The Only 35mm Print of Tom Waits’s Big Time

|John Costello| When a character, on stage or on screen, breaks the fourth wall and another character notices and comments, something special happens. A skilled performer involves the audience as performers in the live performance. Unlike plays and fictional films, concert films… Continue reading

The Lyrical Loneliness of Down By Law

|Jackson Stern| Some of the best songs you can listen to when you’re at your lowest are the loneliest ones. When I was near the end of high school, I got my heart broken in a few different ways, like a lot of people do at that age, and I’d go for these long drives. Almost every day after school Continue reading

The Waits is Over: “Big Time” Finally (Kinda, Sorta) Brings Tom Waits Back to Minneapolis

|Chris Ryba-Tures| Y’all. After, like, 25 years of waiting, hoping, dreaming, I finally get to see Tom Waits in concert! Some of you have probably been waiting even longer. Don’t worry, you can come too. Get your ticket to see the mysterious junkyard troubadour, the skid-row Cyrano, Continue reading

Graft & Collusion: Finding the Real Tom Waits Within the Illusions of One from the Heart

|Sam L. Landman| As he ventured onto the American Zoetrope lot in the fall of 1980, fully prepared to write the soundtrack to Francis Ford Coppola’s One from the Heart, Tom Waits had already spent a majority of his career as an imposter. (And I say that lovingly, as a fan who’s… Continue reading