The Sheila Variations

Boris Karloff: "shocked by unkindness and never less than polite"

This is my late addition to the spectacular Boris Karloff Blog-a-Thon going on at Frankensteinia. I have been losing myself in all of the links. Great stuff - make sure you head on over there and read. Keep scrolling!

Peter Bogdonavich wrote a gorgeous essay about working with Karloff in Targets (Karloff's last film) - and it's such a touching look at a man who took great pride in his work, had tremendous humility towards his vocation, and never once dissed the monster who made him famous. He felt lucky to have played that monster - even though it typecast him forever. He felt lucky to have the chance to work - whenever a job came along.

A couple of years ago, there was a "Boris Karloff Week" here in New York, celebrating the 75th anniversary of Frankenstein. I had a ball going to all the films at the Film Forum, and it was so wonderful to sit in the dark, staring up at the silver flickering screen, surrounded by movie buffs young and old, celebrating this wonderful beloved actor.

Here's an excerpt from the piece in the NY TImes about the retrospective:

But roles like that didn't come frequently for Boris Karloff, and he managed somehow to avoid being consumed by bitterness himself. In one of his last pictures, Peter Bogdanovich's "Targets," he plays an old horror star named Byron Orlok, who is finally, after years of increasingly terrible movies, preparing to hang up his monster suit. That's something Karloff never did: he worked to the end - which came in 1969, when he was 81 - and remained, to the end, a dutiful and uncomplaining ambassador of horror. A strange fate, perhaps, for an ordinary human being, but Karloff was an actor, with an actor's peculiar wisdom. You can feel, in the scrupulous craftsmanship and moving correctness he brought to even his most thankless parts, a kind of humble gratitude, a knowledge that he had, at least, managed to dodge the worst horror of his profession.

A couple months ago, I wrote a post about the "Boris Karloff bowling scene" in Scarface, directed by Howard Hawks. I submit it again, here, for the Boris Karloff Blog-a-Thon.

It's a wonderful sequence, spare and violent, ominous and yet elegant - not one shot too many, a perfect mix of mess (the sound of the bowling alley mixed with the crowd with the strange eerie whistling going on over it - the whistle that we now know means some bad shit is going to go down) and clarity. You don't need to say too much or do too much to create an entire event. Story, story, story. Those old-time movie directors, secret auteurs though they all may have been (and I believe they were), never spoke in terms of art, although they obviously made art. They all talk in terms of STORY. Even down to the philosophy of the closeup, which Howard Hawks was quite eloquent about. There aren't many closeups in his films. A closeup really meant something back then. Yes, it is the most efficient way to shoot a scene sometimes, but it's not always the best, in terms of emotion. If you hold your closeups back, and use them sparingly, then they really have some impact. The first closeup of Katharine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby comes almost 20 minutes into the picture. It's the first closeup of anyone in the picture. Unheard of today, especially for a star of Hepburn's magnitude. But when it first comes, that shot is meant to be subjective, or, editorial - it almost reads as an aside to the audience, like in the days of Shakespeare. You rarely see that kind of spareness with closeups nowadays, because a lot of film directors come from the television world, which is the world of closeups (and it makes sense there, with the small screen, and the limited format) - but it's really wonderful to get into the groove of the old pictures, and realize how much they tell, without either banging you over the head with it, or leaving too much to the imagination so that the event becomes murky. In Scarface, Hawks gets it all just right.

Yes, the film is violent in an almost documentary fashion. But Hawks had a lot of fun here, with themes and motifs and symbols. The film is so full of X-es that I eventually stopped looking for them. They are in shadow on the wall, an X on Ann Dvorak's back made by her dress straps, and more. It's a motif that works on mutliple levels. It could be a cross (the shadows from the windows), which adds a troubling layer of potential martyrdom and noble suffering to the picture, and to the depiction of Tony. But here's Hawks to Peter Bogdanovich on all of those X'es:

In the papers, in those days, they'd print pictures of where murders occurred and they always wrote "X marks the spot where the corpse was." So we used Xs all through the film. When anyone connected with the picture thought up some way of using an X, I'd give him a bonus.

The theme is visible in the props, costumes, lighting design and motif of the film, but not in the dialogue at all. It works on you, as opposed to insisting itself on you.

And here, in the bowling scene, Hawks manages to get an "X" in the middle of the action, hidden, totally in context, so it works on multiple levels. He just bowled a strike. X means strike. But we also know what else it means, and so we know his days (even seconds) are numbered. X is about to mark his corpose. It reminds us of what is really going on. Brilliant.

The Boris-Karloff-bowling scene in Scarface is a masterpiece of storytelling, just in terms of the shots chosen for this short scene. There are about 15 shots all told. That's all you need. You don't need to do too much else as a director - at least not if you are confident of the EVENT you are trying to portray.

A director needs a collaborator in the actor to pull a scene like that off.

You couldn't ask for a better collaborator than Mr. Boris Karloff.

Bogdanovich writes:

Through four decades during his lifetime, and now more than thirty years later, the name Boris Karloff has not only identified a star actor, but conjured up a certain sort of character as well, a very particular representative image. The identification certainly began with the sensation of Frankenstein, but this was deepened through the years by equally intense, brilliant performances in horror movies that most often were less than inspired. Yet he brought the same concentration and sense of responsibility to things like The Haunted Strangler (1958) as he did to more complicated roles in films like John Ford's The Lost Patrol (1934); or, on the Broadway stage, with wickedly funny self-parody in Arsenic and Old Lace in the forties, or in the fifties with children's story-book menace as Captain Hook in Peter Pan and with poetic realism as the Dauphin to Julie Harris' Joan of Arc in Jean Giraudoux's The Lark -- a beautiful performance I was fortunate to see - and for which he received a Tony nomination. In 1966, his superb narration for the brilliant Chuck Jones feature cartoon of Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas helped to make that work an abiding classic.

Considering the majority of the movies in which he was cast (about 140 in all, including 40 silents, starting as an extra in 1916), it is not so remarkable that he almost always transcended his vehicles; but that audiences the world over still treasured him after so much screen junk is unique. They knew that Karloff's star presence in even the worst of these gave them a measure of his consdiderable talent, grace and wit. Therein, of course, was the great irony of his horror image: it was absolutely nothing like the man, any more than the sinister-sounding stage name which William Henry Pratt chose for himself, the surname Karloff by itself sending chills up the collective spine throughout the thirties, forties, fifties and sixties. It still does.

Yet the audience also knew in some way that this consummate beyond-evil heavy was actually a tasteful, knowledgeable British gentleman -- shocked by unkindness and never less than polite -- with a sense of humor about himself and his roles, and only genuine gratitude to the public for their long-lasting affection. It was one of the reasons he kept working right through his eighty-first year. He was just an actor, he would say, who had been lucky enough to find a particular place on the screen and, as long as people wanted him, what right did he have to retire?

Don't Deliver Us From Evil (1971); dir. Joël Séria

In Act I, scene 7 of Macbeth, Macbeth is having doubts about killing Duncan, the King of Scotland. There is still enough of morality in him that he shivers, mortally, at the thought of murder, and what it will bring about. He asks his wife, Lady Macbeth, "And if we should fail?" Lady Macbeth replies,

We fail?
But screw your courage to the sticking place,
And we'll not fail.

Would Macbeth have gone on to kill Duncan without Lady Macbeth whispering encouragement in his ear? What is it about TWO that can be so deadly? Killers, of course, often act alone, but the criminal pairings of history are numerous. Leopold and Loeb. Harris and Klebold. Alone, the personalities are undeveloped, blunted, even, just looking for its perfect half. When they find their perfect half, they become not only whole, but bigger, more grandiose, and capable of great and violent action. It's a two-way current, self-sustaining, a complete world under glass, the duo becomes impenetrable. They egg one another on, building each other up, whispering encouragement (or scolding - "what are you, a pussy?" - which is basically what Lady Macbeth is saying to her husband, a potent scold if ever there was one, to a certain kind of man, and Lady M knows her husband well). One side of the duo brings one aspect of the criminal mind to the table: the planner, the theorizer, the one who perhaps creates and builds up the justification for what they are about to do. "The world sucks", or "we'll show everyone how awesome we are", or "They made fun of us in school, they deserve what they got." These justifications are often backed up with loosely understood quotes from people like Nietzsche (a hero to Leopold and Loeb, with his ideas of the "superman", high above the everyday morality play of normal humanity), or, hell, Marilyn Manson, and cobbled-together hifalutin' theories of violence and death. The other side of the duo brings the mindset of the perfect follower, the subservient. Every leader needs a follower, breathless with admiration and willingness. There's a sado-masochistic thing that happens in deadly duos, the one getting off on being the leader, the other getting off on groveling. Again, it's a self-sustaining system. Nobody can infiltrate, and it's that way by design.

Leopold and Loeb, teenagers, still living at home with their parents, created an entire alternate universe, where they believed they were criminal masterminds (or at least had the potential to be), where they read Nietzsche and talked about the perfect crime, and didn't just talk about it, but planned it out. They slept with each other, a huge taboo, beyond the pale, really, at the time. There were some in their lives who were disturbed by their closeness ("don't you want to make other friends?"), but by the time those gentle suggestions came, it was far too late. The duo had taken its final deadly form. Compulsion, the 1959 film about Leopold and Loeb (with Dean Stockwell, Bradford Dillman and Orson Welles) takes the view that the sado-masochistic dynamic between the two boys is essential to understanding their crime, the one getting off on being dominant, the other getting off on being submissive. You need a partner for S&M games. Otherwise, it's a fantasy existing in a vacuum. It was the submissive one, however, who created the intellectual framework for their "perfect crime", it was the submissive one who talked about justifications for what they did, while the dominant one was less interested in that, and more interested in fame and notoreity.

History is full of deadly female duos as well. I am thinking of the Papin sisters, in Le Mans, France, domestic servants, who murdered the lady of the house and her daughter in 1933. This event sparked the intelligentsia in France, at the time, inspiring Sartre, Camus, Jean Genet, to reflect on not only evil, and the nature of evil, but how evil often only comes about in relationship. One sister by herself would never have had the guts, or the smarts, to murder. But together? One imagines the sisters whispering to one another in their maids' quarters, whipping themselves into a frenzy of anger, outrage, and determination. Sometimes it takes someone TELLING you to "screw your courage to the sticking place". It strengthens your resolve.

Jean Genet, famous thief, prostitute and intellectual, wrote a play based on the story of the Papin sisters, called The Maids. I worked on it as an independent project, in college, with Nancy Plunkett, a dear friend and fantastic actress, a person I have lost touch with entirely, and keep hoping she will reappear eventually. The Maids (at least in the translation I read, I haven't read it in the original French) has an incantatory breathless feel to the dialogue. Genet obviously was not known for kitchen-sink realism, and here, he goes into the darkness at the heart of that duo, jumping in with both feet. If anyone understood the underbelly of sex, and how it works ON us, even as we imagine that WE are working IT, it was Genet. A true outlaw, a homosexual, an artist, his interest in the Papin sisters was the confluence of sex and violence. Thwarted sex drive can often turn into rageful outbursts, and The Maids is a play without men. Men are mentioned, in passing, but they are completely peripheral to the bell-jar world of estrogen, unchecked. The sisters cling to one another in their degradation, reveling, in a way, in their lowly status in life. If they raised their status, then they wouldn't have anything to complain about, and complaining is what fills these sisters with purpose, a bleached-white burning fire of transcendent anger and martyrdom without which they would be lost. The sexual energy between the sisters is explicit. There's one scene in the play where the sisters are play-acting. When "Madame" is gone, they take turns role-playing, one sister playing Madame, the other sister playing herself. Madame glories in abusing the sisters, making them grovel and beg and scrub the floor on hands and knees. In this particular moment in the play, Madame orders the maid to lose herself in a sexual fantasy, making her talk about it, pumping her up, abusing her roundly, keeping the momentum going, until the sister, lying on the floor with her rags and mop bucket, orgasms. There is glory in degradation. This was Genet's stock-in-trade.

It's subversive stuff, and it taps into many things that upstanding citizens perhaps don't want to admit, or are not even aware of, since their experience of life is not that of the perennial "outsider". Genet presses his nose against the glass. His outlaw status was precious to him, it was the his creative wellspring ... and the tension between anger at the world at large, and fiery acceptance and LOVE of his status, makes up the main themes of his work.

The Papin sisters also inspired another play, My Sister In this House, beloved by college theatre programs everywhere because it features that rare thing: two strong female roles. It is one of those narratives that continues to fascinate, disturb. The implications are enormous. It messes with our preconceived notions: about women, about sisters, about victimhood and what it means to be a victim. Here, the victims LOVE their victimhood. They roll around in it, wearing it like a badge.

And, again, there is the fact that there are TWO. One sister alone would not have had the courage of her convictions. She may have smouldered with resentment, and groveled in her own sorry state, but once there are TWO - and once those two bond together, in a delusional fight against the forces that hold them down - everything changes. Victimhood turns into action. Revenge.

The 1954 Parker-Hulme murder in Christchurch is similar to the Papin sister murder in that it has inspired many renditions in literature and film. Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme were teenage girls, best friends, living in Christchurch, New Zealand, and they brutally murdered Pauline's mother while walking with her in the woods. Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures is obviously the most well-known RIFF on this event, but there have been others. The girls lived in an intense heated-up fantasy world, and bonded because of their various physical ailments, reveling in fatalistic "we are not long for this earth" attitudes. When they were separated, even briefly, it was shattering to their senses of self. At the trial, it was suggested that the girls were lesbians, a charge that they both, to this day, deny.

There is something self-sustaining as well as mania-inducing when you get two young girls together. Especially girls of a certain age. It can take benign or malevolent forms, depending on the circumstances. Sex is in the air, on the brain, hormones make sure of that, and the prospect of actually doing something about it, with a man, is terrifying and titillating, but as long as emotional fulfillment comes from the female, you are fine with living on that precipice. As long as nobody tries to separate you and your friend. You could not manage the shoals of adolescence without your friend.

Heavenly Creatures focuses on the girls' sexed-up fantasy life, and the clay creatures they create, which come to life in their minds. Jackson lets us see their fantasies, the medieval orgies they plan for their clay creations, writhing clay figures. It's an outlet for the girls, growing up in a prudish uptight decade. They also obsess about movie stars and singers, crafting semi-violent rape scenarios for themselves, clinging to one another in abject "fear" and excitement. They role-play. One is dominant, one submissive. It is a completely secret world. Nobody suspects how frenzied the girls really are about each other, and once their uneasy parents begin to suspect that something is a bit "off" about the girls' devotion to one another, it is too late. The imposed separations only intensify the bond, and the resolve. Each girl ceases to exist when not in the others' presence.

Joël Séria's controversial 1971 film Mais ne nous délivrez pas du mal (sloppy English translation: Don't Deliver Us From Evil - I like the French better: "But Deliver Us Not From Evil" - a more direct inversion of the Lord's Prayer) is loosely based on the Parker-Hulme murder. Banned in the United States, never released here, it's a gorgeously shot eerie film, about two French schoolgirls, bored out of their minds in a French convent school, who decide to forsake Christ and embrace the Devil. If you take a look at the artwork for the DVD, you may be forgiven for thinking this is your normal underage exploitation affair.

Billed as a horror film, it is actually a deeply psychological art film, with two exquisitely played lead characters, a portrait of obsession and disturbance.

Jeanne Goupil, an inexperienced actress at the time (although you would never know it, this girl, with her choppy Bettie Page bangs, hairy armpits and mischievous grin, gives a chillingly great performance) plays Anne, an intelligent rebellious teenager (hiding cigarettes in her closet at home) who grew up in a grand chateau in a small French village, and goes to school at a convent. She comes home on weekends to stay with her parents, stuffy wealthy intellectuals, who sit around playing chess with one another, as their daughter slumps in a nearby armchair, torturing a small kitten, grinning at the yowls of the cat as she pulls its ears.

Catherine Wagener plays Lore, the blonde sidekick, who is the classic follower. Her desire to FOLLOW eggs on Anne's desire to lead and plan. One would not exist without the other.

Both girls, when in repose, have a flatness to their aspects, as though they are coiled in the brush, waiting to spring, preserving their strength. Only when they are with one another are they giggling and free. The girls do nothing together but laugh, and their laughter is a constant soundtrack throughout the film, even during the most horrifying sequences.

The horror comes from not from gore and death and gotcha-moments of surprise. It comes from the sheer banality of it all, the benign. The two girls, in sundresses, ride their bikes down a country road, their laughter ringing through the air, their limbs long and supple, and knowing what we know about them, how their souls have turned to darkness, it is a chilling image. Holed up in the rigid cloister of the convent, the two girls hide under the covers at night, reading forbidden erotic literature, and whispering about evil and sin. The girls love to go to confession because it amuses them to see the discomfiture of the priest as he hears their stories. They report back to one another about how embarrassed he looked, how funny it was, and how fun it was to be bad. The opening of the film shows a long row of cots, lights out, reminiscent of Ludwig Bemelmans' illustrations for the Madeline books. 12 little girls in two straight lines. A nun strolls down the center aisle, doing a head count, then steps behind a sheer screen at the end of the room. Anne, wide awake in her bed, chewing gum, stares at the screen, a little grin of anticipation on her face. Through the screen, we can see the naked body of the nun in silhouette, her breasts and hips clearly outlined, and Anne gazes upon the sight voraciously. She snaps her gum.

From this opening, you might think you were about to watch a high-end Red Shoe Diaries, with its mix of subversion, flesh revealed, and illicit peeking at things you shouldn't peek at. Not that there's anything wrong with Red Shoe Diaries, I quite enjoy them myself - but Seria is up to something else here. The two actresses were in their late teens, early 20s, but they are playing girls who are 15 years old, ripe on the edge of womanhood, heady with the knowledge that they have ... power. To make men ... do things. Feel things. This is the essence of sin in their Catholic upbringing, and they revel in it. They are all-talk no-action in this aspect of their lives. They are not sexually active, as in, they are virgins, and would never go through with any deflowering with any of the men they torture. No. Men do not interest them. Not really. They are only interested in one another. The fascinating thing about Don't Deliver Us From Evil is that, yes, it does manage to be erotic, but it also manages to be an insightful portrait of sociopathic behavior, and how it operates. The lack of empathy, for instance. Anne and Lore take this to an extreme, renouncing Christ and embracing Satan as their Master, in a black mass done in an abandoned chapel on the chateau grounds. The black mass is filmed in lush detail, the two girls in see-through white nighties, with wreaths of flowers in their hair. They are committed to evil. But what does this mean, in human terms?

In the DVD extras, there's an interview with Jeanne Goupil now, about her experience filming this movie. It's fascinating. She was so raw, so untrained, that all she did was trust Seria completely, and throw herself into the world of the picture. She had no sense of herself as an actress, she didn't worry about her looks (she cut her own bangs), she wasn't outside of herself in the slightest, a reason why the performance is so deadly, so effective. Goupil still had compassion for her character, she had no apologies for it, something I found so refreshing. She found her character to be totally logical, although much of her behavior may seem erratic or insane. But it's not. Everything Anne does is very targeted. It may be amoral, but there is an internal logic that is unshakeable. Highly skilled and experienced actresses are unable to capture this dynamic, and telegraph "I am inSANE, aren't I??", which is a defense mechanism, the actress trying to tell the audience, "I am not like this. I realize what she is doing is wrong." Goupil is beyond those concerns. They don't enter the picture at all. She takes Anne at her word. Fearlessly. It is a fearless performance. Anne's interest is to see other people in pain, uncomfortable. She finds it funny. And so she thinks about it, she ponders it very seriously. She doesn't do anything randomly or on a whim. The mentally challenged groundsman at the chateau, for instance. He is barely verbal, he is guileless, a village idiot, really. He would never hurt anyone. But Anne is bothered by how he ogles at her. Not bothered in the way a prissy girl is bothered. But bothered, as in, he will PAY for looking at her like that. So she lies in wait, watching, taking note of what he cares about, what he loves. The only thing she can come up with is the birds he keeps in cages in his drab garage-attic room. They have bright plumage, citron, sapphire, emerald-green. He clucks over them, he loves them. It is the only thing he loves. To a sociopath, this is information that is gold. This is where you can "get" him. Slowly, over time, Anne and Lore sneak into his room, and kill the birds. One by one. They don't do it all in one fell swoop, because that would not be as psychologically shattering to the groundsman. What is shattering is to go through one death, grieve it, and then think: "Well, now I'm safe." To then come home the next day to find another dead bird.

Goupil, in her interview, says, with zero embarrassment, "She is very smart, very logical. If you want to hurt someone, then of course you would go after what is important to them. What else would really do the job? The only thing to do is kill the birds."

This is what acting teachers talk about, endlessly, when they talk about how important it is to find "motivation". Not motivation as in excuse-making, ie: "My character is hurt and lonely and bored, and doesn't like how the groundskeeper looks at her." That's fine, that's part of it, but don't stop there. Because then you are only playing the excuse, and in so doing, you are plying the audience for sympathy, which has ruined many a potentially good performance. "Feel sorry for me - THIS is why I have done this! Aren't you sad for me?" Your mind should not be on the audience in that way. It should be on getting your needs met as the character. Without apology. So the underlying excuse is there, but the ACTION (killing the birds) is the correct focus. Because in that way, if your motivation is clear ("I must do this in order to get what I need"), the audience will get it, and their response will be far more powerful than if you try to win them over to your side. That's what you want. You listen to convicted murderers talk about why they did what they did, and it is always totally logical. "She was in my way." "I wanted a little bit of peace and quiet." "I needed that money." The horror is in how clinical they are about it. The best performances of this kind focus on the LOGIC inherent in the behavior, NOT in the emotional reasoning, because for such people those "excuses" are often beside the point. I'm talking about true psychopaths here, but the same can be true for playing any character. The brilliance of Nora Helmer dancing a tarantella for her husband is not the underlying thematic elements Ibsen is interested in portraying: the submission of the wife, the unfairness of misogyny and keeping women down ... No. The brilliance of that scene is that Nora is trying to keep her husband from going to the mailbox, because she knows the letter that will bring about her ruin is waiting there. I have seen actresses playing Nora play it as though they are trying to play all of Ibsen's themes, showing they "understand" the social implications of the play, and it's deadly, intellectual, boring. But I saw an actress play it at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, and all she was playing - all she was DOING on that stage - was trying to KEEP. HER HUSBAND. FROM GOING TO THE MAILBOX. THAT is motivation an actress can PLAY. THAT is the difference between a great performance and a workmanlike performance. I still remember her blocking and this was years ago that I saw it. I remember the color of her dress, I remember being in agony watching, because - in that moment - I WAS her. Torvald must. not. be allowed to get the mail. She will do ANYTHING to keep him from going to the mailbox. It was truly terrifying.

This is actress-talk, but I think it's very important, especially when playing characters at the brink of madness. Jeanne Goupil and Catherine Wagener (and, by association, Joel Seria) avoid all of those traps. The script is magnificent, spare. It also allows for cracks in the armor, which elevates the entire story into something almost mythic. If they were just two little evil trollops cavorting around in see-through nighties, then that would be one kind of movie. But these are young girls. Bored out of their minds. Crushed under the oppression of their education and prudery, in general. They have no outlet. But still, they are just young girls. There's a moment that killed me the first time I saw the film. The two girls hover outside one of the bird cages, and Anne reaches in, pulls out the bird, and forces the poison pellet down its throat. She puts the bird back in the cage. The two girls watch, ghoulishly, and, almost immediately, the bird goes into its death throes. We have been so used to the girls giggling at everything, but here, they are silent. And you can see that Lore, looking on as the bird keels over, has some emotions about it. She has some feelings about what she has just been a party to. But the relationship - the current between she and Anne - does not allow for such doubts, for such second thoughts. They must be crushed down, seen as weakness. Morality is inverted here. Compassion, one of the strongest things on the planet, is seen as weak. Kindness is silly, stupid. Coldness and hardness is where it's at. The only vulnerability allowed in their lexicon is what they feel for one another. What's a bird to them? Nothing. But you can see Lore hesitate. You can see emotion fill her eyes. But then, they hear the groundsman returning, and they scurry away into the shadows, to watch him discover the death. Moment of conscience is therefore averted, squashed.

