From the Archives: Singer, Songwriter, and Guitarist Robbie Fulks.

Show: FRESH AIR
Date: DECEMBER 10, 1999
Time: 12:00
Tran: 121001np.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: Interview With Robbie Fulks
Sect: Entertainment
Time: 12:06

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not
be in its final form and may be updated.

BARBARA BOGAEV, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Barbara Bogaev, in for Terry Gross.

For about three years, Robbie Fulks wrote a song a week for a Nashville publishing company, but no performers recorded his songs. Too bad for them. He writes some great songs, and last year we invited him on FRESH AIR to play a few. We're about to hear an encore of that broadcast.

Robbie Fulks writes and performs alternative rock songs as well as alternative country. He lives in Chicago, where he taught for many years at the famed Oldtown School of Folk Music. Fulks is starting to become better known. He has a new compilation disk called "The Very Best of Robbie Fulks" on Bloodshot Records, due out next month.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, EXCERPT, "ROOTS, ROCKS, WEIRDOS (ph)," ROBBIE FULKS)

The (inaudible), the nightclubs all are closed.
Only a washed-up (inaudible) band hitting the stage at Joe's.
The guitar hit the first (inaudible) of secret agent man,
A door in the back blew open, and into the room they ran.

(inaudible), (inaudible).
(inaudible), (inaudible).
(inaudible), (inaudible) they come.
Dressed up like it's 1971.

Well, they (inaudible)...

(END AUDIO CLIP)

BOGAEV: That's "Roots, Rocks, Weirdos," one of the cuts from "The Very Best of Robbie Fulks.

Terry spoke with Fulks last year when he made his major label debut on Geffin (ph) with the CD "Let's Kill Saturday Night."

(BEGIN AUDIOTAPE)

TERRY GROSS, HOST: You kind of have a foot in the rock singer-songwriter world, and a foot in the country music world. What do you see as the difference between those two musical places?

ROBBIE FULKS, SINGER/SONGWRITER/GUITARIST: Well, first of all, I see that they have some things in common. They have -- my favorite kinds of rock and country music have a live performance quality in common, where you get genetically great musicians in a room, looking at each other and playing off of each other.

And if there are occasional, you know, so-called mistakes, then that's less important than the overall vibe and the quality of communication with each other in the band and with the listener.

And also, as far as the songwriting goes, a kind of -- a kind of unflinching honesty and authentic personality and point of view in the songwriting are things that I like both in rock songwriting and country songwriting.

But as far as what's different, besides all the cosmetic things, you know, that one is kind of louder and uglier then the other one a lot of the time, I think that rock songwriting permits more impressionism and more obscurity in some of the lyrics than country songwriting does.

To me, the special terrain that country works so well, that no other kind of music does, is the -- taking the everyday problems of life and dealing with them in simple, universal, uncompromising language.

GROSS: I'd love for you to do a song for us. Let me suggest a song that you also do on your new CD, and it's called "I Can't Win for Losing You." Would you say something about the song before you sing it for us?

FULKS: Yeah. There's a -- it's not an earth-shaking song, it's -- and the lyrics are real, like I said, simple and universal. It kind of reminds me of a Roger Miller kind of '60s groove. It's a shuffle, and it's one of those things -- another thing that country specializes in, I guess, is sad songs set to happy up-tempo grooves.

(BEGIN LIVE PERFORMANCE, "I CAN'T WIN FOR LOSING YOU," ROBBIE FULKS)

There you go again,
Out of control again,
Off running like the wind,
Leaving me blue.

Well, I take you back, and then
You break my heart again.
It seems I just can't win
For losing you.

We tried a thousand times
To keep this love alive,
But your fickle heart
Just can't be true.

Now I've pinned my every hope
On to life (ph).
Well, I just can't win
For losing you.

There you go again,
Out of control again,
Off running like the wind,
Leaving me blue.

I take you back, and then
You break my heart again.
It seems I just can't win
For losing you.

Well, a man's a fool
That makes the same mistake
Time after time
And feels each heartache

Like it was brand new.
Yes, I (inaudible) your broken dreams
With times (ph).
But I just can't win
For losing you.

There you go again,
Out of control again,
Off running like the wind,
Leaving me blue.

