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I keep telling the auditors this, but the IRS is still taking me to court anyway

Richard Corliss, a week after suffering a massive stroke.

I always hated that I confused him with Schickel - who I never liked. Nice piece on Time.

Jack Ely and Suzanne Crough

The greatest one-hit wonder hit ever. Hell, it may even be the greatest rock 'n' roll single ever.

Guy LeBlanc from the prog rock band Camel

hearthesilence wrote:The greatest one-hit wonder hit ever. Hell, it may even be the greatest rock 'n' roll single ever.

I was just reading about the FBI's fixation with this track, which they were convinced was a dirty song corrupting America's young people. When they could have been working to solve actual crimes, the FBI Laboratory was apparently trying to understand the lyrics, but never got them right. They thought the second line of every verse included the phrase "fuck you girl, oh, all the way" or "I fuck your girl all kinds of ways," when in reality the line was "Me think of girl constantly." They also thought they heard things like "She's never a girl I'd lay at home," "She had a rag on, I moved above," "Every night and every day I play with my thing," and "Hey you bitch." There were several FBI interpretations of the lyrics and they couldn't agree, so agents ended up interviewing some of the Kingsmen before finally giving up. There are some excerpts of the declassified FBI records here.

Of course, The Kingsmen were far from the first band to do this track, which always has my dad asking why the hell the FBI didn't just listen to one of the other versions (The Wailers, Rockin' Robin Roberts) to figure out the lyrics!

Probably just the same cluelessness and questionable methods evident in so many declassified records of FBI work, but maybe they thought the Kingsmen's version was the only dirty one and that Ely had garbled the vocals deliberately to smuggle in racy content. In fact it was because the mic was placed too far over his head for the lyrics to be recorded clearly, and he didn't sing it clearly anyway because he didn't know the words well. (I've read that he learned the song just by hearing a jukebox 45 a couple of times.)

Don't forget, Iggy (and the Stooges) famously filled in those imaginary blanks with this version.

Also, partial to this amazing version, featuring the Minutemen, Hüsker Dü and the Meat Puppets (right after the Hüskers finish "Makes No Sense At All"). Sloppy as hell but I love it more for the spectacle of three now legendary bands in their element.

Gregory wrote:

hearthesilence wrote:The greatest one-hit wonder hit ever. Hell, it may even be the greatest rock 'n' roll single ever.

I was just reading about the FBI's fixation with this track, which they were convinced was a dirty song corrupting America's young people. When they could have been working to solve actual crimes, the FBI Laboratory was apparently trying to understand the lyrics, but never got them right. They thought the second line of every verse included the phrase "fuck you girl, oh, all the way" or "I fuck your girl all kinds of ways," when in reality the line was "Me think of girl constantly." They also thought they heard things like "She's never a girl I'd lay at home," "She had a rag on, I moved above," "Every night and every day I play with my thing," and "Hey you bitch." There were several FBI interpretations of the lyrics and they couldn't agree, so agents ended up interviewing some of the Kingsmen before finally giving up. There are some excerpts of the declassified FBI records here.

'Twas ever thus. Frank Zappa reminisced about hearing a censored version of one of his songs - and being surprised because, although no stranger to censorship by then, he'd never thought that there was anything the least bit contentious about those particular lyrics.

Upon investigating further, he discovered that an MGM executive was convinced that the line "with her apron and her pad" was a reference to female sanitary protection, even though the context was clearly that of a waitress in a café and that no reasonable person would assume that Zappa meant anything other than a notepad for taking orders, which was of course what he intended. He concluded "That guy needs to see a doctor".

Between this, harassing most of America's best writers and looking for imaginary Commies in every broom closet, who had time to solve crimes?

René Féret.

Ruth Rendell.

It is interesting that some of the best adaptations of Rendell's work have come from outside the UK: Claude Chabrol filmed A Judgment In Stone as La cérémonie in 1995, and also did The Bridesmaid in 2004. Claude Miller's film Betty Fisher And Other Stories from 2001 tackled Tree of Hands.

And of course Pedro Almodovar made his version of Live Flesh in 1997.

colinr0380 wrote:Claude Chabrol filmed A Judgment In Stone as La cérémonie in 1995, and also did The Bridesmaid in 2004. .

And these are two of Chabrol's absolute best films too! Sounds like she provided some great source material, though it's unsurprising that the French would be smitten with a crime novelist!

A pair of screenwriting one-hit wonders:

Don Mankiewicz (I Want to Live!), also a prolific TV writer and member of the Mankiewicz dynasty

Michael Blake (Dances with Wolves)

Nigel Terry.

This news makes me wish I could see those Tulse Luper films even more. While it shouldn't really be considered in the same breath as his King Arthur in Excalibur or his work with Derek Jarman, the late role I remember seeing him in was that Ring-but-with-a-cursed-website film (I'd say it was ripping off Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Pulse directly, but I'm not entirely sure!) Feardotcom. Its not a great film (though it is impressively almost entirely done in pitch darkness and features a heightened version of an American city that makes Se7en look like it was shot on location!), but it features an impressive supporting cast of 'quirky' middle-aged character actors all meeting grisly ends, including Udo Kier getting run over by a train in the first scene, Jeffrey Combs, Michael Sarrazin giving a paranoid speech about the evils of the internet and Terry as a police inspector getting blown up!

Maya Plisetskaya

Besides being the one of the greatest ballet dancers, she played Betsy in Russian adaptation of Anna Karenina (1967) and then danced the title role for a film-ballet (1975).