Desperately Seeking Tim Tams
by Wrongtom
I figured it was time to write something lighthearted when I spotted “World War 3” trending on Twitter this week, so who better to turn to for the japes than our own head-clown Boris Johnson?
This sack of fetid ham and hay decided — after we watched the statue of Edward Colsten get torn from it’s plinth, and subsequently learned a hell of a lot about the UK’s overlooked role in the Atlantic slave trade — that it was a good time for a jovial announcement about our freedom to make a “world-leading free trade agreement” with Australia. “Our shared history” was cited as he envisaged a brighter future where we “send you Marmite, and you send us Vegemite” before presenting a pack of Tim Tams as the reasonably priced answer to snacking in our post EU hell-scape.
Presumably, by “shared history” he was side-stepping the genocide of 90% of Aborigines at the hands of Brits by the end of the 18th century, having colonised New South Wales as compensation for our loss of plantations, following expulsion from America, £250,000,000 in debt from war, facing a gaggle of angry former slave owners, and overpopulated prisons. I have no issues with the trade deal in theory, I’ve enjoyed a Tim Tam myself from time to time, but I’d much prefer to see an end to this guff-turned-human’s reign over our current national bin fire.
I do have to thank Boris for reminding me of a truly great moment in the UK and Australia’s shared history, however. I refer you to the time Chris Lowe from The Pet Shop Boys took a wrong turn whilst searching for a recording studio in the suburbs of Melbourne, and wound up meeting none other than Helen Daniels sharing some goss one sunny morning on Ramsay Street.
I love a surprise cameo in TV and film, the more incongruous the better, from Michael Stipe selling ropey ice creams in The Adventures Of Pete & Pete, to Miles Davis busking in Scrooged. “Did you learn the song yesterday?” sneers Bill Murray’s Scrooge-lite TV exec Frank Cross.
The chariot of cameos, of course, is the 1985 Madonna vehicle Desperately Seeking Susan. Often dismissed as 80’s pop trash, DSS is in fact a counter-cultural satire, and perhaps the final gasp of downtown Manhattan’s axis of art, punk and no-wave which began with Warhol’s Factory and ended with the extortionate sale of loft spaces from Alphabet City to Tribeca.
Barely a few minutes go by without someone from New York’s no-wave fraternity popping into view, tooting a sax or touting their wares on a street corner, so let’s take a closer look at those involved…
RICHARD HELL
The film opens with Madonna’s Susan waking up in a hotel bed, a sleeping mobster by her side. She robs him of a pair of fancy earrings and exits before he’s murdered where he lies. It’s a fleeting glimpse but when he makes the headlines the following day, it turns out her bed partner was in fact one of the architects of the NYC punk scene, Richard Hell.
Moving to NYC at the turn of the 70s whilst trying his luck as a poet, Hell was there at the start of Television when they were The Neon Boys, and at the end of the New York Dolls when they became The Heartbreakers. With The Voidoids he scored a small hit with Blank Generation in ’77 which was dismissed by a lot of punks, but their chaotic live shows were a big influence on anti-rock ethos of no-wave. Their drummer Marc Bell would soon become Marky Ramone, and later play a really good funk and soul DJ set after me at a poorly attended gig in Liverpool in the mid 00s.
RICHARD EDSON
Desperately Seeking Susan depicts Manhattan as a treacherous place. Maybe not as raw as Mayor Abe Beame’s City but still no place for a small town girl like Rosanna Arquette’s Roberta who circumvents hustlers and street vendors as she stalks the cocksure Susan. Blink and you’ll miss them but veteran character-actor Giancarlo Esposito runs a stall selling sunglasses, and former Sonic Youth/Konk drummer/trumpeter Richard Edson can be seen trying his luck with Susan at a newspaper vending machine. “Hey baby, take a paper” he flirts before she dumps the whole stack at his feet. He’d just transitioned to film the year before in fellow no-waver Jim Jarmusch’s debut Stranger Than Paradise, and would go on to appear in the likes of Platoon, Good Morning Vietnam, Do The Right Thing, and Howard The Duck, but not before performing on a handful of fantastic records with the likes of The Offs, Konk, Liquid Liquid, and the debut mini LP by Sonic Youth.
ANNIE GOLDEN
Susan’s boyfriend Jim is in a band, of course. Before they hit the road we catch a glimpse of their nameless singer played by Annie Golden, formerly of Brooklyn power-pop-punks The Shirts. It’s safe to assume they played second fiddle to Blondie but there’s some great stuff in their catalogue. Here’s a full live show filmed in Colorado in 1979.
You may well have heard Golden’s solo single ‘Hang Up The Phone’ in John Hughes’ Sixteen Candles. You almost definitely saw her as mute inmate Norma in Orange Is The New Black.
