I was wondering whether or not the original King Kong was available online, and, in the process of searching, stumbled across this cover of the Daniel Johnston song “King Kong” by Tom Waits… If you’re interested, you can hear 30 seconds of the original here.
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My mind. It has been blown.
Speaking of Tom Waits.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZChJus0qbWs
I’m a big fan of Daniel Johnston, but this isn’t one of my favorites, to be honest. I just like King Kong, and Tom Waits. It’s got all the elements of a rock ‘n roll perfect storm. I just wish I liked it more…
I just checked and there is a British film called King Thong. I was hoping that I’d be wrong, but I knew I wouldn’t be.
So no one wants to discuss this glorious convergence of King Kong, Daniel Johnston and Tom Waits?
If I wanted to, I could post 100 comments in this thread, and no one could stop me.
Except for maybe Steve Cherry or Linette, who also have the administrative passwords.
And I can see Linette from where I’m sitting, and I know that she’s otherwise engaged. That only leaves Mr. Cherry.
Hmmmm…..
I just wish I liked it more…
I would very much enjoy watching you pull a hundred comments out of your ass on something you wished you liked more.
Then you’d know what most of us go through every night on this blog.
April Fools!
I think it takes a certain strength of character to keep making comments on your own stuff when no one else feels like it. Or maybe it helps develop strength of character. Or… is somehow positive… in some other face-saving way…
…eventually.
After commenting, I realized it was just past midnight, EST. Has anyone else noticed that Mark appears to have created his own time zone?
Black Jake? You still up? Whadda say? I bet in a few minutes we can kick out a hundred comments on DJ, KK and TW…
Okay, anyone else? I’ll start. I think King Kong is the music industry, aka Tom Waits (TW), that profits on Daniel Johnston’s (DJ) innocence (played by Ann Darrow) for the public’s morbid amusement (Mark Maynard, et. all) .
I like Tom Waits music quite a bit, but watching video of him, sorry Kelch, kind of ruins the suspension of disbelief.
The Tom Waits version of the song came out in 2004. Part of a “tribute.”
I think this King Kong looks funny when his big face with the big white teeth come at you.
I haven’t played this clip yet.
When I think that somebody with a little time on their hands edited the King Kong footage to neatly coincide with Tom Waits’ cover, and that Mark finds that a “glorious convergence,” I start to understand him a bit more. Specifically, the beautiful procreation between things like Ricky Nelson and a giant octopus.
I wish the bug jawing middleman, Tom Waits, had been left out of the loop on this one.
Ah. I was just starting to feel alone. I’ll give you time to watch the clip.
King Kong symbolizes a big gorilla on an Island who likes tiny white chicks for some reason, and I guess he gets pissed off from being on stage or something, so he retreats into himself and writes old timey dark music, as if entertaining people is his revenge on the world and will bring his innocence back, which it won’t, so the planes shoot him and he dies from bullets and falling because those things actually do kill people, whereas a broken heart just makes you whine and write selfish music until you realize you’re just acting like a chode.
I still haven’t watched the clip. I’m going to bed.
what…with only 87 comments left to accomplish something entirely fleeting and meaningless?
We haven’t even started to discuss the symbolism of the troubled island that KK was ripped from and thrust into the spotlight. True, he battled his personal demons/dinosaurs, just like DJ, but he was ultimately safe in that isolated wilderness. Even if he was just an overgrown monkey, he felt like a king. Then society intrudes, makes him an object of public curiosity and profit…
As an aside, I first heard the DJ version without reading the song titles and didn’t get that it was about King Kong. I’m not sure if I liked it better before or after.
Okay, I’m realizing I’ve only got, at best, 50 comments left in me tonight. Rather than posting them here, I’ll count them jumping over fences.
“It was like a phallic symbol…and he took his woman to the top of that towering temple…just him and his screaming woman.”
DJ’s cliff notes are impressive.
It really makes for a rather stark and honest summation of the movie.
TW’s borrowed cadence makes me feel like I been to a very dirty church which is as provocative as it is contrived.
My favorite moment in KK is when you see the Empire State Building and can barely make out his figure climbing it. He was so huge in the jungle; now he’s just an ant climbing up civilization’s cock.
So, maybe the TW, KK, DJ combo do provide something. You’ve got the whole power of nature vs. power of civilization thing, then you’ve got the perceived innocent expression of DJ with the carefully crafted imitation and near perfect impersonation of Waits. Sexuality, exploitation, religion, commerce, innocence, desire… maybe it does mix.
