- Josh Max, Auto Gigolo

Click on the headline above to read the apology of Jonathan Wolman, editor of the Detroit Free Press, to his readers after their auto reviewer, Jeff Burgess,  ”quit” rather than soften a on-line review of the new Chrysler 200.

Here’s my own tale of pressure from the suits.

I once worked (here) and I printed  an article called “How To Beat The Dealer.”  I wasn’t even the original author – my article was about the article, published by Consumer Reports.  Full permission given to excerpt, and full credit given.

A irate advertiser (major auto dealer)  pulled 2 million dollars’ worth of ads and demanded “equal time,” meaning “How dare you educate the public about the hundreds or thousands of dollars auto salespeople may hide in the invoice?”

The art director and ad department agreed with dealer, and my name was Josh Mud.

I was instructed, via a blizzard of emails, each more alarmed than the last, to set up an interview with the dealer,  and submit it for publishing.

I paced and stalled, wondering if I would be canned unless I acquiesced.

Of course, the flap reached the top of the place I worked.

I got a call from the deputy publisher within a day saying, “Don’t do a damned thing. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

The art director hated me from then on, and tried, in as many ways as possible, to make it unpleasant for me to work there. Every subsequent email, every phone call and every personal interaction had a subtext of “You’re stupid and I hate you.”   Not because of the ad dollars, which came back after a week, but because I hadn’t immediately done as she asked.  ”I’m all for artistic expression,” she’d said.  ”But this is our livelihood.”  Whereas the deputy publisher, who had hired me, had asked me to be meaner in my reviews from the start.  ”If you don’t like something, say you don’t like it.”  I loved this guy.  Still do.

When I first started reviewing cars and had something awful to say, I felt sorry for all the people who’d designed, manufactured and marketed the car.  Then I started thinking about all the people who take out loans, save their money, look forward to a new car, and are unsure what to buy.  I started aligning myself with those people.  A car isn’t a movie – it’s a vital part of our society.  It has to start each and every time you turn the key, it has to run in all sorts of weather, it has to keep you alive in the event of a crash, and it shouldn’t break down when kept maintained.

It’s to the people who write the check and hope for the best that I am talking to when I write about a car’s merits or demerits.

- Josh Max, Auto Gigolo

]]> http://autogigolo.wordpress.com/2011/03/21/auto-reviewer-quits-rather-than-soften-stance-on-chrysler-200/feed/ 0 autogigolo ThumbsUpDown http://autogigolo.wordpress.com/2011/03/11/auto-gigolo-attends-premiere-of-freshened-up-taxi-driver/ http://autogigolo.wordpress.com/2011/03/11/auto-gigolo-attends-premiere-of-freshened-up-taxi-driver/#comments Fri, 11 Mar 2011 17:20:49 +0000 autogigolo http://autogigolo.wordpress.com/?p=923 ]]> A BRILLIANT WORK, REMASTERED.
“I don’t know who’s weirder, you or me.” Jodi Foster, “Taxi Driver”

If anyone asks me why I live in an overpriced, crowded, out-of-control, busted-up, broken-down city like New York, I always tell them it’s because of A) The Film Forum B) Lasker Pool and C) The city has been incredibly good to me.

Last night, it was good to me again as I attended the premiere of the newly remastered TAXI DRIVER at the Director’s Guild on West 57th.

Harvey Keitel, Robert DeNiro, "Taxi Driver," 1976

My father took me to all those bloody, scary, disturbing films in the 70′s as a very young kid, like “Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein,” “Frenzy,” “The Godfather,” and so on.  We saw “Taxi Driver” at our local theatre and it gave me nightmares for days.  It seemed more like a documentary than a movie.  Still does.

I confess, however, that I felt “Taxi” was overrated as I saw it again through the years on video, and once at the Film Forum.  Now that I am older than all the actors were in the movie—Robert DeNiro, Cybill Shepherd, Jodie Foster, Harvey Keitel—and now that I have taken Robert McGee’s film deconstruction course at this same center, where I watched “Casablanca” deconstructed over 6 hours, shot by shot, I see what a brilliant piece of work “Taxi Driver”  is. Each shot’s composition is  a work of art.  Each actor is alive, intense, vivid, real. I didn’t have the eyes or mental acumen to appreciate it until now.

Martin Scorcese and screenwriter Paul Schrader appeared onstage before the film and talked about shooting the movie in the incredibly hot and sticky summer of 1975.

Scorcese said there are no studio shots in the film—just the streets, the cab, the office of Palantine for President, the diner, the X-rated movie theatre, Travis Bickle’s apartment and the building, hallway and apartment where the climax occurs. Schrader said that before he wrote the script, he was living in his car and got the idea of a desperately lonely man in a big city.

A compelling, satisfying movie, part story, part period piece illustrating New York City, 1975.

OTHER STUFF HAPPENED AT THE MOVIE, THOUGH.

