Culturebox: The Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side

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movies The Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side A filmic valentine to the songwriting of Stephin Merritt. By Dana Stevens Posted Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2010, at 12:56 PM ET "I'll take that kiss now," Stephin Merritt sings toward the end of "Papa Was a Rodeo," a ballad from the 69 Love Songs triple album that brought his band, the Magnetic Fields, into the public eye in 1999. In their documentary Strange Powers (Variance Films), co-directors Kerthy Fix and Gail O'Hara deliver that kiss in filmic form. For those who, like this reviewer, are already fans of the Magnetic Fields, Strange Powers serves as a handy pocket-size supplement to the vast and rapidly expanding Stephin Merritt songbook. But I'm not sure that this 82-minute valentine to the phlegmatic, saturnine, perversely charming Mr. Merritt will recruit many new listeners to his band's work. Though we see a few songs performed onstage in their entirety, this is less a concert film than an intimate glimpse at Merritt's working process. As presented here, that process seems to consist principally of holing up in his East Village studio apartment with his keyboardist, manager, and collaborator since adolescence, Claudia Gonson, as they hammer out melodies at a piano, adding sounds from kitchen whisks, gongs, homemade chimes, and whatever other instruments they improvise from the clutter. Later, as the songs get closer to recordable shape, other band members are brought in: John Woo on guitar, Sam Davol on cello, Daniel Handler (aka the young-adult author Lemony Snicket) on accordion. But the relationship at the heart of the movie--and, the film suggests, of Merritt's life--is his warm, bickering, codependent friendship with Gonson, who cheerfully admits that her role blurs the lines between wife, mother, friend, and "fag hag." To continue reading, click here. Dana Stevens is Slate's movie critic. Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum What did you think of this article? POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES Also In Slate The Tea Party's Concern About Voter Fraud Is Ridiculous Why in the World Would Anyone Buy a Bond With a Negative Interest Rate? Manjoo: How Hotel Owners Should Defend Their Reputations on TripAdvisor	Advertisement
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