The Sheila Variations

Obsession Central: Cary Grant

The continuing saga from this post.

The moments from Affair to Remember that really stood out for me as examples of the special-ness and grace of Cary Grant's talent - moments that taste GOOD:

1. One of their last nights on the boat, when he comes to her room, saying they need to talk because "we have created quite a problem here"

Here's the set-up: The two of them spent a 5-hour lay-over going to visit Nicky's (Cary Grant's character) grandmother in her idyllic little villa. They have a magical afternoon. They realize (with no words passing between them) that they are in love, and that they are engaged to the wrong people. They return to the ship. She avoids him. He tracks her down, and finds her crying. They have a tortured conversation. What should they do? She says to him, "There are rough seas ahead of us." He says "I know. We changed course today, didn't we?" She asks for time to think about what they should do. A couple days go by, and they run into each other - but there's no more of that loving banter, nothing.

One night, it's raining. She sits in her cabin, and she is obviously distraught, just thinking over what she should do. A knock on the door. She answers, and it's him. She begs him to leave her alone, because to be seen together would be "disastrous".

He says, "I know, but we have created a problem here!"

She begs for a bit more time. She says she can think better while he's not around. She's in a dressing gown, and is holding him off at the door. He's leaning in the door.

She says something like, "So please. Go away for now. You can sit and think in your cabin - and I will sit and think in mine ... and we will think this through separately " -- as she says this, he finally starts to back away, nodding, and right before she shuts the door on him, she can't help but add, in a forceful and loving tone, "while we are missing each other."

She must add that. She must let him know that she loves him and misses him.

And his response to that - is so ... spontaneous and so real that I re-wound it 3 times. I feel like I have lived through that exact same moment with a guy or two in my life.

Anyway, you think at first that he is just going to accept her command and go away. He is about to. But then when she adds the "while we are missing each other" line - there is a brief pause - and he then comes back, leans his head in, and says with such simplicity, "Oh, that was very sweet." A brief pause. "What you just said."

Then he kisses her fingers, resting on the door jamb, and he's gone.

I can't really describe the moment better than that, and of course - seeing it is much better than reading a stupid description of it.

He seems so vulnerable in that moment, suddenly. He is so happy that she misses him, too. But it's the way he expresses it ... how he puts his head back in the door, and the "oh that was so sweet" seems to be improvisational. It seems like he just thought it up. And the brief pause, before he explains further, "What you just said."

I adore the moment.

Like I said - I feel like I have lived variations of that moment with guys I've been involved with. It doesn't look like a planned acting moment, it looks real.

2. When he returns to his grandmother's villa, after she has died, and walks through the empty living room

Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr both realized their growing feelings in this villa. The grandmother played piano with her wrinkled arthritic fingers, they had tea - something beautiful transpired. A dawning realization of the right-ness of the two of them together, as a couple.

Deborah Kerr fails to meet him on the day they had planned. Cary Grant thinks that she has blown him off.

He returns to the grandmother's villa - the grandmother is now dead.

All the scene consists of is this:

Cary Grant walks into the villa. He looks around. He stands by the piano, and puts his hand on the piano. An echo of the grandmother playing fills his mind. Then he walks over to the two chairs by the tea-table. He stands there. He looks around. Then he leaves.

It's an extended scene. No words. No other people. Just Cary Grant wandering around. It's all one take, too. No close-ups.

And what he does with this simple scene is so extraordinary. It seems so easy. It's as though we're peeking in through a window at him.

He stands at the piano. He puts his hand on the piano. You can start to hear the music start. He stands there for what feels like forever. There is no movement. All we see is Cary Grant - thinking, feeling things, remembering ... but it's all subtle. He's not weeping, or wailing. He is just standing there. But you pretty much get the entire story of his life from his stance and the myriad looks on his face.

Then - he walks over to the tea table - where his grandmother and Deborah Kerr had sat, having tea.

The following moments are so beautifully done, so simple, so "Method"-y - and he makes it look so easy that I didn't even notice it at first:

The 2 chairs are big Victorian-ish chairs with padded backs. Cary Grant goes to one of the chairs, leans on it, and places his hand on the fabric of the padding. Rests his hand there. As though he is feeling for a heartbeat or a pulse. He stands there for a while. Then he moves to the other chair. Does the same thing. Rests his hand on the padding-fabric. It's almost like you can feel the painful beats of his own heart - because he misses the two women who sat in those chairs so desperately.

It doesn't appear that Cary Grant is actually DOING anything - but oh, he is.

He is feeling for these two women - he is trying to pick up some of their body warmth - trying to feel his way into the past. But he can't. They're both gone.

Objects are very important in Method training. An object can trigger a whole emotional response. Lee Strasberg said, "There are times when you look at your shoes and you see your whole life." That's what I'm talking about here.

That's what Cary Grant is doing with those chairs.

It's heart-achingly beautiful. And simple. That's the best thing about it. Its simplicity.

3. The last scene - when he realizes that she is crippled

He comes to her apartment. She is lying on the couch. He doesn't know that she has lost the use of her legs. He is hard on her, he wants to know why she didn't "keep their appointment". He's angry. She doesn't ever let on that she can't walk.

There is a moment, right as he is about to leave, when he realizes what is going on. A woman came into the gallery that was showing his paintings and wanted to buy the painting he had done of Deborah Kerr and his grandmother. Cary Grant says something to Deborah Kerr like, "She loved the painting - but she didn't have any money apparently - and not only that - but ..." He's about to say "she was in a wheelchair" - and in that second, he realizes. He realizes.

But watch his moment of realization. How subtle it is. It's not a big moment, a big "a-HA" moment, or a teary-eyed moment. All it is is a slight adjustment in his eyes. He realizes. But along with that realization comes intense sorrow, of course. Intense sorrow. That she has been so badly hurt.

Without saying a word, he puts his coat and hat down, and rushes over to the bedroom door, flings it open, and sees the painting there. The painting he did of her.

The music of course swells to a climax, but it's unnecessary because it's all there on Cary Grant's face where 5,000 things happen at once.

He's stunned. There it is. His painting. My God, the look in his eyes!

In the next second, he is overcome. In a very Cary Grant way. His posture changes, straightens a bit, and he closes his eyes - for a deep long pained moment. He is getting himself together to go back to her. He is so so sad. But it's that moment of closing his eyes ...

I've said it before in my posts on acting: A general rule for actors is:

If YOU cry, more often than not the audience WON'T. It's when you hold BACK the tears, that you'll have to mop them up off the aisles.

Cary Grant closes his eyes. He is holding back his sadness for her. No tears. And yet there I was, with tears streaming down my face, even though I've seen the thing 15 times.

When he goes back to her side, his entire face is different. Open. Vulnerable. Concerned. Caring. Confused. In love with her. "Why? Why didn't you tell me?"

That whole sequence of moments: the coldness, the relentlessness, the shocked realization at the doorway, the stunned moment when he sees the painting, the pained closing of the eyes - is a masterful bit of acting. Just masterful.

Obsession Central: Cary Grant - with a long diversion into the history of acting as a craft

Here we go. I was thinking about this this morning, and I want to analyze a couple of moments of Cary Grant's acting.

And so I will do so.

This post also has to do with acting styles, and how they develop, and how they are embodied in different actors at different times.

I popped in An Affair to Remember last night, basically so I could have a good long crying jag. The movie worked like a charm. Doesn't it always?

But now here comes the obsession:

One of the recognizable elements of the "Method" (popularized and institutionalized in America by Lee Strasberg - and embodied by actors such as Marlon Brando, James Dean, Robert De Niro) is that the actor is not just projecting emotions. He doesn't wear a mask, a "sad" mask, a "happy" mask, etc. The "Method" actor seems to be responding to internal stimuli, stuff that is unpredictable (but not unpredictable just for the sake of unpredictability) - and there is more going on within the actor than just what the lines say.

To give an obvious example:

The line may say, "God, I feel like crying." But because of something that happens within the actor, while saying the line, the actor bursts into hysterical laughter.

I might say this: this is closer to how people behave in real life. We aren't programmed, emotionally. You can have a fight with someone and not scream your head off through the whole thing. You might be kneeling at the coffin of a dearly beloved, and suddenly begin to laugh. Or suddenly start to rip up the flowers.

The Method was not "invented" by America. It's not like: Oh, actors were ONE way before the 1950s, and ANOTHER way after. That's missing the point.

Stanislavsky, the great Russian director, had realized, in observing actors - that some of them were better than others at seeming like they were having real experiences on stage. (This goes back to Hamlet's advice to the players. "What's Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba, That he should weep for her?" Hamlet here is pondering the essential mystery of acting. It is a complete fiction - and yet - actors since theatre has began have been crying real tears on stage, etc. One of the best definitions for acting I have ever heard is: "to come to life truthfully under imaginary circumstances". I think "truthfully" may be the key there.) Stanislavsky wanted to come up with a "system" that would help perhaps lesser actors to achieve what others did naturally, or with greater ease.

Also: If you'll notice, the best actors are the ones who don't know how to describe what it is that they do.

Spencer Tracy's advice to other actors? "Learn your lines and don't bump into the furniture."

Robert DeNiro is incredibly inarticulate when it comes to the craft of acting. "Oh... you know ... I do my homework ... I want to be truthful ..." etc.

Meryl Streep never talks about "how". The closest I've ever heard her come to describing how she does what she does is when she did a seminar at my school and said, "Acting, for me, is like going to church. When I'm praying at church, it's a private thing - I could never describe to you how I pray, or why I pray. I just do. And acting's the same way." Also implicit in that statement is the sacredness of it for her.

This has probably been the case with actors since the dawn of time. The ones who were the greats - Garrick, Sarah Siddons, Eleanora Duse, etc. - are the ones who had genius. Who could "weep for" Hecuba naturally, because their natural gifts always led them in the right direction. Hence: genius.

Stanislavsky began to experiment, at the Moscow Art Theatre, with training actors in a "system". A system designed to help actors relax, concentrate, and get to emotional truth. And not just once - it's easy to create a miracle of truth ONCE! That's why so many film stars fail miserably when they try to do Broadway. They are not used to re-creating. In the days of Stanislavsky, the main work an actor would get would be on stage, where you would be required to cry real tears for Hecuba night after night after night. What does one do when the well runs dry?

Stanislavsky's "system" (which is known, in America, as "the Method") was an answer to that problem. Or - ONE answer. Not THE answer.

