ARTS &BOOKS
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 2019:: LATIMES.COM/CALENDAR
F
In “The Testaments,” the long-
anticipated sequel to “The Hand-
maid’s Tale,” Margaret Atwood’s
powers are on full display.
The theocracy of Gilead, in
which powerful men have used the
Bible as genesis and justification
for death, torture and banish-
ment, has banned reading. So
when a young girl is finally allowed
access to the Bible and realizes
that the verses and stories she has
been read by her father and teach-
ers are not the same as those on
the pages, her very soul is shaken.
That girl is Agnes Jemima,
privileged daughter of a Com-
mander. “Our Bibles were kept
locked up, as elsewhere in Gilead:
only those of strong mind and
steadfast character could be
trusted with them, and that ruled
out women,BOOK REVIEW
Atwood’s
powerful
testament
[SeeAtwood,F7]SUSAN STRAIGHT
CRITIC AT LARGESAN FRANCISCO — Linda Ronstadt
did not want a movie to be made about her life. She expressed
that clearly to any filmmaker who approached her, seeking per-
mission to spotlight her music career.
“I’m bored to delirium talking about the past,” she replied to
one such email inquiry in 2015. “Surely, you can find more
worthy subjects.”
The singer, now 73, frequently insists that she didn’t know
how to sing for the first decade of her career — a period during
which she released the hit singles “You’re No Good,” “Blue Bay-
ou” and “Heat Wave.” All she hears in those songs is a young
woman who “did everything wrong,” belting her way up the
scale instead of switching into her head voice past B flat.
“I sounded like a goat,” she says.
So a documentary about her life, no doubt filled with concert
footage of her 1970s bleating? Pass.
But Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman were persistent. After
her initial rejection letter (see above) she eventually agreed to
have lunch with the directors. She thought their emails had
been especially literate, and she was a fan of Epstein’s “The
Times of Harvey Milk,” which won the feature documentary
Oscar in 1985.
Over lunch, she acquiesced. But there were stipulations. She
did not want to participate in a sit-down interview. (“The self-
consciousness of it! Me, me, me,” she groans.) And she did not
want the film to focus on her progressive supranuclear palsy, a
variant of Parkinson’s disease that has robbed her of her singing
voice since its diagnosis in 2013.
“I think she didn’t want it to be ‘Let’s feel sorry for Linda’ and
make a movie about a poor creature,”
LINDA RONSTADT, at home in San Francisco, says she is pleased with a new documentary. However, she first told the filmmakers to find “more worthy subjects.”
Robert GauthierLos Angeles TimesNO SURRENDER
Linda Ronstadt’s voice is at rest, but a new doc shows her undaunted spirit
BYAMYKAUFMAN>>>
[SeeRonstadt, F6]
OKLAHOMA CITY — Greg
Johnson, rabble-rouser and cusser,
steps past a stack of records to a
mixing board and waits for Joe
Baxter, a musician with hundreds
of songs in his head, including
one about a woman working the
swing shift at a cardboard factory
in a dying Oklahoma town.
It’s the kind of song Johnson
likes, a parable about promises
that start out pure but get bruised
along the way. His revered Blue
Door club — he lives in the back
— invokes the everyman spirit
of 1940s folk singer Woody Guthrie
and a disdain for President Trump
that runs as wide and ornery as
the plains that stretch north to
Kansas.
Johnson is a liberal in this deep-
red country
In Oklahoma, the red-state blues
THE REGULAR JOES,fronted by Joe Baxter, center, play at the Blue Door in Oklahoma City.Michael DownesFor The TimesCULTURAL DIVIDE
It may be Trump country,
but progressive musicians
are taking a stand here with
songs of hope and change.
By Jeffrey Fleishman
[SeeOklahoma,F4]