more than once tonight. Apparently he told her the key was to have a precocious smile and a deep tan. "A precocious smile and a deep tan," E.G. would say almost every time Stalin was on screen.

The blondie who plays Beth is still acting. She lives in New Mexico. Savage Steve said he called her about tonight's event. She really wanted to be there but couldn't get out of family obligations. I remember when Better Off Dead came out, I'd just seen her in the first Nightmare on Elm Street. But then I didn't see her much after that. She's been working fairly steadily, but I suppose her taste in film and TV doesn't quite overlap with mine. She did guest-star in a season one episode of Dexter, which is awesome. Dexter's one of my faves. She's done a ton of TV guest spots over the years, so it's possible I saw her but didn't recognize her.

As for Kim Darby, Curtis Armstrong related a funny story about her the first time she appeared onscreen, during the breakfast scene where she serves boiled bacon to her man. Apparently Curtis and Kim spoke all of once during the production. She told him that in Hollywood everyone would be out to destroy him. And then she went into her dressing room and never spoke to him again. Weird, huh? Curtis is still working pretty steadily so I guess he was never destroyed. And Kim's done all right for herself. She started strong as a teenager guest-starring on The Fugitive and Star Trek and all that and has been going strong since. She was pushing forty when Better Off Dead came along, with over twenty years of Hollywood experience under her belt. Her thing about people destroying you was obviously informed by experience, but it does make you wonder what the hell happened to her. I remember seeing an ad in the LA Times Calendar section a few years ago advertising an acting class she was teaching in Hollywood.

The most surprising thing I learned tonight had to do with John Cusack, whose absence at the screening, both physically as well as in the anecdotes shared by Savage Steve and the cast members, was the white elephant in the auditorium until someone asked point blank: "Where's Cusack?" Savage Steve's response? "Cusack doesn't like me, man." Apparently John Cusack hates this film. He did two films with Savage Steve back to back, Better Off Dead and One Crazy Summer. It was after shooting One Crazy Summer that Better Off Dead came out in theaters, in the fall of '85. After he saw it, Cusack went up to Savage Steve and told him it was the worst movie he'd ever seen. He felt like he'd been made to look like a fool and said he'd never trust Savage Steve as a director ever again. "Don't ever talk to me," Cusack apparently said before stalking off. Savage Steve, needless to say, was deflated. He was only twenty-five at the time and so didn't have the perspective that comes with age and which would've made it at least somewhat easier to get over that slap in the face. The lemon juice was that Better Off Dead did a belly flop at the box office. One Crazy Summer didn't do much better, after which Steve said he was in film jail. It was weird. He would eat lunch at the Fox cafeteria, but he wasn't working. Eventually that changed. Three years later he got to do How I Got into College, starring Anthony Edwards and Lara Flynn Boyle. That marked his final foray into feature filmmaking. Since 1990, Savage Steve's been living in TV land. He directed episodes of Encyclopedia Brown, VIP, Lizzie McGuire, and a bunch more. And some TV movies as well. The man's working.

I have to say I take exception to Cusack's attitude. And I think many in the audience were equally taken aback. How could he not have known the kind of movie he was making? I assume he read the script. He's in almost every scene. How could he have been so surprised at the final result? During the very first scene, Sunday morning when Lane's sleeping in bed wearing his ski goggles next to a photo of his girl Beth, Steve said Cusack quickly became impatient with how long it was taking. He'd have to lie there while Savage Steve and the crew were setting up the lights and whatnot. And I think they had to tear down part of the wall behind the bed. Something like that. It was a small room so they needed the space. Anyway, that sort of indicates right there that Cusack's an asshole. I mean he hadn't done much at that point. Sixteen Candles. A couple other small roles. Better Off Dead brought him to a whole new level. It was only after that when he landed stuff like Say Anything. E.G. Daily said something to that effect during the Q&A. She was more diplomatic about it than I would've been. Again, the film flopped, so I can sort of understand Cusack's attitude. Plus he was barely twenty, just a stupid kid. But today Better Off Dead's a classic. Look at the audience turnout tonight. People love it. Don't you think he should renege on being an asshole and maybe apologize to Savage Steve? Try to have a sense of fuckin' humor?

Curtis Armstrong doesn't remember Cusack being unhappy. He said the one and only time he sensed any insecurity was during the One Crazy Summer shoot. The two of them were hanging out with Savage Steve, Bobcat Goldthwait, and some other comedian. Curtis referred to those three as the smartest people in the world. And they were riffing amongst themselves, being funny and brilliant, while Curtis and Cusack sat to the side feeling lost. They just couldn't keep up. Cusack got agitated and left. That's the one and only time Curtis noticed Cusack's insecurity. I dunno. The man's had nothing but steady work since Better Off Dead. It just baffles the shit out of me that he could still maintain an attitude of being betrayed by the director who essentially gave his career a boast. Funny how he could complain about Better Off Dead, and yet willingly sign on for schlock like 2012. Talk about an obvious case of doing it for the money. What an embarrassment. And I bet he's still on speaking terms with Roland Emmerich. Of course the eminent tent pole film director from Germany has already proven he's the master of noise and spectacle, so I suppose if you're an actor agreeing to work with him, you know what you're getting. And if at any time you feel like you're wasting your time and talent, you need only look at that paycheck. Money talks. That adage applies to every nook and cranny of life, but it was practically born in Hollywood. I wonder if Cusack's hard to put up with. I've noticed he's never dated a woman very long. He's never married. In an interview with TIME a few years ago to promote Must Love Dogs, he came across as a rude prick. At the time I just chalked it up to his not wanting to promote a film you could tell from the previews wasn't going to be very good. But now that I see what he was like even as a teenager, maybe being an asshole is just in his very nature. I don't mean to beat this to death, but Better Off Dead is a childhood staple, I wasn't exaggerating about that. Cusack's opinion of it feels like a betrayal.

One thing you never think about when watching it, like most movies, is where they actually shoot the scenes. I certainly never thought about it as a kid, but since then I've been through film school and have gained a greater appreciation for the labor that goes into the craft. One thing I could tell right off the bat in several scenes was that it was in the Valley. Or I should say, a valley. They didn't film it in the San Fernando Valley but in the next one over, San Gabriel. Of the three schools they used for Lane's high school, the one they used the most was in Monrovia. The Meyer family's house was in Pasadena. They had to go out of their way for that flashback scene where Lane first meets Beth, as well as the scene where Lane's chased in the night by all those paperboys. Both of those scenes were shot at Malibu Lakes. If you live in the L.A. area, you know going from the San Gabriel Valley to Malibu is a pretty sincere drive, especially if you're in charge of a film crew with all that gear. In that flashback scene, by the way, that's Savage Steve's sister playing Beth's friend.

Speaking of crews, all of the skiing scenes were filmed somewhere in Utah. I forget the name of the mountain. And Savage Steve wasn't part of it. It was all shot by a second unit. This helps explain how he shot the whole film in thirty days flat. At different times tonight Diane Franklin and Curtis Armstrong talked about their experiences on that mountain. They pretty much said the same thing: It was so unbelievably cold they couldn't feel their faces. The stunt double for John Cusack was named Lane. The stunt double for Diane was nicknamed Kareem because of her very dark tan and afro. You'd never notice it otherwise, but when Savage Steve kept going, "And there's Kareem," you could tell. Diane Franklin didn't have a tan in the film, but if you look closely, that stunt woman wasn't tan so much as burned. And her hair really looked like a 'fro. Too funny. The stuff you notice if you're the one making the film. Although what's really funny is how Savage Steve never noticed that the stepladder was unnecessary for the scene where the dad's putting a big red bow on the newly repaired garage windows on Christmas morning. It starts as a close-up of him giving the windows one last polish, then affixing the bow. And then there's a wide shot of him folding up a stepladder before walking back into the house. That's when you see he's taller than the windows. Someone from the audience was like, "He wouldn't need the stepladder!" I think it was the same woman from the back who was the big soundtrack fan. Anyway, when she said that, Savage Steve was like, "You know, you're right. I never noticed that before." Really? One inconsistency that bothered him was during the ski trials in the beginning. When they were shooting at the foot of the mountain, it was snowing. But on the summit it wasn't. That seems like one of those obvious errors, but you know what? I never noticed it before tonight. Isn't that funny? Yet if I were in Savage Steve's shoes, it probably would've bothered the heck out of me. Another goof that's always bugged him was during the dinner scene when the dad's telling Lane that something needs to be done about the corpse of a car on their lawn. While he's talking, the wife is serving everyone this horrible green slime with raisins in it. "You like raisins," she says before dishing it out. When she spoons it onto Lane's plate, the slime spreads across it until it's flat as a pancake. And then cut to a close-up of it as it slides off the plate by itself. Suddenly it's no longer flat at all but is more like a clump. Again, yeah I noticed it tonight, but like the snow, I never would've noticed it had Savage Steve not pointed it out. Judging by the reaction of the audience when he pointed it out--"Ohhhhhhhh!"--it seems I'm far from alone. As for how Savage Steve got the slime to move by itself, he put a little remote control car under it. That's why he had to clump it up like that, otherwise the poor car would've been smothered. Savage Steve said that scene required the most takes, something like ten, because David Ogden Stiers couldn't stop laughing. I wonder if Cusack ever laughed.

This being his first feature, Savage Steve put a lot of himself in the story. He grew up in Greenwich with a lawyer dad who never smiled and was the furthest thing from hip. He put a lot of his dad in David Ogden Stiers's character, who was originally supposed to be played by Bob Barker, which would've made an almost completely different movie. Bob Barker? Anyways, Savage Steve said the only time his dad smiled or laughed was during Woody Allen movies. That's one of the staples of his childhood. They'd make the trip to New York City on the weekends to see Woody Allen movies. Apparently Dad's sense of humor was limited to Woody Allen and nothing else. Kind of ironic considering that Woody's put David Ogden Stiers in several of his films. As for high school, Savage Steve said he felt like he was the only one who didn't get it. That definitely explains that one scene in the classroom where everyone's eager to answer questions, and how they've all done those elaborate projects while Lane just has a piece of paper folded together with gum. Even the Howard Cosell bit comes from real life. Apparently in high school he really did know a kid who, as he said tonight, was "cursed to sound like Howard Cosell." The Cosell voice in the film, by the way, was dubbed by Rich Little. That's awesome. This would've been around the time he was doing Not Necessarily the News on HBO, one of my favorite shows from the eighties.

By the time he was in high school, Savage Steve had already earned the Savage nickname. It came from an incident in elementary school when he beat up this kid during a soccer game. He didn't really beat him up, just kicked him once when the kid was laying on the ground, knocking out a tooth. He felt terrible about it afterward, but his friends never let him live it down. They mockingly called him Savage Steve, and the name stuck.

So how was he able to direct not one but two feature films by the time he was twenty-five? Actually it's pretty much how most young feature directors get their chance: A short film that attracts just the right pair of eyes at the right time. I can't remember if Savage Steve mentioned where he went to film school. It wasn't at one of the big ones. I think it was Michigan. He just wanted to get as far away from Greenwich as possible. Anyway so he made a short film and submitted it to a contest. It was based on a birthday party when he was eleven or twelve. Well, it was supposed to have been a party, but the only people there were him, his sister (the one mentioned above in the Malibu Lakes scene), and a drunk clown. When it actually happened to him, it was depressing as hell, but like a lot of great artists, he mined his sad experiences for great art. So he made a short film about a kid with no one at his party but a drunk clown. It was screened before a feature film at some festival or other. Apparently a lot of important people were at this screening to see whatever the feature was. Steve had absolutely no hopes for it at all. The screening was on a Friday night. He spent the weekend moping, walking along the beach, feeling like he had no future. He did that all day the following Monday as well. When he got home Monday afternoon, around two dozen messages were waiting for him on his answering machine from producers who'd been at the Friday night screening. Including Henry "the Fonz" Winkler, which is awesome. Savage Steve calls him the nicest person in Hollywood. Too bad he didn't sign with him.

At first his parents couldn't wrap their heads around their kid writing and directing a feature. Savage Steve said they didn't believe him until he flew them out to hang out on the set. Only then, confronted with all those big trucks and all the gear and free food, did they appreciate what their son was doing. Speaking of the set, one funny little tidbit I learned tonight is that the Meyers' next-door neighbor, who's always trimming the hedges, was actually Savage Steve's cameraman. You've got that Christmas morning scene when Lane tries to kill himself in the garage with carbon monoxide poisoning and ends up backing up through the garage door just after his dad repaired the damage done to it by the paperboy. His dad had just come out to show his wife the repaired door, and they're both wearing those animal outfits she got them. Anyway, after Lane destroys the door, we see the neighbor trimming the hedges yet again, this time wearing the same aardvark outfit Lane's dad is wearing. Well, apparently that was the same outfit. Exactly the same. They made David Ogden Stiers take it off and the cameraman put it on, and then edited the scene together to make it look like they were each wearing their own aardvark outfit.

Speaking of the paperboy, that's another thing from Savage Steve's childhood. There was this paperboy in his neighborhood who would sit on his bike across the street and just stare at his house whenever Savage Steve didn't have the money to pay him. Now the paperboy in the film, Johnny, that's not his voice when he talks. Savage Steve wanted him to have a deep husky voice that would belie his pre-pubescence. Unfortunately the kid he cast, Demian Slade, had the right tough-kid look but couldn't pull off a deep voice. Savage Steve told him not to worry about it, just go through his lines, and they'd fix it in post production. So in post they got this other kid, who could effect a deep voice even though he was about the same age, to dub the lines. You do get to see him briefly. During that nighttime shoot in Malibu Lakes when Lane's being chased by all the paperboys, that kid who did the dubbing's one of them. He's the second one you see. First you see Johnny, and then Lane tries walking in the other direction and runs into another one, this kid with a 'fro who sounds a lot like Johnny. Again, I noticed it tonight only because Savage Steve pointed it out, but I never would've figured it out otherwise. One thing that's kind of funny is that the paperboy chase scene was filmed in Malibu, right after Lane leaves that high school dance....which was shot in Monrovia, a good hour's drive away. So he's walking away from the school, and then cut to him approaching his car in Malibu. Of course you have no idea he's in Malibu, but I'm just saying. The magic of editing, huh? Truth is stuff like that happens in movies and TV all the time. That kid who played Johnny, by the way, Demian Slade, seems to have worked fairly steadily for another ten years after this, into his early twenties, and then dropped off the map. Someone asked Savage Steve where he is today. He had no idea.

