The Rake Magazine

Given Edgar Allan Poe's well-known fear of being buried alive, the claim that the horror writer and poet "must be rolling over in his grave" at the prospect of Sylvester Stallone writing and directing the biopic Poe is more than rote recitation of cliché. It's definitely a curious way for 61-year-old Sly to follow-up the cinematic Cialis he recently gave to both the Rocky and Rambo franchises.

It's also yet another bizarre turn in the trajectory of Poe's pop-culture legacy. First an NFL team, the Baltimore Ravens, takes its name from his poem (its raven mascots are named Edgar, Allan, and Poe). Then Poe's great-great nephew, actor-musician Edgar Allan Poe IV, appeared as the ghost of his great-great uncle on the sitcom Sabrina, The Teenage Witch. A fictionalized Poe was also found sleuthing murders with King of the Wild Frontier Davey Crockett in The Alienist-ish novel Nevermore.

Yet it's not the idea that the star of arm-wrestling epic Over The Top or Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot is doing a Poe movie that bothers me (the man did write his own ticket with his script the original Rocky; let's show him some respect).

Even Stallone's rumored casting notions (Robert Downey Jr., Viggo Mortenson) seem on target—if too buff—for his portrait of the tortured genius. So what's the problem? It's just that prospect of any Poe movie being made renders Michael Jackson's long-dormant dream of starring as Edgar Allan Poe even more unlikely-and that's a problem for me. Could Wacko Jacko fall in the footsteps of Apollo Creed and Clubber Lang, and become yet another black man knocked out by the Italian Stallion? That's no way to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Thriller.

Some background: In 2000, USA Today reported that the King Of Pop had finally seen the "very scary" script for his European-funded vanity project The Nightmares of Edgar Allan Poe and was gearing up to "devote himself full-time to preparing for the role" of the author.

It was mind-blowing news, even by the (high? low?) standards of tabloid staple Wacko Jacko, one that lends itself to jokes: Will he instruct "The Tell-Tale Heart" to "just beat it?" Could we next expect Jacko's opportunistic sister Latoya to star as Virginia Woolf in A Room of One's Own? Would Emmanuel "Webster" Lewis be cast as Poe's child-bride Virginia? Would "The Raven" be replaced by Bubbles The Chimp? Would we quoth The Raven "Mama-Say-Mama-Sa Mama-Tu Sa?"

And yes, the racial angle of the MJ casting also raised questions, among them: How confused would've the late playwright August Wilson been? But, let's be honest -- casting MJ as Poe is not as problematic as, say, casting El DeBarge as Nathaniel Hawthorne. Whether it's because of the skin disease vitiligo, cosmetic bleaching or a combination of both, Jackson's pallid complexion looks even more Goth than portraits of Poe's pale visage. The issue here is not casting a black man to play a white man; it's casting an alien mannequin drag queen apparently sculpted out of soap to play a white man.

Nonetheless, the King of Pop insists that he feels connected to Poe, and maybe—DEFINITELY—because of the fact that I was obsessed with both Jacko and Poe in elementary school, I believe him. Before we give Michael's movie a premature burial, let us consider the connections between these two eerie American icons, "thrillers" both—and implore Sylvester Stallone to do the same.

Both Jackson and Poe are arguably the most popular American export in their respective fields, and major influences on those who followed. Baudelaire was said to make his morning prayers to God and Edgar Allen Poe, and Justin Timberlake and Usher are obviously both Michael Jackson impersonators trying to moonwalk in MJ's fleet footsteps.

There is also symmetry to their scandals. They both have been accused of pedophilia; at the very least, they share a penchant for PYTs (Pretty Young Things): Poe married his 13-year-old cousin Virginia, and Jackson has hosted many a sleepover with 13-year-old boys. Thus, their sexuality has been wildly speculated about. In a posthumous psychoanalysis of Poe, Dr. Maria Bonaparte theorized that Poe was celibate, entertained thoughts of necrophilia and suffered from a castration complex (her mentor, Dr. Sigmund Freud provided the preface for this study).

Despite vehement assertions to Diane Sawyer, many said the same (well, minus the necrophilia and castration stuff) of Jackson's marriages to Lisa Marie Presley and later, to his plastic surgeon's nurse, Debbie Rowe, even though they had two children together. (I'd also bet that the paternity suit of a certain Billie Jean would get thrown out of court in a hurry.)

They both struggled with financial difficulties despite being among the best at what they did. Many historians say Poe was an opium addict; Jackson revealed he had an addiction to the painkiller Demerol in court papers. They both explored the pull of drugs in their work. Here's Poe's narrator from "Ligeia," seeing visions of his dead lover: "In the excitement of my opium dream (for I was habitually fettered in the shackles of the drug), I would call aloud her name ..."