I take you back, and then
You break my heart again.
It seems that I just can't win
For losing you.

It seems that I just can't win
For losing you.

(END LIVE PERFORMANCE)

GROSS: That's a really good song. I really like that a lot. That's Robbie Fulks, and it's a song he also does on his new album. The album is called "Let's Kill Saturday Night."

Robbie, you lived in Nashville for a few years, and you were actually working for one of those song publishing companies; writing a lot of songs for the company, being like a staff songwriter. That must have been a really interesting experience. What made you decide to go down to Nashville and try out that life and that approach in the music business?

FULKS: Well, you know, Nashville was there, and so I decided to take a stab at it. I had a friend that worked down there as a staff songwriter. I never did live down there, actually, but I've been up in Chicago for the last 15 years, and I've got a family up here and stuff, so I couldn't quite take the plunge and totally relocate.

But I thought I'd get my foot in the door, and I was so -- I was so encouraged by my first trip or two down there that, you know, I got a writer deal in fairly fast order and got set up with a performance rights organization, and away we went.

And that's where I just kind of hit the brick wall after that. But it did let me spend three years kind of honing my craft, and, you know, as a part-time job it let me spend several hours every day just sitting in my room and writing songs, and that was just invaluable to me.

GROSS: What's the deal like working with a publishing company?

FULKS: Well, you sort of -- you sort of have a, you know, an editor to help give you feedback and, you know, somebody at the publisher will say, Well, this line -- at a good publisher, that is -- will say, This line doesn't exactly feed out of this line before it, and this hook isn't quite strong enough. Or, you know, This song -- go back and rewrite this from a female point of view and make it a little softer, and take out that mention where you say that you're -- that the singer is five feet two inches, because we want somebody taller to be able to sing it too.

So I'd get all sorts of comments like that, and sometimes I'd pay attention to them and sometimes I wouldn't. And then they'll go out and record and try to pitch them to Garth Brooks or whoever, and try to make you a million dollars.

GROSS: So I can see how the artiste in you would feel offended that somebody was editing your songs. On the other hand, it must have been really helpful craft-wise to have somebody critiquing every song like that.

FULKS: Yeah, well, I kind of knew what I was getting into, I guess, when I took the job. And to me it was, Well, spend some time writing for this market or, you know, as best I can, and that kind of work is sort of more like crossword puzzle work. And then I'll spend the rest of the time just writing whatever I feel like. And that's how I got, for instance, a lot of the songs off of -- the "Let's Kill Saturday Night" record was, you know, that other half of the time that was just for me.

GROSS: What about "I Can't Win for Losing You," which you just played, which was that?

FULKS: That was more or less a Nash -- that was a Nashville pitch, actually, because I wrote it -- I co-wrote it with a songwriter down there, and they demoed it in pretty quick order. They liked that one a lot.

But in general, people down there aren't looking for something that old-fashioned-sounding to sing. And, you know, the shuffle quality, and the little yodel quality, and all the rest of that is so old hat and outmoded to them that that didn't really trip any triggers down there.

GROSS: So what's in, if that's out?

FULKS: What's in is kind of soft rock. You know, my friend John Langford (ph) says that country music today is just kind of like suburban light rock music, and that's pretty much it to me. It's got to be -- it helps if it's kind of feminized and socially aware, and doesn't -- and doesn't offend anybody.

GROSS: Do you want to do a few bars of what you think of as the prototypical song that you've just described?

FULKS: Well, no, I don't want to offend any other songwriters, but I got plenty that I wrote like that. Like -- here's a chorus of something I wrote.

(BEGIN LIVE PERFORMANCE -- SINGER/SONGWRITER ROBBIE FULKS)

Look how close we came
When we hardly had a prayer,
And only seconds left to spare.

Then the hand of fate
Came and pulled us from the flame.
I can't imagine losing everything,

But look how close we came.

(END LIVE PERFORMANCE

FULKS: That kind of thing, you know. That's -- to me, that was a Tim McGraw kind of a pitch, and I'm singing it kind of making fun of it as I'm singing it. But it's a song about a guy that almost lost his wife, and then they almost lost their kid, and blah, blah, blah, blah.