ANN MAGNUSON
At her friend’s workplace The Magic Club — filmed at Harlem’s dilapidated Audubon Ballroom where Malcolm X was assassinated — Susan briefly encounters a cigarette girl, played by actor/artist/musician Ann Magnuson. At the turn of the 80s you might have been lucky enough to catch the statuesque Magnuson playing records or performing at downtown NY’s notorious Mud Club before she turned to the big (ok, not that big) screen with a brace of no-wave pictures for director couple Beth & Scott B (Vortex) and the ill-fated Anders Grafstrom who died soon after completing his debut feature The Long Island Four in 1980.
Ann made tracks with art-rockers Bongwater, Vulcan Death Grip and my personal favourites, the all female post-punk-funk percussion orchestra Pulsallama who recorded a couple of ramshackle singles for Dick O’Dell’s Y Records, home to the likes of Pigbag, Maximum Joy, and for one brief moment, Sun Ra. ‘The Devil Lives In My Husband’s Body’ is especially wild.
ARTO LINDSAY
Skip ahead and we join Susan as she places a bogus advert in the classifieds where she encounters an officious newspaper clerk played by Arto Lindsay. Don’t be fooled by Arto’s bookish drag, mind you. Behind those thick rimmed glasses and that preppy suit you’ll find the heart and mind of a seasoned noise-freak. Check his strangled guitar dissonance with his dislocated group DNA in Glenn O’Brien’s Downtown 81…
That’s not to say Lindsay exclusively made unrelenting noise. An increasing interest in Brazilian music led to joyful experiments in samba and bossa nova, forging collaborations with master percussionist Nana Vasconcelos. The pair can be heard on ‘Child Prodigy’ where they’re joined by Japanese composer Ryuchi Sakamoto.
JOHN LURIE
Following the demise of DNA, Arto formed a “fake jazz” band, The Lounge Lizards, who’s sax player John Lurie lurks in silhouette, serenading the neighbourhood next door to Roberta’s hunky new suitor Dez, a downtrodden projectionist at the infamous art-house mecca Bleecker St Cinema. He lives above a chinese restaurant who inexplicably let him borrow their delivery scooter, such was the symbiotic life of downtown New York in the 80s where the working classes intermingled with struggling artists, soundtracked by lonesome sax solos, apparently. More recently, Lurie captured our hearts with a short series of fishing trips with celebrity friends including Matt Dillon, Tom Waits and Dennis Hopper. That latter with whom he went searching for the elusive and possibly mythical giant squid in Thailand.
ANNE CARLISLE
Meanwhile, Dez returns home to find his apartment ransacked by his booji ex, Victoria, who’s new boyfriend casually announces he’ll wait for her outside “in the Porsche.” Victoria, played by Anne Carlisle, will be known to many from the tone-deaf trans gag in Crocodile Dundee when Paul Hogan gooses the cross-dressing Gwendoline. In fact Carlisle had been blurring gender lines since performing dual male and female roles in Slava Tsukerman’s lurid and utterly insane Liquid Sky in which tiny aliens travel to earth in search of a heroin fix, only to become addicted to pheromones in the human brain. There’s murder, intrigue, luminous face paint, and a bit where Carlisle’s drug dealing girlfriend performs ‘Me & My Rhythm Box’ at Danceteria, the labyrinthine nightclub which acted as a crucible for punk, disco and hip hop in Manhattan, hosting early sets by the likes of New Order, The Beastie Boys and Madonna. It’s also where Roberta’s husband tracks down Susan, flailing her arms around to ‘Into The Groove’ as lines between fact and fiction in Desperately Seeking Susan are blurred once again.
SUSAN SEIDELMAN
Behind the camera, and almost definitely the reason for all these cameos, was Susan Seidelman who’s previous film Smithereens might be considered DSS’s less polished predecessor, with it’s protagonist meandering her way around Greenwich Village clubs and bars, meeting artists and punks, trying to fund her way out of the city and over to LA. It also features Richard Hell, plus a cameo from no-wave filmmaker Amos Poe.
Seidelman wound up at Cannes in ’82 when Smithereens became the first independent US film to be invited to compete for the Palme D’Or. It’s a skeletal sketch for what she later made flesh with Desperately Seeking Susan’s bigger budget, and if you’ve got the time, it’s worth watching them both back to back. I’d also recommend Seidelman’s autobiographical doc Confessions Of A Suburban Girl which merges talking heads with dramatised scenes and archive footage as she walks us through her teenage years growing up in the Philly suburbs of the 1960s. So grab yourself a bag of unreasonably priced Tim Tams, get comfy and settle in for the next 50 minutes because here’s the documentary in full.