There are funny stories from Chekhov about how Stanislavsky, when directing his plays, "ruined" them, made them all into tragedies, etc. This is all probably true.

But Stanislavsky's genius was: in addressing, for the first time really, the "problem" of the actor. The problem of the actor in the beginning stages of rehearsal - when you are trying to awaken your imagination, and dream yourself into the role. A genius like Marlon Brando, by all accounts, never needed any direction. His natural instincts were usually spot on (when he was cast well, I mean.) Elia Kazan talks about rehearsing with Brando for Streetcar Named Desire - and he described it as an ever-expanding process of just getting the hell out of the WAY.

Stella Adler, who had Marlon in her acting class, said, "Sending Marlon Brando to acting class was like sending a tiger to jungle school."

But most actors don't have the natural gut-level genius of a Brando, or a Duse. They need help, they need training, they need "a way in". Stanislavsky was the first to devote his life to addressing this issue.

Stanislavsky also addressed the problem of what you do when you're in a long long run of a show. How do you keep it fresh? How do you make every night feel like it's the first time? There's a craft to it. If you leave it up to magic (and your name isn't Eleanora Duse) - then you're gonna be in trouble. You need to get yourself some CRAFT.

The "Method" is a version of Stanislavsky's "system". It's what I'm trained in. I devoted myself to the whole thing long ago, because my idols (James Dean, Marlon Brando, Al Pacino) were all "Method" actors. I saw Dog Day Afternoon when I was 11, and thought, "I need to learn how to do what he does."

I mean, in general - the "Method" so overhauled what people expected of actors that it's hard to remember how revolutionary it was at the time. It raised the bar. And pretty much ... it's the style of acting which everyone does now. When you see old movies, and certain performances seem stage-y, or "dated" - that's really what you're seeing. That the styles have changed.

Now - there are those actors who didn't "need no Method" - and who actually scorned it - but these people, in general, are those whom I would call geniuses. Their acting has nothing to do with a specific time and place - their work would seem timely and fresh no matter WHEN it is seen.

James Cagney. Spencer Tracy. Gents like that. Their talent was so fluid, so flexible, so real - their imaginations were so engaged - they had no trouble relaxing - or Listening (the most important thing an actor can do.) You watch pretty much anything Spencer Tracy does - and one of my impressions of it is: you almost cannot imagine that the words he is saying were actually ever on a printed page. They seem improvisational. As though he is making them up as he goes along. I love him.

But all the greats - all the ones who STILL seem great today - and whose acting "style" has weathered the test of time - are ones who have that capability. Naturally.

It's good to have training as an actor. On-the-job training is the best. You have to have a flexible voice. You have to be able to relax your body, and relax your throat - so your voice can do whatever you want it to. You have to be able to concentrate in the middle of chaos - and sometimes that takes training. But training to become a genius like Spencer Tracy? No. Not possible. All you can do with someone like Tracy is WATCH him and try to LEARN from watching.

Actors like Humphrey Bogart, Spencer Tracy, James Cagney, Deborah Kerr - they stand out in the films they are in. They seem to be emissaries from REALITY, as opposed to actors playing parts. Their acting transcends "style". They could fit in today. Their work isn't dated. It's in a continuum. But then - there are plenty of those old-school actors whose work just doesn't withstand the test of time.

Now. Onto Cary Grant.

I watched Affair to Remember last night, yes, to have a nice big cry. But also - cause I wanted to study him. Watch him like a hawk. Deborah Kerr is so marvelous, so funny, so beautiful - that it is very easy for me to only watch her face during their scenes. So I watched him instead.

(This kind of behavior is extremely fun for me. I love good actors. Gee, can you tell?)

All of this "Method" preface was just to say that one of the things that Cary Grant does - and what he does so well - almost better than anybody else - is listen. He is always listening. Bad actors do not listen. They are consumed with self, they are thinking about their own experience, and not listening to the other actor. Listening is the most important thing.

Cary Grant is, to my taste, one of the best examples of it.

Because what happens is - is if you are really listening to the other person in the scene with you - then they won't always say things the way you might expect them to say it - and you'll have to react. But you'll only be able to react if you notice them in the first place.

Humphrey Bogart. To me, he is most interesting when he's listening to someone else talk. Watch his face. Watch him take the other person in, have internal responses to things - you can see all the stuff he isn't saying. Great stuff.

The scenes in Affair to Remember are such a TREAT because the two of them are such good listeners. It's hard to even know who to look at - you could watch each scene twice - just to make sure you catch all the little moments.

Beautiful.

The film also addresses that thing that happens between two people who fall in love in that particular way: you can read each other's thoughts. You can hear the unspoken.

I love those moments. Deborah Kerr will be talking on about her life to him, then turn to him and say, "Hm?" Grant will say, "What?" Kerr will say, "Did you say something?" Grant says, "I didn't say anything." A smile crosses Kerr's face and she'll say, "Yes you did."

Grant is NEVER just playing the surface of the scene. There's always more going on. You know? He's always holding back, or he's thinking something he's afraid to say, or he's not sure how to find the words ... And the thing is - it all looks kind of improvisational. Like he didn't plan out his responses beforehand.

I've worked with very very "heady" actors. That's what I call them. No matter WHAT I do - their response will not vary. They have planned the whole scene out in their head beforehand. Sometimes it's fun to mess with that, especially if I'm annoyed. I'll change blocking. Just to mess up their little program in their head. I will randomly burst into laughter whereas the day before I hadn't laughed - just to see if they respond.

There is nothing better than acting with someone who is also listening to you - and who is also responding to internal cues - and so that means you do not know what they will do next. You start to feel like it's not acting - you are actually ALIVE. The two of you are "coming to life truthfully under imaginary circumstances".

Here are a couple of Cary Grant's moments I'll point out from Affair to Remember - but I'll do it in the next post. I think what I have babbled about here is WAY MORE THAN ENOUGH for now.

The moments:

1. One of their last nights on the boat, when he comes to her room, saying they need to talk because "we have created quite a problem here"

2. When he returns to his grandmother's villa, after she has died, and walks through the empty living room

3. The last scene - when he realizes that she is crippled

Thoughts on this breathlessly important topic to come shortly ...

A continuation of the "chick flick" discussion below:

Forgot that I had written this post a long time ago: I eavesdropped on 2 couples trying to agree on what movie to rent.

It's an extremely judgmental post. Some people don't like it when I get like that, they think no one should ever "judge" another person, but I judge those people for judging me.

Sometimes it's nice to not be so damn ... nice.

The whole "chick flick" thing

I watched An Affair to Remember last night. Now I, being a chick, have seen that movie countless times, and I own it. But it really shouldn't be relegated to the deadly "chick flick" category just because it deals with a love affair.

It's a better movie than that - and I have problems with the "chick flick" definition anyway. Er ... what ... it's a movie that deals with ... human relationships - and so only women are interested in that stuff?

Or ... is it the style that makes something a chick flick? A sentimental soundtrack, a gushy sensibility, a shallow-ness of character ...?

Like: plenty of films deal with human relationships, love, romance ... films like ... oh ... Casablanca??

So what is it that makes something a "chick flick"? I don't like the connotation that ... anything women might be into is somehow "less" than what men are into. "Oh, that's a chick flick" - said in a totally dismissive way.

That being said: My theory is that "chick flicks" are a relatively recent phenomenon - as a genre, or (maybe more accurately) a marketing tool.

You don't watch a movie like Philadelphia Story - which is all about romance - and think: "Chick flick." No. There was a commitment to story, to character, to comedy ... and the genres were blurred a bit. It's a romantic comedy, but it has deep and serious moments. There are dramatic moments. Everyone is complex. The men are complex, the women are complex.

You see that in a lot of movies back then.

Like Holiday. Or any of the Tracy/Hepburn films.

You can't label them. They're comedic. They're dramatic. They're star vehicles. They're interesting stories. There's romance. But there's usually some other element as well. The films support multiple focuses. There was definitely an assumption that both men AND women would be seeing these movies. They don't seem geared towards either sex.

A lot of the crap out today doesn't have that ambiguity, or that blending of genres.

Obviously, there are a ton of exceptions.

But, to my taste - I would say that something like Mona Lisa Smile is, most self-consciously, a "chick flick". But on another level, I wouldn't just label it as a chick flick, I would just say that it is a "bad" movie. Period.

Being a film geared towards women doesn't automatically make it bad or lesser. I don't like contempt towards human emotion, or contempt towards what are stereotyped as female concerns.

I love the movie When Harry Met Sally. It deals with romance, human relationships, women, men, etc. Typical chick flick territory. But ... that's a good movie.

What exactly is meant by "chick flick"? It's obviously not a compliment.

I'm convinced it has something to do with style, rather than content. But I could be wrong. Like StepMom - which, again, has OBVIOUS "chick flick" content, but again: I would say that it is NOT really a chick flick, it is actually just a BAD movie.

Pretty much any movie which gets the dismissive moniker of "chick flick" I either haven't seen because it looks like a load of malarkey, or I have seen and thought, "Damn. That's a pretty bad movie." I hate being pandered to. And I don't like shallow-ness. I like to be challenged when I go to a film - and something like Mona Lisa Smile isn't challenging. It's condescending.

I'm a woman but I also have a BRAIN and surging violin strings are only gonna work if there's other stuff going on - like PLOT, and CHARACTER, and SURPRISE. Know what I'm saying? The assumption that women are a lump of emotions just waiting to be played on is insulting.

So - does "chick flick" equal bad?

Or ... are there "good" chick flicks? But they get that label because they are about romance?

I'm sure there's not one right answer to these questions - it's all just conflicting opinions - but it should be an interesting discussion.

A challenge

Please try and work as many of these favorite words as possible into a paragraph. Let us HOPE that hilarity will ensue.

Update: Hilarity has most definitely ensued.

Do not miss the brilliance in the comments. They are precious!

Some excerpts:

To this day, dad swears (usually with a glass of scotch in hand, or some other elixir) that his fondest memory is the conflagration which resulted from the school’s not-so-solid decision to combine a fireworks display with their annual scrimshaw festival.

Another one:

It is still difficult at times for me to leave my bungalow, but through modern telephony (with a focus on judicious use of the octothorpe) my existence can be justified. Much like a schwa, I am unstressed.

Excuse me, but I just find that scary brilliant.

