Going Down a Rabbit Hole

Want something to do during the darkest days of the year? Read about my trip down a rabbit hole as I watched a 54 year old TV documentary that played once and was lost until it emerged on DVD four decades later.

Opening

Imagine you’re a Taylor Swift fan, and you turn on the TV to watch a special that’s promoting her new album. But the first thing you see is Willem Dafoe stiffly thanking Dove Cleansers for sponsoring the show and giving one of his grimacing grins.

That’s how Songs of America opened on November 30, 1969, with aging cranky Hollywood tough guy Robert Ryan, wearing an ill-fitting suit and skinny black tie, recently done with filming the brutal bloody anti-western The Wild Bunch, thanking Alberto VO-5 for underwriting Simon and Garfunkel’s special, and promising the next hour will be both entertaining and stimulating.

Stimulating? And then it starts, and within a minute you know this is no ordinary documentary, especially for network TV in the ’60s.

Watch It!

The show is fascinating. In just under an hour it’s filled with great images and music from over 50 years ago. You get interesting insights into their creative process, and a glimpse into their squabbles and bonds. You can watch it here.

What Is This?

In 1969, Simon and Garfunkel were recording what turned out to be their final album, Bridge Over Troubled Water, for Columbia Records. The affiliated TV network, CBS, agreed that a great promotion would be an hour long special featuring songs from the new album. AT&T sponsored it for $600,000.

They probably figured Simon and Garfunkel would stick to their square reputation, and put a camera crew in the recording studio, take a few shots of the guys walking around outside goofing off, film a few songs in front of an audience, maybe make a few mild statements about war and injustice, and make an hour long commercial for the new record and AT&T.

Except Simon and Garfunkel had other ideas. They wanted something meditative and evocative of all of the doubts they had about America. Because this was 19 freaking 69. Everything was barely holding together. They hired Charles Grodin to direct, despite, as Grodin put it, his only experiece behind the camera being getting fired three times from Candid Camera.

Grodin was 34 and had become friends with Garfunkel on the set of Catch 22 where they both played supporting roles.

But Grodin was in tune with Simon and Garfunkel politically. As I mentioned in a recent Food You Can Eat, he was a dedicated lifelong liberal. Grodin and Simon and Garfunkel were all very liberal, but stopped short of the most radical extremes of the 1960s. And like today, this position probably added to the sense of anxiety they felt. They had doubts about America, but couldn’t imagine a revolution either. What then?

Simon and Garfunkel

Simon and Garfunkel grew up in the middle class, they had their first hit in high school, and unlike contemporary acts like the Beatles and Bob Dylan, never made a true stylistic break from their original musical roots. The Everly Brothers were awesome. Why reject them?

It’s not an accident that director Mike Nichols chose their music for The Graduate as the backdrop for Ben Braddock’s neurotic struggles with middle class life. He and they knew their audience.

Their music often had clever harmonies and lyrics that sounded clever, but Paul Simon tended toward words that sounded good together but didn’t mean much – Mrs. Robinson was just a hodgepodge he put together for The Graduate, and songs like 7 O’Clock News/Silent Night and The Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine were pretty clumsily ironic.

But when they hit on all cylinders, like America from the album Bookends, they nailed it. Despite the superficial gloss, there was more to them than might have met the eye.

America

And since this post has gone on long enough, I’ll stop here until next time, since America was the inspiration for that long ago TV special. Seriously, go watch the documentary. It’s great, and I’ll have more to say about it soon.