GROSS: I think whenever the hand of fate makes an appearance it's always a bad sign.

FULKS: A very bad sign.

GROSS: How did you feel when you wrote in a "hand of fate" line?

FULKS: (laughs) I thought it was great. "The hand of fate pulled him from the flame." I thought, Well, this is just cliched enough to send out to middle America and see what happens.

GROSS: Now, who decides on the fate of a song? You write it, you send it to the publishing company, and then what happens?

FULKS: And then it's just out in the free marketplace down in Nashville for various A&R people and producers and artists to listen to and decide if they want to do it.

GROSS: How do they shop for songs or how are songs shopped to them?

FULKS: I don't know. (laughs) I've never done it. I don't really know, except it's just kind of an insular network down there where they'll have meetings, and...

Well, an artist, for instance, will -- there's a thing called Rofax (ph) which is a facsimile that is sent out every week and that has lists of -- so-and-so -- Brooks & Dunn are looking for an up-tempo tune a la "Marie," or whatever the last hit was. And so-and-so is looking for a hot ballad. And most of them just say, So-and-so is looking for a gigantic hit.

GROSS: So, basically, you'd sit home and hope that the hand of fate would point one of your songs out to a hot singer.

FULKS: Pull me from the flame of penury, uh-huh.

(END AUDIOTAPE)

BOGAEV: Robbie Fulks speaking with Terry Gross last year. His new CD is "The Very Best of Robbie Fulks." It's due out in January.

This is FRESH AIR.

(BREAK)

(BEGIN AUDIOTAPE)

Did you give yourself different assignments so, you know, that you'd have different kinds of singers to work for? Like, well, today I'll try the ballad, next week I'll try the up-tempo for a middle-aged singer-songwriter -- for a middle-aged woman singer, or something?

FULKS: Yeah, definitely. You set yourself little tasks like that. And, you know, at some point it just so un-you and so unauthentic that it just shows through the songwriting.

So it's -- for me, it was a little difficult to walk that line where I'd use lyrics that were obviously cliched and obviously that I didn't believe while I was writing them, but still try to make it sincere sounding. So maybe it was just inevitably an impossible task from the beginning.

GROSS: On the other hand, I think there must be something very liberating about writing for a character as opposed to writing confessional autobiographical lyrics, and just thinking about, you know, the shapeliness of the song instead of thinking about whether you personally really mean it.

FULKS: Yeah. Or its like -- it's like a lot of great writers that got their start writing pulp fiction or obituaries or H.L. Mencken doing crime reporting or anything like that. It's just a place to get your tools together. And it is helpful to get outside of your personality and try to adopt other voices, I think.

GROSS: I'm going to ask you to do another song, and this is from a previous album that was called "South Mouth." And the song is called "Forgotten but Not Gone." Tell us how you wrote this, and if you had anybody or any type of song in mind while doing it.

FULKS: Yeah, I had sort of a Johnny Paycheck style in mind. Johnny's got a lot of stuff that he did with Aubrey Mayhew (ph) on the Little Darling label in the late '60s that is just as good as anything ever done in country music. This is, of course, well before the "Take This Job and Shove It" period, which got a little bit more cartoonish.

But like a lot of stuff you write, you start with an idea, kind of gets away from that, so the end product doesn't really sound that much like him. But it still has some of the chord changes that I liked about some of that stuff.

(BEGIN LIVE PERFORMANCE, "FORGOTTEN BUT NOT GONE," ROBBIE FULKS)

This old house turned cold
When he walked in.
Oh, when I felt myself fading
As you smiled at him.

Now lately I'm just barely hanging on,
A shadow of the man you loved,
Forgotten but not gone,
Forgotten like a fool
That time passed by.

But the day that I let go
I know I'll die.
Unwanted man,
A ghost in my own home,
That's how it feels to be
Forgotten but not gone.

Every night these two arms
Reach out for you,
Oh, but you just can't feel their touch
The way you used to.

I guess no heart
Can hold two loves for too long.
One staked his claim,
Now one remains,
Forgotten but not gone.

Forgotten like a fool
That time passed by.
Now I see my whole life
Passing in your eyes,

And the epitaph carved
In your heart of stone
Here lies a true love,
Forgotten but not gone.

