“Reality is diabolical.” — Ingmar Bergman

It’s Ingmar Bergman’s birthday today.

I saw Persona in college – while studying acting – and was so intimidated by it I thought, “Okay. I can’t ever watch this again.” I needed courage to feel like I still could give a good performance myself, but watching Bibi and Liv made me realize how high the bar had been set. But you need those high bars. You need to know what great acting looks like, feels like, what it can BE. It helps you go deeper in your own work, it helps you ask better questions, strive harder.

2018 was Bergman’s centenary and I did a Bergman binge in chronological order (my brief notes here), watching many films I haven’t seen in years: Summer with Monika, Smiles of a Summer Night, Winter Light, Through a Glass Darkly, The Silence – but there were a couple that were new to me. I know Persona, Wild Strawberries, The Seventh Seal and Cries and Whispers very well. Silence I’ve only seen once, same with Through a Glass Darkly: I was so traumatized I am not sure I’ll ever be ready to re-visit, but they live in my head rent-free. I think Shame might be his best, in all honesty. It has a jagged in-your-face style, unique to him, and appropriate to the material. It’s a truly frightening film. You are not allowed any distance from the events onscreen.

For the centenary, I wrote and narrated two video-essays for Criterion, about Bergman’s actresses.I’m very proud of the work I did with these videos, so go check them out!

Liv Ullmann and Bibi Andersson, Sisters in the Art

The Eerie Intensity of Ingrid Thulin

Bergman went places other directors do not go. Even his “failures” are personal. To those of you not really familiar with him, or intimidated at where to start, I would suggest starting with Wild Strawberries, I think it’s a good entry-point. It has the familiar Bergman themes: mortality, the fear of death, etc. Plus ragingly unhappy couples. But it also has sequences of warmth and joy, making it more accessible (horrible word) than, say, Winter Light. (Being “accessible” is not better than being dense or inaccessible. I prefer unhappy films, so take that into consideration. It was when I got to Bergman’s REALLY dark films that I fell in love with him.)

After Wild Strawberries, I’d suggest moving onto The Seventh Seal (it’s always funnier than I remember), Persona (it lives up to the legend) and then Cries and Whispers, his grand excruciating melodrama drenched in red. Smiles of a Summer Night, Bergman’s first international hit, is an ensemble drama/comedy about infidelity, love and sex. It’s “accessible.” You need to see Shame too. It’s a great war film. Because everything with Bergman is personal, if you don’t like him this could be tough going. But I would say he’s one of those artists that anyone who considers themselves a “film fan” really needs to at least check out. He is so imitated you really should know the source. Even people who haven’t seen The Seventh Seal probably recognize the images of this scene:

Bergman’s more difficult work comes in the early 1960s, before PersonaPersona represented a new phase in his career, it ushered in “the Liv Ullmann years.” But before that came his dauntingly great trilogy – which I’ve heard referred to as “the silence of God trilogy” as well as the “spider trilogy” (shivers): Through a Glass Darkly (starring Harriet Andersson), Winter Light and The Silence (both starring Ingrid Thulin, in one of the greatest one-two-punches in cinema history). If you started out your Bergman journey watching an entry in this trilogy, you might never watch another Bergman film. These films are ruthless, they are unblinking examinations of … portrayals of … the lack of God in our world, the bleak landscape of faithlessness, where there is no hope for anything better, and no release possible. The only release is into madness. These are tough tough films, but ESSENTIAL. Without them, Bergman’s work would not be complete. Very few people go AS FAR into their obsessions as Ingmar Bergman did.


Through a Glass Darkly


Winter Light


The Silence

These three films feature towering performances – by Harriet Andersson (Through a Glass Darkly) and Ingrid Thulin (both Winter Light and The Silence – and she is so radically different in each she makes Meryl Streep look like an amateur playing make-believe. This is not hyperbole. Ingrid Thulin is on a level all her own.)

