lycanthropy

I watched the movie Wolf with Jack Nicholson and Michelle Pfeiffer the other night at Purple Paulie's house. Directed by the venerable Mike Nichols (Carnal Knowledge, Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice), this movie was less of a horrorshow and more of an update of An American Werewolf In London mixed with some Hitchcockian suspense.

This movie, when first released circa 1994 in the States, didn't really make much of an impact or so much as a ripple in the media waters. But watching it for the first time ever, I feel that it is an undiscovered gem of a movie.

I've always been a fan of werewolf mythology. I'm a rabid fan (pardon the pun) but I do know where to draw the line-- I have friends who take their enthusiasm for lycanthropy to the extreme, let's just say, whereas my interest has always been metaphorical, really-- I don't believe that there is such a thing as a werewolf, but the origins of such tales in folklore fascinate me.

I used to watch the old movies with Lon Chaney, as well as modern takes on the mythos like Neil Jordan's The Company Of Wolves in 1984; hell, even Teen Wolf had its moments. But the Nichols version is now my new favorite, because it was sexy, among other things.

I mean, Jack Nicholson is a great choice for the role, but not for the reasons you'd expect. Unlike his turn as Ol' Scratch in The Witches Of Eastwick, Jack's character in this movie undergoes a gradual transformation that gets more believable as it gets weirder.

James Spader, one of the most underrated actors out there, turns in a scene-stealer of a performance as Jack's peer and rival. I didn't know he was in this movie, and he plays his role as a conniving up-and-comer to the hilt.

And, of course, Michelle Pfeiffer is so yummy...


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Nichols is known for his satirical comedies, so the script for Wolf is comparable to his other movies. There is a lot of humor mined from the whole predatory-animal-in-the-workplace angle, as well as male midlife crisis and marital infidelity. But what's cool about this movie is that it's one of the few werewolf movies that makes being a werewolf seem like a lot of fun, albeit of the damned and accursed variation.

Usually, the werewolf, or The Wolf Man, or whatever you want to call it, suffers greatly because of his fate. He may enjoy some perks here and there, but ultimately he is doomed. Any character who actively relishes and rejoices in being a werewolf is usally cast as the villain and must be destroyed.

Towards the end of the movie, you get no sense of doom from Nicholson's Wolf Man. If anything, he is delivered from doom by virtue of his "curse" which turns out to be a blessing in disguise. He doesn't break the curse, so technically he is still damned, but... ahh, I don't want to spoil the movie for you...

All I can say is: it's like Count Dracula making it to the castle on time and defeating his mortal enemies, something Francis Ford Coppola almost pulled off in his version of the famous Bram Stoker horror novel.


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I like werewolves so much that I went out and read Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse, a book that I most likely would not have read at age 15 had it not been for its inclusion in an influential literary anthology that I had found in a thrift store for four dollars.

At the time, I thought of the band Steppenwolf, of "Born To Be Wild" fame and glory; my mom had some Steppenwolf records and I was discovering the ancient classics of rock's formative eras. I felt like an audio archaeologist, combing the ruins of Western Civilization, a time before I was born (even if it wasn't too long after the Sixties officially ended)...

I read the excerpt from the book in the anthology, and immediately set out to find Hesse's novel in a bookstore for dirt cheap. It was in stock back then, just as it is today.

One of the reasons why I related to this book so much at the time is because the adolescent years are a wolf-like existence for young men: we are in the midst of transforming into obscene creatures with uncontrollable urges bubbling beneath our innocent faces; in our hormonal, masturbatory shame we may as well have sprouted hair and bayed at the moon... actually, we did sprout hair-- pubic hair, and pimples to boot... and I wanted to fuck and kill and hunt and be wild... and we roamed in packs, but then again we could go off on our own, as lone wolves...

Steppenwolf is not about a teenager, though-- it is about a nearly fifty year-old man named Harry Haller, who believes that the nature of his individual soul (and the souls of a handful of others) is split in two, between that of a man and that of a wolf of the Steppes.

This book was written and published in 1963, which only reaffirmed my then-burgeoning belief that everything that was ever good on this planet was carried out before I was even conceived.


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Last night, I had a telephone conversation with The Wolf Man.

I have a lot of conversations with The Wolf Man, because he plays drums in my band. No, he's not the guy from The Groovy Goolies cartoon... and he's not a werewolf either. We just call him The Wolf Man because his last name is Wolf.

Wolf and I talk about music and what it means to us, but we also talk about girls and relationships. He is candidly torn between wanting to be a ruthless womanizer and a nice guy. This is par for the course for most men, and the reason why I talk to him about it is because (like me) he wishes he were less sentimental and sensitive than he really is. He only wishes it because he sees the full-on wolves-- the predators, the scammers and the bloodlusters, the ones not tortured by conscience or remorse --getting away with bloody murder, while he plays the sheepish lamb and gets walked over by women who probably do not know any better than they should.

As is my style, I usually let the other person go on while I sit back and listen, speaking only when trying to clarify certain points. Wolf opens up to me because (I suspect) he knows that I know he's a Steppenwolf-- that is to say, I hear the struggle in his voice, and I see it in his eyes when we jam together.

But in our conversations especially is where I can detect the traces of the Steppenwolf inside of him. He's a few years younger than me, and has led the life of the Steppenwolf even more than I have in some respects-- he's a Gemini, an astrological sign whose very nature is dualistic and polarized (and mercurial, thanks to the ruling planet Mercury, which it shares with Virgo)... the twins, the two sides of the soul locked in battle, the wolf trying to bite the man, the man trying to tame the wolf...

In the movie Wolf, a man asks to be bitten by Jack Nicholson upon learning that he is indeed a lycanthrope. When Jack wonders why, the man confesses that he would like to be werewolf: he explains that the victim of a werewolf bite is ultimately the arbiter of its own morality-- the wolf itself is not evil, but if the victim is evil then his werewolf manifestation will also be evil. This scares Jack more than knowing that he has become a werewolf!

But at one point, the man asks Jack, "Doesn't it feel good to be a wolf?"

And Jack cannot say no to this query.


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I've been called a wolf in the past, but seldom in a negative sense. For example: A friend once described my sleeping habits as "wolf-like" because I could nap for an hour, after having had no sleep, and wake up immediately, ready to roll.

The times that I have been called a wolf in a negative sense? They were probably well-deserved. I make no excuses for my less-than-stellar moments. But is it the fault of the wolf side of me, or the man side of me?

Am I being fairly blamed for being a wolf, in other words? There have been times when my cruelty was not due to the wolf's baying, but to my own human ugliness. Likewise, some of the noblest and courageous acts I was ever given credit for were not commissioned by my humane side, but by my wolfen side.

Does it even matter at this point? Yes, it does... it matters to me, because I don't like running with packs of wolves who want nothing better than to roam wantonly and without any purpose other than to satisfy their own craven needs.

I don't pretend to be anything other than what I am: an animal. But mixed in there, somewhere, there is a man as well. A civilized man, with thoughts and feelings... and a soul.

Not that animals don't have a soul-- they just choose to ignore it when instinct kicks in.

As a Steppenwolf, I am not completely beholden to my instincts, nor am I a slave to Reason. I am split down the middle, and to manage that requires balance.

This coming Monday, there is a full moon rising. The Wolf Man and I will probably run together in the streets, looking for fresh meat... or we might just talk on the phone about how beautiful some women are, and how great music sounds when you've snorted Oxycontin before a show.

If you hear howls in your part of the city, holler back at us. I promise we won't harm you.