Allee Willis Blog » The Color Purple

28Mar 2011

Allee Willis Marches on Detroit! – A Benefit for Mumford High School

28Mar 2011

Allee Willis Marches on Detroit! – A Benefit for Mumford High School

Next week I’m going back to my home town, Detroit, to conduct my high school marching band playing a medley of my greatest hits in the lobby of the theater I grew up in before a performance of my musical, The Color Purple, with the cast leading a sing-along. It’s a fundraiser to buy new uniforms for the Mumford marching band because with over 40 kids in the band, some of them are still marching around in threads from when I were there. Although I never made marching band as I never learned to play an instrument. I never learned how to read music either which should make my conducting this event most interesting to say the least!

My high school was made famous in Beverly Hills Cop when Eddie Murphy wore a Mumford Phys Ed T-shirt throughout the film. I won a Grammy for Best Soundtrack for Beverly Hills Cop so my destiny and that of my high school are inextricably linked. Mumford is one of the largest schools in the city, 99% African-American and close to that percentage underprivileged. The Color Purple is about believing in and loving yourself, a rise from less nothing to everything that you never even dared to dream. I want to instill that hope in these kids.

I know most of you don’t live in Detroit – any of you who do please come to the Fox on Saturday April 9, from 11- 12:30 PM – but you can still help us march. Please donate to help this most fabulous high school and help invigorate the spirit of Detroit.

And please forward the invitation or give the links to anyone you think might be interested in attending the event or donating to the cause. We need all the $$ we can get!

Invitation- https://www.alleewillis.com/mumfordinvite

All text version – https://www.alleewillis.com/mumfordinvite-text

Direct link to ticket/donation page: https://www.alleewillis.com/mumford

22Mar 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Watch my new song: “Scared About Life Without Oprah”

22Mar 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Watch my new song: “Scared About Life Without Oprah”

My friend and hysterical TV comedy writer, Maxine Lapiduss, has done a brill job on the just-released-and-going-exceptionally-strong video for a song I co-wrote with her, Mark Waldrop, with whom Maxx started the lyric, and Michael Orland, musical director and accompanist for American Idol, good friend, and neighbor of mine who came over with Maxx and with whom we banged out the music in a few hours.

I’m not traditionally big on parody songs but this is the cherry of the bunch. Maxx called a bunch of her friends to help and, if I do say so myself, we all performed masterfully. Wendy and Lisa, yes Prince Wendy and Lisa, produced the song and Jane Lynch, my favorite comedy actress and Sue Sylvester on Glee, does an hysterical cameo.

The melody of “Scared About Life Without Oprah” reminds me a lot of of my earliest songs,…

…totally Pop and slightly theatrically inspired, with bouncy Carole King/ Laura Nyro-ish inspired background vocals.

Maxx has true love for Oprah.

I, too, have true love for Oprah.

We met when she and her TV crew surprised the cast of my musical, The Color Purple, about a month before we opened on Broadway and told us she was joining the show as above title producer. Far from “Scared About Life Without Oprah” I was “Elated about Life WITH Oprah”! Although you never could tell that from this photo where, when most people wait their whole life to be spoken to by her, I wasn’t even aware she was standing next to me attempting to make conversation:

If you live in LA, Maxx is doing one last performance of her hysterical comedy act, “Mackie’s Back In Town” at Sterling’s Upstairs at Vitello’s in Studio City this Sunday night, featuring a live performance of “Scared About Life Without Oprah”. And if you’re on Facebook, join the fan page, http://www.facebook.com/pages/Maxine-Lapiduss/186264481403869. And here it is on itunes: http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/scared-about-life-without/id427623190?uo=4. I swear you will love this, so hit Maxx’s nose now!