There are other moments like this in the film, where one or the other ... hesitate. It is not about God so much, although you could make that argument since the film is about embracing the Devil. Kindness comes from ... where? In an important scene, Anne (who really is the ringleader), realizes she has gone past some invisible point of no return. She realizes this with no dialogue, no expository monologue. But suddenly, we see her running, tears on her face, to the church, where she kneels and prays as though her life depends on it. It's heartbreaking. The black mass is rather silly, right, just superstition, right? But it is in her soul, what she has done ... can she take it back?

All of this is muddied by the intensity of her friendship with Lore. The girls sit around in stasis, legs slack, stretched out, fingers dangling through dead air ... and then, at the sight of the other one, bicycling up the drive, they spring to life. Bodies alert, shoulders back, face alight. A watchful parent would recognize the red flag in this, although the lines are blurry. Isn't that how we feel about our friends? Shouldn't we be happy to see them? What is wrong in that?

Anne and Lore continue to push the envelope, that is the entire point of their existence. Things come to a head when they pick up a stranded motorist, and bring him back to the little guest cottage on the chateau's expansive grounds. It's a cold night. The girls have a fire going, and they take off their clothes, drying them by the fire, as the motorist looks on, bemused, turned on, shocked. They stroll around in their training bras and white panties, serving him whiskey, giggling, acting nonchalant and unaware of the effect they are having on him. This is not the first time they have provoked a man into violence. Doing so is sport for them. It's two against one. They know they are wily and can get away. But here, things go very differently, changing things forever.

Don't Deliver Us From Evil is that rare thing: a film with the courage of its convictions. You can see why it was banned. It is unblinking. Unblinking in its honest portrayal of the sexuality of teenage girls, first of all, and also unblinking in its examination of the slow development of a sociopathic mindset, step by step by step, the girls supporting each other along the way.

Its ending is brutal and beautiful, Shakespearean in its symmetry and theatricality. It made me gasp the first time I saw it, as it dawned on me where we were going. I thought: "No ... no ... they're not going to ... are they?? They couldn't, could they?"

Yes, they could.

And so of course they do.

It's the only logical thing at that point. There is no other possible way for it to go. The girls know what they are doing, and they know how to get what they need.

The pairing has become complete, perfect. The self-sustaining system of the criminal pair will never be broken.

Haunting film.

All cousins great and small

Yesterday, the entire O'Malley clan converged to our house in Rhode Island for a second Thanksgiving. This is a family tradition. Thanksgiving Day is for the respective families, the Saturday after it's the O'Malley extravaganza. This year, a difficult year to say the least, everyone came to our house. There were a couple of cousins missing - Kerry, Marianne (one of the many Mariannes), Timothy, Bridget, Matt and oh God am I missing anyone else? And Cashel wasn't there. But present were:
Uncle Tony and Aunt Marianne
Cousin Liam and Lydia and their son Cormac
Cousin Mike and Lisa and their kids, Fiona, Seamus and Declan
Cousin Marianne and Jimmy and their kids, Jimmy and Michael
Uncle Terry and Aunt Diane
Cousin Rachel
Aunt Regina
Cousin Emma
Cousin Ian
Uncle Tom and Betsy
Cousin Grace
Cousin Henry
Cousins Ben and Sue
Then there was me, Siobhan, her boyfriend Ben, Jean, Pat, and Lucy and Brendan.
And my dear mother.
More people came throughout the day.
Siobhan's dear friend Colleen, her parents, and Colleen's sons Elhadji and Mustapha
Brendan's dear friend Justin, his wife Amber and their three kids
There was so much food it was nearly inhuman.

It was very emotional at times. I am so glad they all came.

Before dinner, cousin Mike organized a game of touch football out in the backyard with all cousins great and small. The age range of the football game was late 40s to three years old. It ended up being the longest football game known to man, and Mike eventually shouted up to the house, after realizing what he had gotten himself into, "SAVE SOME LASAGNA!!"

Keeping everyone in line was a full-time job, since children were racing around holding footballs, and everyone had to be continuously reminded of the rules. But everyone eventually got the hang of it, and it was beautiful to watch. There were times when, listening to the adults coaching the kids on how to play, it sounded like a dress rehearsal of Riverdance.

"Seamus, run - run - run!"
"Declan's got the ball!"
"Grace, when I say 'hike', RUN over there!"
"Fiona! Fiona! This way!"

The light was low in the sky. After a day of rain, the grass was muddy and wet, but the air was beautifully mild, with a sharp nip of autumn in it. The "adults" sat inside, chatting and eating, as a massive group of people, some 6 feet tall, others 3 feet tall, cavorted outside for hours, eventually tromping inside, muddy and happy, to eat the rest of the lasagna.

We are protected. By the love of our clan.

"SAVE SOME LASAGNA!!!"

Observe and Report; dir. Jody Hill

Normally, when I write about movies I've seen, I don't like to focus on what other people have said about it, even if I disagree wholeheartedly with the mainstream opinion. That's not fun writing for me. I enjoy reading dust-ups focusing on certain films (The Dark Knight being the most recent example), and I love reading reviews, I can't get enough, but in terms of what I like to write about, I'm more interested in putting down what I think about something, how I responded, and back up my opinion with specific examples to illustrate where my feelings came from. Also, I think it's good practice to write down your thoughts without qualification. I've written about my pet peeve about that kind of qualified writing before, although I was talking about political bloggers, many of whom seem to have a heightened sense of their audience, especially their "enemies", so they write directly to the enemies, trying to diffuse their criticisms at the get-go. It is dreadful writing. This is the kind of thing that was drummed out of me in 10th grade English. A political blogger starts a post with: "I know that some of you out there think I'm evil or wrongheaded, but just know that I, in turn, find you laughably unserious." That's how it starts. So you've ruined the conversation before it even begins. If anyone reads BEYOND that, you're lucky! It's amateurish. State your opinion, stand by it, back it up with examples, and then let the chips fall where they may. MUCH better read.

Film criticism is different in a couple of significant ways, but I won't go into that.

In terms of 2009's Observe and Report, directed (and written) by Jody Hill, starring Seth Rogen, I need to break my rule a bit. I almost didn't see this film, despite my high regard for Seth Rogen. The reviews, for the most part, seemed baffled that it was such a "dark" movie. I realize my taste is often not in line with the rest of the populace, but I get sick of not being marketed to sometimes. I LIKE "dark". I LIKE "ambiguous" and "morally ambivalent". I LIKE "serious". None of those things should be apologized for. If it's a good film, that is. You're on your own if your dark morally ambivalent film blows.

There are plenty of good films recently that I almost didn't see due to the misleading marketing campaign. The Weatherman. The Breakup. These are essentially serious films, and the posters, as well as the ads, told another story. I know complaining about this practice is similar to complaining about the tides, but indulge me. Back in the studio age of movies, genres were embraced and it was understood that different demographics were looking for different things. Notorious wasn't advertised as a wacky Cary Grant screwball comedy, just to get asses in the seats. This is not to minimize the giant risk Cary Grant took with that role, taking a persona beloved by millions, and turning it inside out. I'm sure many audience members, trained to expect one thing from Grant, were surprised to see how relentlessly "dark" that film was, and how dark HE was. Regardless. There is a market for serious movies, for "women's pictures", for comedies, and the studios targeted people brilliantly.

To advertise The Weather Man as a wacky Nicolas Cage comedy (something I'm not all that interested in, although I realize other people are) is, in the end, damaging to the picture. Because something I AM interested in is Nicolas Cage as a serious heavy-hitting actor. His performance in that was one of my favorite performances of the last 10 years, and I'm so glad I eventually just decided to go see it, despite the poster and the way it was advertised. But any laughs the picture got were wincing laughs of recognition and uncomfortableness, and that should be dealt with honestly in the advertising. Because those of us who love that crap would have gone to see it. And those it WAS marketed to, the ones expecting a wacky comedy, sat there, confused as to what the hell they were watching. I'm sure some were pleasantly surprised (like myself) to find themselves watching a bleak ruthless portrait of a man who has nothing going for him and can't seem to get a leg up with anyone. That's my kind of movie. He was brilliant. Advertising campaigns represent a lack of confidence in anything not easiliy classifiable. I get that marketing these weird movies is a challenge, shall we say, but it's comforting when a studio and its marketing gets behind a movie that may be difficult, or something outside the norm. Here's the post I wrote about The Weather Man, and Roger Ebert covers this issue wonderfully in his review for the film (I included a link in that post). One pertinent quote:

One of the trade papers calls it "one of the biggest downers to emerge from a major studio in recent memory -- an overbearingly glum look at a Chicago celebrity combing through the emotional wreckage of his life." But surely that is a description of the movie, not a criticism of it. Must movies not be depressing?

Amen.

Now, on to Observe and Report. The main flap about the movie (from my outsider perspective) appeared to be that it depicts a date rape. People were either defending the choice, or criticizing the choice, back and forth, and there were some who said stuff along the lines of, "But it's not a date rape. It's obvious that when they started having sex, she was conscious, and she passed out DURING the act." To me, such arguments are beside the point. The real point is: date rape shouldn't be shown without apology? What if he DOES take advantage of the fact that she's drunk? What, that doesn't ever happen in life? The only reason to get into a tizzy about the fact that Jody Hill dared to SHOW such an event is if you are worried and concerned about the lead character being "relateable". Are we so programmed to need a lead character we can "relate" to? I sure as hell am not, that's not why I go to the movies, or not ONLY why I go to the movies. I don't go to the movies to be PROTECTED from harsh truths. We see movie after movie that shows unrelenting violence, bodies being blown to bits, with nary a moment of moral ambiguity ... and then everyone flips out because a date rape is shown?

I didn't understand the brou-haha about the date rape in the first place. It seemed that some people felt such things SHOULDN'T be shown without a big telegraphing arrow pointing down at the event saying, "This is bad. Don't do this." But I'm not an audience member who needs to be COACHED, morally, during a film, thankyouverymuch. I am aware that "date rape is bad", but I certainly don't think it shouldn't be depicted. Once I finally saw the film, I REALLY didn't understand the controversy about the date rape scene.

Not that I don't think it's an iffy moral situation he's in there. I do. Anna Faris is wasted. When the scene starts, she is obviously passed out, as he pumps away at her from above. He is saying her name over and over, which seems to suggest that at one point she WAS conscious. He then realizes she is unconscious, stops pumping for a second and looks down at her, saying her name questioningly. She, still with her eyes closed, not moving, barks, "Don't STOP, motherfucker." So he keeps going. It was hysterical, in a truly awful way. It was HER line that was the button to the scene, that really put it into murky waters, morally. She didn't remain unconscious. Who knows, she may have been conscious the whole time, but the fact that he has STOPPED is just not acceptable to her sorry drunk ass.

Do I think it's date rape?

My question is: do I give a shit, either way?

What I care about is if it propels the story along, if it reveals something about the character, if it serves its purpose. If he fucks a girl while she's unconscious, then I have to say, I'm not surprised, considering the other stuff I have seen from the guy over the course of the film.

Additionally, it doesn't make me like him less. Not that I like him, but it's one of those films that creates a turbulence in the viewer, a disturbing feeling of empathy for someone who, frankly, is a loose cannon, a disaster just waiting to happen ... and yet, you feel for him. You feel like ... if someone would just show this guy some tenderness, or say to him, "You're awesome, you're doing a great job", then his whole life could change. But life isn't that easy, and it is under no obligation to give us exactly what we need. So I do like him, in a way. He's sweet to his souse of a mother (the always excellent Celia Weston), covering her up with a blanket when she passes out on the floor. He obviously is diligent at his job. He has good qualities. But on top of all of that, is a simmering surface of open resentment, the kind of guy who needs to WIN in any conversation he has (there's a very funny "fuck you" exchange with one of the guys who works at the mall, and it goes on forever, "fuck you" back and forth, back and forth, because neither of them can allow the OTHER one to have the last word).

So the focus on how awful the date rape scene is seemed misguided, missing the point entirely. This isn't a black comedy. This is a drama. Morals don't need to be spoon fed to us. And sometimes, the greatest art creates confusion. By liking this, do I endorse it? I don't believe that, but art can push those buttons. It's a tug-of-war, and I love a movie that can do that. I didn't go into the film needing to "like" Ronnie, Seth Rogen's character. His behavior in that scene is completely consistent with his life as that trapped bound-up man. It wasn't gratuitous, it wasn't played for laughs - or not explicitly so. It didn't make a joke of the serious fact of date rape. But even talking about this issue annoys me because it gives credence to the opinion that such things shouldn't be shown. I loved that it was ambiguous. That she was passed out, that he hadn't noticed, and that when he stops, concerned for her, she barks at him from her coma to keep going. It was awful. It was perfect. It was funny in a terrible way. Give me more of that.

He's "in love" with her, but this is what he gets. This is what some people "get" in life, and so the resentment and the feeling of being left out of the human race starts to build up. In some people it just comes out as incessant complaining, or insufferable self-righteousness ("I'm the ONLY person around me who has ANY sense"), and in others, it becomes a cauldron of potential violence. All it takes is a perfect storm to bring such an individual to the forefront, and he will make you sorry, forever sorry, that you ever ignored him, or underestimated him.

Ronnie Bernhardt is that kind of man.

His ancestors in film history are long. Peter Lorre's amoral child-murderer in Fritz Lang's M come to mind, and his long creepy scene where he stares at himself in the mirror, making grotesque faces, just amusing himself, but also, on a deeper level, perhaps looking for A self to inhabit. This is a man outside the human family. He has no empathy for others, perhaps because he has been shown so little empathy in his life, or who knows, maybe he was born with "evil genes", something missing - a little something like compassion, or the ability to connect.

I can think of another famous character in the canon that captures the loneliness of the sociopath.

In Taxi Driver, Travis Bickle says:

All my life needed was a sense of someplace to go. I don't believe that one should devote his life to morbid self-attention, I believe that one should become a person like other people.

This is the territory that Observe and Report occupies. Seen in a mentally normal perspective, Travis Bickle's words make a lot of sense. It would be difficult to disagree with him. But in the context of that film, and his personality, you shudder with dread as to what this will mean. His "sense of someplace to go" is skewed, grandiose, unconnected from reality. Bickle is someone you would do well to avoid, if you meet him in real life. The film captures that sense of ongoing rejection he feels in encounters with his fellow man. He just can't seem to get the tone right. People back away from him, emotionally, and he can sense it. Why? It hurts him. Why should he be so rejected when he is doing the best he can like everyone else?

To imagine Seth Rogen, current golden-boy of the Judd Apatow comedy empire, playing an isolated loser with delusions of grandeur is a stretch, but it's something that is totally thrilling to watch. Not only is he up for the task, but he inhabits it easily. He's not "acting". This is another aspect of Seth Rogen that is usually showed in a positive light in his other films - his shlubbiness, his everyday guy sense of humor, a guy with few prospects. But here, those exact same qualities are used in an inverted way. Same qualities, but they seem totally different in another context. A similar thing can be said about Adam Sandler in Punch-Drunk Love. That was not a completely different person. He wasn't character-actor-ing it up. That was the same guy we see in all of his comedies, but without the levity, without the ba-dum-ching that keeps us comfortable. He has the same antisocial tendencies, the same sudden bursts of rage ... but nobody's laughing at him there. It was a brilliant hat-trick. One of my favorite performances in a long long time. Having dated a couple of men who are funny for a living, I can say that it's not a stretch at all to put people like that into more serious dark films (if it's the right one, that is) - because often their impulse to make people laugh comes out of something deeply neurotic. Generosity, too, they love to make people laugh ... but underneath that is usually a hell of a lot of loneliness and angst. The truly great comedians utilize that part of themselves. George Carlin, Richard Pryor, they don't shy away from their sense of the tragic.

Seth Rogen plays Ronnie Bernhardt, a security guard at a mall. My first sense of where we were going, in terms of this character, was early on in the film when he's being interviewed by a local news station. A flasher has been terrorizing the parking lot, and Rogen becomes obsessed with the case. He's not a real cop, but this is HIS case. HE is going to solve it. To be interviewed by the news is a big deal to anyone, but to this guy, hovering on the edge of his fantasy of himself as a righteous avenger of the weak, it's blood to a vampire. He behaves badly. It's a toe-curlingly awkward scene. The reporter mis-states his title, introducing him as, "I'm standing here with Ronnie Bernhardt, a security guard at the Forest Ridge Mall -" He can't stop himself, he interrupts her rudely. "I'm head of Mall Security. I'm not a security guard. Can we take it back?" He looks at the camera and says, "Action." He's starring in his own movie, and she said the wrong line. She awkwardly goes on with her first question, and he interrupts her again. "You're just gonna keep going? You're not going to fucking go back and correct your mistake?" Rogen plays this moment just right. The curse word shows his anger, and also his lack of control when he feels threatened. She is taken aback, not sure what to do, and again, he grabs the reins. "I'm fucking Head of Mall Security. Let's take it back." Again, to the camera, overriding her authority, "Action."

It's an awful scene, perfect in its delivery, done in one take. It happens in the first 10 minutes of the movie, and in that moment, I threw out the sweet shlub I have come to love, and thought, "Woah, now, who is THIS person?" He did it with such truth, such recognizable resentment and impatience (he has no manners, he can't afford them, not when he has to win in every conversation), that I found myself getting excited. Rogen has always shown that kind of self-righteous grumbling about the stupidity of the rest of the planet, and usually it's funny. Here, you either want to smack him upside the head, or walk away, to avoid having to witness any more awkwardness.

Rogen hangs out with the rest of the security guards, who all look up to him in reverence. He is King of the Hill in his small world. None of them are bright bulbs, intellectually, and he senses that, so he easily has dominated them into a state of groveling subservience. He demands apologies when they have slacked off on this or that aspect of their job, and when it seems the apology isn't sincere enough, he makes them say it again. And again. He's a petty tyrant.

He lives at home with his mother, a slurring drunk, who is racing herself into an early grave. It seems like death can't come fast enough, the way she drinks. She doesn't know how to be a mother. She stutters out the things she thinks mothers are supposed to say, but in the middle of her monologues, you can see her eyes flicker, with anxiety, addiction, because she can tell, vaguely, that she's not making any sense. Ronnie is kind with her. Gentle. He sleeps in his childhood room, with basketballs and soccer balls on his sheets. It is bleak. He is living on a subsistence level, in terms of emotional fulfillment.

There are a couple of sparks that jumpstart Ronnie into action. One is his crush on Brandi, played by Anna Faris, a bitchy blonde who works at the makeup counter in the mall. Her name alone should tell you she would not be an appropriate mate for Ronnie. She doesn't give him the time of day. There's an awful scene where we see her gossiping and laughing with her gay coworker. Ronnie observes from afar, and Rogen, without doing too much, lets us see how much this bothers him. What bothers him is not entirely clear. That she has private jokes with someone other than him? That she is so buddy-buddy with a gay person? Rogen doesn't tip his hand. Instead, he strolls over to the counter, and starts laughing loudly, in an aggressive alarming manner. I remember thinking, when I first saw it, "Ronnie, what are you doing??" It was so obvious he had no idea what the joke was. But it wasn't as though he had been hovering on the outskirts, trying to look like he was involved. Oh no, that would be too vulnerable and open for a guy like Ronnie, who has an armor over his personality saying, "I laugh at people. They don't laugh at me. I feel sorry for people. Nobody should feel sorry for me." So his aggressive laughing is scary. Brandi and her friend glance at him, struck dumb, and he keeps laughing. I was dying for him to stop. This was the push-pull I went through with this guy. I know guys like him. They're the ones who usually bitch and whine about how girls like "bad boys" and why doesn't anyone like him because he's "nice"? I have learned that "I'm a nice guy", in certain contexts, is indicative of anger and resentment at an almost global level - and THAT'S why girls don't like them. Some guy complaining about how girls don't like "nice" guys is a giant red flag. Rogen embodies that sort of resentful pent-up type of guy, convinced he's nice, convinced that women are idiots for not going for him, not realizing that his personality is the issue. So I cringe from guys like Ronnie, and yet in that moment of weird laughing, I ached for him and wanted to intervene. Just go away, Ronnie, stop! However, characters like Ronnie have (alas) an impenetrable ego, to some extent. Their ability to lie to themselves, to see themselves as winners, regardless of the social embarrassment they cause, is eternal. He doesn't understand social cues. He sneers at social cues.

If you haven't seen the film, and you think of Rogen's other roles, you can see the similarities, but here it comes off as sociopathic, frightening. Kudos to Rogen.

The other spark that comes along is the flasher controversy, and the introduction of Ray Liotta, a local cop investigating the case. Ronnie immediately feels threatened by him, but Rogen manages to suggest also the impotence and helplessness he feels when faced by a real cop. He's so angry he has no authority. He has engineered his life so that he can win, in his small sphere. But here, with Liotta, he can't win. The two clash immediately. Liotta brings just the right energy to the role. He seems like a real person, a real detective, at first baffled at this bossy disrespectful security guard honing in on his territory, and finally he is enraged, pushed to the breaking point.

The film doesn't come down too hard on Rogen's character. It's not a pamphlet meant to teach something. It's a portrait of someone's psychology. It shows what it shows. It shows what he does, what he feels. People live like this. Let's watch it.

Rogen strolls through the mall, looking around, seeing potential crime happening all around him, events that only he can stop. His voiceover reminded me of DeNiro's emotionally exhausted narrative in Taxi Driver. The ballast has been stripped away. When you have lost everything, when you are faced with the fact that your idea of yourself is actually not accurate in the slightest, things have a tendency to get very very clear. Rigid as well. It's a defense against the chaos that has been wreaked upon you, the luck of the draw (you're fat, your mother's a drunk, you're biopolar).

In any other context, a character like Ronnie deciding to work out, and apply to the police academy and "better" himself, is seen as a wonderful thing, something to root for. Oprah has taught us well.

But in the context of Observe and Report, I am forced to acknowledge, "Oh, shit. He really should just know his place in life. Because this program of bettering himself can lead to nothing good."

It's an awful feeling. Fatalistic. Hopeless.

Rogen, and Jody Hill, here, provide what appear to be mini-catharsis moments along the way. Random acts of kindness, understanding. The revelation (when he realizes his coworker, and buddy, is a criminal) that Ronnie does have a moral compass, that there is a line over which he will not step. Do the moments add up? Can he be redeemed? Can he find, if not happiness, then at least a modicum of peace and self-acceptance?

Or maybe I'm asking the wrong questions altogether. With this film, there are no easy answers. Looking for answers seems to be beside the point.

Observe and Report was one of the best films of 2009.