Same goes for Scooter Stevens, the kid who played Lane's genius kid brother Badger. It's funny, he seems all calm during the film, but behind the scenes apparently both he and his parents were worrywarts. One of my favorite scenes from the film is when he shows off that laser gun when Lane tells him to stop playing around with "kid-stuff garbage." Before they shot that, Scooter and his parents were worried about the prop that would explode when he pointed the gun at it. And you had all those hot women Badger landed while Lane was crashing and burning at the high school dance. Savage Steve said Scooter was less concerned with the women. That was more a parental concern. Scooter didn't work as steadily as Demian Slade did. He seems to have dropped off the map in the late eighties.

Besides John Cusack, probably the biggest success story from Better Off Dead is Dan Schneider, that big mutha who plays Ricky Smith. During the commentary Savage Steve said that Dan improvised a lot of those little golden moments in the film. Like during the one lunch scene when he pulls Monique closer, he improvised the grabbing of her chocolate pastry. And after the school dance? When he jumps feebly after the balloon? He made that up. That's awesome, that's one of those funny moments that never gets old. Right after he finished this film, he landed a part on Head of the Class, one of my favorite eighties TV shows. Dan was a regular on that. It lasted a good five seasons, over a hundred episodes. That's some nice coinage. But after that he moved more into writing and producing with a focus on kids' stuff. Eventually he landed at Nickelodeon. Guess what? Today Dan Schneider is the head honcho at Nickelodeon. A studio mogul in other words. He doesn't just sit back and let others do the work, though. He's still very much involved in writing and producing. Another cool thing is that to this day he still gets recognized as Ricky Smith. Literally not a week will go by when someone doesn't recognize him as Ricky. Is that awesome or what? And again, it speaks to the durability of Better Off Dead, which is why I'm sore at Cusack for being so down on it. He's done a ton of stuff that's forgettable, but I bet he didn't get mad at those directors. Seriously, it's still influential today, as Diane Franklin pointed out. Better Off Ted, anyone?

I haven't seen Diane Franklin much since Better Off Dead. I remember she guest-starred on an episode of Murder, She Wrote in the late eighties, but that's about it. Oh and she had a role in the second Bill & Ted movie, although I don't think she ever talked because she was supposed to be one of those Medieval girls Bill & Ted landed in the first film. I guess I'm just watching the wrong stuff because she has been working pretty steadily in film, TV, and theater. I wish she had talked about her French accent in Better Off Dead and how she mastered it. Was it just a matter of coaching? Was she already fluent? She never said. I remember being kind of surprised when I found out she was an American when I saw that Murder, She Wrote episode. I just assumed she was French in real life. Diane is the anti-Cusack in that she's grateful for having worked on the film. She wishes she could work with Savage Steve more often. And she had a great time on the set, "falling in love" with Cusack, Curtis Armstrong, Dan Schneider. Those cafeteria scenes were tough for her to shoot because she kept cracking up. There's this one scene when she's sitting next to Ricky. He pulls her chair closer to him while she smiles over at Charles De Mar....who then snorts his Jell-O. They had to shoot that a whole bunch of times before she could stop laughing. One thing that surprised her was the hand shaking the soda beneath the table during a later cafeteria scene when Roy Stalin's taunting Cusack. Lane and Monique are sitting together at lunch, and Stalin and his cronies walk by. Then you see a hand under the table shaking a soda can. Cut to Monique opening it so some of it sprays Stalin. During the screening tonight Diane was like, "Whose hand is that?" She's awesome. After the screening, while the others sat up front to take questions, she stood over to the side with the coat she wore as Monique. People lined up and put it on to have their photo taken with her. See? I like that. She knows that without the fans, you're nothing. Memo to Cusack. She's a few years older than Dan Schneider and Cusack, late forties or so. She's got a couple kids, an eleven-year-old son and a teenage daughter who was there tonight. She's a budding actress apparently, having landed a small part on Flight of the Concords. Diane related a funny incident that happened last year when her son was watching TV late one night. On came The Last American Virgin, Diane's first film, when she was like twenty or so. It's not the kind of movie you want a ten-year-old watching, especially if the ten-year-old's your kid, so suffice it to say it was kind of awkward. Anyway, my eyebrows perked when Diane mentioned she was working on a memoir. Really? Now that should be interesting. Seeing's how I haven't been following her at all since the eighties, I'm curious about the kinds of experiences she's had that would warrant a memoir.

It was inevitable someone would ask E.G. Daily about working with Pee-wee Herman, which is all the more apropos since Paul Herman is literally, as I write this, doing a Pee-wee Herman show downtown at the Nokia Theatre. E.G.'s already seen it and thinks it's hilarious. She's always been a big Pee-wee fan. No, they didn't ask her to be in the show as Dottie, but no matter, she doesn't have the time thanks to her music and all the voiceover she does for cartoons. Hearing Savage Steve talk about filming at Malibu Lakes reminded E.G. of the 1983 film Valley Girl, which she was in. When she landed the role, she was told her character was supposed to be, ya know, a Valley girl, and that she should make her voice sound like that. Only problem was, she had no idea what that meant. E.G.'s a self-described Hollywood rocker girl, practically born and raised on the Sunset Strip. When she was cast in the film, she didn't know the first thing about the Valley. She'd never had a reason to go there. But she did know a thing or two about Malibu. She knew people from that area. Without telling the producers, she made her voice sound like her Malibu friends, whatever that means. And apparently the producers didn't mind and never asked her about it. "I was playing someone from Malibu the whole time," she boasted. She wasn't born Elizabeth Daily. E.G. said she comes from a Jewish family and was accordingly born with a Jewish- or German-sounding name. She didn't tell us what the name was, but apparently it didn't make for a good stage name.

Curtis Armstrong may be the oldest of the Better Off Dead bunch. Well, if you don't count the parents of course. But whereas Cusack, Savage Steve, E.G. Daily, Dan Schneider, and Diane Franklin were all born in the sixties, ol' Curtis was born in the early fifties. Wow, you know what that means? The age I am now? Thirty-three? That's about how old he was when he made Better Off Dead. Which means he's what now? Late fifties? I never would've guessed he was that old. Like Diane Franklin, he kept some of the costumes and props from this film, as well as from One Crazy Summer. He said he almost never does that. It was thanks to Better Off Dead that he landed the recurring role on Moonlighting as Herbert Viola. I watched Moonlighting but forgot he was in that. Then it all came back to me. Herbert. Didn't that secretary, Agnes, have sort of a thing for him? Speaking of which, just to show you what a small world it is, the woman who played Agnes, Allyce Beasley, was married at the time to Vincent Schiavelli....who played the math teacher in Better Off Dead. They were only married three years, and they divorced while Moonlighting was still going.

As a movie buff, I like trivia like that. Savage Steve had more for us. During that one cafeteria scene where Lane takes the guy's roller skates and puts them on before hitting on cheerleader Chris Cummins, there's that guy standing behind him in line wearing those huge dark glasses. When Lane crashes and burns with Chris Cummins, he turns around to see this guy aiming his plastic knife at him, which makes Lane stumble out of the line, fall down, and rip off Chris Cummins' cheerleading outfit. Well, that guy with the knife was apparently the producer's son. It wasn't in the script that someone was leering behind Lane with a plastic knife, but the producer wanted Savage Steve to give the kid a part, so he made that up on the spot. Again, like those other improvised scenes, like Dan Schneider jumping after the balloon, that's one of the best moments in the film that never gets old. And remember when Lane has to go take Joanne Greenwald to the dance? The girl with the "big antenna on her face?" He gets to her house, and she makes him write her a check for what she estimates he would've paid had they actually gone to dinner. Well, when he first knocks on the door, you can hear a huge dog barking and jumping up and down against the glass. That was no dog. The barking noises were thrown in during post. And the movement against the glass was the producer's wife with a stuffed animal. Hilarious, huh? I'll never look at that scene the same way again.

Same goes for the scene when Lane's imagining the hamburger coming alive and making a female hamburger in a mock Frankenstein style. During that scene Savage Steve used a Van Halen song, "Everybody Wants Some." Someone from the audience asked how, with such a small budget, he was able to get the rights. Get this: Savage Steve said that when he asked Van Halen for permission, they were going through a messy breakup with David Lee Roth. "Everybody Wants Some" was one of the songs they did while he was their lead singer so technically Savage Steve should've probably gotten Roth's permission as well. But the Van Halen brothers let Savage Steve use the song for free as a "fuck you to Roth," Savage Steve said. And then he worked with them again on One Crazy Summer. Savage Steve said that Eddie Van Halen kept asking him if he'd slept with Demi Moore. "So have you fucked her? Have you fucked her yet?" No, he never did. You can tell he's not that kind of director.

When I was watching this on TV all the time in the late eighties, I didn't know who the mailman was. As it turns out, Taylor Negron's done quite well for himself. His background is standup comedy and improv. He's still good pals with Savage Steve. And he hangs with Whoopi Goldberg. Which makes sense because I swear he was on Hollywood Squares about ten years ago. It was when Whoopi was running it. Bobcat Goldthwait was a regular, as was Jeffrey Tambor and that big guy, Brad Garrett, who played Raymond's brother on Everybody Loves Raymond. I used to watch that every night when I got home from work while I was eating dinner. It came on after Entertainment Tonight. I'm positive Taylor Negron was on that. And he's been working steadily besides. Like Dan Schneider, his focus is on the younger audience. Curtis Armstrong's still in touch with him. Apparently Taylor lives in an awesome chateau in the south of France. "Like R. Crumb," Savage Steve said, referring to the awesome artist and illustrator.

It was inevitable someone would ask about the scene during the school dance when Curtis Armstrong's character Charles laughs hysterically. It's one of the best scenes in the film. My favorite for sure. Lane and Charles are sitting at the table looking all mopey. Stalin walks by with Beth and his cronies and tells Lane he better shave "her" (the stubble-faced Charles) a little closer before he kisses her good-night. And that's when Charles cracks up. And then he does it again a couple scenes later. Savage Steve said the way it was written, Charles De Mar takes whipped cream off the holiday cake and snorts it. And that's when he starts laughing uncontrollably. They bought several crates of whipped cream but gave it all to hobos before they could shoot the scene. "I'm not proud of it," Savage Steve said. So that's why in the film Charles rolls on his ass for no apparent reason. Later on in the Q&A when they were asked about their influences, Curtis Armstrong talked about Laurel and Hardy. His laughing scene is a direct descendant, so to speak, of Laurel's laughing gags. And of course Laurel and Hardy were awesome at improv, like all great comedians. Curtis did some improv in Better Off Dead, like at the end after Lane beats Stalin on the K12. The Asian Howard Cosell sound-alike is talking on his mic, looking slightly off-camera, presumably at a news camera or something, as he's trying to interview Lane. And then Charles De Mar stands close and smiles at the "camera." Savage Steve said Curtis decided to do that on the spot. There was no camera there. Curtis cracked up watching himself do that.

Woody Allen was the biggest influence on Savage Steve, which just goes to show he has at least that to be thankful for about his Greenwich upbringing. If not for his dad, he wouldn't've been exposed to the Woodmeister so early and so often. This helps explain Lane's predilection for suicide attempts. He's failed in love and thinks life isn't worth living anymore. He's not all jittery and neurotic like Woody's characters, but he is a fatalist like them. Savage Steve said part of the reason this film didn't sit well with critics was because he had Lane attempting suicide several times throughout the film: In the garage (hanging), jumping off the overpass, the garage again (carbon monoxide). It's another of those obvious things you don't notice until it's pointed out to you. He's right, Lane does try to do himself in an awful lot, but it's not disturbing, I suppose, because of the film's cartoon-like humor. Heck, Savage Steve even made a little cartoon for the opening credits. Lane likes to draw cartoons. When he scratches the chalk board accidentally, his classmates' hair literally stands up, like you'd normally see in a cartoon. And people fall off cliffs in cartoons all the time. And get blown up. Johnny falls off the K12 at the end and lives. Ricky Smith's mom blows up at the dinner table and lives. I suspect the critics knew all of this but felt an obligation to be mean for political correctness.

When someone asked why Better Off Dead hasn't gotten the royal DVD/Blu-ray treatment, Savage Steve said no one knows who owns it. Now that's weird, isn't it? No one knows who owns it? Someone's got to know. I did see it on one of the movie channels a few years ago. How did that channel get to show it? They must've gotten permission from someone. Or did they? If ownership is in dispute, can they just show it whenever? Anyway, that's pretty frustrating, as I'm sure Savage Steve and the gang would do an awesome commentary. I bet Dan Schneider would participate. In fact, I bet everyone from the film wouldn't mind participating in the commentary. They all seem like decent people. Except Cusack of course. Fuck Cusack.

Opera League Seminar: Götterdämmerung and Achim Freyer

It was a pleasant Saturday here in the City of Angels, boys and girls. Sun was out. You had a few wispy clouds keeping things from baking too hot. It hovered in the mid sixties all day. Not to upset the east coasters in the crowd, but this was a pretty typical SoCal January day. Sorry.

And it was a great day to get up early and take a jaunt downtown on the Red Line for an Opera League seminar, my first since Labor Day weekend. Today, though, was no ordinary seminar. If you follow my blog, you know I've been to these things before. Usually they're just a couple hours or so. You get there, mill around and eat snacks 'n whatnot, throw down some of that gourmet coffee, and then take a seat for the first lecture. Then after that there's a good thirty-minute break or so, and then a second lecturer comes up. Each lecture's usually about an hour.