21Mar 2011

From Allee on the road…

21Mar 2011

From Allee on the road…

As much as I look forward to rolling out of bed every morning and choosing a fresh, new and wonderful artifact of kitsch to present, today is an absolutely torturous day in terms of what I have to accomplish. First of all, I’m driving back to LA from Monterey. It’s supposed to rain like cats and very large dogs most of the way back so I have to get an early start. Also, I have to write tons of the kind of stuff I hate to write because I’ve got to unleash a whole Facebook campaign on a death-defying event I’m attempting to pull off in 2 1/2 weeks in Detroit when I conduct my high school band in the theater I grew up in playing a medley of my greatest hits before a performance of my musical, The Color Purple, with the cast singing along. This should sound like a manageable event, but just imagine the sound of a marching band playing in the four-story high/almost block long lobby of a theater built in 1930 of solid concrete and marble, the acoustical nightmare of which has just dawned on me: What’s the point of having a sing-along if all you can hear is a bevy of brass drilling through your your eardrums?

And how do I conduct an orchestra facing one direction at the same time as a sing-along, which demands me turning the other way to conduct the crowd? These are the kind of mindnumbing challenges that someone like me, who gets an idea and charges ahead, forgets to deal with until it’s too late to examine the sanity of attempting to do such a thing in the first place. So I rely upon my ability to create good enough art and somehow combine it with everything else that inevitably reels off the railroad tracks, tipping over and spilling down the hillside into a vat of how-the-hell-am-I-going-to-pull-this-off-let-alone-raise-the-money-I-need-to-raise-to buy-the-marching-band-new-uniforms to understand that all of this makes for fantastic kitsch and I just have to roll with it.

Also today, my good friend and hysterical comedy person, Maxine Lapiduss, releases a song/video of a song I co-wrote called “Scared About Life without Oprah”, produced by Wendy and Lisa and featuring Jane Lynch. Of course, Maxine expects me, as any artist or co-writer would, to promote it on Facebook. So not only do I have one most important event to promote I have a song to push as well. So the immediate task is to to sit here on the 101 when it’s not my turn to drive and figure out some way I don’t nauseate myself by unleashing a couple weeks of vigorous begging and pleading to take note of all that is wonderful in Allee world without pissing people off I’m hawking so much. To some folks the shameless task of self-promotion comes naturally. To me, it’s razor blades in my eyeballs unless I can think of an entertaining way to do it.

All this to say I apologize for not posting fresh kitsch today but I will be back tomorrow with bran’ spanking new wonderfulness from the shelves at The Allee Willis Of Kitsch at AWMOK.com (shamelss plug #3). Please send all creative vibes my way today! And pretty please go here and support the cause: https://www.alleewillis.com/mumfordinvite. And if on Facebook please join here to follow the precarious journey to new band uniforms for the funkiest high school band on the planet: https://www.facebook.com/AlleeWillisMarchesOnDetroit

09Feb 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Dinah-Mite and the Dyn-O-Miteness of Jenifer Lewis

09Feb 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Dinah-Mite and the Dyn-O-Miteness of Jenifer Lewis

I love things that are ‘off’ but born of popular trends and then spin off into their own orbit, making a firm landing on the terra firma of Pop Culture themselves. In the early 1970’s, Mego Toys, the po’ cousin of popular doll brands like Barbie, did just that, popping out one cheaply made, shabbily dressed femme fatale after another.

I love product names like “Dinah-Mite” because of their shameless attempt to cash in on other popular trends of the day, in this early 70’s case, second rate karate films starring wannabe Bruce Lees, third rate female detectives in the shadow of Coffey and Foxy Brown, and, most predominantly, J.J. Walker’s Good Times outasite colloquialism, “Dy-no-mite!”.

One lady who is certifiably DYN-O-MITE!, not at all cheaply made and most likely a karate master is my good friend and fantastic actress, Jenifer Lewis. She of close to 200 films and 60+ television shows fame and easily one of the most hysterical people on the planet. Last Friday night she whooped and holla’d – and I mean HOLLA’D – in “So Much Love – An Evening with Jennifer Lewis, A Fundraiser to Benefit Rogue Machine Theatre” at The Nate Holden Performing Arts Center in LA.

Jenifer and I go way back to when she was one of Bette Midler’s Harlettes in the early 80’s. In addition to being great friends, we’ve always supported each other in all the crazy things we both do. When my alter–ego, Bubbles the artist, worked full-time to support me while I worked on The Color Purple musical from 2001 through 2005, Jennifer was first in line with the commissions. Here’s a beautiful salad bowl that Bubbles made of her.

