Blue Heaven, Purple Noon and Dumplings
Welcome to the first installment of The Melt. I originally came up with the idea to do a weekly-ish newsletter documenting all the tuna melts and whitefish melts and other things with melted cheese I ate during the week, but eventually decided to just turn this into a full-blown thing where I write about things rattling around in my head. Basically I get up and I don’t really get to go anywhere, and going places, even if it was just from Brooklyn into the city, is really important to me. So I find myself feeling stuck sometimes. Stuck at home, stuck behind a computer, stuck thinking about things and not really knowing the best way to share it. This newsletter is hopefully a way to remedy that a little bit. I really miss the feeling that comes with doing something by yourself, without an editor or a big social media push or whatever behind it. I write and edit for a living and I love what I do, but I also grew up writing zines and then blogging, and there was a unique thrill in just doing whatever I wanted without wondering “What’s the peg?” or “Will this get a lot of clicks?” I like doing something that’s totally whatever I want and if you like that, then that’s awesome. I really appreciate it. Maybe tell people about it? I swear it’ll be good.
And with that, welcome to The Melt.
#1 “You could melt all this stuff.”
I’m not sure if anybody holds 1990 up as some very important year in film history or anything, but it was the one that gave us three films that I’ve spent a good deal of brain power trying to understand the “deeper” meaning of, besides the fact that they all came out during 365 day period I entered as a nine year old and exited in double digits. The first, Joe Versus the Volcano, celebrated its anniversary this past March and we were all a little too busy stockpiling toilet paper and thinking we’d be back in the office by July 4th to give much thought to a film that’s usually considered a lesser work when discussing the Hanks/Meg Ryan rom coms that dotted the decade. The third would be Home Alone, and I think I’ve probably written way too much about that one already, but the second, the film that turns 30 this week, deserves a few words.
I have a tough time deciding if there’s anything I’d consider my favorite. My top album or book or plate of pancakes I’ve ever eaten, but My Blue Heaven (which turns 30 this week) is a film that brings me immense joy and is a “desert island” pick. It’s a movie about an Italian mobster in the federal Witness Protection Program living in San Diego (played by Steve Martin), and the dry white toast FBI agent assigned to protect him (Rick Moranis) that came out the same year as Goodfellas and is also loosely based off Nicholas Pileggi’s Wiseguy. It did fine at the box office and critics were mixed (Caryn James at the New York Times called it “a truly funny concept and a disappointment on the screen”) but I don’t know many other people besides myself who consider it a classic. It’s the other film based off Pileggi’s book; it was written by Pileggi’s wife, Nora Ephron, but people don’t talk about it the way they do other films she wrote the screenplays for, like When Harry Met Sally or those classic Hanks/Ryan films I mentioned. It arrived in theaters a year after another comedy I love, 1989’s Parenthood, came out also starring Martin and Moranis, and doesn’t usually enter the conversation of those actors’ best films. It really has pretty much everything you could want in a late-1980s/early-’90s film, including Joan Cusack and Carol Kane, but you likely won’t read many anniversary pieces on the film this week — which is a shame.
After all these years wondering why the film hasn’t been hailed as the masterpiece that I consider it in my weird brain, I’ve come to one conclusion that would explain why Criterion hasn’t come knocking for My Blue Heaven and why I couldn’t really find any articles calling it one of the can’t miss films of the summer for 1990: it’s breezy, and critics don’t really love breezy. Sure, it’s a comedy, and comedies don’t always get the same sort of critical love other movies might, but it’s also one that came during a year when directors were challenging moviegoers to reimagine the gangster film. My Blue Heaven fits in with a year that saw Scorsese put out what I consider his best film (besides After Hours, but, again, I’m of a very small crowd when it comes to that one) using the same source material, but you also had King of New York, Miller’s Crossing and Dick Tracy, all films that I’ll go ahead and say I love. You had those and … The Godfather Part 3, which sort of reimagined the gangster film by taking a dump on the legacy of the first two Godfather films. Thankfully, you also had The Freshman. If Goodfellas and My Blue Heaven are siblings via the source material, Marlon Brando playing Carmine Sabatini, basically reprising his role as Don Corleone, who we’re told in the movie was actually based off Sabatini, is its spiritual cousin. Like My Blue Heaven, it maybe doesn’t get the respect it deserves. We like to forget about Brando’s later years for a number of good reasons, but The Freshman shouldn’t be one of them.