Today's seminar was a bit more ambitious: Three lectures plus a panel discussion. The first two lectures were in the morning. Then we took an hour lunch break, came back for one more lecture, and then all three lecturers came up for a panel discussion. I have to admit I was a bit wary about going. For starters, it's been one helluva week at work. The job's fun and rewarding, but sometimes it just runs me ragged. To say I'm burnt toast by Friday night would be the queen mother of all understatements. I really could've used a Saturday sleeping in. And secondly, as I said above, I've only ever done seminars that lasted a couple hours. Did I really want to attend one that would essentially consume my entire Saturday? Okay maybe it didn't cost me the whole day, but that first lecture started at ten, and the panel ended at three. You're talking a pretty sincere commitment of time here.

Finally I said screw it. I bought a seminar ticket a couple weeks ago to stop myself from vacillating. And then last night, after getting home later than I'd intended, which has become a nasty habit, I threw down a couple beers, watched Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and conked out much earlier than usual so I could get in a good seven hours of slumber.

This morning I arrived downtown at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion tanned, rested, and ready, all geared up for umpteen hours of opera talk. As always, the seminar took place up on the fifth floor, the top floor of the Pavilion, in the banquet hall that affords those awesome views of the Music Center plaza and the rest of Bunker Hill. Doors actually open at nine-thirty, which gives people time to talk and nibble on breakfast. Even with my seven hours, though, getting out of bed was a chore. I'd meant to get downtown by nine-thirty, but in fact I walked into the banquet hall at nine-fifty-something, just as Dr. Allan Edmiston, the Pasadena-based cardiologist and die hard Wagner fan who always moderates these seminars, was wrapping up his introduction. I didn't bother getting anything to eat, but I desperately needed coffee. I grabbed a cup and filled it to the brim under that thermos spigot while Englishman Simon Williams took the podium to deliver the day's first lecture. These coffee cups are those old-fashioned white cups you only ever see nowadays in period English dramas. You know, they're those little white things that come with saucers. Yes, the Opera League has each one on its own saucer, all spread out on the table. Very plush. Gotta love it. So I filled my cup, held it fast to the saucer, and quietly but quickly walked around the back of the audience to my usual seat on the far side of the podium. So if you were standing at the podium facing the audience, the buffet tables would be to your extreme left, at the far end of the banquet hall, and I'd be grabbing my seat to your extreme right, only a few rows from the front. People on that side of the crowd always leave front row seats empty. What are they, shy? For me it's the same habit as in college. I sit as close to the front as possible because I learn more that way.

I've seen Simon speak at seminars before. At the Siegfried seminar in September he delivered the first of the two lectures, "Siegfried and the Problem of Fear." He's English, but he's lived here a while now as a theater professor at UC Santa Barbara. Like all English academics, Simon is beyond eloquent. He's awesome with words, and because he's a prof, he speaks in front of large groups all the time. I'm sure he's a natural at this stuff by now. Anyway, I always like it when he talks. He's fun to listen to, and I learn a ton.

The Ring as Existential Drama - Simon Williams

This lecture should've been called "Götterdämmerung as Existential Drama." The fourth and final part of Wagner's Ring Cycle, Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods) was the main focus of both his lecture as well as the lecture right after him. It was the main focus because it's the next production LA Opera will be staging. They've already tackled the first three Ring operas, parts one and two last spring, and Siegfried last fall, and of course they did seminars that focused on those. Now it's Götterdämmerung's turn for the royal seminar treatment.

Simon kicked off his lecture by talking about one of the main things people talk about when talking about Götterdämmerung: The ending. Or perhaps I should say, the lack of an ending. While I myself have never seen it, I've heard plenty about it, and the recurring theme has been the disappointment. Remember that this four-hour opera is actually not a stand-alone opera, it's the fourth chapter of a larger piece, the seventeen-hour Ring Cycle. So when you've sat through seventeen hours of opera, seventeen hours of Wagner no less, you would kinda sorta hope for a decent ending, something to make it all worth it, a kickass climax, right? Well, apparently that's not what you get, and Wagner's taken a lot of flak for that. I'm not talking about the music, mind you. Wagner's music is unimpeachable. But unlike most composers, he also wrote his own libretti, and it's in that category that Götterdämmerung is apparently lacking. Indeed, mediocre text is a criticism that was also leveled at Siegfried last September.

You know, hearing about all that reminds me of George Lucas. Just as Wagner changed the face of opera forever, George Lucas has changed movies. If you examine the history of cinema before and after George Lucas, you can see the man has definitely left an imprint, especially with sound. Most people equate George Lucas with neat visual effects, and while that's certainly true, he also made just as big a mark, if not bigger, in the realm of sound. The original Star Wars had something like ninety tracks of sound. It's the first film that credits someone as the sound director. Before Star Wars, having someone overseeing a post-production crew devoted wholly to the film's sound was unheard of. Since then, it's become commonplace. So George is the man, right? But he's also very human. Namely, he's a terrible writer. The man cannot write a script to save his life. He even admits as much. I remember in one interview he said writing screenplays is so unpleasant for him, it's like writing a term paper, which is why it will forever baffle me that he didn't farm out writing duties for the prequel trilogy.

The same goes with Wagner. When it comes to music, he's a god. By the time Wagner kicked the bucket in the 1880s, he had changed the musical landscape forever. Like George, though, he wasn't a very good writer. I can't say that about Wagner with as much certainty as I can George. I've only seen a handful of Wagner operas: The first three Rings as well as Lohengrin (twice) and Tristan und Isolde. So I sort of have to go by the word of the experts. And I suppose I can say that, based on what I've seen, Wagner's storytelling talents haven't blown me away. But I don't go to the opera for awesome stories, I go for the music. Shit, I know people who go and don't even bother reading the supertitles. The story is immaterial to them. They just want to bathe in the music. Nonetheless, if Wagner wasn't deft with the ol' pen, as all the experts seem to agree, then it's weird he wouldn't hire poets to handle his libretti. Most librettists were poets, and we all know poets can always use the money.

Simon said that, well, for starters, the reason Götterdämmerung doesn't have a very good ending is because Wagner didn't have a clue how to end it. Again, storytelling wasn't his strong suit. When the opera was still called Siegfried's Tod (Siegfried's Death), Wagner ended it by having Siegfried and Brünnhilde riding off in victory to Valhalla. But he wasn't crazy about such an upbeat ending. So then he did a one-eighty to make the ending pessimistic, with the warrior couple completely shunning the world. Simon called it a "Buddhist-Schopenhauer rejection of the world." Schopenhauer is Arthur Schopenhauer, a German philosopher whose name came up in the Siegfried seminar, I believe. He was this guy in the 1800s who was essentially a four-alarm pessimist. He was like, since human desires can never be fulfilled, then the thing to do is live a life of categorically denying any and all desires you even think you have. Don't even try to sate your longing because it will never work. He was a real bummer of a guy, in other words. Anyway, while Wagner didn't go the Schopenhauer route, the ending he decided on is still pretty downbeat: Siegfried's bumped off while Brünnhilde hops on her horse and rides headlong into a bonfire or something. No I'm not spoiling the ending for you. The Ring Cycle and everything in it is pretty common knowledge in the opera world. I had the feeling today that I was one of very few in the audience, if not the only one, who hasn't seen Götterdämmerung.

You can now see what everyone means when they talk about a letdown ending. Part of the letdown is how cryptic it is. What does it mean for Brünnhilde to ride her horse into a fire? Is it a simple suicide or is it metaphorical and/or symbolic? Some people, including the so-called Wagner experts, don't think she's really killing herself, but that she's leaving her deity heritage behind to go live in society with humans. And they write whole books to back up the point. All anyone can do, though, is speculate. Wagner himself admitted he had no idea what the ending meant. A copout if you ask me. How could he do that after working so hard on a project that consumed over a decade of his friggin' life? Simon recounted a lecture he gave to opera patrons in Seattle ahead of that city's Ring Cycle production. He told them the ending is whatever they wanted it to be. He now regrets saying that.

As the lecture's title says, Simon's main theme was existentialism. Like a lot of long words that end in "ism," existentialism can sound pretty intimidating. What's more, because it has the word "exist" at the front, you could sort of think it has something to do with, well, humans' very existence. Do we exist? You know, deep, heavy, somber shit like that. But actually it's all good. Existentialism is one of those branches of philosophy that's actually positive. In a nutshell, it preaches that you should live life to the fullest. Existentialism says that humans are born as blank slates. "Existence precedes essence" was how Simon put it. So first we're born, and then over time we create who we are through the choices we make. That's another tenet about existentialism, being free to make our own choices. One example he cited was how Albert Camus talked about Sisyphus pushing that blasted boulder up the mountain, only to have the thing roll down again. It was an essay Camus wrote in 1942 called "The Myth of Sisyphus." Camus basically says Sisyphus is making the choice to push the boulder up the mountain over and over again. He's not the brightest guy in the world, but at least he's doing something of his own free will. "[O]ne must imagine Sisyphus as happy," Camus wrote. "The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart." See, the problem I have with that is, I always thought the whole Sisyphus thing was a punishment. Didn't he do something bad, sleep with another man's wife or something, and then get cursed to roll the stupid rock up and down the hill for the rest of time? I mean that's the version I remember as a youngster. And if that's the case, it doesn't seem like a good example of existentialism. I wonder what Camus was getting at by saying Sisyphus must've been happy doing something I didn't think was his choice. Anyways, not the best example of existentialism if you ask me, but there you have it.

To keep the momentum going, Simon moved on from Albert Camus to Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-80), the French existentialist who was quite the multi-tasker. Jean-Paul was a playwright, novelist, critic, philosopher, political activist, you name it. Simon recounted a trip he took to Berlin a while back to attend this annual theater festival they have there called Theatertreffen, which literally means "theater meeting." It takes place over a couple weeks every May and is a venue for rising young talent from all over Europe to put on a whole bunch of plays, oldies-but-goodies as well as original new ones. Well, when Simon went one year, one of the oldies-but-goodies was Les Mains sales (Dirty Hands), a play Jean-Paul wrote in 1948. It's a long one, a good seven acts or so, which Simon said was four acts too long.

Les Mains sales takes place during World War II in a fictional Eastern European country called Illyria, which apparently Jean-Paul based on Hungary. The main character is Hugo, a twenty-one-year-old intellectual who comes from, if not wealthy, then definitely a comfortable middle-upper-class background. But he's disenchanted with all that and becomes a Communist. No sooner does he do that than his fellow Commies decide something needs to be done with Hoederer, one of their party leaders who's getting a little too chummy with non-Communist groups, including the Fascists. That's no good, right? Hoederer needs to be dealt with. They tap Hugo for the job. So Hugo and his cute nineteen-year-old wife, Jessica, move in with Hoederer because Hugo has gotten himself hired as Hoederer's secretary. Jessica, meanwhile, thinks the whole exercise is a game and that her hubby can't possibly be serious about assassinating a politician. What makes the job difficult is that Hoederer is a genuinely nice guy. Over time Hugo can't help liking him. Even after Hoederer finds out why Hugo is really there, he offers to help the kid sort out his issues. As if things aren't complicated enough, Jessica develops a crush on the older man. Hoederer is not interested. Finally he kisses her just to satisfy her. This being a drama, Jean-Paul has Hugo walk in at just the moment Hoederer is kissing his wife. Hugo kills him on the spot.

So the existential question is: Why did Hugo kill Hoederer? Originally it was supposed to be for political reasons, but I think it's safe to say ideology was the furthest thing from Hugo's mind when he finally did the dirty deed. You'd probably assume it was simple hot jealousy. But when Hugo recounts the incident to Olga, his only real friend in the Communist group, he says that, yes, he did it out of jealousy, but not for his wife. Seeing Hoederer kiss his wife made him think Hoederer had lied about being a mentor to him.

The whole thing is told in flashback, by the way, Hugo sitting in a cell talking to Olga. The lemon on the wound comes toward the end when Olga tells Hugo that the Communists went ahead and formed an alliance with non-Communist parties. Hoederer was successful and will be remembered as a hero. Hugo, meanwhile, has become a pariah in the party. He knows it. Olga wants to save him, but when the Commie hitmen show up at the jail to bump off Hugo, Hugo actually lets them in. Once again you have existentialism rearing its head. Hugo makes a very conscious choice to let the hitmen take him out. Why?

Sounds like a pretty gripping drama, but it's hard to see how you could stretch it out over seven acts. Apparently Simon feels the same way. But here's the thing: When he showed it to his students at UC Santa Barbara, they loved it. I suppose I'm curious enough that I'd sit through it once, but it's hard to say if I'd love it. Again, seven acts?

Anyway, not to get too sidetracked from the Ring Cycle, but Simon wanted to recount his experience with that play to show how existentialism can be used as a dramatic device, since that's how he was going to talk about Götterdämmerung. It's important to note that while Jean-Paul was an important advocate of existentialism, he didn't invent the idea. Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard and German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche are widely considered the godfathers of the existentialist philosophy. Nietzsche's the reason Simon thinks Götterdämmerung can and should be viewed through an existentialist lens. It's true that you could view this opera and the Ring Cycle as a whole through any number of lenses: Marxist, Fascist, Freudian, Jungian, and so on. Many people have done so. But you have to give the edge to existentialism because Wagner was pals with Nietzsche and bought into a lot of what Nietzsche preached. Whether or not he meant to apply it to the Ring Cycle will never be known, but he could've done so subconsciously....which would also make it Freudian. Okay let's stop there, but you see what I mean.

