u n i v e r s i t y d a i l y k a n s a n
6
entertainment
Tuesday, October 22,1996
Geggy Tah steers through campus
By Erin Rooney
Kansan staff writer
Geggy Tah found their niche in modern rock with a song about changing lanes while driving in a car. Yesterday, they found their way in front of KU students playing a horn-on-a-stick and a steel drum.
The band well-known for the song Whoever You Are, played from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. yesterday at the Kansas Plaza Plaza for a special SUA Tunes at Noon. The Student Legislative Awareness Board registered voters in conjunction with the free concert.
the horn-on-a-stick is a ten-foot gold collapsible plastic PVC pipe with a car funnel on the end. Greg Kurstin, guitarist, pianist, vocalist and horn-on-a stick player, led the band in front of a crowd of about 100 people.
"I usually don't stop by when bands are playing in front of the Union," said Sue Kim, Springfield, Mo., freshman. "But today I did, because they were creative. They have different sounds, different ideas."
Greggy Tan has been on tour since March, promoting its second album, Sacred Cow. This was the first time the band has been to Kansas. Sometimes the band takes its producer's Boston terrier, Gina, on tour. She is featured on the covers of the band's two albums and is also the subject for the love ballad Gina.
first cover and a cow on the second," said Tommy Jordan, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist. "On the first album, lyrics to a song are written on her tongue. So it's like she's liking you as you're reading."
"Some people think that she's a pig on the
The lyrics to *Whoever You Are* have a deeper meaning than thanking a person for letting them change lanes, Jordan said. He explained the lyrics while subtly laughing.
"It's a deep metaphor for emotional change," Jordan said. "We're always changing on the road, new tires, changing from one set of dirty clothes into another set of dirty clothes. Change."
Jordan lives in Pomona, Calif. The bedrooms of his house were used as recording studios for both of the band's albums.
Kurstin and Jordan came up with the name for the band by using the names their younger sisters once referred to them, Geggy and Tah respectively.
When the band wasn't headlining its own shows, Geggy Tah opened for groups such as Sting, Primitive Radio Gods, Wilco and Goldfinger. Kurstin said that opening for a variety of bands allowed the group to offer many styles of music to their listeners.
"Today's concert was great," said Chris Horton, Leawood junior. "They kind of sound like the Police on laughing gas."
The band will play at 9:30 tonight at the Bottleneck. 737 New Hamshire St.
Richard Devinki / KANSAN
The band Geggy Tah performs at the Kansas Union Plaza. The free concert, which took place from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. yesterday, was sponsored by SUA Tunes at Noon, and about 100 students stopped by to watch the show.
Bat spin teaches dangers of booze
Alcohol Awareness Week includes carnival events
By Andrea Albright Kansan staff writer
KU police dared students to throw pies in officers' faces yesterday on Wescoe Beach.
Campus and community groups cooperated with the KU Police Department and Watkins Memorial Health Center to put on a carnival as part of Alcohol Awareness Week. Carnival events simulated how alcohol affects the ability to perform simple tasks.
The carnival featured students throwing pies at KU police. Officer Gayle Reece said the purpose of the piethrowing was to send a signal to students.
"Each time a student throw a pie, I said, 'It's better to throw a pie in my face than to get pie-faced,' she said.
The carnival also featured a basketball toss sponsored by Greeks Advocating Mature Management of Alcohol. Students spun around a bat until they were dizzy and then tried to shoot.
Reece said the event was more difficult than it sounded.
"You twirled around five times and tried to make a basket." Reece said. "I tried it, and I fell down."
Juite Francis, public health educator at student health services at Watkins, said the activities addressed a serious issue. For example, she said, alcohol could inhibit a person's ability to put a condom on correctly.
The Center for Peer Health Promotion sponsored a table where blindfolded students could attempt to put a condom on a mock, wooden penis.
Alcohol Awareness Week also includes a dance troupe performing at noon tomorrow in front of the Kansas
Union. Victims and families whose lives have been affected by alcohol will participate in a panel discussion at 7 p.m. tomorrow at the Pine Room in Kansas Union.
McCollum Hall will also hold its annual Club Mac featuring live bands and non-alcoholic beverages tomorrow night. For $1, students can participate in a mock Singled Out game at 4 p.m. Thursday at Alderson Auditorium in the Kansas Union. The week also includes a community vigil at 6 p.m. Thursday at the South Park Gazebo.