You can see it’s a dead ringer:

Jenifer has always been known for her mouth, which is large and always going. Another woman who was known for her skills with verbiage was the great comedienne, Moms Mabley, who Bubbles committed to acrylic the same year the bowl was made. Moms now hangs on Jenifer’s kitchen wall.

I got a shout-out at her show when Jenifer told the story of going to an audition at Disney where out of the blue they asked her if she could play an old lady. The painting of Moms flashed in front of her eyes and, as if she magically lost all her teeth, she channeled Moms and landed the role of Mama Odie in The Princess And The Frog.

Many friends came to see Jenifer perform Friday night. ‘Friends’ being the operative word as she introduced her musical director, Michael Skloff, my Friends theme song co-writer, who performed the song, TV theme version, at the show.

Also there was Dawnn Lewis…

… Vanessa Bell Calloway and Prudence Fenton…

…Paul Mooney…

…Shangela Laquifa Wadley of RuPaul’s Drag Race 2 and 3…

…and one of my favorite tv actresses of all time, Marla Gibbs.

I have a huge collection of vintage Jet Magazines. Here’s one of them:

Dinah-Mite has Marla’s hair and they’re both wearing purple.

Also wearing purple are Jenifer and I on the opening night of my musical, The Color Purple, on Broadway, December 1, 2005.

Thank God our purple outfits fit us better than poor Dinah-Mite’s.

I should show you Dinah-Mite’s fashionable go-go boots while we’re examining her outfit:

Unfortunately, despite the fact that we both had on fabulous sneakers, I didn’t photograph Jenifer or my shoes Friday night. There’s only this chest-up shot of two Dyn-o-mite friends after one Dinah-mite evening!

24Jan 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 1960’s “Last Leg O’ The (knee) Trip” Pen

24Jan 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 1960’s “Last Leg O’ The (knee) Trip” Pen

I’m happy to report that my own recently operated on left knee is finally allowing my leg to return to its natural state such as modeled by this fantastic “First Leg ‘O Trip’ Washington souvenir pen. Although my own appendage is not as shapely and slim as this perfectly poised on-point gam, it’s just about at the point of where it looks more like an ‘I’ than a ‘V’ and is allowing me to hobble around rather than setting up permanent camp in bed.

I have no plans to go to Washington but, rather, to Detroit, the trip that I suspect sent my knee into hyper-gear and caused my meniscus to rip. Not known for my disciplined exercise regimen, in April I’m heading to the Motor City, my hometown, to conduct my high school band playing a medley of my greatest hits in the lobby of the historic Fox theater before a performance of the musical I co-wrote, The Color Purple. In efforts to bounce around as if I were four decades younger, I got a little overaggressive as I rehearsed, conducting every TV commercial that came on and threw my knee so out of whack it was a lesson blaring in neon signage that one can never let themselves turn so fully into a couch potato that they’re more likely to grow sprouts before being able to function as a fully exercised human being.

Why, you might ask, was I rehearsing to TV commercials when I’ve actually written the songs that are to be performed? That would be because I never learned how to read, notate or play a stitch of music so even if the Mumford marching band arranger scanned his arrangements onto my skin I’d have a better chance of deciphering Chinese than the musical notes and rhythms before me.

So long ago I developed my own technique of being able to jump on a note and rhythm at the first milliseconds of its sound so that it might appear I know what I’m doing. I’m the same way with melodies. Nine times out of 10 I can sing along with something despite never having heard it before. It’s a weird skill I know but I can’t say it hasn’t come in handy:

But back to the leg at hand:

I love my little leg pen and, if I remembered where I put it after I shot these photos, I would have most definitely had it at bedside to psychologically aid in my recovery. That’s one of the beauties of being a collector. The objects around you aren’t just there because that’s what ought to be sitting on an end table or where there’s a chair there’s also an ottoman. The objects and you are one, all manifestations of energy in a world that’s largely up to you to create. Now it’s my job as a diligent patient, and one who has a marching band to conduct to boot, to manifest having a left leg as strong and shapely as my souvenir Washington leg pen and to stay on point forever.

