My clinic takes daily appointments at the same time each
morning. As I wait for that to tick over
I watch the Today program and see an incredibly touching piece of footage. It was of a woman dying of cancer in hospital
who receives a phone call from her idol, Bette Midler. On the footage I saw (its apparently on You
Tube and runs for 9 minutes), Midler
asks if there is anything she could do for her; the dying woman asks her to
sing Wing Beneath My Wings. Bette,
presumably unaware she’s being filmed, then sings it, clearly crying at one
point. Only her dying fan can see the performance
via a smart phone which prevents us from seeing it. It is simultaneously touching, uplifting and incredibly sad (the woman died a few days later) and earns my admiration for everyone involved.
Shortly afterwards, I’ve made my appointment but the memory
of the video remains with me. I muse
over the way in which people respond to the knowledge of their own impending
deaths. Some find solace in a variety of
mechanisms – prayer, visits from friends and music among them. Some refuse treatment and others bury
themselves in work. And then there’s
Warren Zevon.
(AV 26) Warren Zevon
– VH1 (Inside Out) (2004)
This was the obvious DVD in my pile to watch. It is a documentary which shows Zevon’s
response to the cancer diagnosis that ultimately killed him, compiled largely from a video diary he kept for most of this period, encompassing recording sessions and a David Letterman Show appearance that turned out to be his last live performance. Refusing chemotherapy, he decided to record
as many songs as possible in the estimated 6 month period he had been given. He has little
difficulty in having musician friends assist him in the studio including
Jackson Browne, Don Henley, Timothy B Schmidt, Ry Cooder and Bruce Springsteen
among others. Parts of it make for
difficult viewing, especially his goodbyes to people in New York City, his
increasingly obvious physical deterioration and
growing realisation of his fate.
The pain is especially visible as he struggles to complete the vocals
for the final two tracks recorded for his The Wind album, Disorder In The House
(the track with Springsteen) and the poignant Keep Me In Your Heart. Despite all of that, the documentary ends on
a relatively happy note with the disclosure the he outlived the 6 month
prognosis which was long enough to see the birth of twin grandchildren.
(AV 27) I’m Not There
(2007)
This is the biopic that was inspired by and based on the
life of Bob Dylan. It was co-written and
directed by Todd Haynes in an non linear fashion clearly influenced by Dylan’s
structure of Chronicles Volume One. Like
the book, not every aspect of Dylan’s life is touched upon and the storytelling
moves around a number of phases of his career.
But what Haynes added to the mix was turning aspects of each of these
phases into fiction, with one character in each clearly modelled on the Dylan
of the era. For the most part, I could
discern what was happening in almost all of the stories with the possible
exception of the one involving Richard Gere.
This part seems to refer to the Rolling Thunder Revue, as seen when a heavily
disguised Calexico performs Goin’ To Acapulco, and contains references to the
Pat Garrett movie (Gere’s character is Billy the Kid) but I couldn’t work out
the connection. The parts involving Cate
Blanchett as the electric Dylan and Christian Bale as the folkie Dylan are the
most straight forward and impressive. To fully appreciate this, you must have a familiarity
with Dylan’s life, otherwise, I’d suggest you read the Wikipedia entry about
the movie before you start.
But there wasn’t much time to contemplate the movie. By the time it ended, I headed off to the
doctor who diagnosed a viral infection and prescribed antibiotics. This in itself is a sign of the nature of my
illness as the Doc normally doesn’t do this.
Somehow, I think I’ll be watching more DVDs over the next
few days.
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