Last night I finally saw it-I've been wanting to watch this for a few weeks,, but every time me and my main man Kevin Rogers have gotten to the theater it's been either too early-not on for like 2 hours or too late.
It was a great movie-we both liked it a lot. I mean this was helped by the fact that we're both real lovers of music and musicians. The music is great as is the story.
For me in particular this movie touched on all the great subjects and paradoxes of mankind. About music, art, love, men and women, life and death.
Franki Valli was blessed with a superb talent One of the characteristics of human society is that there are always certain individuals so blessed. However, it's like Monk always says, "It's a blessing and a curse."
I think it was Nietzsche who said that a talent is a vampire and you are ultimately the victim of your talent, you end up being consumed by your talent. You see this with Franki Valli. First when he was just being discovered he met his future wife and mother of his children.
Here's what I find so paradoxical. She originally falls for him after hearing him as a very young man sing in that club. She basically takes him in hand at that point-they go to dinner and she asks him 'Do you have a dime?"
"Yes." He answers confused.
"Great, call your mother and tell her you wont be home for dinner."
In the next scene, they're married. However, what's interesting, is that later while he's on the road he sings all these love songs to 'the woman he loves'-this is the paradox of the great male singer. Meanwhile, as he went home after his road trips, his wife is more and more unhappy, complaining that he is never home. In the first scene when he meets Bob Gaudio, a woman-actually this woman is one of a set of blond twins but this is not really the main point-who raves about how she loves the song he wrote and that it sounds like it was written for her alone. Bob blandly answers her that it's a composite for 'EveryWoman.'
Of course, the key of a great love song is that it seems so personal and yet-each woman feels that it's about her. The dirty secret though of someone like Valli who gets married and continues to sing love songs is that these songs are not about her-they remain composites. What won his wife over was his songs to this composite, but in marriage she wanted him to give it up.
This is one of the major paradoxes of love. How often is it that a woman falls in love with a man but then once they're married the very thing that she fell in love with him for becomes something that she sees as coming between their happy marriage? The wonderful voice of Valli is what she fell in love with and yet she came to see it as alienating her husband's affection.
It's not just women who fall in men who do this-men do this too. To take one example, how often do guys meet strippers and then think they've fallen in love and then want the woman to give up her job? Yet this was what attracted him to her in the first place-it never would have happened otherwise.
It's a very common story with love. A woman falls for a popular guy-it's that he's so popular and has so many friends that really attracts her to him but once they're married she complains to him that he spends so much time with all these people-what about her, why must she be second?
Or a man falls for a woman because she's the hottest girl in school or at work or around the block and every guy in the world wants her. However, once they get together he becomes extremely jealous if she even talks to another guy.
Is this the tragedy of love or the comedy of love?
On the question of Valli's marriage, it ended tragically when his oldest daughter overdosed. A case could be made that his troubled daughter suffered so greatly in part by missing him and feeling that he was not there for him. This is probably how his wife saw it-especially after such a terrible tragedy. However, I have a hard time in this case blaming him. I think this is one of the real tensions in love between the sexes, and art.
Again, as Nietzsche said, your talent is also your vampire. I mean, was Valli supposed to just end his career and get a job as a plumber and then be home in time to help his kids with their homework, give them a bath, and tuck them in every night?
I just feel in this case-where we have this level of talent-to deprive the world of such music would be a tragedy.
In a way this gives a new twist on the old anti-feminist message we used to hear back in the 80s-'you can't have it all' women were admonished. In a certain sense, though, it may be that no one can have it all. I mean did Valli actually have a career and a family?
On the other hand, on a less pessimistic note, you have the example of Bob who while being in many ways the 'straw that stirred the drink' as it were, managed to have a long lasting happy marriage with seemingly happy, healthy children. Of course, it's notable, perhaps, that Gaudio gave up signing in the group himself and relegated himself to just writing Valli's songs. Was this his own selfish calculation to have it all-and leave all the sacrifice to Valli? Of course, by then, his marriage was long over.
As to the male-female dynamic, what I would note is this. You can make the case that with a singer like Valli, the message truly only reaches its intended addressee-to use a Zizkean phrase-in the listener of the music-the folks who buy the music and listen to it.
To the extent that his songs are still heard every day on the radio-on oldie stations-and that they've been listened to in offices, bagel shops, family picnics, and commercials a million times and will no doubt be heard a million more times, his voice achieves it's one true goal perhaps: immortality.
At the end of the movie he says that he'll keep singing until he gets home. Perhaps every time one of these listeners hear him, for a little while, he is.
I think that it's legitimate to make much of the fact that in modern music, it's women who disproportionately decide what music will be popular. Of course, today there are many female singers in their own right. However, it's easy to overlook the female power involved in this selection process. Most of what becomes popular since the 50s-beginning with Elvis himself-does so through the decision making process of teenage girls. So Valli sung for them rather than his wife-he only sung for her that first time.
P.S. In many ways, Gaudio is my favorite character in the film-why? It's because he is the one who really made it all possible. Valli was the talent, but Gaudio too had the talent to write songs-he was no slouch as a singer either-but more importantly, he knew Valli was it the first time he heard him-that this would be the-only-voice he would write for. It was only through him that Valli was finally able to declare his independence from his older bullying childhood friend Tommy.
Also, after the horrible death of Valli's daughter, it would have been so easy to have packed up, moved away, and never sung a word of music again in a Zizekean Night of the World.
http://zizekstudies.org/index.php/ijzs/article/viewFile/136/222
That he didn't' was thanks to Bob being there for him and talking him into living again. The Zizekean position would have been to fall into a permanent half catatonic state-I always take the side of the one who wants to keep living not the one that says existence is so sullied as to no longer be worth fighting for.