(END LIVE PERFORMANCE)

GROSS: That's Robbie Fulks performing a song that he wrote called "Forgotten but Not Gone." And he has a new CD called "Let's Kill Saturday Night."

So what was the fate of that song after you wrote it?

FULKS: Nothing happened to that one. You mean as far as the Nashville network?

GROSS: Yeah, I'm -- that's one of the ones you submitted, right?

FULKS: Oh, sure, yeah. I mean, I'd write four or five a month and send them all down and just see what happened. Nothing happened to that one, so I went and recorded it.

And, you know, as I started doing my own records, I started getting the suspicion that anything that didn't really excite them down there might be a worthy song, so that I could consider it one that I might record myself.

GROSS: Did you feel like you had to have a certain number of hooks per song? Or, you know, like, what advice did they give you on hooks?

FULKS: I think we -- my publisher and I both thought that I was pretty hook-oriented to begin with, so I don't think I ever got the response, Go back this and make more memorable sounding or, you know, Center it all on the hook.

I had that part of the craft pretty well down. I think most of the advice that I got was -- was what I was saying, Just take some of the hard edges off, nobody's ever going to sing a song like, "Oh, I feel like a dog," or anything that's that -- anything that's that un-up with people, or bluesy, nobody's going to get that here. There's a wash of positive Oprah Winfrey-style feeling down in Nashville nowadays, apparently.

(END AUDIOTAPE)

BOGAEV: Robbie Fulks spoke with Terry Gross last year. His new album, "The Very Best of Robbie Fulks," comes out in January. He starts a tour in the Midwest with the Cabaret Metro in Chicago on January 29.

We'll hear more from Fulks in the second half of our show.

I'm Barbara Bogaev, and this is FRESH AIR.

(BREAK)

BOGAEV: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Barbara Bogaev, in for Terry Gross.

Back with singer and songwriter Robbie Fulks. He has a new CD coming out in January on Bloodshot Records called "The Very Best of Robbie Fulks." He writes rock and country songs. For three years he wrote nearly a song a week for a Nashville music publishing company. No one recorded his songs, but now he's recording them himself.

He says that his editors at the publishing company occasionally asked him to change hard-edged lyrics.

GROSS: Can you play a few bars of something that got the most negative reaction that you like?

FULKS: Sure. Early on, they -- I found out about the great -- I don't know, the great woman problem, which was that stuff that you write for that market has to fit into what they think a woman would want to sing or want to hear, and that automatically disqualified about 90 percent of my catalog.

But they would say, Go back and write something that's more friendly to women. So just to be sort of ornery, I went back home one time and wrote a song called -- I came in -- I said, I got one here that I really think you'll like. And they said, What's the name of it? And I said, "Hating Women" is the name of it.

GROSS: (laughs)

FULKS: The chorus kind of went, (singing) Hating women...

It's kind of a rockabilly thing.

(singing): Hating women, hating women. Yeah, I loathe them like the dickens, but you won't get far hating women.

All right!

And it had a verse about Ernest Hemingway and a verse about pornographers and a verse about shopping. And it was just calculated for them not to like it. It was a pretty good song, too.

GROSS: Inspired a little bit by "Rockin' Robin," maybe?

FULKS: Exactly.

GROSS: Yeah. There's another song that I imagine didn't endear you to the Nashville community, though I don't know if they ever got to hear it. And I'm thinking of a song that's on your new CD called "God Isn't Real." Did you send that one down to Nashville?

FULKS: Yeah. That's one of the ones that you send -- that I sent it in partly because it's so fun to watch -- We had a Christian receptionist down there at the place where I worked, and one of her jobs was to write up all the titles in her -- in the database. And there were some titles of mine that she just wouldn't write. And it was always fun to try and make up some of these titles that would just stop her fingers on the keyboard, (inaudible).

GROSS: Is that why you wrote the song?

FULKS: That was one of the -- that's not why I wrote the song, but that was definitely the most fun thing about submitting that. And also another song of mine "F This Town," which was another one that stopped her fingers from typing.

GROSS: It's like a Nashville anti-anthem. Play us a chorus of "God Isn't Real," but before you, do tell us what inspired the song.

