Remembering Steve Cropper / Playwright Tom Stoppard
00:00This message comes from Bayer.Science is a rigorous process that requires questions, testing, transparency, and results that can be proven.This approach is integral to every breakthrough Bayer brings forward, innovations that save lives and feed the world.Science Delivers.comThis is Fresh Air. I'm David B. and Cooley.Steve Cropper, the guitarist whose influential work for Stacks Records in Memphis, helped define soul music in the 1960s and 70s,died Wednesday in Nashville. He was 84 years old. Today, we listened back to an archive interview with Cropper.As a member of Booker T and the MGs, the in-house rhythm section at Stacks,
00:42Cropper played guitar on some of the greatest soul hits of the 60s, records by Carla and Rufus Thomas, Wilson Pickett, Sam and Dave, and Otis Redding.long to stop now.You are tired and you want to be free.My love is going strongerAs you become a habit to me,Ooh, I'm loving you too long.I don't want to stop that.Otis Redding, recorded in 1965.
01:46Steve Cropper wasn't just a guitarist at Stax Records.He also was a producer and a songwriter.The number one R&B hits he helped write included Otis Redding,sitting on the dock of the bay, Eddie Floyd's Knock on Wood, and Wilson Pickett's in themidnight hour. Steve Cropper was 14 when he bought his first guitar and developed his styleby listening to both country and rhythm and blues guitarists. In 1962, when Cropper was doingan instrumental jam at Stacks Records with organist Booker T. Jones in his band, the engineerhit record. The resulting record, Green Onions, was a major hit.
02:26Steve Cropper appeared in the 1980 movie The Blues Brothers, playing guitar, and playing himself as Steve the Colonel Cropper.In 1992, Booker T. and the MGs were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.Two years before that, Steve Cropper spoke with Terry Gross.She asked him if the music in Memphis played a big part in his life when he was growing up there.I grew up kind of on the Grand Ole Opry and the kind of Louisiana Hayride kind of.of stuff. Well, you know, it's really interesting about that is that you ended up playingmostly with black singers and playing in integrated bands. How did you get exposed to blackmusic after being used to Grand Ole Opry stuff? Well, that was really the thing. When I got a chance
03:14to have my own radio and start turning the knobs, I found one night on WDIA black spiritualmusic. I'd never heard it before. And it just blew me away, the feeling, the excitement of it,sort of thing. I grew up in the Church of Christ, which is, in those days, basicallya cappella singing, and I was very used to religious music, and I liked it. But herewas a new twist on it. It had a beat, and it was, you know, what we call funky now. And thatwas really, I think, the turning point in my interest in music. There was a music there that Ireally couldn't get enough of, and I just loved it. When you started playing guitar, did youhave a sense of where you could fit in
03:55musically into the kind of music that you liked most?Well, I think so.Definitely was spiritual because it wasa rhythm thing. It wasn't somuch lead and all of that.I really wasn't all that interested inintricate kind of music froma classical standpoint or from a country
04:11fiddle and that sort of thing. I likelistening to it, but I didn't have any desireto get an instrument and try to copythat. I never really was a leadplayer. I never tried to be a lead player.I've been lucky enough to have played a few solos on some great artist records.But really, I'm a rhythm man, and my best forte, I think, is capturing the feel of a song during its inception in the studio.I think that's where I'm best.
04:40Even though people fly me in all over to play on their records and overdub, I think they would be better using me on the ground floor as a building block rather than as a cherry on the case.You had your first hit with a band called The Marquise, and it wasn't long after that that you became affiliated with Stax Records.You became the guitarist in the House Rhythm Section, you became a producer, you became a songwriter with...Floor sweeper.Tape copier and editor.How did you get affiliated with Stax?Well, it started Charles Axton, the Tender Player, and the funny story about Charles Axton.He was the tenor player with the marquise.
