AFOS: "Sleazy Listening" playlist

Airing tomorrow at 10am and 3pm on the Fistful of Soundtracks channel is the Fistful of Soundtracks: The Series episode "Sleazy Listening Revisited" (WEB84) from February 12-18, 2007. In WEB84, I replayed the playlist from the 2003 AFOS: The Series ep "Sleazy Listening" (WEB27), which contained the recently deceased Jerry van Rooyen's greatest piece of film music, "The Great Bank Robbery."

"What's New Pussycat? (Main Title)"

1. Tom Jones, "What's New Pussycat? (Main Title)," What's New Pussycat?, Rykodisc
2. Teo Usuelli, "Piacere Sequence" (from Alla ricerca del piacere), Beat at Cinecittà Volume 1, Crippled Dick Hot Wax!
3. Riz Ortolani, "Il ricordo di Serena" (from Confessione di un commissario di polizia al procuratore della Repubblica), Easy Tempo Vol. 1: A Cinematic Easy Listening Experience, Right Tempo
4. Isaac Hayes, "A House Full of Girls" (from Truck Turner), Double Feature: Music from the Soundtracks of Three Tough Guys & Truck Turner, Stax
5. Ennio Morricone featuring Christy, "Deep Down" (from Danger: Diabolik), Canto Morricone: The Ennio Morricone Songbook, Vol. 1, Bear Family
6. Jerry van Rooyen, "The Great Bank Robbery" (from How Short Is the Time for Love), Free Enterprise, Unforscene Music
7. Vampire Sound Incorporated, "Necronomania," Vampyros Lesbos: Sexadelic Dance Party, Motel
8. The Bob Crewe Generation Orchestra, "The Black Queen's Beads," Barbarella, Harkit
9. Gert Wilden & Orchestra, "Girl Faces" (from Schulmädchen Report 1), Schoolgirl Report, Crippled Dick Hot Wax!
10. Gert Wilden & Orchestra, "Follow Me" (from Was Männer nicht für möglich halten), Schoolgirl Report, Crippled Dick Hot Wax!
11. Roy Budd, "Envy, Greed and Gluttony" (from The Magnificent Seven Deadly Sins), Return of the Budd, Sequel
12. Roy Budd, "Lust" (from The Magnificent Seven Deadly Sins), Return of the Budd, Sequel
13. Burt Bacharach, "Stripping Really Isn't Sexy, Is It?," What's New Pussycat?, Rykodisc
14. Francesco De Masi and Alessandro Alessandroni, "Tema di Londra M.1" (from Colpo Maestro al servizio di sua Maesta Britannica), Beat at Cinecittà Volume 1, Crippled Dick Hot Wax!
15. Armando Trovajoli, "Sessomatto" (from Sessomatto), Easy Tempo Vol. 1: A Cinematic Easy Listening Experience, Right Tempo
16. Armando Trovajoli, "Blazing Magnum" (from Una Magnum Special Per Toni Saitta), Beretta 70: Roaring Themes from Thrilling Italian Police Films 1971-80, Crippled Dick Hot Wax!
17. Dusty Springfield, "The Look of Love," Casino Royale, Varèse Sarabande

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The 1970 "Great Bank Robbery" instrumental is best known as the opening theme from the 1998 indie romcom Free Enterprise, which starred William Shatner as himself in a great pre-Boston Legal comedic turn. On the college radio version of A Fistful of Soundtracks, I interviewed Free Enterprise co-screenwriter Mark A. Altman about the making of the movie at the time of its release. A fan of the original Star Trek and Deep Space Nine (but very vocal about his displeasure with The Next Generation and Voyager), Altman based parts of Free Enterprise on his experiences as an editor of the Larry Flynt-owned Sci Fi Universe magazine. The part of my interview with Altman that I remember the most was when he recalled how during filming, he attempted to ask his idol about the time he worked alongside actress Angelique Pettyjohn, who played one of Kirk's many friends with benefits on Star Trek, and all Shatner could say to Altman was "Who's Angelique Pettyjohn?"

Issue #31 of Geek Monthly (the one with Anna Faris on the cover) arrived in my mailbox the other day, and because van Rooyen's music, which I'll forever associate with Free Enterprise, has been on my mind lately, I was amused to see that in his column in that issue, Altman talked at length about the 10th anniversary of Free Enterprise's release. One of the Free Enterprise anecdotes Altman recalled in his column involves a Cannes party where Shatner re-encountered his Judgment at Nuremberg co-star Maximillian Schell, and all Altman and his Free Enterprise writing partner Robert Meyer Burnett could think while they saw Shatner and Schell embrace was "Oh my God, it's Captain Kirk and Dr. Hans Reinhardt!"