Where the Wild Things Are; dir. Spike Jonze

Maurice Sendak's children's classic Where the Wild Things Are isn't plot-driven. There's not much text, and he uses a lot of repetition ("and they roared their terrible roars," etc.) that gives the book an incantatory feel. As though we, as children, can will ourselves into our own dreamspaces, through certain phrases. Max, a lonely wild little boy, who was making all kinds of trouble the "night [he] wore his wool suit", is sent to bed without supper. In the book, while in his room, he suddenly realizes that a forest has grown there, his room has opened itself up to the natural world. There are trees, and an ocean right there, and also a boat, made just for Max. He leaps in it and sails away on a long long journey. It takes him weeks, a year, until he arrives at the land "where the wild things are". Max is dreaming himself into a world where he is King, where he has power, where he can command a group of scary-looking yellow-eyed "wild things" to be quiet, to do what he says, and where HE gets to send THEM to bed without supper. A fantasy of being in control. The wild things look to him with awe and admiration. They accept him as their King. At Max's command (the famous "let the wild rumpus start"), they all go crazy, jumping and swinging through trees, stamping their feet. Max has no plans as King. A wild rumpus is enough for him. But then he realizes he's hungry, the most prosaic of needs, and yet also the most human. So he gets back in his boat, and sails back home, to find his supper waiting for him in his room, "and it was still hot". Time can bend, stretch out like molasses, if you have an imagination. You can be gone for a year and when you come back your soup is "still hot".

When I was a small child, one of my favorite toys was my mother's metal collander. I wore it as a helmet. There are photos of me, a mini-Viking, peeking out from beneath the collander. You know how you are when you're a kid. You put on a costume, and you enter another world. Some of us, in the arts, never get over this proclivity. But still, it's not the same thing as when you are a child. Much of acting is either trying to remember what it was like as a child, when you were free enough to play "make believe" for hours on end, or trying to recreate the circumstances that allowed you to be that free.

Spike Jonze's film Where the Wild Things Are captures the spirit of Sendak's book with a lawless charm. It doesn't try to do too much. It doesn't add, oh, a giant war between two opposing factions of wild things, it doesn't try to compete with, let's say, Lord of the Rings (which it could have done, it's another story of a quest, a small creature thrown into the big world). It fills out the characters of the wild things, gives them names, whereas in the book they are nameless, but at its heart it is the story of "wildness", particularly the wildness in a small imaginative lonely boy. If his fantasy could come true, in the real world, what would it be? Maybe it wouldn't be a super-hero fantasy, where he leaps tall buildings in a single bound. Maybe it wouldn't involve clanking chainmail and the stomping of medieval-era horses' hooves. Maybe it would just involve him entering a world where he got to be the one ordering others around, especially those who are BIGGER than him, and where he got to be as wild as he wanted. Wildness would be sanctioned in his fantasy world.

The opening of the film shows Max (played by Max Records) playing by himself. Jonze films this in a jagged manner, following Max as he dashes around, jumpcutting from one crazy activity to another, which puts us right into Max's world in the most subjective manner possible. This is one of the times when handheld jumpcut camera movements are actually appropriate to the story being told. It gives a breathless feeling of the creativity and also boredom that little kids feel on almost a moment-to-moment basis, especially if they don't have a gang of friends to hang around with. How to occupy oneself?

Max does pretty well by himself. A small toy boat sails over the waves of his bedspread. A globe sits by his bed, and he stares at it, lost in dreams. But then he also races up and down the stairs, wrestling with the dog roughly, leaping over chairs and crashing into walls, before dashing up the stairs again. The way this opening section is filmed tells us everything we need to know with minimal dialogue, and the best part of it is most of it is suggested by Sendak's book. In the book, his mother sends him to bed without supper. No father is mentioned. Whether this was deliberate or no on Sendak's part I can't say, although I imagine it was. In the film, Catherine Keener plays Max's mother. She's a single mother, a bit harassed by her wild son, and by her responsibilities. There's a brief scene where you can see her working at night, after being reprimanded on the phone by her boss about her work. Max, in one of the most touching moments of the film, lies at her feet, idly playing with the toe of her nylons. He's still a child. He has a vivid fantasy life, but Mom is always there to come back to. There is a great comfort in her presence, even when she scolds him. None of this is filmed in a golden-glowed mist of nostalgia, which would have made it insufferable. This is a film about childhood, but it's not about childhood seen in retrospect, with the rough edges smoothed out. Childhood is intense, sometimes unbearably so. Children go through the full gamut of emotions that adults do: love, fear, rage, feeling trapped, guilt, shame ... only they don't have the context of experience, so events tend to take on grandiose sometimes grotesque shapes, especially to a sensitive child, like Max is. You don't know yet that spilt milk is not to be cried over. You still have to learn that.

Max sees his older sister Claire, once his comrade in play, now moving on, with a new group of friends. The script remains spare, almost wordless in this opening section, a big part of why it is so intense. Much of what goes on, subtextually, in childhood, is on a wordless level. Fear of abandonment is one big thing, but what child ever says, "I fear you abandoning me, Mom, and that's why I'm acting such a nutbag"? Abandonment is part of life, in all its forms. Claire is allowed to grow up and have new friends, but to Max it is abandonment. A huge loss. His heart is broken. He trashes her room, stamping around her rug with his snowy boots. He tears up a little popsicle-stick heart he made her, and there's another shot of Max kneeling on the floor picking up the pieces, and you don't see his face, but the gesture tore at my heart.

Where the Wild Things Are made me remember. Made me remember what it felt like. To be that little and that intense, feeling everything, but not yet knowing that feelings aren't forever, and you won't feel sad forever.

When Max runs away (a significant change from Sendak's book), he finds a little boat in a small body of water, and leaps in, sailing out into open ocean. One of the strengths of the film, I would even call it revolutionary at this point in cinematic history, is how real everything feels. The film has a tangibility to it. The waves Max sails through are real waves, you can smell the salt in the air, feel the slap of the water against the boat. If there's CGI used, it's unnoticeable. This also goes for the "wild things". They appear to occupy real three-dimensional space, as befitting creatures built and created by Jim Henson's Creature Shop. Watching them, again, made me remember what it was like the first time I saw Empire Strikes Back, as a child, at a drivein, in my pajamas with my cousins, and what it was like when I first saw Yoda. Yoda, a puppet, with the voice of Miss Piggy, for God's sake, LIVED. He breathed, sighed, turned slowly, whatever, he looked like life, therefore he was alive. Additionally, he and Mark Hamill obviously existed on the same plane, in the same space. CGI is fine, I'm not knocking it, but at times it leaves me cold, knowing I am looking at something that is not alive. Where the Wild Things Are appears to take place in a real place. The trees are real, the dunes are real. But most importantly, it has that Yoda-Luke dynamic, where Max is actually occupying the same three-dimensional space with these creatures.

A melancholy came up in me as I watched the film. A beautiful melancholy, with many different aspects. And one of them had to do with the question of progress, in all its guises. Just because something is possible, doesn't mean it is right, or artistically pleasing. CGI adds a lot, no doubt about it, but sometimes a lot of LIFE is lost in the process. Where the Wild Things Are pulses with life.

Here's an example. At one point, Max was face to face with Carol, the main "wild thing", voice by Jim Gandolfini (and he does a spectacular job, my God). And they were having a chat, and it occurred to me, out of nowhere, "Man, I bet Carol's breath STINKS." This, to me, is indicative of the level of reality Jonze (and his collaborators) were able to generate. Bad breath is a tactile thing, bad breath doesn't exist in CGI, at least not on the visceral level I got watching Wild Things.

The wild things decide that Max, who shows some startlingly bossy and alpha qualities almost immediately (out of his fear of the creatures), is their King. Max, in his filthy "wool suit", with the sweet little whiskers coming out of the side of the hood, is a tragically adorable little figure, in his tarnished gold crown. My heart ached. The valiant nature of children, so small, so easily dominated. But their experience is not only valid, but from whence all good things come. The people I love best remember what it was like to be children, who haven't forgotten how to play, who have a respect for that level of experience, who don't pooh-pooh it. I am not sure what a child would think, watching Max in his crown, cavort with the wild things. The scenes have a crazy energy, with everyone whooping and jumping, the earth moving with the impact, Max scampering among their feet, nearly getting crushed with every step, but somehow escaping. They aren't joyful scenes, not really. There's more of a savagery there, a release, a catharsis. Sometimes it feels good to just go off on a "wild rumpus", throwing snowballs, smearing mud on your face, rolling around in the leaves. To me, as an adult, tears were in my eyes watching these scenes, because I remembered. I remembered myself, and how lost I got in my fantasies of being a coal-dusted Cockney orphan when I was a child, how real it was to me, how fantastic, how awesome and street-smart I was in my dreamworld, how I was always the Artful Dodger, never Oliver, no, no, I was a LEADER. I do look back fondly on those times as a child, but it is pricked with grief and loss, and Where the Wild Things Are manages to capture that very delicate balance, without tipping over into retrospective analysis. Max is not a grown man looking back on his dreamworld. He's still in it. But for me, in my place in life, watching him lost in it, made me ache. For what will come, for him. For what comes for all of us. Loss of innocence, having to leave the nest, having to learn to let go, all of those tough tough lessons we somehow (hopefully) assimilate when we are children.

The world of the wild things is not fantastical, not overtly anyway. However, there is a forest right next to a rolling Sahara desert, which goes right up to an open ocean. The fort that Max and the wild things build together is a masterpiece of set design and conception. There are shots in this film unlike anything I've ever seen, a whole world evoked, and with palpable reality, the way things seem in dreams sometimes.

The "wild things" here are not actually wild, although they look scary, and you feel like they could be dangerous if provoked. They're more worried than anything else. They bicker amongst themselves, petty infighting. The arrival of Max, however, coalesces them into a group. They have been waiting for him all along, even though they hadn't realized it. When Carol asks Max what his powers are, and Max sort of stutters out some generalities, Carol asks, "Can you keep out the loneliness?"

When he said that (and Gandolfini has never shown more vulnerability than he does here - although his recent performance on Broadway in God of Carnage comes close), my breath suddenly caught in my throat. I felt like a dork. A tsunami of emotion built up behind me. Because that is the question. That is the question to ask a potential friend. "Can you keep out the loneliness?"

Perhaps the wild things are manifestations of Max's personality, phantom images of his own anxiety about growing up, losing things, having to leave Puff the Magic Dragon behind. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but that was the beauty of this film, for me. It gave me the space to contemplate such things, to have moments such as that one, where I got to sit and think about loneliness, and friendship, and how the human condition is so much about loneliness, and coping with it. Here, a "wild thing" is saying it, not human, but the anxiety in his yellow eyes was the anxiety I've seen in my own from time to time. Are you the one? Could you be? Could you help me? With this loneliness?

Are you the one?

My 50 favorite films of the first decade of the 21st century

To quote "that little round-headed boy":

This list means nothing, except to me. It's a list of 50 movies that gave me pleasure over the past decade. I can say without reservation that I would watch any of these again. Would I say that all of them are great films, however great films are supposed to be defined? Probably not. But that's nothing you need to worry about. Because it's my list.

1. Mulholland Drive
2. Zodiac
3. Offside
4. Mean Girls
5. The Hoax
6. The Darjeeling Limited
7. Shopgirl
8. Death Proof
9. Ghost Town
10. Punch-Drunk Love
11. The Rookie
12. Secretary
13. The Royal Tenenbaums
14. School of Rock
15. The Aviator
16. The Great Debaters
17. Rocky Balboa
18. Fireworks Wednesday
19. Stranger Than Fiction
20. About a Boy
21. (500) Days of Summer
22. Half Moon
23. 8 Mile
24. No Country For Old Men
25. Master and Commander
26. Gosford Park
27. Sin City
28. Zack and Miri Make a Porno
29. There Will Be Blood
30. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
31. Lost in Translation
32. Public Enemy
33. The Door in the Floor
34. Something's Gotta Give
35. The Day I Became a Woman
36. A Prairie Home Companion
37. The Lives of Others
38. Bend It Like Beckham
39. The Wrestler
40. Moulin Rouge
41. Erin Brockovich
42. Kwik Stop
43. Shattered Glass
44. Match Point
45. Miracle
46. Adaptation
47. Where the Wild Things Are
48. Thirst
49. Bring It On
50. Blue Crush

Commonplace Book

"We must remember that a new theatre is coming after the war with a completely new criticism, thank God. The singular figures always stand a good chance when there are sweeping changes. Keep your ear to the ground and concentrate on honesty till you know what else is coming!"

-- Tennessee Williams to Horton Foote, April 24, 1943

Commonplace Book

"You must learn now, that the important lesson - as long as you have your health - is that the divide is not between the servants and the served, between the leisured and the workers, but between those who are interested in the world and its multiplicity of forms and forces, and those who merely subsist, worrying and yawning."

-- A.S. Byatt, "Christ in the House of Martha and Mary"

Commonplace Book

"Don't be humble, son. You're not that good."

-- David Lee Roth's father to his son

Commonplace Book

"Just keep on writing. It is remarkable how one begins to know what is right."

-- Editor John Rood to Tennessee Williams, March 22, 1935

Commonplace Book

"I write at high speed because boredom is bad for my health."

-- Noel Coward

Commonplace Book

"You must give up detesting everything appertaining to Oscar Wilde or to anyone else. The critic's first duty is to admit, with absolute respect, the right of every man to his own style."

-- George Bernard Shaw to R.E. Golding Bright, Nov. 19, 1894

Commonplace Book

"Having been unpopular in high school is not just cause for book publication."

-- Fran Leibowitz

Commonplace Book

"It was good of God to let [Thomas] Carlyle and Mrs. Carlyle marry one another and so make only two people miserable instead of four."

-- Samuel Butler

Commonplace Book

"To write adequately one must know, above all, how bad are one's first drafts."

-- John Kenneth Galbraith

Commonplace Book

"All I really knew about what [Harold] Ross wished me to write was that it must be precisely accurate, highly personal, colorful, and ocularly descriptive; and that for sentence style, Gibbon was as good a model as I could bring to mind."

-- Janet Flanner

Commonplace Book

"I'm writing my third autobiography ... the other two were premature."

-- Louis Untermeyer on his 90th birthday

Commonplace Book

"For my part I keep the Commandments. I love my neighbour as my selfe, and to avoid Coveting my neighbour's wife I desire to be coveted by her, which you know is quite another thing."

-- William Congreve, letter, Sept. 27, 1700

Commonplace Book

"Play to the lines, through the lines, but never between the lines. There simply isn't time for it."

-- George Bernard Shaw to actress Ellen Terry on performing Shakespeare, 1896

Commonplace Book

"It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous."

-- Robert Benchley

Commonplace Book

"Well, I hope they understand one another - nobody else would."

-- Wordsworth, 1846 - musing on the marriage of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning

Commonplace Book

"[I have been] weeping steadily because once again I had come to the great healing chapter of the brothers Karamazov. It always chokes me up and fills me with a love of mankind which sometimes lasts till noon of the following day."

-- Alexander Woollcott to Mrs. Otis Skinner, August 2, 1935

Commonplace Book

"You never cut anything out of a book you regret later."

-- F. Scott Fitzgerald to Thomas Wolfe who was struggling with revisions at the time

Commonplace Book

"William Hazlitt owned that he could not bear young girls; they drove him mad. So I took him home to my old nurse, where he recovered perfect tranquility."

-- Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth, June 26, 1806

Commonplace Book

"Well, Jim, I haven't read any of your books but I'll have to someday because they must be good considering how well they sell."

-- Nora Joyce to her husband James, 1940

Commonplace Book

"I quite agree with you, sir, but what can two do against so many?"

-- George Bernard Shaw, 1894. Arms and the Man opened on April 21, and when the curtain fell, there were unanimous cheers. Shaw came out to bow, and one man booed. This was Shaw's response

Commonplace Book

"No it is not."

-- Oliver Goldsmith on his deathbed - answering the question if his "mind was at ease" - 1774

Commonplace Book

"Whether children will find anything amusing in it, only time will tell."

-- E.B. White to his editor Cass Canfield about Charlotte's Web

Commonplace Book

"A past master in making nothing happen very slowly."

-- Clifton Fadiman on Gertrude Stein

Commonplace Book

"I woshipped Kipling at 13, loathed him at 17, enjoyed him at 20, despised him at 25, and now again rather admire him."

-- George Orwell, 1936

Alex gets a rave

On Sunday, November 15, Alex performed her cabaret act at Sterling's in Los Angeles, and got the kind of review you dream of. So proud of you, friend. Wish I could have been there.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), dir. Frank Capra

Frank Capra on Jean Arthur (quoted in Richard Schickel's The Men Who Made the Movies):

Jean Arthur was an enigmatic figure because she doesn't do very well in crowds, and she doesn't do very well with people, and she doesn't do very well with life, but she does very well as an actress. She's afraid. She'd stand in her dressing room and practically vomit every time she had to do a scene. And she'd drum up all kinds of excuses for not being ready. Well, I finally got to know her. All I had to do was push her out into the lights, turn the camera on, and she'd blossom out into just something wonderful, very positive, certain. An assured, poised, lovely woman. And she could do anything, could express love or hate or anything else. And when the scene was over, she'd go back into that dressing room and cry. She certainly had two sides to her: the actress, this wonderful actress, and this person, this shy personality that she was in reality. She's quite a study.

Frank Capra on Jimmy Stewart:

Jimmy Stewart first of all is very, very fine actor. He's a fine man. He can project whatever his thoughts are. He can project what he's dreaming, what's in his heart, what's in his soul. He can let you see that. He's a very humble man. And at the same time he's very educated and a very knowledgeable sort of a guy. But he's got this wonderful quality - all the women want to mother him, that's his great quality. Now, they don't want to jump in bed with him, perhaps, but they certainly want to mother him. When he's in trouble, they're for him. They want to help him.

Frank Capra on Stewart again:

My father first thought of Gary Cooper for Mr. Smith, but decided that Jimmy had everything Cooper did - with one thing more - he projected an Ivy League intelligence that was crucial to the character of Jefferson Smith, and it was something Cooper did not have. Stewart was the perfect garden variety of citizen with just the right touch of Phi Beta Kappa.

Marc Elliot, from Jimmy Stewart: A Biography:

The making of Mr. Smith was fraught with controversy from the beginning, reaching all the way to the highest governmental authority in Hollywood, Joseph L. Breen, then the head of the industry's self-regulated Production Code Administration. It was one thing for a director like Capra to make a satire about Utopia, as long as it was set in some far-off Shangri-La, or a wacky comedy about a wealthy, out-of-touch family of millionaires living in a Shangri-La-like mansion exempt from the realities of the "real" world. But, as Capra was to discover, it was quite another to attempt a head-on, non-metaphoric feature about the pervasive, ongoing political corruption set within the great, vaunted walls of the United States Congress.

In 1937, Harry Cohn had optioned a short treatment written by Lewis R. Foster called The Gentleman from Montana, which concerned the gradual disillusionment of an optimistic freshman senator. Foster was an "idea man" who, like Capra, started in silent comedy but had seen his career dissipate in the first decade of talkies until he was reduced to freelancing original treatments he'd written for the studios. Cohn liked the premise of The Gentleman from Montana but initially thought about shelving it after Breen, whose office insisted it be shown all material that any studio considered filming, personally wrote back to Cohn in January 1938 rejecting the treatment because of its "general unflattering portrayal of our system [that is] a covert attack on the democratic form of government."

The project then languished from studio to studio. Everyone who read it liked it, but no one in a position to get it made was willing to challenge Breen's powerful office, until Harry Cohn decided to take a chance on it. He believed he could soften up its rougher, more controversial edges and optioned it as a project for Soviet Georgian emigre director Rouben Mamoulian. Cohn had been searching for something for Mamoulian, hoping he could sign the director to a contingent long-range contract at a bargain rate. Moreover, if a controversial project like Mr. Smith failed, he could always put the blame on what he would describe as Mamoulian's Soviet-bred anti-Americanism.

More from Marc Eliot:

Principal photography on Mr. Smith Goes to Washington began in April 1939. The interiors were mostly shot on a giant sound stage that Columbia Pictures had converted into an impressively detailed reproduction of the actual Senate chamber. Early into filming, Capra decided to personally escort his principal players to Washington D.C., to shoot some location scenes while hopefully instilling in his cast a deeper patriotic feel for the material they could use in their performances. Along with Stewart and Arthur, Capra took the always spectacular and profoundly underrated Claude Rains (Senator Joe Paine), the Capra regular and ever-dependable Edward Arnold (state machine boss and corrupt publisher Jim Taylor), Thomas Mitchell (perennially tipsy D.C. beat reporter Diz Moore), and Harry Carey (benevolent vice president and president protem of the Senate.

It was the first time Jimmy had been to the nation's capital since he was a boy, when he'd once gone with his mother and sisters to visit Alexander while he was stationed there during World War One just prior to his being shipped out to the front lines of France. This time Stewart fell deeply in awe of the capital, particularly the monuments, and especially the Lincoln Memorial, which was to play such a crucial role in two of the movie's pivotal scenes.

Jimmy Stewart:

Director Frank Capra, who taught me a lot about acting while we were making Mr. Smith, refused to build synthetic Washington street scenes at the Columbia lot or use process shots; he took the cast to Washington and caught scenes at the exact moments when natural settings dovetailed with the story. In order to get a certain light, we made a shot at the Lincoln Memorial at four in the morning. To catch me getting off a streetcar, a camera was hidden in some bushes. I got on a regular car, paid my dome and, to the motorman's amazement, departed, two blocks later - in front of the bushes. For shots of me going up the Capitol steps, I sat in a car and, at a given secret signal, went trudging up through the swarming lunch-hour crowd. This search for absolute realism, plus the superlative work of the supporting actors, had a great deal to do with 'making' the picture. I think especially of the grand performances of Claude Rains, Thomas Mitchll and Jean Arthur, a fine comedienne who proved in Mr. Smith that she could handle dramatic moments with equal skill.

More from Marc Eliot:

The film builds toward its inevitable climax in which everything miraculously resolves itself in happy democratic justice and contentment but not before what Andrew Sarris once described as the "obligatory Capra scene of the confession of folly in the most public manner possible". During this sequence, Capra shoots Stewart in ever tighter close-ups, full-face shots with no visible background, his wrists curved downward like swans' necks under his chin, his eyes darting from side to side, his face awash in sweat and agony.

Jimmy Stewart:

It was the filibuster speech that Capra started way back in the gallery with the camera and ended up two feet from my face. Capra said, 'Jesus, do it right, 'cause this is what we're going to use.' He kept getting closer and closer. By the time he got there I had the thing all worked out.

Frank Capra:

To act hoarse for the filibuster scene would be an additional hurdle that he have to go through in doing this part. So I thought I'd like to relieve that [burden] from his mind. I asked a doctor, "Look, you can cure a sore throat, can you produce one?" And he says, "Oh sure." So about three times a day he'd swab Stewart's throat with a vile mercury liquid of some kind that would swell his vocal chords and make him hoarse. He'd have to fight to get that voice out. That, of course, was a great, great help in playing the part.

Marc Eliot again:

To modern audiences Mr. Smith Goes to Washington may come off as too oversimplified a fairy tale of right triumphing over wrong, one more in the endless replays Hollywood has given the world of the David-and-Goliath tale, even if this one is staged in the arena of Washingtonian democracy. However, in its day, the film's defiant view of the reality of American politics was nothing less than populist dynamite. Nothing like it had been seen in an American mainstream movie. No filmmaker had ever before made such massive accusations about the pervasiveness of the corruption inherent in the hitherto untouchable hallowed halls of Congress. Because of it, Mr. Smith deeply resonated with a citizenry that had lived through a decade of the Depression and was now engaged in a battle over whether or not America should enter into the dangerous battlefield of World War Two.

The film had a special premiere on October 17, 1939, in Washington D.C., the audience made up of Washington insiders and Hollywood glitterati.

