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Return to “Ragtime”

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I’m of two minds about Paramount Home Video’s new 4K Bluray of Milos Forman‘s Ragtime, which popped yesterday.

Why not just buy the damn thing, watch it and sort out the issues as I go along? Because I’m torn about it.

On one hand Ragtime, mainly set in the New York City area between 1905 and 1910, is a generally respected effort. Plus it seems all the more noteworthy now considering that a film of this type (released in the fall of ’81) would never be made for theatrical today.

Nobody has ever called it great or mindblowing, but some admire the devotional labor-of-love thing — the wonderful yesteryear detail, the ambitious scope, the old Model-T cars and horse-drawn wagons, the period-perfect clothing.

Plus a fair amount of work went into making Ragtime look as good as it possibly can. Plus the package includes a “directors cut workprint” that runs 174 minutes — 19 minutes longer than the original 1981 theatrical release version (i.e., 155 minutes). For me this is the biggest attraction.

Plus it offers some deleted and extended scenes. Plus a presumably engaging discussion between screenwriter Michael Weller and the esteemed screenwriter and man-about-town Larry Karaszewski, who worked with Forman on The People vs. Larry Flint. So it sounds like a decent package.

But on the other hand I know that Ragtime is an underwhelming, at times mildly irritating film. It certainly seemed that way when I caught a press screening sometime in the early fall of ’81, inside the Gulf & Western building on Columbus Circle. And no, I haven’t seen it since. I felt that as engrossing as some portions were, it didn’t feel right. It felt spotty. And it certainly didn’t catch the sweep, texture and wonderful authenticity of E.L. Doctorow’s 1975 book, the reading of which I adored.

It was great to see the 80-year-old James Cagney back in action, but I really didn’t care for some of the casting choices (especially Elizabeth McGovern as Evelyn Nesbit and the way-too-young Robert Joy as Harry K. Thaw).

And I never understood why so much attention was paid to the tragedy of Coalhouse Walker (Howard Rollins, Jr.), whose racially-provoked standoff was just one of many sagas that Doctorow passed along. Ragtime is so intently focused on this one character and his injured sense of honor that it could have been titled Ragtime: The Saga of Coalhouse Walker.

I realize that in accepting the challenge of compressing Doctorow’s fascinating cultural tapestry into a two and a-half-hour film, the efforts of Forman, Weller and the uncredited Bo Goldman were all but doomed from the start. In a perfect world Ragtime would have been produced as an eight- or ten-hour miniseries. Then it might have had a chance.

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Sutton Frances Wells

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The daughter of Jett Wells and Caitlin Bennett arrived just after 11 am New Jersey time —11.17.21. Saint Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston. 8 lbs., 2 ounces. Labor began last night around 9 pm — 14 hours start to finish. Epidural administered around 3 am. Everyone is fine, all is well, morning has broken, all choked up.

Speaking as a leather-jacketed samurai poet clear light rumblehogger, I’m not that down with being called “grandpa”. It’s not what anyone would call a difficult hurdle, but the “g” word always makes me think of The Band’s “Rocking Chair.”

Denial and Complacency

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Many most people have a fundamental inability to face potentially devastating threats to human existence. What matters most to them is hanging on to the conditions of life they know — the familiar, the banal — rather than dealing with whqt’s coming around the corner.

Five words — complacency by way of denial (or denial by way of complacency).

This is clearly the basic theme of Adam McKay‘s Don’t Look Up (12.10), which has been screening for a few and is screening for more than a few starting tomorrow.

Quick — name a significant 1963 film that dealt with roughly the same psychological response to imminent human extinction. Correct — Alfred Hitchcock‘s The Birds.

Bodega Bay was abounding with complacency and denial, and it all came to a bubble in that famous luncheonette scene in which recent bird attacks were discussed and the town drunk (Karl Swenson) occasionally proclaimed “it’s the end of the world!” He was right and nobody listened. Because drunks are only to be tolerated, if that.

In Don’t Look Up Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence play astonomers who’ve detected an oncoming meteor that will most likely destroy the earth upon impact. They are also playing Swenson’s character.

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Good Doc But What’s The Hoo-Hah?

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Pretty much any list of 2021’s finest documentaries would include Morgan Neville‘s Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain, John Hoffman and Janet Tobias‘ Fauci, Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering‘s Allen vs. Farrow, Todd Haynes‘ The Velvet Underground, Andre Gaines‘ The One and Only Dick Gregory, Mariem Pérez Riera‘s Rita Moreno: Just A Girl Who Decided to Go For It and, of course, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson‘s Summer of Soul.

May I ask why Summer of Soul, which is basically just a restored-concert-footage thing with three or four talking-head interviews thrown in…why is Summer of Soul the runaway presumed winner? It’s a highly engaging, finely tuned musical high, but what’s so “best of the year” about it? Any ideas, suspicions, etc.?

From HE’s 7.16.21 review: “Shot during the mid-to-late summer of ’69 at the Harlem Cultural Festival, the doc is half…make that two-thirds about music and a third about revolutionary-cultural uplift. Changes were in the air; terra firma was shifting. ’69 was the year, remember, when average African Americans began self-identifying as ‘black’.