My wife J.J. and I had the misfortune to be sitting in the packed theatre in front of a father and son apparently straight out of Bay Ridge, the son about my age and a bodybuilder, and the father looking like a longshoreman.  As soon as Scorcese came out, the father started commenting about every 3 seconds in an absurdly deep, loud voice.  It was an incredible voice but of course quite distracting, so I shhhh’d several times and then just gave up and took it.
When the panel was over and the lights came up as film was about to start, J.J. turned to the father and said, “Are you going to talk that way through the movie?”

The guy exploded under his breath,  telling her to shut her @#$@#$ mouth sotto voce, and J.J. gave it right back. Back and forth, back and forth they went in the space of 10 seconds, each of the man’s expressions more nasty than the last.  I saw it wasn’t going to end and I turned around and said, as though I was addressing a stadium, “That’s my wife—don’t you talk to her like that.  You shut up and you shut up and everybody shut up and let’s watch the movie, ok?” I purposely made a scene. Wasn’t angry, not really.  Just LOUD, on purpose.  Didn’t give a damn if people were looking—and they sure looked!

Then it was over. We all turned around and faced front, waiting for the lights to go down.

That’s when security appeared.  Since I was the one shouting, they came to me!

“Is there a problem here?” said a taxi-sized man with a shaved head and overcoat.

“No, no problem!”  I smiled.    Incident over.

I noticed the body builder son didn’t jump in.  I was reminded of my own father, who, in the last years of his life, was loud and unfiltered  and would explode if you challenged him, frequently embarrassing all.  I thought, “The son has been through this before with his father.”

At the end of the movie, everyone got up like ladies and gentlemen and filed out, no further problems.

Went downstairs to the lounge and who do I see examining a painting on the wall, all by herself, but Miss Debbie Harry.

Went up to her, softly got her attention—it took the second try—and said hi. She said hi back. I looked her in the eye and told her, “I love you and I’ve loved you for 30 years, and I’ll never get tired of listening to your voice until the day I die.”

She was hard in her face, very frozen in her energy. That was ok.  Someone probably has said something like that to her every day for 35 years. She said thanks, I walked away smiling like an idiot, and then her two female friends came out of the bathroom. Both looked at me and returned my lingering smile, very warm, as if they knew what meeting Harry meant to me, me, who has absorbed every lyric, every breath, every vocal nuance of Blondie’s hits like “Dreaming Is Free,” “Die Young Stay Pretty,” “Hangin’ On The Telephone,” “Call Me,” and so on, wishing she was my girlfriend as a boy, and waiting 31 years to tell her I loved her.  Me, who thought “Madonna’s ok but she’ll never be as famous as Debbie Harry,” when Madge’s star began to rise in 1983.

Blondie, circa 1980

The last time I saw Debby Harry was 1988, in Kenny’s Castaways, all by herself.  I didn’t say anything then—a stranger approached her before I got my nerve up and asked, “Are you Blondie?” which is like asking Ian Anderson if he’s “Jethro Tull”—and I slunk away, disappointed in myself. I wasn’t going to let this opportunity go by.  Who knows, it might have been another 23 years until I bumped into her again, in 2044.

When anyone ever asks why we put up with all the crap we put up with in NYC—sky-high rents, crowds, subways that break down when it rains, kooks in theatres, etc etc—

I will tell them, “This is why. Martin Scorcese doesn’t come to Pennsylvania or Idaho or Connecticut, and neither does Debbie Harry!”

-Josh Max, Auto Gigolo

Thanks for the car chat, Chris.

One of the great things about my job test-driving cars is that it’s introduced me to a lot of colorful people I never would have met otherwise, people I frequently get a bang out of.  Chris Mayo was one of those guys.

I was in a Westchester basement recording studio last summer wearing a guitar and headphones when I heard someone outside the house yell at the top of their lungs, “WHOSE BENTLEY GT IS THAT???”

I thought I was blocking someone’s car in the driveway, or worse, that maybe someone had hit the Bentley I had driven from NYC to the studio, and I felt the color drain from my face.

“It’s mine!” I bellowed up the stairs.

A tall hunk of furniture appeared at the door a few seconds later, as excited as if he’d seen his favorite baseball team score a run.  It was Christopher Mayo, with a big question mark above his head.

Chris’ younger brother Greg, who owns the studio and who was engineering my recording session, introduced us and explained to Chris that I was an auto reviewer, not a rock star or mogul, and that the GT was the car du jour. I was in the middle of a take but I saw Chris was absolutely bonkers with curiosity, so I explained to him how I got the job (perseverence) how many test cars I’ve had (over 500) and what kind (all of them.)

That whole summer, as I made my recording, I’d roll up to the Mayo’s house in a test car and Chris would appear, as if by magic, as soon as I opened the driver’s door to get out. One question would follow each answer even before I was done talking.  He wanted to know every last detail—torque, horsepower, price, history, feel, smell, looks, you name it.   As enthusiastic and occasionally in-your-face as Chris could be when I showed up, I actually looked forward to seeing how happy it made him to talk about cars.

