Leonard Cohen (1934-2016)

Singer-songwriter, poet/novelist, dapper ladies’ man, and perennial cool guy Leonard Cohen has died at the age of 82. It’s difficult to eulogize someone whose music has meant so much to so many people, over several decades, but I will say a few things. First, his debut LP, 1967’s Songs of Leonard Cohen, is required listening. Cohen made plenty of other music that’s worth delving into, but if for some bizarre reason you haven’t heard that first album, it’s probably not a bad idea to stop whatever you’re doing, hunt it down, and give it your undivided attention. Second, while he wrote, recorded, and performed a tower of fine music, “Dress Rehearsal Rag” in particular stands out to me as song like no other, a cinematic trip through the psyche of someone suffering from a severe form of quiet desperation. There’s something elemental about it that reaches the sublime and somehow makes it seem a lot more urgent and productive than the vast majority of dirges a person is likely to hear, including most of those that would fall under the banner of “angry tough guys with their amps cranked up” sort of music. Lastly, I was fortunate enough to see Leonard Cohen and his band live in October of 2009, at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, and it was a stellar experience. He could have phoned it in and much of the audience probably would’ve been flattered by his mere presence, but instead Cohen and his band pulled out all of the stops and gave it their all. From top to bottom, they cared about putting on a good show and it meant a lot to everyone in attendance. Here was an artist in his mid-seventies skipping onto the stage, kneeling to sing “Hallelujah,” revisiting “Everybody Knows” and over two dozen other songs from his back catalog with the verve of someone with his entire life ahead of him. It was quite inspired and something I’ll never forget. Rest in peace, L.C.

Raoul Coutard (1924-2016)

Earlier this week saw the death of French cinematographer Raoul Coutard, who left an indelible mark on many key francophone films of the Nouvelle Vague and beyond. Coutard’s shooting style was at times unorthodox and a marked contrast to that of the traditionally lit and blocked “cinema du papa”—he had a lot to do with why films like Pierrot Le Fou and Shoot the Piano Player became hallmarks of Sixties Modernism and would still seem so novel and fresh in the following decades. Coutard shot, among other things, Costa-Gavra’s Z (surely among the top ten overtly political films of the 20th Century) and Philippe Garrel’s The Birth of Love (which I’d rank as one of thee great films of the 1990s…just impossibly charming). And of course that only scratches the surface. The New York Times published a nice obituary here. Rest in peace, Raoul.