More:

"Level with me", Karen requested the next day "Was there any nookie between you too?" It being technically her bailiwick, I was obliged to admit it. But I wasn't the murderer. My finding the body was mere serendipity!

"I know you didn't.", Karen informed me. "Her real name was Mary; she was from Oklahama. She's essentially one of Octothorpe's sluttish molls."

More:

She was into Hedonism and god bless her for that. It kept me warm on the coldest Vladivostok nights. We had a bungalow on the outskirts of the city. It was an abysmal place, one end sinking like that leaning tower. She taught math at the Progressive Institute; chisenbop for physics majors, while I stayed home laboring through my doctoral thesis on the phenomena of flux creep to speed scotch distillation. Barbarism, sure, but you try getting through the Vladivostok winter after the single malt elixir has run out.

Shaking with laughter.

Alexander listened to the crepuscular goings-on of the monastery while he mixed the grain. The prayers, in the distance, were a symmetrical nonsense, not distinct enough to make out. "Ah, it is done, an elixir fit for the King’s horse."

Oh. My. God.

The patient was a sluttish louche, overly fond of hedonism. He had sullied his reputation beyond repair, and gradually made his descent into madness. Nookie had ruined him. When he discussed the creature, he would start to gesticulate wildly, and the electroencephalograph readings showed dangerous excitations of the humours. He would also repeat the phrase: "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtan" which I mistakenly believed was nonsense.

And:

I'd spent the night in my bungalow attempting to coax some nookie out of a sluttish girl I'd met at the bar at Siro's who'd gone all flibbertigibbet when she noticed the scrimshaw around my neck sporting a horse head and deduced I was in racing.

You people are BEAUTIFUL.

Thoroughly Modern Molly

The Guardian asked readers to send in their own versions of Molly Bloom's run-on monologue that ends Ulysses - and here they are.

These strike me as supremely funny.

Yes because he never did a thing like that before to borrow my basque separatist I mean he seems alright now but a bit knackered and not as randy as he used to be either hes been snogging someone in Lillies Bordello or Sinergy or hes losing it I mean doing that newspaper stuff getting on to forty balding and all but if hes been with that Stephen little pain in the scrotum with his gorgonzola airs

The "basque separatist". Love it. And the "gorgonzola airs" - doesn't Leopold Bloom have a gorgonzola sandwich at some point during the day?

But my favorite one of all is the one where, through her rambling, Molly ends up getting pissed enough at mankind - to start to say "no" over and over in a refrain, as opposed to saying "Yes" the way she does in the book.

The ending of the actual book goes like this:

and the night we missed the boat at Algeciras the watchman going about serene with his lamp and O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

If you read it out loud - you start to realize what is actually going on, what she is doing. It's impossible to read it out loud and not get the connotation.

But here's the "No" version:

so when comes again for me he can use his favourite self inflicted right hand girlfriend again as he has used today and he can watch the football and the like and the next time he comes at me and looks at me with those eyes he will see in my eyes no and he will ask me again and i will say no i will say no he will not have my mountain flower and no i will not put my arms around him again and i wont draw him down to me again and he will never feel my breasts again and he will never smell my perfume again and i dont care how much he gets excited and pants or how mad he goes i will say no and will say no i will No.

I love that. I love the image of the person who sent that one in coming up with the idea, and then sitting down at their desk to type it out, and send it into the Guardian. There's hope for the human race.

A commitment to comedy is a hopeful thing, yes.

A couple of "Notorious" facts

These may be well-known, but what the hell - they're fun to re-count anyway.

-- At that time, "Notorious" had what was widely touted to be "the longest kiss in film history". It takes place in the scene where Grant and Bergman are first in Rio de Janeiro, at the hotel.

In order to get around the Hollywood morality codes, which stated that kisses could not last any longer than 3 seconds - Hitchcock broke the kiss up in short intervals - 3 second kiss, pause, 3 second kiss, pause, and on and on and on ...but the embrace itself goes on, continuously for that whole time. They are on the balcony, they move inside, the phone rings, they move to the phone, he picks up the phone, he answers it, then they move to the front door where he leaves. The embrace never stops really. The kisses themselves may only last 3 seconds a piece, but the rest of the time they're nibbling, nuzzling, hugging ... it's quite amazing.

-- Another fact is: The whole plot circulates around those wine bottles in Claude Rains' cellar, bottles filled with uranium ore, to be stored up for the making of bombs. Originally, the bottles were going to be filled with diamonds - but a couple of months before they began shooting, atomic bombs were dropped on Japan, and so Hitchcock changed to something more timely, more alarming.

-- During the endless staircase descent in the last shot of the film, there are (apparently) more steps going down than there are going up. Hitchcock added steps for that final scene, because he wanted to draw out the suspense.

Favorite words

Read this whole thread. People are posting their favorite words.

I mean, you just have to love a thread where the word "bumbershoot" comes up.

Now reminder - because this always happens when any "word" thing comes up: This is about favorite WORDS, not favorite CONCEPTS.

It always annoyed me at the Inside the Actors Studio seminars when people were asked in the questionnaire at the end "what is your favorite word" and their answer would be "love". Or "courage". Or whatever. Concepts. These are concepts. The word encompasses the concept, yes, of course. But word??

Your favorite word may be "muck", because you like the sound of it - but you may find that muck itself is kind of a gross thing. One person on the thread I link to says their favorite word is "syphilis" - and then hastens to add: "For the sound of it, not the meaning!"

It was refreshing when Holly Hunter came to do the seminar (on my birthday, as I recall) and she thought about it for a long long time, and then said, "Portentous. I just like saying it. Por-ten-tous."

My kind of chick.

My favorite words?

Elixir
Evensong
Nonsense
Symmetrical
Mash
Bailiwick

Bailiwick. Yum. I love that.

I also like crepescular.

(via Book Slut)

Disloyal post

from a rabid 6 Feet Under fan.

I feel bad about this, and almost like I have to whisper my criticisms ... because although I am a die-hard fan, and I will continue to watch (sort of like how I have read every crappy book Jeanette Winterson has written since The Passion, hoping for a miracle) - I am less than thrilled about the first 3 episodes of this new season.

If you're not a 6 Feet Under fan in the first place and wonder why anyone would like the show, then you won't get my disappointment obviously.

To me, it's one of the best shows on television.

In terms of depth of character development, in terms of the level of the quality of the acting, in terms of keeping me on the edge of my seat - not only through the season, but through their very long (HBO-long) off season - The show is a great accomplishment, and a great collaboration.

For the past 2 seasons, I haven't been able to predict how things would turn out. Which is such a joy. The characters, while I love them and recognize them, are in many ways incomprehensible - the same way people are in real life. Like - your friend goes out with someone completely inappropriate, and you think, "What is she thinking???" The characters on 6 Feet Under are like that. They feel real. They make mistakes. The plot doesn't seem overly orchestrated. It's not like ER ended up being - after its glory days: a never-ending soap opera of love affairs and high drama, pushing the characters into deeper and deeper shite. Yes, Nate had his brain problem thing, and the unexpected pregnancy, etc. But it didn't feel like overly-set-up plot points, it felt like the way life happens sometimes. Sometimes randomly terrible things just HAPPEN.

Anyway. Preface over.

I've watched the 3 episodes of this latest season. Every Sunday night, my friend Jen and I have a date to watch. We are both huge fans. We are ready to forgive MUCH. We are ready to go with them, wherever they take us.

But something's off. The characters are not behaving like themselves. Or something. I can feel the hand of the writers, moving them around like chess pieces. There's something that feels false, pushed, orchestrated.

Here is a random list criticisms and things which do not ring true, in terms of character:

-- While I do not find it unbelievable that someone as conservative as Rico would be completely undone by having a one-night stand with a stripper - I do not find it believable AT ALL that he would suddenly set himself up as the stripper's sugar-daddy. Not believable. No. What would be MORE interesting would be to watch what has happened in Rico's marriage because of that one secret indiscretion. He's not a slick guy - I would imagine he probably had never been with anyone else but his wife - he's strongly Catholic - What torment would he go through? But this whole stripper side-plot seems contrived, silly, and ... not realistic.

-- I have a message for Nate: BUY A STROLLER. God, I am so SICK of seeing Nate walking around with that kid in his arms. Nate, there are things called STROLLERS. Buy one.

-- The whole plot of Claire being fascinated by the Mena Suvari character is also not realistic. Claire, I think, is too cynical to fall for what is, essentially, a pose. Also: here's another thing: Mena Suvari plays a platinum-blonde performance-artist hottie, who wears leather, and says "irreverent" things that are supposed to be shocking - and at one point, Claire asks her friend, "So is she bi?" And her friend replies, "She's a hardcore radical lesbian feminist." I admit that I yelled at the television. "She is NOT." I actually KNOW some hardcore lesbian feminists, and count some of them as my friends - and only on the planet STUPID would Mena Suvari's character be a "lesbian feminist". Dumb. A male fantasy of a lesbian. Dumb. Also, I don't get why Claire thinks Mena is cool. Mena seems like a little girl playing dress-up, trying to shock "Daddy", and her performance art is stupid. Claire is a true subversive, a true artist - someone who smells artifice and phoniness from miles away. Doesn't make sense.

My guess is is that Mena Suvari, since American Beauty hasn't done diddly-squat. So Alan Ball (of American Beauty fame) created this character for her just to jump-start her career again.

It feels tacked on.

-- I hope Arthur hasn't left the house for good. He added that creepy American Gothic sensibility which seems to be the core of the show ... but I'm not feeling that creepy core in this season. Not at all.

-- I can't let it go: Nate: BUY A STROLLER.

-- I am bored with Brenda now that she has "gotten healthy". Sorry to say it but it's true. Her downward spiral added such tension to the show, such a disturbing quality - and I miss that. Nobody else was as messed up or as brilliant as she. Maybe the writers have something in store for her, but ... I miss the pot-smoking sex-addicted genius.

-- However: Justin Theroux is completely smokin', and I hope his plot line continues. I remember thinking, "Who is that smokin' hottie??" when I saw Mulholland Drive - and so I'm glad to see him again.

-- I don't think Nate should leave the funeral business. That's the whole point of the show. Two brothers - inherited this business - Nate is the more free-spirited one (and yet righteous - in that kind of "I ran an organic food co-op in Seattle" brand of righteousness), David the more conventional ... But seeing Nate in that environment was always so interesting, because you knew he was suppressing half of his impulses. Suppression of impulses is one of the KEY elements of drama. Somehow, this season is missing that.

