Art Garfunkel's Bright Eyes is 30 years old - the BBC tells the story of its genesis here.
Watership Down the novel, Watership Down the movie and Bright Eyes the song are three of the great cultural oddities of our time.
Bright Eyes is a song about death, made for a dark and brutal cartoon adapted from a novel about talking rabbits.
Criticism is irrelevant. There is no why or wherefore; it is what it is.
Boy was Watership Down dark. Put that together with The Last Unicorn, and Transformers: The Movie, and it's a surprise that the Brothers Grimm didn't pop up and say, "Whoa, easy there. That's a bit much."
ReplyDeleteWatership Down was rubbish. not only did it give me nightmares, it also gave the world of my nascent reading habit a whole series of totally useless anthropomorphic fantasy novels, including Shardik, The Animals of Farthing Wood and, even worse, Duncton Wood, which was a fantasy series set in the exciting world of moles. I mean, honestly.
ReplyDeleteI suppose there is precedent, though. Anthropomorphic stories go back to Chaucer, Aesop and probably the cavemen. There's also that puzzling chapter The Piper at the Gates of Dawn in Wind in the Willows.
ReplyDeleteBut yes, Watership Down is weird and original by any standards, and even allowing for all the above.
Yes Brit, no matter how many times I read Wind in the Willows I could never figure out what it was that Grahame was trying to say there. Almost a Kubrick / 2001 / obelisk moment.
ReplyDeleteRegeneration maybe ?
Choosing Garfunkel was a master stroke, he is undoubtedly the oddest, weirdest strangest performer in an industry not noted for its surfeit of sanity. Everybody and their dog bought Bridge over Troubled Water, it was a best seller for a long time. From there on in it kinda went wonky, Simon did his African thing and Garfunkel, well, was just STRANGE.
ReplyDeleteSome good stuff though, The Boxer, Kodachrome, that wotsit for the Graduate, Strawberry Fair.
I have a confession Brit, must tell someone, last night I was forced, by the female members of the household, to watch Mama Mia, what the f..k is that all about.
No need to convince me of the worth of Simon and G, Malty. Key soundtrack of my childhood, and I love Graceland too: great tunes, nuttiest of nutty lyrics. He looks around around, he sees angels in the architecture, spinning in infinity he says hey, hallelujah.
ReplyDeleteLife-affirming.
Garfunkel comes across as a very odd bod - if he was a raspberry ripple he'd eat himself.
Not been subjected to Mama Mia yet, Mrs B went with her girlfriends and hated it (she was the only one who did), so no enforced DVD replays for me.
I was forced, by the female members of the household, to watch Mama Mia.
ReplyDeleteBy coincidence the female members of the household forced me to do precisely the same thing.
I now have a watertight definition for torture.
Heh heh.
ReplyDeleteNot since Baywatch The Movie has a film so divided the sexes.
I have to admit I quite enjoyed Mama Mia. I think this means I'm either a woman or homosexual or possibly both.
ReplyDelete