"I'd always dreamed of being my own star"

You've been asked if you're a feminist so many times, and you're tired of that. But after you left Porter [Wagoner]'s show, it became an important moment of empowerment for women. You said, essentially, "I deserve my own space."

Yeah, you're right. I had always dreamed of a show of my own. I'd always dreamed of being my own star. I had never in a million years thought about being just a girl singer in somebody else's band. I kept trying to tell Porter, "I need a little freedom. If I'm going to stay here, I need to do this, do that." Oh Lord, everything I said was a big fight.

It was the hardest thing I ever did because it was scary, the leaving and the going. Everybody was saying, "You're making a big mistake. You're one of the best, hottest girl singers in the business, and if you leave Porter, you're not likely to do well." I wasn't afraid of my future because I truly believed I had one. But it was the going, having to hurt people that have helped you. Through my intuition and prayer and faith in myself, that's where I got the courage to do it. My first million-selling record [1976's Here You Come Again] was after I left Porter's show, after I went ahead and took on new management, did all the things I felt I needed to do. I've just been going ever since.

We still live in a world where women are fighting for equal pay, let alone respect. Are you proud that women particularly can turn to you for that example?

Absolutely. I kept asking for a raise, but the whole time I was with Porter, the whole seven years I stayed, my salary never changed. Porter justified it by the fact that I was making royalties, publishing my songs. He made every excuse. Porter would buy me gifts and publicise the fact he'd got me gifts, when I kept saying, Why don't you just treat me fair? I was never going to be any more than what I was, Porter Wagoner's girl singer. I didn't want to make as much money as him. It was his show. I don't care if you're a man or a woman or whatever your colour or your religion: if you do the work, you should be paid for it. It's not about anything other than your work.

- Grayson Haver Currin interviews Dolly Parton, Mojo magazine, November 2023, p.37

What Ridley Scott learned from making Blade Runner

Midway through, the Guardian ran an interview in which Scott said that he preferred British crews, because he could give them orders and they'd say, "Yes, guv'nor!" The crew printed up T-shirts that read "YES GUV'NOR MY ASS!" Scott and his British compatriots tried to quell the insurrection by wearing T-shirts reading “XENOPНОBIA SUCKS." The budget ran two million dollars over. The final days were a frenzy, with the last scene - Rutger Hauer's moody android death - shot against the last sunrise to dawn before Scott's cameras would be taken from him. In postproduction, Scott was fired - twice - but worked his way back.

When preview audiences expressed confusion, Scott, against his better judgment, added a voice-over and a happy ending in which Deckard and his android paramour flee Los Angeles; Kubrick gave him helicopter footage left over from The Shining.

Blade Runner came out in June 1982, two weeks after E.T., which synched better with the sunny Reagan era than Scott's bleak dystopia did. [Pauline] Kael wasn't its only detractor; another critic wrote, "I suspect my blender and toaster oven would just love it." After making six million dollars on its opening weekend, the film all but disappeared. Although it grew into a cult classic and became a touchstone for such filmmakers as Christopher Nolan and Denis Villeneuve (who directed the 2017 sequel), Scott still speaks of Blade Runner with an ache. Asked what it taught him, he sounded like a defiant general routed by an undeserving enemy: "I learned that the only opinion that matters, when all is said and done - even with failure in your face, and you're lying on the mat, crushed - is, What did you think of it?"

- Michael Schulman, 'Napoleon Complex', New Yorker, 13 November 2023, p.43

See also:
Movies: The refreshingly brutal candour of The RKO Story, 27 July 2021
Movies: Parker Posey on working with Christopher Guest, 31 August 2020

Movies: Young Spielberg, 27 September 2017

Undo the blue, be bright and shiny new

Thursday music corner: Iraina Mancini is a British singer-songwriter and DJ, who released her first album, Undo The Blue, in 2023. The title track of the album, a collaboration with the band Sunglasses for Jaws, was produced by Jagz Kooner (possibly best known for producing Primal Scream's cover of Some Velvet Morning with Kate Moss), and was released as the album's first single in 2022. The 60s-70s influenced music video was directed by New Zealand film director Marc Swadel, who has shot music videos for a wide range of artists including Einstürzende Neubauten, Devo, Sonic Youth, The Fall, Teenage Fanclub, Nick Cave, Iggy and the Stooges, The 3Ds, The Clean, Connan Mockasin, Bailterspace, Dinosaur Jr, Sebadoh, Pavement, Liam Finn, and The Cramps.

