July 17, 2008
Hello in There
I found a link to the Midler piece I referenced in my comment on c’flock. It wasn’t until I remembered it was the lead-in for Hello in There, a song by John Prine, that I found it. Now, this isn’t the exact rendition to which I referred from the live recording I had on 8-track. (I have not heard this for years.) The version I remember was edgy-er (edgier? How the fuck do you spel…? Don’t matter). The first was funnier and all the more poignant because of the edge with which she delivered it. This version has been softened, pablumized. I’d like to think it wasn’t Bette who changed her performance, that it was some soul-less, humor-less somebody from Disney or Corporate related to this broadcast who made her change it to make it more sentimental. Still, there’s something surreal in Emmett Kelly, sitting on the stage, in face. Here it is:
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4 Responses to “Hello in There”
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The fact that she softened it makes me feel a little ooey about her. She sold out. She’s never been the same since.
Puts me in mind of so many of the icky feature films of Richard Pryor, another performer with a sharp wit honed on pain. I expect it’s easier than we imagine to slip into the quicksand. Come to think, even Oscar WIlde had his maudlin moments.
Let this stand as a warning.
But I’ve always been wild about Wilde even in his maudlin moments.
I expect it’s easier than we imagine to slip into the quicksand.
Especially if we stand to make a few million bucks from the fall. If presented with such an opportunity, I can’t help but wonder where any one of us might slip?
I miss Bette’s previous incarnation. Does it always have to be that it always has to be make art or make money? At what point, in such a fall, might we forget we were making art once then give ourselves wholly to making money. (And Sheila, “icky,” is a kind word.)
(Anybody seen Bette’s Vegas act, yet? Now, Celine, she was icky from day one. I’d like to think Bette’s maybe on the road to recovery. But the old “gal” ain’t who she used to be. For that matter, Vegas, for all its PR to the contrary, ain’t what it used to be either.)