Marc Eliot on the response:

The very next day, senator after senator and political columnist after political columnist publicly questioned the film's depiction of the everyday mechanics of American politics. Washington columnist Willard Edwards wrote that at the premiere "members of the Senate were writhing in their seats [over their] resentment ... the Senate believes itself to have been maligned by the motion picture industry [and] is preparing to strike back at Hollywood. Frederic William Wile of the Washington Star wrote what was perhaps the most stinging attack on Capra when he insisted that the film "shows up the democratic system and our vaunted free press in exactly the colors Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin are fond of painting them."

The controversy quickly took on a life of its own, with Capra taking virtually all of the heat, while the film's stars, especially Jimmy, managed to avoid the fray. When things got too hot for Capra, he rather unfortunately suggested that maybe the blame really belonged to the film's screenwriter, Buchman, who was, Capra reminded everyone, a member of the Communist party, someone who'd "betrayed" everyone (including Capra himself) by inserting certain party "codes" into the movie.

Much to the relief of Capra and Cohn, the film's public premiere a week later, at New York's Radio City Music Hall, brought rave reviews from the general press, and it went on to become a box-office blockbuster.

Thomas Mitchell on Stewart:

He was the most naturally gifted actor I ever worked with. It was all instinct, all emotion. I don't think it came from training or technique ... it came from forces deep within him.

Andrew Sarris on Jimmy Stewart:

I would prefer to place James Stewart in a triptych of equal acting greatness with Cary Grant and James Cagney ... and say that Stewart is the most complete actor-personality in the American cinema, particularly gifted in expressing the emotional ambivalence of the action hero.

Frank Capra on Stewart:

He played [Jefferson Smith] with his whole heart and his whole mind, and that is what made it so real, so true.

Jimmy Stewart to Peter Bogdanovich:

That's the great thing about the movies ... after you learn - and if you're good enough and God helps you and you're lucky to have a personality that comes across - then what you're doing is - you're giving people little, little, tiny pieces of time, that they never forget.

Van Gogh's letters

An unbelievable online project, something I have barely dipped my toe into it's so overwhelming: 902 of Van Gogh's letters online - translated, with notes, sketches included, and also facsimiles - which is something I love beyond measure. To actually see what the letter LOOKS like. Kind of like wandering through the Alexander Hamilton exhibit at the New York Historical Society and peering at his writing, his actual writing, under glass. It's a spectacular project, and quite artfully done. There's an intuitive nature to the website (whoever designed it? Hats off). You can search the archive by correspondent, or by date. Some of the letters have sketches included, and you can go straight to those letters, or you can read them all the way through. The letters are reproduced, with the original line endings (ah, I love obsessives) in translation - because there may be some golden psychological nugget in where Van Gogh ended a line - who knows. It's gorgeous, not to be missed.

"White Christmas" in Cincinnati (and other pitstops)

Cousin Kerry is touring, at this moment, with White Christmas, and they are now in Cincinnati - having a great time. Audiences have been loving the show, as have critics (here's just one review), no surprise there, it's just beautiful, so keep your eye out for it. They're touring all through the Midwest for the next month and a half.

And, very exciting, they took a field trip on their day off to Rosemary Clooney's house - which is a museum.

Performing Revolution in Central and Eastern Europe

Awesome: an ongoing arts festival (through March 31) celebrating the role of artists in "ripping holes in the Iron Curtain". I want to see every production, go to every reading.

Daniel Gerould, author of an anthology of plays from this time called Playwrights Before the Fall, says:

“What we had in theater in Eastern Europe was a measure of what was going on beneath the surface of life in these countries. Through the arts you felt the tremors and shocks of change that might have initially been imperceptible. And it enabled people to get an inkling of what was to come.”

Fantastic-sounding festival. Speaking of playwrights, politics and revolutions (velvet or otherwise), here's a post I wrote about Vaclav Havel, one of my heroes. Naturally, his work is represented in the festival.

What we did today.

The rehearsal for "Jack Crew's Hamlet" at the New Burbage Theatre Festival

Season 1 of Slings and Arrows (which we discussed, beautifully, here.)

Yes, an obsessive post. Fun for me. Hopefully fun for all of you diehard fans of the show out there. What is so gorgeous to me about this TV series is how much it GETS the rehearsal process - the true STRUGGLES that must take place in order to, you know, get up and do it - and how that takes different forms in different people. It has respect for all of its characters (well, maybe not that bitch from Texas on the board, Holly!! She's awesome - what a truly irredeemable character, and that actress is brilliant) and the journey of Jack Crew, an American movie star who has come up to Canada to "play Hamlet", is one of the most moving in the entire series. He is young, hot, successful ... and scared out of his mind. It takes a while for him to get the courage to ... do this role ... and here, in script-form and synopsis-form, is what that process was like for him.

Also: there is some damn fine script analysis going on here.

My favorite line in the entire thing? It comes from Geoffrey, and it's one word: "Filler".

Never thought of it that way before, and now that's the only way I can think about it.

Opening credits for Season 1. Cyril at the piano in the theatre bar. He sings.

Cheer up Hamlet
Chin up Hamlet
Buck up you melancholy Dane
So your uncle is a cad who murdered Dad and married Mum
That's really no excuse to be as glum as you've become
So wise up Hamlet
Rise up Hamlet
Hark up and sing the new refrain
Your incessant monologizing fills the castle with ennui
Your antic disposition is embarrassing to see
And by the way, you sulky brat, the answer is TO BE
You're driving poor Ophelia insane
So shut up you rogue and peasant
Grow up, it's most unpleasant
Cheer up, you melancholy Dane!

From Slings & Arrows, season 1.

Geoffrey: Greetings, actors! I have news from my planet! Darren Nichols is gone. He has been sent packing. You will no longer see him or his post-modern pseudo-Brechtian leather-clad schoolboy buggery of a production design again. There are some of you who will be terrified to learn that I am taking over direction of this play. There are others who will be thrilled because you know that in my production there will be little danger of you stepping in a pile of horseshit. [Crazy laugh] But I think there is one thing that the pro-Geoffrey and anti-Geoffrey camps can agree upon and that is that my reason may very well be hanging by a thread - well, my friends, it is my belief that the best stuff happens just before the thread snaps. So. Take out your scripts. Let's begin. A free reading of the play - sitting, walking, standing, dancing, levitating - whatever it is you want to do - and Maria, I imagine we're still waiting for Ellen?

Ellen: I'm here.

Geoffrey: Fantastic. Maria? Off we go.

Maria: All right then. Hamlet. Act One. Scene One. Enter two sentinels.

Frank [as Bernardo]: Who's there?

Cyril [as Francisco]: Nay, answer me: stand, and unfold yourself.

Frank: Long live the King!

Cyril: Bernardo?

Frank: He.

Cyril: You come most carefully upon your hour.

Frank: 'Tis now struck twelve; get thee to bed, Francisco.

Cyril: For this relief much thanks.

Geoffrey sits beside the hospital bed of May Silverstone, head of the Board of Directors, who has fallen ill. He fills her in on what is happening at the theatre.

Geoffrey: Anna is bleaching her teeth and they are getting whiter every day so we're all very excited. What else .... Frank and Cyril say hello and they have baked you something but I can't pronounce it.

May: (whispering) The play ....

Geoffrey: No, May, I don't want to give you another heart attack. Okay. The play. Ellen is being Ellen. And Claire is absolutely horrible. But Jack ..... I don't know. Ultimately, this is Jack Crew's Hamlet, it's not mine, and I'm not just saying that to make excuses, but I don't know who he is. I don't know what his thing is. I don't know what he's going to bring to the role, so I can't see the Hamlet, so I can't see the play. And that's the problem.

Rehearsal for Hamlet. Jack Crew, American movie star playing Hamlet, is onstage, doing karate moves, supplying his own sound effects, as he kills Polonius. Ellen, playing Gertrude, stands by, script in hand. Geoffrey watches from the stalls, silent. The actor playing Polonius falls.

Maria (the stage manager) calls out the stage direction: "Polonius falls and dies."

Ellen [as Gertrude]: O me, what hast thou done?

Jack [as Hamlet, improvising around the text. His actual line is: "Nay, I know not:
Is it the king?" Instead he says:]: I don't know. Who was it? Was it the king?

Ellen: O, what a rash and bloody deed is this!

Jack: [again improvising - the actual line is: A bloody deed! almost as bad, good mother, As kill a king, and marry with his brother. But instead, Jack says:] Yeah, right. Almost as bad as killing a king and marrying his brother, right?

Frank [watching from the stalls, whispers to Cyril]: Why is he allowed to do that?

Cyril: It's the Method isn't it, ducky. He's making it his own. That's how they do it in America.

Up onstage, Jack discovers Polonius lying on the floor.

Jack: [his actual line as Hamlet is: Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell! I took thee for thy better - instead, Jack says:] You IDIOT! You stupid idiot. I thought you were the King. Oh well, no great loss, ey?

The ghost of Oliver hovers behind Geoffrey and he says to Geoffrey: How long are you going to let him shred the text like that?

Geoffrey: At least he's making an effort. Ellen is barely in the room.

Oliver: She'll claim she has nothing to work with.

Geoffrey: He's giving her plenty to work with.

Oliver: Unfortunately none of it was written by William Shakespeare.

Ellen: [onstage] What have I done, that thou darest wag thy tongue
In noise so rude against me?

Jack: [his actual line is:
Such an act
That blurs the grace and blush of modesty,
Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose
From the fair forehead of an innocent love
And sets a blister there, makes marriage-vows
As false as dicers' oaths: O, such a deed
As from the body of contraction plucks
The very soul, and sweet religion makes
A rhapsody of words: heaven's face doth glow:
Yea, this solidity and compound mass,
With tristful visage, as against the doom,
Is thought-sick at the act. Instead Jack says:]
What have you done? What have you DONE? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE? Fuck ME!

Geoffrey: Oh my God.

Oliver: [gesturing at his watch] Tick tick tick, Geoffrey.

Geoffrey: Well, can't you do something? Cast a spell to make it all better?

Oliver: I'm not a witch, Geoffrey.

Geoffrey: Then what good are you.

Oliver: I'm a shoulder to cry on. A quip here and there.

Geoffrey: No, honestly. Why are you haunting me like this? Do you have some kind of purpose? Is there some kind of mystical task you're supposed to perform before they let you move on because I tell ya', I'll help you my friend. I would very much like to help expedite that process.

Oliver: I'm sorry Geoffrey. I don't know why I'm here. There was no pamphlet in the coffin. Anyway ... he who is without sin ...

Geoffrey: What?

Oliver: What is YOUR purpose here? Exactly?

Long pause, as Geoffrey realizes that the rehearsal has stopped and everyone is looking at him talking to what appears to be himself.

Maria: Would you like to take a break, Geoffrey?

Geoffrey: Yeah. 15 minutes, please?

Maria: 15 minutes everyone.

Ellen sweeps by Geoffrey saying to him as she passes: "It's not my fault. He's giving me NOTHING. Sorry."

During the break, the actors mill around backstage, having snacks, looking at their scripts. Jack stands in a corner, pacing, talking to himself. Claire, who is playing Ophelia, sashays over to Kate (played by Rachel McAdams). Kate and Jack have been developing a relationship, and Claire is jealous.

Claire: Why doesn't he just say the lines?

Kate: I guess it's just part of his process.

Claire: Didn't it ever come up? I mean, when you guys were dating?

Kate: I don't want to talk about it.

Claire: (sashaying away) Fine.

Kate gets up and approaches Jack.

Kate: Hi.

Jack: Hi.

Kate: Claire's a bitch.

Jack: Yeah. She's a terrible actress too in case you haven't noticed.

Kate: Why don't you say the lines? Ever?

Jack: I can't say the lines until it feels right.

Kate: If you want to run lines ... I'm available.

Jack: No. I know the lines. I don't own them yet, you know what I mean? When I'm improvising, those are my words so it feels right.

Kate: Oh, okay, yeah, I've heard of that.

Jack: It's a Method thing I picked up when I worked with Howard.

Kate: Howard?

Jack: Ron Howard. (Claire starts laughing.) I know, Opie, right, ha ha? But the guy's been around actors since he was like three. He knows his stuff.

Kate: Sorry.

Jack: I would like to run lines with you though, if that's okay.

Kate: Okay.

Jack: You know, you wanted to take it easy ...

Kate: Well, we're just gonna run lines, right? We're not gonna have sex.

Jack: To be perfectly honest, I want to do both.

Kate: Well, running lines is okay. Tomorrow night? Your place?

Jack: Great. I'll pick up some Cheesies on my way home.

Kate: Cheesies! Classy!

Jack: If we were gonna have sex, I might spring for Nachos.

Moving on in the rehearsal process. The cast is rehearsing Act 4, scene 5. Ophelia's mad scene. Horrible-actress Claire, with a wreath of flowers in her hair, staggers around onstage, singing in a terrible sing-song voice, "Oh will not come again ..." It is horrendous. Everyone stands around looking on. Geoffrey sits with his head in his hands. Finally he can take it no longer.

Geoffrey: Stop. For God's sake, stop.

Claire: What.

Geoffrey: Where is this coming from?

Claire: What?

Geoffrey: This staggering-about-with-your-mouth-open?

Claire: You're being sarcastic again with me. Please don't be sarcastic.

Geoffrey: Actually, I'm not.

Claire: Ophelia's mad.

Geoffrey: Right.

Claire: I'm playing madness.

Geoffrey: Right. And how does staggering about with your mouth open suggest madness?

Claire: I'm not mad.

Geoffrey: Right.

Claire: And I never have been so I have to simulate it.

Geoffrey: Right.

Claire: I'm using sense memory. I'm remembering what it was like being stoned and I'm using that. I'm disoriented, my head is spinning - I think that's what it's probably like when you're insane.

Geoffrey: Right. Well. It's not. Trust me. That's what it's like when you're stoned.

Claire: Forgive me, I mean no disrespect. I don't have your experience with insanity.

Geoffrey: Right.

Claire: And this is hard anyway because I can't take any meaning from the text. Ophelia's just singing nonsense songs.

Geoffrey: Right. Claire. Claire. Claire with the hair. Ophelia is a child. She has been dominated by powerful men all of her life and suddenly they all disappear. Her brother goes to France, her father is murdered by her boyfriend, and he is shipped off to England. She is alone for the first time, grieving and heartbroken and guilty because, as far as she's concerned, it's all her fault. She ignored her brother's advice and fell in love with Hamlet and now her father is dead, all because of her, and the pain and the loss and the shame and the guilt - all of this is gnawing away inside this child's mind and it comes out as little songs. "And will he not come again? And will he not come again? No, no. He is dead. My father is dead and I killed him." Kay? Now let's try it again without the Vietnam flashback.

After this, the ghost of Oliver lets Ellen's chameleon out of its cage backstage, and it crawls on the stage, startling Claire who is acting her scene, and she falls off the stage, breaking her ankle. This means that Kate, the understudy, is going to go on. There's only a couple of days to opening. Geoffrey has been informed by Richard Smith-Jones, managing director, that there is no more money. Geoffrey decides, after having a dream of himself naked onstage, to have the cast do it in rehearsal clothes. On a bare stage. He walks into the theatre, the cast waits in the stalls. He pushes a clothing-rack in front of him

Geoffrey: "Lord, we know what we are but know not what we might be." Who said that? Ophelia. (he bows to Kate in the front row) Welcome Kate. All right, let's get started. Frank? Knock knock.

Frank: "Who's there?"

Geoffrey: Excellent. First line of the play. The world's longest knock-knock joke. Who's there, indeed? Who are these people? Who is Hamlet and Ophelia? The answer is - whoever is playing them. I want this production to be about us. Now, I am going to modify the design. You might say, throw it out. I want everyone to have a look through this rack of costume pieces and find something that you need. Don't worry about period. Shakespeare didn't care about anachronisms and neither should we. Just find something that says Prince or Daughter, or in Cyril's case - Queen. And Maria, I would very much like to move the rehearsal al fresco for today because it is a beautiful day today.

Ellen: No set?

Geoffrey: Nope. Some chairs maybe.

Ellen: Oh Jesus Christ, Geoffrey. No set? No Hamlet? It's going to be quite a show.

Geoffrey: Thanks, Ellen. Thanks for caring.

Rehearsal goes on. Jack and Ellen are rehearsing Act 3, scene 4. Things are obviously still not going well, Jack still improvising, Ellen not really acting at all. Geoffrey paces around them.

Jack [as Hamlet]: Nay, but you live in the rank sweat of an unseem'd bed, stewed in corruption, and you SCREW in that bed.

Ellen: Are you done? (Jack nods)
O, speak to me no more;
These words, like daggers, enter in mine ears;
No more, sweet Hamlet!

Oliver (whispering to Geoffrey): What is she doing? She's up to something.

Jack: Uncle Claudius is a murderer and a villain --

Oliver: She's testing you.

Geoffrey (to Oliver): STOP IT.

Ellen and Jack glance over at him.

Jack: You want us to stop?

Geoffrey: No. Ellen, you're not here, you're not in the room.

Ellen: Sorry.

Geoffrey: Polonius is dead, he's lying there on the floor, your son is accusing you of having murdered --

Ellen: I know the story.

Geoffrey: Okay, well, then please join us.

Ellen: Fine. O, speak to me no more;
These words, like daggers, enter in mine ears;
No more, sweet Hamlet!

Jack: Uncle Claudius is a murderer and a villain.

Oliver: Look at her. She's baiting you. You'd better deal with this situation, old boy before the situation festers.

Geoffrey: WILL YOU PLEASE SHUT UP?

Jack: I'm sorry, man.

Ellen: Are you in any condition to do this? Are you? Because your lunatic babblings are very distracting.

Geoffrey; Ellen, you are not participating in the process. It is very frustrating.

Ellen: I know. I know. I'm sorry.

Geoffrey: I cannot direct you if you refuse to act.

Ellen: How do I act in a play that doesn't exist?

Geoffrey: I believe the play has been around for about 400 years.

Ellen: Yes, but I can't SEE it. We have no set. And I can't hear it. I know the play well enough but I'm not hearing any of the text. I mean, what are we doing here, Geoffrey? Are we putting on Hamlet? Do we even HAVE a Hamlet? I'm sorry, Jack. I'm sorry. But we open in nine days for the love of God. And I am terrified. I mean, we all are. We are absolutely terrified.

Geoffrey: Ellen, when you start coming to rehearsals on time, and when you stop sending Maria out for cookie and coffee runs and when you stop interrupting scene work so you can run out for a quick fag, and when you start showing your fellow actors just the tiniest bit of respect, then I will be thrilled to listen to you, but until such time you will please resist the urge of speaking for the group. FUCK. Maria?

Maria: Five minutes everyone.

Geoffrey goes out into the lobby and has a confrontation with Richard Smith-Jones, who tells him that they have "cannibalized" the Previews for Hamlet in order to save money - so now Hamlet will open right after dress rehearsal, an unheard-of and terrifying situation. No previews? The heat is on. No more fucking around. Geoffrey re-enters the theatre. Ellen stands in the back, smoking. He comes up beside her.

Geoffrey: All right, let's see if he can do it.

Ellen: Please.

Geoffrey walks down the aisle, gearing up.

Geoffrey: Maria. (deep breath)

Maria: Are we back, Geoffrey?

Geoffrey: Jack? Three, one.

Maria: Act III, scene one, Claudius and Polonius -

Geoffrey: No. Just Jack. We're gonna run the soliloquy.

Jack: Okay.

The two men go up onstage together, and speak privately, with everyone watching.

Geoffrey: This one scares you, yeah?

Jack: Yeah, it scares the shit out of me.

Geoffrey: Why? You know it.

Jack: Of course I know it. Everybody knows it. That's the problem.

Geoffrey: Why?

Jack: Because when I say 'To be or not to be' the audience will be hearing every great actor who ever spoke those words. They'll hear Olivier, and Burton, or you -

Geoffrey: More likely Mel Gibson.

Jack: When I say those lines they won't be in the play anymore. They'll just be watching some guy acting.

Geoffrey: Yeah.

Jack: Me specifically.

Geoffrey: This is a problem?

Jack: Yeah, that's a fucking problem.

Geoffrey: Because you'd just be a guy acting ... and Hamlet isn't?

Jack: No. Well, he is kind of, in a way.

Geoffrey: So Hamlet is just acting - is that what you're saying?

Jack: Yeah, he acts like he's crazy - that 'antic disposition' - but then, no, not really -

Geoffrey: You have got to be specific. In this scene, Act 3 scene 1, does Hamlet know that Claudius and Polonius are spying on him?

Jack: I don't know.

Geoffrey: You have to know. If Hamlet is aware of their presence, then when you speak these particularly famous words, you are performing for the guy who killed your father and for a meddling fool - both of whom are hidden in this room. And if you don't know they're here, then your audience is you - and those people out in the seats. But you have to decide.

Jack: Now?

Geoffrey: Right now. Right now. You can keep the decision to yourself if you want to, but you have to decide. (calling out) Claudius and Polonius, please.

Jack: Jesus.

Geoffrey: Jack, listen to me. There are a lot of people here who don't think you can pull this thing off. I think they're wrong. But you have to do it - and you have to do it right now - and you have to do it with the text. So let's go. Do what you do. Act.

Geoffrey goes down and sits in the stalls. Jack sits in a chair. Nervous. He starts. Simply. Openly. He doesn't push or stutter. He speaks the words.

Jack:
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.--Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.

He glances to his left and sees Kate, standing there, as Ophelia, in tears, looking up at him, proud.

Kate: (whispers) That was great.

The cast bursts into applause, and gather around him to shake his hand. He did it. At least once. Now they will have one dress rehearsal and then opening night. Before the dress rehearsal, Geoffrey comes out to make a speech.

Geoffrey. Hello everybody. Here we go. Well, we only have one dress rehearsal which is not great but it's okay because as the saying goes ... a bad dress means...

Cast: ... a good opening.

Geoffrey: Exactly. So we are protected. We are protected to a certain extent by a cliche. No, I'm sorry. This is actually going to be a nightmare. It is going to have that sickly sickly feeling of playing to an empty house except for a couple of ushers and maybe a sympathetic lizard. There's no avoiding it, so just find your light, say your lines -a nd if you can't find your light, shout your lines from the shadows. Get through it the best you can and we'll fix what needs fixing tomorrow. It is going to be frightening. Have a good show. Oh, you know, there is one encouraging thing that I can say ... I just happen to believe that this play is the single greatest achievement in western art. So we've got that going for us.

Backstage, everyone is freaking out, running around, in a panic. Jack has been throwing up for an hour in his dressing room. He comes out, and Richard Smith-Jones comes up to him. Jack looks like hell.

Richard. Just wanted to say have a good show.

Jack: Thanks, man.I'm pretty freaked right now to tell you the truth.

Richard: (in a soothing manner) I'm sure you are, Jack. I know that things have been kind of crazy, but I just wanted to say ... Don't worry. Nobody expects you to become a classical actor. You're a movie star, and that's the truth of it. Like Geoffrey said, youll sell us out no matter what. So just go out there and have fun.

Richard walks away, thinking he has just given Jack a huge GIFT. Jack looks devastated. After the dress, we see Jack come back to his dressing room, throw all his stuff into a bag and storm out. He leaves his script on the dressing room table. He walks out. Kate runs up to him, alight.

Kate: Hey, we got through it!

Jack blows right by her and storms out the door, shouting, "Mother FUCKER."

Kate runs after him, calling, "Jack???" But she lets him go. She's not sure what just happened.