Criterion Collection has come out with a gigantic box-set, complete with 39 of his films. Yes, the price is high, but when you consider what you will be getting (including some films that have been long unavailable), it’s worth it.

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“He’s one of those actors who knows that his face IS the story.” – Sam Shepard on Harry Dean Stanton

It’s Harry Dean Stanton’s birthday today.

I’m pretty sure my introduction to Harry Dean Stanton – whose birthday it is today – was as Molly Ringwald’s sad dad in Pretty in Pink (he made a huge impression on me). It wouldn’t be long after that – in a fit of Paul Newman obsession – that I saw Cool Hand Luke – realized it was the same guy as the one in Pretty in Pink, and then began a life time of catching up on his capacious body of work. Even he didn’t know how many movies he was in. He worked right up to the end and Lucky – his final film – came out after he died, a clear sign he was already living forever.

Here’s the tribute piece I wrote to Harry Dean Stanton over at Ebert when he died.

I hadn’t seen Lucky when I wrote the tribute, so I’m sad I couldn’t include it, but I did get to write about his performance in Twin Peaks: The Return, especially the astonishing moment where he looks up at the trees. It takes a lifetime to be that relaxed (in front of the camera or anywhere else.)

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“I think there is a little of Beckett in everything I have done.” — Monte Hellman

Today is the birthday of the one-of-a-kind American-B-movie-but-also-French-existentialist film director Monte Hellman, who died last year.

For a really good roundup-overview of this iconoclastic American director, check out David Hudson’s “Monte Hellman’s Sly Humor and Existential Dread” over on Criterion – ostensibly a roundup of all of the pieces written about Hellman in the wake of his death last year, but also provides a chronology and background of this outlaw-director who got his start, as so many did, on Roger Corman’s B-movies.

I’ll never be “over” Monte Hellman, and I will never stop being surprised by films like Ride In the Whirwind or The Shooting or the road movie to end all road movies, Two-Lane Blacktop. There is something uncapturable in their sense of existential space, the space fraught with the tension of waiting for some indefinable event that may never come. Hellman was Beckettian in sensibility and outlook.

The month after his death, I wrote a tribute on Monte Hellman for Film Comment.


Monte Hellman and James Taylor during the filming of “Two-Lane Blacktop”.

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Review: Wild Diamond (2025)

Liane wants to be “the French Kim Kardashian”, perhaps (most definitely) a dubious goal, but understandable in the context of Wild Diamond. This isn’t your normal cautionary tale about social media and/or influencer culture. There’s something else going on – other strains present in the film. I tried to capture what I sensed in my review for Ebert.

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“Nothing can prevent me from making films.” — Jafar Panahi

panahi-540x304

It’s his birthday today.

Jafar Panahi should need no introduction, but just in case

Jafar Panahi is an Iranian director with an international reputation, and a daunting list of films, many of which were made under terrible conditions (The White Balloon, The Mirror, The Circle, Offside, Crimson Gold, This Is Not a Film, Taxi, Closed Curtain). Harassed and persecuted for years (Panahi’s films were openly critical of the regime, in particular its barbaric treatment of women), Panahi was finally arrested and imprisoned. Tortured. He went on hunger strike. The situation made international news in 2009/10/11. Released from prison, Panahi was placed on house arrest until the verdict. When the verdict finally came in, it was devastating: 6 years in prison, as well as a 20-year ban on making films. No travel, no interviews. Panahi is in his 50s. This is a lifetime ban.

HOWEVER:

More after the jump.

Continue reading

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Happy Birthday, Thomas Mitchell

Interesting that Thomas Mitchell and Bruce McGill were born on the same day (scroll down). I said in the piece about Bruce McGill that McGill is in “the Thomas Mitchell tradition” and the “Thomas Mitchell tradition” is quickly vanishing from the face of the earth. This is due to multiple factors, but mainly it’s the loss of the character actor tradition. Now of course there are still character actors, but it’s just different now. There’s more work (ironically) but less chance for these people to really shine, unless they’re cast in prestige television that everyone watches. Like Sopranos or Six Feet Under – which didn’t cast glorified hotties overall in smaller roles, but honest to goodness character actors who have been around since the 70s and 80s. People like Thomas Mitchell, back in the Golden Age, would show up in things – often playing variations on a theme – and people would feel comfortable, happy, like he was their uncle up onscreen.

