One Trick Pony

Paul Simon’s One Trick Pony (1980) was one of the last in a string of rock-star movie vanity projects, drug and/or ego-driven spectaculars like Magical Mystery Tour (Beatles), Renaldo and Clara (Bob Dylan), A Poem is a Naked Person (Leon Russell), Journey Through the Past (Neil Young) and 200 Motels (Frank Zappa). No matter how surreal, artsy or faux documentary, once the vibe of self-indulgence escapes the bottle, it’s difficult putting it back.

One Trick Pony, written by and starring Simon, is a straightforward narrative about an “aging” rock star attempting to fix a broken marriage, keep his band on the road and record a hit that’ll get back him into the big time.

The idea of rock stars growing older was a thing in 1980 as Lennon and Dylan approached 40 and Woodstock was more than ten years in the rearview mirror. Classic rock (when it was still just plain “rock”) was gasping for air and couldn’t keep up with the energy and zest of punk and new wave.

Simon plays one-hit wonder Jonah Levin, lucky enough to stay off the oldies carousel as he continues to tour and write new music, a lifestyle that ultimately busted his marriage. “You get to a certain age and rock and roll is sort of pathetic,” scolds his wife (Blair Brown).

Sure, she’s bitter but Jonah is performing songs with titles like How the Heart Approaches What It Yearns and God Bless the Absentee. He’s not exactly Ozzy Osbourne or Lux Interior.

One Trick Pony may reveal more about Paul Simon than Jonah Levin. If Art Garfunkel could have an acting career working with hotshot directors like Mike Nichols and Nicolas Roeg, why not Simon? And if Artie could unveil his pale scrawniness in Carnal Knowledge (1971) and in the originally rated X and released a few months before One Trick Pony, Bad Timing (1980), why couldn’t Simon? In One Trick Pony we get two bathtub scenes, bedroom sex with Brown and, most embarrassing of all, Simon’s naked torso with tight jeans, more Burt Reynolds than sensitive singer/songwriter.

The one time when Simon allows himself to be filmed in an unflattering light is when he and his band walk through an airport: he looks to be nearly a foot shorter than his fellow musicians, and with his perpetual oversized baseball cap and solemn look comes off like a Little Leaguer braving a stomachache.

Simon’s acting is serviceable, much better than the wooden line readings he gave in Annie Hall (1977). Jonah’s band, an all-star group of studio musicians, cook during the live concert numbers, the only time Simon seems to come alive. A collegiate looking Lou Reed plays a record producer and when Jonah agrees to appear at a “salute to the sixties” event, there’s some exciting footage of Sam & Dave, plus a reunited Lovin’ Spoonful. And Tiny Tim wearing this cool custom suit.

If anything, One Trick Pony is notable today as possible source material for This Is Spinal Tap (1984). Harry Shearer has a brief role as Jonah’s manager, a member of Jonah’s band offhandedly mentions "the bigger the cushion, the better the pushin'" and the band shows up for a three-date gig only to find the club shuttered after the owner ran off with the money. Jonah’s band also plays Cleveland’s Agora Ballroom, obviously successfully navigating the “little jog to the left” and finding the stage.

Clocking in at two and a half minutes, Paul Simon wrote one of the best songs about the ups and downs of a traveling musician on the road, Homeward Bound. There was no need to stretch it out into ninety minutes.

Born on the Fourth of July

In George Vecsey’s excellent 2006 book Baseball: A History of America’s Favorite Game, he devotes a chapter to the New York Yankees titled Why the Yankees Exist, writing “Quite like America itself, the Yankees were either classic champions, envied and admired all over the world, or else they were haughty oppressors, resented down the downtrodden masses.”

Moving on to George Steinbrenner (again, this is 2006), Vecsey added: “New York in the mid-1970s encouraged more flamboyant magnates. A builder with eccentric orange hair and equally flaming ego, Donald Trump, openly boasted about his real estate prowess.

“The Boss (Steinbrenner) seemed to take his cue from being born on the Fourth of July, surrounding the Yankees with patriotic rituals involving flags, anthems, military choruses, and, for playoff games, trained American eagles soaring over Yankee Stadium."

This is the same Steinbrenner who was convicted of making illegal contributions to Richard Nixon’s presidential campaign (with no prison time) and was suspended from baseball at one point for paying a known gambler to dig up dirt about Dave Winfield, with whom he was feuding.

He was quotable and commandeered the back pages of New York City’s tabloids, then hijacked national sports pages on the morning of the 2010 All-Star Game by dying.

Gee, much of this seems strangely familiar. 

Factoring in their separate relationships with Rudy Giuliani and this sentence – frightening in so many ways – from Wikipedia's Steinbrenner entry: "In 1989, after seeing Donald Trump on The Morton Downey Jr. Show, he wrote a letter to Trump suggesting he should run for president," the public lives of Steinbrenner and Trump are intertwined in many ways.

Yankee fans of a certain age learned that if they squinted hard enough, Steinbrenner’s lording over their favorite team could fade into the background. Today, some New York Giants fans are learning to compartmentalize Jaxson Dart’s apparent admiration for the current administration. Or as many did a decade ago, choosing to look past all that embarrassing commentary by several NBA players that the earth was flat.

Sometimes viewing things through that sort of lens is the only way to keep your sanity. 

P.S.

George Vecsey turns 86 on July 4. As a reporter for Newsday and The New York Times he covered the New York Mets from their inception; his 1970 book Joy in Mudville is the franchise’s origin story. Vecsey also wrote Coal Miner’s Daughter, about Loretta Lynn and was one of 25 Newsday journalists who contributed to the 1969 novel Naked Came the Stranger, a satire of the then-current popular literature, as well as sex in suburbia. There’s some Metsiana in the name of the main character in Vecsey’s contribution, Morton Earbrow, inspired by Casey Stengel who said Gil Hodges was so strong that he could "squeeze your earbrows off."