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This is Fresh Air.
I'm David Bianculli.
Patti Smith is now considered one of the wise women of rock and roll, an eloquent chronicler of her life in music and in a series of acclaimed memoirs.
But 50 years ago she was a scrounging poet who wanted to be a rock star on her own, very literary terms, and her debut album Horses, announced a unique artist.
Today we're going to listen back to portions of two of Terry's interviews with Patti Smith about her early days as a poet and performer.
But first rock critic Ken Tucker takes a look back and tells us about the new anniversary edition of Horses, which is supplemented with previously unreleased music.
50 years on, Patti Smith's Horses still sounds like nothing else before or since its arrival in 1975.
At the time, Smith had one foot in poetry, the other in rock and roll.
Her spirit animals were the French surrealist Arthur Rimbaud and the Doors demigod Jim Morrison.
Both bad boys who died young, they inspired Patty as self-mythologizing, rebellious innovators.
But they also served as warning lessons in the self-control and discipline necessary to be a long-lasting prolific artist, which the 78-year-old Smith has indeed become.
Consider however, what it was like to see for the first time the 28-year-old Smith as she struck an androgynous pose in a white shirt and black tie.
Cover photo by pal Robert Mapplethorpe.
And consider what it must have been like to first hear her tremulous croon on a song like Free Money.
Every night before I go to sleep Find a ticket, win a lottery I took the pearls up from the sea Cash them in and buy you all the things you need Every night before I rest my head See those dollar bills go swirling in my bed Critics write about 1970s downtown Manhattan Patti Smith performing at CBGB's at Max's Kansas City, but they ignore or aren't aware of the true crucible of her talent, St.
Mark's in the Bowery, the Lower East Side Church, and Ground Zero for the New York School of Poetry.
This was the site of open readings, where Patti could rub shoulders with key influences like Allen Ginsberg, John Giorno and Ann Waldman.
Patti's print poetry was flatly derivative, but Smith's creative breakthrough came in collaboration with guitarist Lenny Kay.
Together, they set her poems to music, with Lenny plugging in to accompany her words at readings.
Very quickly, they were welding electric guitar to epic creations, as in this nine-minutes-plus opus combining one of her poems with a cover of Chris Kenner's Land of a Thousand Dances.
It's the song that gave the album its name.
Boy was in the hallway drinking a glass of tea.
From the other end of the hallway, a rhythm was generating.
Another boy was sliding up the hallway.
He merged perfectly with the hallway.
He merged perfectly with the mirror in the hallway.
The boy looked at Johnny.
Suddenly Johnny gets a feelin'
He's been surrounded by horses, horses, horses, horses, coming in in all directions, white, shining, silver, studs with their nose in flames.
He saw horses, horses, horses, horses, horses, horses, horses, horses.
Do you know how to call me?
Patty quickly went full-on rock star, getting signed to Clive Davis' then-new Arista Records, alongside unlikely label mates such as Barry Manilow and Lou Rawls.
At once a punk and an artiste.
Smith had to grapple with the question of what it meant to be avant-garde when you also love the Marvelettes.
Every day things change And the world puts on a new face.
Certain things rearrange, And they're so.
That's The Hunter Gets Captured by the Game, a 60s hit for Motown's Marvelettes written by Smokey Robinson and adored by Smith, who has always had juicy taste in oldies.
The new 50th anniversary edition of Horses includes some alternate takes of songs from this album and others that would appear on subsequent releases.
The one previously unreleased song is called Snowball.
Oh, don't look behind me now.
I know what's coming.
Big, white, hairy ball of late looking like a snowball.
When it hits me, I'm so amazed.
When it hits me, I'm feeling crazed.
When it hits me, I start to recall memories.
It's pretty easy to hear why Snowball didn't make the horses cut.
It's a more conventional pop song, one that doesn't possess the grand delirium Smith was going for.
Right from the start, she knew how she wanted a sound and reportedly fought with her producer, The Velvet Underground's John Cale, to achieve the sounds she heard in her head.
Car stopped in a clearing Reven of life.
It was nearing.