Francis said the carnival, which continues from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. today in front of Wescoe Hall, had attracted students to the information tables and allowed the groups to make their message clear.
"We wanted to draw more attention than we have in the past," Francis said. "The carnival sparked more interest. Even if students didn't pick up pamphlets, the point was driven home. They felt what it was like to be impaired."
Local playwright sparks national interest
Hendrix life, death a new perspective
Alan Greenberg rests on some 35mm film canisters in his Lawrence home. Jimi Hendrix, a screenplay Greenberg wrote about the famed guitarist, may be directed by Martin Scorsese in a feature film.
Geoff Krieger / KANSAN
By Jeff Ruby Kansan staff writer
A purple haze is about to cover the filmindustry.
Alan Greenberg, a Lawrence resident, has written Jimi Hendrix, a screenplay that has grabbed the interest of several Hollywood directors.
"My goal when I started was not just to make a screenplay on the same level as his music," Greenberg said. "I told my friends I didn't know what I was going to be writing, but by the time I finished, Jimi would be alive again."
The 170-page manuscript, which Greenberg rubbed with dirt from Hendrix's Seattle grave for good luck, walks through the landscape of the rock legend's spiritual life, Greenberg said.
"In a way, he embodied to me all the conflicts of the '60s," Greenberg said, explaining Hendrix's continued popularity 26 years after his death. "Musically speaking, he was the embodiment of what so much of the music of the '60s was about and was trying to evoke and represent. In a way, he's a cipher for all of our highest aspirations."
Greenberg, who moved to Lawrence in 1991, was born in New York and grew up in Miami. He spent 4 1/2 months writing the screenplay after six months of research in Seattle.
"Ridley Scott (director of Blade Runner) was going to direct it, but negotiations broke down," he said. "Now Michael Apted (director of Extreme Measures) is considering it. I know that Oliver Stone was all excited, but we don't want Oliver Stone."
He has written screenplays for Francis Coppola and Martin Scorsese, and various directors and studios have been negotiating his script.
Why wouldn't Greenberg want well-known '60s affectionate Stone
"Not controversial enough," he said. "Oliver Stone is like Peter McNeiley fighting Mike Tyson. Oliver Stone jumps over the top rope to get in the ring, goes battling into Mike Tyson and has nothing to throw at him, and then he gets knocked out with the first punch."
to take the reins of his script? Too controversial?
"I had already done considerable research about Jimi and his life and his death, and among other things, I found out that his death was not due to drug indulgence as we've been told," said Greenberg, who claimed to have read every word ever written on Jimi Hendrix. "It was something dark going on, and I think I know what the story really was."
Greenberg's screenplay contains new revelations about the Hendrix legend. For example, Greenberg suggests that Hendrix did not die an alcohol-related death, as previously believed, but was poisoned by a groupie named Monika Damman, who was paid by the star's manager to do the deed, he said.
John Stansifer, Lawrence junior and aspire screenwriter, said
Steve Wilson, manager of Kief's Audio/Video, 2429 Iowa St., said Hendrix CDs continue to sell to people of all ages because the artist's legend has grown during the years. "Like it or not, there is the cult around those who die tragic deaths," he said.
"It's beyond entertaining," he said. "On first reading, it literally blew me away. He never tells too much with the story and he never tells too little. He says just exactly what you need to know in order for the story to move on. Within a year or two he'll start a new wave in film."
Greenberg's vision of Hendrix's life was astounding.
"Just like Jimi was an unknown," he said. "Jimi was a meteor. He came out of nowhere. The whole film, Jimi's life, his music and the film of it all is a step into the unknown. I told NOel Redding, his bass player, before I started that if the screenplay isn't as good as Jimi's music, then I've failed."
Greenberg said he would like to see an unknown actor play the lead role when his screenplay becomes a film.
Local screenwriter seeks deep meaning
By Bradley Brooks Kansan staff writer
Walking into the home of Alan Greenberg, I found myself greeted by a man enjoying his dinner of fish and chips in a countryesque kitchen complete with a wallpaper border of an architectural design that neatly ringed the room — a picture of normality.
After I was led to the Southwestern-motif covered futon, normality of thought was nowhere to be found in this self-defined poet/screenwriter/filmmaker's mind, who has lived in Lawrence for three years.