The next morning, the day of their opening night, the cast gathers at the theatre, for notes and a partial run-through. We see everyone sitting around, waiting. Geoffrey paces. Kate looks panicked.

Geoffrey finally walks off the stage and out of the theatre.

Maria: Everyone is released. Fight call is at 7:30. Until then, relax. And stay by a phone. Please.

We learn that Jack didn't show up for the rehearsal, and nobody can reach him. Maria has been calling his phone all morning. They waited two hours, until they finally canceled rehearsal. Nobody knows where he is. Nobody knows about the little tete-a-tete he had with Richard Smith-Jones. He told no one. He just vanishes. Kate, with her sudden day off, sets out around town to try to find him. She goes to his place. No go. But she does see that he has packed up his room and his bags aren't there. He's gone. She wanders around, looking at all of their old haunts, for sign of him. No luck. Finally, she finds him under the tree where they spent their first night together (platonically). She stalks up to him. He sees her.

Jack: I don't want to talk about it.

Kate: Please?

Jack: Kate.

Kate: We had to cancel rehearsal!

Jack: So? It's all bullshit, Kate. You guys talk a good game but it's all bullshit in the end.

Kate: 'You guys'? What are you talking about?

Jack: I feel hurt, Kate. Genuinely hurt. I know I'm here to sell tickets but I don't need it thrown in my face.

Kate: Did someone say something to you? Claire?

Jack: Claire? Claire's a fucking angel.

Kate: Well then who?

Jack: It was Richard, Kate. He said it didn't matter what I did onstage, nobody expects anything of me. He told me that Geoffrey said the show would sell out no matter what. My fucking high-brow genius director.

Kate: Richard said that?

Jack: He said it last night right before I went onstage. I mean, what the hell is that? The New Burbage Theatre Festival, you know? I'd rather be in LA where the assholes tell you to your face that they're assholes.

Kate: Jack, that doesn't sound right.

Jack: No, it doesn't sound fucking right, does it? I don't want to talk about it anymore. I'm getting pissed off again.

Kate: Are you going?

Jack: I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. I've gotten into three cabs today. I keep wanting to say Airport but I just end up going for a ride.

Kate: Are you staying because of me?

Jack: Kate, please, I can't deal with relationship shit on top of all of this.

Kate: Sorry.

Jack: Just walk with me, okay?

They walk through the park.

Jack: Man, I feel like my brain is gonna explode.

They sit on a bench, quietly, looking around them.

Jack: Everyone's gonna hate me for throwing a fit and running away.

Kate: No, no one's gonna hate you. It's just a screwed up process. So are you saying you want to do it?

Jack: Fuckin' right I want to do it. I wanted to do it yesterday.

Kate: Well, then that's the important part.

Jack: My head's all messed up. Fuck. Who am I kidding? I have to do it. I'm an actor and it's Hamlet. What am I gonna do, walk away? I'd feel like a loser my whole life.

Kate: So you're afraid to do it but you know you have to and if you don't you won't be able to live with yourself.

Jack: Yes!

Kate: Well ... I think you can use that onstage.

He looks at her. They kiss.

Soon, they head back to the theatre. It's opening night. No preview period. Insanity reigns backstage. The well-dressed crowd starts flocking in. Jack and Geoffrey sit in Jack's dressing room.

Jack: Why would Richard say that? Why would he go out of his way to fuck with my mind?

Geoffrey: I don't know. Why would a man kill his brother and marry his sister-in-law?

Jack: It's a fucked-up world.

Geoffrey: Yeah, it is. It is. Especially for actors. Actors are entirely dependent on other people for what they do. They need a writer, they need a director, they need someone to make their costumes, the sets, the props - they need a theatre - worst of all, they need other actors. That's a lot of people. That's not even including the audience. You bring all of those people into one place and the odds are that you are gonna get screwed by somebody. Usually by somebody wearing a tie.

Jack: I never looked at it that way.

Geoffrey: Well, you can't, can you. Otherwise, you'd go mad. Are you up to some notes? I don't want to overwhelm you or anything. It's just blocking. I want you to be seen.

Jack: Yeah. What the hell. Shoot.

As the notes session goes on, Jack starts to become more and more agitated. His nerves are overwhelming him.

Geoffrey: Oh yeah, you're drifting kind of to the right on Osric's entrance. So just try and keep stage left. If you're ever in doubt, just find your light.

Jack: Oh Jesus. I don't know what that means.

Geoffrey: What?

Jack: Find your light.

Geoffrey: I've said it to you, like, a dozen times.

Jack: Every time you say it, I never knew what you meant. I just nod my head when you say it.

Geoffrey: Wow. Okay. Light is hot. And when you're in your light, you can feel it on your face.

Jack: Look. My hands are shaking. I feel sick. FUCKING RICHARD, MAN. I can't do this! The play's too big! I can't wrap my head around it! I'm just a face, you know? Normally, I don't have to keep it up for more than 3/8ths of a page. Or it's just a glance, you know? And you do it 20 times until you get it perfect.

Geoffrey: Well, forget about perfection. There's nothing more boring than perfection. Imprecision, fear - this is what gets them to their feet.

Jack: Well, I should be brilliant then.

Geoffrey: And. It is not that big of a play.

Jack: Yeah, right.

Geoffrey: Come here. Sit down. Sit. Now look at me. I want you to think of it in terms of six soliloquies, okay? Count them off with me. 'O that this too too solid flesh'. 'O what a rogue and peasant slave am I.' 'To be or not to be.' 'Tis now the very witching hour' - that's a short one, that's only twelve lines. 'Now might I do it pat'. 'How all occasions do inform against me.' That's it. Six. And the rest, as they say, is silence.

Jack: I think there's some dialogue in between.

Geoffrey: Filler. Nail those six soliloquies, everyone goes home happy. Jack. Jack. You can do this. I'll be there.

Maria's voice over the intercom: This is your five minute call. Five minutes til the top of the show.

Jack gets up and vomits into the sink. Geoffrey nods in approval.

Geoffrey: I'll give you a moment alone.

It's the top of the show. Jack stands backstage, nervous as hell. Geoffrey comes up behind him.

Geoffrey: Six soliloquies.

The show begins. Jack paces backstage. Geoffrey talks to him.

Geoffrey: First one's gonna be easy. You are just so sick of the world and all the people in it. You just wish you could melt. Stay up left of Laertes on your entrance.

Jack: I'm gonna throw up.

Geoffrey: Use it.

Jack walks onstage.

The scene is going on. We get shots of the actors (Frank, Cyril, Kate) watching on the monitor backstage.

Claudius: But the great cannon to the clouds shall tell,
And the king's rouse the heavens all bruit again,
Re-speaking earthly thunder. Come away.

Cyril (looking up at the monitor): Here we go. Moment of truth.

Jack: O, that this too too solid flesh would melt
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on't! ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. That it should come to this!

We see Geoffrey backstage, count off on his fingers: One.

The show goes on. Jack crosses backstage, Geoffrey walks with him, talking.

Geoffrey: You are disgusted with yourself. You are a coward. You are not man, you are weak and passionless. A failure.

Jack walks onstage.

Jack: O what a rogue and peasant slave am I ...

Geoffrey walks with Jack backstage again to stage left, talking to him.

Geoffrey: On some level you long for this to be over. You long for rest, mental, spiritual rest ...

Jack: I know this one.

Jack onstage, sitting in a chair.

Jack onstage:
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die, to sleep
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to ...

The show goes on. We see other scenes. We see Richard Smith-Jones backstage, welling up with tears as he watches. We see the audience, rapt, really listening, really taking it in, laughing, pausing, listening. Now, Jack, onstage, with Soliloquy # 4. Geoffrey crouches backstage, mouthing along the words.

Jack:
'Tis now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world: now could I drink hot blood,
And do such bitter business as the day
Would quake to look on.

Geoffrey glances up and sees Ellen looking at him. He holds up four fingers, and she holds up two in return.

Jack's voice onstage:
Now might I do it pat, now he is praying;
And now I'll do't. And so he goes to heaven;
And so am I revenged. That would be scann'd:
A villain kills my father; and for that,
I, his sole son, do this same villain send
To heaven.
O, this is hire and salary, not revenge.
He took my father grossly, full of bread;
With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May;
And how his audit stands who knows save heaven?

As he speaks, we see all his fellow cast members backstage, looking out at him, enraptured, cheering him on silently. Nahim, the janitor, stands beside Kate, watching, too. His face is aglow.

Nahim: Ah. Fate plays with our prince.

Kate: What?

Nahim: He cannot kill the King while he prays.

Kate looks up at him with a huge smile on her face. Beautiful moment.

Then - Jack onstage:

Jack: How all occasions do inform against me,
And spur my dull revenge! What is a man,
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed?

We see Geoffrey watching from backstage. Oliver is standing beside him.

Oliver: It's Number Six.

Geoffrey: He's in the homestretch.

Oliver reminds Geoffrey that Geoffrey had promised to use Oliver's actual SKULL in the famous scene in Hamlet - so Geoffrey has to dash off to his office where he keeps Oliver's skull on his desk. He races back down, races underneath the stage, and places the skull under the trap door. Just in time. Jack reaches down and pulls it out.

We see Jack as Hamlet die.

Jack:
O, I die, Horatio;
The potent poison quite o'er-crows my spirit:
I cannot live to hear the news from England;
But I do prophesy the election lights
On Fortinbras: he has my dying voice;
So tell him, with the occurrents, more and less,
Which have solicited. The rest is silence.

As Jack's head falls, it is away from the audience, and we can see him lying there, eyes open, with this huge beautiful smile on his face.

The audience goes nuts. Jack comes backstage, Geoffrey hugs him, and then pushes him back onstage to take an encore. Richard, tears on his face, comes up to Geoffrey, beside himself.

Richard: I don't know what to say. That was incredible. You know, I saw Chorus Line when I was 16 years old--

Geoffrey: The critics are gonna slaughter us.

Richard: How can they?

Geoffrey: Because Jack is an American movie actor. That's all they're gonna write about, right?

Richard: They can't ignore what happened on this stage tonight.

Geoffrey: What did happen? Exactly?

Richard: I don't know. This is all new to me.

Geoffrey: Well, please. Join us again. We do eight shows a week, matinees on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

Cormac McCarthy: "Creative work is often driven by pain. It may be that if you don't have something in the back of your head driving you nuts, you may not do anything. It's not a good arrangement. If I were God, I wouldn't have done it that way."

Fantastic interview with Cormac McCarthy. Too rich to excerpt, just go read the whole thing. I'll just pull this bit out. He is asked what kind of response he has gotten to The Road from fathers:

I have the same letter from about six different people. One from Australia, one from Germany, one from England, but they all said the same thing. They said, "I started reading your book after dinner and I finished it 3:45 the next morning, and I got up and went upstairs and I got my kids up and I just sat there in the bed and held them."

Vilmos Zsigmond and Laszlo Kovacs

Just the names inspire awe and admiration, a newsreel of famous images flickering through your head. A Chinese dragon hurtling through the hills of San Francisco, for example.

Matt Zoller Seitz reviews an upcoming PBS documentary about their friendship, the legendary way it was formed (1956, in Budapest in the middle of the Soviet crackdown - the stories abound), and the lifetime of collaboration. Two immigrants, essentially, who ended up shaping, in uncountable ways, how Americans saw themselves, adding to our collective memory of the 20th century.

Today in history: November 14, 1851

"Give me Vesuvius' crater for an inkstand!" Melville apparently shouted as he sat at his desk writing Moby Dick, which was published on this day today.

It was not a success, to put it mildly. Here's an example from just one of the reviews at that time:

"We have little more to say in reprobation or in recommendation of this absurd book.... Mr. Melville has to thank himself only if his horrors and his heroics are flung aside by the general reader, as so much trash belonging to the worst school of Bedlam literature -- since he seems not so much unable to learn as disdainful of learning the craft of an artist. --Henry F. Chorley, in London Athenaeum, October 25 1851, review of "Moby Dick"

See what I mean? That's not just a bad review. It's an assassination of even the ATTEMPT of the book. (a la: "Don't even TRY, Melville.") Vicious.

Here's another example, again with that "Don't even TRY" attitude:

"Mr. Herman Melville has earned a deservedly high reputation for his performances in descriptive fiction. He has gathered his own materials, and travelled along fresh and untrodden literary paths, exhibiting powers of no common order, and great originality. The more careful, therefore, should he be to maintain the fame he so rapidly acquired, and not waste his strength on such purposeless and unequal doings as these rambling volumes about spermaceti whales." -- London Literary Gazette, December 6 1851

Melville's reputation would not recover for generations. He had had early success, but then died in obscurity. Moby Dick remains an unclassifiable novel for me - would I call it "my favorite"? I would not. But I will say this: It is, hands down, the most exciting read I have ever had. Not exciting because of all that exciting action, because as we all know, the majority of the book is one long marine biology lesson - and those were the sections that seemed to be the stumbling blocks for early reviewers and readers - like: why the hell do I care about blubber? Get back to Ahab! I certainly didn't get it the first time I had to read it at age 16, but when I re-read it, years and years later, I could not get enough of those sections. The brilliance of not only the writing - but the philosophy, and the insights - was so daunting and overwhelming that I felt like little Pip when he went mad after falling overboard: being faced with the vastness of the ocean, and God, and the blinding light of it all, he didn't know how to re-enter reality. I felt blasted open by Moby Dick. I actually found it hard to take in, there was so much ... it wasn't just a good read. It was EXCITING. Unlike any other book I've ever read.

"Moby Dick proved hard and exhausting to write. But he knew it was original and he understood that it was good. Published in 1851, it was not a success; until the first quarter of the twentieth century it was neglected. Ambitious later books were rejected. The failure of Moby Dick helped turn his primary attention to verse. Battle-Pieces (1866) was welcomed as peripheral work by a man who had once been famous for his prose. Seriously disturbed in his mind, he made a trip to the Holy Land (meeting with [Nathaniel] Hawthorne in Southport en route), and out of this visit emerged his most ambitious if not his most accomplished poem, the 18,000-line Clarel, twice as long as Paradise Lost, and in the octo-syllabic couplets of Gower's Confessio Amantis. Eventually, Melville - after working as a minor customs officer in New York - was reduced to dependence on his wife's money: she gave him an allowance to buy books and to print his later works in small editions for the tiny readership he retained. He died in 1891, quite forgotten, with the manuscript of the prose work Billy Budd completed but unpublished. His reputation was at such a low ebb that even this masterpiece went unpublished until 1924." -- Michael Schmidt, The Lives of the Poets

"The paucity of primary sources derives in large part from the downward trajectory of Melville's career. When Typee came out in 1846, he was only 27 years old. A best seller in its day, the book 'made him as famous as he would ever be when he was alive,' says Samuel Otter, an associate professor of English at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Melville's Anatomies (University of California Press, 1999).

"The name died before the man," Mr. Olsen-Smith says. "Compare Melville to Mark Twain, for instance - a man who remained beloved throughout his life and after, up to the present. People saved every scrap. ... It's a different story with Melville.' " -- Jennifer Howard, "Chronicle"

"...a cosmos (a chaos) not only perceptibly malignant as the Gnostics had intuited, but also irrational, like the cosmos in the hexameters of Lucretius." -- Jorge Luis Borges on the "cosmos" of "Moby Dick"

"In general, it is the non-psychological novel that offers the richest opportunities for psychological elucidation. Here the author, having no intentions of this sort, does not show his characters in a psychological light and thus leaves room for analysis and interpretation, or even invites it by his unprejudiced mode of presentation... I would also include Melville's Moby Dick, which I consider the be the greatest American novel, in this broad class of writings." -- Carl Jung inThe Spirit in Man, Art, & Literature

"Moby Dick was the most difficult picture I ever made. I lost so many battles during it that I even began to suspect that my assistant director was plotting against me. Then I realized that it was only God. God had a perfectly good reason. Ahab saw the White Whale as a mask worn by the Deity, and he saw the Deity as a malignant force. It was God's pleasure to torment and torture man. Ahab didn't deny God, he simply looked on him as a murderer - a thought that is utterly blasphemous: "Is Ahab Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm?...Where do murderers go?... Who's to doom, when the judge himself is dragged to the bar?"' -- John Huston, An Open Book, 1980

Letter of Herman Melville to Nathaniel Hawthorne:

June 29 1851

My dear Hawthorne ,

The clear air and open window invite me to write to you. For some time past I have been so busy with a thousand things that I have almost forgotten when I wrote you last, and whether I received an answer. This most persuasive season has now for weeks recalled me from certain crotchetty and over doleful chimearas, the like of which men like you and me and some others, forming a chain of God's posts round the world, must be content to encounter now and then, and fight them the best way we can. But come they will, -- for, in the boundless, trackless, but still glorious wild wilderness through which these outposts run, the Indians do sorely abound, as well as the insignificant but still stinging mosquitoes. Since you have been here, I have been building some shanties of houses (connected with the old one) and likewise some shanties of chapters and essays. I have been plowing and sowing and raising and painting and printing and praying, -- and now begin to come out upon a less bustling time, and to enjoy the calm prospect of things from a fair piazza at the north of the old farm house here.

Not entirely yet, though, am I without something to be urgent with. The "Whale" is only half through the press; for, wearied with the long delay of the printers, and disgusted with the heat and dust of the babylonish brick-kiln of New York, I came back to the country to feel the grass -- and end the book reclining on it, if I may. -- I am sure you will pardon this speaking all about myself, for if I say so much on that head, be sure all the rest of the world are thinking about themselves ten times as much. Let us speak, although we show all our faults and weaknesses, -- for it is a sign of strength to be weak, to know it, and out with it, -- not in [a] set way and ostentatiously, though, but incidentally and without premeditation. -- But I am falling into my old foible -- preaching. I am busy, but shall not be very long. Come and spend a day here, if you can and want to; if not, stay in Lenox, and God give you long life. When I am quite free of my present engagements, I am going to treat myself to a ride and a visit to you. Have ready a bottle of brandy, because I always feel like drinking that heroic drink when we talk ontological heroics together. This is rather a crazy letter in some respects, I apprehend. If so, ascribe it to the intoxicating effects of the latter end of June operating upon a very susceptible and peradventure feeble temperament.

Shall I send you a fin of the Whale by way of a specimen mouthful? The tail is not yet cooked -- though the hell-fire in which the whole book is broiled might not unreasonably have cooked it all ere this. This is the book's motto (the secret one), -- Ego non baptiso te in nomine -- but make out the rest yourself.

H.M

"Melville, as he always does, began to reason of Providence and futurity, and everything that lies beyond human ken, and informed me that he had 'pretty much made up his mind to be annihilated'; but still he does not seem to rest in that anticipation.... He can neither believe, nor be comfortable in his unbelief; and he is too honest and courageous not to try to do one or the other." -- Nathaniel Hawthorne, on a walk on the beach with Melville, 1857

"Readers will note that I have said nothing very much about Moby-Dick . But what can anyone say? Its quietly portentous first sentence is as famous as any in world literature ('Call me Ishmael'), and some of Ahab's monologues, like the one beginning 'Is Ahab Ahab?,' achieve an eloquence rivaling that of the Bible and Shakespeare. There are longueurs, but even in the midst of tedious cetological lore, one comes across such disturbing passages as that in which the Pequod's sailors squeeze and squeeze and squeeze handfuls of white spermacetti. Then there are the marvelous portraits of the crew -- the black cabin boy Pip, who goes mad and loses his sense of self, the well-meaning but weak Starbuck, the mysterious harpooners Queequeg, Tashtego, Daggoo. There are the haunting encounters with other ships, especially the Rachel 'searching for her lost children.' And throughout there is philosophizing that at times rises to a kind of prose poetry:

'All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life. And if you be a philosopher, though seated in a whale-boat, you would not at heart feel one whit more terror, than though seated before your evening fire with a poker, and not a harpoon, by your side.'

In Melville's lifetime few recognized or even suspected the writer's exceptional genius -- but Nathaniel Hawthorne came close, and the two men established a long-lasting friendship. After their first encounters, the writer of Polynesian adventures went back to his romantic tale about 'Whale Fishery' and, in Delbanco's words, 'tore it up from within.' Melville deepened and amplified his novel, enlarged it in every sense, with the obvious hope of joining what he called, in an essay on Hawthorne, that fraternity where 'genius, all over the world, stands hand in hand, and one shock of recognition runs the whole circle round.' With wonderful appropriateness, then, the author of The Scarlet Letter -- which appeared in 1850 -- became the dedicatee of the following year's Moby-Dick .

-- Michael Dirda, 2005

"It will be a strange sort of book, tho,' I fear; blubber is blubber you know ... and to cook the thing up, one must needs throw in a little fancy, which from the nature of the things, must be ungainly as the gambols of the whales themselves." -- Melville on "Moby Dick" - in a letter to Richard Henry, Jr.

"A sense of unspeakable security is in me at this moment, on account of your having understood the book. I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb." -- Melville to Nathaniel Hawthorne - after Hawthorne read Moby Dick

-- "[He is] a little paler, and perhaps a little sadder.... and no doubt has suffered from too constant literary occupation, pursued without much success, latterly; and his writings, for a long while past, have indicated a morbid state of mind." --Nathaniel Hawthorne, on seeing Melville in 1857

"It is--or seems to be--a wise sort of thing, to realise that all that happens to a man in this life is only by way of a joke.... And it is also worth bearing in mind, that the joke is passed around pretty liberally and impartially, so that not very many are entitled to fancy that they in particular are getting the worst of it." -- Melville to Henry Savage

E.M. Forster, from one of his lectures on the novel.

"Moby Dick is an easy book, as long as we read it as a yarn or an account of whaling interspersed with snatches of poetry. But as soon as we catch the song in it, it grows difficult and immensely important. Narrowed and hardened into words the spiritual theme of Moby Dick is as follows: a battle against evil conducted too long or in the wrong way. The White Whale is evil, and Captain Ahab is warped by constant pursuit until his knight-errantry turns into revenge. These are words -- a symbol for the book if we want one -- but they do not carry us much further than the acceptance of the book as a yarn -- perhaps they carry us backwards, for they may mislead us into harmonizing the incidents, and so losing their roughness and richness. The idea of a contest we may retain: all action is a battle, the only happiness is peace. But contest between what? We get false if we say that it is between good and evil or between two unreconciled evils. The essential in Moby Dick, its prophetic song, flows athwart the action and the surface morality like an undercurrent. It lies outside words...we cannot catch the words of the song. There has been stress, with intervals: but no explicable solution, certainly no reaching back into universal pity and love; no 'Gentlemen, I've had a good dream.'

The extraordinary nature of the book appears in two of its early incidents -- the sermon about Jonah and the friendship with Queequeg.

The sermon has nothing to do with Christianity. It asks for endurance or loyalty without hope of reward. The preacher 'kneeling in the pulpit's bows, folded his large brown hands across his chest, uplifted his closed eyes, and offered a prayer so deeply devout that he seemed kneeling and praying at the bottom of the sea.' Then he works up and up and concludes on a note of joy that is far more terrifying than a menace...

Immediately after the sermon, Ishmael makes a passionate alliance with the cannibal Queequeg, and it looks for a moment that the book is to be a saga of blood-brotherhood. But human relationships mean little to Melville, and after a grotesque and violent entry, Queequeg is almost forgotten. Almost -- not quite...

Moby Dick is full of meanings: its meaning is a different problem. It is wrong to turn the Delight or the coffin into symbols, because even if the symbolism is correct, it silences the book. Nothing can be stated about Moby Dick except that it is a contest. The rest is song."