I saw the boy break out of his skin.
My heart turned over and I cried it days.
Patti Smith is still touring.
She has a Substack newsletter to chronicle her dreamiest thoughts and has a new memoir called Bread of Angels.
The reissue of Horses fits right into her current context, sounding as urgent and immediate as it did a half century ago.
Ken Tucker reviewed the new 50th anniversary edition of Horses.
It was released last month by Legacy Recordings.
After a break, we'll listen to a portion of Terry's 1996 interview with Patti Smith.
This is Fresh Air.
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November 10th marks 50 years since Patti Smith released her debut album Horses.
One of the biggest influences on Smith was her friendship with the artist Robert Mapplethorpe.
They both were 20-year-old aspiring artists when they met in 1967 in New York City.
They soon moved in together and helped nurture each other's artistic development.
Mapplethorpe became one of the most controversial artists of his time.
His photographs of nudes, often in erotic and sadomasochistic poses, put him at the center of a battle over censorship and federal funding of the arts.
Mapplethorpe died of AIDS in 1989 at the age of 42.
Terry first spoke with Patti Smith in 1996, when Smith had published a book of short prose poems dedicated to and inspired by Mapplethorpe.
The book was called The Coral Sea.
Terry asked Smith about a famous photograph he had taken of her.
He took the photograph perhaps the most famous photograph of you that was on the cover of your album Horses, I think in 1975, in which you're wearing a kind of oversized white shirt and an undone tie with like a suit jacket slung over your shoulder.
Tell us how that photograph came about.
Well, we...
We wanted to take the cover, and Robert knew where he wanted to take it.
It was up in Sam Wagstaff's apartment in New York City, which was a very white room.
There was a triangle of light that used to come through a window and he was extremely interested in photographing that triangle.
We went up there and I remember the light started changing and he wanted us to hurry up and we had to run.
We couldn't get a cab and we had to run as fast as we could because he could really feel the light changing.
And in terms of my clothing, it was just my usual clothes.
I used to like, I really wanted to have a Baudelairean type of look.
I wanted a black and white sort of a mixture of just how I was and a little 19th century feel in it.
But in the end the final photograph, which some people have made quite a bit of the particular pose or stance in the photograph was really a tribute to Frank Sinatra.
The capital years.
Well, no, actually, he did a movie, I think it was called... Oh, man...
I don't think it was Pal Joey.
It was the Joey Lewis story.
And Joey Lewis was a singer that got in trouble with the mob and got his throat cut and he wound up a comedian.
I don't know if you remember that.
Yeah, it's the movie that All the Way comes from.
Yeah, that's right.
The last scene of it, Frank Sinatra's walking alone down a dark street with a lantern.
There's a lantern-lit street.
And he, sort of philosophically talking to himself uh, in a pane of glass and he slings his coat over his shoulder and uh, you know philosophically, uh walks into the city sunset.
But um, i always thought it was cool the way he slung his coat over his shoulder.
So um, that was the only uh.
There was only a couple of photographs in that particular shooting like that, but that was the one robert picked.
The frank sinatra shot.
The Joker is Wild, I think.
Yeah, that's it.
Yeah, that's it.
The Joker is Wild.
Appropriate title.
You met Robert Mapplethorpe in 1967 when you were 20.
Do I have that right?
Yes.
How did you meet?
Well, we met in Brooklyn.
I was around Pratt Institute of Art where he went to school.
I had a friend there and my friend had moved and I was looking for my friend and i knocked on the door where he used to be and someone said well, i don't know where your friend is, but you can ask the guy in there.
And i went in another room and saw this kid sleeping um on this cot and i just stood there and was watching him sleep and he?
Um opened his eyes and smiled at me and that's how we met.
Now, was he already taking photographs when you met?
No, he didn't start taking photographs till late sixty nine, when we were at the chelsea hotel.
He he really only started taking photographs.
He was doing drawings, paintings and collages and some constructions and then later he did installations.
But in his huge montages and collages he uh used a lot of magazine pictures, holy cards, existing pictures uh, reproductions of Michelangelo, who he greatly admired, reproductions of statues and sculpture.