What is striking about Thomas Mitchell is the variety of his roles, the breadth of “people” he had in him! His gift was astonishing, and it never seemed like he was just mimicking someone else. He could be genuinely lovable and also genuinely NOT lovable. Both seemed natural. He could be competent and damn near romantic (Mr. Smith Goes to Washington) and he could be incompetent and eccentric (It’s a Wonderful Life).

He is one of my favorite actors of all time. I’d put him toe to toe with any of the great leading man actors any day of the week. Thomas Mitchell made OTHER people look good. He won an Oscar for his performance in Stagecoach and was nominated in the same category (Best Supporting) for Hurricane. Let’s talk about his other awards. He won the New York Film Critics Circle Best Actor award for Long Voyage Home, and since I am now a member of that illustrious group I feel pride. He was nominated three times for an Emmy, winning once. He also won a Best Actor in a Musical Tony Award, bringing him into the rarified category of people who have won Oscars, Emmys and Tonys. If he came out with an album and it won a Grammy, he’d reach EGOT status.

I was thrilled to pay tribute to him in the March-April 2018 issue of Film Comment, focusing on his terrifying performance in Moontide, definitely one of his lesser-known films, but filled with fascination. Mitchell is truly scary in it and he’s doing so much with it, including playing the gay subtext consciously. He knew exactly where that character was coming from and did not try to hide it. The piece isn’t online, although you can purchase it. It meant a lot to me to pay tribute to him, and put that performance into the context of the rest of his illustrious career. He never really played another role like it.

Well, WE all did.

 
 
Thank you so much for stopping by. If you like what I do, and if you feel inclined to support my work, here’s a link to my Venmo account. And I’ve launched a Substack, Sheila Variations 2.0, if you’d like to subscribe.

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Happy Birthday, Bruce McGill

Bruce McGill is one of those actors who would have fit in perfectly with the old studio system: a first-rate support player, a guy who can do anything: drama, comedy, farce, who can fit into any context. He’s in the rarified Thomas Mitchell tradition. Thomas Mitchell was as good as any A-lister ever was. Better. And so is McGill. He can come from any region of the country. He can be sentimental, he can be sincere, funny, broad. He can be tragic, naturalistic, or stylized. There’s nothing the guy can’t do. He is, like most character actors, a far better actor than most established movie stars, in terms of scope and versatility, and any project he is in is better because of his presence.

I have a special fondness for his performances in two episodes of Quantum Leap, episodes which bookend the series: first and last.

In the final episode of Quantum Leap, McGill plays the bartender who, in a mysterious knowing way, shows that he is the key to the entire experiment. He has been there all along. The way he plays his scenes with Scott Bakula is with just the right amount of kindness mixed with opacity, seasoned with a sort of individualistic tough love, smiling at Bakula’s bafflement, but not cruelly. Never cruelly. He gives his scene partner space to figure it out for himself. It’s a wonderful piece of acting (and just gets better with repeated viewings).

He makes other actors better, just by being in a scene with them.

Al Pacino, in The Insider, does some terrific work, not as self-involved and egomaniacal as some of his more recent performances have been. His movie-star persona fits nicely with Lowell Bergman in The Insider: Pacino can play to his strengths. He is a speech-maker, bombastic, and Pacino does his schtick where he talks quietly and deliberately and then suddenly explodes on one or two words … While I have been tired of that Pacino schtick for a decade or more now, in The Insider it works, it is in service to the story. It is not just Pacino trying to “make something happen in the scene” by being randomly loud and then equally as randomly quiet.

