VEILED THREATS by Phil Mershon
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WHO IS HARRY NILSSON (AND WHY IS EVERYBODY TALKIN' ABOUT HIM)?
Directed by Jerry Scheinfeld
Written by Jerry Scheinfeld
Starring Harry Nilsson, Ringo Starr, Richard Perry
Released in 2010
Picture
Harry Nilsson wheeled his way in and out of life with such tender rapidity it's a wonder his poor body and soul withstood things as long as they did. With a voice that echoed as much Tin Pan Alley as Abbey Road, this insecure man lulled us out of our somnambulism with many a fine tune, the first big one being the Fred Neil-penned "Everybody's Talkin'," the hit from the film Midnight Cowboy, a song that beat out both Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell because of its appropriateness for the movie as well as stark, simple skill at capturing a sentiment beneath the mouth of a jar and kissing it through the glass.
    The movie Who is Harry Nilsson (And Why is Everybody Talkin' About Him)? was released a couple years back and one of the downright dirty shames of this new thing called the twenty-first century is that it didn't sell more tickets than it did, as if Harry was just some flash in the grease who didn't warrant an entire documentary film about him, an idea I for one reject because (a) I've always loved his songs, and (b) because making a documentary this good is something one does not have the ability to do just every day. For one person the point of reference may be that he wrote the song "One," a huge hit for something called Three Dog Night. For another person it may be his album of songs written by Randy Newman. For most people it is probably the thoroughly enjoyable Nilsson Schmilsson record, an album from which no less than three Top Forty singles were culled, an album produced by Richard "The Lion-Hearted" Perry, when the singer's voice was at or near the top of its incredible precipice of talent. Whether one loved the Number One smash "Without You" (written by two guys from Badfinger, whose own version was great but still not as great as Harry's), or the silly and brilliant "Coconut," or the not-as-simple-as-it-seems rocker "Jump into the Fire," Nilsson Schmilsson had a little something for no one and a lot of something for everyone else. 


    As a kid back in the times when being a kid counted for something, my own first exposure to the man came from hearing him sing the theme from the mediocre TV show "The Courtship of Eddie's Father." Mere days later I was treated to the soundtrack from a kid's animated film called The Point, to this day one of the most enlightened exercises a kid can encounter, and I grooved in total sullen silliness first to "Me and My Arrow" and then to the rest of the album. 
    No one had ever sung quite like that before. It sounded like what you might get if you'd crossed Paul McCartney with Frank Sinatra and put the voice in the throat of playwright Arthur Miller. 
    John Scheinfeld has been making good documentaries since the early 1990s (The Unknown Marx Brothers, The Unknown Peter Sellers, The U.S. vs. John Lennon). Now he has made a great one.Who is Harry Nilsson? takes you by the lapels from the instant Dustin Hoffman walks out on the stage to make the announcement of the passing of this human being and continues to shake you until we get to the L.A. earthquake that occurred the day of Nilsson's funeral. Memories are shared by Micky Dolenz, Van Dyke Parks, Brian Wilson, Richard Perry, Eric Idle, Ringo Starr, John Lennon, Harry's wives and kids, The Smothers Brothers, Robin Williams, and throngs more, and even if the name of this singer-songwriter means absolutely nothing to you, I would still encourage you to see this movie if for no other reason than to get some sense as to how artistically successful a music documentary can be when the subject is not necessarily a household name, however much it should be. For those with only a passing familiarity, you will be dipped in the lifetime of a man whose music you will find will add cosmic joys and sorrows to your days and nights, and to those of you who, like myself, waited in record stores for the release of the next product (Pussycats, for instance, with Lennon producing, or a song that should've been a hit and couldn't have been, such as "Jesus Christ You're Tall"),  this movie may actually bring you to the edge of despair over just how much was lost that stupid day in January 1994 when we lost a great American hero. 
​
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  • Home
  • Links
  • The Deluge
    • Veiled Threats >
      • 1939-1945
      • 1946-1963
      • 1964-1975
      • 1976-1985
      • Born Losers
      • Don't Look Back
      • Bonnie and Clyde
      • Cool Hand Luke
      • The Graduate
      • Up Tight!