Here's Jackson, from Blood On The Dance Floor's "Morphine":

Demerol Demerol Oh God he's taking Demerol
Hee-hee-hee Demerol Demerol Oh my oh God it's Demerol
Hee Oooh

Then there's the Vincent Price connection. Price, of course, was the on-screen embodiment of Poe's work in such Roger Corman films as The Pit and the Pendulum, The Masque Of The Red Death, and The Cask Of Amontillado. He also provided the rap and maniacal cackle on the title track of Jackson's Thriller.

That's not all. They both had a less-talented, oft-maligned brother named Tito. Yep, that's right -- Tito Allan Poe. They both (except Jackson) are widely credited with inventing the modern detective story. They both (except Poe) were known for wearing a single white sequined glove, allegedly wanting to buy the Elephant Man's bones, and getting their scalp burned by a pyrotechnic mishap while shooting a Pepsi commercial.

Sure, skeptics may assert that Poe has a better chance of writing a sequel to The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym before The Nightmares of Edgar Allan Poe would take any Oscars, or even Golden Globes. Then there's always the camp that will insist that Prince does and will always do everything better than Jackson. But those people obviously haven't seen Under The Cherry Moon lately, and I think Michael's turn as The Scarecrow in 1978's The Wiz proves he can update classic material,) These maybe nonexistent critics are also forgetting that Jackson has worked with both Francis Ford Coppola (Disney's 3-D Captain Eo, to these eyes, a primary influence on The Matrix and Neo) and Martin Scorsese (MJ's "Bad" video, which featured Wesley Snipes as a gang-banger challenging prep-schooler MJ's manhood) back when that meant really something.

Whether Jackson as Poe is bad meaning bad, or bad meaning good, or so bad it's good, who knows? But even if you don't take into account movie's off-the-scale camp genius potential (R. Kelly's "Trapped In The Closet" would be rendered a trifle by comparison); think of Jackson as an ambassador of American literature. I don't know how big Poe's work is in Filipino prisons, but I bet he'll be huge there after this movie. So it is with this argument that I must ask Sylvester Stallone resurrect another ‘80s icon, and cast Michael Jackson as Poe. C'mon Rock, make a nightmare come true.

when you reach

somewhere

that is nowhere

and you talk

with sadness

to someone

younger, beautiful, longing

with peace in her eyes

you feel calm

and your worries vanish

like water

through the fingers 

of a fist gripping fear 

I am sitting here late in the evening babysitting. Perhaps it is because I feel so esconced here in a secure state of suburban responsibility that I can safely venture into a topic I should know little about. Then, of course, it could be because I work with a lot of "young" people. 

By "young" I mean "millenials"—which loosely describes anyone entering the workforce since the turn of the century—or adults in their mid-twenties. I am a "first x" who came of age under Ronald Reagan but frankly since I partied away most of my mid-20s I feel much closer to millenials than garden variety gen-xers. 

Speaking of whom (gen-xers) you might want to listen up, because the millenials I favor are literate adults, not Lohans. In fact, the only reason I place the risqué picture of Lindsay atop this post is because she apparently has a new book of her doing bad things. I just learned this tonight when I went looking for a picture online (for this post).

Fortunately, the millenials I know would never mess with poster trash like Lindsay Lohan. While they are so much more than her, they also might not be that into you.

They are not, for example, interested in your music. By "your music" I mean primarily the stuff they play on Cities 97 that is composed and performed primarily by white people. Forget Phish. Forget Radiohead. And please forget R.E.M. or Coldplay for that matter.

They like hip-hop. Hip-hop is their cosmos. It is very explicit, and it can sound like scratches on a trash can to untrained ears.

So train your ears.

Because hip-hop and rap (same thing, essentially) is the first entirely new musical art form of the millenium (although it was born in the Bronx in the mid-'70s). It has its own critical cannon, including "flow," which when delivered by a master like the non-retired Jay-Z can be as mellifluous as Mozart.

The reason you need to know this music is because music defines young people far more than older ones. Movies, books, those kinds of things matter far less than getting into their musical groove (books are not off-limits, just not the lead topic.)

Young people are also not adept with their phones, except for texting. Older people might look down on this until they realize that younger people text because a) it is cheaper, b) they can do it in class, and c) it's less intimate (and stressful) than talking to someone.

Which leads me to my third point: young people prefer to keep their distance. They will not fully engaged with you until you get on their wavelength.

I may have more insights soon, but that is it for now.

Do I sound like an expert?

Maybe I should ask a movie starlet.

Know any?