-- Oh, and here's another message for Nate: GET YOUR OWN APARTMENT. Only on television do full adults linger about in their parents houses, with no questions asked, for seasons on end.

-- There's also something off about the production values. The colors are different, they are brighter, more garish. The "sets" don't have the same empty creepiness - like an Edward Hopper seen slightly askew. A glance through a wavery mirror into American life. That's what the production values always said to me before. All the lonely people ... The kitchen in the house is not filmed anymore with that same sense of isolation, and cleanliness. Perhaps it is because of the advent of George (the brilliant James Cromwell) - George is up to no good. I'm sure he's a serial killer, or maybe a secret agent for the United States government (his ominous comment about how "controversial" geology is because of the "oil" is a clue of things to come). Jen thinks that he might have 40 identities or something.

-- Speaking of George - since Mrs. Fisher (brilliant actress, love her) married George and has gone all domesticated - she has somehow disappeared from the radar. I miss being a part of her journey, which was always so weird and compelling and moving. The mother, trying to find her own way, after being widowed. Now she's married again ... but ... I have no idea how she feels anymore about things. I miss her context.

-- I think Nate is hot. Okay? I also think that Peter Krause is one of the best actors working in television today. He is so open. So open. I love his acting. I watch him in awe. Yet he's also hot. A very cool mixture. But now all he seems to do is walk the sidewalks endlessly, holding his daughter in his arms because he has never heard of strollers, and goes to play-dates, and ... I miss the angry Nate. I miss the rebel, the guy who would explode, who had a sense of humor too. I want a scene where that kid is not in his arms, too. God, so tiresome.

All of these criticisms aside, I will continue to watch each and every episode.

But I'm disappointed. I admit it.

A momentous moment

I feel like I've forgotten how to be hopeful. There's been a lot of white noise in my head over the past couple weeks. Fear, anxiety, despair ... it seems the world is falling apart.

But let's just take a moment and wish this newly sovereign nation all the best.

May they find their way through this dark tunnel. May they find a way to resolve differences through laws, and not war.

Again, I've forgotten how to be hopeful.

But I do wish this for them.

Tooo many books

Fun!! What kind of book reader are you? Kevin wants to know.

Here are my answers. (It's a multiple-choice thing.)

1) What is your favorite type of bookstore?
A. A large chain that is well lit, stuffed full of books, and has a café.
B. A dark, rather dusty, used bookstore full of mysterious and vaguely organized books.
C. A local independent bookstore that has books by local authors and coffee.

Well, I'm gonna have to go with A, as much as I don't want to. I like the atmosphere of the dark dusty places, but I like knowing that I can get what I need in the big chain.

2) What would excite you more?
A. A brand new book by your favorite author.
B. Finding a classic you've been wanting to read.
C. Receiving a free book from a friend in the mail.

A, most definitely. Jeanette Winterson hasn't written a good book in years, but I still buy them all because of how I felt about The Passion. I keep hoping! Any new book by A.S. Byatt is greeted by me with a shiver of excitement as well.

3) What's your favorite format?
A. Novel
B. Short story
C. Poetry

A. Strangely enough, I think a good short story is far more rare than a good novel. It's an incredibly challenging form - very few people are good at it. So I'm going with A.

4) Favorite format, part II.
A. Contemporary fiction.
B. Classic novels.
C. Genre (mystery, espionage, etc.)

I'm going with B.

5) Favorite format, part III (none of the above) Fiction or non?
A. Almost entirely fiction.
B. Almost entirely non-fiction.
C. A mix of both.

C.

6) Does the design and condition of the book matter?
A. Yes, I love a well designed book and keep mine in mint condition.
B. No, the words are what matter.
C. Yes and no, I appreciate good design and treat my books with respect but I am not obsessive about it.

I'm gonna go with C on this one.

I have had to buy different versions of the same damn book because I found the typeface grating, or too small, or whatever. Some books just feel good in your hands.

And, fortuitously, I bought what has ended up being one of my favorite books OF ALL TIME (Hopeful Monsters, by Nicholas Mosley) - without knowing a THING about it - because I liked the design of the book. Shallow? Perhaps. But in that particular case, SUCH good fortune. I should send the book designer a card.

7) On average how many books do you read a month?
A. I am lucky to read one.
B. I am dedicated. I read 4 or 5.
C. I am a fiend. I read 10 or more!

In between B and C.

8) Do you prefer to own or borrow?
A. There is a particular joy in owning a book. I have a large library.
B. Why spend money when you can read it for free? I use the public library.
C. Different tools for different job. I do both.

A. Sadly.

9) Where do you get (the majority) your book news?
A. Newspapers.
B. Magazines.
C. TV
D. Blogs.

A. I read the Sunday Book Review and the NY Times Review of Books religiously.

10) Are books a professional obsession?
A. Yes, I work in the field (writer, reviewer, publisher, teacher, etc.).
B. No, I do it for fun.
C. Kinda, I write the occasional review but have a regular job outside of books.

I guess I would say A. Not paid for writing as of yet, but I will be.

(via Dean)

Continuing on the Cary Grant theme:

Here are some quotes from the man himself - I love his wit, the dryness of it.

"My formula for living is quite simple. I get up in the morning and I go to bed at night. In between, I occupy myself as best I can."

"To succeed with the opposite sex, tell her you are impotent; she can't wait to disprove it."

"I improve on misquotation."

A reporter once asked him, "Who is Cary Grant? He replied: "When you find out, tell me."

Here is part of his 1970 Honorary Oscar speech: ""You know that I may never look at this without remembering the quiet patience of directors who were so kind to me, who were kind enough to put up with me more than once, some of them even three or four times. I trust they and all the other directors, writers and producers and my leading women have forgiven me for what I didn't know. You know that I've never been a joiner or a member of any particular social set, but I've been privileged to be a part of Hollywood's most glorious era."

And lastly, I love this one:

A reporter in search of information wired Grant's agent: "HOW OLD CARY GRANT?" Grant happened to read the message himself, and wired back "OLD CARY GRANT FINE. HOW YOU?"

And speaking of that tumbling in Holiday:

More Kapuscinski

For those of you who are interested in this interesting writer, the student of revolutions, here are some more quotes (I'm just not up to writing anything original today. Burnt out.)

The following is from The Soccer War - one of his essays on Ghana:

In those days, the 1960s, the world was very interested in Africa. Africa was a puzzle, a mystery. Nobody knew what would happen when 300 million people stood up and demanded the right to be heard. States began to be established there, and the states bought armaments, and there was speculation in foreign newspapers that Africa might set out to conquer Europe. Today it is impossible to contemplate such a prospect, but that time, it was a concern, an anxiety. It was serious. People wanted to know what was happening on the continent: where was it headed, what were its intentions?

The so-called exotic has never fascinated me, even though I came to spend more than a dozen years in a world that is exotic by definition. I did not write about hunting crocodiles or head-hunters, although I admit they are interesting subjects. I discovered instead a different reality, one that attracted me more than expeditions to the villages of witch doctors or wild animal reserves. A new Africa was being born -- and this was not a figure of speech or a platitude from an editorial. The hour of its birth was sometimes dramatic and painful, sometimes enjoyable and jubilant; it was always different (from our point of view) from anything we had known, and it was exactly this difference that struck me as new, as the previously undescribed, as exotic.

I thought the best way to write about this Africa was to write about the man who was its greatest figure, a politician, a visionary, a judge and a sorcerer - Kwame Nkrumah.

Favorite things

I stole this from Mrs. DuToit. I love the idea.

My favorite sculpture: (Small note: I thought I knew my favorite until I saw Mrs. DuToit's and now I feel I may have to reconsider. Look at her favorite statue!)

But regardless: here's mine, since I first saw it in my Humanities class in high school. Rodin's "The Kiss"

My favorite painting:

I literally wish that I could step into the world of - this one - always have. Van Gogh.

My favorite food:

Probably a semi-burnt hamburger from off a grill during a summer barbecue - cold beer to wash it down - Yum

My favorite beverage (hot):

Coffee. Coffee. Coffee.

My favorite beverage (cold):

My favorite play (modern):

Summer and Smoke, by Tennessee Williams. I've read it countless times, I have worked on it myself - I will never get to the bottom of it. Its very ambiguity is what makes it so beautiful, that haunts me.

My favorite play (not modern, not Shakespeare):

I cannot choose one. Do not make me.

Duchess of Malfi, by Christopher Marlowe
Saint Joan, by GB Shaw
The Seagull, by Chekhov
Uncle Vanya, by Chekhov
Hedda Gabler, by Ibsen

My favorite Shakespeare play:

I might have to go with The Tempest. I don't know why. There is something in the magic there, the fantasy, the magic island - Ariel and Caliban - the split between flesh and spirit - that just gets to me. And I love the title. I think it's one of his best.

Miranda says one of my favorite lines he ever wrote:

O, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in't!

My favorite sonnet:

I am partial to Sonnet 29:

When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

And I may be partial to the sonnet above, but I love Sonnet 116. Sonnet 116 HURTS.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

OUCH

My favorite book (non-fiction):

Probably The Book of Abigail and John (compiled letters of Abigail and John Adams. I've read it 10 times or more.)

My favorite book (fiction):

Oh, how to choose. Probably Catch-22, by Joseph Heller.

But Ulysses by Joyce needs to be on there too.

My favorite poem:

No question: "The More Loving One", by Auden

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.

My favorite song:

"Oh Darling", by The Beatles. I have many other favorite tunes that come in and out of my life, but that one always makes the list. I just LOVE it when McCartney screams.

Speaking of Cary Grant...

Oh were we??

I couldn't sleep last night. So I watched, back to back, Notorious and Holiday. 2 Cary Grant films.

Seeing them back to back like that made me realize that he is a wee bit underestimated in terms of his range.

Yes, he always plays the same kind of guy. It looks like he wears the same costume in each of his films.

Cary Grant was not like today's actors who feel that they must play someone mentally ill, or physically misshapen in order to be taken seriously as a talent. That wasn't really the way it was back then.

It's not a good or a bad thing - just the truth.