Repeats of A Fistful of Soundtracks: The Series air Wednesdays at 10am and 3pm.

Jerry van Rooyen (1928-2009)

"The Great Bank Robbery," a supercool big-band jazz instrumental I first heard on the soundtrack album for the 1998 Eric McCormack/William Shatner indie comedy Free Enterprise, is the epitome of sleazy listening, from the bouncy organ solo to the presence of my favorite '60s/'70s instrument, the fuzztone guitar. The funky tune, which popped up during a Taco Bell ad campaign this summer (the one that doesn't involve "The Piña Colada Song"), was originally written for the obscure 1970 German B-movie How Short Is the Time for Love. Its composer, Dutch bandleader and trumpeter Jerry van Rooyen, died on September 14 at the age of 80.

Though the bandleader wrote scores for only seven movies (the X-rated 1969 Jess Franco flick Succubus is the most well-known film he scored), those scores were sleazy listening at its best. In 1997, the Crippled Dick Hot Wax! label released At 250 Miles Per Hour, a collection of highlights from four of van Rooyen's previously unavailable scores. This CD was most likely where Free Enterprise screenwriters Mark A. Altman and Robert Meyer Burnett were first exposed to "The Great Bank Robbery" (mistakenly called "The Great Train Robbery" in the van Rooyen obit that was posted on Weirdomusic.com). No wonder Altman and Burnett adopted the swinging van Rooyen instrumental as the opening theme for their Swingers-inspired film and attempted to do for "The Great Bank Robbery" what Pulp Fiction did for "Misirlou."

My starting six for Asian American cinema

A discussion about supporting Asian American cinema inspired blogger and R&B/hip-hop scholar Oliver Wang to invite experts on Asian American cinema to post their lists of six films they would recommend to people whose idea of an Asian American film is Rush Hour. Phil Yu of angry asian man, who helped spread the word about Wang's little starting six project, contributed his own starting six and had a couple of surprising picks on his list, like the corny Flower Drum Song, which he even admitted had some cheesy moments.

I saw Wang's starting six and wanted to post my idea of a starting six on my blog to show people who are underwhelmed by a lot of Asian American cinema that there are a few gems out there.

1. The Breakthrough Film: Chan Is Missing (director: Wayne Wang, 1982)
I first saw Wang's comedy about assimilation and Asian American identity on KQED when I was in high school, and I dug how the film is unsentimental, smart and documentary-like, whereas Wang's other signature Asian American film, the Joy Luck Club adaptation, is annoyingly sentimental, syrupy and cartoonish, with a point of view that constantly and Frankenstein-ishly screams out "Asian man bad!"

2. The Serious Filipino American Film: The Fall of the I-Hotel (director: Curtis Choy, 1983)
This outstanding hour-long documentary about the razing of San Francisco's Manilatown is a landmark work in the short history of Filipino American cinema, and it contains powerful footage of the 1977 protests against the eviction of 50 manongs (elderly Filipinos) from their soon-to-be-demolished Manilatown residential hotel.

3. The Actioner: Big Trouble in Little China (director: John Carpenter, 1986)
Twentieth Century Fox marketed BTILC as a movie in which Kurt Russell's Jack Burton is the hero ("Jack Burton's coming to rescue your summer"). In actuality, Jack is the buffoonish sidekick in a role that's usually reserved for the Asian guy, while the real heroes of the piece are the resourceful badass Wang Chi (Dennis Dun) and the wizardly tour bus driver Egg Shen (Victor Wong). That sly and subversive role reversal is one of the reasons why I admire Carpenter. It's a shame that no Asian American filmmaker has yet made an Asian American-centric action flick as enjoyable and empowering for APA viewers as BTILC (Enter the Dragon and later vehicles for the likes of Brandon Lee, Keanu Reeves, Jackie Chan and Lucy Liu don't count as APA-centric). When are we going to see the APA equivalent of Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, Shaft, Coffy or El Mariachi?