Forster said that "prophetic" literature was one of the "forms" of the novel, and that only 4 writers came close to being prophetic: Dostoevsky, DH Lawrence, Emily Bronte, and Herman Melville. I also have to say I cannot agree strongly enough with his comment: "The rest is song." YES.

As in this, one of my favorite bits of writing not only from Moby Dick, but ever:

A word or two more concerning this matter of the skin or blubber of the whale. It has already been said, that it is stript from him in long pieces, called blanket-pieces. Like most sea-terms, this one is very happy and significant. For the whale is indeed wrapt up in his blubber as in a real blanket or counterpane; or, still better, an Indian poncho slipt over his head, and skirting his extremity. It is by reason of this cosy blanketing of his body, that the whale is enabled to keep himself comfortable in all weathers, in all seas, times, and tides. What would become of a Greenland whale, say, in those shuddering, icy seas of the north, if unsupplied with his cosy surtout? True, other fish are found exceedingly brisk in those Hyperborean waters; but these, be it observed, are your cold-blooded, lungless fish, whose very bellies are refrigerators; creatures, that warm themselves under the lee of an iceberg, as a traveller in winter would bask before an inn fire; whereas, like man, the whale has lungs and warm blood. Freeze his blood, and he dies. How wonderful is it then - except after explanation - that this great monster, to whom corporeal warmth is as indispensable as it is to man; how wonderful that he should be found at home, immersed to his lips for life in those Arctic waters! where, when seamen fall overboard, they are sometimes found, months afterwards, perpendicularly frozen into the hearts of fields of ice, as a fly is found glued in amber. But more surprising is it to know, as has been proved by experiment, that the blood of a Polar whale is warmer than that of a Borneo negro in summer.

It does seem to me, that herein we see the rare virtue of a strong individual vitality, and the rare virtue of thick walls, and the rare virtue of interior spaciousness. Oh, man! admire and model thyself after the whale! Do thou, too, remain warm among ice. Do thou, too, live in this world without being of it. Be cool at the equator; keep thy blood fluid at the Pole. Like the great dome of St. Peter's, and like the great whale, retain, O man! in all seasons a temperature of thine own.

Happy birthday, Moby Dick.

Big news

I'm still not used to having, you know, an entertainment center. I'm slow to understand my own life at times. But today I realized: Orphan Train, the TV movie, the movie I was so obsessed with as a child that I wrote it out as a novel - is on VHS. Yes, you have to buy it used - there is no such thing as a new copy of Orphan Train - but it can be done. I bought a copy yesterday and should receive it by Monday. I haven't seen it since I wrote my damn novel, at age 11. I'm almost nervous.

Oh, and Linda Manz - who I just wrote about in my post about Days of Heaven, plays one of the orphans: Sarah, the girl trapped in the house of ill repute before the "orphan train" and Jill Eikenberry chugs her off to prosperity.

I literally cannot WAIT to see this damn movie again.

The theme is Cassavetes

John Cassavetes has been everywhere the last week (not to mention on my wall, but then that's always been true). Alex and I watched Opening Night while she was here (she had never seen it). She said to me, "You know what I feel like seeing right now? Woman Under the Influence." I said, "I have it!!" Which then began a conversation about other Cassavetes films, and where it was revealed that she had never seen Opening Night. Well, this must not stand! And we MUST watch it together! It was all quite perfect because Alex was in town for a Broadway audition - and Opening Night is, of course, about an actress, and her struggles (mild word) to play a particular role. Gena Rowlands is magnificent here, but then so is everyone. We had a great time watching it. It took us about five hours because we had to keep pausing the film to talk about it, or to dig through my various Cassavetes film books to look for details about how he shot such and such a scene, or how Joan Blondell handled his process, etc.

Awesome time. That movie puts me through the wringer. I find it hard to get through by myself, actually. I need company to watch that movie.

Then there were a couple of Facebook conversations about Cassavetes (I can't get off Facebook these days), which seemed rather coincidental.

And now I read this lovely piece, and learn that November 11 was the day that Shadows, Cassavetes' first film (as a director) was screened in Manhattan. The birth of the independent film movement in America? Perhaps. Elbert Ventura talks about how Shadows came to be (a well-known story to Cassavetes fans), but also about that mythical "first version", and the controversy surrounding it. One of the details I really liked in the article was that after the "first version" was shown and it got a hostile reaction, Cassavetes decided to re-do it. Ventura writes:

Cassavetes held no truck with Hollywood convention. His movie is elliptical, uninhibited, even at times cruel. Cassavetes and his actors aren't afraid to have their characters act in unlikable ways, as when the siblings torment a square suitor waiting on a primping Lelia. But that's not to say that Cassavetes was hostile to the viewer—far from it. In fact, Cassavetes said the reason he tinkered with the original was because of that cool audience response to the first version. In other words, he listened to the test-screening crowd. Cassavetes would later call the first version "a totally intellectual movie and therefore less than human." What he wanted more than anything was to connect with those people sitting in the dark.

As difficult as his movies sometimes can be, I do think that Cassavetes' love of the audience is something not talked about much. He obviously didn't have one eye on them at all times, and wasn't interested in "pleasing" them, ie: filming films that would live up to audience expectations, and show them things they had seen before. Cassavetes was not interested in comfort. He seemed to not only abhor it, but not understand it at all, especially in art. Whatever the reason, I very much liked the added perspective of Cassavetes realizing something was wrong with that first version. It shows a discerning mind. He didn't say, "Look, you all just didn't GET it. You didn't GET what I was trying to do, and screw you!" Above all else, the man wanted engagement. Not pleasure, perhaps, but engagement. If the audience wasn't engaged, then that was on HIM to remedy.

Cassavetes himself said:

The [shortcomings of the first version] came as a shock, a shattering admission of our own ineptness. It would have been easy to side with those few who refused to believe the film was anything but marvelous, for it is one weakness that all human beings are prone to. It would have been easier just to call it a day, to wrap up the criticisms and say that those who didn't understand are idiots and that we weren't trying to impress anybody. However, it is my belief that films can educate, enlighten, entertain and give people release from their hidden fears, their individual terrors, their prejudices. For me, it is imperative that we [filmmakers] sustain our integrity as far as it can reach, because the position of leading and being listened to involves a responsibility that must be responded to. Otherwise, the man lives with the knowledge that he is a fake. It would be impossible, for me personally, to have people think I am ethical and pure and to know inside me that I am a fraud. It would make me live with the fear of time, the fear that I would waste the only life that I have.

(Quote from Cassavetes on Cassavetes, by Ray Carney.)

Shadows was a watershed moment, and it also holds up in subsequent viewings, despite its roughness and amateur acting. The film has a feel to it, an energy that cannot be faked or manufactured. As always, you feel you are looking at something real. The Criterion Collection Cassavetes collection is well worth it, tons of extra features, a booklet, all the fixings.

On November 11, 1959, Shadows was screened at the Fashion Industries Auditorium at 225 West 24th Street. 50 years ago.

Rimbaud's Son

A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize.
-- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

I saw him again the other day.

He stood in front of the St. Mark’s Hotel in the East Village beside a straggly-haired woman showing the ravages of meth on her face, and he was talking at her fanatically, gesturing with his filthy hands, in a dreamspace of self-importance and grandiosity.

For a brief autumn I had dated him.

I met him the day J.F.K., Jr. disappeared. The body had not yet been found. I stood in line at the A&P deli counter, in Hoboken, wearing a backwards baseball cap, overalls, and hi-top sneakers. What I am trying to say is that the day J.F.K., Jr. disappeared, the day I met Thomas, I looked like a Peanuts character, not at all dressed for romance. Coincidentally (bizarre, considering what day it was), I happened to be reading Chris Matthews’ political biography of Kennedy and Nixon. I had my nose in the book as I stood in line, until I heard a tough-guy voice say, “It’s a shame, ain’t it?”

I looked up and there he was leaning on the other side of the deli counter, white apron on, looking right at me. I didn’t know what he was talking about or why he was talking to me.

“What’s a shame?” I asked.

“Shame about his son,” he said.

It did not escape my notice that the guy behind the counter was gorgeous in an overblown young-John-Travolta way. He had thick wavy black hair, he was about six feet tall, and his eyes were startling. A blazing green. His skin was pale, and he had strong Italian features. Total looker, not my type at all. My type runs towards pasty beefy Irish boys, not green-eyed matinee idols in white aprons.

“Whose son?” I asked.

He gestured at my book. “His son.”

I looked at my book, and then understood. “Oh! Yeah. It is a shame. Just awful.”

It struck me as notable that he would look up from slicing turkey, see Peppermint Patty waiting in line, glance at the title of her book, and then speak about it, as though in mid-conversation. Not “Is that a good book?” or “What are you reading?”

But “It’s a shame, ain’t it?”

Two days later when I saw him sitting on a bench outside the A&P, having a cigarette on a break, I took a second to get my courage up and then walked over to him.

He remembered me. We immediately started talking about J.F.K., Jr., who had by then been found.

He told me his name was Thomas.

Thomas was odd in a way I couldn’t quite place. It was like he was ten years old inside that handsome body, he had the same open-faced enthusiasm as a child, the same fearlessness with strangers. I am much more reserved.

In that first conversation, which lasted all of fifteen minutes, I learned that he loved Rimbaud and Henry Miller. He also loved Wallace Stevens and said to me, “With my white apron on in there, I feel like the goddamn Emperor of Ice Cream.” He did not come off as pretentious or as though he was trying to name-drop me to death. He was simple, open, free. He wanted to be a writer. I would later learn that he had written a novel (unpublished), and had stashed the manuscript with a friend who was a dishwasher at a pizza joint on 12th and Willow in Hoboken. “Yeah, I let him read it. He didn’t really understand it though. I need to get it back from him.”

That first day on the bench, he asked me for my phone number and I gave it to him. He called me the following day and we met up for drinks later that night. He showed up on the date with no money, and although I was willing to pay for a couple of beers, he told me he was going to “hustle” some drinks for us. It made me uncomfortable, especially when he returned from wherever he went, wielding two Heinekens. Had he begged? Pestered? So he actually was a hustler. We sipped our hustled beers and I listened to him talk. There seemed to be no pretense with him. It was disarming. He talked and talked and talked, flowing from one topic to the other, yet always connected to me. He picked up on every gesture I made, the smallest of expressions. I learned that he lived at the YMCA in Bayonne, a pretty bleak place, and he was on the waiting list for the YMCA in Hoboken, a step up. He told me he had lived in Union City for a while, but had to move because he thought that the person in the apartment across the way was flashing lights at him from window to window, trying to pass on some sinister message. “Union City is a bad place, man,” Thomas told me. “Even the light is evil there.”

He said at one point, out of nowhere, “I hate déjà vu. I feel like one day I’m gonna go into a déjà vu and never come out.”

Although much of what he revealed (in his speech, the stories he told, his actions) was alarming to me, we started dating. There were those blazing green eyes to consider.

But what really happened was this: I loved how he talked about books. I could not get enough of it. I grew up surrounded by language, and I grew up with parents who loved to read. In my family, you come home for a visit and two seconds after you are asked, “How are you?” you are asked, “So what are you reading?”

Thomas discovered literature late. He had not grown up in a family who valued language or education. His father was violent and cold, his mother simpering and ineffective. His older brother was in prison. Thomas put himself through college. He majored in English. His family thought going to college was a stupid thing to do, a waste of time, and majoring in English was flat-out insane. But Thomas was drawn to books, to words. His taste ran to the difficult and the surreal. He could be a snob about anything that was too “easy”.

Rimbaud was the hook for Thomas, his “way in” to the world of words. He had never encountered anything so thrilling. Thomas could talk about Rimbaud for hours, and he did. To anyone who would listen. Bartenders, strippers, co-workers who spoke no English, the ex-cons who lived with him at the Bayonne Y, people on the train. He always carried a battered taped-together paperback of Rimbaud’s work in his back pocket so that he could pull it out at a moment’s notice and read out loud the passage he wanted. Rimbaud was not a distant literary figure to Thomas, he was a companion. We’d be sitting my room, and Rimbaud would come up (as he always did) and Thomas would reach into his back pocket for the book, laughing at himself as he did so. “I get so excited I’m like a little kid.” Rimbaud wasn’t really my cup of tea, but it was riveting to hear Thomas proclaim Rimbaud’s words out loud, in my room on a rainy morning, on the A train, on my fire escape, on the steps of the YMCA:

And since then I’ve been bathing in the Poem of star-infused and milky Sea,
Devouring the azure greens, where, flotsam pale,
A brooding corpse at times drifts by.

The phantasmagorical imagery of Rimbaud’s writing seemed to express to Thomas what it was actually like for him, inside his own head. Rimbaud would certainly understand the flashing evil light of Union City. Rimbaud would also fall into a déjà vu and never come out.

Thomas talked about writers as though they had written their books specifically for him. He did not come to “the greats” with preconceived notions or the sense that he should be intimidated by them. He met them fresh. To hear him talk about Yeats or Eugene O’Neill or Shakespeare was, for me, like blood to a vampire. None of it was passive received knowledge. He took it personally. So personally that he tried to commit suicide in college after reading a book by Carlos Castanada. He had spent intermittent months in institutions since then, diagnosed as bipolar. His demons were strong, but he resisted medication even though it was supposed to help him not perceive flashing lights from an opposite window as ominous Morse code. He didn’t like the dulling effects of the meds, he didn’t like having no libido, he wanted to still see blazing lights, even if they were sometimes scary.

His attachment to me happened instantly. I became the normal sane thing in his crazy life. I would pick him up at the Y, and he could escape into the confines of my cozy apartment, where there was food in the cupboards, a TV to watch, a warm bed, and he could be fed and nurtured for a bit. But I don’t like clinging, and he clung. I was not allowed to have a day to myself because he would start to get frayed and confused when not in my presence. I would say to him, “I really am not the kind of person who needs to see someone every day. As a matter of fact, I am the opposite kind of person. I cannot see you tomorrow. I need some time to myself, goddammit.” But then at 8 a.m. the next morning, a knock would come on the door, and there he would be, pleading, “I won’t get in your way! You can have time to yourself. I’ll just sit in the other room and read or something! I won’t bother you!”

Right before I met him, Thomas’ father had been diagnosed with throat cancer, and instead of facing chemo and treatment he instead chose to shoot himself in the head in front of his wife and son. Thomas told me that no matter what he did he couldn’t shake the image of his father’s head exploding all over the living room. He would wake up screaming.

I was not really serious about Thomas. I was not in love with him. I was in love with the manner in which he approached literature, and I was in love with how he talked about it. But I didn’t take him seriously for one second as a mate. At that point in my life, I felt I could not “afford” another heartbreak, and it was safe to hang out with Thomas, because he would never hurt me. This was unfair of me. Thomas was madly in love with me although I never could tell if his feelings were genuine or if he was just clutching at a safe zone, someone to take care of him in the midst of his madness and chaos. He was a hustler, remember. He knew how to get his needs met. But still. It cannot be denied that when I had had enough of the 8 a.m. knocks on my door, the badgering and pleading, the irrational outbreaks, and the nonexistent sex, I cut him loose. He never saw it coming. I hadn’t realized as it was happening how much he had deteriorated in the short time I knew him, but when I looked back at our first meeting, the difference was startling. Being under my wing made Thomas feel he didn’t need to take his medication anymore, so he slowly began to fall apart. I got out just in time. To make matters worse, he pleaded with me to change my mind, grabbing onto me in my car, stopping just short of getting too rough, tears in his eyes, begging me. It was awful. I had to pry his hands off of me and push him out of the car. Slowly, shoulders hunched, he trudged back into the YMCA, and it tore at my heart to see him. I wondered what would happen to him. I now could see the evil ominous light that had driven Thomas from Union City. It followed him around.

A week or so later, he called me (collect). I was instantly angry. “Thomas, I told you. I am done with you.”

“I know, I know, sorry, but I just had to tell you that I have a whole new plan. I just can’t take Bayonne anymore. It’s getting me down, you know, and I’ve been reading Hemingway a lot, and you know, he really dug Key West, and I think I’m gonna go down and live there, where there’s no winter and people can just live. I can sleep on the beach, and I can write. I got my book back and I want to work more on it. Hemingway was real macho, but he was an artist, too. I think Key West is gonna be good.”

It sounded crazy, but it seemed right to me, too. “That sounds good, Thomas. I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

He was manic. I could hear it in his voice. “Tennessee Williams loved Key West, too,” he babbled on. “And he was gay and everything, but that’s the thing about Key West – it can handle the two poles of masculinity” (his exact words) “ – the Hemingway and the Tennessee Williams – so it can handle me, too. I don’t want to be tough all the time like I have to be here.”

Of course Thomas had an angle in calling me. He always had an angle. All he needed from me, one last thing, was money for a one-way bus ticket to Florida. I hesitated. It wouldn’t be a lot of money, but I had already bailed him out financially a couple of times (especially since he was fired from the A&P for getting violent with a customer and also for stealing some of the deli meats for himself). But he pleaded. “This is the last time I ask you for money, I swear. And I’ll pay you back every penny.”

I gave him the money and Thomas hopped on a one-way ticket ride to the land where the Two Poles of Masculinity could remain in balance and he could hover between the two, Ernest Hemingway and Tennessee Williams holding hands across the blazing white sand.

He called me once more after that (collect, of course) to tell me how things were going. He was dismayed to learn that sleeping on the beach was not allowed in Key West and the cops were really strict about it. He was homeless for a while, stashing his duffel bag with the book manuscript in places where he knew it would be safe. He washed dishes at restaurants, crossed paths with some sketchy characters who offered him money to strip in gay clubs or have sex with older tourist women. He finally was invited by a drug dealer he had met to crash on the couch at the drug dealer’s psychedelic home, full of swirling colored tiles and mannequins hanging from the ceiling draped in Mardi Gras beads. It was something out of a Tennessee Williams play. Thomas had reached the Camino Real. It sounded, frankly, terrible to me, way worse than what had been going on for him in Bayonne, but Thomas talked about it all as though he got a kick out of the whole thing.

I asked, “So how’s that whole Two Poles of Masculinity thing going for you?” I asked.

“You know what is so weird about that, Sheila? Key West is full of roosters and stray cats. They’re everywhere. They walk like they own the streets. But I like to think of them as cocks and pussies. Everywhere you look here are cocks and pussies.” He started laughing at his own pun.

“You’re crazy. You should write all that down.”

“I go hustle drinks at Sloppy Joe’s and sit in the seat where Hemingway used to sit. It’s the island of misfit toys down here.”

I hung up with Thomas, imagining him sitting in Hemingway’s chair, surrounded by cocks and pussies, and I figured that was that. He sounded cheerful, at any rate, and at least he was out of my hair.

One wintry day a year later, I was walking down the street in Hoboken, and I glanced at a grubby figure lying in a doorway, got one glimpse of the bright green eyes, and stopped, jolted to a standstill. My heart pounded. That couldn’t be him … could it? Why was he here? He was supposed to be in Key West. When did he come back? What happened? He was so filthy I couldn’t be sure it was him, so I circled the block to take another look. I wasn’t sure why I was so frightened. It was terrible to imagine him being so lost like that. I confirmed, in my second walk-by, what I had known from the moment I saw the green eyes. It was him. The homeless man lying in the doorway was Thomas. I was upset, but what shocked me the most, scared me the most, was that his thick black hair had gone completely white in just a year. He was an old man. Whatever grip he had had on reality when I knew him was obviously gone. He was talking to himself, muttering in a cranky self-righteous way. He had his hand out for change and his fingers looked like something out of a Walker Evans photo. The light in his eyes was no longer sane. It was now unearthly, floating about untethered, never landing in one spot. The “azure greens” were now unhinged, staring at “flotsam pale” corpses 24/7. Union City got him after all.

I did battle with myself. Should I speak to him? Remind him of the freckled girl in overalls he had once cavorted with through the midnight streets of the East Village? Remind him of that one night when we were parched and couldn’t find an open deli, and Thomas grumbled, in an annoyed voice,

“Water water everywhere, and not a drop to drink!”

Would he remember me, or was his madness one that had obliterated the past, wiping out everything along with the image of his father’s head in pieces on the sofa? I moved on, without speaking, pricked with guilt, shaken up for the rest of the day.

I kept my eyes peeled after that, giving each homeless person a second look to see if it was Thomas. But I didn’t see him again, at least not in Hoboken.

Years passed.

And then, the other day, as I mentioned, I saw him again, this time in Manhattan, hanging around on the corner outside that denizen of despair, the St. Mark’s Hotel. He was arguing with his meth-whore, giving her the business, and I stood back to watch. Thomas, that beautiful sensitive man I had once loved to listen to, staggered away from her, enraged, the over-oxygenated look of a religious madman on his face. He was smoking a cigarette, his clothes were falling apart. He was skin and bones.

As he lurched past me, close enough to touch, I found myself peering at his butt, battered jeans hanging off his hipbones. I had to check. For that dog-eared copy of Rimbaud. I know it’s naïve, but if he still had that book, I thought it might mean … something.

But what would it mean? What difference would it have made, ultimately? He still would be a homeless man, off his meds, staggering down the street.

Of course there was no book in his back pocket.

I almost hadn’t recognized that dirty white-haired man. It wasn’t just his appearance that had changed so much, although he had gone through a radical transformation. It was that the actual person looking out of those green eyes was different: He, the tough sweet guy behind the deli counter, was no longer in there, and the Rimbaud had probably been lost a long time ago.

On high roads in winter nights, without roof, without clothes, without bread, a voice gripped my frozen heart:
“Weakness …
those whom I met did not see me.”

But I saw. I saw.

It’s a shame, ain’t it.

"Days of Heaven", dir. Terrence Malick

Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven is one of the most beautiful films ever made. There is something grandiose, epic, even melodramatic, about some of the vistas we see of the Texas panhandle in this film. Every corner of the giant screen is packed with beauty, arresting images, startling closeups of dew on a grain of wheat, and vast panoramic shots of empty waving fields, with one stark structure standing up in the distance. People seem miniaturized in this landscape. They lose their individuality. They become moving black specks, secondary to the natural world. The overall memory I have of the film is not of the plot, or of specific scenes. It is of the images. I can't get them out of my head. I have heard the film criticized for being too slow, nothing happens, the emotions seem muted somehow. All of this is true, but I'm not sure I think that's a fault. Perhaps it's a fault of the audience, who is primed to wait for EVENTS and climaxes, but I think Malick's mood here is deliberate. The main character of the story is not Richard Gere's hot-headed Bill, nor Brooke Adams' practical yet trapped Abby. The main character is not Sam Shepard's "farmer", nor is it Linda Manz's wonderful character of Linda, the tag-along street urchin, Richard Gere's younger sister. Linda Manz does the narration for the film (I'll get to that in a minute), and so we get that we are seeing it all through her eyes, a child's eyes. But still, the main character here is the landscape. All human endeavor, and all human relationships (made up of love, jealousy, anger, need) are secondary to the earth, and its movements and rhythms. This theme permeates the entirety of Days of Heaven, and seen in that light, of course the "problems of three little people wouldn't amount to a hill of beans".