Thank you all for taking this weeklong knee/leg journey with me. It actually made it feel like fun and that’s a lot to be said for surgery! This is, indeed, the ‘last leg’ of this journey.

29Dec 2010

Allee Willis’ Soul O’ The Day – I’m Here and so is Oprah, Jennifer Hudson, Fantasia and LaChanze

29Dec 2010

Allee Willis’ Soul O’ The Day – I’m Here and so is Oprah, Jennifer Hudson, Fantasia and LaChanze

Last night on the Kennedy Center Honors on CBS Oprah Winfrey was the first one to receive her award. Not only did my song,“I’m Here”, co-written with Brenda Russell and Stephen Bray, from my musical, The Color Purple, get played during the montage of Oprah’s life but it was then sung to her live by Jennifer Hudson, backed by the choir at Oprah’s alma mater, Tennessee State University.

It was a spectacular moment, not only for Jennifer Hudson and Oprah, but for me as a songwriter, who rarely gets to hear their music performed in a way they imagine it while writing as so many songs mutate from a fabulous little gem to an unrecognizable life form once they’re in the hands of an artist or producer. In my case, I’ve been blessed to see this particular song performed spectacularly by an bevy of fantastic singers and actresses, most notably Fantasia, LaChanze, Jeannette Bayardelle and Hudson. Here’s Fantasia, who played Celie, who WAS Celie, on Broadway for a year as well as for many months on the First National Tour, singing “I’m Here” at the Tony’s in 2007.

I would’ve much rather shown you Fantasia in costume as Celie singing “I’m Here” as it’s performed in the musical but it’s one of the quirks and, to me, one of the most backwards and archaic practices of musical theater, that they don’t allow performances to be filmed. Which means that unless you were one of the 1,000,000+ people who saw The Color Purple on Broadway you not only will never get to see LaChanze, the brilliant actress who originally starred on Broadway as Celie and won a Tony for her performance, but you will never get to experience the show as it was originally conceived. As such, all you can do is stare at this CD cover for the next 4 minutes while you listen to LaChanze sing “I’m Here”.

How beautiful does LaChanze sound and how dumb is it that you can’t see her?! Or that you can’t see Fantasia, who lives the life portrayed in “I’m Here”?! And the same for Jeannette Bayadelle, one of Celie’s understudies on Broadway who graduated to the lead role for the First National Tour. There are scattered and muffled pieces of Jeannette singing the song on YouTube, taken on cameras snuck into the show, but that’s not the way for you to see these great singers and actresses and it’s certainly not the way for you to see the show.

It’s nutty to me that people can’t be exposed to theater the way they are to all other entertainment mediums because of some ancient rule that the only filming allowed is of one performance that lives in the archives at Lincoln Center that only the authors and producers of the show can see. And by appointment only. How out of touch is that?!!! But you don’t want to get me started on everything I think needs to be adjusted in the world of theater so that new generations can embrace it as enthusiastically as ones did did back in the 40s and 50s, when hit musicals were on the tips of everyone’s tongue and not just the elite and tired few. Okay, enough… this post is about the brilliant performance of Jennifer Hudson last night and the brilliance of Oprah as an outstanding human being, not to mention how completely overwhelmed and thrilled I am to see the effect of “I’m Here” on the honoree:

Often times as a songwriter you’re the one left behind. Everyone knows the artist, in some cases the person who has the least to do with what you’re hearing or seeing, and many people know the producers. But songwriters create in the privacy of their little hovels and and rarely get the glory unless they’re recording artists themselves. I’m not complaining – well, I am – but I know that I’ve been blessed to have my songs covered by artists all over the spectrum of music. And one of the nicest gifts of all was watching TV last night and seeing this bunch of people kicking back and enjoying my song:

28Dec 2010

My Song Sung to Oprah on The Kennedy Center Honors TONIGHT, Tues., Dec. 28!

28Dec 2010

My Song Sung to Oprah on The Kennedy Center Honors TONIGHT, Tues., Dec. 28!