But - Notorious, an Alfred Hitchcock film - with Ingrid Bergman and Claude Rains - is a truly frightening psychological thriller. Very very good. Cary Grant's character in that is a bit jaded - he falls for the girl - but at the back of his mind he always thinks of her as a whore. He can't get past it. So their banter back and forth has that charge - that charge of a man who deeply wants something, and actually feels quite vulnerable to this woman - but he has to put her down. And, above all, he is smooooth. By the end, when he goes to the house to save her (marvelous scene) - and finds out, at last, all of the horrible things done to her, he is meltingly tender with her, just a beautiful tenderness - You believe that he would take a bullet for her, he will do the right thing, he will make it right.

Then in Holiday (a very funny little movie, by the way) - he plays a kind of happy-go-lucky working guy who ends up falling in love with a millionairess. The millionairess has a kind of crazy sister, played by Katherine Hepburn. Cary Grant, in Holiday has the same Cary Grant voice, the same Cary Grant suit, the same slicked Cary Grant hair you see in ALL his movies - but the energy is different, the focus is different. The man truly had a gift for comedy. Member Bringing Up Baby? Member Philadelphia Story?

I think half the reason why he was so damn FUNNY in comedies is because of his striking good looks. You just do not expect a man with such good looks to behave like such a GOOFBALL.

Also - there are always seems to be this barely controlled sense of embarrassment in Cary Grant - which he tries to cover up with dignity - and when that is done in a comedic context - it provides MUCH humor.

In Holiday - the way his character relaxes, if he's feeling tense, is to do somersaults, or cartwheels, or do a lovely tumbling combination across the floor. So any time that he is left alone in the millionairess' mansion, he looks around surreptitiously, making sure the coast is clear, and then does a random tumbling routine. It is freakin' HYSTERICAL. And it's not a stunt man. It's actually Cary Grant taking a running lead and then doing a spectacularly messy round-off across the marble floor. I was howling.

So different from the subtle jaded bittersweet tone of his character in Notorious.

Different from the straightforward honest open character he played in North by Northwest.

Different from the bumbling goofy GEEK he plays in Bringing up Baby.

Different from the rakish semi-cruel (but hilarious) character he plays in Philadelphia Story.

His costumes may have always been the same, and he never changed his voice, or his look, or put on a limp, or an accent, or tried to play a sharecropper, or anything like that ... He knew his world, his gifts, where he could fit into a plot ... He didn't try to 'stretch' himself. He didn't need to.

Cool, man.

And I'd never seen Notorious. That's quite a damn fine movie.

Question: Random

Have any of my readers been to Split? In Dalmatia/Croatia?

If you have, could you tell me about it? What is it like? Diocletian's palace, with modern-day houses crammed into the crevices ... is it still like that?

Please take me on a virtual tour of it, if you have been there. I want to go someday.

I hate the word "someday" more and more.

Name that quote

"How does a girl like you get to be a girl like you?"

Kapuscinski

Ryszard Kapuscinski, one of my own personal idols, has spent his entire life reporting on revolutions across the world. His books include:

Another Day of LIfe - the story of the civil war in Angola. Kapuscinski was there.

The Emperor - the story of the overthrow of Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia

The Soccer War - considered a journalism classic. This is Kapuscinski's compiled writings on all of the revolutions he had witnessed: Central America, Africa, and more. Wherever a revolution broke out, Kapuscinski was there. Great book.

Imperium - maybe my favorite of his. Kapuscinski's sweeping book on the Soviet Union. As a Polish person, Kapuscinski had personally experienced the tyranny, and this is his book detailing it.

The Shadow of the Sun - Kapuscinski's latest book. All about Africa - of course focusing on the revolutions. "Revolution" is his theme.

Kapuscinski wrote many of these books while living under Soviet tyranny and oppressing and censorship. He couldn't write the book he wanted to write, criticizing the Soviet regime - and so he instead wrote books about other countries. But his books are obviously criticisms of totalitarian and fascistic regimes in general - it was his indirect way of telling the truth about what was going on in the Soviet Union.

The first book of his I read was Shah of Shahs - about the last Shah of Iran, and the revolution which toppled him.

Kapuscinski was there.

If you haven't picked up one of his books, I highly recommend it.

He's one of those writers who gets his head above the muck, the mire - and can take a long view, a large picture.

In these uncertain times, I think trying to look at a large picture is essential. Even if we have to squint. Robert Kaplan, another hero of mine, is immersing himself in classical history right now, the history of the ancients. There are lessons there for all of us. That's one of the reasons why I'm finally reading Black Lamb and Grey Falcon. I need the perspective of history. And long history. Ancient history. We ignore history at our peril.

That is the message of Rebecca West, and it's Kapuscinski's message as well.

I've compiled a bunch of quotes. It's the tip of the ice berg. But it gives you a feel for what he's about, if you haven't read him.

Kapuscinski: New Year's Eve in Teheran, 1979

From Ryszard Kapuscinski's book Shah of Shahs (about the last Shah of Iran):

Kapuscinski was in Iran when the American hostages were taken. He had a front-row seat for the entire revolution. On New Year's Eve, 1979, he takes a stroll at night through Teheran, and walks by the US Embassy.

I'd made up my mind to go to the US Embassy on New Year's Eve. I wanted to see what this place the whole world was talking about would look like that night.

I left the hotel at eleven. I didn't have far to walk -- a mile and a half, perhaps ... The cold was penetrating, the wind dry and frigid; there must have been a snowstorm raging in the mountains. I walked through streets empty of pedestrians and patrols, empty of everyone but a peanut vendor sitting in his booth in Valiahd Square, all wrapped and muffled against the cold in warm scarves like the autumnal vendors on Polna Street in Warsaw. I bought a bag of peanuts and gave him a handful of rials -- too many; it was my Christmas present. He didn't understand. He counted out what I owed him and handed back the change with a serious, dignified expression.

Thus was rejected the gesture I'd hoped would bring me at least a momentary closeness with the only other person I'd encountered in the dead, frozen city.

I walked on, looking at the decaying shop windwos, turned into Takhte-Jamshid, passed a burned-out bank, a fire-scarred cinema, an empty hotel, an unlit airline office.

Finally I reached the Embassy. In the daytime, the place is like a big marketplace, a busy encampment, a noisy political amusement park where you come to scream and let off steam. You can come here, abuse the mighty of the world, and not face any consequences at all. There's no lack of volunteers; the place is thronged.

But just now, with midnight approaching, there was no one. I walked around what would have been a vast stage long abandoned by the last actors. There remained only pieces of unattended scenery and the disconcerting atmosphere of a ghost town. The wind fluttered the tatters of banners and rippled a big painting of a band of devils warming themselves over the inferno. Further along, Carter in a star-spangled top that was shaking a bag of gold while the inspired Imam Ali prepared for a martyr's death. A microphone and batteries of speakers still stood on the platform from which excited orators stirred the crowds to wrath and indignation. The sight of those unspeaking loudspeakers deepened the impression of lifelessness, the void.

I walked up to the main entrance. As usual, it was closed with a chain and padlock, since no one had repaired the lock in the gate that the crowd broke when it stormed the Embassy.

Near the gate, two young guards crouched in the cold as they leaned against the high brick wall, automatic rifles slung over their shoulders -- students of the Imam's line. I had the impression they were dozing.

In the background, among the trees, stood the lighted building where the hostages were held.

But much as I scrutinized the windows, I saw no one, neither figure nor shadow. I looked at my watch. It was midnight, at least in Teheran, and the New Year was beginning. Somewhere in the world clocks were striking, champagne was bubbling, elaborate fetes were going on amid joy and elation in glittering, colorful halls. That might have been happening on a different planet form this one where there wasn't even the faintest sound or glimmer of light. Standing there freezing, I suddenly began wondering why I had left that other world and come here to this supremely desolate, extremely depressing place. I didn't know. It simply crossed my mind this evening that I ought to be here. I didn't know any of them, those fifty-two Americans and those two Iranians, and I couldn't even communicate with them.

Perhaps I had thought something would happen here. But nothing happened.

Posted by sheila Permalink

Kapuscinski: On Revolution XI

From Ryszard Kapuscinski's book Shah of Shahs (about the last Shah of Iran):

Dissent soon broke out in the revolutionary camp. Everyone had opposed the Shah and wanted to remove him, but everyone had imagined the future differently. Some thought that the country would become the sort of democracy they knew from their stays in France and Switzerland. But these were exactly the people who lost first in the battle that began once the Shah was gone. They were intelligent people, even wise, but weak. They found themselves at once in a paradoxical situation: A democracy cannot be imposed by force, the majority must favor it, yet the majority wanted what Khomeini wanted -- an Islamic republic.

When the liberals were gone, the proponents of the republic remained. But they began fighting among themselves as well. In this struggle the conservative hardliners gradually gained the upper hand over the enlightened and open ones. I knew people from both camps, and whenever I thought about the people I sympathized with, pessimism swept over me.

The leader of the enlightened ones was Bani Sadr. Slim, slightly stooping, always wearing a polo shirt, he would walk around, persuade, constantly enter into discussions. He had a thousand ideas, he talked a lot -- too much -- he dreamed incessantly of new solutions, he wrote books in a difficult, obscurre style. In these countries an intellectual in politics is always out of place. An intellectual has too much imagination, he tends to hesitate, he is liable to go off in all directions at once. What good is a leader who does not know himself what he ought to stand up for?

Beheshti, the hardliner, never behaved in this way. He would summon his staff and dictate instructions, and they were all grateful to him beause now they knew how to act and what to do. Beheshti held the reins of the Shiite leadership, Bani Sadr commanded his friends and followers. Bani Sadr's power base lay among the intelligentsia, the students, and the mujahedeen. Beheshti's base was a crowd waiting for the call of the mullahs. It was clear that Bani Sadr had to lose. But Beheshti too would fall before the hand of the Charitable and Merciful One [Khomeini].

Kapuscinski: On Revolution X

From Ryszard Kapuscinski's book Shah of Shahs (about the last Shah of Iran):

Revolution attaches great importance to symbols, destroying some monuments and setting up others to replace them in the hope that through metaphor it can survive. And what of the people? Once again they had become pedestrian citizens, going somewhere, standing around street fires warming their hands, part of the dull landscape of a grey town. once again each was alone, each for himself, closed and taciturn. Could they still have been waiting for something to happen, for some extraordinary event? I don't know, I can't say.

