The Hotline started running in Musician’s Magazine in the 1970s, moved over to The Beat and Preview in the 1980s and is back in 2020. Film interviews with Jodie Foster, Robert Zemeckis, Ray Manzarek of The Doors (yes, a notable in the film world,) Michael Moore as well as people from everyday life. We thank the staff with Michael Bloomberg for granting us permission to video Michael Douglas, former police commissioner Ed Davis and Medford Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn earlier this month.
FILM TRAILER: GONE HOME
Jimmy Jewels – one of the best record producers in the city of Medford is in the new film Gone Home from writer/directors Brandon Rose and Zach Eastman. From the press release: JACK NALLY and his new wife KATE are driving to Jack’s family home so that Kate can meet his family for the first time. As they are en route, JOSEPH and MARIE NALLY discover a chest buried in their backyard, which changes them upon opening it. When Jack arrives, he starts noticing that his parents have become overly kind and sweet. Thrown off by this sudden change in life-style, Jack slowly starts to piece together why exactly his parents have changed and what is truly behind it. Starring: Zachary Speigel, Taylor Karin, Kathryn Graham Howell, Michael Vasicek, Spencer Kane Mackey and Jimmy C. Jules Google “Gone Home Trailer” and check it out.
FILM REVIEW: BURDEN
Burden, released on March 6th from Director/Writer Andrew Heckler stars Forest Whitaker and Garrett Hedlund. It will shock you to see a true story from 1996 centered around a Ku Klux Klan museum in Laurens, South Carolina and the preacher who took on the modern-day Klan. We spoke with producer Robbie Brenner on March 9th (and will have the interview for you next week) and learned that Heckler started working on this project in 2000, four years after the events that Burden is based upon. Rated R, and coming close to two hours in the theater, the film brings together a difficult-to-recapture mix of violent race relations, a love story and the struggle of moving on from one lifestyle to another. Reverend Kennedy takes as much of a gamble as Klansman Mike Burden, incredible risk setting in motion a series of events that are as thought-provoking as they are compelling. Hedlund captures the individual, Mike Burden, that you meet tucked inside the closing credits – a formerly explosive beast tamed by those helping his evolving personality – his girlfriend, her son and the preacher man. That Heckler, Brenner and all involved let the film sauté over a twenty-year span of time is to their credit. With commendable acting, directing and camera-work that takes the movie home, there are stories within stories given a birds-eye view that will generate conversations. I still can’t grasp that this kind of hate – and compassion – brewed at this level within the past three decades. Like I said…a conversation piece, and worth playing in every high school and college for social studies or whichever discipline can gain an advantage from this remarkably filmed piece of American history.
FILM NOTICE: Science Fiction from Director Warren Pantyhose
Warren Pantyhose calls himself a “Eurotrash Exploitation Director” with a Canon camera crafting unique Science Fiction A thirty-minute feature is cut up into six segments Warren airs on YouTube – he gave the Hotline some additional insight: “ I’m actually working on a second film that’s a continuation of the first. It’s going to be done with altered discount figurines and homemade backgrounds in a stop motion style of animation. I plan on splitting the film up into segments once it’s aired on local access TV .following suit with the most recent film.” We’ll have an interview with the local director in the coming months.
NIGHTLIFE
Club Bohemia at 738 Mass. Ave in Cambridge has on Friday the 13th Big Blue Moon, Art House, Stuck Stars and Submariners, doors at 8 pm, of course. On Saturday, March 14th Drobakid, Clifford and the Midnight Motion – all times and acts subject to change. It’s the cellar full of noise downstairs at the Cantab Lounge, one of America’s Greatest Dive Bars …now in its 80th year. Full disclosure — I performed there in 1974 and I’m still alive to tell the tale!
SALLY O’BRIEN’S SOMERVILLE 335 Somerville Ave, Mar 13 • Charles Delta + The Soon to Haves at 9 pm, Coo and Howl on Saturday, March 14 at 9:30 pm.
Thunder Road is 379 Somerville Ave, just a skip and a jump from Sally O’s. They’ve got a Tribute to the Music of Phish on Friday the 13th, now that sounds like lots of fun – see Thunderroadclub.com And a shout out to Charlie Able, the proprietor who did an amazing job with the old Jaspers. Charlie ran Harper’s Ferry where we videotaped Janis Joplin’s original band Big Brother and the Holding Company circa 1995…a quarter of a century ago. Great to see Mr. Able back on the music scene.