05:22He was a tenor player with the marquise.He was on the record last night and everything.He came to me and he said, I hear you guys got a pretty good band.He said, you know, I play saxophone.I'd like to be in your band.And I said, well, I'm not really interested.I don't think we're interested in adding horns to the group.And I said, how long have you been playing, you know?
05:40And he said, oh, I've been taking lessons for three months.I'm going, oh, yeah, great, you know.And somewhere in the conversation, he goes, oh, by the way, my mother owns a recording studio.And I said, can you show up for rehearsal on Saturday?And that is a true story now.I may stretch it a little bit, but that's an actual truth.And we went out, his uncle, Jim Stewart, the owner of Stacks Records,had a little studio in his garage in Memphis.
06:05And we went out there and jammed around.And then they moved from his garage to a little place out in Brunswick, Tennessee,where they had the satellite label.And we would go out there every weekend and play and all that.And, of course, Jim Stewart said we never had a chance we'd never made.it but I think he just was being devil's advocate to just see if he could push us intosomething and we kept trying we cut a bunch of instrumentals and some crazy little things thatnever saw the light a day and until the time that we came up with with last night but what
06:36happened was Estelle I don't know Estelle Axton I don't know if she saw any talent thereor what she saw but but she liked me enough to keep me around and she put me to work in herrecord shop and I sold records that's what I did andI kept working onon the weekendsI would kind of do a littleA&Ring because people were always coming inand on Saturdays I would hold auditions
07:00because people were always bringing in songs and all thatand that's sort of how I got startedyou know in the A&R thingand finallyJim said wait a minute he saidyou know Steve's spending more time in the studioand he is in a record shop and whateverand so they got together and decided
07:15that I would start getting my salaryfrom the recordcompany rather than the record shop. And I started working, I guess, A&R full time at that point.Well, you with the group Booker T and the MGs, had the hit of Green Onions, and I think this wasa big hit, and it helped out Stacks Records a lot. How did the four of you, Booker T, L. Jackson,Donald Duck Dunn, and yourself get to play together and become the House Rhythm Section?well what it all stem from basically was there we were with all this great success doing the dick clark show and everything is the marquise and we had this big hit record last night and it was a lot of fun and then all of a sudden it wasn't fun anymore it became work and what you call a road burdened and that sort of thing and seven of us or eight of us traveling in one car and trying to make all these shows and i found out that i wasn't too happy with the road and so what i really wanted to do was get back in the studioI mean, that I already knew that that's what I wanted to do.
08:21Anyway, that's what I did.I came back to Memphis.I went to work in the studio again.I helped put together the rhythm section I found out.I've been playing with another band called the Club Handy Band,and we had done some sessions for Don Robey.I think I don't even remember which songs,but I played on the Five Blind Boys albums.
08:38I played on Altie and T. Braggs.I think there were some Bobby Blueblan stuff that I played on.But I played with a lot of those musicians,and we were asking around to find out who was a real good keyboard player.We had used several.And they said, there's this kid.He's still in school in Booker T. Jones, and he's incredible.And they had worked with him on a lot of other stuff and on stage as well.
09:00And so we got Booker over on a session, and everybody just fell in love with him.Let me play some of Green Onions.Because we're only going to play an excerpt, I'm going to start this a little in because I want to get to your guitar solo in it.So this is Green Onions, Bookerty, and the MGs.You co-wrote Doc of the Bay with Otis Redding,and you produced the record as well, right?Right, correct.What was your collaboration with him like when it came to writing songs?
10:03Well, of course, we wrote a lot of songs together.The inception of Doc of the Bay was really no different than any other one.Otis was one of those kind of guys who had 100 ideasand he always had with him anytime he came in to record10 or 15 different pretty good ideaseither intros or titles or whateverand he had been in San Francisco doing the Fillmoreand the story that I got he had rented a boathouse
10:31or stayed out at a boathouse or something that's when he got the idea ofwatching the ships come in the bay thereand that's about all he had I watched the ships come inand watch them roll away again and I'm sitting on dock of the bayand I just took that we just sat down and I just kind of learned the changes that he was kind of running over and I finished the lyrics and if you listen to songs that I collaborated with Otis most of the lyrics are about him well he never really he might say the big O in a song or something like that but he Otis didn't really write about himself but I didsongs like Mr. Pitiful sad song Fafah they were all about Otis and Otis's life and and Doc of the Bay is exactly that I left my home in Georgia headed for the Friscoe Bay it was allabout him going out to San Francisco to perform.And that's kind of the way I wrote with Otis.