But he was never satisfied and he really started taking photographs to insert within his other work.
He didn't set out to become a photographer.
He really just wanted to create his own information for his drawings and montages.
Did you help each other with your work?
Always.
What ways were you able to help him, and how did he help you?
Well, we helped each other in any way we could, whether it be financially or an encouraging word or constructive criticism and just mutual belief in each other's work.
That's something really, that no one can duplicate nor take away from you is when you have another human being that completely believes in your work.
Was he the first person who completely believed in your work?
I'd say so, yes.
You've said that Mabel Thorpe helped you make the transition from psychotic to serious art student.
What did you mean by that?
Well, I'm never quite sure of what I meant.
You know, when people ask me to explain what I said 20 years ago or something.
I couldn't exactly say what I meant, but probably when I met him I felt like my work was really an extension of my neuroses instead of an extension of intelligence.
By helping me believe in myself as a person and gaining respect for my own intelligence, shifted the emphasis where the work came from.
I really did start writing and drawing when I was younger, to relieve myself from certain emotional tensions.
Like what?
Well, I mean, whatever tensions people have when they're...
Growing up, whether it be fear or sexual tensions or parental tension, youthful paranoia, I don't know.
Name it.
I think he gave you the money to record your first record, the 45 that had Hey Joe on one side and Piss Factory on the other.
Tell me the story of that.
Well, it's really simply Robert...
You know, for a long time, I had helped him financially, and Robert's situation got more solid.
He had a really benevolent and wonderful patron, Sam Wagstaff.
And through Sam Wagstaff, Robert was able to finance our first independent well, our only independent single.
And that's all the story was.
I wanted to do a single and didn't have the money, and he gave it to me.
So we went into Electric Lady Land one night and did it one night.
Robert.
Always when we were younger, he always thought that I should sing, although it was never really an ambition of mine.
And he was really happy when I wanted to do the single and he was really pleased to be a part of it.
Had he heard you sing?
I mean, would you sing?
Were you singing in the house before you were singing in performance?
Yeah, you know, I'd be making spaghetti or washing clothes and sing.
I don't know.
He used to sing little songs, and for some reason he liked my singing.
I used to sing little blues songs and things and he used to think I Well, he always thought I should sing.
Do you think you would have done it if he didn't nudge you in that direction?
Well, he did push me towards that, but it was a series of people actually...
You know, Sam Shepard was really instrumental in getting me to sing in public.
I had a few different friends that seemed to think that I had a bend toward that.
And I really do believe.
If it wasn't for those friends, Lenny Kay and a few others no, I don't believe that I would be singing.
At least not...
I mean, I might still be singing around the house making spaghetti, but I can't say that I would have been recording.
Patti Smith speaking to Terry Gross in 1996.
After a break, we'll listen to portions of another of their conversations, this one from 2010.
Also, we'll hear from actress Laura Dern in a 2023 interview discussing her mother, Diane Ladd, who died this week at age 89.
And I'll review Pluribus, the new series from Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan.
I'm David Bianculli, and this is Fresh Air.
Late at night, dreaming hotel I was looking for you.
We're commemorating the 50th anniversary of Patti Smith's debut album Horses.
She's considered the godmother of punk.
With her first album, she created a hybrid of poetry and rock and established a high-energy performance style that was sometimes aggressive and sometimes ecstatic.
When Terry spoke with Patti Smith in 2010...
Smith had written the memoir Just Kids about growing up in New Jersey, moving to New York in 1967, evolving into a poet, songwriter and performer and beginning a relationship with artist Robert Mapplethorpe.
You say that until a friend suggested that you be in a rock and roll band, it had never occurred to you.
It was just like not part of your world.
No, why would it?
You know, I'm not a musician anymore.
You know, I didn't play any instrument.
I didn't have any specific talents.
I mean, I came from the South Jersey, Philadelphia area.
And in the early 60s, everybody sang.
They sang on street corners, three-part harmonies, a cappella.
I knew most of my friends were better singers than me.