Before talking about Götterdämmerung, Simon gave us a brief overview of how the first three Ring operas could be viewed as existentialist. He flew through this bit and I didn't quite catch it all. For Das Rheingold, he talked about Wotan, the god of gods, being existentialist. Wotan thinks Valhalla is his key to total freedom. Once the giants Fafner and Fasolt have finished building it, Wotan can live there and rule the world and do whatever he wants. He can be a true existentialist and live life to the fullest. The one small problem here is that the plan backfires completely. With Valhalla's construction as his goal, Wotan has restricted his choices. All of his actions are motivated by the desire for power and freedom. And so, ironically, his power diminishes. Wotan and the other gods make their own choices that determine their destiny. This makes them all too human. And existentialist. Simon played an excerpt from scene four where Wotan goes:

So grüss’ ich die Burg, (Thus I salute the fortress,)
Sicher vor Bang’ und Graun! (safe from terror and dread!)

Now for Die Walküre, Siegmund is our existentialist hero. Just to remind you: Siegmund's that one guy with the twin sister Sieglinde whom he sleeps with (don't ask). She gives birth to Siegfried who, amazingly, isn't born with a tail or a third arm or anything. All of Siegmund's actions are the result of his own choices. He acts out of justice. I'm not sure if knocking up his twin is part of the whole justice thing, but the rest of what he does definitely is. Just like Hugo from Les Mains sales, Siegmund does what he knows is right even if it comes at a personal cost to him. In the end, though, he fails. His dad Wotan, meanwhile, continues the downward spiral he started in Das Rheingold. Simon called Wotan's monologue in Die Walküre the god of gods' position on existentialism, where he's like, "All I can see in the world is myself..." Wotan, in other words, has become mired in his own choices even more than he was in the first opera. He'll never be truly free (i.e. existentialist) like everyone else, but again, he's only in this dorky situation because of choices he himself made in Das Rheingold. Now I wonder if Camus would say Wotan's happy? I mean he called Sisyphus happy, which I have to take with a grain of salt. Anyway, so that's Wotan. Like his boy Siegmund, his choices fail to make him free to live life to the fullest. No, the one character in Die Walküre who is truly free is the main Valkyrie, Brünnhilde. She knows the choices she makes will upset her dad Wotan, but she makes them anyway. And she tells Sieglinde to go ahead and have her incestuous baby. Why not? Life's short, right? Here Simon played an excerpt from act three when Sieglinde, in response to Brünnhilde's advice, sings:

O hehrstes Wunder! (Sublimest wonder!)

Herrliche Maid! (Glorious maid!)

Dir treuen dank' ich (You true-hearted woman, thank you)

heiligen Trost! (for sacred solace!)

Für ihn, den wir liebten, (For him whom we loved)

rett' ich das liebste: (I'll save what's most dear:)

meines Dankes Lohn (may my gratitude's guerdon)

lache dir einst! (smile upon you one day!)

Lebe wohl! (Fare you well!)

Dich segnet Sieglinde's Weh'! (Let Sieglinde's woe be your blessing!)

According to Simon, this song replaces the sword melody from Das Rheingold as the Ring's existential epicenter.

Now for the third opera, Siegfried, existentialism has the hardest time. Siegfried, I learned at last September's seminar, is generally considered the Ring Cycle's weak link. Having a hard time with existentialism isn't really a fault, not if Wagner didn't set out to make Siegfried an existential vehicle. I suppose what Simon meant was that viewing Siegfried in an existential light isn't as helpful as it is when that same light is applied to the other three Ring operas. In Siegfried you have no society. It's almost like the title character lives in a vacuum. He has no connection with the real world at all. Like his grandfather Wotan, he sees the world and himself as one and the same. Speaking of Wotan, in Siegfried he's known as the Wanderer. He wants to keep tabs on his grandkid while his internal struggle continues to worsen. He's no longer free to make his own choices. In fact, he's so messed up he tries to get in the way of Siegfried and Brünnhilde carrying out the choices they finally make. Or rather, the choices Brünnhilde makes for the both of them. The best Wotan can hope for is that love will reunite all.

Okay. With that brief overview of existentialism in the first three Ring operas, Simon now dove into the meat of his lecture: Existentialism in Götterdämmerung. He reminded us that Götterdämmerung's libretto was actually the first libretto Wagner wrote. It was originally supposed to be just this one opera called Siegfried's Tod (Siegfried's Death), not four operas. But of course Wagner thought it was important for everyone to know in exhausting detail what happened before Siegfried bit the Nordic big one. If you view those first three as backstory and Götterdämmerung as the main one, that might explain why Götterdämmerung has the most complex plot. In contrast with Siegfried, which took place in a vacuum, entirely outside of society, Götterdämmerung's storyline is completely embedded in society. This is illustrated quite starkly in the act two chorus. Apparently Wagner got a lot of flak for the chorus. It's the only chorus in the entire Cycle, so I reckon most people thought it didn't fit. For his part, Simon loves it. He doesn't view the chorus as a "setback," a word he repeated several times in this context. Not only is it not a setback, it fits perfectly with one of the overall themes of the opera: Siegfried and Brünnhilde distancing themselves from their deity heritage and getting closer to humans.

Simon also said that Wagner, like Jean-Paul Sartre after him, drew heavily from the Greek classics. I wrote a blog post about a German art and opera seminar at the Getty Center last year. Among many other things, they talked about the source texts that inform the Ring Cycle storyline. As I sort of remembered from high school, German and Icelandic myths figure heavily in the Ring, but so does Ancient Greece. The whole idea of a hero striving for the freedom to make their own choices while society tries to imprison their freedom, so to speak, comes directly from Ancient Greece, and that's what you have in Götterdämmerung with Siegfried and Brünnhilde.

Another marked difference between this opera and the other three is the ferocity of the orchestra's brass section. Simon isn't a musicologist. That would be the domain of Mitchell Morris, today's second speaker. But Simon did say that from a layman's point of view, the Götterdämmerung brass isn't its usual warm self. At the end of the first act he always feels "cowed" by the music and doesn't want to talk to anyone during intermission. It reminds him of those giant bird creatures from Avatar swooping down to peck at people. The hostile orchestra "entraps and overwhelms," he said. That's cool that he used an Avatar reference. I have to say at first blush Simon doesn't strike me as the kind of guy who'd see a movie like that. Don't get the man wrong, he's not saying he doesn't like the music. He loves it. Wagner is "incapable of writing a single boring bar of music," he said. Sure, Siegfried's funeral is depressing, but it's "wonderfully depressing," he said. He loves to hate villains like Hagen and Alberich because they, like the other characters, are so wonderfully rendered by the music.

Speaking of Hagen, he was part of the next excerpt Simon played. It's from the very beginning of the opera. Simon said that out of all the overwhelming, hostile brass sets in the production, this first bit is the most overwhelming to him. What you have here is a scene at Gibichung Hall. The Gibichungs are a race of people who live along the Rhine. Their ruler is this kat called Gunther. Hagen is Gunther's half-brother and main advisor. This first scene sees them anticipating Siegfried's arrival. It's too bad I can't play you the music, but here's what they say:

Hagen

Ein gemächlicher Schlag, (With an easy stroke,)

wie von müssiger Hand, (as if with idle hands,)

treibt jach den Kahn wider den Strom; (he drives the boat fast against the current;)

so rüstiger Kraft in des Ruders Schwung (such robust strength in the swing of the oar)

rühmt sich nur der, der den Wurm erschlug. (proclaims this must be he who slew the dragon.)

Siegfried ist es, sicher kein andrer! (It is Siegfried, certainly no other!)

Gunther

Jagt er vorbei? (Is he speeding past?)

Hagen (calling toward the river)

Hoiho! Wohin, (Hoiho, Where are you going,)

du heitrer Held? (my fine hero?)

Siegfried's Voice

Zu Gibichs starkem Sohne. (To Gibich's stalwart son.)

Hagen

Zu seiner Halle entbiet' ich dich. (To his hall I invite you.)

(Siegfried enters.)

Hieher! Hier lege an! (This way! Lay to!)

I can sort of see what Simon means by "hostile brass." I don't know. I'll see this thing in April. And then in June I'll see all four Ring operas again. With this info under my belt, I'll be able to watch and listen with more informed eyes and ears. Don't be fooled by Hagen and Gunther's hospitality, by the way. They aren't exactly fans of Siegfried. In fact, they really want to hurt him.

Wotan, meanwhile, that poor devil, is continuing his futile quest to be free to make his own choices, the same quest he's been on pretty much the entire Cycle. Since he can't tell himself from the rest of the world, you could also say he's on a quest to make everyone else free, to have everyone abide by the existentialist credo of living life to the fullest. In Siegfried he was really hoping his grandkid Siegfried's love for Brünnhilde would help make this quest easier, but no go. Speaking of the lovely couple, Simon reiterated that they are the existential heroes here. Well, Siegfried's more of a wannabe. He doesn't make it, but Simon thinks Brünnhilde is, in fact, successful, her riding into the bonfire be damned. Her existentialism is fully realized, perhaps because of, as opposed to in spite of, her choice at the very end to dance with the fire.

Simon played another excerpt from act one. Now we're with this gal named Waltraute, one of Brünnhilde's Valkyrie sisters. Waltraute pays a visit to her sis and goes:

Seine Knie' umwindend (Clasping his knees)

liegen wir Walküren; (we Valkyries lie;)

blind bleibt er (he is blind)

den flehenden Blicken; (to our pleading glances;)

uns alle verzehrt (we are all consumed)

Zagen und endlose Angst. (by dismay and infinite dread.)

An seine Brust (To his breast)

preßt' ich mich weinend; (I pressed myself, weeping;)

da brach sich sein Blick; (his glance grew less harsh;)

er gedacht Brünnhilde, dein'! (he was thinking, Brünnhilde, of you!)

Tief seufzt' er auf, (Sighing deeply,)

schloß das Auge, (he closed his eye)

und wie im Traume (and as in a dream)

raunt' er das Wort: (whispered the words:)

"des tiefen Rheines Töchtern ("If she gave back the ring)

gäbe den Ring sie wieder zurück, (to the deep Rhine's daughters,)

von des Fluches Last (from the weight of the curse)

erlös't wär Gott und Welt!" (both god and world would be freed!")

The "he" she's referring to here as well as quoting is her and Brünnhilde's dad Wotan. Waltraute is basically telling Brünnhilde how Dad came home from wandering (remember in the opera just before this he was known as the Wanderer) with his spear broken and how bummed out he was by that and so forth. It wasn't just any spear. It had all of the treaties and bargains Wotan's ever made carved along its shaft. The spear vested him with authority, in other words, so of course he's upset that it broke, right? And now he's basically sitting in Valhalla feeling sorry for himself while a flock of ravens go back and forth from Valhalla to Earth to keep him in the loop on what's going on. Simon referred to Wotan's attitude as the "philosophy of resignation." Ya know. The world sucks. Life sucks. And apparently Waltraute sort of buys into it. So after recounting Dad's sorry state, and how he wishes Brünnhilde would return the ring to the Rhine, she begs Brünnhilde to do what Dad wants so he'll be happy again. But Brünnhilde's like, "Uh, no." She's not giving the ring back to the Rhine Maidens. It's hers, dag nabbit. It's not just greed, though. Brünnhilde splinters from her father philosophically. She doesn't buy into his "philosophy of resignation." Again, she is our existentialist hero, and from act one the glimmers of her existentialism become visible. Waltraute rides off in despair. And then what happens is, Siegfried shows up. For some bizarre reason, he's disguised as Gunther, wearing the Tarnhelm, and claims Brünnhilde as his woman. She puts up a good fight--what Valkyrie wouldn't?--but Siegfried wins in the end. He snatches the ring and slips it on his finger. Swell guy, huh?

Simon referred to Siegfried as the biggest disappointment in Götterdämmerung in terms of existentialism. He called Siegfried a "Rousseau-istic" character, a reference to Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78). Know who he was? Me neither before I joined the Opera League. Rousseau was a Swiss French philosopher who, like most philosophers, was quite a prolific writer, both in fiction and non. Among the things he philosophized about were human will, education, and the moral simplicity of people. From his 1754 book Discourse on Inequality: "The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said 'This is mine,' and found people naive enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: 'Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.'?" And then in Emile, his 1762 treatise on education, which he considered his most important work, Rousseau was like: "The noblest work in education is to make a reasoning man, and we expect to train a young child by making him reason! This beginning at the end; this is making an instrument of a result. If children understood how to reason they would not need to be educated.” You get the picture, right? So by labeling Siegfried Rousseau-istic, Simon meant that, while he's a hero out in nature, where he doesn't have to deal with humans, he's dumb as a doornail when you throw him into society. Anyways, if you're looking for existentialism, you might be tempted by Siegfried, but you'll be let down in the end.

Hagen, meanwhile, is very clearly not existentialist. Simon called him the anti-existentialist character, a full one-eighty from Brünnhilde. Hagen has absolutely no good in him at all. He hates people for the sheer love of hating them. And he's envious of their happiness. He'll never be happy, so why should they be?

As you can see, what with Hagen, Siegfried, and Wotan, this opera isn't exactly chockfull of the nicest people you'll ever meet. What a bunch of downers, huh? Speaking of Wotan, Simon said the Wotan of Götterdämmerung is similar to the Wotan of Das Rheingold in terms of his attitude. He travels along a cycle, if you will, of resignation. In the middle of the Cycle he gets his hopes up with Siegfried and Brünnhilde, then gives up on that hope. Simon referred to a ritual of throwing a clump of dirt over your shoulder to signify you don't care what happens to you. That's Wotan.