11:16I wrote the bridge and stuff like that.And that's the way we collaborated.He trusted me.You know, I always seemed to do the things that he liked, you know, worked on songs that cameout the way he wanted them.And I also worked on a lot of songs with Otis, arrangement-wise, and helped him putthem together and all that, where I didn't, you know, claim any writers or anything becauseit wasn't necessary.
11:40had most of it finished to begin with.And I just helped him do it.But a lot of these things where he had just bits and pieces,I would actually put them together,and we'd make whole songs out of them and go in the next day and record them.So we had a lot of fun together.Otis was a great guy to work with, and he was a great friend.Well, let's listen to the record.
11:57This is Doc of the Bay.Sitting in the morning sun,I'll be sitting when they even come.watching the ships roll inand then I watch and roll away againyeahI'm sitting on the dark of the baywatching the tide
12:24roll awayI'm just sitting on the dark of the baywasting timeI left my left myhome in Georgia headed for the Frisco Bay because I've had nothing to live for and look like nothing's going to come my way so I'm just going to sit on the darker bay watching the tie row away and sitting on a darker bay and sitting on a darker bay.wasting timeLooks likeNothing's going to change
13:19Everything still remains the sameI can't do what ten people tell me to doSo I guess I'll remain the sameIt's sitting here resting my bonesAnd this loneliness won't leave me aloneThis 2,000 miles I roamJust to make this stop my homeNow I'm just going to sit at the dark of a bay
13:54Watching the tideRoad awayI'm sitting on the darker bayWasting timeI want to ask youI want to ask you about another record.This is also a song you co-wrote.You co-wrote this one with Wilson Pickett, and it's midnight hour.
14:36This was, I think, for the first session that you played with Wilson Pickett.Right, it was.Tell me about writing this song with him.Well, it's real simple.We knew that he was coming down, and, of course, my connection with the record shop,and I went up and found some stuff that he had sung on.Of course, he sang, you know, with the Falcons, and he had sang some spiritual things.And it seemed like every time that he sang lead on something, when he got down to the fade out,
14:58he would go, oh, way to the midnight hour, whoa, see my Jesus in the midnight hour.And all this, I said, that's the guy's ID.So I just took that right there and presented it to him with a little idea.He had a couple of ideas, and what happened was that we picked him up at the airport.They dropped us off at the hotel, and Jerry Wexler and Jim Stewart went out to get something to eatand just talk business.And when they came back, I don't know, it was a couple hours later, we had in the midnight hour written and don't fight it.They said, we're going to get out of here, let you guys keep going.
15:29And they left and we wrote a thing called I'm Not Tired.And we went in the studio the next day, recorded all three songs, and all three songs.songs were hits. Very lucky me, huh?Well, let's hear it in the midnight hour.midnight hour when there's no one else around I'm going to take you girl and hold you and do all the things I told youis at the midnight hour yes I am oh yes I am one thing I just want to say ready I'm going to wait to the storm is Wilson Pickett in the midnight hourwritten by my guest, Steve Cropper, who's featured on guitar.You also did a lot of work playing behind Sam and Dave,
16:41and Sam and Dave were the inspiration for the Akroyd and Belushi group,The Blues Brothers, and you played with them as well.What did you think of the Blues Brothers when they got started,or when you got started, or whatever?What did you think of, did you think that it was a parody that was in bad taste at all?you know like two white guys doing their parody of black singerstwo white guys who probably fantasized about themselves sometimesof being black singers
17:13but what was your take on it?Well, you know, they got a lot of bad rap on that, I think initiallyand a lot of people for some reason thoughtthat John and Danny were kind of scoffing black musicians for some reasonthat's not the case at all and what I found out was really the contrary to all of thatThey had such a love for that kind of music, for rhythm and blues and so forth.And I couldn't believe I went to John's house one day, and he showed me a collection of blue stuff that just blew me away.I'd never seen that big of a collection of blues music.
