“If hard times are here again, maybe it’s time for Hollywood to once again stand up for the downtrodden.” — N.Y. Times critic A.O. Scott in a video assessment of John Ford‘s The Grapes of Wrath (1940), one of the older big-studio films that I’ve sworn by all my life.
Richard Dreyfuss told the ladies on The View that he played Dick Cheney in W. for “money.” Well, partly. The four things actors kick around before doing a film are (a) how many of the scenes are mainly about my character?, (b) how many lines and possible close-ups do I have?, (c) how much will I get paid? and (d) how good is the overall script and/or the director?
The question isn’t why Dreyfuss said that W. is “six-eighths of a great film.” The question is, why didn’t he say “three-quarters”?
Drefyuss also said that Oliver Stone is a little bit like Sean Hannity, explaining that “you can be a fascist, even when you’re on the left.” Show me a director who doesn’t believe that he/she is boss and that all opinions must finally be subjugated to his/her creative judgment, and I will show you a namby-pamby. John Ford once said that all strong directors are, to some extent, bastards.
As you listen to Paul Begala talking about the campaign with Bill Maher, you may (or may not) want to consider the double standard that white-rube America is going by these days. Two or three graphs hence, I mean.
All I know is that I’m so scared about what’s going on right now with the national polls that I’m afraid to look at them. I’m living in a fetal tuck position, praying that I’ll wake up (or that the nation will wake up) from this ongoing devolving nightmare. We’re all citizens of the DVA these days — the Divided States of America. Bush-Palin Nation, I’m absolutely convinced, is a thoroughly rancid, racist, titanically clueless and revoltingly ignorant place — and even a bit worse than Bush-Cheney Nation, given the possibilities for succession.
If this was the 1860s and a war was about to start that would afford the Blues an opportunity to defeat, crush and subjugate the Reds once and for all and put them all into re-education camps, I would volunteer for the infantry tomorrow and sing John Ford “tah-rah!” songs as the troops march into battle.
Read this letter from longtime Sarah Palin acquaintance Anne Kilkenny and tell me you wouldn’t enlist as well.
Here’s that letter I was sent earlier….
If you’re a minority and you’re selected for a job over more qualified candidates you’re a “token hire.” If you’re a conservative and you’re selected for a job over more qualified candidates you’re a “game changer.”
Black teen pregnancies? A “crisis” in black America. White teen pregnancies? A “blessed event.”
If you grow up in Hawaii you’re “exotic.” Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, you’re the quintessential “American story.” Similarly, if you have the first name Barack, you sound like an unpatriotic outsider. Name your kid Track, you’re colorful.
If you’re a Democrat and you make a VP pick without fully vetting the individual you’re reckless. A Republican who doesn’t fully vet is a maverick.
If you spend 3 years as a community organizer, growing your organization from a staff of 1 to 13 and your budget from $70,000 to $400,000, then become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new African American voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, then spend nearly 8 more years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, becoming chairman of the state Senate’s Health and Human Services committee, then spend nearly 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of nearly 13 million people, sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran’s Affairs committees, you are woefully inexperienced.
If you spend 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, then spend 20 months as the governor of a state with 650,000 people, then you’ve got the most executive experience of anyone on either ticket, are the Commander in Chief of the Alaska military and are well qualified to lead the nation should you be called upon to do so
because your state is the closest state to Russia.
If you are a Democratic male candidate who is popular with millions of people you are an arrogant celebrity. If you are a popular Republican female candidate you are energizing the base.
If you are a younger male candidate who thinks for himself and makes his own decisions you are presumptuous. If you are an older male candidate who makes last minute decisions you refuse to explain, you are a shoot-from-the-hip maverick.
If you are a candidate with a Harvard law degree, you are an elitist who’s out of touch with the real America. if you are a legacy (dad and granddad were admirals) graduate of Annapolis, with multiple disciplinary infractions, you are a hero.
If you go to a south side Chicago church, your beliefs are extremist. If you believe in creationism and don’t believe global warming is man made, you are strongly principled.
If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you’re a Christian. If you have been married to the same woman with whom you’ve been wed to for 19 years and raising 2 beautiful daughters with, you’re risky.
If you’re a black single mother of 4 who waits for 22 hours after her water breaks to seek medical attention, you’re an irresponsible parent, endangering the life of your unborn child. If you’re a white married mother who waits 22 hours, you’re spunky.
If you’re a 13-year-old Chelsea Clinton, the right-wing press calls you “First Dog.” If you’re a 17-year old pregnant unwed daughter of a Republican, the right-wing press calls you beautiful and courageous.
If you teach abstinence only in sex education, you get teen parents. If you teach responsible age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.
