Reading: The Joy of Drawing by Gerhard Gollwitzer
Music: Angelina Carberry
TV/Movie: The Negotiator
Link o' the Day: O'Neill's Music Of Ireland

I missed yesterday's post, so sorry. No worries, though. I would have just written another mash note about how much I love the movie Fight Club. Instead, though, I'll point royal readers to check out the classic Robert Altman film, Popeye.

Popeye???

The guy with the tumorous forearms, slack face and squint, and a speaking voice reminiscent of a stuttering hand drill?

Yep, that's the one. I saw this movie when it first came out in theaters in 1980 (which would have made me around 12 or 13. We were all very excited. This was Robin William's very first feature film. He had already blown our minds with his standup following his entertaining years as Mork from Ork, so yeah...we were excited. And Popeye was big around that time, too. It was a regular staple of the Saturday morning cartoon lineup, and , of course, the afternoon reruns.

Unfortunately, I ended up not liking it very much. Not many did. For one thing, it wasn't based on Popeye of the animated cartoons, but of the original Thimble Theatre Popeye appearances from the 1930s newspaper strips by E.C. Segar. Probably the most notable difference was that Popeye hated spinach, only using it once during the early comic strip years. The spinach fetish was added later to the animated cartoons (and later comics) in order to make Popeye a positive role model for children. Olive Oyl's family was more visible in the story, and the town of Sweethaven was full of very quirky (quirksome, quirkful) characters.

In other words, it was a movie meant to appeal to serious Popeye fans who understood the context of what Altman was presenting as opposed to popular audience who were expecting something else. And people were not ready to accept it as a musical. It seriously hurt Altman's career for years until he came out with The Player in 1992. Still, some of the things that make Altamn's later films more interesting were first pioneered in the Popeye film (overlapping dialogue, ensemble casting, long tracking shots following characters around, etc.)

As for Robin Williams, back then we were very disappointed in him until (arguably) 1987's Good Morning, Vietnam For the record, he did very well in 1982's The World According to Garp and 1984's Moscow On the Hudson but I think GMV was what made him a more respected star.

But that was then and this is now. I recently saw Popeye on one of the HBO channels and enjoyed it quite a lot. Maybe it's because I understand the context more, maybe because I have more patience with the artistic styling, maybe because I've developed as a film buff in the past 28 years. (Someone could also say, possibly, that my tastes have devolved, but that is cruel, libelous rumor-mongering and they will pay.) The music wasn't as annoying now that I understand it better. I liked the casting better. There are great bits of dialogue all throughout the movie, and neat little design details (in characters and settings) that make it delightful to explore.

I would even say that the film is....wait for it...

BRILLIANT.

Granted, I can sometimes be more forgiving of films than certain associates of mine, (I'm talking about you, Reilly.) but I'm going to stand by my assertion that Robert Altman's Popeye is worth, at the very least, viewing on cable or renting on DVD. Maybe even to own.

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Today's link takes you to a page with a complete collection of PDF pages from O'Neill's Music Of Ireland, the main resource for Irish musicians. Entry No. 1577 is "The Sailor's Hornpipe" which is used as the intro and ending to the Popeye theme song.

Cheers!