It was a great movie-we both liked it a lot. I mean this was helped by the fact that we're both real lovers of music and musicians. The music is great as is the story.
For me in particular this movie touched on all the great subjects and paradoxes of mankind. About music, art, love, men and women, life and death.
Franki Valli was blessed with a superb talent One of the characteristics of human society is that there are always certain individuals so blessed. However, it's like Monk always says, "It's a blessing and a curse."
I think it was Nietzsche who said that a talent is a vampire and you are ultimately the victim of your talent, you end up being consumed by your talent. You see this with Franki Valli. First when he was just being discovered he met his future wife and mother of his children.
Here's what I find so paradoxical. She originally falls for him after hearing him as a very young man sing in that club. She basically takes him in hand at that point-they go to dinner and she asks him 'Do you have a dime?"
"Yes." He answers confused.
"Great, call your mother and tell her you wont be home for dinner."
In the next scene, they're married. However, what's interesting, is that later while he's on the road he sings all these love songs to 'the woman he loves'-this is the paradox of the great male singer. Meanwhile, as he went home after his road trips, his wife is more and more unhappy, complaining that he is never home. In the first scene when he meets Bob Gaudio, a woman-actually this woman is one of a set of blond twins but this is not really the main point-who raves about how she loves the song he wrote and that it sounds like it was written for her alone. Bob blandly answers her that it's a composite for 'EveryWoman.'
Of course, the key of a great love song is that it seems so personal and yet-each woman feels that it's about her. The dirty secret though of someone like Valli who gets married and continues to sing love songs is that these songs are not about her-they remain composites. What won his wife over was his songs to this composite, but in marriage she wanted him to give it up.
This is one of the major paradoxes of love. How often is it that a woman falls in love with a man but then once they're married the very thing that she fell in love with him for becomes something that she sees as coming between their happy marriage? The wonderful voice of Valli is what she fell in love with and yet she came to see it as alienating her husband's affection.
It's not just women who fall in men who do this-men do this too. To take one example, how often do guys meet strippers and then think they've fallen in love and then want the woman to give up her job? Yet this was what attracted him to her in the first place-it never would have happened otherwise.
It's a very common story with love. A woman falls for a popular guy-it's that he's so popular and has so many friends that really attracts her to him but once they're married she complains to him that he spends so much time with all these people-what about her, why must she be second?
Or a man falls for a woman because she's the hottest girl in school or at work or around the block and every guy in the world wants her. However, once they get together he becomes extremely jealous if she even talks to another guy.
Is this the tragedy of love or the comedy of love?
On the question of Valli's marriage, it ended tragically when his oldest daughter overdosed. A case could be made that his troubled daughter suffered so greatly in part by missing him and feeling that he was not there for him. This is probably how his wife saw it-especially after such a terrible tragedy. However, I have a hard time in this case blaming him. I think this is one of the real tensions in love between the sexes, and art.
Again, as Nietzsche said, your talent is also your vampire. I mean, was Valli supposed to just end his career and get a job as a plumber and then be home in time to help his kids with their homework, give them a bath, and tuck them in every night?
I just feel in this case-where we have this level of talent-to deprive the world of such music would be a tragedy.
In a way this gives a new twist on the old anti-feminist message we used to hear back in the 80s-'you can't have it all' women were admonished. In a certain sense, though, it may be that no one can have it all. I mean did Valli actually have a career and a family?
On the other hand, on a less pessimistic note, you have the example of Bob who while being in many ways the 'straw that stirred the drink' as it were, managed to have a long lasting happy marriage with seemingly happy, healthy children. Of course, it's notable, perhaps, that Gaudio gave up signing in the group himself and relegated himself to just writing Valli's songs. Was this his own selfish calculation to have it all-and leave all the sacrifice to Valli? Of course, by then, his marriage was long over.
As to the male-female dynamic, what I would note is this. You can make the case that with a singer like Valli, the message truly only reaches its intended addressee-to use a Zizkean phrase-in the listener of the music-the folks who buy the music and listen to it.
To the extent that his songs are still heard every day on the radio-on oldie stations-and that they've been listened to in offices, bagel shops, family picnics, and commercials a million times and will no doubt be heard a million more times, his voice achieves it's one true goal perhaps: immortality.
At the end of the movie he says that he'll keep singing until he gets home. Perhaps every time one of these listeners hear him, for a little while, he is.
I think that it's legitimate to make much of the fact that in modern music, it's women who disproportionately decide what music will be popular. Of course, today there are many female singers in their own right. However, it's easy to overlook the female power involved in this selection process. Most of what becomes popular since the 50s-beginning with Elvis himself-does so through the decision making process of teenage girls. So Valli sung for them rather than his wife-he only sung for her that first time.
P.S. In many ways, Gaudio is my favorite character in the film-why? It's because he is the one who really made it all possible. Valli was the talent, but Gaudio too had the talent to write songs-he was no slouch as a singer either-but more importantly, he knew Valli was it the first time he heard him-that this would be the-only-voice he would write for. It was only through him that Valli was finally able to declare his independence from his older bullying childhood friend Tommy.
Also, after the horrible death of Valli's daughter, it would have been so easy to have packed up, moved away, and never sung a word of music again in a Zizekean Night of the World.
http://zizekstudies.org/index.php/ijzs/article/viewFile/136/222
That he didn't' was thanks to Bob being there for him and talking him into living again. The Zizekean position would have been to fall into a permanent half catatonic state-I always take the side of the one who wants to keep living not the one that says existence is so sullied as to no longer be worth fighting for.
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