Check out our latest acweekly.com presentation, featuring a very unique sound therapy available in Galloway Township. It is hoped it will be open to the public this summer. Are you stressed?

I watched a great documentary film on the late musician Joe Strummer (The Clash, The Mescaleros) called Let’s Rock Again! last night. An hour long and directed by Dick Rude (who played the character Duke in the extraordinary cult classic Repo Man), the film follows Strummer on tour with his band the Mescaleros towards the much-too-early end of his life in December 2002.

One of the coolest parts for someone who works in the Bayport One building on the Black Horse Pike (where the Atlantic City Weekly offices are located as well as numerous radio stations) was to see Strummer — en route to a gig at The Shell at Trump Marina in Atlantic City at the Trump Marina in August 2002 — roll up to the front door of the Bayport One building — after turning to the camera from his car seat and saying “Welcome to Pleasantville” — to plug his show on the local rock station WZXL 100.7. Unannounced.

With it being a weekend, the doors were locked, so Strummer (and cameraman Rude) went behind the building where the back-door entrance and intercom is located. We see Strummer try the back door, dial up the station on intercom, get brushed off by someone there (a WAYV part-timer at the time) and then — finally — inside the station talking on and off air with DJ Steve Raymond (who was two songs away from playing a Clash tune!) about The Mescaleros’ new album and the show in Atlantic City. Later in the doc, we see Strummer on the Atlantic City Boardwalk handing out fliers to his own concert (video link at end of this post). Only one person seems to recognize the legendary punk-rock bandleader.

So….although it’s print deadline day for us here at AC Weekly, I had to go downstairs to talk with Raymond about the experience. I just did.

“I wasn’t supposed to work that day,” Raymond told me. “My wife and I were headed to Delaware for the day when I get a call that the part-time weekend DJ called out sick. I was so upset, but I had to come in. I was spitting nails coming up the Parkway.”

A little later that day, Raymond, as he put it, “was in the right place at the right time.”

As the film shows, Raymond goes to the back door of Bayport One and greets Strummer — in awe. “It turns out he was the greatest guy. I just wished I had prepared more for an interview!”

Strummer was finishing up a tour in Atlantic City and was headed to Japan. He died four months later.

“So it turns out that I — [along with the DJ from KROQ in Los Angeles, also shown in the film] — was the last American radio DJ to interview Strummer before he died,” said Raymond. He recalls Strummer signing a copy of his latest “biscuit” Global A Go-Go (released in July 2001) and WZXL giving it away to a lucky caller that same day. Strummer also signed a Rolling Stone music encyclopedia for Raymond.

WZXL DJ Steve Raymond holds up his Joe Strummer autograph inside his radio booth

For fans of the Clash, Atlantic City miscellany or Strummer, the very thoughtful, funny and talented man, add Let’s Rock Again! to your Netflix queue right now. Check out the great clip below of Strummer pitching his show on the Boardwalk circa August 2002:

Joe Strummer on Atlantic City Boardwalk

The stage show The Wedding Singer, based on the 1998 Adam Sandler flick, is running now through Aug. 31 at Harrah’s Resort. AC Weekly publisher Lew Steiner caught this video from the show, which we’ve been told is very good, last night. Enjoy the sneak peek and check out more videos on our ever-expanding video page (scroll down), including Kiss Army at last weekend’s Fakefest at Trump Marina, Kalin & Jinger’s Real Magic show, currently running at the Marina, and the ACCVA’s Atlantic City Boardwalk Walking Tour.

As August approaches and this summer of big scale bombast movies begins to dial down the hype machine, the desire to see smaller scale movies about real people begins to dominate my thoughts. It’s why I so look forward to my annual trek to the Toronto Film Festival in September. It is also why those occasional character driven movies like the fabulous Waitress and the very funny Knocked Up are so appreciated as a summer change of pace.
As a film critic, I like to think that I don’t let too many sleeper gems, small scale films that offer the simple pleasures of real characters and emotions, slip by unnoticed. However, if I have been guilty of the sin of omission, or of living in a town that isn’t exactly a hotbed of alternative cinema, Netflix bails me out.
I’ve found several gems in my recent Netflix envelopes including Aurora Borealis, The Dead Girl and Black Snake Moan. Sometimes I’ll get the notice that a film is coming, a selection I made months ago, and I’ll wonder, what movie is that?

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Four years ago, I signed up for a free tryout of a new DVD-by-mail service called Netflix. You went on-line to set up your list of movies, and the first three available were sent to your home. You watched them at your leisure, with no late fees. When you sent back a movie in a pre-paid envelope, the next movie on your list was sent to you. Despite the fact that the local Blockbuster had tons of movie titles available, I found myself relying on Netflix for all my video needs. Why? Well, the no late fee aspect was attractive, and the $20 a month fee was reasonable. I usually averaged 12 to 15 movies a month. Even at the then $3-a-title rental price at the Blockbuster, that meant I was getting $39 to $45 worth of movies for the monthly fee. (These days the fee is $18 and movies at the local video store are $4.50 a title so the savings are even greater.)

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Duane Hopwood, an engaging low-key look at a man whose life is spinning out of control due to his alcoholism, recently came out on video. Starring David Swimmer and written and directed by Matt Mulhern (who grew up in Longport and co-starred in the TV series Major Dad), the film is set in Atlantic City and was filmed there in Feb., 2004. If you rent the DVD (Roger Ebert put it in his top 10 for 2005), look closely at the coffee table during a scene when Duane’s friend Gina (Susan Lynch) drops by Duane’s home in the rain. Sitting on the table is a copy of Atlantic City Weekly (the Feb. 5, 2004 issue to be exact), featuring a rodeo rider on the cover.
Rent the movie and also read my interview with Swimmer from the Nov. 17, 2005 issue about this underrated little gem.

I received a request for some info on movies made in Atlantic City. Atlantic City, when it was known as the World’s Playground in the 1920s through 1960s, was referenced in numerous movies, including Citizen Kane.
However, when it comes to movies that were actually filmed here, the two biggest were Louis Malle’s magnificent Atlantic City (1981) and Bob Rafelson’s The King of Marvin Gardens (1972). Both looked at the city when it was on the ropes. In particular, The King of Marvin Gardens uses the town’s seedy and dying look to establish the uncomfortable relationship between two brothers (played by Bruce Dern and Jack Nicholson). The movie was filmed in town in 1971. During a break from my first semester at college, when Stockton made its debut at the Mayflower Hotel on the AC boardwalk, I watched Dern, Nicholson and Ellen Burstyn film take after take of Dern and Burstyn in a rolling chair meeting up with Nicholson.
Malle’s Atlantic City uses Atlantic City as the backdrop to show the transformation of the characters, through the transformation of the city. Set when casinos first arrived, Susan Sarandon is the ambitious young woman who wants to become a dealer. Burt Lancaster is an old low-level gangster who remembers when Atlantic City was noted for its illegal gambling joints. Kate Reid and Robert Joy co-starred. Joy, by the way, can currently be seen as the coroner on CSI: New York.
In more recent times, Atlantic City has been briefly used as the backdrop in the movies The Color of Money, Ocean’s Eleven and Rounders.
However, there is a little movie you might want to check out on DVD. Duane Hopwood (2005), stars David Schwimmer as a drunk trying to get his life back together. It was filmed in Atlantic City and Longport in 2004, and if you look closely, you will see a scene that features a copy of Atlantic City Weekly on a coffee table. I interviewed Schwimmer, an interview you can read by accessing the archives link for Nov. 17, 2005 on the www.acweekly.com web site.
Later