But let me tell you: Nothing Pacino does in The Insider, nothing Russell Crowe does in The Insider, can come close to the power and electricity from Bruce McGill’s one big moment in that courtroom in Mississippi: “Wipe that smirk off your face!

Pacino and Crowe have other concerns. I don’t mean to make an unfair comparison. They carry the picture, they have to modulate and gradate their performances in scene after scene, showing the slow transformations of their two characters. They do stellar jobs. But in a movie such as this, with so many elements, so many different sections, you need power-hitters in the smaller parts. You need someone who can come up big when you need him to. A Big Papi of character actors. In giant ensemble pictures, with mega-watt movie stars in lead roles, it is essential to fill in the second-and-third-tiers with talented and sometimes-anonymous character actors. The old studio system knew this well. The new Hollywood doesn’t always realize this. They have forgotten. Character actors are there to provide reality and depth, to ground the movie stars in a world that we, the audience, can recognize. Character actors look like us. They help us think this story is happening in the real world.

In a film such as The Insider, with so many terrific moments from the lead actors, it is heartening to see how much time and weight is given to these secondary characters. The film is cast brilliantly, and the casting is really WHY the film works. (Any director worth his/her salt knows that 90% of their job is casting well.) The contributions of the three leads – Pacino, Crowe, and Christopher Plummer – are substantial. But without Debi Mazar, Lindsay Crouse, Philip Baker Hall, Colm Feore, and the spectacular Bruce McGill, our beautiful movie stars would be acting in a vacuum.

Bruce McGill’s contributions to a film like The Insider are not, in general, pointed out or celebrated. They are taken for granted. They’re appreciated, but in an invisible way. This is the blessing and the curse of the character actor. McGill wouldn’t be nominated for an Oscar for The Insider. The part is too small. But if you want to see an actor tap into what my acting teacher in college called “the pulse of the playwright”, if you want to see an actor easily illuminate every single thematic element of the movie as a whole – without being didactic or obvious, if you want to see an actor who understands that every element of a film is like a fractal (what is happening in the top tiers has to be happening in the lowest tiers too), if you want to see an actor enter a film and, with only one or two moments, remind us of the stakes, so urgently, so ferociously, that he makes all else pale before him, if you want to see a guy stroll away with the entire picture – watch Bruce McGill in The Insider.

What Bruce McGill doesn’t know about acting probably isn’t worth knowing.

 
 
Thank you so much for stopping by. If you like what I do, and if you feel inclined to support my work, here’s a link to my Venmo account. And I’ve launched a Substack, Sheila Variations 2.0, if you’d like to subscribe.

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#tbt Only connect

I wrote a little bit about this in the recent snapshots. I recently got together with my first boyfriend, Antonio. Our relationship was such ancient history it’s hard to feel its relevance to my every day world, but it is a connecting thread, a piece of time, which – to be honest – I barely remember. I remember mostly the terrible stuff. And the crazy aftermath, moving to Chicago and tossing myself into a social scene with such frenzy I got mileage out of it for years. I kind of went into that here. As bad as much of this was, I look with much more forgiveness and tenderness on our younger selves, and forgiving (or trying to forgive) myself for being too immature and inexperienced to know that I deserved to feel better about myself, which had nothing to do with Antonio. This is neither here nor there. He and I are somewhat in touch but not in an extended way. I hear from him occasionally and it’s usually because he remembered some crazy joke we had together. As bad as much of the relationship was, we always – always – had this wild shared sense of humor, and I have vivid memories of both of us – at one time or another – literally collapsing into a heap on the ground because we were overcome with laughter. He reached out recently. He had found a box of stuff in the process of moving, letters I wrote to him – so many letters (I was in college, he was in law school in another state) – all these photos I had never seen before. Memories came flooding back but then there were some I have no memory of at all. It is a very strange sensation.