Chris was also a musician and hung around some of my recording sessions, but I had to invite him to leave after a while because I was self-conscious and was trying to get work done.   It’s wasn’t easy for a 5’8, 175-lb guy like me to tell a 6-foot-plus, 200-plus pound guy to leave a room in his own house, but Chris understood and didn’t take it personally.  I was secretly flattered that he actually gave a damn about listening to my recording sessions because Chris was the son of Bob Mayo, who played keyboards with Foreigner and Peter Frampton and many others before his own untimely passing at the age of 53. The gold records Bob Mayo earned for Foreigner’s “4″ and “Frampton Comes Alive” hung prominently on the studio walls.

Last week,  in the dark, Chris lost control of his 1994 Firebird, left the road, hit a rock embankment and his car flipped.  He was thrown from the vehicle, and he didn’t make it. He was 29 years old.

The news hit me like a kick to the gut.  I got physically nauseous, nauseous over the violent, sudden way he left this life and what that must have been like for Chris and the police and EMTs who tried to save his life, nauseous after reading he wasn’t wearing a seat belt, and nauseous thinking of his mother and brother and how they will need unbelievable amounts of strength and courage to live however normally they can after this devastating loss. It is impossible to believe this young man with so much energy is simply gone.  His sudden passing is a stark, plain reminder of the impermanence of everything and everyone – me, you, the clothes on our backs and the body carrying us through our lives until one day the body is no more and we are free to move onto the next phase of existence.

But Chris had one of those gifts not many people have, and I knew it just from the six or so times I saw him while he walked this earth. He was truly alive when he was alive.  He was big, he was loud, he said what was on his mind, and you always knew when he was in the room.  He was passionate about a lot of things, so much so that the mere sight of a car parked in his driveway could make him bellow, “Whose Bentley GT is that?” loud enough to be heard in the basement of the house.  He made an impression on people and he made an impression on me.

We’ll all be talking about him for many years to come.

Christopher Mayo, 1981 – 2011

- Josh Max, Auto Gigolo

First, be glad you’re  not this guy, who parked his BMW on swank Sutton Place during the storm and came back to find all four windows down and the car packed with fluffy goodness.

I have my own little blizzard tale. Pull up a fender, won’t you?

I got a 2011 Jeep Liberty delivered to me Wednesday morning and decided to drive to White Plains, about 2o miles north of Manhattan, that night to check out the vehicle’s 4-wheel drive.  On the way there, no problem. It was snowing but I didn’t feel it was a “storm” like the bliz we had last month.  There was no one at the New York Sports Club I went to and I blissfully lifted and pushed and grunted solo.  Showered and dressed, I did a little grocery shopping, then headed back out on the road at 11:45 PM.

Things had changed.   I was in a true storm, the snow blowing sideways, visibility about 25 feet.  I set off, expecting to go slowly, but to make it home fine due to the vehicle I was driving.

I came to one of my exits and saw it hadn’t been plowed, so I threw the Jeep into 4-wheel drive, drove over the drifts and onto my entrance ramp, and up I went, no problem. At the entrance’s summit, however, I saw, a little ways up the road, 5 cars completely sideways—stuck.  Road blocked.

My only choice, besides sitting there until help arrived—I had no shovel and no gloves, duh—was to drive backwards down the ramp the way I’d come.  I’d go slowly, with my flashers on, and if I saw anyone coming behind me, I’d throw it back into gear and drive up the hill again.

The path behind me, of course, was practically invisible, but I made it almost all the way back down the ramp in reverse when I missed a turn and plowed into a drift.

RRR-rrr-rrr.  Stuck.

I got out and saw all four wheels surrounded by snow, and the undercarriage packed with the white stuff, too. I used my construction boots to kick away all the snow around each tire, front, side and rear, then freed most of the undercarriage using the same method. Whole thing probably took less than 5 minutes.

Climbed back in, started up and drove off, sweet-as-you-please.    Got home and kissed the wife.

Idiot for going out in the storm? Ah, I don’t know.  It’s my job to see how these metal beasts do in all kinds of weather.  Nobody got hurt, and no one from the county had to rescue my ass.  I had the thought that if I had a shovel and tools and sand and stuff, I wouldn’t mind going back out on the highway and finding people who were stranded, like the 5 cars I saw, digging them out and sending ‘em on their way.

Next storm.

Adios!

-Josh Max, Auto Gigolo

In this AOL Autos article, I talk about two different Good Samaratins who had two different outcomes after helping victims of crashes.

- Josh Max, Auto Gigolo

Just reminding you that New Year’s Day is to thieves what catnip is to cats or peanuts are to an elephant or a hot dog is to a roll or a flower to a bee or a banana to a monkey.  Click to read my article in AOL Autos.

- Josh Max, Auto Gigolo