THE WORLD BEFORE YOUR FEET

      Groupthink doesn't live here, critical thought does.

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Matt Green’s labor of love to walk all 8000-plus blocks (between 6000 and 8000 miles) of New York City’s streets has taken over six years to complete. Green’s insatiable curiosity about the concrete, glass, and stone fabric of “the most populous city in the United States” is contagious.

Dressed frequently in the same clothes, and shoes, the thirtysomething Green couch-surfs while frequently cat (or dog) sitting while spending around $15 a day on transportation and food. His is a monk-like existence introduces him to a range of locals who he never fails to charm with his pedestrian story of urban exploration that is nothing if not a living celebration of New York City’s five boroughs. The Queens Museum’s Panorama of New York City (built for the 1964 World’s Fair) gives a sense of scale.

Another aspect of Matt Green’s mission involves constant online research that he turns into articles for his website (imjustwalkin.com) after visiting specific locations. Green is a fountain of historic information. He describes former synagogues turned churches ("churchagogues") that dot New York City neighborhoods. Harlem, East New York, South Bronx, and Brownsville once had significant Jewish communities that have been replaced by an ever-changing population. If you look closely at these sanctuaries you can see traces of their religious origins.   

Documentarian Jeremy Workman (son of the revered documentarian Chuck Workman) underscores the film with an array of appropriate instrumental music that lends an emotional underpinning to the seamless editing that transitions from distant neighborhoods like Flatbush, Brooklyn to Gramercy Park, Manhattan. The effect is a feast for the eyes, ears, and heart.

Executive produced by Jesse Eisenberg and Allen Altman, here is a delightful documentary that beckons to be revisited if only to remind its audience of New York City's complex landscape.

“The World Before Your Feet” is an exquisitely profound cinematic historic document on New York City. That might be a mouthful, but Jeremy Workman connects Matt Green’s foot journey to the real-time scale of New York City and to the soul of its citizens. This inspired documentary is perfect. Don’t miss it.

Returning guest co-host documentarian Jeremy Workman discusses his new film THE WORLD BEFORE YOUR FEET and his dad Chuck Workman's Beat Generation documentary THE SOURCE over BROOKLYN OKTOBERFEST from Brooklyn Brewery.

 

THE YAKUZA — CLASSIC FILM PICK

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Groupthink doesn't live here, critical thought does.
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Robert Mitchum was a hot property coming off the success of “The Friends of Eddie Coyle” when he made Sydney Pollock’s “The Yakuza” in 1974. It was the same year that “The Yakuza’s” co-screenwriter Robert Towne scored big with his screenplay for “Chinatown,” which Roman Polanski crafted into a timeless masterpiece of political and familial corruption in Los Angeles. Why not write a script that guarantees a trip to Japan for some extravagant location filming?

For his debut screenwriting effort, Paul Schrader works with Towne on “The Yakuza” to create an ambitious cinematic apologia for the atrocities levied on Japan by the U.S. during World War II, albeit on a deep personal level. The screenwriters are quick to point out in stark narrative terms the awful damage done to the Japanese by America’s fire-bombing missions that paled even the horrific destruction done by the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The film is a crash course in the ethical codes of the Yakuza, Japan’s transnational organized crime syndicate. Robert Mitchum’s World War II vet Harry Kilmer still carries a torch for Eiko (Keiko Kishi), the Japanese woman whose life he saved while serving as a U.S. Marine. Kilmer went so far as to borrow money from his fellow Marine George Tanner (Brian Keith) to help Eiko open a bar in Tokyo.

Tanner has since switched from being a private detective to selling guns to the Yakuza. A lost gun shipment has caused the Yakuza to kidnap Tanner’s daughter. Kilmer agrees to do his old War pal a favor and travel to Tokyo to track down Eiko’s Yakuza-connected brother Tanaka (played by the amazing Ken Takakura) to help rescue Tanner’s daughter. Tanner hooks Harry up with Dusty (Richard Jordan) as a personal bodyguard whose instincts for survival are no match for Harry’s fast-twitch defense mechanisms.

The convoluted narrative holds secrets about Tanner, Eiko, and Tanaka that cause Mitchum’s stoic character to take violent action, even against his own flesh. Although clunky by modern editing standards, “The Yakuza” is a fascinating film that earns its sequences of shocking violence, and pays off with a crisis of personally expressed morals that transfer from Eastern to Western philosophy through Tanaka and Harry Kilmer.

Robert Mitchum was in his stride when he made “The Yakuza,” doing a movie every year and making it look easy yet poignant with every performance. “The Yakuza” is a beautifully flawed film that nonetheless catches you off guard when you least expect it.

Rated R. 112 mins. 

Documentarian Jeremy Workman ("Who is Henry Jaglom," "Magical Universe") joins the boys to talk about Sydney Pollock's THE YAKUZA (starring Robert Mitchum, Keiko Kishi, Ken Takakura, and Richard Jordan). 

Although it was Cole's idea to do Mitchum's follow-up to "The Friends of Eddie Coyle," Jeremy still had his diary notes from seeing THE YAKUZA way back in 2001. Cole broke out a bottle of Hitachino Nest's REAL GINGER BREW because it only seemed right to have a legit Japanese craft beer on the show. This is one damned fine beer. Bon appetite. 

RUDE BOY

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We delighted in drinking Samuel Adams REBEL JUICED IPA for our discussion of RUDE BOY, currently streaming on FILMSTRUCK. Pull up a chair to THE BIG FEAST!

Bon appétit!

However fraught with behind-the-scenes controversy, “Rude Boy” is a priceless document of one of the greatest Punk bands in history. This music exploitation docudrama is the result of a co-directing effort by Jack Hazan and David Mingay set during 1978 and 1979 when The Clash were positioning to take over the world.

The film features recording sessions and live performance footage of songs that appeared on the first two Clash albums (“The Clash” and “Give “Em Enough Rope”).

It’s obvious that the filmmakers haven't a clue about creating narrative structure, but they know they’ve got a tiger by the tail, and to their credit they don’t let it go.

Controversy arose when members of The Clash discovered a subplot woven into the storyline that denigrated young black men in London during the Thatcher era. The band distanced itself from the film, and never received any royalties from it. It doesn’t help that the filmmakers repeatedly return to “White Riot,” one of the band’s most misunderstood songs that the Nazi National Front adopted as their own.

So it is with bitter sadness that any knowing audience should come to a film that so innocently captures the charismatic personalities of the band and of their raw musicality on full display. A highlight of the film arrives when Joe Strummer bangs out a couple of blues tunes on an out of tune upright piano in a small empty music hall. This scene alone is worth the price of admission.

What storyline there is arrives via Ray Gange (playing himself) a right-wing leaning punk who inexplicably loves fiercely leftist-minded Clash, so much so that he endears himself as an unpaid roadie. Ray works at a dirty book store and collects his weekly dole amount of less than $15 when he isn’t getting drunk and going on the road with the band. Ray exposes his aspirational motivation for aligning himself with the right-wing because he wants to ride in big black cars rather than walk everywhere.

Here is a backstage and close-up proscenium look at The Clash shortly before they took America by storm with a stage act that still puts every other band to shame. Joe Strummer had the goods, and the perfect band to back him up. See the proof, and ignore the film’s spackled-on political subtext. Meet The Clash!

Songs to look out for include: “Career Opportunities,” “I’m So Bored With the USA,” “Stay Free,” and “I Fought The Law.” Wow.

Rated R. 133 mins.