“For what it’s worth, I was at [last night’s 6 pm screening] of The Hurt Locker and liked it quite a bit,” writes Newark Star-Ledger critic Stephen J. Whitty. “I’ve always liked Kathryn Bigelow (and yet strangely, Point Break least of all) and thought this one not only hit all her old themes (male bonding, the rush of risk, loyalty vs duty) but also managed a take on this war I haven’t seen before.
“I agree it’s going to be a challenging sell down the road, but this really is one of those iraq war movies that’s not about the Iraq War. It’s about “what do you do when your boss is an adrenaline junkie?” The guys in it could just have easily been cops or firemen or John Ford cavalrymen.”
In honor of tonight’s swear-along screening of Scarface at the John Ford Anson amphitheatre, a YouTube clip that features all 226 f-word expletives.
As it must to all men, death came today to the great Jules Dassin at age 96. A Greek-descended, Hollywood-employed, highly-rated noir director, Dassin was blacklisted in 1949 only to bounce back with Rififi (’55), the greatest heist film ever made. (Rififi was actually released in France in ’54.)
The Paris-based melodrama re-ignited Dassin’s career and led to subsequent hits such as He Who Must Die (’57), the lightly comedic heist film Topkapi (’64), Phaedra (’62),and the legendary Never on Sunday (’60). He also directed Uptight (’68 — a Harlem-based remake of John Ford‘s The Informer), Promise at Dawn (’70), The Rehearsal (’74) and Circle of Two (’80).
Dassin’s noteworthy Hollywood-era films include Brute Force (’47), The Naked City (’48) and Night and the City (’50). Forget noteworthy — these three are essential if you haven’t yet seen them.
I’ll forever be grateful for having attended Dassin’s special visit to the L.A. County Museum of Art in 2004, during which he spoke on-stage for about 90 minutes before a screening of Rififi. A 40-minute video of that visit can be found on the Criterion Collection’s 2007 DVD of The Naked City.
Jules Dassin
One of Dassin’s more ardent admirers was Alexander Payne, who felt a kinship based on their common Greek heritage. Payne told me this afternoon that he recently lobbied for Dassin to be given a special honorary Oscar from the Academy, but it was no-go.
In view of the Academy having given a politically controversial honorary Oscar to Elia Kazan, who was despised in some corners for having named (or confirmed) names to HUAC, Payne feels “it would have been nice for the Academy to have acknowledged both sides of that very difficult coin — a director who stayed, and another who was forced to leave.”
Dassin was married to Greek actress Melina Mercouri until her death in 1994. He was a very wise, charming and elegant man, to judge from his comments during the LACMA interview. He deserves some kind of special posthumous tribute on next year’s Oscar show, considering how the Hollywood community came close to ruining Dassin’s life during his creative prime.
It’s strange that no one has commented so far about the obvious echo factors regarding Michael Bay‘s Platinum Pictures being in negotiations with Paramount Pictures to do a Rosemary’s Baby remake. For humor’s sake, at least.
Mia Farrow in Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby
Echo #1 is that we’ve got a trade story here about a man who’s been half- jokingly referred to by film writers, editors and film fans for years as a satanic figure, and now this guy is looking to make a movie about the birth of Satan’s spawn. You don’t think that’s funny?
Nobody actually believes that Bay is literally a man-devil with horns and hooves, but he’s certainly been seen for at least a decade as someone who’s come to represent demonic forces in the film industry, a soul-less heebie-jeebie craftsman who has done more than anyone else to bring about the death of genuine spirit and heart and coherency in narrative cinema, a sworn enemy of the beliefs and ghosts of Ernst Lubitsch, Robert Bresson, John Ford and Stanley Kubrick (among thousands of others) and the mortal foe in today’s world of alive-and-well guys like Florian von Heckel Donnersmarck.
Echo #2 is all flaky ephemera and silly supposition, but throw it all together you’ve got the kind of thing that would make you gulp if you heard it in The Omen. I’m not saying it’s remotely imaginable much less anything a sane person would consider, but let’s take the Michael Bay-is-the-devil idea and advance it a notch and suppose, just for fun, that Bay is actually the son of Satan.
He was born on 2.14.65, which was when Ira Levin was writing and researching his Rosemary’s Baby novel, which was published about two and a half years later, in mid 1967. So where did the idea for Levin’s book come from? Perhaps there were demonic vibrations in the air in the aftermath of Bay’s first wail and Levin, being a typically sensitive writer who perhaps knew a little something about the occult, picked up on this somehow? Maybe he knew someone who told him, “Something has happened, I know not what.”
Clearly the editors of Time magazine felt something in the air also because in April 1966, when Bay was only 14 months old, they published their famous “Is God Dead?” essay with that magazine cover that people still remember today. Roman Polanski, director of the original Rosemary’s Baby (’68), used this Time cover for an insert shot in his film.
