Man must
fight for life
By Cheryl Rudert
The twentieth century is teaching us many things.
Among them is survival — in a retrogressive sense. For if
primitive man led a perilous daily life, constantly pitted
against the adversaries of weather and wild beasts, mod
ern man leads an equally challenging one. Only his ad
versaries have evolved, ironically, from his own self.
John Schlesinger s chilling Marathon Man, besides
providing a first-rate armchair-gripping story of torture,
enigma, and betrayal, offers a disturbing hypothesis: 20th
century technology, advanced beyond the perimeter of
efficiency, has turned cities into nightmarish outposts of
antagonism and violence, thereby giving rise to the exis
tence of pure evil (specifically in the form of Nazism). The
consequences force the pacifist, nobler members
of society to defend themselves with the same violent
methods they object to.
The theme sounds quite similar to the one Sam Peck
inpah proposed in Straw Dogs (also with Dustin Hoff
man). This time however, Hoffman is faced with an evil
more potent and malignant than the half-witted hate of a
peasant family. The story's horror is derived from the fact
that the evil is inherent in a nebulous tentacle agency of
the U S. government (the Division" — doing the jobs the
FBI and CIA won't touch) whose ambiguous motives are
never clearly defined, and a member of one of the sup
posedly humane professions — dentistry — transformed
into a fiend by ambition and the ideals of Nazism.
Hoffman, as "Babe Levy, a Jewish graduate student
whose father committed suicide when persecuted during
the McCarthy witch-hunt, is a sort of marathon "every
man". Seen on the surface he is a symbol of benign
humanity, naive in the face of enemies, which appear to
be all around him, and complementing h.s moral an
tithesis, Christian Szell.
Szell, played by Laurence Olivier, is a former Nazi
dentist, who amassed a fortune in diamonds as bribes for
freedom from Jews in a concentration camps. There he
transformed his art into a demonic form of torture, gaining
a reputation as "The White Angel" (because of his head of
white hair) among his victims. Szell lives comfortably for
years in Uruguay off of his stash of diamonds, which is
kept m a safe deposit box in New York. When his brother
dies in a bizarre auto accident, losing the only other key,
Szell, mistrustful of his team of diamond-smuggling "Divi
sion couriars, decides to come to New York to collect the
fortune himself.
Arriving like a dim ghost from an unspeakable past,
Szell radiates a diabolical presence in the midst of a
confused world. One of the most haunting scenes occurs
when he walks through the primarily Jewish diamond
market district and is recognized by two of his former
victims. It is the type of scene that strikes raw nerves and
stays fixed in a racial memory, outliving the film itself.
Babe becomes unsuspectingly involved with Szell
when his brother "Doc" (Roy Scheider), one of Szell's
enigmatic couriers, staggers into his apartment profusely
bleeding to death. Erroneously thinking that Doc’s last
words to Babe concerned his mission, Szell has Babe
captured and strapped to a dentist chair. Then the pain
begins — the white, shrieking, glaring pain that makes
you never want to see a dentist again.
As the film progresses, William Goldman's plot be
comes a bit hazy for an audience accustomed to direct
answers. Instead we are transmitted a blurred image of
corruption and innocence battling it out amongst a heavy
overlay of details and symbols. It is not necessarily an
objectionable criticism however, and the superb control of
tension, Hoffman's and Olivier's acting, the photography
and immaculate editing bring the film's calibre up to a high
level — high enough even to pay three dollars to see it.
The film's resolution lies in Babe's transformation
from an inactive spectator. "I don t confront things,” he
tells one of his professors. Bitterly harboring desires for
revenge, which surface partially in his doctoral thesis, he
lives mutely in a jungle of antagonism — until he is
goaded beyond human patience.
Forced to make a moral decision, his actions become
the film's catharsis. He represents all the latent powers of
good stirred into being, unwillingly but compulsively.
Watching this polarity of morals has its lighter mo
ments as well. One of the film’s redeeming factors is its
roller-coaster ride of humor, fright and sobriety. Seconds
before Hoffman undergoes his dental ordeal the audience
is caught chuckling. It is a bitter-sweetness that makes
the film a bit more concrete than a dream — or a night
mare.
Putting Marathon Man into a specific category is
difficult. How does one recommend it to a friend? Say it is
a thriller and one’s mental process conjures up a Hitch
cock film; say it is a film with a social statement and
Grapes of Wrath or Metropolis flash across the mind. It is
exactly this quality of combining genres into one celluloid
strip that makes the film work. Instead of detracting from
the tension the depiction of our worldly woes gives us a
more relative substance to savor in our thoughts when the
film has ended.
Szell and the “Division” are not improbable freaks of
nature; they are spawned from the twentieth century
along with a whole Pandora's box of goodies. Because of
this, Schlesinger's artwork is not a comfortable one to
watch. But then, neither is our current state of affairs.
By Eric S. Lee
If you tried to get in to the pitcher sale at Duffy’s
Friday before last and couldn’t make it through the crowd,
it's because there’s a scandal in town and everybody
wants to hear it.