We got together. I haven’t seen him since 2011. A lot has changed since then. I’m healthy, for one. I am not a haunted tragic ghost. He wanted to show me all the stuff he found. I wondered if it would be okay. What if I was triggered? What if I suddenly became a haunted tragic ghost again?

None of that happened. We got together in an old seafood spot, sitting right next to the channel leading to open ocean, a place we had been to many times as a couple, but honestly it’s a place I’ve grown up going to. I brought him there once, when he visited Rhode Island. Listen, if you’re a Midwesterner you may think you’ve had fresh fish. Trust me: you have not. Not like Rhode Island fresh fish. So you come visit me from the Midwest, I’m taking you to this place.

I had no idea if it would be awkward seeing Antonio. I was ready for it. It wasn’t awkward at all. So much to catch up on. Family stuff. We went down the list of every single family member and got caught up on what they were doing – or not (many have passed away, and we mourned them together). We talked about our relationship. I feel like he might have a more positive view of it than I do, but even that is okay. We talked about mental health and how we probably both were depressed a little bit when we were together (which, honestly, wasn’t that long, all told. It FEELS like it had to have been a decade at least but it was only about three years). We stayed there for hours. We met up when the sun was high and we parted when it was dark. It was truly incredible and something I could not have imagined in the past. We made it! Here we are!

We looked at the stuff he brought. We were GUFFAWING at some of this stuff. Others I was almost baffled, like, I have NO memory of this. Is that even me?? I grabbed a couple faves. Like I said, these represent a connecting thread. It feels like there are breaks in the timeline and you emerge from nothingness into a whole new space. I feel that way about 2009-2012. But no. 2009-2012 happened. I was here. It’s all connected. There are no breaks. I was just amazed, though, seeing some of these pictures for the first time since we got them developed. Because that’s how long ago it was. You’d take your rolls of film to the little Kodak kiosks.

In one of the more stupid decisions we made as a couple, we divested ourselves of most of our possessions and moved into a Westfalia camper van, where we then proceeded to live for months, trolling around the continent, breaking up horribly as we went. And yet nobody was like “Take me to the nearest Greyhound station. I have got to get ouf of here.” It was before cell phones. We were completely off the grid and would make calls from pay phones at gas stations. Here I am in North Dakota on a lonely road somewhere, making a call, and staring across at the fields of sunflowers as far as the eye could see.

I have dressed the exact same way since I was 9 years old. I have no idea where this was but I do remember wandering through industrial waste zones in various decimated areas outside Philadelphia and taking pictures. It looks like I’m on a beach but what that huge concrete slab is I have no idea.

I’m standing in the driveway of his grandmother’s house, a kind of legendary house perched on the rocky shore of Rhode Island. Antonio lived there when he went to college, where we met. He had taken a bunch of years off, so he was older than everyone. The grandmother mostly lived in Florida (I think?) but it was this old house, one floor, kind of a sprawl, cozy, not ostentatious, but on a huge chunk of land. Fireplaces. So many great times had in that house. Lots of parties. I have no idea when this is but I can tell I am holding my jeans jacket, with the white bleach stains on it, that I still have. I have had it since high school. At the age of 16, I wrote on the back “CIAO! MANHATTAN” in purple marker. It’s still there.

Antonio’s family basically had an island in the St. Lawrence Seaway. He and his brother and sister literally built a shack on a sandy point. You had to come to the island by motor boat. There was nothing on the island but “the big house” where maybe some distant uncle was staying, and the shack, off by itself on the other side of the island. Going there was roughing it. No electricity or running water, etc. It was beautiful but I never liked going there. One time, though, in a burst of spontaneity, my main group of friends decided to drive up there and go hang out for the week. Some of our longest lasting friend-jokes come from that trip. It rained 4 days out of 5. Here we all are, posing by the’ old-fashioned wooden commode Antonio found at some antique shop, which we put in the field behind the house, out of sight. Antonio is fishing out of the commode. So ridiculous.

The last two photos are interesting because
1. I have no memory of either of them
2. I don’t think it was conscious but both appear to be homages.

