Steve Shelley Movies
- 2004
- Add Be Here to Love Me: A Film About Townes Van Zandt to QueueAdd Be Here to Love Me: A Film About Townes Van Zandt to top of Queue
The celebrated singer and songwriter Steve Earle once said "Townes Van Zandt is the best songwriter in the whole world, and I'll stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that." Earle was hardly the only artist of note who loved Van Zandt's poetic, elliptical songs of love and dashed hopes -- Willie Nelson, Emmylou Harris, Norah Jones, the Cowboy Junkies, and Nanci Griffith are among the many performers who have recorded his work, and he was a key inspiration for much of the Texas singer/songwriter community, including Guy Clark, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Joe Ely, and Lyle Lovett. However, while Van Zandt was greatly admired by his peers and a small cult of passionate admirers, it was other artists who had hits with his songs, not him, and this gifted but troubled man was haunted by drug and alcohol addiction much of his life. Van Zandt also had difficult relationships with his family and three wives, and at the age of 20, he was given shock treatments which wiped out nearly all of his childhood memories. In the 1990s, Van Zandt's public profile began to grow larger, and he was signed to a major record label for the first time in 1996, but as often happened in his songs, fate stepped in, and Van Zandt died following hip surgery on New Year's Day, 1997. Filmmaker Margaret Brown, a longtime fan of Townes Van Zandt, examines both his life and his art in the documentary Be Here to Love Me: A Film About Townes Van Zandt, which includes interviews with many of his close friends, family members and collaborators, including Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Emmylou Harris, Steve Shelley, Guy Clark, and many more. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
Director Richard Linklater and writer/actor Eric Bogosian collaborated on this adaptation of Bogosian's play about a handful of people edging into their 20's who seem like the poor relations of the genial eccentrics in Linklater's Slacker. While the Texas bohemians in Slacker has their myriad obsessions to keep them occupied (even if they didn't do much about them), SubUrbia's protagonists have few if any clear goals and hang out not as a means of killing time, but as a way of life. Jeff (Giovanni Ribisi) talks about going back to college some day while he lives in a tent in his parents' garage. His girlfriend Sooze (Amie Carey) imagines herself a performance artist; most of her "work" is displayed in he parking lot of a convenience store, though she often talks about moving to New York. Tim (Nicky Katt) was bounced from the Air Force and spends his evenings soaking up alcohol and bitterness. Buff (Steve Zahn) is obsessed with pizza and is content with his reputation as the wacky guy who will do anything. And Bee-Bee (Dina Spybey) is Sooze's best friend, just out of rehab, with her willpower hanging by a thread. It's a big night in front of the convenience store; Pony (Jayce Bartok), who used to play guitar at school dances, has become a rock star, and promises to stop by after his show at the local hockey arena (none of his friends have the money to see him play). Meanwhile, the American work ethic is represented by Nazeer (Ajay Naidu), an immigrant from Pakistan who runs the store where the kids hang out; he's sick to death of them, and lives for the day when he gets his engineering degree and never has to see their faces again. Bogosian has said this play (and in particular the character of Jeff) was freely drawn from his own post-teenage years. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- Starring:
- Jayce Bartok, Amie Carey, (more)