While Brünnhilde does achieve freedom, it has a flipside: Her ferocity. "Those who love greatly, avenge greatly," Simon said. This explains Brünnhilde's actions in act two. She's pretty upset at having been overpowered by who she thinks was Gunther. When she finds out that it was, in fact, Siegfried, her blood positively boils. Siegfried denies her charge and then goes off to a wedding feast or something. Brünnhilde, meanwhile, stays behind and ponders a way to get back at him. Make no mistake, she wants Siegfried dead. Did I mention Valkyries are tough nuts? Especially Valkyries like Brünnhilde who, per existentialism, have realized the freedom to do what they want. Gunther, meanwhile, needs to restore his name. He can't have weirdos like Siegfried impersonating him and doing weird shit. Siegfried has to be dealt with. Hagen's all for it. He and Gunther decide to take Siegfried on a hunting trip, maintain the guise of friendship just a little longer, and then bump him off. Brünnhilde joins the plot. She tells them the only vulnerable spot on Siegfried is his back.

Brünnhilde, Gunther, and Hagen sing a trio at this point. This is the last song of act two. Brünnhilde and Gunther make a vow in the name of Wotan, "guardian of oaths," to kill Siegfried. Hagen, that nasty cuss, makes his own evil vow to his dad Alberich to snatch the ring after Siegfried's dead so they can rule the world.

Simon didn't play that song unfortunately. He did play Brünnhilde's monologue at the end of act three, though, which is the end of the opera and the Ring. Siegfried's six-feet deep at this point. She's feeling a wee bit guilty.

Schweigt eures Jammers (Silence the shrill clamor)

jauchzenden Schwall! (of your grief!)

Das ihr alle verrietet, (All of you betrayed his wife,)

zur rache schreitet sein Weib. (who now comes for vengeance.)

Kinder hört' ich greinen nach der Mutter, (I have heard the children cry to their mother)

da süsse Milch sie verschüttet; (when sweet milk had been spilled;)

doch nicht erklang mir würdige Klage, (but no lament reached my ear,)

des hehrsten Helden wert. (fitting for this supreme hero.)

__________

Die Gattin trügend, treu dem Freunde, (Deceiving his wife, loyal to his friend,)

von der eignen Trauten, einzig ihm teuer, (with his sword he separated himself)

schnied er sich durch sein Schwert. (from his own true love, alone dear to him.)

Echter als er schwur keiner Eide; (No man more honest ever took an oath;)

treuer als er hielt keiner Verträge; (none more true made a treaty;)

latrer als er liebte kein andrer; (none was more pure in love;)

und doch, all Eide, alle Verträge, (and yet none so betrayed all oaths,)

die treueste Liebe trog keiner wie er! (all treaties, his truest love!)

__________

Weiss ich nun, was dir frommt? (Do I know now what is your will?)

Alles, alles, alles weiss ich, (Everything, everything I know,)

alles ward mir nun frei! (all is now clear to me.)

__________

Grane, mein Ross, sei mir gegrüßt! (Grane, my steed, greetings!)

Weißt du auch, mein Freund, (Do you too know, my friend,)

wohin ich dich führe? (where I am leading you?)

Im Feuer leuchtend, liegt dort dein Herr, (Radiant in the fire, there lies your lord,)

Siegfried, mein seliger Held. (Siegfried, my blessed hero.)

Dem Freunde zu folgen, wieherst du freudig? (Are you neighing for joy to follow your friend?)

Lockt dich zu ihm die lachende Lohe? (Do the laughing flames lure you to him?)

Fühl meine Brust auch, wie sie entbrennt; (Feel my bosom too,)

helles Feuer das Herz mir erfaßt, (how it burns,)

ihn zu umschlingen, umschlossen von ihm, (a bright fire fastens on my heart)

in mächtigster Minne vermählt ihm zu sein! (to embrace him, enfolded in his arms,)

Heiajoho! Grane! (to be one with him in the intensity of love!)

Grüß deinen Herren! (Heiajoho! Grane! Greet your master)

Siegfried! Siegfried! Sieh! (Siegfried! Siegfried! See!)

Selig grüß dich dein Weib! (Your wife joyfully greets you!)

Heavy shit, huh? Simon spent a few minutes dissecting this a bit. You see in that first stanza how Brünnhilde says she hears "children cry to their mother?" Apparently the "children" she's referring to are Gunther and Hagen. Sure, she told them how to bump off Siegfried, but that doesn't mean she likes them. Indeed, they're despicable to her. Siegfried betrayed her that one time, but she still likes him better. That becomes quite clear in the second stanza, where she goes, "No man more honest ever took an oath; none more true made a treaty; none was more pure in love..." This baffled Simon. "What Siegfried is this?" he said. This isn't the Siegfried the audience has been getting to know over the past couple operas. Indeed, he digressed a bit and wondered out loud if Siegfried-as-shining-hero is some sort of sub-myth to the Ring that's taken on a life of its own, perpetuated by folks who haven't actually bothered sitting through the umpteen-hour Cycle. While I haven't seen Götterdämmerung yet, I did see Siegfried last September, so I can sort of confirm what he's saying. Siegfried has his virtues, but he's also kind of a weirdo. It's just strange how he seems so aloof from, ya know, reality. Simon did say that the way Brünnhilde described Siegfried is how Siegfried could have been if he hadn't been corrupted by society, kind of like in Tristan which, as I said way up top, Wagner wrote during his twelve-year gap between acts two and three of the Siegfried score. At one point Isolde sings about Tristan in an idealistic sense, in the way she wants to see him instead of the way he really is. And how is Tristan really? Well, he's suffering a "Freudian crisis," according to Simon. I saw Tristan a few years ago so I don't remember it that well. I do remember that its four or so hours swallowed up my entire Sunday, but that's about it. Wagner requires patience and no mistake.

One last comment Simon had for Brünnhilde's monologue concerned the very end. Again, it's too bad I can't play you the music, but toward the end of that last stanza, the music you hear is reminiscent of the melody Wagner uses in Die Walküre when Sieglinde praises Brünnhilde after the latter encourages her to go ahead and have that incestuous child. The end of Götterdämmerung is the only other time Wagner uses this melody, which has become known as the Brünnhilde melody. The last stanza is the only time in the entire Cycle where the music "breathes," Simon said. Brünnhilde's final words are the "breath of the world." The final stanza is also the only instance of free will in the entire Ring, which is kind of astounding if you think about it. And it hammers home the idea of Brünnhilde being the only true existentialist character in Götterdämmerung.

Now here's the thing: Does Brünnhilde die? As you can sort of tell from the excerpt, she's on her horse, Grane, and rides him into the fire. Simon's not convinced she's dead. Nah, she's now living in society amongst us mere mortals. I don't know about that, I think he's reaching. I mean, look at what she says. She's going on about the fire burning her bosom and all that, and how she joyfully greets Siegfried who, remember, is dead at this point after having been lured into that hunting trip with Gunther and Hagen. So if she says she, his "wife," greets him, what does that tell you? Uh, she's maybe hoping to see him in the afterlife?

Simon said directors have always had a terrible time with Götterdämmerung's ending. In that Seattle production he mentioned at the start of his lecture, the ending had all the gods come out on the stage and shake hands. Hilarious. In a San Francisco production they had Alberich come back, which Simon emphatically said "really didn't work." One ending he really liked was in Stüttgart. Brünnhilde gave her final monologue as a concert piece while the stage directions from the libretto were projected behind her. Very creative.

And finally Simon played one last thing, the instrumental finale after Brünnhilde does whatever she does by riding Grane into the bonfire. It really is a beautiful piece of music, so affecting that we all clapped when it was over. Allan Edmiston came back up to shake Simon's hand and was like, "Thank you, Simon. And thank you, Vienna Philharmonic!" Apparently it was their rendition of the score we'd been listening to. Awesome. Vienna's top notch. I saw Wagner's Lohengrin there in June of '99. I don't remember much about the story, but the music has stayed with me ever since.

Opera Transfigured: Notes on Götterdämmerung - Mitchell Morris

Speaking of music, that was Mitchell's focus. Like Simon, Mitchell's someone I've now seen at these seminars a few times. And he was at the Getty Center last March for that whole thing on German art and opera. He's a musicologist at UCLA. In his intro, Allan talked about some of the stuff Mitchell's taught recently, classes on Sibelius, Mahler, and Shostakovich. He's all over the map in other words. I'd definitely sign up for the Sibelius class if I didn't have other stuff to worry about, like earning money and eating. Jean Sibelius was a composer from Finland known mainly for symphonies. His heyday was the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a time I know very little about in terms of classical music. Plus, how many Finnish composers do you know? Although he's never talked about it at the League seminars, another of Mitchell's specialties is whale singing. Yes, I mean that literally. Dude's an authority on how whales communicate, which I think is friggin' awesome. Anyway, as with his lecture at the Siegfried seminar, Mitchell got very technical with a lot of music terminology, not all of which I was able to follow, but I'll relay what I can.

In a nutshell, the point of his talk was how music was never the same after Götterdämmerung. Indeed, it was never the same after act two of Siegfried. When Wagner shelved the Ring for those twelve years, he not only composed Tristan und Isolde, but also Der Meistersinger von Nürnberg. And it was during that time that his musical aesthetic changed, and in so changing influenced the musical aesthetic of his peers, as it was generally agreed that Wagner was at the top of his class. Opera in particular was never the same after Götterdämmerung.

What does Mitchell mean when he makes sweeping statements like that? Does the music change in any manifest way that lay listeners like you and me would notice?

Mitchell started with leitmotifs, those pieces of music that are associated with characters or themes and are always played when that character or theme reenters the drama. At seventeen hours, the Ring Cycle has no shortage of leitmotifs. At first, they're easy to pick up on. As we progress through the Cycle, though, they not only multiply, they became hazier, harder to notice. The way Mitchell described it, the leitmotifs become more holistic. They go from the left brain to the right brain. If you're like Mitchell and actually pay attention to such things, then watching the Ring can be kind of frustrating as you lose sight of all the leitmotifs, but he does say there's a huge payoff at the end.

Wagner hated the idea of the musical dichotomy of convention versus expression, even though it's central to the drama. And by expression, Mitchell meant spontaneity, something he admits having no patience for. His Southern upbringing has something to do with that, he said. Mitchell said this during the Siegfried seminar. If you want spontaneity, go to the monkey house and watch the chimps throw stuff at each other. Also like last time, he walked over to the piano and played a few chords for us while talking about how, after Bach, music was generally split between two scales: Major and minor. He called the minor scale "major's evil twin." And then when Wagner took his hiatus from the Ring to do that other stuff, he changed the rule of scales. For example, Mitchell said that when you watch Tristan, it's difficult to label the scale and key without also taking into consideration things like connotation, context, and timbre. You could say the first act of Tristan is in A major and minor as well as C major and minor, all at the same time, which was unheard of before. The scales are flexible, you could say.

Mitchell also gave us a brief exposition on symmetrical phrasing, how a lot of songs can be split into units of four, something that was especially fundamental to eighteenth and nineteenth century music. Mozart played around with this. While the units of eight were secure, Mozart didn't always split them into four plus four. Sometimes he did five plus three. By the time Robert Schumann came along a few decades later, in the mid 1800s or so, the eight had become a secure quadrangle. Most folks stuck with the conventional four plus four.

And then after Schumann comes Wagner with his pesky Ring Cycle. With Götterdämmerung, Wagner blew the four plus four clear out of the water. Symmetrical phrasing became blurred. Mitchell said that, like most artistic innovations, the new way has its upsides and downsides. One upside is that you can have more spontaneous music, personified in the Ring with Hagen and Alberich. A downside is that, from the listener's point of view, there's less solid ground to stand on because there's no consistent scale or symmetry tying things together. While I'm sure experts like Mitchell are sensitive to that, I'm not sure I'd notice it. Or perhaps I would on a subconscious level. I'll have to keep this in mind when I see Götterdämmerung in a couple months.

To elaborate on what he meant by having ground to stand on, he referenced Italian opera. When you see operas by composers like Verdi, the music is very danceable. You take act one of La Traviata for instance. It's all waltz. Every movement of it. Although I should say that Verdi was awesome enough to separate the drama from the dance. Anyway, that's what he means. You can't dance to a song if the notes are all over the place, A major and C minor and all that, all at the same time.

Now while Verdi and his Italian brethren were doing their thing, German composers were churning out music that was less expressive and emotive and more internal and psychological. Wagner's a perfect example of that. That's what makes it so God damned hard to sit through Parsifal and Tristan. They're psychological dramas. Not much actually happens in the outside world. The action, such as it is, takes place mostly in the characters' heads. And when they sing and interact throughout the opera, the words coming out of their mouths basically manifest--and, one hopes, eventually resolve--the internal conflicts. While Italian composers of the 19th century reveled in nature and the world around them, their German contemporaries were "obsessed with Romantic internal drama," as Mitchell put it. And not just composers. In general, all German art and thought of the nineteenth century revolved around Romanticism. Interesting. I mean when I hear the word Romantic, I think of British literature of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Shelly, Byron, all those kats. And then it spread to American shores in the early and mid nineteenth century. Edgar Allan Poe's a good example. But I never did learn about Romanticism in any other context. I had no idea it permeated German society so much, although I have heard the term used at past Opera League seminars.

Speaking of nineteenth century Europe, Mitchell discussed one of the cultural traits of that time: Arranged marriages. You had families forming alliances through marriage. This happened in the States as well. It was everywhere. Heck, pick up any Jane Austen novel, one of the conflicts is always someone coerced into marrying someone else for the benefit of status or prestige or wealth, or any number of reasons that have nothing to do with love. It was in this context that Mitchell brought up Claude Lévi-Strauss, the French anthropologist considered the father of modern anthropology. He passed away last fall at the age of 100, just a month shy of 101. Mitchell related an anecdote from a trip Claude took to South America. One of Claude's big things was visiting the indigenous peoples of different countries so he could compare and contrast the "savage mind." In South America he visited tribes who live deep in the Amazon. Among other things, he asked them how they decided whom to marry. In other cultures siblings and cousins would marry each other, why didn't the Amazonians? "Are you kidding?" they asked him. "Marry our sisters? Then how do we get a brother-in-law?" In other words, how can they form alliances with other families if they only marry within the family? The whole incest thing never came up as a reason. It was all about alliances.