The key to all of this is in Linda Manz's narration. I am hard-pressed to think of a more effective use of narration in a film. Maybe Taxi Driver. Linda Manz's childish tough voice, detailing the events and what they seemed like to her at the time ("at the time" - that's key - part of the power of the narration is you get the sense that she is telling this story long after the events transpired), adds to the elegiac atmosphere in ways that I am still trying to understand. Narration is tricky. It's awful if it is just telling you what you see on the screen. Then you don't need it. It's similar to unimaginative directors who choose a song to underline a scene that is so on the nose it loses its effect. An audience can start to feel condescended to if you consistently underline things for them, as though they couldn't pick it up on their own. So narration is tricky. When it's done well (like in Taxi Driver), you can't imagine the film without it. Without Robert DeNiro's tired bitter voice, detailing the filth and dirt that are seeping into his very soul, his exhausted disgust at the world he lives in, that film wouldn't be what it is. Because yes, there is a plot that has to be acted out, there are characters and dialogue and story - Taxi Driver has all of those things, but what it really is is a psychological portrait. Or, no, not a portrait. More like an excavation. The Travis Bickles of the world are forgotten, ignored, looked down upon. They seem "off". People instinctively stay away from such people. Taxi Driver gets inside his head. You are compelled to empathize, no matter how repelled you are. Narration is key to this. A recent study on psychopaths shows that mental health officials, prison guards, and other people who come into daily contact with people who are probably psychopaths (a true psychopath is very rare) all report a strange skin-crawling feeling when in the presence of such people. Gavin de Becker would call this "the gift of fear". One person in the study said that the sensation is like, "I'm about to be lunch." A propos, because these people are predators. A lion doesn't pity you. A lion eats you. The skin-crawling feeling (and I've gotten it once or twice in my life) is a warning sign, a deep evolutionary flare from within, telling you: "Get away from this person. Your life depends on it." We have Raskolnikov, an example of this in fiction, but the be-all end-all is Cathy from East of Eden. If you want to understand Travis Bickle, if you want to understand anyone with psychopathic tendencies, Cathy from East of Eden is a good place to start.

I have strayed far from my topic, but Linda Manz's narration did get me thinking.

Her voice is so distinctive. So her own. It is wise beyond its years, and feels "caught in time", rather than "acted", in any way, shape or form. That is tough for an adult to pull off in a narration, let alone a child. It feels improvised, like she really is calling up her own memories. She is articulate in the way children can be, with a bluntness of expression that is in stark contrast to the painterly beauty seen in shot after shot of the film. "He was pretty close to the boneyard," she states about Sam Shepard's Farmer. Or: "They pretended they was brother and sister. I guess it made it easier for them, because people like to talk," she says about the relationship between Gere and Adams. There is no affect in her voice. It's perceptive, this is a child who sees a lot, and maybe doesn't understand all that she sees, but she understands enough.

It is HER story, not Richard Gere's story, not Brooke Adams' story, not Sam Shepard's story. And yet, Linda Manz, in the film itself, has very little dialogue. She hovers on the outskirts, we feel her relationship to the others, we understand her character, but she the actress is NOT the lead. If the film were narrated by Brooke Adams' character, we would be traveling into treacly Lifetime movie territory. Events and emotions feel distant in Days of Heaven because that is often how children experience the upheaval of adults. It makes, yes, for a muted atmosphere. But I think that is the film's selling point, rather than its flaw.

Days of Heaven requires that you relax, you sink into it, you breathe into that world. You slow down your own rhythms to reflect the rhythms shown on screen. A river being ruffled by rain and wind. A frog sitting on a small rock, breathing in and out. Wild mustangs galloping this way and that as a thunderstorm approaches. A staring scarecrow, teetering in the middle of an endless field of wheat.

There is a school of thought that says audiences must be invested emotionally in the story. Now, of course, this is true a lot of the time. An acting teacher of mine used to say that if you were "bored" watching a movie, that was a sign. A sign that "something was wrong". Not with YOU, as in: you're not getting it, you're not paying close enough attention ... If something bores you, that is a valid response. It is interesting to contemplate: what is missing in the story? Why does it not engage me?

But stories can work on audiences in many ways. There is something like Woman Under the Influence, which tosses you into the middle of that family blow-up, and requires that you not just "go there", but you love these people. If you don't love them, then you may end up thinking, "What the hell is everyone going on and on about?" It is hard not to love John Cassavetes' characters, as rowdy and unreachable as many of them are. Even the drunken carousers in Faces, as cruelly as they all act at times ... I love them. Love makes all the difference.

Days of Heaven is not that kind of story. We have Richard Gere, and at this point in his career it was hard not to be drawn to him, to care about him. He was able to show a sort of baffled HURT that demanded you be sucked into his story. Perhaps it was because of his beauty. His beauty works on us, of course, that sort of beauty compels you to look at it, marvel at it. But so much of that HURT quality he captured so well early on in his career came from a sense that things should be EASIER for him, why weren't things just coming to him? I mean, I'm beautiful, I'm sexy, women want me ... why is everyone giving me such a hard time? It's strangely vulnerable. Gere has lost a bit of that now, in his middle age, but I think it is that that set him apart back then, that made such an impression in his early roles in Looking for Mr. Goodbar, American Gigolo, Days of Heaven and, of course, the pinnacle of this - Officer and a Gentleman. He's gorgeous, but he's vulnerable. He played great pricks. Irresistible pricks. Men trapped by their own beauty. Hard to do, hard to pull off. Because the trap here is is that those of us in the audience who are not beautiful, who have never experienced life being that gorgeous, may think, "Oh, boo-hoo, cry me a river. You're gorgeous. So life doesn't work out for you all the time. Welcome to the club." Yes, and that's it exactly. That is exactly the type of struggle that Gere embodied early on. He was a good actor. Limited, but that's okay - he was able to get, in a couple of key parts, roles that capitalized on those limits, and utilized his great and cinematic beauty. In Days of Heaven, he plays a hot-tempered impulsive guy, with a keen of kindness within him (watch how he plays with the kids, chasing, laughing, running - it makes total sense that children would gravitate towards such a man. He was HOT, not cold. Not aloof.) Beauty like his can be off-putting. Here, he wears it casually, unlike in American Gigolo, which fetishized him brilliantly.

Brooke Adams, with her distinctive elfin face, the downturned mouth, the huge eyes, plays a kind woman, who does what she has to do to survive. She loves Richard Gere, but neither of them ever talk about love. Perhaps it began as a relationship of convenience. It's easier to survive on the hustling streets of Chicago if you have a partner-in-crime than if you're by yourself. Especially if you're a woman. But their arrangement remains unspoken, understood. Events of the film bring their emotions to the forefront, as they realize how much they love each other only when they are apart. But again, none of this is spoken, or expressed. It's all in the silences.

Their romance matters to the film, but I am not invested in it emotionally in the same way that I am with John Reed and Louise Bryant in Reds, or any of the other great sweeping romances of the time. The point of the story is not the romance, or the love triangle, when Brooke Adams marries Sam Shepard (at Gere's suggestion). The "Farmer" is, as Linda Manz told us, "close to the boneyard", so if Abby marries him, maybe when he dies (hopefully soon), she will inherit his money, his property - and they all (Gere, Manz) will benefit. Things naturally don't work out that way, and the situation becomes tense, strained, sexually ambiguous.

It reminded me a bit of Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious, where Alicia Huberman (played by Ingrid Bergman) marries Claude Rains' Nazi Sebastian, as a ruse to get closer to his Nazi secrets. Cary Grant basically pushes Bergman at Rains, despite his growing love for her. The marriage is, of course, a sham, and when Alicia does a good impression of being a wife (after all, she must act the part, otherwise Sebastian would suspect!), Cary Grant's "Devlin" holds it against her. He thinks she's acting a little TOO well. It's all quite unfair, because it was his idea in the first place.

Brooke Adams is not in love with The Farmer, although she finds herself falling in love with him. None of this is said. You can see it in how she looks at him, and you can definitely see it in how he looks at her. Making love with someone every night is bound to change things, and her heart starts to open to this man. Yet she is still drawn to Gere, who scowls and pouts his way through the work on the farm, glaring across the wheatfields at the huge house standing alone.

But again, none of this appears to me to be the point. My response is not what I feel when I see Louise Bryant struggling on snowshoes through a tundra to try to get to Moscow. In that situation, I AM her. I must get to him. My life has no purpose without him. I must be by his side. The journey seems endless, and rightly so. Time slows down when we are denied what we need. Here in Days of Heaven, I do not feel the urgency of the romance between Gere and Adams. I don't feel, as I do watching Notorious, that this whole thing is effed up, and they are HURTING one another instead of LOVING one another, and it's awful! I feel here that these are two people, down on their luck, trying to make the best of it, making mistakes, acting impulsively, but still, not from any malevolent or underhanded motivation.

Days of Heaven keeps me at arm's length, except for Linda Manz's narration, and the beauty of the cinematography which is enough to catch my breath in my throat, repeatedly. It is surplus. How does one deal with surplus? Especially a surplus of beauty? I get that feeling sometimes in museums, if I spend too long there. I stop being able to take it in. I get satiated. Days of Heaven tiptoes along that line for me. You could freeze that film at any point and look at a work of art. Extraordinary.

Looking at Days of Heaven, and its composition, I immediately think of two paintings (posted below the jump). I can't believe that I'm the only one to have noticed it. It appears deliberate. I love these paintings not just for the artistry, and the beauty of the work. I love these paintings because there are stories here, untold, unspoken, and I look at them and immediately, almost by instinct, start filling in the blanks, asking questions, looking closer, wondering what is the MEANING of what I see.

The paintings are meant to be a springboard for contemplation, not the final word.

So, too, with Days of Heaven.

As You Like It, Act III,sc.5

ROSALIND (to the mousy little Phebe)

Who might be your mother,
That you insult, exult, and all at once,
Over the wretched? What though you have no beauty,--
As, by my faith, I see no more in you
Than without candle may go dark to bed--
Must you be therefore proud and pitiless?
Why, what means this? Why do you look on me?
I see no more in you than in the ordinary
Of nature's sale-work. 'Od's my little life,
I think she means to tangle my eyes too!
No, faith, proud mistress, hope not after it:
'Tis not your inky brows, your black silk hair,
Your bugle eyeballs, nor your cheek of cream,
That can entame my spirits to your worship.
You foolish shepherd, wherefore do you follow her,
Like foggy south puffing with wind and rain?
You are a thousand times a properer man
Than she a woman: 'tis such fools as you
That makes the world full of ill-favour'd children:
'Tis not her glass, but you, that flatters her;
And out of you she sees herself more proper
Than any of her lineaments can show her.
But, mistress, know yourself: down on your knees,
And thank heaven, fasting, for a good man's love:
For I must tell you friendly in your ear,
Sell when you can: you are not for all markets:
Cry the man mercy; love him; take his offer:
Foul is most foul, being foul to be a scoffer.
So take her to thee, shepherd: fare you well.

Is there a blunter line than "Sell when you can: you are not for all markets"? Ouch. Not only does Rosalind know a lot about love (making it up as she goes, of course), but she appears to have a deep understanding of the capitalist system as well.

I love that monologue. It's been coming up a lot recently.

In honor of Veterans Day:

Here is an entry from my journal when I was a junior in high school. I was madly in love (in an unrequited fashion, getting my practice in for later in life apparently) with the Band President, referred to here as "DW".

NOVEMBER 11 - VETERANS DAY

I am now here at Meredith's. It's 10:00 but it feels like it's midnight. GOD. AM I TIRED.

Today I went over to Mere's bright and early so we could see the parade together. As Mere got ready (she was still in her pjs), we listened to records, looked at rock magazines, and talked about boys. [Uhm, central casting??] We talked about two boys in particular.

Anyway, we started out and the parade had already started so I rudely tore down the sidewalk and perched on the curb looking for the band. Mere caught up with Dolores -- just then the band was going by -- in their blue suits and hats with plumes.

DW wasn't playing. He was leading the whole thing. He was dressed in a white sort of Sergeant Pepper suit with white sneakers - he held a shiny post with a ball on the end [Uhm - a baton, Sheila?] - he waved that. [Now I know I have so much distance between then and now - but come on. I was in love with this guy and suddenly I get to see him as Harold Hill?? Of COURSE I was in love with him!! "76 trombones led the big parade ..." I mean, who could resist??] Around his neck hung a whistle. He's such a big shot. I love it. I almost died when I first saw him. He looked so grand. He was walking backwards, facing the band - arms up - conducting - He kept glancing over his shoulder, and then turning back. I never knew he looked so cute. HE WAS GORGEOUS! Mere quietly stood there letting me sob on her shoulder - then - (the parade was a big 3 minutes) - we went down to Hazard School where the whole parade and everyone gathered for the memorial service for the dead veterans.

The whole walk down, I felt so weird inside. My DW feeling.

Everyone was gathered on the lawn around the big plaque - with all the names on it. The band was standing near it in lines, all holding their instruments. DW stood in line with the first row - but off to the side. He leaned his hands on the post in front of him. I didn't know he was going to be so gorgeous. He looked so solemn.

Mere and I stood smack opposite him. He was looking straight my way. Mere murmured to me, "Sheila, he is looking right at you." "I know. I know."

During the prayer, he bowed his head. [And, uhm, obviously you didn't.] I liked to see that. I like to see that he has a serious side. I could talk seriously to him.

After the ceremony, Mere and I ran over to talk to J as the band walked back to the schoool. J's so cute - she kept ordering me, "Come into the band room, Sheila! Come on! Strike up a conversation!" I kept saying, "Right. Right."

Finally, Mere and I did. It was havoc. All those blue uniforms and plumes running around. J kept giving me burning glares across the room. I casually leaned up against a column in the middle of the room, talking to Mere. ["Casually" my ass.] Suddenly, Mere mouthed hugely, "He's right there." I glanced over my shoulder. There he was. Leaning on the very same post as me. Our backs were touching.

I cannot even explain it. How can anyone explain the feeling? God, I wish I were eloquent. I know exactly the feeling, but I can't put it into words.

It's like this. I like DW so much it aches. It yawns and gnaws away inside me. (How poetic)

Anyway, I turned back to Mere, with an agonized glance - then suddenly DW sort of circled the column - using his shoulder as a pivot - so that he came face to face with me. He is so huge. He turns me on. Tall men! I like that!

He grinned down at me. "So ... how did we look out there marching?"

I wanted to throw myself on him screaming, "YOU ARE SO GORGEOUS!" but I just smiled. "You guys looked really good. Very dignified." "How'd we sound?" "You weren't playing when you passed us." Then someone walked by and asked DW "What time do we gotta be here tomorrow?" DW lifted his hand to his forehead and rubbed it, thinking. His elbow brushed against my forehead. His voice is so deep. "Eight o'clock." I stared at him. "The game starts at eight?" "Oh ... no. But we have to get here early so we can jam and stuff." [I find that absolutely endearing.] "Ah!"

Then DW went off to put his sax away. Mere made this up: DW has "sax appeal". So then. Mere and I waved to J and left. As we left, I heard sly J yell, "See ya tomorrow, Sheila!"

All the way home, Mere and I - I love her - [Note: It is not possible for me to put FOUR underlines beneath the words "I love her" - but just know that that is how it appears in the original] I am the most fortunate girl in the world. Thank you God! THANK YOU, GOD!! Dave turned to talk to me! What am I gonna do?

I'm going to the Homecoming with J and April. Mr. President will probably be there. I will not ask him to dance. I will let him ask me. I think he will if I give him a chance. I'll just strike up a conversation with him. See if he does care or if it's my overactive imagination.

Then - we all went to the Umbrella Factory - the most wonderful little store full of everything - posters of everyone, knick knacks, boxes, jewelry, mobiles - all crammed into a tiny ramshackle building. I bought a new diary. I'm almost run out on this one. My new one is beautiful. It's Chinese - or Japanese? - a woven cover of reds ilk with shiny thread - with little embroidered pagodas and flowers - I love it! And I bought a Jimmy poster [No need for last names. Me and Jimmy Dean - we're like THIS!] and some wicked stationery. [I love when the word "wicked" shows up in this context in these journals. hahahaha]

Then we went to the Gift Barn - a quaint group of stores around a small duck pond. I had run out of money by then but we had a good time anyway. I am exhausted and Mere is now ready for bed - and so am I! [Mere - while I was sleeping over your house - I sat there WRITING IN MY DIARY? How rude. I apologize! I am sure you were busy reading "rock magazines" but still.]

Football game tomorrow.

Diary - this is not a crush!!

What happens when Alex gets nervous

Alex came and stayed with me for the last 24 hours. She had an audition for the Broadway musical of Priscilla Queen of the Desert. Her first Broadway audition. Very exciting. I picked her up at 11:30 Monday morning in Manhattan. Her audition was at 3:15. I drove us back to my place. We hung out, we had bagels, everything was normal, until all hell broke loose about 2 hours before her audition. I filmed much of it, which I am sure will be unearthed sooner or later. She looked like a million bucks, stalking around my apartment, but SHE was not IN her eyes. I looked at the eyes of my good friend and no longer saw HER. She was PANICKED. She was in the bathroom doing her hair and makeup and there was silence for about 15 minutes. I puttered around, living my life. Suddenly I heard her scream, "I AM SO FUCKING SCARED." I was driving her in to her audition. I would randomly give her time checks, "We have to leave in 20 minutes" which would cause a frenzy of true and sincere panic. Then the panic would descend into random self-loathing, where she would say stuff like, "I hate myself." I would burst into laughter.

We left so much time to get to the audition that we arrived at the casting office AN HOUR EARLY. It was only three blocks north to the Church of Scientology on 46th Street, so I wondered if we could go get a quick auditing session (granted, it wouldn't be as healing as our personal tour of the Life Exhibit on Hollywood Boulevard, but every little bit counts). However, that idea was nixed. It was more important to stay put and count the minutes as they went by. We stood across the street from the building, and I said stuff like, "This is so exciting" and she would reply, "Are you on crack? This is not exciting." We had this exchange repeatedly. We filmed ourselves. We filmed the people coming out of the building. Alex kept saying, "Why do they look so CALM?"

But here, for me, was the pinnacle of Alex Being Nervous. I've never been WITH her when she's like this. We've been friends for years now, but this was a new Alex. She was, at times, utterly unreachable. It was like trying to break through to someone in a catatonic state. She chain-smoked like a dragon. She would suddenly burst forth her inner monologue of, "What am I DOING? Who do I think I AM?" And I kept saying, "Dude, you're gonna be great. I bet you're gonna GET this thing."

Before I get to the pinnacle let me say this: Alex is nothing if not articulate. She is a teacher, after all. And a writer and actress. She can talk about anything. I have had brilliant and engaging conversations with her about politics, religion, Grizzly Man, social upheaval, the history of acting, Buster Keaton, Ronald Reagan, Fred Phelps, and any other topic under the sun. We have talked about blogging and also the kind of coffee we like. We have discussed sex and Tyne Daly and high school dances. Sometimes in a 20-minute period. And in all of this, she is never less than totally articulate.

But here was an exchange we had as we stood across the street FOR AN HOUR, basically stalking the building she was about to enter.

She fired at me, as though I were her personal assistant (and on this day, I was), "What floor is it on?"

I said, "The 10th."

She looked up at the office building which was only about 12 stories high. Not a huge skyscraper or anything. And she said, and I quote, "It's so high!"

That's when I truly realized that a panicked CYBORG had hijacked my friend.

The 10th is "so high"? It is? Compared to what? A 98 floor building? Also, what does that have to do with anything? Will it make your audition any different? Would you feel differently about it if the casting office was on the 3rd floor?

I started laughing hysterically, and am still laughing.

"The 10th."
"It's so high!"

Yes, Alex, it is. But ... is it really? And what does that have to do WITH ANYTHING??

Finally, we couldn't stand it any longer and we went inside, up to the atmospherically thin level of the 10th floor - I almost got VERTIGO because of how HIGH UP WE WERE - and she signed in (she'll tell the story of what happened there), and then we sat down to wait. Surrounded by gay dancer boys, who all knew each other, waiting to audition for chorus parts, and a smattering of hottie women and only one, count 'em, ONE, transgendered person. Rock the house, Alex. And she did. She said it was one of the best auditions she's ever had.

I'll let her tell it from there, but I just had to get in my version of Alex's nerves, and how suddenly my articulate friend could think of nothing better to say than, "It's so high!!"

I knew we should have gone and gotten audited. Our engrams were all effed up.

Happy birthday, Anne Sexton

Poems and quotes from and about her below - in honor of this amazing talent, who pretty much burst fully-formed onto the poetry scene. When you read the Complete Poems, you can feel her sliding off the rails at the end (I'm not talking about mentally - I'm talking about the quality of her work, although the two are probably related) ... some of those late poems are embarrassing. (I love Robert Lowell's quote below, and think it would have been very interesting - might have saved Sexton that embarrassment). But she was all about revealing her truth, as it was in whatever moment she found herself in. The clarity and almost frightening pure expressing of much of her work is gone at the end, and some of it sounds like a bad imitation of Jack Kerouac, a riff with no purpose, no cleverness ... like this, from one of her last poems:

I love you the way the oboe plays.
I love you the way skinny dipping makes my body feels.
I love you the way a ripe artichoke tastes.
Yet I fear you,
as one in the desert fears the sun.
True.
True.

This is terrible stuff, the voice of a sentimental undergraduate in a beginning poetry class, not a celebrated prize-winning American poet. It almost embarrasses me to type that out here. So I see there to be a regression in the gift - because her first poems are spectacular, and she wasn't like Sylvia Plath, who was a precocious academic poetess, getting published in Seventeen magazine when she was still a teenager, and winning prizes, and all that. Sexton was getting married, having kids, and struggling with her sickness.

She was a housewife, mother, and madwoman - who had spent time in mental institutions, and a psychiatrist suggested that maybe she "should write" as a way to get through the darker moments. Maxine Kumin tells the story:

Nevertheless, seven months after her second child, Joyce Ladd Sexton, was born in 1955, Anne suffered a second crisis and was hospitalized. The children were sent to live with her husband's parents; and while they were separated from her, she attempted suicide on her birthday, November 9, 1956. This was the first of several episodes, or at least the first that was openly acknowledged. Frequently, these attempts occurred around Anne's birthday, a time of year she came increasingly to dread. Dr. Martin Orne, Brunner-Orne's son, was the young psychiatrist at Glenside Hospital who attended Anne during this siege and treated her for the next seven years. After administering a series of diagnostic tests, he presented his patient with her scores, objective evidence that, despite the disapproving naysayers from her past, she was highly intelligent. Her associative gifts suggested that she ought to return to the writing of poetry, something she had shown a deft talent for during secondary school. It was at Orne's insistence that Anne enrolled in the Holmes workshop.

"You, Dr. Martin" came directly out of that experience, as did so many of the poems in her first collection, To Bedlam and Part Way Back.

The first poem Anne wrote, "You, Dr. Martin", reads:

You, Doctor Martin, walk
from breakfast to madness. Late August,
I speed through the antiseptic tunnel
where the moving dead still talk
of pushing their bones against the thrust
of cure. And I am queen of this summer hotel
or the laughing bee on a stalk

of death. We stand in broken
lines and wait while they unlock
the doors and count us at the frozen gates
of dinner. The shibboleth is spoken
and we move to gravy in our smock
of smiles. We chew in rows, our plates
scratch and whine like chalk

in school. There are no knives
for cutting your throat. I make
moccasins all morning. At first my hands
kept empty, unraveled for the lives
they used to work. Now I learn to take
them back, each angry finger that demands
I mend what another will break

tomorrow. Of course, I love you;
you lean above the plastic sky,
god of our block, prince of all the foxes.
The breaking crowns are new
that Jack wore.
Your third eye
moves among us and lights the separate boxes
where we sleep or cry.

What large children we are
here. All over I grow most tall
in the best ward. Your business is people,
you call at the madhouse, an oracular
eye in our nest. Out in the hall
the intercom pages you. You twist in the pull
of the foxy children who fall

like floods of life in frost.
And we are magic talking to itself,
noisy and alone. I am queen of all my sins
forgotten. Am I still lost?
Once I was beautiful. Now I am myself,
counting this row and that row of moccasins
waiting on the silent shelf.

