Rock 'N' Film: Cinema's Dance With Popular Music

489 Pages·2016·16.57 MB·English

by  David E. James

Rock ‘N’ Film

Rock ‘N’ Film
Cinema’s Dance with Popular Music
David E. James
1
3
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
James, David E., 1945–
Rock ‘n’ film : cinema’s dance with popular music / David E. James.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–19–938759–5 (cloth) — ISBN 978–0–19–938761–8 (updf) —
ISBN 978–0–19–938762–5 (epub) 1. Rock films—History and criticism.
2. Motion pictures and rock music. I. Title. II. Title: Rock and film.
PN1995.9.M86J37 2015
791.43ʹ6578—dc23
2015013936
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
For Joann

{ Contents }
Acknowledgments  ix
1. Introduction: Rock ‘n’ Film  1
2. Absolute Beginnings: Blackboard Jungle  23
3. Jukebox Musicals  33
4. Dirty Stars: Jayne Mansfield and Kenneth Anger  55
5. Rock ’n’ Roll Noir: Elvis before the Army  73
6. Sunshine Elvis: The Devil in Disguise  92
7. Back in the UK: The English Elvises  123
8. The Beatles I: Richard Lester and A Hard Day’s Night  138
9. The Beatles II: Next Morning  158
10. Toward Documentary: Bringing It All Back Home  183
11. D. A. Pennebaker: Documentary from Folk to Folk Rock and Rock  200
12. Utopia and Its Discontents: From Woodstock to Message to Love  225
13. The Rolling Stones: The Greatest Rock ‘n’ Film Band in the World  255
14. Mick Jagger, Demon Brother  275
15. Rock ‘n’ Film Crisis: The Rolling Stones in the United States  286
16. Back to Black: Soul  313
17. . . . And White: Country Music  346
18. Rock ’n’ Roll Suicide Film  367
Notes 393
Index 453

{ Acknowledgments }
Like film and music, cinema historiography is a collective activity, and I
have been extraordinarily privileged in the many friends and colleagues who
have contributed to this project. I am especially indebted to Derek Nystrom
and other university press editors and readers who encouraged, enriched,
and guided it from its beginnings. Johanna Gosse, Adam Hyman, Jonathan
Kahana, Tom Kemper, Dana Polan, Sophia Serrano-Wagner, and Dean
Wilson all read the manuscript, helping me enormously and saving me from
many errors. I am additionally grateful for many kinds of assistance from
Nicole Brenez, Drew Caspar, John Ganim, Alan Golding, Rick Jewell, Harvey
Kubernik, Earl Rath, Paul N. Reinsche, Paige Rozanski, and Jeff Sconce.
I have been aided by the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of
Southern California, and by two awards: an Academy Film Scholarship from
the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Beverly Hills, in 2007,
and the Ailsa Mellon Bruce Senior Fellowship at the Center for Advanced
Studies in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., for the
academic year, 2011–2012. My gratitude for the assistance and pleasure they
gave me is unbounded.
For permission to reproduce the Sprod cartoon, I gratefully acknowledge
Punch Limited, www.punch.co.uk; and for the Midnight Movies calendar,
Presidio Theater, San Francisco, Fall 1977 (detail), I gratefully acknowledge
Mike Getz.
Notes: This project attempts a scholarly treatment of a topic that so far has
received primarily journalistic attention. Hoping to make it useful for popu-
lar as well as academic readers, I have relegated the scholarly apparatus to the
footnotes, and developed the theoretical and methodological principles all
together in the first chapter. This may be postponed by any reader preferring
to move directly to the historical account.
Almost all the illustrations are drawn from the films themselves, which
now exist in a variety of formats. To ensure some consistency, the frames have
been edited, though as little as possible. Nevertheless, all should be consid-
ered as details rather than full frames. Specifications of images in the com-
posites read left to right, top to bottom.