I’m not saying any of this makes any sense, but once you accept the fictional notion of Bay’s demonic parentage it all starts to fall into place with an oddly creepy logic. Bay’s birth, Levin begins “Rosemary’s Baby,” Time wonders if God has died, the book is published, the movie is shot and released….all in fairly fast succession.
If you go by the logic of The Final Conflict (1981), the rise of Damien Thorn (Sam Neill) is fulfilled when be becomes an adult and begins to control the levers of power in decisive ways. Bay has obviously been doing that for some time in Hollywood circles, but now, the theory goes, he’s finally reached a point where he can tell (or help to tell if someone else directs) the story of his own birth. Yes, a stupid idea but on some primal level there’s a small part of me that believes all of it.
The scary thing is that Bay and his Platinum Pictures team will almost certainly screw this one up — overbaking it, removing all subtlety and sense of dread, making it for the downmarket crowd, etc. Just like they’re certain to do when they get around to remaking Alfred Hitchcock‘s The Birds.
When I think of Valentine’s Day, I usually imagine a bunch of Chicago hoods getting machine-gunned to death back in 1929. But this year is different. Partly because I’m in a great relationship groove (God has smiled down), and partly because there’s a stand-out Valentine’s Day Word Theatre event happening on Thursday, 2.14 at Social (formerly the Hollywood Athletic Club) that will be refreshingly free of the usual trite, mawkish sentiments that tend to coagulate on this romantic holiday.
It’s called “Hot Flicks: Love Scenes from the Silver Screen.” The performers will be Richard Schiff, Illeana Douglas, Chris Gorham, Amanda Seyfried (star of the forthcoming Mamma Mia!), the great Donal Logue (Zodiac, The Tao of Steve), Christina Pickles, Kali Rocha, Michael Rodgers, Toni Trucks, and Raviv Ullman.
I’ve been to Word Theatre events before and know something about the experience. It’s like seeing a first-rate play without the acts or the scenery or the makeup or the blackouts or the tight seating. And with gifted actors, a classy clientele, excellent hors d’oeuvres and (if you’re so inclined) booze.
Good love-scene movie dialogue is hard to come by. Mainly because filmmakers don’t tend to believe in it. Moments of longing, hunger, unrequited love, tenderness or spiritual affinity between characters tend to sink in more deeply when expressed non-verbally. Through the eyes, for the most part, or sometimes with a gesture that isn’t meant to be seen. Like Ward Bond happening to notice the wife of John Wayne’s brother gently stroking the Duke’s Civil War uniform in John Ford‘s The Searchers. Or Heath Ledger pressing his face into Jake Gyllenhaal‘s tattered shirt during a private moment near the end of Brokeback Mountain.
But affecting I-care-about-you dialogue happens nonetheless. My personal favorite is this passage from Jerry Maguire. (Notice that I didn’t include “you complete me” or “you had me at hello.”) I’m also a big fan of “you make me want to be a better man” from As Good As It Gets.
I’ve also always liked the dialogue between Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson in David Lean‘s Brief Encounter. I’m told this will be included in the 2.14 program.
Week after week after week, N.Y. Times DVD columnist Dave Kehr creams over every elitist-esoteric Criterion/Janus/ Anchor Bay DVD that comes along — the dweebier and more Thalia-in-the- ’70s, the better. But every now and then he goes mainstream mushy, as he has today with a review of the fourth of fifth DVD transfer of Leo McCarey‘s An Affair to Remember (1957), a tightly corseted and overpraised weepie with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr.
Kehr has kicked in with a heartfelt, well-written tribute to Grant’s acting and how his performance as Nickie Ferrante deepened his game with a new introspection, blah blah.
Every now and then Kehr gets out the violin and goes mainstream and talks about some schmaltzy movie that has gotten to him on some primal level (be it emotional or aesthetic). He did this with the last October’s Funny Face DVD. I was duly persuaded and went out and bought it and realized after watching this sometimes elegant but often repulsively candied Stanley Donen musical for 20 or 30 minutes that I’d been burned. I’m still smarting over Kehr having sold me on the Criterion Colection DVD of John Ford’s Young Mr. Lincoln. I bought it, popped it in and began muttering to myself after watching for 40 or 50 minutes….burned by Kehr again!
Kehr knows from art-film esoterica — give him that. He’s definitely a guy to listen to when it comes to the latest Samuel Fuller or Vittorio Se Sica box set. But caveat emptor when it comes to ’40s and ’50s schmaltz!
Christmas is a vibe about caring, giving, compassion for the lessers. The spirit of this holiday may not be a tangible reality until you find yourself giving five bucks to a guy begging for gas money (as I did last night — he was probably a practiced con artist) or your car is stuck in a snowstorm and two guys jump out of their cars to give you a push (which happened to me three nights ago), but when real life comes up short a semblance of this is somewhat evident in this and that film.