Everything that makes up the outward, visible part of a revoltuion vanishes quickly. A person, an individual being, has a thousand ways of conveying his feeligs and thoughts. He is riches without end, he is a world in which we can always discover something new. A crowd, on the other hand, reduces the individuality of the person; a man in a crowd limits himself to a few forms of elementary behavior. The forms through which a crowd can express its yearnings are extraordinarily meager and continually repeat themselves: the demonstration, the strike, the rally, the barricades. That is why you can write a novel about a man, but about a crowd -- never. If the crowd disperses, goes home, does not reassemble, we say that the revolution is over.

Kapuscinski: On Revolution IX

From Ryszard Kapuscinski's book Shah of Shahs (about the last Shah of Iran):

[The Shah] also perished because he did not know his own country. He spent his whole life in the palace. When he would leave the palace, he would do it like someone sticking his head out the door of a warm room into the freezing cold. Look around a minute and duck back in! Yet the same structure of destructive and deforming laws operates in the life of all palaces. So it has been from time immemorial, so it is and shall be. You can build ten new palaces, but as soon as they are finished they become subject to the same laws that existed in the palaces built five thousand years ago. The only solution is to treat the palace as a temporary abode, the same way you treat a streetcar or a bus. You get on, ride a while, and then get off.

And it's very good to remember to get off at the right stop and not ride too far.

Kapuscinski: On Revolution VIII

From Ryszard Kapuscinski's book Shah of Shahs (about the last Shah of Iran):

The Shah's vanity did him in. He thought of himself as the father of his country, but the country rose against him. He took it to heart and felt it keenly. At any price (unfortunately, even blood) he wanted to restore the former image, cherished for years, of a happy people prostate in gratitude before their benefactor. But he forgot that we are living in times when people demand rights, not grace.

Kapuscinski: On Revolution VII

From Ryszard Kapuscinski's book Shah of Shahs (about the last Shah of Iran):

A despot believes that man is an abject creature. Abject people fill his court and populate his environment. A terrorized society will behave like an unthinking, submissive mob for a long time. Feeding it is enough to make it obey. Provided with amusements, it's happy. The rather small arsenal of political tricks has not changed in millennia.

Thus, we have all the amateurs in politics, all the ones convinced they would know how to govern if only they had the authority.

Yet surprising things can also happen. Here is a well-fed and well-entertained crowd that stops obeying. It begins to demand something more than entertainment. It wants freedom, it demands justice. The despot is stunned. He doesn't know how to see a man in all his fullness and glory. In the end such a man threatens dictatorship, he is its enemy,. So it gathers its strength to destroy him.

Although dictatorship despises the people, it takes pains to win their recognition. In spite of being lawless -- or rather, because it is lawless -- it strives for the appearance of legality. On this point it is exceedingly touchy, morbidly oversensitive. Morever, it suffers from a feeling (however deeply hidden) of inferiority. So it spares no pains to demonstrate to itself and others the popular approval it enjoys. Even if this support is a mere charade, it feels satisfying. So what if it's only an appearance? The world of dictatorship is full of appearances.

Kapuscinski: On Revolution VI

From Ryszard Kapuscinski's book Shah of Shahs (about the last Shah of Iran):

All books about all revolutions begin with a chapter that describes the decay of totterign authority or the misery and sufferings of the people. They should begin with a psychological chapter, one that shows how a harassed, terrified man suddenly breaks his terror, stops being afraid. This unusual process, sometimes accomplished in an instant like a shock or a lustration, demands illuminating. Man gets rid of fear and feels free. Without that there would be no revolution.

Kapuscinski: On Revolution V

From Ryszard Kapuscinski's book Shah of Shahs (about the last Shah of Iran):

It is authority that provokes revolution. Certainly, it does not do so consciously. Yet its style of life and way of ruling finally becomes a provocation. This occurs when a feeling of impunity takes root among the elite: We are allowed anything, we can do anything. This is a delusion but it rests on a certain rational foundation. For a while it does indeed look as if they can do whatever they want. Scandal after scandal and illegality after illegality go unpunished. The people remain silent, patient, wary. They are afraid and do not yet feel their own strength. At the same time, they keep a detailed account of the wrongs, which at one particular moment are to be added up.

The choice of that moment is the greatest riddle known to history.

Why did it happen on that day, and not on another? Why did this event, and not some other, bring it about? After all, the government was indulging in even worse excesses only yesterday, and there was nor eaction at all.

"What have I done?" asks the ruler, at a loss. "What has possessed them all of a sudden?"

This is what he has done: He has abused the patience of the people.

But where is the limit of that patience? How can it be defined? If the answer can be determined at all, it will be different in each case. The only certain thing is that rulers who know that such a limit exists and know how to respect it can count on holding power for a long time. But there are few such rulers.

Kapuscinski: On Revolution IV

From Ryszard Kapuscinski's book Shah of Shahs (about the last Shah of Iran):

History knows two types of revolution. The first is revolution by assault, the second revolution by siege.

All the future fortune, the success, of a revolution by assault is decided by the reach of the first blow. Strike and seize as much ground as possible! This is important because such a revolution, while the most violent, is also the most superficial. The adversary has been defeated, but in retreating he has preserved a part of his forces. He will counter-attack and force the victor to withdraw. Thus, the more far-reaching the first blow, the greater the area that can be saved in spite of later concessions. In a revolution by assault, the first phase is the most radical. The subsequent phases are a slow but incessant withdrawal to the point at which the two sides, the rebelling and the rebelled-against, reach the final compromise.

A revolution by siege is different; here the first strike is usually weak and we can hardly surmise that it forebodes a cataclysm. But events soon gather speed and become dramatic. More and more people take part. The walls behind which authority has been sheltering crack and then burst. The success of a revolution by siege depends on the determination of the rebels, on their will power and endurance. One more day! One more push! In the end, the gates yield, the crowd breaks in and celebrates its triumph.

I love that - this book was written in 1982 - and he was basically describing what would eventually happen in his home country (and had already begun happening in the early 80s) - with Lech Walesa and the Solidarity movement - a revolution by siege.

Kapuscinski: On Revolution III

From Ryszard Kapuscinski's book Shah of Shahs (about the last Shah of Iran):

Every revolution is preceded by a state of general exhaustion and takes place against a background of unleashed aggressiveness. Authority cannot put up with a nation that gets on its nerves; the nation cannot tolerate an authority it has come to hate. Authority has squandered all its credibility and has empty hands, the nation has lost the final scrap of patience and makes a fist. A climate of tension and increasing oppressiveness prevails. We start to fall into a psychosis of terror. The discharge is coming. We feel it.

Kapuscinski: On Revolution II

From Ryszard Kapuscinski's book Shah of Shahs (about the last Shah of Iran):

Revolution must be distinguished from revolt, coup d'etat, palace takeover. A coup or a palace takeover may be planned, but a revolution -- never. Its outbreak, the hour of that outbreak, takes everyone, even those who have been striving for it, unawares. They stand amazed at the spontanaeity that appears suddenly and destroys everything in its path. It demolishes so ruthlessly that in the end it may annihilate the ideals that called it into being.

Kapuscinski: On Revolution I

From Ryszard Kapuscinski's book Shah of Shahs (about the last Shah of Iran):

The indispensable catalyst is the word, the explanatory idea. More than petards or stilettoes, therefore, words -- uncontrolled words, circulating freely, underground, rebelliiously, not gotten up in dress uniforms, uncertified -- frighten tyrants.

Kapuscinski: "Kipling's formula"

From Ryszard Kapuscinski's book Shah of Shahs (about the last Shah of Iran): Transcript from another interview with an Iranian man:

He was reading a lot now and translating London and Kipling. When he remembered his English years, he thought about the differences between Europe and Asia and repeated Kipling's formula to himself: "East is east, and West is west, and never ... " Never, no, they will never meet, and they will never understand each other. Asia will reject every European transplant as a foreign body. The Europeans will be shocked and outraged, but they will be unable to change Asia. In Europe, epochs succeed each other, the new drives out the old, the earth periodically cleanses itself of its past so that people of our century have trouble understanding our ancestors. Here it is different, here the past is as alive as the present, the unpredictable cruel Stone Age coexists with the calculating, cool age of electronics -- the two eras live in the same man, who is as much the descendant of Genghis Khan as he is the student of Edison ... if, that is, he ever comes into contact with Edison's world.

Kapuscinski: "an army of foreigners"

From Ryszard Kapuscinski's book Shah of Shahs (about the last Shah of Iran):

When thinking about the fall of any dictatorship, one should have no illusions that the whole system comes to an end like a bad dream with that fall. The physical existence of the system does indeed cease. But its psychological and social results live on for years, and even survive in the form of subconsciously continued behavior.

A dictatorship that destroys the intelligentsia and culture leaves behind itself an empty, sour field on which the tree of thought won't grow quickly. It is not always the best people who emerge from hiding, from the corners and cracks of that farmed-out field, but often those who have proven themselves strongest, not always those who will create new values but rather those whose thick skin and internal resilience have ensured their survival. In such circumstances history begins to turn in a tragic, vicious circle from which it can sometimes take a whole epoch to break free..

And yet how do we build [the Great Civilization] here, where there are no experts and the nation, even if it is eager to learn, has nowhere to study?

In order to fulfill his vision, the Shah needed at least 700,000 specialists immediately. Somebody hit upon the safest and best way out -- import them...Tens of thousands of foreigners thus began arriving. Airplane after airplane land at Teheran airport: domestic servants from the Philippines, hydraulic engineers from Greece, electricians from Norway, accountants from Pakistan, mechanics from Italy, military men from the United States...

This army of foreigners, byb the very strength of its technical expertise, its knowing which buttons to press, which levers to pull, which cables to connect, even if it behaves in the humbles way, begins to dominate and starts crowding the Iranians into an inferiority complex. The foreigner knows how and I don't. This is a proud people, extremely sensitive about its dignity. An Iranian will never admit he can't do something; to him, such an admission constitutes a great shame and a loss of face. He'll suffer, grow depressed, and finally begin to hate. He understood quickly the concept that was guiding his ruler: All of you just sit there in the shadow of the mosque and tend your sheep, because it will take a century for you to be of any use! I on the other hand have built a global empire in ten years with the help of foreigners.

This is why the Great Civilization struck Iranians as above all a great humiliation.

