Elliot Smith, may he rest in piece

The SF Weekly's Garrett Kamps has published a nice piece on Elliot Smith, whose passing last week surprised me but not anyone who had seen him recently. Kamps rightly expounds on the tragedy -- which is not just the singer-songerwriter's suicide itself, but a culture that may have contributed to it. Reading the piece just made me wistful and sad about how people could just let someone waste away like that, but perhaps, as Kamps wonders, he was a lost cause. Either way, it's a piece worth reading. Why is this film-related? Well, anyone who caught the Oscars a few years back may recall, as I will forever, Smith's singing his Oscar-nominated tune "Miss Misery," looking frail and Goth, as he went head to head against Celine Dion's vomitaceous iceberg of a song. It was riveting viewing. I also saw Smith on stage in LA, back when he still looked relatively un-junkie-like, and it was his words that floated in the air, above all else, that transported me. He will be missed.



Posted by cphillips at October 30, 2003 10:48 AM