Hacker Cinema
Walk on the Wild Side
1962 · Film · 114 min
Directed by Edward Dmytryk
At a 1930s New Orleans bordello, Hallie is the main attraction for both clients and the shrewd madam. The arrival of Dove Linkhorn, her lovesick sweetheart from three years ago, disrupts the normal and triggers a chain of events involving a number of people, including the young woman he travelled with, who is now the Doll House's newest employee.
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2 comments on Hacker News
The only improvement I see from Bass' design is United Way (gradients suck in the long run, though they were the bee's knees in 1972). If you cannot silk screen it easily onto a T shirt with spot colors, it's not a good logo.
Saul Bass also did some incredible movie titles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqM3McG4-LE
A great many experimented with his simple text and cutout animation, but I especially like the cinemagraphic ones in black and white -- (time index 29:26) -- Something Wild, Walk On The Wild Side
I'll add to the other comments about the context in which they made this music, to give you a sense of where they were coming from. I read someplace, maybe even liner notes for one the Velvet Underground records, that they would fine any band member that played a blues lick.
In a sense, as I understand it, they were trying to reinvent rock'n'roll through radical simplification. The Unix way. 3 chords and the truth. If you listen to their music, you can hear them doing it - no blues, no cliche, Lou's radically simple singing, but still building amazing music.
> the stuff I've heard on the radio (esp "Walk on the Wild Side") strikes me as pretentious
It might seem pretentious, but it was very real to them. The characters in Walk on the Wild Side were real people they knew (look it up online) - far more 'wild' than my life, but really it's about empathy. The images created by those short, one-verse character sketches are amazingly rich, the clear-eyed description of the darkness in their lives, and the empathy for what many (especially then) considered the trash of society is still almost heart-breaking to me.
> I always thought "warewolves of london" was Lou Reed.
No offense, but you're not grasping Lou Reed if you confused them. It's not just the voice, but what Lou had to say. Here are some more Lou Reed songs to try:
* Sweet Jane (live in Italy) [listen to how incredibly simple the music is, but so effective]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQ5kab3Mr4M
* Halloween Parade [Look up the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade if you aren't familiar with it, and remember this was written as the AIDS epidemic was beginning and (IIRC) still the institutions weren't acting, just watching gay people die. The whole New York album is amazing.]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb_r-IwB8t8
* Heroin (live in Italy) [Listen loud with headphones. I don't need to try the drug now.]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0odhuRxnYBU
* Doing the Things That We Want To [a bit dated in sound, but again very real. He's talking about the inspiration of other artists: Sam Sheppard's Fool for Love, Martin Scorsese's New York movies and Travis Bickle, etc.]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SGeNsQttYE
* The first few songs of the 1969 live record
Most of all, he has what I want most from an artist: Something to say.