There was nothing in what I did that would give a sense that I should be in a rock and roll band.
Also, girls... weren't in rock and roll bands.
I mean they sang, but you know, the closest thing to a rock singer, a real rock singer that we had was Grace Slick.
And I certainly didn't have Grace Slick's voice.
So you found the guitarist Lenny Kay.
You read an article by him about acapella groups and you really liked it.
And you found him.
You sought him out.
He was working at a bookstore in the village.
If you had not found Bunny Kaye, do you think you wouldn't have been in a rock and roll band?
Because he has been your guitarist kind of forever.
Well, I can't say what would happen.
It was really Sam Shepard who suggested.
You know, I said to Sam, when Robert helped me through Gerard Malanga to get my first reading, I said I got to do something special, because if I don't do something special, Gregory's going to, you know, throw tomatoes at me or something.
Gregory Corso, who was... mentoring me not to be a boring poet.
And I said, I want to do something special.
And Sam said, well, you have these.
And I said, well, I could sing acapella songs.
And he said, well, do you know anybody that plays guitar?
And I said, well, this fellow Lenny Kay mentioned he played a little guitar.
And I don't know how I would have evolved, because the thing about Lenny is that made him different from everyone else is Lenny was there to magnify my ideas.
He really – I'm not saying he was totally selfless.
He had a sense of himself.
But he was completely there for me.
You were saying that you didn't have – you didn't think of yourself as a singer per se that your friends had better voices than you did.
But you created this new style, really, that was a combination of poetry and music.
It wasn't about having a perfect singer's voice.
It was the style that you performed and the personality that you put into it, the kind of defiance that you had in some songs, the energy.
Would you talk about what you felt you were doing early on?
That was different from what you'd seen other people do.
I think my perception of myself was really as a performer and a communicator.
My first album, Horses.
My mission and the collective band mission was really, on one level, to merge poetry and rock and roll but, more humanistically, to reach out to other disenfranchised people.
You know, we... In 1975, the...
Young homosexual kids were being disowned by their families.
Kids like me who were a little weird or a little different were often persecuted in their small towns.
And it wasn't just because of sexual persuasion.
It was for any reason, for being an artist, for being different, for having political views, for just wanting to be free.
And I really... recorded the record to connect with these people.
And also in terms of our place in rock and roll, just to create some bridge between our great artists that we had just lost Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison among them and to create space for what I felt would be the new guard, which I didn't really include myself.
I was really anticipating people or or bands like The Clash and The Ramones.
I was anticipating in my mind that a new breed would come television.
A new breed would come and they would be less materialistic, more bonded with the people and not so glamorous.
I wasn't thinking so much of music.
I wasn't thinking so much of perfection or stardom.
I had this mission.
And I thought I would do this record and then go back to my writing and my drawing and return to my somewhat abnormal normal life.
But horses took me on a whole different path.
Is there a track from horses that particularly illustrates what you were describing as what your mission was?
Birdland.
I think Birdland because for various reasons.
Birdland was an improvisation built on an improvisation.
It so much exemplifies the communication of my band, especially between Richard Lenny and I, And it speaks of this new breed, the new generations who will be dreaming in animation.
You know, the new generations that will race across the fields, no longer presidents, but prophets.
That was my, it was like my telegram to the new breed.
Oh, let's hear it.
This is Birdland from Patti Smith's first album, Horses.
I'm helium raving, this movie is mine.
He cried out as he stretched the sky, pushing it all out like Lake Dick's cartoon.
Am I all alone?
This generation will just be dreaming of animation night and day.
It won't let up, it won't let up, and I see them coming in.
Oh, I couldn't hear them before, but I hear now.
It's a radar score black ships that were moving in streams of them.
And he put up his hands and he said it's me, it's me, I'll give you my eyes.
Take me up.
Oh now, please take me up.
Robert Mapplethorpe did the very iconic photograph for the cover of Horses.
What impact do you think that photo had on how people perceived you?
Well I, you know I, I don't know, I know people really liked it.
I know the record company didn't.
They didn't?
That's such a great photo.
Why didn't the record company like it?