Kapuscinski: The Iranian students

From Ryszard Kapuscinski's book Shah of Shahs (about the last Shah of Iran):

This essay is on the Shah's frantic push towards modernization:

From a logical point of view, anyone who sets out to create a Great Civilization ought to begin with people, with training cadres of experts in order to form a native intelligentsia. But it was precisely that kind of thinking that was unacceptable. Open new universities and polytechnics, everyone a hornets' nest, every student a rebel, a good-for-nothing, a freethinker? Is it any wonder the Shah didn't want to braid the whip that would flay his own skin? The monarch had a better way -- he kept the majority of his students far from home. From this point of view the country was unique. More than a hundred thousand young Iranians were studying in Europe and America. This policy cost much more than it would have taken to create national universities. But it guaranteed the regime a degree of calm and security.

The majority of these young people never returned. Today more Iranian doctors practice in San Francisco or Hamburg than in Tebriz or Meshed. They did not return even for the generous salaries the Shah offered. They feared Savak and didn't want to go back to kissing anyone's shoes. An Iranian at home could not read the books of the country's best writers (because they came out only abroad), could not see the films of its outstanding directors (because they were not allowed to be shown in Iran), could not listen to the voices of its intellectuals (because they were condemned to silence).

The Shah left people a choice between Savak and the mullahs. And they chose the mullahs.

Kapuscinski: The Bus Stop

From Ryszard Kapuscinski's book Shah of Shahs (about the last Shah of Iran):

The following is an essay on SAVAK, the Shah's brutal secret police force:

Savak had a good ear for all allusions. One scorching afternoon an old man with a bad heart turned up at the bus stop and gasped, "It's so oppressive you can't catch your breath." "So it is," the Savak agent replied immeditaely, edging closer to the winded stranger. "it's getting more and more oppressive and people are fighting for air." "Too true," replied the naive old man, clapping his hand over his heart, "such heavy air, so oppressive." Immediately the Savak agent barked, "Now you'll have a chance to regain your strength," and marched him off.

The other people at the bus stop had been listening in dread, for they had sensed from the beginning that the feeble elderly man was committing an unpardonable error by saying "oppressive" to a stranger.

Experience had taught them to avoid uttering such terms as oppressiveness, darkness, burden, abyss, collapse, quagmire, putrefaction, cage, bars, chain, gag, truncheon, boot, claptrap, screw, pocket, paw, madness, and expressions like lie down, lie flat, spreadeagle, fall on your face, wither away, gotten flabby, go blind, go deaf, wallow in it, something's out of kilter, something's wrong, all screwed up, something's got to give -- because all of them, these nouns, verbs, adjectives, and pronouns, could hide allusions to the Shah's regime, and thus formed a connotative minefield where you could get blown to bits with one slip of the tongue.

For a moment, for just an instant, a new doubt flashed through the heads of the people standing at the bus stop: What if the sick old man was a Savak agent too? Because he had criticized the regime (by using "oppressive" in conversation), he must have been free to criticize. If he hadn't been, wouldn't he have kept his mouth shut or spoken about such agreeable topics as the fact that the sun was shining and the bus was sure to come along any minute? And who had the right to criticize? Only Savak agents, whose job it was to provoke reckless babblers, then cart them off to jail.

The ubiquitous terror drove people crazy, made them so paranoid they couldn't credit anyone with being honest, pure, or courageous...

Fear so debased people's thinking, they saw deceit in bravery, collaboration in courage. This time, however, seeing how roughly the Savak agent led his victim away, the people at the bus stop had to admit that the ailing old man could not have been connected with the police. In any case, the captor and his prey were soon out of sight, and the sole remaining question was: Where did they go?

Nobody actually knew where Savak was located. The organization had no headquarters. Dispersed all over the city (and all over the country), it was everywhere and nowhere. It occupied houses, villas, and apartments no one ever paid attention to...Only those who were in on the secret knew its telephone numbers...Whoever fell into the grip of that organization disappeared without a trace, sometimes forever. People would vanish suddenly and nobody would know what had happened to them, where to go, whom to ask, whom to appeal to. They might be locked up in a prison, but which one? There were six thousand. An invisible, adamant wall would rise up, before which you stood helpless, unable to take a step forward.

Iran belonged to Savak.

It was Savak that banned the plays of Shakespeare and Moliere because they criticized monarchical and aristocratic vices. Savak ruled in the universities, offices, and factories. A monstrously overgrown cephalopod, it entangled everything, crept into every crack and corner, glued its suckers everywhere, ferreted and sniffed in all directions, scratched and bored through every level of existence...

The people waiting at the bus stop knew all this and therefore remained silent once the Savak agent and the old man had gone. They watched each other out of the corners of their eyes, for all they knew the one standing next to them might have to inform...Without wanting to (even though some of them try to hide it so as not to provoke any aggressive outbursts), the people at the bus stop look at each other with loathing. They are inclined to neurotic, disproportionate reactions. Something gets on their nerves, something smells bad, and they move away from each other, waiting to see who goes after whom, who attacks someone first. This reciprocal distrust in the work of Savak...This one, this one, and that one. That one too? Sure, of course.

Everybody.

What I LOVE about this excerpt is that you can see how Kapuscinski - in focusing on life under Savak in Iran - he is criticizing the life he grew up in - life in Poland under the thumb of the Soviet Union. By writing about these other totalitarian regimes, he was able to freely criticize the USSR.

Kapuscinski: "Qom was rumbling"

From Ryszard Kapuscinski's book Shah of Shahs (about the last Shah of Iran):

Kapuscinski interviews an Iranian about the beginnings of the revolution:

Every pretext, he says, was good for rising up against the Shah. The people wanted to get rid of the dictator, and they flexed their muscles whenever they had the chance.

Everybody looked toward Qom. [Ed: Qom is a religious center in Iran.] That's the way it had always been in our history: Whenever there was unhappiness and a crisis, people always started listening for the first signals from Qom.

And Qom was rumbling.

This was when the Shah extended diplomatic immunity to all US military personnel and their families. Our army was already full of American experts. And the mullahs came right out and said that the Shah's move offended the principle of sovereignty.

Now, for the first time, Iran would hear Ayatolla Khomeini. Before that, no one knew of him -- nobody but the people of Qom, that is. He was already over 60, old enough to be the Shah's father. later he would often call the ruler "son", but of course in an ironic and wrathful tone. Khomeini attacked him ruthlessly. My people, he would cry, don't trust him. He's not your man! He's not thinking of you -- he's only thinking of himself and of the ones who give him orders. He's selling out our country, selling us all out. The Shah must go!...

Now I wonder just what conditions created Khomeini. In those days, after all, there were plenty of more important, better-known ayatollahs as well as prominent political opponents of the Shah. We were all writing protests, manifestos, letters, statements. Only a small group of intellectuals read them because such materials could not be printed legally and, besides, most people didn't know how to read. We were criticizing the monarch, saying things were bad, demanding changes, reform, democratization, and justice.

It never entered anyone's head to come out the way Khomeini did -- to reject all that scribbling, all those petitions, resolutions, proposals. To stand before the people, and cry, The Shah must go!

That was the gist of what Khomeini said then, and he kept on saying it for fifteen years. It was the simplest thing, and everyone could remember it -- but it took them fifteen years to understand what it really meant. After all, people took the institution of the monarchy as much for gratned as the air. No one could imagine life without it.

The Shah must go!

Don't debate it, don't gab, don't reform or forgive. There's no sense in it, it won't change anything, it's a vain effort, it's a delusion. We can go forward only over the ruins of the monarchy. There's no other way.

The Shah must go!

Don't wait, don't stall, don't sleep.

The Shah must go!

The first time he said it, it sounded like a maniac's entreaties, like the keening of a madman. The monarchy had not yet exhausted the possibilities of endurance.

Kapuscinski: "our game of seeing whose I is superior"

From Ryszard Kapuscinski's book Shah of Shahs (about the last Shah of Iran):

Kapucinski interviews an Iranian - these are the notes from that interview:

Because the man has to be superior, the woman must be inferior. Outside the home I might be a nonentity, but under my own roof I make up for it -- here I am everything. Here my power admits of no division, and the more numerous the family, the wider and mightier my authority. The more children, the better: They give a man more to rule over. He becomes the monarch of a domestic state, commanding respect and admiration, deciding the fate of his subjects, settling disputes, imposing his will, ruling. (He stops to see what sort of an impression he is making on me. I protest energetically: I oppose such stereotypes. I know many of his fellow countrymen who are modest and polite, who have never made me feel inferior.) Quite true, he agrees, but only because you don't threaten us. You're not playing our game of seeing whose I is superior. This game made it impossible to create any solid parties because quarrels about leadership always broke out immediately and everyone would want to set up his own party.

Kapuscinski on Oil Societies

From Ryszard Kapuscinski's book Shah of Shahs (about the last Shah of Iran):

The following essay on Oil always struck me as particularly insightful:

Oil kindles extraordinary emotions and hopes, since oil is above all a great temptation. It is the temptation of ease, wealth, strength, fortune, power. It is a filthy, foul-smelling liquid that squirts obligingly up into the air and falls back to earth as a rustling shower of money. To discover and possess the source of oil is to feel as if, after wandering long underground, you have suddenly stumbled upon royal treasure. Not only do you become rich, but you are also visited by the mystical conviction that some higher power has looked upon you with the eye of grace and magnanimously elevated you above others, electing you its favorite.

Many photographs preserve the moment when the first oil spurts from the well: people jumping for joy, falling into each other's arms, weeping.

Oil creates the illusion of a completely changed life, life without work, life for free. Oil is a resource that anesthetizes thought, blurs vision, corrupts. People from poor countries go around thinking: God, if only we had oil! The concept of oil expresses perfectly the eternal human dream of wealth achieved through lucky accident, through a kiss of fortune and not by sweat, anguish, hard work. In this sense oil is a fairy tale, and like every fairy tale, a bit of a lie. Oil fills us with such arrogance that we begin believing we can easily overcome such unyielding obstacles as time. With oil, the last Shah used to say, I will create a second America in a generation! He never created it.

Oil, though powerful, has its defects. It does not replace thinking or wisdom.

For rulers, one of its most alluring qualities is that it strengthens authority. Oil produces great profits without putting a lot of people to work. Oil causes few social problems because it creates neither a numerous proletariat nor a sizable bourgeoisie. Thus the government, freed from the need of splitting the profits with anyone, can dispose of them according to its own ideas and desires.

Look at the ministers from oil countries, how high they hold their heads, what a sense of power they have, they, the lords of energy, who decide whether we will be driving cars tomorrow or walking.

And oil's relation to the mosque? What vigor, glory, and significance this new wealth has given to its religion, Islam, which is enjoying a period of accelerated expansion and attracting new crowds of the faithful.