Here I am a character in an Edvard Munch painting.

Here I am re-enacting Andrew Wyeth’s “Christina’s World” (see former note about the jeans jacket) on the little lawn next to the Point Judith Lighthouse (right around the corner – sort of – from the seafood place I mentioned). It may be Christina’s world but the slant of light on that white stucco is pure Edward Hopper.

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“When liberty is taken away by force it can be restored by force. When it is relinquished voluntarily by default it can never be recovered.” — Dorothy Thompson


Dorothy Thompson, 1939: testifying in Congress to repeal the Neutrality Act.

“They are holding every Jew in Germany as a hostage. Therefore, we who are not Jews must speak, speak our sorrow and indignation and disgust in so many voices that they will be heard.” — journalist Dorothy Thompson, radio broadcast, 1938

American journalist Dorothy Thompson, whose birthday it is today, wangled and manipulated her way into an interview with Adolf Hitler in 1931. Before he even became Chancellor. Thompson had been keeping a close eye on him ever since the “beer hall putsch” in 1923, which launched him into national prominence.

Thompson was one of the few American journalists – hell, European journalists, ANY journalist – who recognized the threat of him instantly, and devoted her career to warning people about him in her regular radio broadcasts, and devoting columns to him.

Her interview with Hitler is absolutely fascinating, and was published in a 1932 issue of Cosmopolitan. It caused a firestorm of horror and revulsion, as well as envy from other journalists. It was a major SCOOP. Her article was eventually published in book form.

“[Hitler] is formless, almost faceless, a man whose countenance is a caricature, a man whose framework seems cartilaginous, without bones. He is inconsequent and voluble, ill-poised, insecure. He is the very prototype of the Little Man. A lock of lank hair falls over an insignificant and slightly retreating forehead. . . .The nose is large, but badly shaped and without character. His movements are awkward, almost undignified and most un-martial…The eyes alone are notable. Dark gray and hyperthyroid—-they have the peculiar shine which often distinguishes geniuses, alcoholics, and hysterics…There is something irritatingly refined about him. I bet he crooks his little finger when he drinks a cup of tea.” — Dorothy Thompson, “I Saw Hitler”, 1932

She posed as a Red Cross worker and infiltrated the German High Command, getting interviews with high-ranked generals. She peppered Hitler with requests for an interview until finally he granted her one, probably assuming he could snow her because she was a woman. He underestimated her. Her article has generated criticisms that she underestimated him. He seemed like such a nonentity to her, such a Nobody, no way could he do a lot of damage. This criticism seems to me to ignore the deeper psychological insights her interview provided. What she was seeing, what she saw, was a nobody, a Little Man, not a powerful intimidating warrior at all but … a little bone-less guy with a bad haircut who put on airs. There have been many many scholars since the 30s who have examined Hitler as a Nobody, a Little Man, an uneducated and easily-swayed nonentity. An incel, really. It’s very dangerous when a “Nobody” gains power. (J.P. Stern expanded on this idea in his excellent book, Hitler: The Fuhrer and the People – which I wrote about here). Hitler had a “revelation” about Germany’s destiny while he was in the trenches of World War I (he describes this in Mein Kampf: nobody can say they weren’t warned), and he then set about bringing his prophetic “vision” to completion. This is a deep topic, and goes far beyond the scope of this “birthday post” but what I want to point out is: Thompson didn’t say “I don’t think he can do much damage.” She knew he and his rhetoric were ALREADY damaging: she perceived it earlier than most journalists (the populations Hitler targeted felt it immediately, of course). Her perception of Hitler as a man prone to “hysterics”, her perception that his “refinement” was bogus … it all adds up to a hit piece not on his policies, but on his psychology, it’s a hit piece on him PERSONALLY. Her article says: “I see through you, you bully.” “I Saw Hitler” was particularly damning because a woman wrote it. Nazis extolled womanhood but only of the domestic breeder variety. Sounds familiar. But men who prefer women submissive forget something very important: due to political and social/cultural oppression for literally millennia, many women are accustomed to keeping their mouths shut and navigating AROUND men, who have been mostly barriers to their advancement. Women are far more familiar with male psychology than men are familiar with female psychology. Because of this, women see through male bullshit. Men are more prone to buy each other’s bullshit. Thompson got up close, did not buy the bullshit, perceived the Emperor had no clothes, but she also – importantly – perceived the dangerous sway he held over Germany, and called it out. Hitler was, of course, apoplectic when the article came out.

