Growing Old Disgracefully
March, 1993
By Ian Pearson
The place was a madhouse. About a hundred extras had been recruited to play the denizens of a seedy bar for a rock video called "Closing Time." It was a country tune about drinking and dancing and Johnnie Walker wisdom running high, and the Matador, an after-hours country-and-western club in west-end Toronto, was a perfect setting for it. But there was a problem on this November afternoon. So many odd people were running around -- women with platinum beehives, men with string ties and whisky-veined faces, actors and dancers dressed to look like lowlifes -- that the film crew was having difficulty getting its work done.
Like over here, in the congested foyer beside the dressing room. The sign plainly said "Crew Only" above a catering tray of nuts, vegetables, and dip, just as a table bearing chips and Cheesies across the room was marked "Extras Only." It should have been perfectly obvious, but here was this guy with a lined face and slicked-back salt-and-pepper hair heading for the crew's tray. Actually, he was wearing a pretty nice dark double-breasted suit -- it gave him a bit of dignity -- but he was one of the oldest people in the room, clearly some geezer who supplemented his pension by working as a film extra.
When the elderly gent raised a stick of the crew's celery to his lips, the production assistant had had enough. "Excuse me," he huffed officiously, "are you an extra?" "Yeah," replied an aged-in-oak baritone, "I'm an extra." "Well, would you please get your food from the extras' tray."
Leonard Cohen kept a straight face and strolled over to the extras' tray, where he started wolfing down Cheesies. He liked Cheesies anyway and he was finding he didn't mind taking orders. This video business was a necessary evil of the music industry these days. After a grueling couple of years trying to finish his new recording, Cohen found it relaxing to have someone else tell him what to do.
As it turned out, he had nothing to do but wait for six hours until his star turn in front of the camera came up. In his role as a smiling fifty-eight-year-old public man, he was unerringly polite to his fans as he wandered around the club. Introduced to an eight-year-old girl, he quipped, "Pleased to meet ya, darlin'." He greeted a wizened Willie Nelson lookalike with a crisp "Howdy!" When a fan recalled how he had spent half a year of high-school English studying Cohen's writing, the poet-novelist-singer-songwriter replied, "Well, it looks like you turned out okay anyways."
And the women! The legendary ladies' man flirted with his legion of women admirers, and displayed his unwavering allegiance to the ideal of feminine beauty. He watched a MuchMusic crew interviewing Rebecca Jenkins, a rising actress (Bye Bye Blues, Bob Roberts) and singer who had a role in the video, and asked a bystander, "Who is that? She's beautiful." Moments later, Jenkins wandered over to meet Cohen with the TV crew in tow. Cohen shooed off the MuchMusic people, but when Jenkins started retreating as well he begged her, "Don't leave! Come and stay with the people who love you." Jenkins returned and admitted that she was intimidated by meeting Cohen. He immediately became familiar with her, asking, "So, how's your life? Is there a man?" She told him she was starting a new relationship and within minutes she was having a heart-to-heart chat with Cohen as if he were her oldest confidant.
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March, 1993
By Ian Pearson
The place was a madhouse. About a hundred extras had been recruited to play the denizens of a seedy bar for a rock video called "Closing Time." It was a country tune about drinking and dancing and Johnnie Walker wisdom running high, and the Matador, an after-hours country-and-western club in west-end Toronto, was a perfect setting for it. But there was a problem on this November afternoon. So many odd people were running around -- women with platinum beehives, men with string ties and whisky-veined faces, actors and dancers dressed to look like lowlifes -- that the film crew was having difficulty getting its work done.
Like over here, in the congested foyer beside the dressing room. The sign plainly said "Crew Only" above a catering tray of nuts, vegetables, and dip, just as a table bearing chips and Cheesies across the room was marked "Extras Only." It should have been perfectly obvious, but here was this guy with a lined face and slicked-back salt-and-pepper hair heading for the crew's tray. Actually, he was wearing a pretty nice dark double-breasted suit -- it gave him a bit of dignity -- but he was one of the oldest people in the room, clearly some geezer who supplemented his pension by working as a film extra.
When the elderly gent raised a stick of the crew's celery to his lips, the production assistant had had enough. "Excuse me," he huffed officiously, "are you an extra?" "Yeah," replied an aged-in-oak baritone, "I'm an extra." "Well, would you please get your food from the extras' tray."
Leonard Cohen kept a straight face and strolled over to the extras' tray, where he started wolfing down Cheesies. He liked Cheesies anyway and he was finding he didn't mind taking orders. This video business was a necessary evil of the music industry these days. After a grueling couple of years trying to finish his new recording, Cohen found it relaxing to have someone else tell him what to do.
As it turned out, he had nothing to do but wait for six hours until his star turn in front of the camera came up. In his role as a smiling fifty-eight-year-old public man, he was unerringly polite to his fans as he wandered around the club. Introduced to an eight-year-old girl, he quipped, "Pleased to meet ya, darlin'." He greeted a wizened Willie Nelson lookalike with a crisp "Howdy!" When a fan recalled how he had spent half a year of high-school English studying Cohen's writing, the poet-novelist-singer-songwriter replied, "Well, it looks like you turned out okay anyways."
And the women! The legendary ladies' man flirted with his legion of women admirers, and displayed his unwavering allegiance to the ideal of feminine beauty. He watched a MuchMusic crew interviewing Rebecca Jenkins, a rising actress (Bye Bye Blues, Bob Roberts) and singer who had a role in the video, and asked a bystander, "Who is that? She's beautiful." Moments later, Jenkins wandered over to meet Cohen with the TV crew in tow. Cohen shooed off the MuchMusic people, but when Jenkins started retreating as well he begged her, "Don't leave! Come and stay with the people who love you." Jenkins returned and admitted that she was intimidated by meeting Cohen. He immediately became familiar with her, asking, "So, how's your life? Is there a man?" She told him she was starting a new relationship and within minutes she was having a heart-to-heart chat with Cohen as if he were her oldest confidant.
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