4. The Humorous Filipino American Film: The Flip Side (director: Rod Pulido, 2001)
José Sáenz is a comedic standout as an untalented Pinoy baller who thinks he's black in the most obscure of my six choices (it's never made it to DVD). Though Pulido's only feature film is more like an 80-minute sitcom than a movie, I prefer it over The Debut, and the sharpest and most dead-on parts of Pulido's screenplay deal with Pinoys who wish they were black and Pinays who pass themselves off as "Hawaiian," whitewash their looks and date only white guys. No other Asian American feature film has irreverently poked fun at self-hating Asian women like The Flip Side did (c'mon Pinoy screenwriters, it's time to rip Michelle Malkin a new one like Law & Order: Criminal Intent and Boston Legal did to Nancy Grace).

5. The Indie Film: Better Luck Tomorrow (director: Justin Lin, 2002)
I prefer the pre-MTV Films version with the ballsier, Taxi Driver-esque ending over the final cut with the slightly modified ending. The conclusion Lin opted for in the final cut is like if Martin Scorsese took Paul Schrader's Taxi Driver screenplay and tacked on a couple of lines at the end in which Travis Bickle says he plans to turn himself in for murder because he suddenly felt sorry for slaughtering all those pimps.

6. The Mainstream Film: Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle (director: Danny Leiner, 2004)
This hilarious cult favorite annoys Asian American film scholars who find it misogynist and slam it for being lowbrow. But it's lowbrow humor for smart people, and even Stephanie "Actresses with not-so-toned bodies should be allowed to do nude scenes too" Zacharek didn't call it misogynist and enjoyed how it's "so unaggressive in the way it addresses the issue of what it means to be a minority in this country that it coaxes you into thinking about it." (If those haters want to see better-written female characters, the somewhat inferior sequel Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay is up their alley. It appears to have been written to appease them.) The fact that many Asian American viewers like myself find Harold & Kumar--which was written and directed by white guys--to be more accurate about our experience than rather shrill and heavy-handed indie dramas with similarly aged lead characters made by Asian American filmmakers is a sign that those indie filmmakers need to step their game up.

Six honorable mentions

The Crimson Kimono (director: Samuel Fuller, 1959)
A lengthy Asian male/white female kiss in 1959? Wow. We have Fuller and his brass ones to thank for that.

Who Killed Vincent Chin? (directors: Christine Choy and Renee Tajima-Peña, 1987)
I don't think I can watch this hard-hitting staple of Asian American studies movie screenings again because the subject matter infuriates me so much.

Robot Stories (director: Greg Pak, 2003)
Matt Zoller Seitz is right. This low-budget anthology from Greg, whom I'm honored to be in the same graphic novel with, is a great sci-fi movie. It contains several terrifically written roles for actresses of color. Lesser-known actresses like Wai Ching Ho (as a grieving mother with a comatose son) and Julienne Hanzelka Kim (as a laconic yet very expressive android) are among the standouts in the cast. If that silent movie I always wanted to write ever gets made, Kim would be perfect for it.

Sucker Free City (director: Spike Lee, 2004)
I know it's a made-for-TV Spike Lee Joint, but this Alex Tse-penned unsold pilot about San Francisco gang life, which co-stars the always superb Ken Leung, premiered first at the Toronto International Film Festival before debuting on Showtime. It ranks with the Twin Peaks and EZ Streets pilots as one of the best feature-length pilots ever made, and it's a more satisfying Tse film than Tse's Watchmen adaptation.

The Motel (director: Michael Kang, 2005)
I appreciate how this indie comedy has none of the formulaic touches that Rotten Tomatoes Show hosts Ellen Fox and Brett Erlich skewered in their "Ode to the Indie."

Beerfest (director: Jay Chandrasekhar, 2006)
The first Broken Lizard flick I ever saw is the funniest one the troupe has done so far, with a hilarious performance by Chandrasekhar as a fallen beer pong legend who's turned to whoring himself out and giving $15 "ZJs."

Coming either later this year or next year: My starting six for Asian American comic books and graphic novels.

Stuff White People Like But This Brown Man Can't Stand #2: Snuggies

WTF, white folks? Snuggies make you look like creepy members of the world's wussiest cult or the Polyphonic Spree.

When it gets cold indoors, there's a far less idiotic-looking piece of clothing I prefer to put on. It's called a sweater.

Snuggie is a ridiculous product name too. It doesn't belong on a garment that's so dorky and white. Snuggie's more like a name for a pimp ("Bitch betta have Snuggie's money or Snuggie's gonna cut somebody!").

Roc Raida (1972-2009)

I love how Roc Raida (real name: Anthony Williams), a legendary turntablist and member of the X-Ecutioners crew for those not in the know, cited Bruce Lee as an influence in a DJ tutorial he recorded for djvibe.com.