Mitchell also mentioned Gayle Rubin, another anthropologist and a disciple of Claude. Gayle's forte has been less about the mind of the "savage" and more about sex and gender politics. She hit the big time in the mid seventies, when she was in her mid twenties, with an essay called "The Traffic in Women: Notes on the 'Political Economy' of Sex," a serious academic study into how women were traditionally secondary. She became what they called a "pro-sex" feminist. Eventually she got her doctorate in anthropology at Michigan, where she currently teaches.

Anyway, it's the "traffic in women" concept Mitchell wanted to hammer home. That's what we see in Götterdämmerung. As an example, he played us act one, scene two, which is sandwiched between two of the excerpts Simon played, scenes one and three. The former is the one with Hagen and Gunther spotting Siegfried as he approaches their domicile, Gibichung Hall. And then scene three is where Waltraute pleads in vain with her sister Brünnhilde about giving the ring back to their dad Wotan. Well, in scene two we get to meet Gutrune, the sister to Gibichung ruler Gunther. What Simon didn't play us in the scene one excerpt was this one bit where Hagen, Gunther's advisor as well as half-brother, advises Gunther to marry Brünnhilde. Gunther needs a wife for strategic purposes. And their sister Gutrune needs a husband. Hagen suggests Siegfried. He's already given Gutrune a potion to give Siegfried that will make our pitiful hero forget all about Brünnhilde and fall for Gutrune. And while he's still drugged up and ready to marry Gutrune, Siegfried can help them convince Brünnhilde to marry Gunther. Gutrune goes along with this just fine. This leads to the excerpt Mitchell played, which I've scanned and inserted below. Siegfried shows up at Gibichung Hall, drinks up, forgets everything, falls for Gutrune, and agrees to help them snare Brünnhilde. They take it even further. Hagen has them take a blood oath. Siegfried and Gunther mix their blood in a drinking horn and then leave to find Brünnhilde. Hagen stays back and pinches himself to make sure he's not dreaming. He can't believe how well his plan's working. Siegfried and Gunther have no idea what he's all about. His one and only motive here is to get back the ring. And those two idiots will unwittingly bring it to him. By the way, sorry if Mitchell's excerpts are tough to read. Don't bother with the left column, that's the German. English is on the right. Squint hard.


Anyway, you see Mitchell's point. The male characters talk about Brünnhilde and Gutrune as if they're products to be traded and bartered. The song contains a lot of "callousness," Mitchell said, in its attitude toward women. And that Gutrune goes along with it would drive Gayle Rubin insane. Wagner's not showing this "traffic in women" thing in a very positive light. That's because he was very much against it as well as the whole idea of arranged marriages in general. Notice that Brünnhilde is the ultimate hero of the Cycle. She's a very modern woman. She lies down for no one. That's the kind of woman Wagner admired. So as Mitchell said, the Ring Cycle "presupposes women as their own agent." I have to say the irony here is precious. The Ring Cycle notwithstanding, Wagner's attitude toward women was terrible. He cheated on his wife all the time. Seriously, Wagner was convinced a woman's place was the kitchen. Literally. He's the last person you'd expect would disagree with trafficking women and arranging marriages, yet there you have it.

Speaking of irony, it's ironic Brünnhilde and Gutrune would be treated that way when the whole thing's a false bargain. Gutrune knows this, of course, which is, I suppose, why she goes along with being objectified. Siegfried's the only one dumb enough not to see through their scheme. He's dumb because he's not connected to society. Ring characters not connected to society are either deities or otherwise not completely human, like Siegfried as well as his dad Siegmund, whom Mitchell described as "half-beastly." Now you can see, by the way, why Siegfried had no problem assaulting Brünnhilde and stealing the ring. He had no idea who she was because of how drugged up he was.

Before he played the excerpts, Mitchell described them with the German word Aufhebung, which means uplifting. The characters may be callous, but the music's Aufhebung. And then after the first excerpt above, he talked about how interesting it was to hear Siegfried and Gunther sing a duet. This marks the first duet in the Ring, an old-fashioned "grand opera" duet, he said. Not even the twins Siegmund and Sieglinde have a duet. "Not even the twins sing in thirds for heaven's sake," he said. But Wagner systematically undermines the duet with orchestral leitmotifs. Two in particular: The "curse" and the "spear" motifs, which make this ditty a real bear for the orchestra. Really, I'm no Ring expert, but I've seen enough Wagner to pity any orchestra that has to take him on.

The second excerpt was from act two, scene one. That's cool. Simon skipped act two entirely. This scene involved the wicked Hagen and his father Alberich, who's an even bigger bastard. In other words, it's a pretty dark scene. "Very creepy," was how Mitchell described it.

Not sure how well you can read that. Hagen's dozing by the banks of the Rhine. Dad wakes him up and tells him to "hate happy people." Oh, and go kill Siegfried and get the ring back. And make sure Wotan's ruined. Mitchell didn't play the whole scene, just the first part with father and son, up to where Alberich makes his son swear to get the ring back and to "be faithful! Faithful!" Mitchell reiterated Simon's point about Hagen being out to ruin the happiness of everyone else since he himself is inherently incapable of being happy. "A spirit of negation," Mitchell called him, a term coined by Goethe. Yet it's because of all this darkness that Mitchell called Hagen the most interesting character in Götterdämmerung. As for Alberich, Mitchell called him "relentless." And that certainly shines through if you can read the above dialogue. One interesting thing Mitchell also pointed out was how fast Alberich speaks for a Wagnerian character. I'll have to remember that when I see Götterdämmerung. Wagner never does anything fast. Mitchell said if you really listen to Alberich in that scene, you'll see--or rather, hear--that he doesn't have any clear periods between his sentences. Except in two places: When he mentions the Rhine Maidens, and at the very end when the curse comes to the fore.

Mitchell played one more excerpt, the finale in act three when Brünnhilde rides Grane into the fire.

Yes I know Simon played this too, but the music's so awesome, it's worth it. The music is awesome, but not the libretto. Mitchell stated unequivocally that the "text fails" at the end of Götterdämmerung, and that of course is why opera companies have such a tough time with it. But back to the awesome music, Mitchell described it as the dissolving of Loge's fire. You remember Loge? I haven't mentioned him in this post because he doesn't figure into Götterdämmerung, but he was in the earlier Ring operas, Das Rheingold specifically. He's basically Wotan's attorney. No one calls him an attorney, of course, but that's what he is. I forget who, but whoever spoke at one of those earlier Ring seminars referred to Loge as the world's first lawyer. Fire is Loge's big thing, the element he seems to control. Well, in terms of the music Wagner associated with Loge, during the Götterdämmerung finale you can hear it briefly. "Loge's fire slips away," was how Mitchell put it. You can hear the Rhine sub-dividing. All of the leitmotifs fall away, leaving us with Brünnhilde.

One last thing Mitchell said about the finale: Think about the amen cadence. You know how choirs sing amen, right? It's a single note they draw out, and then it falls to another note. I'm no musicologist, but it's basically two long notes, right? The amen cadence. Also called the plagal cadence. Hardly restricted to church choirs, the plagal cadence became a very common convention from the 1700s onward. But here's the thing: Whenever the plagal cadence was played, it was understood as happening "after the end" of the song. Mitchell stressed that. After the end. In that light, it should be noted that Wagner inserted his plagal cadence before Brünnhilde and Grane ride into the fire. Hmmm......

Achim Freyer's Ring - Michael Hackett

Mitchell's lecture ended at twelve-thirty. Time for lunch. When I registered for the seminar a few weeks ago, I had the option of coughing up an extra thirty bucks or so, on top of the registration fee, for a boxed lunch. I said nah. I knew I'd still be full from the breakfast snacks I snagged during the break between Simon and Mitchell's lectures. So during the lunch hour, I went outside to the Music Center plaza, got a Diet Coke from that little snack shack to the side of the plaza between the Dorothy Chandler and the Taper, and grabbed one of the tables they have scattered around. It was a beautiful day, and I was amazed at how crowded the Music Center was. I almost didn't get a table. I think a production was going on inside the Chandler, but it wasn't an opera. While it's mainly LA Opera's home, I know the Music Center rents it out to other theater companies whenever LA Opera's between productions, as they are now. They did The Barber of Seville in December and are now dark until April, when they do Götterdämmerung plus another one at the same time. And I think the Taper was showing something this afternoon. Anyway, action packed.

At one-thirty I headed back inside for the third lecture. Michael Hackett, another speaker I've seen at past League seminars, spent an hour talking about Achim Freyer, the German stage director behind LA Opera's current Ring Cycle productions. Of these three guys who spoke today, I think I prefer Michael the most. That says a lot. I mean they're all professors in their fifties or so, they've all been speaking in front of large groups for decades, and it shows. They're top-drawer lecturers. But one of them's got to be the best, right? I never thought about it before today, but now I'm thinking Michael's the shit. He's very passionate, for starters. Dude could get you excited about the virtues of beige if he wanted. The downside is that he talks kind of fast. Simon and Mitchell pace themselves, Simon especially with his very British delivery, his words tightly clipped and enunciated. Michael? He just plows ahead. Today he spoke fast even by his standards. He had "lots to cover," he said toward the beginning, and he was "excited" to talk about Herr Freyer. Michael said he's been talking to people about Achim for three years now, ever since Achim agreed to do the Ring Cycle.

Make no mistake: Michael is a fan of Achim. Lots of people are fans. He's very much admired and respected. But he's also very divisive. As he proved eight years ago with Bach's Mass in B Minor, he has a very unique vision that he pursues relentlessly without a care to what the critics think. Which is a good thing since a lot of the time what they think about him isn't very flattering. Michael called his three years of talking about Achim Freyer a "sordid history fable" because of all the righteous indignation he's had to put up with from the anti-Achim crowd.

There's some irony to Michael being Achim's great defender. If there's anyone who loves Wagner's Ring Cycle and would feel protective of it from rogue directors, it would be Michael. He grew up on the stuff. He talked about how, when he was a youngster, his mom would listen to opera singers like Danish tenor Lauritz Melchior (1890-1973) and Norwegian soprano Kirsten Flagstad (1895-1962), both of whom were noted for their Wagnerian work. Wagner was impossible to get away from in Mom's household. If you had a chat with Mom about opera, "Do you like Wagner?" would never be asked. It would be like asking, "Do you like the Grand Canyon?" Liking or not liking isn't the point. Wagner was so dominant a force all you could do was give in.

Anyways, Michael's point in giving us some of his backstory was to let us know he is just as invested in Wagner emotionally than anyone else. More than most, I would say. And yes, when he first heard Achim Freyer was going to do LA Opera's first Ring, he felt some trepidation. Although I should say he liked Achim's by now infamous Mass in B Minor. To this day LA Opera has not gotten as much mail about a single event as it did the Mass in B Minor. And it was split pretty evenly, too, for and against. It's funny, I remember when they staged that at the Dorothy Chandler. It was a one-night-only performance in 2002. I knew about it ahead of time. It may have even been advertised on the LA Opera Web site. It's not an opera, but it was being staged at the Chandler, which is our opera house, and it was being directed by Achim Freyer. I didn't go, but someone I worked with at the time did. She didn't like it at all. In fact I think she walked out on it. She didn't feel indignant enough to write hate mail. In fact she almost mentioned it in passing. She just thought the whole production was silly. Too bad because that was her first time at the Dorothy Chandler, which she called a "seventies monstrosity." I have no idea what that means. I think she was just bitter at having wasted her night out. Anyway, Michael liked it, but he knew a lot of people didn't, and that's mainly why he was a little nervous about Achim doing the Ring Cycle.

Michael told us about people literally yelling in his face about Achim. One such encounter took place at a USC luncheon. USC has this members-only joint on campus called the University Club. It's mainly for faculty and high-up people, but I suppose you could get in if someone invited you. Michael not only doesn't work at SC, he's the enemy: A UCLA Bruin. He's a theater professor and chairs UCLA's theater department. I can only assume SC let him into their prestigious University Club because he knows folks there. He half-mockingly called his lunch a "potato chip lunch" because of how all the sandwiches on the menu come with potato chips. When he was at one such lunch, someone there knew how much Michael liked Achim Freyer and decided to let him know their thoughts about the old coot. This was about a year ago, when the first Ring opera, Das Rheingold, was being staged. Michael swore he wasn't exaggerating. Someone at that potato chip lunch got in his face and yelled at him about what a piece of shit Achim Freyer was. And then something similar happened up in the Bay Area when Michael attended a meeting of the Wagner Society of Northern California. I think he gives talks there on a semi-regular basis like he does with the Opera League here. Anyway, this was also this time last year. Someone from the Wagner Society had seen Das Rheingold and apparently wasn't shy about voicing their thoughts. Michael did have to give the person credit, though, for not getting quite as close to his face as that nut did at the USC potato chip lunch. He seems like such a good-natured, good-humored guy, I'm guessing he didn't let either encounter rile him up. Seriously, though, he's like this warrior on the front lines defending Freyerland, and he's got the scars to prove it.

And then Michael posed a question: These people who get mad at Achim Freyer, who are they really mad at? Achim? Or Wagner? Wagner was scandalous in his day because of his work. Those who reacted negatively complained about the same things people complain about now when talking about Achim. That's why Michael thinks those two people who yelled at him, and everyone else who criticizes LA Opera's Ring, are not really upset at Achim. They think they are, but they're really complaining about Wagner.