17:45Of course, being in Chicago, he had a lot of access to a lot of stuff that, of course, we never heard in Memphis and so forth.It never really, most of it didn't reach the record shop that I worked in.But you mentioned about Sam and Dave being their influence.that is something that really came aboutwhenever they decided to put a band togetherand got Duck Dunn and myself involved in the groupbecause they were from the showfrom the routine they did on the show
18:10their concept of an album at that pointwas strictly doing nothing but blues kind of songsand you know things by the Downchild Blues bandand you know Delbert McClinton stuff and all those kind of thingsand I feltyou know I'd been in the business a long timeand I felt if they wanted me to contribute anything to this,I thought they should go a little bit more commercial.
18:34And so it was my suggestion, along with Duck Dunn and all,that we do something like Soul Man.And we later did Who's Making Love as well.But we talked them into doing that,and then they started asking about, well, how did Sam and Dave do them?So we kind of started showing them some of the routines,like some of the dance things that Sam and Dave would do on stage.And they go, yeah, man, this can be fun.
18:58So that's something that was sort of a new ingredient put in the Blues Brothers Actas we started making preparation to do a show.Steve Cropper spoke with Terry Gross in 1990.He died Wednesday at age 84.After a break, Kevin Whitehead will celebrate the 100th birthday of jazz organist Jimmy Smith,even though the celebration may be a few years early.Also, we note the passing of playwrights.Tom Stoppard, who died last week at age 88.
19:30And, critic at large John Powers reviews the new Brazilian film, The Secret Agent.I'm David B. In Cooley, and this is Fresh Air.ComeAnd you go downAnd I feel in troubleAnd I've got to surroundJust hold onYou're coming
20:08Hold onNow I'm comingI'm onMy wayYou're coverIf you get cold, yeahI will be your coverI don't have to worry
20:24Because I'm hereI'm here, don't need to stop, baby, because I'm here, just go home.I'm coming, oh, Lord, I'm coming, oh, Lord, I'm coming, oh, Lord, I'm coming, oh, Lord, I'm coming.This is all she got to doAll my name is a quick reactionYeahThis message comes from WiseThe app for using money around the globe
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21:36in every detail of a life celebration. Find a provider near you at DignityMemorial.com.At Radio Lab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry.But we do also like to get into other kinds of stories, stories about policing orpolitics, country music, hockey, sex, of bugs.Regardless of whether we're looking at science or not science,we bring a rigorous curiosity to get you the answers.And hopefully make you see the world anew.Radio Lab, Adventures on the Edge of what we think we know.
22:12Wherever you get your podcast.Reference books give the birth date of the great jazz organist Jimmy Smithas December 8, 1925, 100 years ago.More recent sources cite 1920.as Smith's birth year.Our jazz historian, Kevin Whitehead,says at this point,the latter date, looks more plausible.