It goes like this: Steve Myers of Patterson Alley and
Free and Easy fame, and Richard Price, onetime member
of the Archies and current composer for the Williams
bread ads, have started a new group. The group’s name
is Scandal — and here’s the good part — Myers and Price
make no bones about the fact that this is a copy-rock
band.
Can you do that in Eugene? Well, the Fox and
Weasle have been doing it successfully for quite some
time. "I think that Tom Greenough is the best entertainer
in this town," says Myers. "But there's only so much two
people can do. I wanted to design a band from the begin
ning that could play commercial music — Top-Forty stuff
— and do it as well as it could be done.”
With this in mind Myers and Price sat down and made
a list of all the material, the arrangements and the set lists
and made tapes of everything before they even picked the
musicians. They knew exactly what they were going to do
and how it was going to sound, they even scouted for
equipment before they finally got around to choosing the
people for the group, which make them sound like sort of
an afterthought, but wait till you hear where they got them,
them.
Myers, a two year student at the music school, de
cided to draw from among his classmates. Although he
conceded "a lot of people were skeptical that you could
take a classically trained musician and get them to play
rock and roll," there was a method in his madness. “One
of the hardest things to work with in forming a new group is
prior expectations. Any musician with any experience has
a very clear conception of what he’s worth and he doesn’t
want to work for nothing.” It is a well known fact that the
music school never has paid too well.
For a strong vocal sound, Myers picked three
women, all classically trained in voice: Jeanne Ferguson,
Laurie Tellock and Katie Hargreaves. “They’re really the
backbone of the group," says Myers. “We couldn’t do
what we re trying to do without them. “Besides giving the
stage a warm feeling, when they open their mouths,
they're all in tune. That’s something you don’t hear very
often.”
The rest of the Scandal personnel include Steve
Myers on lead guitar and pedal steel, Richard Price —
rhythm guitar and sax, Steve Larson on the Keyboards,
Tom McCauley does Bass and Jim Watson is the drum
mer. "I never know what I’m going to hear next from these
guys,” Myers says. “They’ve got these licks from other
worlds of music and they put them in very professionally. ”
Myers and Scandal worked together all summer and
their debut at the pitcher sale was an incredible success.
They also played to an enthusiastic crowd in the Ballroom
last Saturday night and according to Myers, he’s having a
hard time keeping up with the bookings already.
But how can a band that is conceived and con
structed as methodically as a piece of recording equip
ment, be successful in a town with such high audience
expectation as Eugene?
According to Myers, the show is designed with the
audience in mind. The sets are tong, the women are there
adding class and relating directly to the audience; the
musicians are tight and the sound is well engineered and
well balanced. Myers philosophy is that the most impor
tant thing for a musician, or any kind of performer, is to
remember that there’s an audience out there that came to
be entertained and if you're not there to entertain them,
you may as well be home watching television.
There’s an old axiom that says “It's not what you do
— it's how you do it." I don't really think it matters what
kind of music Scandal plays, as long as they do it well.
And they do.
Folk music master
holds workshop concert
This Sunday Mike Seeger, a master of traditional folk
music, will perform on the stage of the Community Center
for the Performing Arts, 8th and Lincoln.
He was born into a famous American music family.
The father, Charles Seeger, is a famous folklorist. The
mother, Ruth Crawford Seeger, is the author of several
well known folk music books, Pete Seeger, is his half
brother, and Peggy Seeger, another well known folk
singer, is his sister.
Seeger is considered an expert on the folk music of
Appalachia and the Southern Mountains, country music
of all kinds, and bluegrass music.
a b I
He is also one of the most extensive collectors of
traditional music throughout the South and a spokesman
for the urban appreciation and study of the music of the
southern Appalachian region.
As with most of Seeger s solo and group albums
(with the New Lost City Ramblers) over the past 16 years,
the bulk of his music is traditional — the kind that has been
handed down from generation to generation and only
recently has been written down on paper.
His performances are designed to show the breadth
and depth of southern American folk music, both instru
mentally and vocally. He plays in a variety of styles, many
of which are still current in the South today. He sings
songs that range from the old unaccompanied English
ballads to some of the more recently composed folk
based songs.
The emphasis in the first half of the program is usu
ally on stylistic development progressing from melody
oriented songs, such as those accompanied by fiddle or
banjo, to chord oriented songs accompanied by autoharp
or guitar. The second half emphasizes themes: rural topi
cal songs reflecting industrialization of the South, some
principal occupations of the south, as well as some of the
themes dealt with in one of the South s major industries,
contemporary country music.
Traditional music has been and always will be the
fore-runner to bluegrass, country, and rock and roil music.
And Mike Seeger — who plays all the instuments used in
mountain music: guitar, banjo, fiddle, autoharp, french
harp, jewsharp, dulcimer, mandolin and harmonica — is
one of the leading exponents of it.
At 3:30 p.m. the musicologist will present a matinee
workshop. This will be an informal lecture-performance,
and interested musicians should bring their instruments.
Then at 8 p.m. Seeger will appear in one concert perfor
mance.
Tickets for each event are $3 in advance, $3.50 day
of show. Children 12 and under get in for half price. Ticket
outlets are Sun Shop, Everybody's and the Community
Center for the Performing Arts. For more information call
687-2746.