Randy Ray

Sometimes the only Birds of a Feather are found when one looks in a mirror. Sometimes, you’re IT in your little world, and keeping others from that fact comes with a price. Certainly, paying someone to find out things about your long, forgotten past, and then killing people who find out about the events in that very past sounds downright insane. Yet, that’s exactly what Orson Welles does in this week’s Hidden Flick, Mr. Arkadin a.k.a Confidential Report.

The eternal enfant terrible of the cinema wrote, directed and played the title role of the mysterious and eccentric billionaire (are there any other kinds?) who is trying to hide a shady past from his innocent adult daughter still wallowing in the fantasy that her father’s huge mound of cash was accumulated by good old fashioned hard labor. Nope, the man is downright filthy, corrupt and evil and she’ll find out eventually—or so he fears.

Welles, as he did so often in his directorial escapades, created a landmark visual and audio experience—truly a work of complete cinema—with bizarre camera set-ups, voice-overs in which he sometimes plays multiple characters, shadowy tricks of the light, buildings as medieval gothic playgrounds, towering figures hidden by masks (often Welles in the title role as the extremely wealthy man with a secret), and, as always, wonderfully strange actors playing characters you’d only find in a…well…Welles’ flick. READ ON for more about Welles’ Mr. Arkadin…

Lassie’s face was perfect for close-ups, according to Orson Welles. Somehow, as I listen to Trey Anastasio call out to the old pup on David Bowie from Providence, Rhode Island on December 29, 1994, that makes a lot of sense. Lassie got his close-up, alright, before Phish slammed the hook home and then whipped out a beaut duo of Halley’s Comet>Lizards for shaggy dog-storied measure. Alas, Phish did indeed get their due—ahhh…the Jammys—but did Lassie? Of course, she did. She is flealessly hailed as a Screen Canine Legend. Welles? Citizen Kane, yes. Everything else? Maybe not.

The Orson Welles vintage has been woefully underappreciated for far too long. To many cinenewbs, the artistic bottle was dusty and so was the liquor. Then again…the man didn’t make it easy on himself, burning through cash like a dreamer on a weekend bender in Atlantic City. He never had complete creative control over his projects after Citizen Kane—a film he made when he was 25, and the equivalent of hitting 80 home runs as a rookie. He would either lose final cut, or the celluloid would languish in a vault somewhere, growing a third chin, a gray beard, and earning a poisonous critical rep, OR—the mightiest cut of all—he’d make a masterpiece [insert several titles here] and some studio clown would slice the thing into unwatchable oblivion—dubio blackholeish. READ ON for more…

No, there isn’t a typo in the title of our latest search for obscure film gems. This week, we take a look at Breakfast with Hunter, a landmark cinematic achievement from award-winning documentary filmmaker Wayne Ewing.

For many years, Ewing had the distinct pleasure (and occasional nuisance) of being the next door neighbor to literary giant and the King of Gonzo Journalism, Hunter S. Thompson. Ewing managed to capture Thompson during many wild escapades in Hollywood, Louisville, and Manhattan but, more importantly, he was also able to film the legendary scribe at home in Woody Creek, Colorado, during long passages of peaceful, endearing moments that give strong evidence that Thompson’s public persona was just a mere smokescreen that often hid his much larger skills on the page and, in the end, betrayed and besmirched his historical record.

Read on for more about Wayne Ewing’s Breakfast With Hunter…

We’re extremely honored to welcome Randy Ray onto the Hidden Track team. You’re probably familiar with Randy’s work on both Relix and Jambands, but he’s also authored two novels with a third on its way. Here’s Randy’s first column:

Most people are unaware that on the initial release of London Calling, The Clash’s landmark double album, their hit single, arguably the most commercial piece of old school ear candy the band would ever record, wasn’t even listed on the sleeve.

Train in Vain appeared as a hidden track, the last song on side 4, kicking in after Revolution Rock, and solidified the legendary status of the album and the band. The gesture also spoke volumes about the post-punk quartet’s confidence that a) they could record a cool, timeless track, and b) they didn’t need to shove the product down the consumer’s throat by highlighting its appearance with even a slight mention on the sleeve.

That sort of hidden track mentality also feeds into my philosophy of live music and film. Like most people who either write or consume the many morsels of heady and witty words on this site, we are longtime Phish fans, as well—just sort of comes with the territory these days like the idea that most of us are either post-college, in college or live near one of those brick or ivy institutions. Anyway, I take that fact as a given and it follows that a lot of the old Phish head way of thinking feeds into our daily lives beyond the “1 for 3, 2 for 5” and “brotha can ya spare an extra” ingrained information.

The best comment I ever heard about improvisation actually came from Phish keyboardist, Page McConnell when he very simply stated that if the band had not been venturing out into the Great Unknown for 15 minutes, they would not have reached that point where everyone was in sync, a new form of music was being created on the spot, and the entire audience was part of that process. There are numerous examples from a 20-plus year career where Phish did, indeed, find this passage of space after the 10- or 12- or McConnell-branded 15-minute demarcation mark. Suffice to say, it required the band and fan to be patient through quite a bit of improvising before one got to that sweet spot.

Read on to find out what film Randy chose as the first Hidden Flick…