“And the footage is magnificent. You can almost feel the heat, smell the New York air, grass and trees, the cooked food, the cigar and cigarette smoke and the faint scent of flat, room-temperature beer.

“Most of the film — directed by Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, shot a half-century ago by Shawn Peters, brilliantly edited by Joshua L. Pearson — is focused on the great songs and performances, and is what you might call (for lack of a better term) honky–friendly. Nobody says anything about the legacy of inherently evil whiteys or The 1619 Project or CRT…a blessing! Then it becomes more political and more Black-attuned about the serious consciousness elevations that were happening everywhere in all corners, and then it whips back into a more-or-less pure musical mode at the end.”

Supplementary Income

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Philip Morris was an I Love Lucy sponsor for four years — ’51 to ’54. This wasn’t a magazine ad but a 1953 cardboard standee, promoting Christmas packaging for cartons of Philip Morris King Size cancer sticks. HE to Clayton Davis: Desi was Cuban, of course, but here he looks half-Spanish and half like Raymond Burr in Perry Mason….kinda like Javier Bardem looks in Being The Ricardos (Amazon, 12.10).

Which Elvis, Baz?

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“Suspicious Minds“? Really? Released in ’69, that was a Vegas Elvis tune. And we don’t like the Vegas decline-and-fall years around here.

The real authentic Elvis reigned between ’54 and ’58, and sang “Blue Moon,” “All Shook Up,” “Good Rockin’ Tonight,” “Blue Suede Shoes,” “Hound Dog,” “Reddy Teddy,” “Teddy Bear,” etc. That’s the Elvis everyone wants to hang with.

Does this mean that Baz Luhrman‘s Elvis (Warner Bros., 6.4.22) is going to focus on downslide Elvis, glitter jumpsuit Elvis, fat Elvis, Memphis Mafia Elvis, Graceland Elvis, keeling-over-on-the-toilet Elvis? Does this mean that Austin Butler will do a Robert De Niro in Raging Bull and wear a 40-pounds-heavier fat suit and look all puffy-faced and shit?

Young Elvis is the glorious first half of Lawrence of Arabia. Corpulent, drug-addled, peanut-butter-and-banana-sandwiches Elvis is a tragedy.

The 6.4.22 release date means it’ll probably play at next May’s Cannes Film Festival.

Family Resemblance

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Yesterday afternoon I finally saw Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person in the World, the justifiably acclaimed Norwegian relationship drama that led to star Renate Reinsve winning the Best Actress trophy at last July’s Cannes Film Festival.

A side observation shared by Tatiana and myself was that Reinsve bears an unusual resemblance to HE’s own Svetlana Cvetko (Show Me What You Got, the forthcoming One Nation Under Earl). They’re of different generations, of course, but with Svetlana being a younger-looking ex-model type you might almost think “older sister-younger sister” if they were to stand side by side at a cocktail party.

Reinsve will be in town soon for interviews and industry schmoozers, and I’m determined to at least try and get the two of them to pose before HE’s iPhone 12 Max Pro.

Here are some comparison shots — one of the Reinsve snaps was taken during an accidental fire alarm intermission at the Soho House screening room; the others were taken in Cannes. The Svet shots (wearing a cap, accepting an award at the Messina Film Festival, etc.) speak for themselves.

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Fassbender Resurgence?

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Most anyone will tell you that Michael Fassbender started to slip into some kind of career withdrawal or even eclipse mode around three years ago, give or take. Whatever happened to Next Goal Wins, the Taika Watiti flick in which Fassy plays Thomas Rongen, a real-life soccer coach? I only know that he was hot for a few years (‘08 to ‘13), and then I went cold on him and the candle flickered, and now he’s shooting David Fincher’s The Killer in Paris. Maybe it’s comeback time.

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B’day Greeting From Dan Richter

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Of all the Facebook-software-generated birthday greetings that came in today, I was especially moved by one from Dan Richter, who played “Moonwatcher” in 2001 A Space Odyssey.

I haven’t spoken to Dan face-to-face for a full 28 years, but we’ve kept up the correspondence. Of all the famous people I’ve met and regard on friendly terms, I suspect that 100 years from now more people will be familiar with Richter (or at least his legendary performance) than any present-day Hollywood hotshot you could name.

Be honest — how many people in the year 2121 will know or care who Chris Pratt was? Or Dwayne Johnson? Or any other quarter-of-an-inch-deep actor of note? How many people will recall who Ed Sheeran was? Paul McCartney or Mick Jagger, okay, but Sheeran?

Here’s an L.A. Times Calendar piece that I wrote in ’93 about Dan Richter, the ’60-era mime who played the bone-tossing Moonwatcher in Stanley Kubrick‘s 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The last time I linked to this piece was in July ’08. Here are three scans of the original article — #1, #2 and #3.

My father met Dan at a Connecticut AA meeting in ’92 or thereabouts, and at my dad’s suggestion I called a while later and visited Dan at this home in Sierra Madre for an interview. I remember he was dealing with chemotherapy at the time. He’s still with us and doing fine .

In 2012 Richter published a memoir — “The Dream Is Over” — mainly about a four-year period that he spent with John Lennon and Yoko One (’69 to ’73).

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