Sorry this is so last-minute (not as sorry as I am for that crazy smile on my face) but if you have a chance to catch or TiVo The Kennedy Center Honors tonight, Jennifer Hudson is singing my song, “I’m Here”, to Oprah when she gets her honor. The Kennedy Center Honors are on CBS, I think at 9 pm. I’m told it’s toward the beginning of the show but with this said, you never know how things are going to be edited and whether the song is going to be there or not. But I have a lot of friends who were there and said it’s fantastic. Of course, it’s a great honor to know that “I’m Here” is part of such an honor for Oprah!

“I’m Here” is the lead character, Celie’s, big song or as they call it in the theater, the 11 o’clock song, in the musical I co-wrote with Marsha Norman, Stephen Bray, and Brenda Russell, The Color Purple.

Here I am with my co-authors the first time we met Oprah in 2005 when she walked into a rehearsal to announce she was coming onboard:

The Color Purple ran on Broadway for two and a half years and is going into its fourth year on tour.

That’s not seventh place American idol winner Jennifer Hudson in the poster, it’s first place Fantasia, who starred as Celie for a year on Broadway and for some of the First National Tour. Coincidently, LaToya London, who came in fourth, played Celie’s sister, Nettie, on tour.

Our original Celie on Broadway was the brilliant LaChanze, who won the Tony for Best Actress, our only win out of 11 nominations, one more than the movie got with the same number of noms.

Oprah definitely enjoyed producing The Color Purple:

There’s nothing inherently kitschy about Oprah Winfrey but in terms of my connection to her as producer of my musical, I love the kitsch value of the following photo. One waits a lifetime to be spoken to by Oprah and here I am not even paying attention…

Here we are opening night of the First National Tour in Chicago, May, 2007. I have no idea who we were all looking at.

The lyrics of “I’m Here” are a testament to the survival of the human spirit despite incredible odds. I saw an interview with Paul McCartney, who also receives an honor tonight, saying that what touched him the most was that all of the winners came from exceedingly humble beginnings and overcame incredible odds to become who they are. So “I’m Here” seems like a perfect match. You can read the lyrics and hear an incredibly fuzzy made-by-someone-who-snuck-a-camera-into-the-theater recording of Fantasia singing the song here. To hear the real thing, a version I co-produced with Fantasia and a 30 piece live orchestra, check it out on iTunes on Fantasia’s Back To Me CD.

For anyone doubting whether they have any worth, “I’m Here” is your theme song. Lucky for me, it’s Oprah’s tonight.

19Dec 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Kitschy Khristmas Shopping List #1

19Dec 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Kitschy Khristmas Shopping List #1

Last weekend I drove down to San Diego to see a performance of my musical, The Color Purple. I rarely get a chance to see the show but when it’s anywhere near LA I choose which performances I’m going to see by which town has the best thrift shops and then I make a whole trip out of it. For this performance I mapped out all the second hand shops between LA and San Diego. But we left too late so dealt with the shopping jones in one antique mall in Solana Beach on the way to SD. I especially love antique malls this time of year because the Khristmas Kitsch comes out in full force.

Which is why no one should ever travel without a camera at this time of year. There is far too much kitsch to document by storing the wonderfulness in your head only.

The first thing I came across was this Bedazzled holiday fauna interpretation. These trees on felt or velvet are common Khristmas kraft faire but this one was done with more precision than most that line thrift shop shelves this time of year, with everything lying at the bottom of junk drawers messily glued on to form the tree. This crafter used chunks of resin to fill in the gaps between jewels instead of just accepting patches of black velvet looking like dead branches on the tree.

I am so not a Mickey Mouse connoisseur so don’t know the vintage of this, but were I to let the mouse run around my house it would likely be in the form of this plastic cup with the big feet and double holed grip.

You can always count on a sweater smorgasbord this time of the year.

I dig homemade Christmas decorations but for $95 Santa’s mail won’t be delivered anywhere near my house this year.

Were I of the right religion I would definitely have gone for the following. If anyone ever spots Moses rolling through the rushes in mosaic let me know.