Thompson was bureau chief in Berlin. She was considered so dangerous she was expelled from Germany, the first foreign journalist to get that “honor.” She came back to America, continuing to sound the alarm, to urge Americans to take the threat seriously. She testified before Congress in 1939, asking them to repeal the Neutrality Act (see photo above).

Also in 1939, a terrible year, maybe the worst in the 20th century, Thompson attended the Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden organized by the German American Bund Society. 20,000 people were there, arm bands ON, Sieg Heils at the ready. Terrifying. An almost forgotten moment in US history, although we’re seeing it play out again in real time.

Dorothy Thompson was there as a journalist. Journalists are supposed to be objective, right? Put their “biases” aside, right? Well, Thompson had different ideas. She saw her job as a truth-teller and she knew the Nazis were dangerous and if the Nazis won millions would die. So she sat there in the press area, and loudly heckled the speakers. She burst out in derisive laughter at their statements. She caused a scene.


At the 1939 Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden: Dorothy Thompson heckles the speakers.

The Nazis around her were so furious at how she was raining on their fascist parade, a ruckus ensued. She kept heckling. The people around her heckled her. The situation was about to spin out of control when the police intervened and escorted Thompson out of the arena. Just like she was expelled from Germany for speaking out. So think about that: in the land of the free and the brave, she was criticized for speaking the truth, too.

She wrote about the vulnerabilities in our political system and how America should not be complacent about our immunity from this mental disease:

No people ever recognize their dictator in advance. He never stands for election on the platform of dictatorship. He always represents himself as the instrument – the Incorporated National Will. When our dictator turns up you can depend on it that he will be one of the boys, and he will stand for everything traditionally American. And nobody will ever say “Heil” to him, nor will they call him “Führer” or “Duce.” But they will greet him with one great big, universal, democratic, sheeplike bleat of “O.K., Chief! Fix it like you wanna, Chief! Oh Kaaaay!”

Thompson was married to Sinclair Lewis. Her work inspired him to write his spookily prophetic novel with the bitterly sarcastic title It Can’t Happen Here. Lewis speculates on the kind of man who could swerve America away from democracy, echoing his wife’s prophetic words above. Lewis, too, sensed our vulnerabilities, the cracks in our system through which tyranny could slip. They both were right on the money.

Along those lines, Thompson wrote a fascinating piece for Harper’s Bazaar called “Who Goes Nazi?“. In the article, she looks around a hypothetical dinner party filled with a diverse group of Americans, and guesses which ones will “go Nazi” and which ones would be immune. It’s really something, that piece. It checks out.

Kind, good, happy, gentlemanly, secure people never go Nazi. They may be the gentle philosopher whose name is in the Blue Book, or Bill from City College to whom democracy gave a chance to design airplanes—you’ll never make Nazis out of them. But the frustrated and humiliated intellectual, the rich and scared speculator, the spoiled son, the labor tyrant, the fellow who has achieved success by smelling out the wind of success—they would all go Nazi in a crisis.

This brave smart woman was on the right side of history. To quote contestants on reality TV shows: Thompson wasn’t “here to make friends.” But she was right about the Nazis and she knew she was right. In situations where peer pressure acts as a silencer – where consensus is stifling – think WWDTD? (What Would Dorothy Thompson Do?) Journalists especially should ask themselves that question. They should be asking it now. They are failing.