Few films capture this better than John Ford‘s The Grapes of Wrath. Yes, I’m thinking again of that diner scene I wrote about a week ago. Other films with genuine humanitarian compassion: Joseph Losey‘s The Boy with the Green Hair, Todd Browning‘s Freaks, Peter Davis‘s The War at Home.
The only bona fide Christmas film that exudes a portion of this is the 1951 British-made Scrooge (a.k.a., A Christmas Carol) with Alistair Sim.
True Christmas spirit is less evident in the standard holiday classics — It’s a Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street, A Christmas Story, Home Alone — that movie authorities bring up each and every year.
I tried re-watching It’s a Wonderful Life (i.e, the latest restored DVD) a few weeks ago, and found it very hard to stay with. I needed time-outs, pauses, walks around the block. Talk about a film that is chock-full of treacly speed bumps. Is there a more toxic poison than yellowed sentimentality? I hate — hate — the way those bank examiners begin singing “Hark, the Harald Angels Sing” with everyone else at George Bailey’s home at the very end. It is time to shut this movie down and keep it down.
It’s a Wonderful Life‘s popularity is due to its touching central theme, which says that no one with friends is a failure. That’s a true statement if you’re talking about real friends and not just good-time, fair-weather drinking buddies, which are easier to come by. I’ve known many people in my life whose definitions of friendship are on the flexible side. A fair-sized percentage of those who believe that this 1946 Frank Capra film is touched by greatness are, I suspect, among this group.
I’ve always hated Bob Clark‘s A Christmas Story. (Wait…am I allowed to say this?) A Miracle on 34th Street is a passable thing, at least as far as Edmund Gwenn‘s Kris Kringle is concerned. I know that I’ve found it less offensive than It’s a Wonderful Life over the years. I probably need to see it again.
Thanks to George Prager for supplying this glorious SNL piece about the “lost ending” of It’s a Wonderful Life. Perfect…hits the spot.
Listen to this HE-edited version of a famous scene from John Ford‘s The Grapes of Wrath. A dirt-poor oakie comes into a diner looking to buy a loaf of bread but he can’t afford to pay more than a dime. Listen to the rest and you’ll be able to follow. The way I’ve cut it, the scene ends where it should — with a truck driver saying “what’s it to ya?”
But listen now to Ford’s version of the scene — the way it actually plays in the film. Ford keeps the camera rolling until the waitress considers the extra-large tip, goes all mushy and says “truck drivers!” Due respect to Ford, but this is my problem with the guy — he’s too sentimental. If Howard Hawks had directed this scene, he would have used the first version.
It turns out there’s one decent DVD store in the Boston area after all — the Video Underground in Jamaica Plain, which is somewhere south of Brookline Village. Open 1 to 11 pm daily, and specializing in independent, cult, foreign, classic and locally made titles. Presumably staffed with knowledgable cineaste types like Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary used to be when they worked at Video Archives.
But that’s all she wrote in this area, and I’m in still grappling with the shock of realizing that if the communal DVD experience is all but obliterated in Boston, it must be pretty much finished nationwide except for the existence of those very few specialty DVD stores serving big-city elites.
What a wonderfully corporate Orwellian world we’re living in! No more going outside to stores where you can view and hold DVDs in your hands before buying them, and perhaps even discuss their merits and demerits with the guy at the counter. No more tasting or savoring life’s rough and tumble at all, really. Instead you go online and order a digital semblance of that rough and tumble, and two or three days later it arrives in your mailbox and you pop it into your DVD or X-Box or PS3 player, and you sit there on your couch, vegging out and munching out on sour cream and onion-flavored Ruffles. (My personal favorite…sorry.)
I’ve been noticing these grotesque life forms — products of an indoor, online-based, sedentary existence — walking down Newbury Street over the last couple of days. Kids with a simian aura, obviously unrefined attitudes, squealing with laughter at each other’s jokes, sounding like Sopranos extras, reeking of cigarettes or pot and carrying around massive loads of whale blubber. Give me a city and a lifestyle that keeps me away from these animals….these harbingers of cultural death. If the ghosts of Honore de Balzac or William Makepeace Thackeray were to run into these kids they’d reach for their muskets and start shooting.
I made the mistake of going to a Best Buy last night in hopes of finding the Ford at Fox collection among the new releases. Forget it. I asked a kid working there if it was at least in the Best Buy database and possibly available at some other store. “What’s this DVD again?” he asked. “Ford at Fox,” I said. “Movies made by John Ford…you know, one of the great all-time directors. An old-time guy.” He didn’t have a wisp of a clue what I was talking about. You don’t have to be a John Ford scholar but to have never heard the words “John” and “Ford” spoken in sequence ….good God.
Here’s a 7.9.06 Boston Globe piece by John Swansburg about the death of the local video store. “It’s a greater loss than you might think,” the subhead reads. No, no…I get it, I get it!
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