22:34That'd make MondayJimmy Smith's 97th birthday,not his hundredth.But just to be on the safe side,Kevin Whitehead offers this tribute.Organist Jimmy Smith and crisp, bluesy cooking default mode, on 1964's The Cat.In the 60s, Smith and big bands often squared off as evenlymatched sparring partners. In the 1950s, Smith had reinvented jazz organ, becoming the most
23:31imitated organist since Bach. An early inspiration was Wild Bill Davis, who played a blurrierversion of the big band-style shout choruses Smith would later tighten up. Here's Wild Bill in 1950.Wild Bill DavisJimmy Smith could sound much like that early onwhen he first switched over to organ from piano.But from his first sessions as leader in 1956,his mature concept was there.The three-piece band with guitar,
24:17the deep bluesiness and swing feel,the earthy licks and heavy complications,and the clean and dirty colors he drawfrom the Hammond B3 organs tone controls.And while his hands kept busy with all that,his left foot tapped out baselines on a pedal boardas his right foot controlled the volume.Jimmy Smith on, you getchaacicic's
25:03his 1956 blue notes sides were an instant sensation.In no time, his base.Ice camp Philadelphia was rife with new style organ players like Shirley Scott, Charles Erland,Groove Holmes, and Jimmy McGriff. Smith taught a few of them, including Joey DeFranchesco, later.Soon there were organ rooms everywhere. Setting the style one more way, Jimmy Smith manipulatedthe foot pedals and tone controls to give each note a percussive attack, in effect makingorgan a percussion instrument. He'd drum on a single key or two to make the point.An electric organ keyboard has easier action than piano,
26:05so Smith could really get around.But that percussive attack made hitting the keys sound like work,making his fastest playing seem even more superhuman.Jimmy Smith's insane 1957 variations on body and soullook ahead a decade to SunRas interstellar organ solos.I think it right.And I'm going to see.I don't know.
26:31I'm a lot of them.heard of it.And I'm.Coming.Apparently, it's.And so.And I'm a group.I'm a.
26:42Well..I don't know.Jimmy Smith might pepper his LPs with bewhiskered oldies, like,Yes, Sir, That's My Baby and Swanee.But in the 1960s, like other jazz stars, he hoped to connect with younger rock record buyers.Smith was better positioned to cross over than most with electric guitar and drums for a bandand plenty of bugging momentum on his own electric acts.You can bet rock organists checked him out.
27:24Jimmy Smith on Oliver Nelson'sversion of Peter and the Wolf, one of a few good albums,the arranger and organists made together,one with West Montgomery,on guitar. In search of Radio Gold, Jimmy Smith stepped out as a singer on a 1968 session.Jazzers aiming for youth dollars didn't always hit the mark, but his playing was still on themoney. Yeah, keep in step and keep your eyes on me. Now, shuffer your feet and keep your body free.Yes, a freedom dance for one and all. Yeah, for freedom dance, whether you're short or tall.
28:20It's a freedom dance, let's have a ballA freedom freak out and free for allcame along, and groovy Hammond B-3 organs suddenly sounded old hat.From the 1970s on, jazz organ groups would go out of and come back into fashion,and Jimmy Smith's career had its corresponding downs and ups.He'd spawned so many admirers, it could be hard to hear him with fresh ears.But Jimmy Smith always delivered the goods, even as the beats behind him changed,and he always displayed what I think of as outlandish good taste.
29:18The history of his instrument is neat.split. There's jazz organ before Jimmy Smith arrived and jazz organ after. Simple as that.Kevin Whitehead is the author of New Dutch Swing, Why Jazz, and Play the Way You Feel.Coming up, we remember the celebrated playwright Tom Stoppard. This is fresh air.One of Britain's most celebrated playwrights, Tom Stoppard, died last week at the age of 88.Condolences and tributes came from King Charles III, Mick Jagger,and the National Theater in Britain, where many of his plays were first staged.The theater released a statement saying that Stoppard's plays, quote,
30:38with their blend of intellectual curiosity, wit, and narrative experimentation,have made a lasting impact on the National Theater and on British.theater. His bold storytelling encouraged audiences to reflect on history, philosophy, and the humanexperience, unquote. Stoppard's best-known plays include The Real Thing, Arcadia, the Coast of Utopia,and Rosencranton Gildensterner dead. He wrote screenplays for the movies Shakespeare in Love,the Human Factor, The Russia House, Billy Bathgate, and Empire of the Sun. He was knighted in 2007.Terry Gross spoke with Tom Stoppard in 1991 when the movie adaptation was released of his play Rosencranton-Gildenstern are dead.Rosencranton-Gildenstern are minor characters in Shakespeare's Hamlet.