      • Cycle Savages
      • Wild in the Streets
      • Never a Dull Moment
      • Yellow Submarine
      • Night of the Living Dead
      • Faces
      • The Love Bug
      • Midnight Cowboy
      • Easy Rider
      • Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice
      • Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
      • They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
      • The Magic Christian
      • Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song
      • The Landlord
      • The Ballad of Cable Hogue
      • Getting Straight
      • The Bird with the Crystal Plumage
      • Five Easy Pieces
      • Godard in America
      • Gimme Shelter
      • Little Big Man
      • The Boys in the Band
      • Joe
      • The Garden of the Finzi-Continis
      • The Big Boss
      • There's a Girl in my Soup
      • The Liberation of L B Jones
      • Klute
      • The French Connection
      • Willie Dynamite
      • Helter Skelter
      • King: A Filmed Record
      • Get Carter
      • Harold and Maude
      • Panic in Needle Park
      • Across 110th Street
      • And Soon the Darkness
      • Deliverance
      • Rolling Thunder
      • Super Fly
      • Busting
      • The Ruling Class
      • The Harder They Come
      • Day of the Jackal
      • Play Misty For Me
      • The Jezebels
      • Sacco & Vanzetti
      • Badlands
      • Cold Turkey
      • Soldier Blue
      • American Graffiti
      • The Falcon and the Snowman
      • Watership Down
      • Scarecrow
      • Walking Tall
      • Frances
      • The Coca-Cola Kid
      • Bob Roberts
      • Bad Company
      • We Are Marshall
      • Patton
      • The Natural
      • The Crossing Guard
      • Reds
      • The Spook Who Sat by the Door
      • Mud
      • Who is Harry Nilsson
      • Ornette: Made in America
      • Six Degrees of Separation
      • This Film is Not Yet Rated
      • Incident at Oglala
      • That Championship Season
      • The Pope of Greenwich Village
      • Little Murders
      • Assault on Precinct 13
      • Capote
      • Inglourious Basterds
      • The Friends of Eddie Coyle
      • Scorpio
      • The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
      • A New Leaf
      • Seven Psychopaths
      • The Last House on the Left
      • The Deer Hunter
      • Let the Right One In
      • Colour Me Kubrick
      • A Time to Kill
      • A Scanner Darkly
      • Salem's Lot
      • Roman Polanksi: Wanted and Desired
      • The Seven-Ups
      • The Contender
      • Hoffa
      • The Pledge
      • American: The Bill Hicks Story
      • Donnie Brasco
      • Bugsy
      • Milk
      • Reservoir Dogs
      • Glengarry Glen Ross
      • V for Vendetta
      • Trumbo
      • Two in the Wave
      • South of the Border
      • Into the Abyss
      • God Bless America
  • Before the Deluge
    • The Bicycle Thief
    • Judgment at Nuremberg
    • Five Minutes to Live
    • The Manchurian Candidate
    • Hud
    • Pressure Point
    • Blow Up
    • Requiem for a Heavyweight
    • Hurry Sundown
  • Human Flood
    • Jean-Luc Godard >
      • Breathless
      • Masculine Feminine
      • Film Socialisme
    • Brian De Palma >
      • Sisters
      • The Fury
    • Stanley Kubrick >
      • Lolita
      • 2001: A Space Odyssey
      • A Clockwork Orange
      • The Shining
      • Full Metal Jacket
    • Francis Coppola >
      • The Conversation
      • Apocalypse Now
    • Woody Allen >
      • Take the Money and Run
      • Bananas
      • Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But were Afraid to Ask
      • Sleeper
      • Love and Death
      • Annie Hall
      • Interiors
      • Manhattan
      • Stardust Memories
      • Zelig
      • Broadway Danny Rose
      • The Purple Rose of Cairo
      • Hannah and Her Sisters
      • Radio Days
    • Robert Altman >
      • M*A*S*H
      • Brewster McCloud
      • 3 Women
      • Nashville
      • The Gingerbread Man
      • Ready to Wear
      • Gosford Park
      • The Player
    • Luis Bunuel >
      • The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
    • Roman Polanski >
      • Cul-de-Sac
      • Rosemary's Baby
      • MacBeth
      • The Tenant
    • Martin Scorsese >
      • Boxcar Bertha
    • Steven Spielberg >
      • Duel
    • Oliver Stone >
      • Talk Radio
    • Orson Welles >
      • F For Fake
    • Akira Kurosawa >
      • DODES'KA-DEN
    • Max Ophuls
    • John Ford >
      • The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
    • John Huston
    • Frank Capra
    • Billy Wilder
    • Roger Corman
    • Bernardo Bertolucci
    • Elia Kazan
    • William Wyler
    • Spike Lee
    • Francois Truffaut >
      • 400 Blows
      • Jules and Jim
      • Bed and Board
    • Jean Renoir
    • Federico Fellini
    • Charlie Chaplin
    • John Cassavetes
    • Agnes Vargas
    • Alain Resnais
    • Eric Rohmer >
      • Claire's Knee
    • Ida Lupino
    • Leni Riefenstahl
    • Penny Marshall
    • Costa-Gavras >
      • The Confession
      • Missing
    • Alfred Hitchcock >
      • Spellbound
      • Shadow of a Doubt
      • The Birds
      • I Confess
      • Dial M for Murder
      • Rear Window
      • To Catch a Thief
      • The Wrong Man
      • Suspicion
      • Saboteur
      • Lifeboat
      • Notorious
      • Rope
      • North by Northwest
      • Psycho
      • The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)
  • No Particular Place to Go
  • The Pits
    • The Big Chill
    • W. C. Fields and Me
    • Zabriskie Point
    • Eat The Document
    • Hitler: The Last Ten Days
    • A Boy and His Dog
    • A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
    • The Executioner's Song
    • The Visitors
    • Paul McCartney Really is Dead
    • Going Places
    • Pi
    • Erik the Viking
    • Sometimes They Come Back
    • Thinner
    • Beyond the Valley of the Dolls
    • A Bullet for Pretty Boy
  • Links