Like My Blue Heaven, The Freshman was a comedy, one that was more of a critical success upon release and holds a 94 percent rating today on Rotten Tomatoes. The difference between the two all goes back to the idea of breezy. The Freshman took place in Dinkins-era New York City. Still a relatively gritty, dangerous place. My Blue Heaven, on the other hand, took place mostly in the California suburbs and was about a fish out of water (Martin’s Vinnie) scamming his way into the hearts of the good, decent citizens of the fictional town of Fryburg. The Freshman is meta, making Brando play a character that supposedly influenced his most famous role. My Blue Heaven is the type of film you know is going to have a happy ending. There’s very little violence and no nudity, earling a PG-13 rating upon release. And while The Freshman putting Brando in the role of a mob member was hardly a stretch, Martin doesn’t really give off the tough guy from Little Italy vibe no matter how hard he tries. Every friend I know who grew up in an Italian-American household that has seen the film calls Martin’s accent a joke and, yeah, it is.
And that’s part of why I love the film so much. It’s one of Martin’s last truly absurd roles before he started doing more family-friendly roles like Father of the Bride (which I love), serious acting like Grand Canyon (which I think I need to watch again for the first time in over 20 years) and his more high-minded sort of cosmopolitan comedy like the near-perfect L.A. Story and Shopgirl (both of which he wrote). Martin’s Vinnie isn’t exactly “King Tut” or anything like his standup, but it is Steve Martin … playing a mobster, a mobster who seems really nice. Mobsters aren’t supposed to be nice or hilarious, and movies about them are supposed to be gritty and violent, not, well, breezy. (It should be noted that an even odder choice was initially supposed to play the role, Arnold Schwarzenegger.)
So why do I keep bringing up the term “breezy?” Well, for one, it’s almost always sunny in Fryburg. There is a scene where it’s raining, but it’s preceded by an intertitle that into each like a little rain has to fall, and the rain is a metaphor for Vinnie having trouble. This is a very bright movie. Another thing is the man behind the camera, Herbert Ross, was as acclaimed for his work as a choreographer as he was a director. Sure, he might be best-known to some folks for directing the original Footloose, but he also spent a few decades on Broadway and also worked with Neil Simon on a few film adaptations of his plays (my favorite, The Sunshine Boys). He also worked with Martin on another oddball film that I love, 1981’s Pennies From Heaven. Ross was, for all intents and purposes, a song and dance man, and that comes through at times in My Blue Heaven, especially during the second Merengue scene that includes one of my all-time favorite tropes from the era: a white dude trying to get funky.
30 years after its release, My Blue Heaven actually feels very relevant. I couldn’t help but think about it as I finished up the final season of Schitt’s Creek last week, and earlier this year as The Good Place wound down. Those television shows, in their own ways, are also breezy. It’s almost always sunny in Schitt's Creek and the afterlife scenario that Ted Danson’s Michael has designed (that is, when things aren’t going haywire because something went wrong), and there is the underlying idea that even the most rotten people aren’t beyond redemption. Watching those shows, I got the feeling that there was going to be some sort of happy ending. I won’t spoil it for those of you who didn’t finish either Schitt’s Creek of The Good Place, but I’ve always been drawn to movies and shows you know will end on a happy note. Sure, I like a little intrigue like wondering if Tony Soprano was killed (he absolutely was), but I also think of Danson on another show, Cheers, gliding his hand across the bar as he realizes how lucky he is to have that place and the people that inhabit it. I like the feeling there’s going to be a happy ending. And, if I may apply it to the current day and our horrible real-life situations, I think that hope that things will end up being OK before the credits roll might keep me going.
#2 Sounds of a dying summer
I really miss chillwave. I saw Steven Hyden and Ian Cohen talked about the “rise and fall” of the late-aughts sub-genre on their podcast, but I haven’t had a chance to listen to it just yet. All I know is that one of the musicians most associated with the term, Washed Out, recently put out an album called Purple Noon, which shares a name for my favorite of the adaptations of Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley. The record has a similar hazy feel to the 1960 Italian film that I’d highly you suggest watching as summer winds down, then watch the 1999 version in a few weeks and admire not just the rich American expats in Italy looks of Matt Damon and Jude Law, but let Philip Seymour Hoffman in his Brooks Brothers blazer and V-neck sweater help inspire you for the fall.