31:31They're Hamlet's old friends who unknowingly become part of a plot to have Hamlet killed,but Hamlet has them executed instead.Rosencrantz and Guildenstern never understand the larger story they are part of.This predicament so typical of minor characters is the subject of Stoppard's absurdist comedy.The play first opened at London's National Theater in 1967 and soon after had success on Broadway.Terry asked Stoppard why he wrote a story about minor characters in Hamlet.The first thing I liked about them is that they were two of them.And the double act has a long and honorable comic tradition.
32:14And I can see why, because they're fun to write.And these two people, not Shakespeare's version of them, but mine,I turn them into the kind of double act which everybody is familiar with.There's usually one who's a little brighter and quite often angry with the other onewho's a bit dim but sweet and so on.Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello.A little like that, yes.And the other thing about them was that in the story which they've been dropped into,
32:43they had this sort of very strangepredicament.When you look at Shakespeare's text,they're not really told what's happeningin that play.And furthermore, when they end up dead,they don't knowwhy. They don't know
32:59what they've done. In fact, they haven't done anything.So, they're well-meaning,and they're often presentedas villains, spieson the side of the bad King Claudius.But in point of fact,In fact, there's no reason to look at them like that.Now, I found them rather endearing.
33:19Well, you use a lot of wordplay in your work.And, in fact, let me play a clip here of a scene in which Rosencrantz and Gildenstern are playing, like, word game tennis.Oh, yes.You want to explain the way the game works?The idea is that it's two people who have to avoid answering questions.they have to answer a question with a questionand the first time somebody forgetsor breaks one of the rules, then he loses a point.
33:50What's the matter with you today?When? What? Are you deaf?Am I dead? Yes or no.Is there a choice? Is it the God?Fowl? No non-sequiters. 3, 2, 1 game all.What's your name? What's yours?You first. Statement.One love.
34:05What's your name when you're at home?What's yours? When I'm at home? Is it different at home?What home? Haven't you got one?Why do you ask?What are you driving?What's your name?Repetition, two love, match, point.Who do you think you are?
34:19Rhetoric, game and match.Do you think of yourself as having played word gamesin Rosencrantz and Guildensternas elaborate as the games Rosencrantz and Guildensternplay with each other?What's happening is thatthere are these two peoplewho are stuck there
34:38waiting for the next eventto discuss and talk about.Between Shakespeare's,scenes, they don't really have any purpose or role, and they pass the time in different ways.They discuss things, they speculate, and occasionally they get into some kind of game.Words is all they have available. They don't have TV or whatever. They're just there withthemselves. So, in some strange way, the predicament of the writers is the same as thepredicament of the characters, because in writing
35:12the play, I was in exactly thatsituation, that they had ascene between scenes.And there wasno plot that they were awareof. So they had to pass thetime, and I had to invent waysto help them to pass the time.
35:28So all three of us,Rosencounsel, Gurdenstern, and Iwerein the same situation.Now, one of the themes of your work is thedifference between art and life, kind of comparing art and life.And both you and Shakespeare have used plays within plays.Do you think that's a good device for exploring the difference between art and life?
35:49Because the framing play becomes reality, even though it's really theater too.Yes, it's something.I don't know why, but it's something about that, which clearly appears to me, becauseI've used it more than once, more than twice.There's something about writing about the relationship between one work of artinside or up against another known play by somebody else.There's something which makes sparks for me.And it got to a point a few years ago
36:23where I had to stop myself from doing another one of those.It was becoming a kind of mannerism.But anyway, in my case,I'm always writing about the ostensible subject matter,not the supposed subtext.And I'm constantly coming up againststudents, for example,who believe that
36:43I've written the playin a sort ofattempt to disguisewhat I'm really writing about.And I know what they mean, becauseperhaps on some level, you're doing that.But it's nothonestly, it's not really the way that
37:02writers think, I don't believe.Let's get into your background a little.You were born in Czechoslovakia,and your family fled because of the Nazis?Yes, I mean, in the sort of general phrase, the gathering war, you know.A lot of people left what looked like,what looked as though it might turn into a theater of war.And we went to Singapore, which was ironic because we got there in time for Pearl Harbor
37:30and the Japanese invasion.And we got women and children went on boats.My mother tells me that our boat was supposed to go to Australia,but for some reason or other, while we were out at sea,turned around and went to India,and that's how I ended up there.So women and children were given the passage on the boatsand the men stayed behind, so your father stayed behind?