Because my hair was messy because, you know, it was a little incomprehensible to them at the time.
But I fought for it, and they did try to airbrush my hair, but I made sure that was fixed.
People were very— upset constantly about my appearance when I was young.
I don't know what it was.
It was very hard for them to factor.
But I've always had that problem, even as a child.
I used to go to the beach when I was a little kid and just want to wear my dungarees and my flannel shirt.
And the whole time, people would be, why are you wearing that?
Why don't you get a bathing suit?
It's like, leave me alone.
It's just like, I'm not bothering you.
Why are you worried about, you know, what I look like?
You know, it's just, I'm not trying to bother anybody.
But people love the photograph.
The people on the streets love the photograph.
And it gave Robert some instant attention.
I think it was his.
You know where he it really helped, you know, launch his work into the public consciousness.
And...
And so we were both very happy about that.
And the funniest thing and sort of the sweetest thing was when I started performing after the record came out.
I would go to clubs anywhere.
It could be Denmark, could be in Youngstown, Ohio.
And I would come on stage and at least half of the kids had white shirts and black ties on.
It was kind of cool.
We were all We all had suddenly turned Catholic.
Patti Smith speaking with Terry Gross in 2010.
There's a new 50th anniversary edition of her debut album, Horses, now out on Legacy Recordings.
She also has a new memoir titled Bread of Angels.
Coming up, we remember actress Diane Ladd, who died Monday at the age of 89.
This is Fresh Air.
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Actress Diane Ladd died Monday at the age of 89.
Her most famous film roles include Martin Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, in which she played the foul-mouthed Southern waitress Flo.
Here she is telling customers to leave the other waitress alone.
Everybody can see she's got big s*** on her.
But hands off, let the girl do her work.
If there's going to be any grab-assing around here, grab mine, Steve.
You can look, but don't you touch her.
And David Lynch's Wild at Heart, in which she played a former beauty queen who hires a hitman to kill her daughter's boyfriend.
The boyfriend is played by Nicolas Cage.
Here he is, calling the house to talk to her daughter.
Can I talk to Lula?
There's no way in hell that you're going to talk to her.
If you even think about seeing Lula, you're dead.
What?
You heard me.
And don't you ever call here again.
Ladd's real-life daughter, Laura Dern, played her daughter in the film.
They worked together again in mother-daughter roles in the film Rambling Rose, and both were nominated for Academy Awards.
They continued in that pairing in the HBO series Enlightened.
In 2023, Terry Gross spoke with Laura Dern.
The actress had just written a book about conversations with her mother.
It grew out of her mother's diagnosis of lung disease, when the doctor had given her six months to live.
He suggested that walks might help increase her lung capacity.
So Dern began taking her mother on 15-minute walks every day.
What is something that you asked her on these walks that you don't think you otherwise might have asked her.
That was important for you to hear about.
Well, my mom says...
We both thought I was dying, so we spilled the beans.
And most of us, within our own family particularly, don't spill the beans.
Or we wait till it's too late and say, oh, I wish I'd asked them this or that.
And what shocked me as I would start to engage her in topics, is how little I had asked this only child thing.
Single mother who raised me an only child.
And yet I hadn't asked her.
Why did you, from this tiny town in Mississippi, think I'm going to be an actor?
That's what I want to do.
What was the first movie that inspired you?
Who were the actors you fell in love with?
Given that I became an actor as well and we worked together, as you mentioned a number of times, Wouldn't that be a natural conversation?
It never came up.
Things as seemingly mundane as favorite foods, favorite colors, favorite flowers, that were just to pass the time.
It moved me so much how little the people in our most intimate relationships, how little we ask.
And I know her emotionally, but I...
I never asked where those feelings stemmed from.
I want to play a scene you did with your mother in the HBO series Enlightened.
I'm not going to set up the whole story.
I will just say that you had basically a ragey, nervous breakdown at work.
And you go off to rehab in Hawaii where you learn to meditate.
And you return home drunk. changed by it.
You've learned to meditate to calm the rage and anger and to center yourself and focus.