But this isn’t about Highsmith adaptations. No, I just want to point out that I’ve had the Washed Out album on a lot lately. Ernest Weatherly Greene Jr., the person behind the project, might be best-known for one of his songs ending up the theme for Portlandia. And while that early stuff is fine, this new album is a perfect summertime album, the kind you will only listen to from June until maybe early September. When I tried to describe it to a friend I told her it’s a sensitive indie guy trying to sound like Sade. Make of that what you will, but I’m a fan. And as the summer slowly winds towards its inevitable conclusion, Purple Noon has been on heavy rotation, second only to Down on the Road by the Beach by Steve Hiett.

You can Google Hiett and read his biography and the reason the British photographer made the 1982 album. You can look at the shockingly blue photos of mysterious women hanging out around Miami Beach in the early-80s he took to go along with the album that took nearly 40 years to make its way over to the United States. You can even buy it on Bandcamp, although I’d highly recommend adding the vinyl to your collection if you have a record player. It’s worth it for the book of his photos alone.
Down on the Road by the Beach serves as a soundtrack to the images, but it works just fine on its own. There’s always something sinister about summer to me, I’ve never quite been able to put my finger on exactly what it is, but there’s something about all the dreams we have about it when it’s any other season, and then it comes and goes, and we’re back to dreaming. We’re so enamored with the sun that we don’t really pay much attention to the world around us. It’s the escapist season. This year, however, that was impossible for those of us with an ounce of intelligence or compassion. Maybe you made a single trip to the beach, or found a quiet spot outside where you and a friend could sit six feet away from each other while sharing a bottle of wine and just talking, but it wasn’t a summer, not in the traditional sense. It was a time of reflection, a time of mourning and a time of rage. And to be perfectly honest, I’m fine with sacrificing summertime in order to try to change things for the better, but the lack of traditional summer fun really had me thinking a lot about the melancholy side of the season. About how quiet things seem these days, how we’ve all just sleep walked through 2020 and that the stuff I’ve been listening to certainly reflects that sort of feeling. The new Washed Out and Hiett’s album especially do.

For my first book, I used a quote by Sydney Freeman-Mitford, Baroness Redesdale at the end of The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family: “Isn’t it odd how, when one looks back at that time, it seems to have been all summer.” I couldn’t help but think of that a few days ago when I was sitting in my chair and listening to Hiett’s album. It has its playful moments: the cover of Chuck Berry’s “Roll Over Beethoven” especially. Spiritually that track is like a quieter cousin of Yo La Tengo’s cover of the Beach Boys “Little Honda,” a sleepy, cough medicine-soaked version of an iconic rock and roll tune, but it fades away into the second-half of the song, “Out on the Beach,” which smacks of some tropical Lynchian noir I’d like to see. That’s really the overall feel of the entire record: it’s not quite lush, but it isn’t totally lo-fi. There’s something sad underneath it that I can’t really figure out, but that only serves to make it all the more interesting to me. What I keep wondering is when I go to listen to these albums over future summers, will I look back on this time and remember how down and out everything felt the first time I heard them? The hope is that things get better from here, that we can move forward, but it’s so hard to tell. I hope we don't remain in this time, and I hope these two albums don’t either.
#3 Dumplings
I’d had a lunch set with a friend who was visiting from out of town this past March, but it was canceled because, well, you know. My friend had told me he’d never been to Nom Wah in Chinatown, and I was really looking forward to taking him because the old dim sum parlor (which turned 100 this year) is one of those few remaining truly old-school NYC places that still holds up. Also, Doyers St. is one of the best little parts on the island of Manhattan. (My general rule of thumb is if the spot was featured in Milton Glaser and Jerome Snyder’s The Underground Gourmet and it’s still around that it should be considered a landmark and every New Yorker should frequent the place at least once a month.)

Anyway, Nom Wah was sort of frozen in my mind like this meal I needed to have. I’ve been thinking about it for five months. And while I would have liked to have had my spring rolls and chicken and cabbage dumplings there (or even their cute outdoor dining situation they’ve got going on right now), I gladly settled for take out, eating it on my roof with Emily and her sisters. The trick to ordering a meal you’ve been thinking about for a really long time is if somebody (I won’t say who…) texts you that they want “one of each dumpling” that means you have to get one of each dumpling. If they tell you later they were kidding, tell them you can’t tell over text and the fault is all theirs, but you’ll overlook it because now you’re rich in dumplings. You also need those damn cracker-like scallion pancakes, the fried rice, the chicken feet, at least two orders of the pan-fried noodles and the rice roll with fried dough. You put that away and eat it for breakfast.
That was the best thing I ate this week. The meal I’ve been thinking about during this hellish time.