Or, maybe the whole DJ affection is just about how musicians and other artists always imagine themselves to be “king kongs,” these other creatures and outcasts and can’t deal with fame and their desire for it. Maybe once tom waits or death cab for cutie become Tom Waits they have to latch onto someone like DJ to protect their image of themselves as a troubled outsider, when they’re really just a sudden pop.
Maybe they all feel swallowed by the likes of NYC even as they’re climbing to the top.
Maybe they can’t trust success or at least come to peace with it.
I can’t find the Gordon Gano cover from the same album…
I feel like a Gordon Gano cover of would also be worth discussion.
That should have read “cover of impossible love.”
On the other hand, maybe the message is that we should learn to appreciate beauty without trying to possess it or capitalize on it. Really, how different is KK (DJ) from the forces that were seeking to own him than he was of the beauty he was trying to possess?
Maybe the message is that 100 comments is an awful lot, and we should all just wake up and go to bed.
I had love to deal with
as well as fighter planes.
Not only my body in the clouds
but my head as well.
Pierced by cupid’s arrows,
blasted by machine gun fire,
it got so I didn’t know
one from the other.
So I toppled, I fell.
The allure of woman,
the inhumanity of man…
hard as I hit,
it was like the ground saved me.
I’ll pick this up. I’m sure we can get this post to 100 comments by the end of the day.
Did anyone else think the Peter Jackson version of King Kong sucked? I mean, how hard do you have to work to turn a movie in which a giant ape fights a dinosaur into unwatchably boring garbage?
It was sort of the anti-Jaws. Because in Jaws, you don’t see the shark for so long, but it makes it more exciting and suspenseful, but in Jackson’s King Kong, everything before the ape shows up is just boring.
I’ve always wondered if they maintained a consistent scale throught the movie (the old version). From the first scene where he appears, to the dinosaur fight, to the voyage, to the theater, to the Empire State Building, is Kong a consistent size? If so, how big, and if not, what is the variance?
“How much should I pay the sitter?” has 210 comments. Surely we can get this post to 100 with a conscious effort!
I don’t think I’m going to be able to match OEC’s 24 comments.
Kong should have been white.
Waits should have been black.
The world would have been a better place.
Tom Waits lived in a swimming pool for three years. Not many people know that.
I bet you could roll a marble through King Kong’s fingerprints.
Here’s your white king kong.
I didn’t know they had even invented dinosaurs in 1933.
Wow, what a great video.
I like claymation better than CGI. I think someone should bring it back and everyone should agree to like it so it will be brung back.
This movie was deeply shaping for me; it was an awakening. It’s a favorite among many in the community.
Also, King Kong brought it on himself because he refused to be civilized. You don’t see Barny getting shot all to hell by biplanes, cause Barny got his mind right and didn’t let no triflin’ bitch provoke him into losing his cool.
Real Kings control themselves, Kong.
Holy crap, I almost missed hitting the record button for the ER finale while I was trying to think up comments.
You know what else pisses me off? That movies portray herbivorous dinosaurs as gentle giants. What are they basing that on? Other herbivores are mean as hell. Elephants and hippos kill people all the time, not to eat them, just because they’re mean as hell. Bulls gore people, woodchucks will bite the shit out of you. Herbivores are mean. Those brontosauruseses or whatever in Jurasic Park should have head-butted those kids out of that tree and stomped on them until they liquified, all mean and shit.
The thing with King Kong is why the DNR would rather you kill nuisance animals than relocate them.
I got a “Fur Harvester” License from the DNR website today. It costed $15 and I printed it out and laminated it with packing tape. Now I’m a real trapper, like the guys in King Kong.
Read the article that I just posted on the front page… Apparently raccoon pelts are going for $10 a piece in Detroit. The meat can go for up to $12.
I hope they all died in the last episode of ER. I think that all shows should end like that. In the case of ER, I think it would be fitting if somehow they all tripped, one after another, and fell on scalpels and the like… Just an hour of one person after another, tripping and falling on sharp things. I think that would be a great way to go out as a series.
And I think you could roll a bowling ball through King Kong’s fingerprints.
I mean the little grooves of his fingerprints. Like in the sworl.
That’s good TV writing, Mark, by the way. I’d be delightedly entertained.