Kapuscinski: "Old Mossy"

From Ryszard Kapuscinski's book Shah of Shahs (about the last Shah of Iran):

Mossadegh is a figure for the exiles - at least that's how I see it. A man who took risks, and promoted self-sufficiency - and ended up paying a huge price for it. Iranians in exile love Mossadegh.

First excerpt: (Kapuscinski looks at a photograph of Mossadegh - and writes the following observations):

This is undoubtedly the greatest day in the long life of Doctor Mossadegh. He is leaving parliament high on the shoulders of an elated crowd. He is smiling and holding up his right hand in greeting to the people. Three days earlier, on April 28, 1951, he became Prime Minister, and today parliament has passed his bill nationalizing the country's oil. Iran's greatest treasure has become the property of the nation. We have to enter into the spirit of that epoch, because the world has changed a great deal since. In those days, to dare the sort of act that Doctor Mossadegh just performed was tantamount to dropping a bomb suddenly and unexpectedly on Washington or London. The psychological effect was the same: shock, fear, anger, outrage. Somewhere in Iran, some old lawyer who must be a half-cocked demagogue has pillaged Anglo-Iranian -- the pillar of the Empire! Unheard of, unforgiveable! In those years, colonial property was a sacred value, the ultimate taboo. But that day, whose exalted atmosphere the faces in the photograph reflect, the Iranians do not yet know they have committed a crime for which they will have to suffer bitter painful punishment. Right now, all Teheran is living joyous hours of its great day of liberation from a foreign and hated past. Oil is our blood! the crowds chant enthusiastically. Oil is our freedom! The palace shares the mood of the city, and the Shah signs the act of nationalization. It is a moment when all feel like brothers, a rare instant that quickly turns into a memory because accord in the national family is not going to last long. Mossadegh never had good relations with the Pahlavis, father and son. Mossadegh's ideas had been formed by French culture: A liberal and a democrat, he believed in institutions like parliament and a free press and lamented the state of dependence in which his homeland found itself. The fall of Reza Khan presented a great opportunity for him and those like him.

The monarch, meanwhile, takes more interest in good times and sports than in politics, so there is a chance for democracy in Iran, a chance for the country to win full independence. Mossadegh's power is so great and his slogans so popular that the Shah ends up on the sidelines. He plays soccer, flies his private airplane, organizes masked balls, divorces and remarries, and goes skiing in Switzerland.

The 2nd Excerpt about Mossadegh - Kapuscinski interviews someone about Mossadegh. Kapuscinski rightly felt that the story of Mossadegh was one of the keys to the tragedy of what happened in Iran. The revolution, which had begun as a revolution for more freedom, more democracy - had been hijacked by the mullahs. And it was all over from there. Anyway, this is a bit of the transcript from that interview:

Do you know that for twenty-five years it was forbidden to utter his name in public? That the name "Mossadegh" was purged from all books, all history texts? And just imagine: Today, young people, who, it was assumed, should know nothing about him, go to their deaths carrying his portrait. There you have the best proof of what such expunging and rewriting history leads to. But the Shah didn't understand that. He did not understand that even though you can destroy a man, destroying him does not make him cease to exist. On the contrary, if I can put it this way, he begins to exist all the more. These are paradoxes no tyrant can deal with. The scythe swings, and at once the grass starts to grow back...

Mossadegh! The English nicknamed him "Old Mossy". He drove them crazy, and yet they respected him in a way. No Englishman ever took a shot at him. In the end it was necessary to summon our own uniformed goons. And it took them only a few days to establish that kind of order! Mossy went off to prison for three years. Five thousand people went up against the wall or died in the streets -- the price of rescuing the throne. A sad, bloody, dirty re-entry.

You ask if Mossy was fated to lose? He didn't lose. He won. Such a man can't be erased from the people's memories; so he can be thrown out of office but never out of history. The memory is a private possession to which no authority has access.

Mossy said the land we walk on belongs to us and everything we find in that land is ours. Nobody in this country had ever put it that way.

He also said, Let everybody speak out -- I want to hear their ideas. Do you understand this? After two and a half millennia of tyrannical degradation he pointed out to the Iranian that he is a thinking being. No ruler had ever done that! People remembered what Mossy said. It stayed in their minds and remains alive to this day. Words that open our eyes to the world are always the easiest to remember. And so it was with those words.

Could anyone say that Mossy was wrong in what he did and said? Today everyone says that he was right, but that the problem is he was right too early. You can't be right too early, because then you risk your own career and at times your own life. It takes a long time for a truth to mature, and in the meantime people suffer or blunder around in ignorance. But suddenly along comes a man who speaks that truth too soon, before it has become universal, and then the ruling powers strike out at the heretic and burn him at the stake or lock him up or hang him because he threatens their interests or disturbs their peace.

Mossy came out against the monarchical dictatoriship and against the country's subjugation. Today monarchies are falling one after the other and subjugation has to be masked with a thousand disguises because it arouses such opposition. But he came out against it thirty years ago, when nobody here dared say these obvious things.

"You can't be right too early." Truer words.

Kapuscinski: "obliterated all contrasts"

From Ryszard Kapuscinski's book Shah of Shahs (about the last Shah of Iran):

The Iranians resented the fact that, for security reasons, only foreigners were invited to certain celebrations in which the Shah took part. His compatriots also said bitingly that since he traveled almost exclusively by airplane and helicopter, he saw his country only from a lofty vantage point that obliterated all contrasts. I don't have any photographs of Khomeini in his early years. When he appears in my collection, he is already an old man, and so it is as if he had never been young or middle-aged. The local fanatics believe Khomeini is the Twelfth Imam, the Awaited One, who disappeared in the ninth century, and has now returned, more than a thousand years later, to deliver them from misery and persecution. That Khomeini almost always appears in photographs only as an aged man could be taken as confirmation of this belief.

Kapuscinski: "Uneasy Teheran nights"

From Ryszard Kapuscinski's book Shah of Shahs (about the last Shah of Iran):

Kapuscinski describes being in Teheran during the revolution:

I walk back upstairs, through the empty corridor, and lock myself in my cluttered room. As usual at this hour I can hear gunfire from the depths of an invisible city. The shooting starts regularly at nine as if custom or tradition had fixed the hour. Then the city falls silent. Then there are more shots and muffled explosions. No one's upset, no one pays attention or feels directly threatened (no one except those who are shot). Since the middle of February, when the uprising broke out in the city and the crowds seized the army muitions depots, Teheran has been armed, intensely charged, while in streets, houses, under cover of darkness, the drama of assassination is enacted. The underground keeps a low profile during the day, but at night it sends masked combat squads into the city.

These uneasy nights force people to lock themselves in their own homes. There is no curfew, but getting anywhere between midnight and dawn is difficult and risky. The Islamic Militia or the independent combat squads rule the looming, motionless city between those hours. Both are groups of well-armed boys who point their guns at people, cross-examine them, confer among themselves, and occasionally, just to be on the safe side, take those they've stopped to jail -- from which it is difficult to get out. What's more, you are never sure who has locked you up, since no identifying marks differentiate the various representatives of violence whom you encounter, no uniforms or caps, no armbands or badges -- these are simply armed civilians whose authority must be accepted unquestioningly if you care about your life. After a few days, though, we grow used to them and learn to tell them apart. This distinguished-looking man, in his well-made white shirt and carefully matched tie, walking down the street shouldering a rifle is certainly a militiaman in one of the ministries or central offices. On the other hand, this masked boy (a woolen stocking pulled over his head and holes cut out at eyes and mouth) is a local fedayeen no one's supposed to know by sight or name. We can't be sure about these people dressed in green US Army fatigue jackets, rushing by in cars, barrels of guns pointed out the windows. They might be from the militia, but then again they might belong to one of the opposition combat groups (religious fanatics, anarchists, last remnants of Savak [Ed: Savak was the secret police of the Shah]) hurrying with suicidal determination to carry out an act of sabotage or revenge.

But finally it's no fun trying to predict just whose ambush is waiting for you, whose trap you'll fall into. People don't like surprises, so they barricade themselves in their homes at night. My hotel is also locked (at this hour the sound of gunfire mingles with the creaking of shutters rolling down and the slamming shut of gates and doors). No friends will drop by; nothing like that will happen. I have no one to talk to. I'm sitting alone looking through notes and pictures on the table, listening to taped conversations.

Kapuscinski: "In what language...?"

From Ryszard Kapuscinski's book Shah of Shahs (about the last Shah of Iran):

All over the world, at any hour, on a million screens an infinite number of people are saying something to us, trying to convince us of something, gesturing, making faces, getting excited, smiling, nodding their heads, pointing their fingers, and we don't know what it's about, what they want from us, what they are summoning us to. They might as well have come from a distance planet -- an enormous army of public relations experts from Venus or Mars -- yet they are our kin, with the same bones and blood as ours, with lips that move and audible voices, but we cannot understand a word. In what language will the universal dialogue of humanity be carried out? Several hundred languages are fighting for recognition and promotion; the language barriers are rising. Deafness and incomprehension are multiplying.

I have a question.

Is there any reason in this day and age for a gentleman to wear his hair parted in the middle and then feathered? With an obvious use of hair products?

Really. I'm just asking.

Obsession Central: Bogart, Bacall - Sheila's Daily Fix

Bogart hated doing publicity shots, and got out of them as often as he could - which, of course, was much easier once he was a huge star.

Martin Weiser - the studio photographer who had been personally assigned to Lauren Bacall (his job was to create the mystique, take the shots which would blanket the country on the release of To Have and Have Not) wanted to get some publicity shots for To Have and Have Not of just the two stars. Weiser was actually assigned to do just that, but Bogart refused. "No. I won't do it. I hate doing them, and I won't do it." He was immovable.

Bacall, knowing that these photos would be important for her career, sweet-talked Bogie into allowing it.

45 years later, Martin Weiser, in an interview, was still able to remember the "magic" of his photo shoot - which had to be squeezed in between a lunch break and the filming of the afternoon.

Of course, at this point, Bogie was married to someone else (very unhappily - the two of them were known as "the Battling Bogarts" - she stabbed him in the back with a knife - he blacked her eye - their battles were famous) - and Lauren Bacall was a teenager about to become a massive star.

But the growing connection between the two of them is obvious in the photo below, which is one of the shots from Weiser's photo shoot: