25 | May | 2011 | Through the Shattered Lens

The latest “Song of the Day” is very near and dear to my blues-covered metal heart. I consider it one of the best rock ‘n’ roll songs ever created. It’s been covered by numerous bands in the decades since it’s initial release but I will always consider the original as the best. The latest song of the day is The Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil”.

This song was released in the early days of December 1968. It was the opening track for The Rolling Stones’ latest album (Beggars Banquet) at that date. What makes this song so great is how simple the song really comes across. It doesn’t have the typical blues rock tone of previous Stones’ songs until Keith Richard’s guitar solo around the 2:55 mark. The song definitely sounds more like a combination of folk rock (by way of it’s spoken word-like lyrics) and a samba (due to the incorporation of additional percussions like the congas).

“Sympathy for the Devil” has been called a confession song while others see it as the narcissistic bragging of the narrator. Both viewpoints are quite valid and there are more as every listener of this song hears and imagines different themes. I always saw it as a combination of the two. It’s Lucifer both confession and bragging about his role in the tumultuous and evil events in man’s history. It’s a song it’s narrator wants it’s listeners to understand his role in all these events. Events as evil as they are but done so with style and panache that should count for something.

It’s no wonder Neil Jordan used the Guns ‘n’ Roses cover of this song to close out the final scenes of Interview With A Vampire. It definitely fit the film as a whole. One had to wonder if the song was for Louis or for Lestat. Of more recent use for the song was it’s inclusion in the game soundtrack for Activision’s Call of Duty: Black Ops. I’ve included the Guns ‘n’ Roses cover below so you all can decide on your own which was better: the version by the song’s primogenitors or it’s harsher cover by a band that ended up splitting up during it’s production.

Sympathy for the Devil

Please allow me to introduce myself
I’m a man of wealth and taste
I’ve been around for a long, long years
Stole many a man’s soul and faith

And I was ’round when Jesus Christ
Had his moment of doubt and pain
Made damn sure that Pilate
Washed his hands and sealed his fate

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name
But what’s puzzling you
Is the nature of my game

I stuck around St. Petersburg
When I saw it was a time for a change
Killed the czar and his ministers
Anastasia screamed in vain

I rode a tank
Held a general’s rank
When the blitzkrieg raged
And the bodies stank

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name, oh yeah
Ah, what’s puzzling you
Is the nature of my game, oh yeah
(woo woo, woo woo)

I watched with glee
While your kings and queens
Fought for ten decades
For the gods they made
(woo woo, woo woo)

I shouted out,
“Who killed the Kennedys?”
When after all
It was you and me
(who who, who who)

Let me please introduce myself
I’m a man of wealth and taste
And I laid traps for troubadours
Who get killed before they reached Bombay
(woo woo, who who)

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name, oh yeah
(who who)
But what’s puzzling you
Is the nature of my game, oh yeah, get down, baby
(who who, who who)

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name, oh yeah
But what’s confusing you
Is just the nature of my game
(woo woo, who who)

Just as every cop is a criminal
And all the sinners saints
As heads is tails
Just call me Lucifer
‘Cause I’m in need of some restraint
(who who, who who)

So if you meet me
Have some courtesy
Have some sympathy, and some taste
(woo woo)
Use all your well-learned politesse
Or I’ll lay your soul to waste, um yeah
(woo woo, woo woo)

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name, um yeah
(who who)
But what’s puzzling you
Is the nature of my game, um mean it, get down
(woo woo, woo woo)

Woo, who
Oh yeah, get on down
Oh yeah
Oh yeah!
(woo woo)

Tell me baby, what’s my name
Tell me honey, can ya guess my name
Tell me baby, what’s my name
I tell you one time, you’re to blame

Oh, who
woo, woo
Woo, who
Woo, woo
Woo, who, who
Woo, who, who
Oh, yeah

What’s my name
Tell me, baby, what’s my name
Tell me, sweetie, what’s my name

Woo, who, who
Woo, who, who
Woo, who, who
Woo, who, who
Woo, who, who
Woo, who, who
Oh, yeah
Woo woo
Woo woo

I’ve been told that guys don’t seem to appreciate being called “adorable” by girls. They consider it a back-handed compliment and seriously, how insecure can you be? Okay, I understand that most guys want to us to think that they’re dangerous and I’ll admit right now that all that stuff you’ve heard about girls liking bad boys — well, it’s true. But adorable is no longer just a back-handed compliment. Why? Because Joseph Gordon-Levitt has made adorable sexy.

I first really noticed Joseph Gordon-Levitt when I saw him as the lead in 2007’s overlooked crime thriller The Lookout but he truly won my heart when I first saw him dancing to You Make My Dreams in (500) Days of Summer. And then came Inception. Some people will tell you that film was about Leonardo DiCaprio entering other people’s dreams to find himself. Nope, sorry, not true. As far as I’m concerned, Inception was a movie about Joseph Gordon-Levitt getting all dressed up and floating through the halls of that dream hotel and beating up every single person who tried to get in his way. What did all three of these roles have in common? Nothing except for the utterly adorable hotness of Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

It was this adorable hotness that led me to see Gordon-Levitt’s latest film, Hesher. Despite the fact that the film is massively (perhaps fatally) flawed, this is also the film that proves that, as an actor, Joseph Gordon-Levitt can be something more than just an adorable fantasy boyfriend.

Directed by Spencer Sussman and co-written by Animal Kingdom director David Michod, Hesher opens with 12 year-old T.J. (Devin Brochu) struggling to come to terms with the tragic death of his mother and his family’s subsequent collapse. T.J. and his father (a bear-like Rainn Wilson) have moved in with their grandmother (a perfectly poignant performance from Piper Laurie) who is showing the beginning signs of senility. T.J. spends his days obsessing on the remains of the family car (which was totaled in the accident that killed his mother), trying to avoid local bullies, and dealing with a hopeless crush that he’s developed on a cashier (Natalie Portman) at the local grocery store.

When T.J. first meets Hesher (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), Hesher is squatting in an abandoned construction site. T.J. accidentally leads a security guard to Hesher’s temporary home. Hesher responds by lighting a molotov cocktail and blowing the place up while T.J. runs away. Suddenly, T.J. starts to see Hesher wandering around the hallways of his school. Walking home from school, T.J. sees Hesher following behind him in what can only be described as a “rape van.” And then, just as suddenly, Hesher has moved in to T.J.;s house and made himself into a part of the family. Hesher quickly becomes a mentor of sorts to T.J. though his lessons primarily consist of doing things like blowing up a bully’s car and then running off, leaving T.J. to deal with the consequences.

Hesher is hardly a role that you’d expect to find Joseph Gordon-Levitt playing. With long, unwashed hair and an extended middle finger tattooed across his back, Hesher isn’t so much an outsider as he’s just a sociopath, the type of guy who you try not to make eye contact out of fear that he’ll respond by shooting you first. How scary a guy is Hesher? He’s so scary that just saying his name causes the film’s soundtrack to explode with a burst of heavy metal. That’s how scary he is. The Joseph Gordon-Levitt that we all know and love (or at least the one that I know and love) is pretty much impossible to find and yet, Gordon-Levitt still gives a great performance here. Without ignoring any of Hesher’s rough edges or trying to reveal any sort of inner decency, both the film and Gordon-Levitt make Hesher into a frustratingly attractive character. This is probably the best performance of Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s career so far.

Unfortunately, the rest of the film doesn’t really live up to Gordon-Levitt’s performance. It starts out well and, for quite some time, we’re encouraged to believe that Hesher might just be a product of T.J.’s imagination, a projection of his own anger and depression. That’s an interesting idea and would have made for a far more effective film. Unfortunately, Hesher then suddenly moves in wit T.J. and suddenly, he’s interacting with Wilson and befriending Piper Laurie and, worst of all, he starts to reveal a little bit about his past. In other words, he goes from being a symbol of unrestrained ID to just being another white trash rapist. Once the film makes it clear that Hesher is an actual character then suddenly, you realize that the filmmakers haven’t given you any credible reason why both Wilson and Laurie (not to mention the cops who start to regularly drop by the house as Hesher blows stuff up around the neighborhood) would so easily accept the idea of living with him. Finally, the movie concludes with a sequence at a funeral that just feels so simultaneously wrong, heavy-handed, and maudlin that, at first, I was convinced that it had to be some sort of satirical comment on the clichéd nature of the scene. But no, the rest of the film makes clear that we’re supposed to take this sequence seriously. It’s such a wrong-headed move that it cheapens everything that came before it. The movie ends with a lot of loud music and the credits are decorated with obscene graffiti but it doesn’t make any difference. The film has already revealed that, at heart, it’s hardly rebellious enough to be worthy of a character like Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Hesher.

In the end, Hesher fails as a movie but its partially redeemed for revealing that there’s more to Joseph Gordon-Levitt than just adorable cuteness.