I’m thinking we can really get the ball rolling on the Ypsi groundhog fest now. This is the time of year to trap them, apparently. I’m short on corpse storage space at the moment, so if anyone’s moved by community spirit to volunteer some freezer space, it’d sure be appreciated.
35 more comments to go.
Can people flip the bird on prime time TV?
If any of you patriarch’s hadn’t noticed, King Kong is a Queen. The anatomy is clearly that of a female gorilla which, when you watch it, defines every scene of the movie far more coherently.
I was raised Presbyterian back when that meant that my momma wasn’t allowed to nurse me past six months of age. Watching this movie at the age of 15 was the first time I realized women had nipples. My mom marched me out of the theater with my eyes covered after that scene. It was twenty or thirty years I guess before I ever saw the rest of the move. Before that I’d imagined breasts as smooth tiny buttocks. Opened up a whole world for me.
I sure wish whoever wrote that song had included the part about the nipples.
What is Tom Waits waiting for? Maybe a song he has ripped off somebody else?
Dang. Seventy comments … that’s so close to 100 that I’m tempted to round it out … but then, 70 percent is a passing grade…
Cmandler,
Hell yes Jackson’s version sucked so bad I couldn’t even finish it. I still don’t what happened. There’s no way that would inspired Daniel Johnston even as a thirteen year old boy.
And I’m pretty sure Kong is a consistent size although I think the scale of the background varies.
white kong.
…is the gateway drug to “a href=”http://merlin-works.com/uploaded_images/IMG_0204-759592.jpg”>tighty whitey kong.
Wow. I really messed up that link.
Paw. Daniel Johnston wet the same sheets for 34 years. Most people know that.
BJ. I bet you could stroll a sable through Tom Wait’s underpants.
Luke. Darwin invented dinosaurs in the 1850s. It was the part of the whole “over the top” victorian era thing. They also invented sewage.
It was a beautiful time.
BJ. It’s stop motiondammit. Not claymation.
Furrieballs, And here I always thought this movie was the most influential among your community.
Okay, I think we’re up to a B minus, anything else would just be overachieving…
Although I did want to explore one more thing…
Daniel Johnston.
Johnson is a common reference to a phallus (e.g., “he whipped out his Johnson), but it adds a “t.” So, in Daniel’s name you have a phallus with a crucifix, which seems like fitting summary of the movie.
Although Marion’s analysis would challenge the above. I would like to hear more of the interpretation of scenes from that perspective.
I promise, I think, my really very last comment which is simply aboutDaniel Johnston and all he implies about “songwriters,” success, imitation, ego, industry and the aping of desire.
cmadler wrote, “It was sort of the anti-Jaws. Because in Jaws, you don’t see the shark for so long, but it makes it more exciting and suspenseful, but in Jackson’s King Kong, everything before the ape shows up is just boring.”
That is the same reason I can’t believe people call “The Birds” a classic. It was so boring, I didn’t even get to the part with the birds. I fell asleep after the first three hours of it.
Wait, I forgot. I fall asleep during any movie in which Hillary Swank’s ass doesn’t make at least a cameo appearance.
Jim, are you saying that breasts are not smooth, tiny buttocks?
You just ruined my life. Thanks.
It’s 4:49 am.
I meant 4:50.
Even the internet’s pretty dead this time of morning. Another good reason to learn Mandarin, or perhaps Australian.
I could break into your houses and I bet you’d sleep right through it. Or at least poop on your doorsteps. I think the primary reason there’s not more poop on your doorsteps is that people aren’t generally inclined to do it. Not because of cops.
The cops don’t poop on your doorstep?
Not literally.
I guess a lot of people get up around 4:00 normally. I should quit my complaining. I get to watch the Asian markets ticking away for a few hours. Still, for the cost of fighting off a dinosaur or two in mortal combat, I could sleep in as late as I wanted every day. That explains why he was so pissed. I stand by my opinion that he should have dealt with his upset feelings more maturely, though.
What the hell have you been doing up since 2:00, Patrick?
Oh, 3:00, I mean. Mark’s blog is in its own timezone.
Four more to go after this one.
Should we let Mark take the torch across the finish line?
I’m not going to handicap myself for the sake of Mark’s feelings.
King Kong out-competed the Tyrannosaurus, the US Government out-competed King Kong… I guess it’s the law of the jungle no matter where you go.
One more.
100