37:52That's right, and he died in Singapore.And after the war, when we were in India,my mother remarried an Englishman whose name I now have.Stopper.Exactly.Do you have a lot of memories of being frightened a lotwhen you were a child and your family was fleeing Czechoslovakia and then Singapore.I remember, I think I remember being driven to the boat in Singapore,
38:17and I had a sense that there was some kind of air raid,and I certainly remember a Japanese zero airplane with its nose in the ground,just sort of where it had crashed.I remember being the air raid shelters.Everybody in my generation remembers the smell of sandbags.But in India, I'm afraid that protected by the innocence of childhood, I never felt unhappy or worried or nervous.I mean, obviously I must have done sometimes, but in a general way, I look on India as being a lost domain of childhood happiness.When you were writing the screen adaptation for Empire of the Sun, did you identify with the story at all?
39:06you know, because you were in Singapore during wartimeand you and your parents got away on the ship?Yeah, when I was asked to write that screenplay,they didn't know that my own childhoodwasn't that different from young gyms.Was he called Jim? Yes.But he was in Shanghai,but when I visited the location
39:35and saw the little boy's bedroom.It gave me a really spooky feelingbecause the designers, who must have researched it very thoroughly,they gave him books and things stuck on the walls,which triggered off memories of my own.I mean, they were my books,and over his bed was a thing,a thing called Flags of All Nations,
39:59a sort of map, a chart of different flags.and I remembered suddenly having thisabsolutely the same chartflags of all nations in my bedroomso it was a realtime trip butas for writing the storywell listen I didn't get put in a prisoner
40:19of war camp and I wasn'tchased around by Japanese soldiers noI want to thank you very much for talkingwith us oh I enjoyed it thank you very muchTom Stoppard speaking with Terry Gross in 1991the celebrated playwrightdied last week at ageComing up, John Powers reviews the new Brazilian film, The Secret Agent. This is fresh air.
40:43The new Brazilian film The Secret Agent is set during that country's dictatorship, which ran from1964 to 1985. It stars Wagner Mora as an honorable scientist who becomes a target of powerfulforces. The movie, which was directed by Cleberman Donchafilio, won two big prizes at Cannes, andis Brazil's submission for this year's Academy Awards. Our critic at large, John Powers,says it's even better than I'm Still Here, the Brazilian movie that won an Oscar earlier thisyear. If you've spent any time in a dictatorship, I've had that happy experience. You understandwhy your high school teachers were always praising democracy. You quickly learned that authoritarianstates are all about violence, inescapable corruption, and a sense of free-floating anxiety.
41:33You get a masterful portrait of what that's like in The Secret Agent,an unsettling yet very enjoyable new movie by Brazil's leading filmmaker Kleber Mendonsofielio.Set in 1977, near the middle of his country's two-decade dictatorship,this smart, brutal, often funny thriller, uses the travails of one ordinary manto capture a reactionary era in its daily realities and surreal absurdities,its public cruelty and private decency.The superb Brazilian actor Wagner Mora,who became famous here on Narcos,
42:13stars as a research scientist called Marcello,an innocent man on the lamb for reasons we only learn later.He heads to Recefe, a coastal city in northern Brazil,to pick up his young son from his late wife's parentsand then flee the country together.He takes refuge with Dona's suburb.a deliciously free-spoken septuagenarian, who's at once a real pistol and something of a saint.Her apartment house is a secret sanctuary for people in various types of trouble.
