Danny Says
Rolling Stones’ Jann Wenner is the most surprising face to turn up in this documentary on Danny Fields. He credits Fields with tipping him on the importance of cover stories. As Danny Says shows, Fields was a link between the gay underground, Andy Warhol and underground rock. The writer-DJ-A&R man signed MC5 and The Stooges and worked tirelessly to promote the CBGB’s scene. Danny Says includes great footage from Warhol’s Factory and The Velvet Underground.
Clandestine
Playing out against the spreading plague of meth amphetamine and the unending war on drugs, Clandestine is a TV-cop style procedural set in Long Island. The suburban residents, abetted by an idiot local politician, remain oblivious to the proliferation of cooking and selling in their midst. Meth is an ugly drug, leaving a toxic stink and turning the faces of users into monster masks. The movie’s brutality and horror is cut by sentimentality and family drama.
“The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson featuring: Jerry Seinfeld”
It was four years before “Seinfeld” debuted on NBC, but Jerry Seinfeld was already a rising star when he appeared on the “Tonight Show’s” June 27, 1985 episode. The “funny young man,” as Johnny Carson called him, did a stand-up routine with jokes about TV commercials, the stories old people tell and the peculiar animal mascots chosen by America’s political parties—a “jackass” and a “smelly, slow-witted circus animal.” Two other episodes featuring Seinfeld are included.
“Judy Collins: A Love Letter to Stephen Sondheim”
Although she emerged from the ’60s folk scene and was played on FM rock stations in the early ’70s, Judy Collins’ bel canto voice predisposed her to art songs performed with pops orchestras. Although Collins opens this PBS special with Joni Mitchell’s “Chelsea Morning,” she focuses on the work of Broadway’s most aesthetically ambitious writer, Stephen Sondheim. Of course, Collins sings her 1975 hit, Sondheim’s “Send in the Clowns.” Her voice remains strong and delicately expressive.