"I feel like an uncompromising visionary poet in a war with Hollywood; it's a war, a holy war," said Greenberg, 46. "But Hollywood can't stand up to the holy."
Greenberg despises the message that most movies send to the public and is working to change that through his work, he said.
Greenberg has written two books, more than 15 screenplays and made two feature films. One of those films, Land of Look Behind, won the 1982 Chicago International Film Festival and was a documentary that examined Bob Marley's death, and the Jamaican culture.
His book Love in Vain has been called a vision of Robert Johnson, the mythical blues musician. The book, published by Da Capo Press based in New York City, was hailed by Keith Richards as the first book to capture Johnson's central feel.
Greenberg has a unique approach to cinema.
"I don't operate by the rational means that other filmmakers do," Greenberg said. "I am not part of the entertainment industry. The entertainment industry is masturbatory, incorporated. What I don't want is Jerry Seinfeld defining my life."
Greenberg said entertainment as a whole acted as a hypnotic beast that lulled people to passivity in life.
"I want to create something that is vital — a synthesis between the truth and life," he said.
Greenberg said that he had a definite goal for what he wanted his movies to achieve for an audience.
"I want them to honestly look at themselves and understand their worth." Graceph said.
Greenberg's movies haven't hit the mainstream yet. But that may change soon.
"Martin Scorsese claims that he will make Love in Vain his next project," Greenberg said.
For now, the artist said that he was going to continue following up on what he had already written and was working to get other screenplays made into feature-length films.
"I equate my work with an amusement park: It is exhilarating, but terrifying," he said. "If I can get people to dance and cry at the same time with my films, then I am succeeding."
Boring movie makes people into Sleepers
Stellar cast unable to waken film's leaden, complex plot
By Jeff Ruby
Kansan staff writer
Not since Bonfire of the Vanities have so many good actors come together, put their egos aside for an acclaimed director, and made such a mediocre movie as Sleepers.
The film assembles an amazing cast including Robert DeNiro, Dustin Hoffman, Brad Pitt, Kevin Bacon and Jason Patric. But the actors seem overqualified for their one-dimensional, derivative roles.
Barry Levinson's bitter chronicle of the lives of four Manhattan youths is long on talk, overflowing with style, and light on substance. All the pieces are there for a successful epic, but Levinson never puts them all together in any memorable or interesting manner.
Levinson begins successfully in painting a vivid, genuine picture of late-1960's New York street life. The main characters, Shakes, Michael, John and Tommy play stickball, hang out on Hell's Kitchen rooftops, steal hot dogs from vendors, and, of course, mix with ever-present mobsters in a neighborhood where everything's a shakedown or a scam.
When the four youngsters' high jinks land them in a boys' home, they are raped and humiliated again and again by Nokes, an evil guard played by Bacon. They vow to never discuss the abuse with anyone.
The film then jumps to 1981, when a chance meeting between Nokes and two of the protagonists ends with Bacon's repulsive character shot dead in a restaurant.
Pitt, who plays Michael, has become a district attorney who develops a plan to complete the act of revenge. He takes the case, prosecuting his friends in hopes of losing the case and getting them acquitted. Hoffman sleepwalks through the role of the scatter-brained, alcoholic lawyer who defends the murderers with a case crafted for him by Michael himself.
Steepers flashes back and forward mercilessly, and follows the lives of so many characters that few of them are even allowed to be more than mere shadows of people. Levinson's direction is innovative and distinctive, but with such a convoluted, drawn-out plot that his techniques fail to create engaging characters.
DeNiro, perhaps the most authentic actor in the history of cinema, gives the film's best performance as a priest who must choose between betraying God and selling out Pitt and his friends. One gripping scene simply shows a close-up of DeNiro's face reacting to shocking news, and his bittersweet, expressive features say so much more in that one minute than the film says in its other 21/2 hours.
Sadly, the film never fulfills its vengeful promise, and the moment of retaliation leaves the viewer feeling hollow rather than satisfied. Because the characters are never developed as anything more than stereotypical New York jerks, we find it difficult to work up much emotion for them at all.
Sleepers is one of those movies that suffers from being too ambitious,building up the audience's expectations then leaving them unfulfilled when the final credits roll.
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