While this is the first time an LA-based opera company has staged the Ring in its entirety, it's hardly the first time LA's been exposed to the Ring. The Shrine Auditorium by SC, where I used to walk past all the time during my grad school days and which hosts lots of those big events like the Emmys and Grammys and which used to host the Oscars in the pre-Kodak Theatre days, staged Ring operas several times between 1939 and '69. Eight of the productions were from San Francisco Opera, a company that's been around since 1923. And there were a bunch more. When LA Opera was founded in 1986, they didn't waste a minute trying to devise a way to put on the Cycle. One plan involved none other than George Lucas. I suppose the Star Wars saga has echoes of the Ring in it, but only because Lucas dipped into some of the same myth pools Wagner did. Anyway, so LA Opera approached Industrial Light and Magic, one of Lucas's babies, about staging the entire Ring at the Dorothy Chandler. Result? They never made it past the planning stage. Why do you think that is? You got it. It was the budget. Michael didn't say how much it would've cost, but he did say it would've made Achim Freyer's $32 million budget look like piss in the wind. Only, he said it after some elderly guy in the audience said it was too bad the ILM deal didn't work out because, according to him, it sure would've been a lot cheaper. He said this before Michael could tell us why it never got past the planning stage. After this guy said that, Michael closed his eyes and calmly shook his head while I tried not to fall out of my chair laughing.

Speaking of LA Opera's early days--and he's been a regular here from the beginning--one thing that used to turn Michael off about the company was the short shrift given to stage directors. He said they used to spend all their time and energy on getting famous singers. You can sort of see why the company would do that, right? What's the main point of going to an opera? You don't have to be a fan to know it's all about the music. Some people go just for the music and nothing else. For them the staging and story are immaterial. In general, when people talk about an opera, they talk about the composer, right? Not the librettist. So if you're a new opera company just starting out, you don't have the bandwidth to tackle everything. Focus is key. What do you focus on? Exactly.

According to Michael, the day LA Opera finally started giving stage direction its due was the day they hired Achim Freyer to stage The Damnation of Faust, the 1840s French opera by Hector Berlioz, adapted from Goethe's epic poem Faust, which I know a thing or two about after having minored in German in college. This was 2004 or thereabouts, a couple years after Achim did the notorious Mass in B Minor. While I didn't make it to the Mass, I eagerly attended The Damnation of Faust and enjoyed it quite a bit. Apparently so did many other people. It was nowhere near as controversial as the Mass had been. In fact, I don't think it caused any controversy. Achim just came in and did a solid job.

Speaking of the Mass, though, Michael recounted yet another confrontation with someone yelling at him. Right after the Mass, as in, that same night, this guy got right up to him and railed against the production, complaining about how this one character lumbered around the stage like Frankenstein or a golem. Michael said that was the point. The whole theme of Bach's Mass is becoming flesh, becoming alive. And what's Frankenstein? What's a golem? Form without spirit. Mass in B Minor is about a form gaining spirit. All Achim did was stage something consistent with the music.

I've seen Michael talk at various seminars, but one thing I didn't know until today was that he had a pretty strict Catholic upbringing. He went to a private Catholic school from K through 12, and then for college he went to a Jesuit school, where he stayed for eight years until finally landing his doctorate. His point in giving us that little tidbit about himself was to illustrate his sensitivity to a theme such as spirit gaining life. Again, as with his emotional connection to Wagner and the Ring, he felt a similar connection to Bach's Mass. If there's one person you think might get riled up over an experimental interpretation of it, you'd think it would be Michael here. Yet again, though, he found that he dug Achim's vision. I tell you, Michael doesn't seem like a conservative Catholic at all. He's never betrayed that about himself. If he hadn't mentioned it, I never would've guessed. I wonder if he actively observes his religion, goes to church, confession, all that stuff. You've got to figure he must if the first twenty-five years of his life, about half his life at this point, was spent at one Catholic institution or another. Anyway, he might have a conservative background, but that doesn't seem to get in the way of his enjoying Achim's anything-but-conservative M.O.

After that little bio about himself, Michael gave us Achim Freyer's backstory. He was born in Berlin in 1934, in the part of the city that had become East Berlin by the time he was in high school. Like everyone else in his age group, Achim inherited the legacy of the Holocaust. He of course had nothing to do with it, yet he was now part of the generation that would have to explain it and feel completely ashamed by it. This kind of alienation manifested itself in art and culture when practitioners like Achim eschewed traditional German high art. Why would they do that, you ask? Because the Holocaust was perpetrated by a whole bunch of Germans who adored and celebrated high art. Wagner's a shining example of that. A lot of people associate Wagner with the Nazis, which isn't quite right since Wagner died in the early 1880s, well before Nazism was a thought in anyone's noodle. Heck, Hitler wasn't even born until the late 1880s. So there you have it. But when the Nazi party was formed in the 1920s, a lot of them, including and especially Hitler, loved Wagner. They loved the Ring Cycle and Tristan and Der Meistersinger. So Wagner and all the other gods of German culture became sort of guilty by association.

Achim went even further by becoming anti-Gesamtkunstwerk. If you read any of my other Wagner Opera League posts, you might recognize that long German word. In English it literally means "total art work." That doesn't really convey its meaning, though. Gesamtkunstwerk is a philosophy Wagner espoused whereby he wanted his operas to be not just operas, but all forms of art combined into a single entity. This comes from classical Greece. A play isn't just a play. It's got acting, it's got poetry, it's got singing, musical instruments, stage craft, great writing and directing, awesome painted sets, costumes, everything. Each and every branch of the art world comes together to form a single entity on the stage. That's Gesamtkunstwerk. Well, because Wagner was all about that idea, Achim was against it by default. Wagner advocated it so much that he would arrange to have all the lights go off in the theater so that people could just focus on the total art. That was a big deal then, as the house lights would often stay on for those folks in the audience who'd come to play cards or have dinner with friends.

In 1954, around the time he turned twenty, Achim met and became a pupil of East German playwright Bertolt Brecht. Achim didn't have much time to work with him. Brecht died in '56. But he did absorb a lot. One thing Brecht advocated, in addition to divorcing high art, was a rejection of naturalistic acting, the kind of acting Brando was pioneering in movies like A Streetcar Named Desire. Brecht believed that if you made the drama too naturalistic and real, you risked driving away the audience. One example Michael cited was The Sopranos. Those scenes of people being bumped off could be very graphic because the producers were striving for realism. Well, that's great, but some people tend to recoil, if not change the channel, at the sight of so much blood. Reality took people out of the story, Brecht thought. And so he would do things to remind the audience that what they were watching was a mere representation of reality, not reality itself. The Ancient Greeks did that all the time, and that's what Brecht was trying to get back to. The Greeks used masks. Achim uses masks all the time. I'm not sure if Brecht did that, but he did other stuff the Greeks did, like having characters stop in the middle of a play to talk directly to the audience. Sometimes characters would interrupt the action to sing a song. Stagehands would appear with huge signs with stuff written on them to help explain to the audience what was going on. One extra thing Brecht could do that the Greeks couldn't was manipulate stage lighting. He would make the lighting look intentionally artificial, perhaps making it extra bright.

Achim dug all that. The man's become renowned in these parts because of the funky masks he makes his singers wear. English tenor Graham Clark admitted having a tough time with his mask during last fall's production of Siegfried, in which he played the vile Mime. It's ironic, though, since he earned raves. His singing was so expressive that, even though he's wearing the same static mask throughout, people in the audience thought the mask's facial expression was changing.

So it's Achim's insistence on intentional artifice that seems to be at least one of the reasons he rubs people the wrong way. Michael told us that Achim's philosophy for staging the Ring was to create action on stage that would run counter to the music. That's tough to pull off because the action is also a vessel for the music. The music flows through it, but Achim doesn't want the action to explain everything either. The people who don't like his style, according to Michael, are the same people who love the mainstream popcorn movies that spoon-feed you everything and leave nothing to the imagination. Achim, like Brecht, wants drama to make people think. Michael said Achim follows this same philosophy in his painting. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that. Achim's a painter as well. I knew this from an article in the LA Times last year. Some of his work was at the LA County Museum of Art's Art of Two Germanys/Cold War Cultures exhibit last spring, which I unfortunately missed.

After the Achim bio, Michael played some video excerpts from LA Opera's first three Ring productions. The videos were shot by the arts and culture body of Berlin. They're the property of the Berlin city archives, in other words, and according to Michael, it was quite a treat that we were getting to watch them. During the screening, he said his daughters, ages twenty-five and twenty-eight, really dug Achim's version of the Ring. "Kool with a capital K," he said. His students at UCLA are into it too, apparently. See? I'm sure this was Placido Domingo's thinking in hiring Achim in the first place, just as he'd tried to get George Lucas fifteen years ago. Let's get some of the younger generation in those seats.

That’s ironic as hell considering how old-fashioned Achim is in a lot of what he does. The way he uses the stage is like the box from Renaissance times, viewing the players through a box. Michael said you’ve got a problem with that kind of staging, what with the tension between the horizontal and vertical space, the two-dimensional space of the action and the three-dimensional space of the audience. Plus you’ve got time, the fourth dimension, which can be represented on stage with lighting.

This is when Michael talked about Adolphe Appia, the Swiss French architect from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. His big thing was how to make theatrical staging better. Adolphe wasn’t a big fan of the usual painted two-dimensional sets. He especially wanted to improve the stage design for Wagner operas. One way he did this was, you guessed it, lighting. Adolphe was convinced that light and shade were vital in making the actors appear to exist in the world represented by the set. The timing of his theories was fortuitous and then some, seeing’s how Edison only invented the first workable electric light in October of 1879. In New Jersey, naturally. Jersey represent. In addition to advocating three-dimensional space, Adolphe saw the actors as plastic forms that you could mold and manipulate to fit the world on the stage. The more dynamic and three-dimensional the actors’ movement, the better, as that would put them in harmony with the three-dimensional space.

Are you following all that? I’m trying not to be technical. I’m not sure how I could be as I’m not exactly an expert on stagecraft. In fact, it might seem kind of obvious that you’d want realistic sets, right? But remember, that only happened because of lights, and when Adolphe was born in 1862, electric lights were science fiction. Whether or not audiences were happy with painted two-dimensional sets was immaterial. It was all you could really do until Edison worked his magic.

Wagner’s grandson, Wieland Wagner, really dug Adolphe’s work with Granddad’s operas. So much so that it’s thanks to Wieland that the annual Bayreuth festival in Bavaria, where Wagner built his Ring-specific theater, caught up with modern times. Years after Adolphe passed away, Wieland implemented his lighting aesthetic there.

While Achim tips his hat to the Renaissance, he also mixes it up with his own aesthetic. Remember that tension I mentioned above? Between 2D and 3D? Well, Achim doesn’t just leave it at that. He “dynamites” it, as Michael says, with those lights on the stage, the light drawings. Achim’s a master of light. The swords are essentially light rods. Staffs and spears? More light rods. There’s this one scene where the rods start vertical as the characters hold them straight up, and then the characters move all around and shift their light rods so that they’re pointing in every conceivable direction.

Michael recounted first seeing Achim's version of The Damnation of Faust a few years ago. There’s this one scene at the very end. No, I’m not spoiling the ending for you. If you don’t know the Faust story, shame on you. Anyway, while Faust burns in hell, his main squeeze Marguerite goes up to heaven. The way Achim staged it was, as she ascended to heaven, heaven itself as well as a whole bunch of cherubs, played by a bunch of kids, came down to her. Achim blew up the perpendicular tension. It looked to Michael like those kids were about to have their heads lopped off. That’s not to say he didn’t like how Achim staged it. Quite the contrary. He liked how Achim played with the terrestrial meaning of the stage space itself.

Going back even further than the Renaissance, Michael said that Achim draws from Medieval traditions as well. He called Achim “cabalistic,” but not in the sense that we usually use the word cabal, the secret plotting and what have you. No, he meant it in the way Achim uses symbols. Cabalistic symbols are, as you might intuit, symbols that have secret or hidden meanings. Achim’s staging of the Ring is like a cabinet of wonders, although Michael did say that at some point you have to give up trying to interpret each and every symbol.

Achim comes from the tradition of coding, which includes using color as motifs. After having seen three of the Ring productions, I can confirm that Achim does this in spades. He's a genius with color. It's all very interpretive. Again, he comes from that Brechtian school where he's not going to spoon-feed you everything. He wants you to reflect on it. It's anti-totalitarian in other words, which is how German artists of Achim's generation would think about it, coming from the time and place they do. You can watch their stuff and take away from it whatever you want.

Michael also talked about toy theater from the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Those were the little paper theaters you could buy at the concession stand at the theater or opera house and take home and assemble to put on little entertainments for guests. Michael said that he was somewhat reminded of that tradition when he watched Achim’s Ring, only Achim was using his “toy theater” as a platform for Freudian and Jungian dreams.

Is that heavy shit or what? Elaborating on that a bit, Michael talked about artists being in communion with their dream state, and how Achim Freyer's Ring could be viewed as a product of our present culture's shared dreams. Emphasis on present, as this Ring could never have been done a hundred years ago, or even thirty years ago. Michael took it even further, saying this Ring could be our dream of the previous generation's dream.

In addition to the toy theaters, he referenced Joseph Cornell's famous boxes. You heard of him? Joseph Cornell (1903-72) was a sculptor whose forte was assembling boxes out of various everyday objects. Found objects, as they say. And since he drew heavily from Surrealism, all bets were off when Joe made a box. I mean they were simple. They had glass on one side so you could see inside of them, but his whole underlying theme was about being a formal Constructivist while simultaneously indulging in Surrealist fantasy with what was in the box, which could be anything. Among his more famous ones were the Medici Slot Machine boxes. He made boxes for kids too. Anyway, so Michael talked about that a bit, how Achim's Ring Cycle is like a Joseph Cornell box writ massive, formal and constructive yet playful and fantastical at the same time.