42:48As Marcello makes his escape plans, we also follow the bad guys, a couple of hitmen fromdown south, and Recife's gleefully crooked chief of police, who's a blast to watch, even thoughhe's a monster. We keep waiting for and fearing the moment these villains find Marcello.Adding to the craziness, Recefe is right in the middle of Carnival, and a bout of publichysteria about a man's severed hairy leg that has supposedly come back to life and isattacking the local citizenry. Now, Mendonso began as a critic, and his tastes ran fromart movies to shoot him-ups. Even as he honors the thriller genre byslowly building suspense, he tells his story with anuteur's freedom and looseness,
43:36leaping around in time, and often stepping away from the plot to show us the interesting texturesof Brazilian life. A gay cruising area, a local movie theater, a murdered body that's beenlying outside a gas station for days. Menonza is a loyal son of Recife, and his first majorfilm, 2012's neighboring sounds, used his own residential block as a metaphor for 21st centuryBrazil. Here, he goes back in time to bring alive the city's swirling history. From itscafes and apartments to its dingy alleyways and spectacular vistas, no movie this year hassuch a warmly detailed and loving sense of place. Mendonza's Reciphi is a vibrant, raciallymixed place, where good and bad live side by side. In the movie, its carnival is an eruption
44:29of samba and alcohol and joy that also, newspaper headlines tell us, leaves 91 peopledead. Like a political thriller from the Hollywood 70s, the secret agent presents us with anx-ray of society, from its highest reaches to its darkest corners. It's hard to imagine a richercast of characters, each individualized and respectfully giventheir humanity, be it the hitman who bristles at his employer's offhand racism, the Jewishtailor scarred with World War II bullet holes, the smug tycoon getting rich off the dictatorship,the secretary who has the hots for Marcello, or Marcello's late wife, who appears in only one scene,but she and that scene are lacerating. Stitching it all together is Mora, whose shape-shifting
45:20performance is a triumph of watchful subtlety, so quietly warm and sympathetic that we're withhim the whole way. There may be no better piece of screen acting this year than the one in whichMarcello first meets his fellow residence at Dona Sebastienas. More's amused melancholy gazetakes in each of them in a precise, generous way that makes you realize the kind of big soulhe actually has. The secret agent makes clever use of the moviejaws, which Marcello's son wants to see, even though the poster gives him nightmares.In a way, Mendonso's movie works like Spielbergs.We keep wondering, with mounting dread, if and when Marcello will get caught.
46:05But here, of course, the danger comes not from a real shark, but from a political one,a military junta where the rich and powerful feel entitled to crush anyone who merelyoffends them. At one point,eluding his pursuers,Marcelo steps onto a street filled withcarnival goers ecstatically partying.He has a drink and briefly joins in thedancing. And we realize how happy his world could be
46:32if only those in powerweren't trying to kill him.John Powers reviewed the new movie, The Secret Agent,now playing in New York and L.A.It's scheduled to roll out soon nationwide.On Monday's show, Homelessness in America.Patrick Markey spent two decades walking through New York City's tunnels, armories, and intake centers where families sleep on floors.His new book, Placeless, asks, what if homelessness isn't a personal failing, but a political choice?
47:04And what if the solution is simpler than we think?I hope you can join us.To keep up with what's on the show,get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. You can subscribe to ourYouTube channel at YouTube.com slash This is Fresh Air. We're rolling out new videos with in-studioguests, behind-the-scenes shorts, and iconic interviews from the archive. Fresh Air's executiveproducer is Danny Miller. Sam Brigger is our managing producer. Our senior producer today is RobertaShurrock. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional
47:44Additional engineering support by Joyce Lieberman, Julian Hartsfeld, and Deanna Martinez.Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne-Marie Baldonado, Lauren Crenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaliner, Susan Nucundi, and Anna Bown.Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. Hope Wilson is our consulting visual producer.For Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley, I'm David B. Incouli.
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