Iraina Mancini - Undo The Blue (2022) 

See also:

Music: Iraina Mancini - Sugar High (St Etienne remix, 2023)

Music: Jonathan Bree - When We Met (2023)

Music: Primal Scream & Kate Moss - Some Velvet Morning (2003)

Wellington Anniversary Day 1924

In 1924 Anniversary Day, the 84th anniversary of the founding of the city of Wellington, fell on 22 January, a Tuesday. The main focuses of anniversary day in the capital were the annual regatta for the nautically minded and the opening of the summer racing carnival at Trentham racetrack for those fond of horseflesh. The capital's womenfolk were encouraged to outfit themselves grandly for the occasion, as this advertisement for racewear in the Dominion indicates:

(The IRD's inflation calculator estimates that the Shantung silk frock at 37/6 above would cost $225 today).

The Dominion also reports on the sailing trophy awarded as part of the regatta, the Sanders Cup, which was first given in 1921 in honour of the Great War hero Lt-Cdr William Sanders VC DSO. Sanders, the only New Zealand sailor to win the Victoria Cross, successfully drove off a German U-boat on his first mission as captain, but lost his life to another U-boat a few missions later. The Sanders Cup is still competed for today and is the oldest sailing trophy still awarded in New Zealand.

The Dominion's editorial is chiefly concerned with political events in Britain, and focuses on the imminent formation of Britain's first ever Labour government, led by Ramsay McDonald, within hours of the publication of the article. The editorial takes a sceptical approach to the new administration: 

As it is at present organised, the British Labour Party includes, with men of comparatively moderate views, a number of extremists whose talk and ideas are those of the Moscow International. These extremists are, as a group, actively belligerent, and habitually regard all strikes as right and all opposition to strikes as wrong. They are an integral and not by any means unimportant element of the Labour Party. Hitherto they have been at least tacitly accepted in that character by the leaders and representatives of moderate Labour, but a searching test such as the railway strike may provide is not unlikely to demonstrate that the two wings of the Labour Party are incapable of working whole-heartedly together.  

Elsewhere, the Dominion reported on a fine night's entertainment had the previous evening at Wirths' Circus:

The Flying Lloyds gave an exhibition of triple somersaulting, double twisting, and reverse flights, done at a height of twenty feet from the ground, the like of which has rarely before been seen in Wellington. They fully merited the thunderous applause with which their turn was greeted. Equally dangerous and calling for the utmost degree of skill, as well as application of nerve and strength, was the turn of Evans and Perez. To climb up a 80-foot pole balanced on the shoulders of a man, and from the top do hand-balancing feats is not an everyday accomplishment, and the spectators literally held their breath.

Tickets to the circus located at Cable St ranged from three to seven shillings (plus tax), with children half price.

See also:
History: Wellington Anniversary Day 1850, 22 January 2015

History: Wellington 150 - a capital anniversary, 26 July 2015

History: Shipping in Wellington, 1850-70, 12 June 2009

A friend won't say it's over and go out just for spite

Thursday music corner: Tommy Boyce (1939-94) and Bobby Hart (b.1939), known collectively as Boyce and Hart, were a singing and songwriting duo best known for their many compositions recorded by the Monkees, including Last Train To Clarksville and most of the band's self-titled first album. The duo also released three studio albums under their own names from 1967 to 1969. 

I Wonder What She's Doing Tonight is Boyce and Hart's most successful single released under their own names, reaching number eight in the US Billboard charts in 1968. It was the title and opening track of their second album, released in 1968. The modern video below featuring 1960s TV actors Barbara Eden and Elizabeth Montgomery is mostly not contemporaneous to the recording, although some of it is from a 1970 episode of Bewitched in which Boyce and Hart are performing a different number, I 'll Blow You A Kiss In The Wind. (Also, Elizabeth: your guitar's not plugged in...)

Boyce & Hart - I Wonder What She's Doing Tonight (1968)

See also:

Music: Boyce & Hart - The Ambushers (I Wonder b-side, 1968)

Music: The Monkees - Words (1967)

Music: The Monkees - A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You (1967)

Wellington Criterion: NZ Cycle Classic

Road racers cycling the fifth and final day of the Cycle Classic in downtown Wellington, 14 January 2024.