Dorothy Thompson is a role model and hero.

“A little more matriarchy is what the world needs, and I know it. Period. Paragraph.” — Dorothy Thompson

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“Art is theft, art is armed robbery, art is not pleasing your mother.” — Janet Malcolm

It’s her birthday today. She died in 2021.

I started out with The Silent Woman, many years ago, her book on the challenges of writing about Sylvia Plath, particularly in lieu of the draconian Plath estate, run – Shakespearean-ly – by Ted Hughes’ sister Olwyn who always hated Sylvia. It’s a fascinating and troubling book about the issues of legacy, narrative, who gets to tell whose story, who “holds” the story, and – finally – acknowledging the upsetting fact that Sylvia Plath has been “silenced” by her own estate. (This is no longer the case, freakin’ 30 years later. About time.)

Many of Malcolm’s books are about the art of writing itself. She was ambivalent on the subject. Similar to Susan Sontag’s ambivalence in re: photography, Malcolm wondered if writing – particularly non-fiction writing and reportage – served any purpose at all. Malcolm’s eye was unsparing. She interviewed people, and they crucified themselves by their own words, and by her descriptions of them.

All writers should read The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. Malcolm’s writing was so dominating it often got her into trouble: there were numerous controversies in re: her quotations. On more than one occasion, Malcolm had to produce her original notes in order to prove such-and-such conversation took place. On more than one occasion, Malcolm could not locate said notes. She was often “in trouble” like this. Her book on “the Freud archives” is a real banger – and a continuation on her earlier book on Psychiatry: she was fascinated – and repelled – by the whole thing.

Malcolm is probably most well-known for The Journalist and the Murderer: her most brutal book. Malcolm was incensed by Joe McGinniss’ best-selling “true” crime book Fatal Vision, about convicted family annihilator Jeffrey MacDonald. What angered Malcolm was McGinniss’ trickery. The writer pretended to be MacDonald’s friend and supporter in order to gain the accused murderer’s trust, McGinniss pretended the book he was writing would be a defense of MacDonald, when in actuality it was going to be an indictment. Very unethical. Malcolm didn’t care about MacDonald’s case, but she went after Joe McGinniss hard. She was appalled, you can feel it in the prose. The book started out as an article, which caused a sensation. Her thoughts went against the almost universal accolades Fatal Vision received – and she elaborated the article into a short fiery polemic-book. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that Malcolm destroyed McGinniss’ reputation. He never recovered. He’s still defending himself from Malcolm’s assault on his integrity. To Malcolm, McGinniss was a symptom of a larger issue: Malcolm’s real interest was journalism itself, which you can also see in The Silent Woman, which is about Plath, but it’s really about the challenges of literary biography. Malcolm was not afraid to go after the entire journalistic profession of journalists, calling them ALL out in these unforgettable blazing words:

Every journalist who is not too stupid or full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people’s vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse.

The Journalist and the Murderer was so influential it’s on the curriculum in Journalism programs across the United States to this day.

Malcolm was an unsentimental writer and resistant to emotion or consensus-driven pressure. It’s a great lesson, one I try to take to heart. The pressure to conform is intense. Twitter was a wild exaggeration of what already exists. I haven’t experienced such peer pressure since high school. My views often don’t line up with the status quo or the majority. I never was susceptible to peer pressure, for some reason, but I still feel it. Resisting peer pressure is essential for clarity, and crucial for writers.

I trusted Malcolm because of how far she stood back from her subject. She was transparent about how she thought, not just WHAT she thought. Her book about Plath is an investigation into the estate, and grappling with what she discovered. She thinks out loud in her writing. While her writing is crystal-clear, what she does – often – is lead you through a maze of possibilities, where clarity vanishes (this happens in the Plath book: there are no answers there, no one villain).

Janet Malcolm was – and still is – a role model for me as a writer.

I miss coming across her byline, in The New Yorker, or the New York Review of Books. I would set everything aside to dive in.

 
 
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