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Metro Newspaper Santa Cruz
Week of May 12-19, 2004
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Maz Appeal
Aptos artist James Mazzeo is at the center of Neil Young's vision for 'Greendale'
By Rebecca Patt
Not far from here in the fertile depths of Neil Young's imagination lies a
coastal town of rugged green hills called Greendale, the namesake of the musical
movie kicking off the Santa Cruz Film Festival on Thursday, May 13.
The movie's dialogue is a Neil Young soundtrack telling the story of Greendale,
whose denizens include the Green family and assorted characters such as an
art gallery owner named Lenore, a cop named
Carmichael and the devil himself, who does a funky shimmy down the sidewalk
in one of the movie's best scenes. The film has no sound other than the 10
tracks of the Greendale soundtrack, which the actors lipsync
in place of regular dialogue.
The plot has to do with a family saga, sudden murder, drug dealings and political
and environmental activism, among other themes. Oh, and there's a gratuitous
dancing cheerleader scene. Young said he wrote the songs in the car on the
way over to the studio every morning.
"When I was writing these songs, I was very surprised. 'Cause I'd never
written a song that had characters in it and then another song that had the
same characters in it. And then another one, day after day," Young told
audiences during a solo acoustic performance of Greendale in Dublin,
Ireland. "I don't make this stuff up, really, so when it happens, it
surprises me as much as anybody else."
If the end result is typical of Young's iconiclastic reputation, that suits
Aptos artist James "Maz" Mazzeo just fine. A longtime friend of
Young's, Mazzeo's paintings and pen-and-ink drawings are featured prominently
throughout the film, and he plays the part of Earl Green.
"Neil likes working between the lines," says Mazzeo. "People
have to work if they want to be a part of this thing, and the viewer has to
be a part of the process. His art is not obvious. My art is not obvious."
Greendale Is Us
Greendale was filmed just a stretch up Highway 1 from Santa Cruz, around Pescadero,
Half Moon Bay and Young's ranch in Woodside. Local pride will swell at seeing
Grandma Green cruising around town past Duarte's Tavern. The house where the
Green family lives--known as the
Double E--is one of the homes on Young's property, and the hillside where
Sun Green builds a big "No War" sign out of hay bales belongs to
Young's neighbor Dale Djerassi, who also shot some brief footage in the film
of oil drilling at the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Young wrote, directed and filmed almost the entire movie with his own camera,
a little hand-held super 8. The credits list the director as Bernard Shakey--a
frequent alias of Young's. Shakey makes a very quick cameo in the film as
Wayne Newton.
"Neil loves cameras. If Neil didn't write songs and play guitar, he'd
probably be a cinematographer in Hollywood," says Mazzeo.
Greendale is not Young's first foray in pushing cinematic boundaries, although
it's his most multifaceted project yet. The first Shakey Pictures production
was called Journey Through the Past, and it sometimes
used to show as an opener to the Woodstock movie. Featuring footage
inspired by Young's dreams and hippie life in Topanga circa the early 1970s,
it earned a reputation from the few who saw it as unwatchable and confusing.
Greendale is a multimedia blitz, encompassing the movie, the concert tour,
the book and the CD, which comes with a DVD of Young performing acoustically
in Dublin. Another DVD now out shows the making of Greendale, and yet another
of the live concert is in the works.
According to Mazzeo, Young is especially interested in making DVDs because
the sound quality is superior to CDs.
"If he can make an album with the newest and best in sound, the DVD-A
five-channel sound, and he can be a cameraman too with the DVD visual, then
ding-dong--it's time to make a DVD," says Mazzeo.
Maz-ive Attack
Mazzeo is now putting the finishing touches on over 140 pen-and-ink illustrations
for the book of Greendale, which will likely be released in November along
with the DVD of the film.
"In the back, there is a really nice supplement all about me and my artwork
and my biography, which is really going to be a feather in my cap when it
comes out," he says.
A playful and endearing guy with bright blue eyes, Mazzeo comes off like part
magician and part beach bum. In the movie, Earl Green is seen dejectedly hauling
his paintings--actually Mazzeo's--back and forth from his camper bus--which
is actually Mazzeo's camper, as well.
Mazzeo is best known as the artist behind Young's 1975 Zuma album cover, a
drawing of naked women and prehistoric birds which enjoyed the distinction
of being selected by Rolling Stone as one of the most demented album covers
of all time.
The song "Bandit," in which Young softly croons the chorus, "Someday
you'll find everything you're looking for," is one of Greendale's instant
classic tunes, and the song is supposedly written for Mazzeo. In it,
Young sings, "You're hard to reach, no one can reach you, but I can reach
you." "And he can reach me, 'cause he's like my best friend, and
he knows he can," says Mazzeo.
The two have been friends for over 30 years. They first met in 1966 in Sausalito
at a club called the Ark, where Young was visiting with his band Buffalo Springfield
and Mazzeo, tinkering with melted gelatin slides
and food coloring, was pioneering the psychedelic light show concept for Moby
Grape.
They got to be fast friends a few years later, when Young moved in next to
Mazzeo's art commune in Palo Alto called Star Hill Academy for Anything, and
in the next few years Mazzeo would move to Young's place
and then go on tour with him as the road manager for Crosby, Stills, Nash
and Young's world tour in 1974. The two have been housemates in Malibu, traveled
across the country on Route 66, and they once attempted to drive across the
Sahara in a 1934 Rolls Royce named Wembley. They
never made it farther than Brussels, where the car blew up on them.
Death by Watermelon
From cardboard to potbellied stoves (one of which is featured in the book
Handmade Houses), Mazzeo has created art in every medium. His abstract paintings
are full of exuberance, color and joy, with titles like
Death by Watermelon. He did a series called F@#king with Picasso, replicas
painted in glow-in-the-dark paint meant to be black lit, which were purchased
by Young.
But even with all that, Greendale "is one of my dreams come true,"
he says. "Who doesn't dream about being an actor and having all their
art seen by people and loved by people? In fact, it's been more than a
dream, I don't think I could have even dreamed as big as far as what Greendale
has actually become in my life. I would have dreamed something just a little
bit less and just been thoroughly ecstatic, but this
is even more than that, and I'm at someplace just slightly above ecstatic.
I'm not even sure there is a word for it."
A Hollister native, Mazzeo says he has felt since he was a kid that in his
60s, 70s and 80s he would be a major American artist and pop culture hero.
He just turned 60 a couple of weeks ago. Three months ago,
Mazzeo says he stopped smoking pot and drinking coffee, and started exercising
and trying "to do all kinds of things really right."
"Neil has set the bar really high and I need be in the shape to meet
that success," he says.
Mazzeo's art will be featured in a special one-night exhibit at the Santa
Cruz Museum of Art and History, an event that takes place right after Thursday's
Greendale showing.
Besides being an extraordinary artist, he is also one of Santa Cruz's best
hopes for answering the Santa Cruz Film Festival's most burning question:
Will Neil Young make an appearance at the Greendale showing?
"I don't have a clue," says Mazzeo. "I did tell him that if
he didn't make it that I'd be the one who would probably have to stand up
and take his place in front of the audience and talk about his film, and that
was the best way to threaten him that I could probably think of. But the rumor
has
it that the mayor of Greendale may actually show up for that evening."
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