As much as he's smitten with Achim's version of the Ring, the best version Michael's seen is the 1976 centennial production put on at Bayreuth by the French theater director Patrice Chéreau. Michael was twenty-six at the time. And Patrice? He was quite the theater prodigy. He was only thirty-two when he landed that gig which, in the opera world, is amazing. It was the Ring Cycle's 100th birthday. Wagner built the theater at Bayreuth specifically for the Ring. You've got to figure competition to direct that was cut-throat. Like Achim, Patrice brought his own unique vision. He set the Ring during the nineteenth century Industrial Revolution. Instead of the Rhine, you had a hydroelectric power dam. The sets were the insides of factories, dark and dank. All of the characters, the humans and deities, wore business suits. Patrice did it like that because he'd been inspired by how some people, including George Bernard Shaw, viewed the Ring as a "revolutionary drama" and a "critique of the modern world." Remember how I said up in Simon's lecture how the Ring could be viewed pretty much through any philosophical lens? There you go. It's funny because, like Achim's Ring today, Patrice's version was very divisive. People booed, got indignant 'n shit. The singer he got to play Siegmund wasn't a real opera singer but a "rock star with a 17" waist," Michael told us. Today, though, that production is viewed as one of the best ever. Michael's hardly alone in citing it as his fave. When the production finally ended in 1980, the audience gave it a ninety-minute standing ovation. It grew on them, I reckon.

This only reinforces why Michael's in the pro-Achim camp. When you hear people griping that it's not a traditional Ring production, what does that mean? What's traditional in this instance? Do you want it to be staged the way it was originally staged in 1876, when it was brand new? Before there was such thing as electric lighting? Why would you want that? Do you want to see Brünnhilde wearing a helmet with those Viking horns? But that's how the Nazis wanted it, and Achim's specifically trying to get away from all that. To pine for how the Ring used to be staged, Michael said, is futile. You can't reproduce other versions, and it would be a waste of the director's talent to do so. Soprano Jessye Norman is retired now. She was awesome in the seventies and eighties when she was at her peak, but it'd be weird to try to emulate versions of the Ring she was in when you can't have her now. Each production of the Ring is a product of its own time and place, which brings us back to that key question: What is a traditional Ring production? Going back to George Lucas, Michael talked about the original 1977 Star Wars, which is now officially called Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope. That was a product of its time. At the time, the effects and the sound were phenomenal. But viewed through today's lens, it looks silly. So if you were to do your own version of Star Wars, wouldn't you, ya know, try to do it your own way rather than just copy what Lucas did? What would be the point of that?

One of the big things this new version is getting attention for is Achim's use of puppets and masks. What's with all the masks? Is it just to emulate Ancient Greece? Well, partly. But it gets deeper. Michael said in no uncertain terms that the puppets and masks are Achim's response to the Holocaust. When Achim was still very young, he loved to draw figures. He wasn't even ten yet. We're talking late 1930s and early 1940s, when the war was raging and the Nazis were only just initiating their "Final Solution." When you look at these sketches (I haven't), Michael said it's pretty obvious they're Holocaust figures. You know, they're very thin and gaunt with hollowed-out eyes. What does that mean? How can that be possible? Achim himself has wondered about that ever since. You can understand why he'd be a proponent of Jung's theory of living in the dream sea, having shared dreams. And shared nightmares. And you can see why he'd want to get away from the kind of Ring productions favored by the Nazis. Puppets and masks are a very deliberate attempt to disassociate himself as much as possible from all that.

One thing I didn't know until today is that Achim begged Placido repeatedly not to use supertitles. This goes along with his thing about letting the audience take way what they want. Spoon-feeding the audience English translations of the dialogue gets in the way of his anti-totalitarian mission. He wants people to tap into their emotions. "Language as emotion," Michael said, as opposed to language as an intellectual concept. Achim views supertitles as too left brain, which Michael said was something Wagner would've agreed with. I can sort of see the point. After going to operas on a semi-regular basis for ten years now, sometimes I do find myself having a hard time getting emotionally invested in the drama because of having to read the supertitles. At the Dorothy Chandler the supertitles are projected above the stage as well as to either side. The side projections are for those folks on the ground level sitting too far back under the loge to see the titles above. It can be a pain in the ass. More than once I've found myself wishing I could speak Italian or French or German or what have you.

Achim's Ring Cycle is very visual. He wanted to maximize the visual experience by taking out supertitles. Indeed, the visual nature of this production only reinforces Michael's point about each version of the Ring being a product of its time and place. Los Angeles is the visual capital of the world. When he was still running the LA Philharmonic, Esa-Pekka Salonen conducted selections of Sibelius hand-picked by theater director Peter Sellars and performed while a silent film starring Lillian Gish was projected behind the orchestra. That's such an LA thing to do, ya know? That performance was definitely a product of this city's culture. It wouldn't work anywhere else. Achim's trying to tap into this visual tradition. Michael said that Achim's doing visually what Wagner did musically. That's high praise, but okay. As with Patrice Chéreau's centennial production, only time will tell how Achim's Ring is ultimately regarded.

Michael concluded his lecture by pointing out that he wasn't a true believer from the get-go. He was ambivalent about Das Rheingold. But early on in Die Walküre, when he saw Placido Domingo wearing that blue makeup as Siegmund, he "drank the Kool Aid." By the way, the blue used for Siegmund and Sieglinde as well as some of the other costumes and sets for this Ring, apparently this is Achim's special blue. He trademarked it as Freyer blue. That's wild. Anyway, the last thing Michael said was that, whatever we end up thinking about Achim Freyer's version of the Ring Cycle, he wanted us to think about an adage by experimental theater director Robert Wilson: "If it comes together, so much the better. If it doesn't come together, so much the better." Hmmm, not sure what to think about that. While I personally dig Achim's work, I haven't drunk Robert Wilson's Kool Aid just yet. He's worked with LA Opera a few times. His version of Butterfly was great, so much so that they brought it back two more times. I saw it that first time as well as when it came back, although I skipped its third staging because I felt like they brought it back again too soon. His version of Wagner's Parsifal, on the other hand, was a travesty. To this day it ranks as one of the longest nights of my life.

Panel Discussion - Simon Williams, Mitchell Morris, Michael Hackett

By now it was two-thirty in the afternoon. Only a half-hour left. Home stretch, boys and girls. What a day, huh? They capped things off by taking away the podium and bringing up chairs so all three speakers could sit and chat with the audience. Simon kicked things off by giving us his personal thoughts about Achim Freyer's Ring. In addition to teaching theater at UCSB, Simon reviews operas for The Wagner Journal, a print and online publication based in London that comes out three times a year and basically talks about Wagner's works in many different contexts, whether political, musicological, historical, you name it. Simon contributes articles to them regularly, including reviews of Achim's Ring productions. Overall he likes this Ring quite a bit, but one thing that drives him nuts is the scrim. That's awesome because I was thinking the same thing during Das Rheingold. After two more operas, I've gotten used to it, but it is kind of annoying. Simon's even more sensitive to it because his vision's not what it used to be. Sometimes it's downright impossible for him to see what's going on further back on the stage, at the top of the huge rake. It reminds him of another Ring production from 1962-63 that used a scrim. It's the only other time he's ever seen a scrimmed Ring. That said, he did say our Siegfried is the best Siegfried he's ever seen. That's awesome because you've got to figure this guy's seen tons of Siegfrieds. As for the best overall Ring Cycle Simon's ever seen, that would be a production he saw in Cologne. It was set during the 1990s Balkan civil war. Wow, that's different. So interesting how different directors put their own spin on things. I know the Balkan conflict hit home in Germany because it marked the first time since World War II that they deployed troops abroad, a big deal that brought perhaps some controversy in Europe but didn't seem to faze anyone over here. One thing Simon liked about the Balkan Ring was how, in Siegfried, the dragon didn't always look the same. It looked however Siegfried saw it, which changed a few times throughout the scene. Simon's overall gripe with the Ring is that the story moves too slowly. That's no one's fault but Wagner's. That's been one of the recurring themes throughout all these Ring seminars: The librettos are lacking.

Michael talked a bit about emotion in the Ring, or the lack thereof. He mentioned Achim's "no total" quote, referring to how he doesn't want to spoon-feed the audience so they have something to think about when they go home, that old Brechtian rule of thumb. Achim, as I said above, wants you to tap into your emotions to a certain extent. "Language as emotion," as Michael said in his lecture, but Achim shies away from too much of it. This brought the conversation back to Robert Wilson, the experimental director I mentioned at the end of Michael's lecture. Robert's not big on excessive emotion either. Less is more seems to be his credo. With Parsifal I'd change that to "none is none." Parsifal was all about Robert getting his weird out. But sometimes "less is more" can really work emotionally. And again I cite Butterfly as a great example. So did Simon. He loved Robert's version of that. Even though the sets were minimal, it was still the most Japanese version of it he's ever seen. When Butterfly does herself in at the end, she uses her index finger to mime the motion of a blade across her throat. Very minimal, right? But it worked. Simon said he felt the knife on his own throat when she did that.

I'm happy to hear that none of them liked Robert's Parsifal. One of them mentioned the libretto and said that one of the Kundry scenes was downright raunchy. Kundry is a female slave who tries to seduce Parsifal the first time she meets him. Whereas it was a pretty erotic scene in the text, Robert somehow managed to suck all the eroticism out of it so that it came across as "arid." Mitchell said Robert's version was neither ritualistic nor decadent. The original libretto was both of those things.

Someone in the audience asked Mitchell about unstable music in the Ring. Did Mitchell think it was hard to tell at times if the music was stable or unstable? I suppose this was following up on that one part of Mitchell's lecture about how Wagner's music for Götterdämmerung didn't provide the audience much ground to stand on, how it could be A major and minor and C major and minor all at the same time, like Tristan. Mitchell's response was that, while Wagner played around with scale, he wasn't trying to fool anyone. Most composers weren't out to fight the audience. In fact, the only instance he could think of where the concept of stable versus unstable was intentionally confused was--you ready for this?--post-1950s Western avant-garde.

Someone in the audience asked Michael about any circus influence on Achim's version of the Ring. Michael definitely agreed with that. I didn't think about it before, but the circus-like look and feel is kind of obvious now. I'm not sure if that was Achim's intention or if it just worked out like that. Michael said the idea of a circus informs Achim's Ring in two ways. I forget what the first one was, I think it had something to do with Achim's use of face paint. The second was about the masks. Of course they're static and never change, but remember what I said above about Graham Clark's mask seeming to change commensurate with Mime's emotions? Add to that the way the characters view each other. The same masked character could look hideous to Alberich while looking comical to Siegfried.

Another audience question had to do with the younger generation liking Achim's Ring. Did they think Achim was selling out by catering to younger demographics? I'm not really young, but I'm an infant compared to most Opera League members, so I have to assume they sort of meant me. I would've given anything to stand up and respond to that, but the professionals did a good job. Both Simon and Michael said that, barring some exceptions, most theatrical works lose their effect over time. If you want to revive something, you need to put a spin on it to keep it relevant and fresh. One example Simon cited was Baz Luhrmann's 1996 movie version of Romeo + Juliet with Leonardo DiCaprio and Clare Danes. It was necessary for Baz to put his own spin on it rather than recycle an older version, such as the 1968 film with Olivia Hussey. As cool as Baz's version was, it's now lost some of its effect. So if you're going to adapt it again, well, it had better be original. Mitchell added something that, again, seems so obvious you wonder how you never thought about it. When you do a modern version of a classic, right? Either on stage or for film or TV, it will only last about twenty years. Classics must be recycled, if you will, every twenty years. Most of the time. Achim's Ring will only last four years, according to him. That seems like a weird prediction to me. Is he saying that this version of the Ring will seem like old hat by 2014? Really? Is that a swipe at Achim or the Ring? Other opera companies do the Ring on a regular basis, every four years or so like the Olympics or what have you. But they don't always do a brand new version. I saw Die Walküre at the Met a few years ago, and I can assure you it was not some new modern production. No, in fact it was very old-fashioned. Simon capped off the youth discussion by saying you can't sell out to youth, but you do need "an edge of modernity." Well said.

This one guy in the audience brought up what Simon said toward the beginning of his lecture, about Albert Camus claiming Sisyphus was pushing that rock up and down the mountain because it's what he wanted to do. Like me, this guy had a problem with that statement. Wasn't Sisyphus pushing the rock as a punishment? Simon said sure but, at least according to Camus, no one was putting a gun to his head. There was no one around to make sure he was actually pushing that rock per the terms of his punishment. So viewed in that sense, he was still making a choice. "A dumb choice," Simon agreed, but it was still his choice, and this is what Wotan doesn't have in the Ring. He added one more thing about Wotan that sort of sums up the Wotan section of his lecture this morning: Wotan IS the human race. He is both ideal and corrupt. Again, well said.

Speaking of the freedom to make choices, the last thing the panel talked about were the Ring's female characters. This was in response to someone asking Simon about how the male "heroes" weren't really the heroes. Simon said this was something Wagner did intentionally. At first, in Das Rheingold, you assume the men, especially the male gods like Wotan, are going to be the heroes, right? Over the course of the Cycle, though, you realize the men aren't so bright. They keep making questionable decisions, Wotan being a shining example of that. Simon reiterated what he said this morning: Brünnhilde's the real hero. And the other female characters are generally more heroic than the men. Well, they're definitely smarter, that's for sure. You've got Fricka and Erde. Especially Erde. She's awesome. In fact, I wish Wagner had used her more. Like everyone else in his day and age, Wagner was used to the idea that men were the heroes on stage. Making Brünnhilde the hero, as Simon stated in his lecture, was a very conscious choice. Also as I said, it's ironic as hell that Wagner would make his female characters the agents of their own actions seeing's how he thought women belonged in the kitchen. At any rate, from when we first meet Brünnhilde in Die Walküre, she makes choices and does things everyone else only wishes they could do. This includes the way she "dies" at the very end. And as we saw with Sieglinde, she encourages others to make their own choices rather than bow to what they think society expects of them.

So that does it, boys and girls. Quite a Saturday, huh? This wasn't the easiest post to write, but I'm glad I toughed it out. I got even more out of the marathon seminar by writing about it than I would've had I just gone there, gone home, and moved on. I'm pretty jazzed up to see Götterdämmerung in April, that's for sure, as well as the whole Ring again in June. Speaking of which, I better get my tickets.