FULKS: Well, this song is an atheist song, and it basically represents my point of view, or a slightly radicalized or a caricature version of my point of view, about the problem of evil and the implausibility of divine intelligence in the world.

And the first chorus for instance, goes...

(singing): Go ask the starving millions
Under Stalin's cruel reign,
Go ask the child with cancer
Who eases her pain?
Then go to your churches
If that's how you feel.
But don't ask me to follow,
For God isn't real

That's the first chorus of that.

GROSS: So, what reactions did you get to it?

FULKS: That is another one that kind of went into a black hole as far as they were concerned. But sort of an interesting reaction playing that. That's on my new record, and so I play it, you know, all the time now when I go out.

And there's often a contingent of people that either refuse to clap, very ostentatiously refuse to clap, for that one, or stare angrily. Or, on occasion, just leave the concert at that point. That's happened in a couple of cities so far -- Atlanta, Oklahoma City, and a couple of other places. So we always kind of look forward to pulling it out and just seeing what will happen.

GROSS: Does it ever bother you that by singing that "God Isn't real" you're not only expressing your opinions as an atheist, but your saying the God other people believe in isn't real, and that you really might be offending them or challenging them in some way?

FULKS: No, I don't think so, because I think the free exchange of ideas is a fine and American tradition that I'd like to uphold. And I was -- on the same topic, I was doing an interview with a right-wing paper. The interviewer was Christian -- and this was just the other week -- and he said, "Well, I appreciate your putting it out on the table like that, because so much of the atheism that you hear in modern pop culture is just sort of a hidden and watered down presupposition in music, or in movies, or in TV shows, and it's seldom stated so bluntly."

So, better to -- better not to beat around the bush and just lay your cards out, I think.

GROSS: So, what reaction did you get at your publishing company when you sent the song down? You didn't really expect somebody was going to do it, right?

FULKS: (laughs) No, I really expected Alan Jackson might take a stab at "God Isn't Real." I'm just that naive. No, I didn't hear anything, and I didn't expect to.

GROSS: Did you see the Garth Brooks TV special recently?

FULKS: No, I don't really watch TV. I heard about it, or I read about it somewhere.

GROSS: There's a part in his concert -- this was like a video clip where he goes flying a la Peter Pan across the stadium that he's performing in. He's, I suppose, suspended by wires the way everybody who plays Peter Pan on Broadway is. And I thought, Wow, is that what you need to do now to sing country music, is fly across the stadium while singing with one of those little portable microphones?

FULKS: That's great. I wish we could have just seen Web Pierce flying around over his audience.

GROSS: (laughs) Exactly. Who can imagine that?

FULKS: I'd pay to see that.

GROSS: You have a song called "(Blank) This Town," "(Epithet) This Town," which is a song about Nashville. Do you want to do just a couple of bars of that? And you can say "(Blank) This Town" instead of the word that you really use.

FULKS: Sure.

GROSS: Or another substitute, if you prefer.

(BEGAN LIVE PERFORMANCE, "(EPITHET) THIS TOWN," ROBBIE FULKS)

Hey, this ain't country-Western,
It's just soft rock feminist crap.
And I thought they'd struck bottom
Back in the day of Ronnie Milsap.

Now they can't stop the flood of (beep)
There ain't a big enough ASCAP.
Sure I like old Tim Carroll (ph)
And BR549.

But Nashville don't need that noise,
No, Nashville will do just fine
As long as there's a moron market,
And a (beep)...

(END LIVE PERFORMANCE)

FULKS: I don't how much I can say of this.

(LAUGHTER)

FULKS: So, beep!

GROSS: Well, what -- I mean...

FULKS: That gives you an idea.

GROSS: Yeah. You know, I'm wondering, did the people who you were working with hear that song, and did they take it personally? Like, What are you? This guy break (ph) if that's the way he feels about the city and the music coming out of it.

FULKS: Probably that didn't help my cause too much down there.

GROSS: (laughs) Yeah, probably.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: Were you in a moment of particular frustration when you wrote that?