And you come home with an exercise that you're supposed to write a letter to somebody who you have difficulty communicating with.
So you come home and your mother, who's played by your mother, Diane Ladd, is there.
And here's the scene where you start reading her the letter that you were told to write in rehab.
Mother.
They have asked me to write a letter to the person I have the most difficulty communicating with.
It was not hard for me to decide who that person is.
How long is this going to take?
Do you have somewhere to be?
No.
I just wanted to know how long this is going to take.
Not long.
I've just got to read you what's on these papers.
Well, I can read, honey.
But I'm supposed to read it to you, Mom.
That's the point.
Okay, Amy.
You and I have been through a lot.
Dad's death, all of Bethany's issues, my divorce, money problems.
You name it, we have dealt with it.
I know I have disappointed you in many ways.
And yes, there have been times that you have disappointed me.
But I want to change that.
And I truly believe that we can change.
And if we can change...
Anything is possible.
If we can change, the whole world can change for the better.
I don't know what that means, honey.
Mom, can you just let me finish?
And we'll talk after.
Is this what they asked you to do up there?
One of the things, yeah.
And what medications did they give you?
Mom, nothing.
I'm off my medications.
Well, why on earth?
Mom, I don't want to talk about my medications.
I'm here reading you.
I just want to be sure that you are okay.
Okay.
I just...
Look, don't get irritated with me because I just want what's best for you.
That is all I have ever wanted.
Such a beautiful scene about miscommunication and not understanding each other and having like a different approach to expressing things.
When you work with your mother, as you've done several times, does it make you self-conscious, because you know each other so well?
It's not like a professional relationship, because you have, you know, the deepest personal relationship anybody has.
Well, first of all, thank you for playing that scene.
I'm just smiling and cracking up over here as I'm listening to it, because it is the extraordinary writing of Mike White who, you know, just navigated the complexity of that dynamic, as you mentioned.
And you know, in the book, in our conversations, my mom talked about the joy she had remembering the first time we worked together on wild at heart.
Um, the first film we did together and we had to do this very emotional scene.
And she remembered me preparing for the scene at one end of the set and her at the other, both doing our work, both having trained separately as professionals, you know, not engaged in that together.
Um, And then coming together to do this very emotional scene and the camera rolls and David Lynch called action and it's very emotional and I'm crying in her arms and he said cut.
And mom describes us pulling away and her looking in my eyes and realizing that she knew exactly what had brought up the emotion in me.
And I looked at her and felt I knew the emotion and the pain and she was expressing in the scene.
Both very personal, both never discussed, but we just know each other so well.
And so at that moment, we started laughing hysterically right after this big crying scene.
And mom describes the whole crew looking at us as if we were nuts.
But it was such a personal intimate, beautiful thing to share the kind of knowing and bringing it into this professional space, but also the boundaries of that professional space, that it's sort of this unspoken language.
So you wouldn't ask your mother, what were you thinking of when you made that scene?
Exactly.
And yet we knew.
And yet we knew and never discussed it.
Laura Dern, speaking with Terry Gross in 2023.
Her mother, Diane Ladd, died Monday at the age of 89.
Coming up.
I review Pluribus, the new Apple TV Plus series from Vince Gilligan, creator of Breaking Bad.
This is Fresh Air.
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Vince Gilligan, the creator of Breaking Bad and co-creator of Better Call Saul, has a new series called Pluribus.
It stars Ray Sehorne from Better Call Saul, and the first two of its nine episodes premiere tonight on Apple TV.
Seven of the nine were made available for preview, and I've seen them all.
But I want you to have as much fun watching Pluribus as I did, so I'm going to say as little as possible about what happens in them.
Apple TV Plus already has renewed Pluribus for a season two, and it's a smart move.
Vince Gilligan, once again, has come up with a boldly brilliant TV series.
The best way to describe Pluribus without revealing anything is to think of it as an episode of The Twilight Zone spun off into its own series.
It begins with scientists monitoring a radio telescope and discovering something new and exciting.
There's got to be something bouncing off the, off the.
It's not bouncing off the moon, dave.
