In his Last Will and Testament made in 1987, on view in the sprawling exhibition Stranger Than Kindness: The Nick Cave Exhibition, Nick Cave requested: “…money earned on records, both publishing and record sales, should be used to have and maintain a small but adequate room or rooms that will serve as the “Nick Cave … Continue reading
In the nebulous period of 1983 and 1984 between the drug-fueled dissolution of the trash can-driving, six-inch-gold-blade-slicing, zoo-music-girl-lusting, junkyard royalty The Birthday Party and the official designation of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Nick Cave played a smattering of clubs under a few different titles. There was Nick Cave and the Cavemen, which is … Continue reading
“I just want to be perfect,” says Karen Carpenter in the recording studio, played by a Barbie doll fashioned by director Todd Haynes in, what I would argue, is still his best film, Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story. Thanks to Haynes’s deranged casting choice, Barbie is a flawless proxy for Karen Carpenter, the wholesome clear-voiced … Continue reading
Tony Soprano. Mad Magazine’s Alfred E. Neuman. Donald Trump. What do these three figures have in common? Is it their putty-like pudgy faces? How about Donald Trump’s wielding of Alfred E. Neuman as an insult against Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg? Or maybe the mob boss actions of our former ketchup-throwing, table cloth-swiping President who still … Continue reading
Why hello there, proud patriotic Filthy Dreams readers! What’s that? You’re NOT proud at all to be an American this year?! I know, I know. How DARE we even celebrate Independence Day? Look. Given these feel like our country’s last days, we better party now before the Supreme Court makes a decision on that too! … Continue reading
I once saw Lou Reed on a bicycle. No, it wasn’t a hallucination. That I’m aware of at least. It was 2007 and I had just graduated college. Unemployed with not much to do, I spent my time wandering aimlessly around the city while applying for jobs at the precipice of the 2008 subprime mortgage-induced … Continue reading
Are you sick to death of sleek cinema? An overbearing aesthetic that has trickled down so far that even the most whacko experimental films and unhinged underground movies strive to achieve a similar spotless surface perfection as those boring big-budget Hollywood films? Blech! Give me the awkward, the uncanny, the janky, the shonky, the half-baked, … Continue reading
“It’s just a question of Tiiiime! And it’s running out for you…” Whoa! Hello there, dearest Filthy Dreams readers! You startled me out of my reverie. I was just spinning and spinning and spinning like a whirling dervish, mimicking Depeche Mode’s Dave Gahan. *whew* I need to catch my breath… Anyway, what’s that? What am … Continue reading
“It is human to shy away from or ignore what makes us uncomfortable, but this practice unintentionally causes harm. You have an opportunity to lean into the discomfort of confronting racism on an experiential level as you view art that wrestles with America’s past and present racial tensions. You have every right to feel your … Continue reading
I’m beginning to hate the phrase “chosen family.” Conducting an interview recently for a well-known “queer” publication, I felt myself physically recoil when an interviewee used that term. Why? Because like queer itself, the phrase, to me at least, feels increasingly hollow—emptied of all meaning—especially as queer becomes a brand identity and chosen families, the … Continue reading