FULKS: I was having a really good time when I wrote that, but -- I mean, I have to say as far as all of this relates to, like, sending stuff in and what their reactions were to it, I just kind of -- after the first year of my three-year deal, I stopped even thinking about it anymore and just started writing for my own pleasure, because so little was happening that I kind of gave up on it, so --

That song was written shortly after I gave up on it, and it was great to vent spleen and just to have total fun writing a song to say whatever you wanted to say.

(END AUDIOTAPE)

BOGAEV: Robbie Fulks from a 1998 interview. His new CD is "The Very Best of Robbie Fulks." We'll hear more after a break.

This is FRESH AIR.

BOGAEV: We're back with our encore broadcast with singer-songwriter Robbie Fulks.

(BEGIN AUDIOTAPE)

GROSS: Now that you're just writing for yourself, and your not sending songs to the Nashville publishing company, how has it affected your songwriting?

FULKS: It makes it harder because, as I say, when you're writing for a particular market and writing in a style that a lot of other people are writing in, the rules are kind of there, laid down, and it's a little more crossword puzzle-like.

But in writing -- there's a song called "Take Me to the Paradise" on my new record that I absolutely wasn't working from some other form, at least consciously in my head as I was writing it. There wasn't so much of a model or prototype for that kind of a song that I could think of. And so it's a lot harder to get it right, because you write a line and it doesn't automatically trigger, Oh, yeah, this says that, and now the next think I need to say is that -- if you know what I mean.

GROSS: Right. Right. Can you play a little bit of the song you were just describing, "Take Me to the Paradise?"

FULKS: Sure.

(BEGIN LIVE PERFORMANCE, "TAKE ME TO THE PARADISE," ROBBIE FULKS)

Stained glass windows,
Smoked wood tables.
The slaves of culture toil by night.
The pall of perfume,
True confessions.

And when the air gets thick as this,
You can cut it with a straw.
And as the moon hangs over Waverly, they call,
Take me to the Paradise,
Let me live once more.

Better men have faced these walls
And fallen on the floor

(END LIVE PERFORMANCE)

FULKS: So, a song like that is clearly a little bit more literary in its aims than a lot of the songs I was just playing for you a second ago, and...

GROSS: A little more oblique?

FULKS: Mmm-hmm.

GROSS: Mmm-hmm.

FULKS: And harder to write.

GROSS: Now, when you're writing a rock song, do you think it needs hooks in the way that your country songs do?

FULKS: Yeah. I like everything to be memorable. I like a song that you hear it one time and you think, Well, I've heard this a million times before, but you haven't.

That's the kind of -- that's what I liked about the music that hit me when I was growing up, Beatles music and all that kind of pop music. And, yeah, hooks, hooks, hooks.

GROSS: (laughs) When we have singer-songwriter's on the show I like to ask them at the end to redeem a song. So I want to ask you if you can think of a song that a lot of us might find uninteresting or square, and that you think is a really swell song that you'd like to play for us and redeem? When you think of a song, would you introduce it for us?

FULKS: Yeah. Let me think a second.

This is called "Dancing Queen" by ABBA.

(BEGAN LIVE PERFORMANCE, "DANCING QUEEN," ROBBIE FULKS)

Friday night and the lights are low
Looking out for a place to go
Where they play the right music
Getting in the swing
You're going to meet the king (ph).

Anybody could be that guy.
Lights are low and the music's high
Where they play the right music.
And get in the swing,
You're in the mood for dance

And when you get the chance,
You are the Dancing Queen,
Young and sweet, only 17.
Dancing Queen, feel the beat
Of a tambourine, oh, yeah.

You can dance, you can jive
Having the time of your life.
Oh,see that girl, watch that scene,
Dig it, the Dancing Queen.

When you tease and you turn it on,
Leave them burning but then you're gone,
Looking out for another.
Anyone will do.
You're in the mood for dance.

And when you get the chance,
You are the Dancing Queen,
Young and sweet only 17.
Dancing Queen feel the beat
Of the tambourine, oh, yeah.

You can dance, you can jive,
Having the time of your life.
Oh, see that girl, watch that scene,
Dig it, the Dancing Queen
Dig it, the Dancing Queen.