Maybe it's those chatty kathys at the forest service.
I hate those guys always on their radios talking about trees.
Dave, it's not smoky bear, we're picking up.
Look at that signal.
It's drifting.
What is it then?
Looks like simple pulse width modulation, old school, like morse code.
Maybe somehow it's the time signal out of Fort Collins.
They use pulse width modulation.
It's not the atomic clock.
The atomic clock changes every minute because it's a clock.
This is the same exact data repeated every 78 seconds.
Plus, this is coming from 600 light years away.
That's similar to the way another fantasy drama series, Three-Body Problem, began recently.
But this new series has other plots and plot twists on its mind.
Before too long, we meet the protagonist of Pluribus.
She's Carol Sterka, best-selling author of sexy, sappy sci-fi fantasy novels.
And she's played by Ray Sehorne, who was so unforgettably real and relatable as Kim Wexler in Better Call Saul.
We meet Carol at a Barnes & Noble in Dallas, reading from her book to her adoring fans, then signing copies and interacting with them before retreating with her agent and best friend, Helen, to a local bar.
At the bar Helen, played by Miriam Shore, offers a toast to the new book tour, a toast Carol rejects.
Best book tour.
What is that?
Is that like best stomach cancer?
You endure it.
You do not toast it.
Oh, how I hate all those paying customers showering me with love and respect.
Why do I have to make so much money?
How do you fare?
Carol has fame and money and a beautiful house back home in Albuquerque.
Yes, once again, Gilligan and company have returned there to film parts of this new series.
But all that doesn't seem to make her happy.
And when people around her suddenly start acting very strangely, she feels even more isolated.
Apple TV Plus, in its own press materials, describes the premise of Pluribus this way.
The most miserable person on earth, it says, must save the world from happiness.
And even if I wanted to elaborate, the streaming service's press restrictions on spoilers make it next to impossible.
I've never seen such a long, detailed list of plot points not to reveal.
But I don't mind.
If you stick with the Twilight Zone analogy, you'll notice echoes in Pluribus from various classic Zone episodes.
A woman all alone in her home fighting against a mysterious enemy surrounding her.
A woman fighting against a society that wants her to conform and act just like them.
A man all alone with buildings and streets deserted trying to survive.
And so on.
Vince Gilligan was a writer and producer on The X-Files, and his love of the genre comes through loud and clear here, like a radio signal from across the universe.
And what he's doing in Pluribus, while having fun with themes from The Twilight Zone and classic sci-fi films like Invasion of the Body Snatchers somehow, is paradoxically bordering on unique.
Yes, he and his creative team of writers and directors dip into Gilligan's familiar bag of tricks—
Beautiful photography, long extended set pieces and montages, intense and lengthy conversations among characters.
But the way those characters are introduced and dealt with here and the way the plot widens and deepens.
To say so much about so many big idea topics, it's as singularly and hypnotically odd in its way as Twin Peaks was.
It's disturbing, unpredictable, and alternately funny and creepy.
And while Ray Sehorne doesn't carry all of the weight of Pluribus, other co-stars, including Carolina Wydra and Carlos Manuel Vesca, are wonderful too.
Her Carol is a character you'll relate to, laugh at, and buy into completely.
The opening episode, written and directed by Gilligan, takes her on a wild and crazy ride, and we go right along with her.
And Gilligan and Pluribus ask a larger question as well.
Fighting for life and liberty, that's a given.
But what if the pursuit of happiness is vastly overrated?
Maybe even dangerous.
On Monday's show, Academy Award winner Tim Robbins talks about Topsy Turvy, the new play he wrote in response to pandemic isolation.
From the Shawshank Redemption to founding the Actors.
Gang Robbins discusses how his commitment to creating politically relevant art has shaped his four-decade career.
I hope you can join us.
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This week on the NPR Politics Podcast, the political laws of gravity still exist.
When you have an unpopular president and people are dissatisfied with the economy, that president's party loses.
Plus, the president's tariffs at the Supreme Court.
Catch up on political news you've missed or have just been sitting out on the NPR Politics Podcast.
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