I’m definitely not into these little guard guys but you always see them around at Christmas. This one is particularly festive. I especially love his rubber chair leg tip shoulder:

I know that it was the individual bunches of tinsel that were for sale here but if I were someone who was decorating for Christmas I would’ve bought this whole thing and used it as a giant ornament:

Barbie, of course, always gets in on the Christmas action. With this kind of packaging I wish she were made out of chocolate:

Little baldheaded children with long eyelashes always look good dressed for the holidays:

I know that snowmen always abound in Christmas decorations so nothing special here other than the homemade quality of these three. I especially like how off-center the nose is on the guy all the way to the right (the snowman’s right, not yours):

I always like light up yard decorations of Joseph, Mary and baby Jesus. I love how coiffed Jesus is in this one, especially in his pink pantsuit, and how much baby Jesus looks like a bubbling soufflé.

Vintage Pebble Art is great all times of the year but looks especially good in these praying Christmas portrayals:

Although it has nothing to do with Christmas, The Color Purple, the musical I co-wrote and which is what brought me down to San Diego in the first place, has an awful lot to do with a little girl praying and writing letters to God. Seeing my show for the last time for a few months until I fly to Detroit in April to conduct my high school marching band playing a medley of my greatest hits in the lobby of the Fox theater, where The Color Purple will be, was an excellent early Christmas present for me, especially after a day of such kitsch as aforementioned lighting up my eyes with wonderment. Look what God has done!

And speaking of purple and Christmas, it’s still not too late to order a lovely Pigmy Will ornament for the tree or to use as a hat on little baldheaded rubber Christmas children.

30Sep 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 1960’s Church & Funeral Fans, Wienerschnitzel and The Color Purple

30Sep 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 1960’s Church & Funeral Fans, Wienerschnitzel and The Color Purple

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I bought my first African American church fan in the late 1970’s but my collection really kicked into gear after I worked with James Brown in the mid-80s. He always told me my music was so hot and picked up the fan to “cool himself down”. So after that I always bought the fans when I saw them cheap enough. But the collection blasted into overdrive when I began writing The Color Purple musical in 2001. The very first time Alice Walker, the author of the original book, came over I gave her her choice of over 50 fans. I used them all the time with Brenda Russell and Stephen Bray, my music co-writers, but sadly can’t seem to find any photos of us cooling ourselves. But anytime anyone came over to hear any of the music they always listened with church fan in hand. I think we had just finished one of the Church Ladies’ songs when this group, including Alfre Woodard, Lorraine Toussaint, Stephanie Burton, Peter Hastings, Roderick Spenser and Maggie Wheeler (Janice on Friends), came over.

As often as they came from churches, the fans were also a hot promotional item given out by funeral homes. They usually portrayed a gorgeous, dressed in their Sunday best, peaceful looking, happy family. The fans I’m featuring today aren’t necessarily my favorites so much as I love that they all feature white hats. This first one comes from the Brown & Robertson Funeral Home in Picayune, Miss. According to the back of the fan, they offer “A Dignified Service in a Sympathetic Way”.

This next one comes from the Jones-Gaines & Sons Funeral Home in Topeka, Kansas, “Serving Topeka Area Families With Over 51 Years of Courteous and Efficient Service”.

This one’s courtesy of the Dykes Funeral home in Covington, VA. “Consideration for the Living–Reverence for the Dead”.

And finally there’s this one from John Q. Adams of Victoria, Texas that says simply “Ladies Hose & Shoes”. I’m assuming that that does not refer to a selection in the funeral home so I guess the fans were available to any business that wanted to hand them out.

I took a fan with me last night when I crawled along the 101 to Thousand Oaks to see the Second National Tour of my musical, The Color Purple. After 2-1/2 years on Broadway and a three-year First National Tour, this was going to be my first time seeing this all new production and cast.

There was a huge traffic jam on the freeway for about 7 miles because of an accident on the other side. Los Angeles has just gotten over record-breaking heat so people were a little more cuckoo in their cars than usual. I stayed cool because I had my fan and sensible shoes for driving.

I wish I could say that the show was fantastic but I ended up staying in my car on my Ipad for most of it because an idea I’ve been attempting to massage out of my head for several weeks finally decided to spill out while I was in line at Weinerschnitzel.

So I spent most of Act 1 pounding away in a parking lot under the glow of the yellow W neon. Having driven all the way to Thousand Oaks though, I made myself get to the theater.

I walked in during “Uh Oh”.