(END LIVE PERFORMANCE)

GROSS: Well, I'm very impressed. I mean, you not only did it, you did the whole song. You had it all worked out. Do you do this in your shows?

FULKS: No, I haven't done that one. We did it -- I don't know, maybe three years ago for two or three times, and then it kind of got lost in the shuffle.

GROSS: Now, what do you love about the song? Why did you choose that to redeem?

FULKS: I like that one because it's so much about melody and chords. And, you know, the words are so obviously just kind of wretched words written by people that don't speak English that well. But to me it underscores the idea that the words are less important than everything else a lot of the time.

Just a general vibe, groove, melody, chorus. And I don't know, any time that there's, like, a sexy 17-year-old character in it, it's ipso facto interesting, I think.

(END AUDIOTAPE)

BOGAEV: Robbie Fulks. He tours the Midwest next month, starting in Chicago on January 29. His new compilation disk is "The Very Best of Robbie Fulks" on Bloodshot Records. It's coming out in January.

Here's "May the Best Man Win."

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, "MAY THE BEST MAN WIN," ROBBIE FULKS)

(inaudible) the guests were sidlin' (ph)
As down the aisle they came.
All heads turned in disbelief,
And I (inaudible) mine in shame.

For even as the vows were read,
He was wanting to do me wrong.
Now, the wedding party is over,
And the love I had is gone.

So may the best man win,
And may he wind up crying.
May he suffer for life
All her cheating and lying.

Well, I gave her my best,
And I've given up trying.
(inaudible),
So may the best man win.

We'd been childhood sweethearts,
And he would always tag along.
I guess between the three of us,
Only one line was drawn.

But now he's made that fatal step,
I wish him better luck than me.
Oh, the living hell he's (inaudible) into,
Even death won't set him free.

So may the best man win,
And may he wind up crying.
May he suffer for life
All her cheating and lying.

Well, I gave her my best,
And I've given up trying.
(inaudible) fools rushed in,
So may the best man win.

(inaudible) fools rushed in,
So may the best man win.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

BOGAEV: Robbie Fulks, from his new CD, "The Very Best of Robbie Fulks."

Coming up, a review of the new film "The Green Mile."

This is FRESH AIR.

TO PURCHASE AN AUDIOTAPE OF THIS PIECE, PLEASE CALL 877-21FRESH
Dateline: Barbara Bogaeve, Philadelphia, PA
Guest: Robbie Fulks
High: Singer, songwriter, guitarist Robbie Fulks's new CD is "The Very Best of Robbie Fulks." Fulks has one foot in the singer/songwriter scene, and one in country music. In fact he spent three years writing songs in Nashville, but no one opted to record his songs. In 1998, he debuted with a CD of his own music, "Let's Kill Saturday Night."
Spec: Entertainment; Music Industry; Robbie Fulks

Please note, this is not the final feed of record

Copy: Content and programming copyright 1999 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 1999 FDCH, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to WHYY, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission.
End-Story: Interview With Robbie Fulks
Show: FRESH AIR
Date: DECEMBER 10, 1999
Time: 12:00
Tran: 121002NP.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: "The Green Mile:" A Movie Review
Sect: Entertainment
Time: 12:52

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not
be in its final form and may be updated.

BARBARA BOGAEV, HOST: Five years ago, writer-director Frank Darabant (ph) made the film "The Shawshank Redemption" based on a story by Stephen King. Now Darabant is back with "The Green Mile," also based on a story by Stephen King and starring Tom Hanks.

Our film critic, John Powers, has a review.

JOHN POWERS: For the last several months, Hollywood's hype machine has been insisting that the year's big Oscar favorite is "The Green Mile." It has a big inspirational theme, a beloved star in Tom Hanks, and preview test scores that went through the roof.

Yes, "The Green Mile" would seem to have everything going for it -- except the fact that it's no good.

The movie begins with an old man, Paul Edgecombe (ph), telling a story about his past that he's never told before. And so we flash back to 1935 Louisiana. Tom Hanks plays the younger Paul, the humane head guard on death row at Cold Mountain Penitentiary whose corridor to the electric chair is nicknamed the Green Mile.

Paul has always run a decent, down-home cell block. But things get weird when a new prisoner arrives. His name is John Coffee (ph), played by Michael Clark Duncan (ph), and he's a gargantuan African-American convicted of killing two little girls.

