Still Bill meets Salinger

Still Bill Trailer from B-Side Entertainment on Vimeo.

"Not everything is gonna make your socks roll up and down," Bill Withers told me and approximately 50 other people last night at the IFC after a viewing of the documentary about the "Ain't No Sunshine" man, called Still Bill. Most people don't know Bill by name; just by the music he wrote and sang. Probably because not only did he not really dig the spotlight all that much, but he hasn't released anything since 1985. So, as I was taking my first few breaths, Bill's musical career was taken its last.

That's not to say he isn't still producing anything. Bill calls on his "old friend fear" for one of the reasons he hasn't made anything new. And in the aftermath of seeing this documentary, and with JD Salinger's death today, I have to ask...is this what made Salinger hide in Cornish NH this whole time too? Or was it just to create romantic myths to liberal arts English majors everywhere about him and his shot gun and his reclusive rocking chair life?

Regardless, what do you do when you've created a masterpiece? Where do you go from there? After you write Ain't No Sunshine or Catcher in the Rye, and it's received as well as they were, what's the next step? Do you feel pride or just like a big..fat..phony?

All I know is whoever now owns the rights to JD's stuff better be smart about it. You know Hollywood already has 5 sunglassed douchebags pulling up to Cornish. They've been waiting.