NEW YORK -- We almost blew off Patti Smith.
To understand why, maybe you need to understand how we approach film festivals. Our first priority has always been to see movies that we think have a decent chance of opening in our market so we can review them for the newspaper. That's the reason we started this section. The mission statement -- and there really is a written one, (and there really is one that was actually written out) -- says that's what it's supposed to be about. Not celebrity interviews, not trend pieces about theater amenities, but film criticism.
So that's job one, even when we're in an environment as distracting as the Tribeca Film Festival. We could, if we wanted, spend an afternoon checking out the various virtual reality thrill booths located in the festival's "hub." We could attend Q&A sessions with various luminaries or check out previews and premieres of any number of television or Web-based series. We could go to parties for independent documentarians. We could stand around in the festival lounge (or on the rooftop of the hub) and drink Bulleit bourbon.
And -- as you know if you follow me on Facebook or Twitter (@borkdog) -- we do do these things at Tribeca, they're just not the core of what we do. So Patti Smith was an optional, add-on event, one we could go to if, at the end of the day, we felt like heading up to the Beacon Theater on the Upper West Side. When I got up on Monday morning, at our hotel on the edge of Chinatown I thought the chances were about 50-50 we'd make it to the world premiere of Horses: Patti Smith and Her Band, Steven Sebring's a concert film culled from two January 2016 Los Angeles shows where she played her iconic 1975 debut album in full.
For one, the documentary -- made for Apple Music -- doesn't seem likely to have any sort of theatrical release. You'll be able to see it via the service starting May 22. Some people would argue it's something other than a movie. It wouldn't have been accepted at this year's Cannes Film Festival. It probably won't get a lot of end-of-the year attention from movie critics.
More importantly to us, to see it, we would somehow have to make it up to 75th Street, which is about an hour walk from the theater on 23rd Street, where we wouldn't be anyway because Karen Martin, my wife, the founder of this section and this newspaper's Sunday Perspective editor, had some business at the Whitney Museum of American Art, which is about 10 blocks south (beneath) the theater.
On the other hand, Smith and her band were scheduled to play a short set after the screening. So it wasn't just a film screening for a movie I probably would never have cause to review, it was a chance to see an iconic artist (and her guitarist Lenny Kaye) in an iconic, medium-sized venue. I'd never seen a show in the Beacon, but I knew it was the place where the Allman Brothers used to wrap up most of their tours.
Still, it was going to be a hectic day. It started with an interview in Brooklyn that I thought I'd be through with about noon. After that I'd hop on the subway and meet Karen at the theater in Chelsea, we'd walk down to the Whitney and then back to the theater in Chelsea together, catch another film, and then -- if we felt like it -- to strike out for the Beacon Theater.
If we didn't feel like it, there were plenty of things to do in Chelsea, or actually back in Tribeca, where the festival hub is located and they were also holding public screenings. We've had ambitious plans before -- sometimes we've followed through and sometimes we've taken the path of least resistance. All you jealous haters out there won't believe it, but attending a film festival is actually work for a working critic. Even if part of your job is watching movies, you can get a little tired by the end of the day and want to do something different.
After all, I'd blown off Patti Smith before.
We were supposed to see her perform in Austin, Texas, as part of the SXSW festival years ago, but there was an unseasonable cold snap which left us unprepared for the outdoor show. So we went to the Continental Club instead.
Maybe if I hadn't seen Smith in the late '70s and early '80s we'd have been more inclined to brave the elements in Austin. But I had seen her, and frankly, I'd thought she was OK. Smith is an artist I admire, a real art punk pioneer, but none of her records are in regular rotation in our house. She was heavily influenced by the Morrison boys and I like her a lot more when she's channeling Van than when she's obsessing over Jim.
So Monday morning, I figured something could come up. Maybe we'd get a better offer, a dinner invitation, or we'd hear some buzz about a movie we just had to see. Maybe we'd just take the night off and wander around Soho or have dinner in Little Italy. I know our tendencies.
...
But after falling asleep -- something I rarely do -- in a press screening of an Italian film, we rallied. We marched uptown, picked up our tickets, found our seats. Most of the crowd seemed dressed more for a Broadway show than a rock concert, and most of the attendees were old enough to have driven themselves to the record store to pick up a copy of Horses the year it came out. But then, most of the people around us had paid $86 for their tickets, and the cheapest tickets were $56. We thought we might catch the film, and if there wasn't too long a break between the end of the movie and the start of Smith's set, a couple of songs.
Horses: Patti Smith and Her Band is actually pretty thrilling. The sound was exceptional -- probably because they know how to present rock 'n' roll at the Beacon. It's a pretty straightforward concert film, shot in lustrous black-and-white by Sebring, who previously collaborated with Smith and her band on the 2008 documentary Dream of Life.
As Smith reeled and snarled and howled her way through the familiar material, I realized I've never heard her sound better. Her voice has deepened and grown more sonorous, at 71, she's evolved from a gestural vocal performer with a set lungs of to a real singer with impressive control of her dynamics.
The crowd in the theater clapped and sang along with the LA crowd captured on the film, creating a kind of meta-concert experience. I don't think you'll feel the same thing watching Horses on your iPad.
Then, immediately after the credits rolled, the screen furled up to reveal the bare brick back wall of the theater and Smith, Kaye and the rest of her band diving straight into a version of "Dancing Barefoot" that got the crowd on its feet. Avoiding -- for the most part, the songs on Horses although we got a little bit of "Land" with the "Gloria" and "Land of a Thousand Dances" interpolations -- Smith and her band rolled out an incendiary cover of Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth," which she dedicated to the activist students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
"The Parkland Five magnified by millions of young people are the f*g hope of this planet," she said. "We have to salute back our youth. We have to be with them. We have to pray with them, march with them. Their cause is ours. Their cause is our future."
This drew general applause but also a bit of heckling from the balcony -- a brief flurry of unintelligible shouting that caused Smith to wonder aloud, "What is this, Altamont?"
It wasn't, but it was a night that will be remembered, especially after Smith introduced a special guest.
"Who is that?" the woman standing next to me asked as a grinning man in a black leather jacket holding a Telecaster strode on stage to a thunderous ovation.
"That's Bruce Springsteen, ma'am" I said.
And we came so close to missing it.
pmartin@arkansasonline.com
blooddirtangels.com
MovieStyle on 04/27/2018