But while his size is menacing, Coffee is actually a gentle giant possessed of miraculous powers, and soon the cell block becomes the arena in which the forces of good and evil collide, and Paul is forced to make weighty moral choices.

But before we get to all that heavy stuff, the movie kills a lot of time on the cell block. The guards joke and quarrel, a prisoner trains his pet mouse, and Paul battles a urinary tract infection so painful that he can't have sex with his wife.

In fact, we get our first taste of Coffee's supernatural gifts when he helps cure this infection, a favor for which Paul brings him a reward.

(AUDIO CLIP, "THE GREEN MILE")

MICHAEL CLARK DUNCAN, ACTOR: Smellin' me some cornbread.

TOM HANKS, ACTOR: It's from my missus. She wanted to thank you.

DUNCAN: Thank me for what?

HANKS: Well, you know. (whispers) For helping me.

DUNCAN: Helping you with what?

HANKS: You know.

DUNCAN: Ohhhh. Was your missus pleased?

HANKS: Several times.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

POWERS: The movie was adapted for the screen by Frank Darabant, whose success with "The Shawshank Redemption" seems to have gone to his head, for he's lost all sense of proportion. Darabant takes a small fable, worth maybe 80 minutes, and draws it out to three long, lulling hours. He plays everything slow and throws in lots of extraneous scenes, many of them milking cheap laughs and Awws! through the use of that cute mouse.

This is stuff that would have already seemed shameless 50 years ago, but Darabant keeps laying it on with an air of astonishing self-importance. I've rarely seen a bad movie that's so confident of its greatness, or so bogus in its vision of the world.

I didn't believe in the prettified penitentiary, which was apparently designed by the architects who gave us the pleasant death camp in "Life Is Beautiful." I didn't believe that in Depression-era Louisiana, Paul would have four crisply uniformed full-time assistants to guard only three killers, or that three of these assistants would be incredibly nice guys.

And I groaned in disbelief at the story's simple-minded morality. There are two evil characters in "The Green Mile," one a boastful killer, the other a cringingly sadistic prison guard, and they are so irredeemably wicked that never for a second do they ever promise to turn into something richer. All we can do is hate them.

The good guys are even duller. John Coffee is a racist liberal cliche, the big, dumb, noble African-American who's also a Christ figure. Naturally, the story's not really about him but about the white guy, Paul, and he too is a cardboard cut-out whose vague aura of solidity comes from being played by Hanks, who's evidently now campaigning for a place on the dollar bill.

Why else turn down great risky roles like Oliver Stone's Nixon, a part God gave him the face to play, in order to trot out yet another embodiment of ordinary American decency? Even worse, Hanks thinks he's been daring in choosing this role, because Paul works on death row. No matter that he seems less like a prison guard than the nicest prefect at a prep school. Why, he even chastises the killers for swearing!

Eventually it dawns on Paul that Coffee may actually be innocent, at which point the plot takes a ludicrous turn. It's impossible to spoil this movie's ending. It's already rotten. But it is possible to give it away, so I'll say only that "The Green Mile" cravenly sidesteps all its most serious issues. It builds to a symbolic orgy of guilt and murder, miracles and forgiveness, bombarding us with phony uplift.

In the process, Paul Edgecombe behaves reprehensibly, even immorally, and what's scary is that the movie refuses to admit it. Darabant is so busy turning Hanks into St. Paul that he doesn't realize that his movie is actually about Judas.

BOGAEV: John Powers is film critic for "Vogue."

For Terry Gross, I'm Barbara Bogaeve.

TO PURCHASE AN AUDIOTAPE OF THIS PIECE, PLEASE CALL 877-21FRESH
Dateline: Barbara Bogaeve, Philadelphia, PA
Guest: John Powers
High: Film critic John Powers reviews "The Green Mile" starring Tom Hanks.
Spec: Movie Industry; Entertainment; Tom Hanks

Please note, this is not the final feed of record

Copy: Content and programming copyright 1999 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 1999 FDCH, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to WHYY, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission.
End-Story: "The Green Mile:" A Movie Review
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.