But this idea kept smacking against the front of my brain and I couldn’t open my Ipad in the theater because the last thing I wanted to do was distract anyone in that audience from what was going on on stage. So, knowing I had tickets to see the show the rest of the week, I joined my now-sitting-in-the-car-way-too-long-to-eat Wienerschnitzel and fan and headed back home.

26May 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Velveeta Camera and “Food For Thought” Party Photos!

26May 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Velveeta Camera and “Food For Thought” Party Photos!

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This is one of the few food related items that John Lloyd Young didn’t jewel at my place last Sunday when The Allee Willis Museum Of Kitsch & APLA hosted “Food for Thought”, the first ever exhibition of his brilliant Pop Kitsch art interpretations of iconically kitschy komfort foods. Had I remembered where I put it I may have used my Velveeta camera to take some fabulous photos that day. Lucky for us I didn’t as you can actually see the work and the beautiful Pop Kitsch guests like RuPaul who came to view it much clearer then my little Shells & Cheese Dinner baby is capable of popping out.

John Lloyd’s eye-popping work costs somewhat more than the three Kraft box tops and dollar shipping and handling one had to send in to get this Velveeta Camera when it was made in the 1980’s. The 110 Kodak film cartridge is still inside…

…just as fresh as John Lloyd’s ever-glowing can of Spam.

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Of course, my preference would be to dump the Kraft Shells & Cheese Dinner cam and go for John Lloyd’s Kraft Mac & Cheese “Dominoes”. It’s hard to a tell from this photo but he jeweled 100 boxes of it and toppled them out on a 16 foot serpentine table.

In 2006, the musical I co-wrote, The Color Purple, lost the Tony to Jersey Boys of which John Lloyd Young was the star and for which he won the Best Actor Tony.

We hadn’t seen each other since the round of award parties back then but a few months ago he e-mailed me out of the blue and asked if I was interested in writing some music with him. When he came over to talk about it he brought me a gift that he had just made, a jeweled box of Triscuits.

I went completely nuts for the box and encouraged him to keep on jeweling. What I saw over the next couple of months I considered brilliant works of Pop Kitsch art and I decided that presenting John Lloyd’s work would make an excellent exhibition as the first artist officially sanctioned by The Allee Willis Museum Of Kitsch. My Tony loss to him already made a perfect set up for Kitsch. I also thought that his Pop Kitsch sensibility would inspire mine and make for some excellent party props like this sign I painted interpreting the junk food John Lloyd chose to honor in his work.

We both were hard at work up until the last minute before the guests arrived.

And arrive thank God they did as all proceeds benefited AIDS Project Los Angeles. Those who dug deep included Stu James (Harpo in The Color Purple), Lesley Donald (Buster in The Color Purple) and Jai Rodiguez,

as well as Mito Aviles, Chadmichael Morrisette and Tiffany Daniels (Squeak in The Color Purple) posing with John Lloyd’s very first jeweled piece, “Virtue” (not edible!)…

…and a couple hundred more folks who you can see you right here.

When it came to food there was delicious Moms BBQ House soul food versions of John Lloyd’s delicious jeweled food.

Here’s Charles Phoenix modeling the chicken, peas and mac & cheese with me, Sonny Ruscha Bjornson and Mark Blackwell:

“Food for Thought” was also an unbelievably great excuse to order the world’s largest home delivered pizza…

… and to float individual servings of cotton candy in the pool for guests to snack on.

Here’s a lovely display of Spam that accompanied John Lloyd’s bejeweled Spam…

… and the artist vouching for its edibility:

I must say that despite my lifelong dedication to junk food I never tasted Spam until I spiked a cube here. Not surprising to anyone who knows me I found it very tasty. But I digress.

All in all, it was a wonderful day both as a party host and as a conceptual artist. John Lloyd’s and my work melded into one big kitschified fondue and despite the fact that rain was threatened all week the heavens held up so our eyes and stomachs were able to ingest beautiful works of art that my Velveeta camera only dreams of capturing in their full glory.

For full documentation of the bejeweled food fest go here.

To see how the Los Angeles Times enjoyed it go here.

Photos: Melissa Manning for the Look Partnership LLC