Her first poem.

Whether or not you "like this sort of stuff" (and that is the main complaint you hear about Sexton and the other "confessional" poets) is not the point. The point is that the VOICE we meet in "You, Dr. Martin" is confident, strong, and unselfconscious. We know we are meeting the POET, not a smokescreen of words and devices. It's not clever. Straight out of the gate, there was nothing between Anne Sexton and her expression of herself. Sylvia Plath's early poems suffer from precocity, they can come off as coy - arch - She was still working to find herself. Wonderful stuff, with some startling lines - but it wouldn't be until 1962, years into her career, when Plath would burst out with her original voice - that you would never ever mistake for anyone else's. Sexton STARTED at that point. Her voice didn't need to be developed, or honed. It came out fully-formed. There was much jealousy between the two, although they were also good friends.

Her life was not easy, and she made life hell for her husband, her kids, and anyone who really loved her. A mixture of drink, drugs, and a lifetime battle with mental illness took its toll on her relationships, certainly, but it also took its toll on her writing gift, which you can see in those later poems. They don't just read as hallucinatory or unclear. They come off as amateur.

Regardless: A remarkable journey. With some WONDERFUL poems.

My father saw her read her poetry in Cambridge, Massachusetts when he was in college. Her poetry readings were more like underground rock shows, with handmade posters, and an electric buzz of excitement running through the mostly-young crowd. They weren't poetry readings, they were events. Anne Sexton was gorgeous, and she would dress the part. When my dad saw her, she wore a bright red dress, slinked her legs around each other (so many of the photos of her have her twining those legs about), and chain-smoked. My dad said she was great, he remembers it well.

My favorite of hers is this one:

LIVE
Live or die, but don't poison everything...

Well, death's been here
for a long time --
it has a hell of a lot
to do with hell
and suspicion of the eye
and the religious objects
and how I mourned them
when they were made obscene
by my dwarf-heart's doodle.
The chief ingredient
is mutilation.
And mud, day after day,
mud like a ritual,
and the baby on the platter,
cooked but still human,
cooked also with little maggots,
sewn onto it maybe by somebody's mother,
the damn bitch!

Even so,
I kept right on going on,
a sort of human statement,
lugging myself as if
I were a sawed-off body
in the trunk, the steamer trunk.
This became perjury of the soul.
It became an outright lie
and even though I dressed the body
it was still naked, still killed.
It was caught
in the first place at birth,
like a fish.
But I play it, dressed it up,
dressed it up like somebody's doll.

Is life something you play?
And all the time wanting to get rid of it?
And further, everyone yelling at you
to shut up. And no wonder!
People don't like to be told
that you're sick
and then be forced
to watch
you
come
down with the hammer.

Today life opened inside me like an egg
and there inside
after considerable digging
I found the answer.
What a bargain!
There was the sun,
her yolk moving feverishly,
tumbling her prize --
and you realize she does this daily!
I'd known she was a purifier
but I hadn't thought
she was solid,
hadn't known she was an answer.
God! It's a dream,
lovers sprouting in the yard
like celery stalks
and better,
a husband straight as a redwood,
two daughters, two sea urchings,
picking roses off my hackles.
If I'm on fire they dance around it
and cook marshmallows.
And if I'm ice
they simply skate on me
in little ballet costumes.

Here,
all along,
thinking I was a killer,
anointing myself daily
with my little poisons.
But no.
I'm an empress.
I wear an apron.
My typewriter writes.
It didn't break the way it warned.
Even crazy, I'm as nice
as a chocolate bar.
Even with the witches' gymnastics
they trust my incalculable city,
my corruptible bed.

O dearest three,
I make a soft reply.
The witch comes on
and you paint her pink.
I come with kisses in my hood
and the sun, the smart one,
rolling in my arms.
So I say Live
and turn my shadow three times round
to feed our puppies as they come,
the eight Dalmatians we didn't drown,
despite the warnings: The abort! The destroy!
Despite the pails of water that waited,
to drown them, to pull them down like stones,
they came, each one headfirst, blowing bubbles the color of cataract-blue
and fumbling for the tiny tits.
Just last week, eight Dalmatians,
3/4 of a lb., lined up like cord wood
each
like a
birch tree.
I promise to love more if they come,
because in spite of cruelty
and the stuffed railroad cars for the ovens,
I am not what I expected. Not an Eichmann.
The poison just didn't take.
So I won't hang around in my hospital shift,
repeating The Black Mass and all of it.
I say Live, Live because of the sun,
the dream, the excitable gift.

Here are some quotes about (and from) Anne Sexton:

"All I wanted was a little piece of life, to be married, to have children.... I was trying my damnedest to lead a conventional life, for that was how I was brought up, and it was what my husband wanted of me. But one can't build little white picket fences to keep the nightmares out." -- Anne Sexton

"Untrammeled by a traditional education in Donne, Milton, Yeats, Eliot, and Pound, Anne was able to strike out alone, like Conrad's secret sharer, for a new destiny. She was grim about her lost years, her lack of a college degree; she read omnivorously and quite innocently whatever came to hand and enticed her, forming her own independent, quirky, and incisive judgments. Searching for solutions to the depressive episodes that beset her with dismaying periodicty, Anne read widely in the popular psychiatric texts of the time: interpretations of Freud, Theodore Reik, Philip Reiff, Helena Deutsch, Erik Erikson, Bruno Bettelheim. During a summer-school course with Philip Rahv, she encountered the works of Dostoevsky, Kafka, and Thomas Mann. These were succeeded by the novels of Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, and Kurt Vonnegut. But above all else, she was attracted to the fairy tales of Andersen and Grimm, which her beloved Nana had read to her when she was a child. They were for her, perhaps, what Bible stories and Greek myths had been for other writers. At the same time that she was being entertained and drawn into closer contact with a kind of collective unconscious, she was searching the fairy tales for psychological parallels." -- Maxine Kumin

"What Sexton suggested to Plath was the force of simple rhyme and simple rhythm, the magic of nursery rhyme darkened by time, of fairy tale where the happy ending somehow doesn't happen. Sexton showed Plath the way, and then Plath died first, stealing a march on her friend, which Sexton resented and envied. Four years Plath's senior, Anne Sexton survived her by twelve years, committing suicide in 1974. But Plath keeps hold of the laurels. There are wonderful things in the Complete Poems of Sexton, published in 1981, but many of them are things we associate, whatever their original source, with Plath, and Sexton's work seems but a footnote to hers." -_ Michael Schmidt, "Lives of the Poets"

"Criticism of 4 of my poems in Lowell's class: criticism of rhetoric. He sets me up with Ann Sexton, an honor, I suppose. Well, about time. She has very good things, and they get better, though there is a lot of loose stuff." -- Sylvia Plath, journal, March 20, 1959

"This then is a phenomenon ... to remind us, when we have forgotten in the weariness of literature, that poetry can happen." -- Louis Simpson on the publication of Anne Sexton's first book of poetry

"For a book or two, she grew more powerful. Then writing was too easy or too hard for her. She became meager and exaggerated. Many of her most embarrassing poems would have been fascinating if someone had put them in quotes, as the presentation of some character, not the author. -- Robert Lowell

"Have rejected the Electra poem from my book. Too forced and rhetorical. A leaf from Anne Sexton's book would do here. She has none of my clenches and an ease of phrase, and an honesty. I have my 40 unattackable poems." -- Sylvia Plath, journal, April 23, 1959

"I hold back nothing." -- Anne Sexton, 1969

"Retyped pages, a messy job, on the volume of poems I should be turning in to Houghton Mifflin this week. But AS [Anne Sexton] is there ahead of me, with her lover GS [George Starbuck] writing New Yorker odes to her and both of them together: felt our triple martini afternoons at the Ritz breaking up. That memorable afternoon at G's monastic and miserly room on Pinckney "You shouldn't have left us": where is responsibility to lie? I left, yet felt like a brown winged moth around a rather meagre candle flame, drawn. That is over." -- Sylvia Plath, journal, May 3, 1959

"Does Sexton imagine any way out of this impasse, any way to escape the debilitating terrors of a consciousness plagued by a conviction of its own evil? One possibility is to replace self-loathing with an open acceptance of evil—even admitting the likelihood that she is 'not a woman'. What is remarkable, however, is not this admission itself but the lively, almost gleeful tone in which it is uttered:

"I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming of evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.

" 'A woman like that is misunderstood,' Sexton adds wryly, but the poem is a serious attempt to understand such a woman--her sense of estrangement, her impulse toward death--by internalizing evil and giving it a voice: a chortling, self-satisfied, altogether amiable voice which suggests that 'evil' is perhaps the wrong word after all. Sexton's witch, waving her 'nude arms at villages going by,' becomes something of value to the community, performing the function Kurt Vonnegut has called the 'domestication of terror.' Unlike Plath's madwoman in 'Lady Lazarus'--a woman at the service of a private, unyielding anger, a red-haired demon whose revenge is to 'eat men like air'--Sexton's witch is essentially harmless. Although she remains vulnerable--'A woman like that is not afraid to die'--she rejects anger in favor of humor, flamboyance, self-mockery. She is a kind of perverse entertainer, and if she seems cast in the role of a martyr, embracing madness in order to domesticate it for the rest of the community--making it seem less threatening, perhaps even enjoyable--it is nevertheless a martyrdom which this aspect of Sexton accepts with a peculiar zest." -- Greg Johnson on Anne Sexton's perhaps most-famous poem, "Her Kind"

Her Kind
by Anne Sexton

I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.

I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.

I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.

"Once, when I wrote to her about my terror of publishing a second book of poems, she answered: 'Don't dwell on the book's reception. The point is to get on with it--you have a life's work ahead of you--no point in dallying around waiting for approval. We all want it, I know, but the point is to reach out honestly--that's the whole point. I keep feeling that there isn't one poem being written by any of us--or a book or anything like that. The whole life of us writers, the whole product I guess I mean, is the one long poem--a community effort if you will. It's all the same poem. It doesn't belong to any one writer--it's God's poem perhaps. Or God's people's poem. You have the gift-- and with it comes responsibility--you mustn't neglect or be mean to that gift--you must let it do its work. It has more rights than the ego that wants approval.'" -- Erica Jong

"It would be hard to find a writer who dwells more insistently on the pathetic and disgusting aspects of bodily experience." -- James Dickey - the man who wrote "Deliverance", a book that had, if I recall, quite a few "disgusting aspects". I suppose when women write about their bodies it's just grosser to some people. Men's bodily functions are somehow noble and human, women's are better not talked about. Oh, boo-hoo. I love Dickey's poems, but I do not like this comment of his.

"[Sexton's poems] raise the never-solved problem of what literature really is, where you draw the line between art and documentary." -- Hayden Carruth

"My own struggle with Anne Sexton, for twenty years now, has not been about her subject matter (she is the one who taught me that you can write a poem about anything), but about the blatant deterioration of her talent. Sexton's Complete Poems appeared in 1981, edited by her daughter/literary executor Linda Gray Sexton. This volume includes the eight books Anne Sexton sent to press during her lifetime, as well as one hundred and thirty pages of posthumously published poems. Though fascinating as Sexton documents, the latter are shockingly sloppy and full of over-the-top, bad-trip imagery. This, coupled with the fact that the last three books she did publish (The Book of Folly, The Death Notebooks, and That Awful Rowing Toward God) saw an obvious decline in quality, has made it difficult to come to grips with her complete body of work. It also didn't help that, after her death, her former mentor Robert Lowell wrote that her writing had become "meager and exaggerated." I jokingly refer to Sexton's late period as "Bad Anne." How else to reconcile such slipshod lines as "I flee. I flee. / I block my ears and eat salami" with her amazing early metaphors ("leaves . . . born in their own green blood / like the hands of mermaids") and admissions ("Once I was beautiful. Now I am myself")? It's too painful to think of her simply as a brilliant poet who got bad. And too easy, somehow, to blame it on pills, alcohol, insanity, fame. Better, I recently decided, to think of her as a genius with demons, writing to beat the clock. " -- David Trinidad

"Her delineation of femaleness [is] so fanatical that it makes one wonder, even after many years of being one, what a woman is." -- Mona Van Duyn

"All I need now is to hear that GS [George Starbuck] or MK [Maxine Kumin] has won the Yale and get a rejection of my children's book. AS [Anne Sexton] has her book accepted at HM and this afternoon will be drinking champagne. Also an essay accepted by PJHH [Peter J. Henniker-Heaton], the copy-cat. But who's to criticize a more successful copy-cat. Not to mention a poetry reading at McLean. And GS at supper last night, smug as a cream-fed cat, very pleased indeed, for AS is, in a sense, his answer to me." -- Sylvia Plath, journal, May 20th, 1959

"Her vision of Him as the winner in a crooked poker game at the end of that book [The Awful Rowing Toward God] is a sporting admission of her defeat rather than a decisive renewal of the Christian myth." -- Estella Lauter

"One feels tempted to drop [Sexton's poems] furtively in the nearest ashcan, rather than to be caught with them in the presence of so much naked suffering." -- James Dickey

"NOW: the story about George, J-- and Ann, and the children. An insufferable woman (myself of course) gets involved in the separated family. She thinks G will be fondest of her, tells mad wife (she's sick, I mean, really sick) it is of course Ann, feels very clever. Then finds out, when A's book is accepted, it is really A, gets furious. Calls up society, or gets sociologist friend to call up society for prevention of cruelty for children, never really finds out if they get through. Day in park. Children can't speak, finds herself throwing peanuts to pigeons etc. Ducks, squirrels, children blank-staring and oblivious. Smell bad, girl urinates on bench. I wouldn't be surprised to read tomorrow in the paper how that little girl was killed falling from that roof. Of course she never does read any such thing. Her good will perverted, conditional on pity that would generate from self if G was her lover, when cheated of that, it becomes nasty busybodiness. THE OLYMPIANS. Poor, married poets in Ritz bar. -- Sylvia Plath, jotting down sketches for a story about Anne Sexton, journal, June 15, 1959

Sylvia's Death - by Anne Sexton
for Sylvia Plath

O Sylvia, Sylvia,
with a dead box of stones and spoons,

with two children, two meteors
wandering loose in a tiny playroom,

with your mouth into the sheet,
into the roofbeam, into the dumb prayer,

(Sylvia, Sylvia
where did you go
after you wrote me
from Devonshire
about rasing potatoes
and keeping bees?)

what did you stand by,
just how did you lie down into?

Thief --
how did you crawl into,

crawl down alone
into the death I wanted so badly and for so long,

the death we said we both outgrew,
the one we wore on our skinny breasts,

the one we talked of so often each time
we downed three extra dry martinis in Boston,

the death that talked of analysts and cures,
the death that talked like brides with plots,

the death we drank to,
the motives and the quiet deed?

(In Boston
the dying
ride in cabs,
yes death again,
that ride home
with our boy.)

O Sylvia, I remember the sleepy drummer
who beat on our eyes with an old story,

how we wanted to let him come
like a sadist or a New York fairy

to do his job,
a necessity, a window in a wall or a crib,

and since that time he waited
under our heart, our cupboard,

and I see now that we store him up
year after year, old suicides

and I know at the news of your death
a terrible taste for it, like salt,

(And me,
me too.
And now, Sylvia,
you again
with death again,
that ride home
with our boy.)

And I say only
with my arms stretched out into that stone place,

what is your death
but an old belonging,

a mole that fell out
of one of your poems?

(O friend,
while the moon's bad,
and the king's gone,
and the queen's at her wit's end
the bar fly ought to sing!)

O tiny mother,
you too!
O funny duchess!
O blonde thing!

"I'm hunting for the truth. It might be a kind of poetic truth, and not just a factual one, because behind everything that happens to you, there is another truth, a secret life." -- Anne Sexton

Edward Hopper's Usherette

From David Thomson's The Whole Equation: A History of Hollywood:

Was [Edward] Hopper a realist, or was he dreaming as he painted this picture? Were we asleep at the movies in those days? Did all of us want to get lost?

It is a picture of an operating movie theater, yet things are wrong. There is that fragment of a black-and-white screen - not really black or white, but gradations of silver light - at the edge of a painting rich in color. There are the red drapes, scarlet, at the foot of the stairs; there are the rose-colored lamps; there is a glow on the brass rails next to the seats; the usherette's suit is midnight blue; and she is such a bright blonde - maybe she ought to be in movies herself. (Is she a premonition of Nicole Kidman?)

All that brave color needs light, and you realize slowly that just about all the house lights are on in this cinema, and maybe some it never had. With a picture playing, whether it is the feature or a preliminary attraction, there would be wounded cries to kill the lights. Darkness is the first fix moviegoers need. And the painting is very specifically silent (which is not the same here as being without sound - more of that in a minute.)

What has Hopper done? We know he was a moviegoer; as he wandered the city he spent hours in cinemas, for their own sake and to plan works like this. But he has left the lights on, when he could just as easily have painted the read dark. You can imagine that: the composition might be a little different, but every visible detail - the man's cheek in the stalls, the usherette's hair - could depend on the screen's reflected light, that moony spill. Then the painting would be darkness with just those fragments of human attention floating in the gloom, instead of a picture that is like day-for-night, like midnight shot at midday, or like a movie house that is being dreamed.

Then, do you see how the exact center of this strange picture is the least helpful? It is the featureless nothing of a heavy pillar, the thrust that separates the world of the theater (the screen, the seats, the people) from the solitude of the usherette - that quiet, peaceful sidebar where she leans against the wall, her chin resting in one hand. She is not watching the movie. She is not that kind of usherette bursting to get into pictures, a would-be actress studying every tiny gesture on the screen. No, she has her own private movie running, and maybe she is an usherette because in that job you have time to sink into your own thoughts, time to go unnoticed.

Not that she is anonymous or insignificant. Far from it. She'd be tall, I think, even without those high-heeled sandals with their sexy straps. And how does light get to her arched white feet? You can see within those dark blue slacks that she has legs all the way up, a cinched waist and the heave of breasts, as well as that corn-colored hair Doris Day had at Warner Brothers in the fifties, that drops on her shoulders like a wave. And there is light enough to pick out one side of her face - the bone-like flash of wrist and palm. I never saw skin so luminous in a functioning movie house - no, not even one glimpse of pale thigh on a back-row seat in the inadvertent swing of a south London usherette's touch. This girl has such a light strapped to her left wrist; you can see it tucked under the right elbow, thrust up to sustain the head so full of sadness or rapture.

Why watch the movie when that girl is standing there? Is that what the painting is about? Is it Hopper's way of saying that within the crowded, half-awake daydreaming of a packed theater, there may be some pressing loneliness or melancholy, one beautiful girl who doesn't buy the escape of the screen? Yes, that thought is there for sure: Hopper believed in the lonely crowd and urban solitude. He hoped to find drama there, just as his piercing eyes see her feet - put the light where the money (or the sexiness) is. But there's something else going on which has to do with the eternal difficulty in working out what is on the screen.

I mean, this is 1939, so you can propose that the picture playing is something from that famously golden year. Is it Dark Victory, Love Affair, Wuthering Heights? I can believe this girl would like those movies and know them well enough so that she could lean against a wall - Hopper is so alert to tiredness - and just listen to its dense soundtrack. I think her eyes are closed - but maybe that's just me - the better to encourage the process of digestion or absorption.

There, that is getting close to something, I think. As I look at the painting I feel myself absorbing its atmosphere, yet being absorbed, so that I wonder if the girl isn't dreaming me as I watch her. Like "Madeleine" in Vertigo, declining to notice Scotty, but falling in love with him a little even as he comes under her spell? Don't we fall in love with those who look at us with yearning?

Today in history: November 7, 1917

One of the most seismic events of the 20th century: The Russian Revolution.

Look at that gathering of rogues.

I love the grainy old photographs of all of them - they always look so twinkly and jolly, don't they? It's such a dichotomy because honestly a more humorless and nasty bunch has never existed. Stalin's face always seems to be twinkling, as though he is Santa Claus on his day off. And the "social realism" paintings of the guy are so idealized it makes me want to puke. Standing surrounded by children, glimmering and twinkling benevolently. But they ALL look like that to me. Like they are chortling from on high. I say "I love the grainy old photographs" not because it does my heart good to see Trotsky smiling - but because I find them VERY interesting. Especially, as I mentioned, the collective twinkle in the eye. It's propaganda. Very very effective propaganda. Myth-making.

On this day in 1917, the Bolsheviks seized the government buildings and put out a proclamation declaring the new government. There had been a spontaneous uprising in February of the same year, and much upheaval led up to the October Revolution. The Czar had abdicated (unbelievable) - a Provisional Government had been set up (with a mix of the old guard and the new ... well, THAT didn't last long) ... the Bolsheviks, in their power-grab, put out a notice saying that the Provisional Government was no longer.

There was almost no resistance, although a civil war followed.

The Russian Revolution is, along with Cary Grant and the early career of Ralph Macchio, one of my enduring fascinations.

Many reasons why.

First of all: I love politics and history - and whatever the outcome, you would be hard pressed to find a more important moment of political upheaval in the entire 20th century than the Russian Revolution. It changed the world.

Second of all: because it was SUCH a bad idea.

This is the secret in the secret book in 1984 (excerpt here). This is what nobody told you: The point was NEVER equality. The point was ALWAYS power - and controlling power into the hands of a very few. But the theories and ideals surrounding this secret were compelling to so many ... many still refuse to believe that there is no secret. That the smokescreen of equality was STILL the real point.

Thirdly: I am fascinated in the Russian Revolution because of the world-wide repercussions of it - and also because I vividly remember the entire edifice cracking apart in the late 80s. I couldn't believe it. I am in that generation that still grew up being afraid of Russia. Come on, I saw Red Dawn and it was real enough at the time for me to tremble at the thought of such a thing actually happening. We were the last generation to grow up with that fear. We have OTHER fears now - but not that one. I grew up during the dying gasps of the Cold War. So - to learn about the BEGINNINGS of such a political movement - something that would be entrenched for the better part of a century - has always been important to me.

And lastly,: cults fascinate me. How do you not only control what people DO but how they THINK? It all comes down to language.

In the early heady days of the Bolshevik takeover - there was something in their twinkly assurance that they could re-make the world through LANGUAGE itself. Imposing a mindset, a correct way of thinking, on a country of millions.

Victor Klemperer, a German Jew who lived in Dresden Germany and witnessed the rise of Nazi power, eventually wrote a book (after WWII and the fall of the Nazis) called The Language of the Third Reich and it is an obsessive documentation of how the language was co-opted by the Nazis. He has saved newspaper clippings, obituaries, regular classifieds - to show how the language had filtered down into even the most mundane level. It became a code. It had no life in it. It atomized - from top to bottom. It is chilling - a brilliant book, I highly recommend it (not to mention his published journals of the Nazi years - NOT to be missed: I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1933-1941 and I Will Bear Witness 1942-1945: A Diary of the Nazi Years. Invaluable historical documents. An example of his notes about "the language of the third reich" here)

John Reed's 10 days that Shook the World is a brilliant and intense piece of propaganda . It's so vivid that you can see the clouds of people's breath in the freezing air as they stomp in the packed ice outside the Winter Palace. You smell the cigar smoke, all of that. A first-hand account of the October Revolution, it was the book that "sold" the Revolution to the outside world. I used to have a way-more condescending readership than I do now - this was in the early days of my site - and most of those guys have moved on to greener friendlier pastures. I got in fights on almost a daily basis with readers who couldn't seem to stop visiting me every day, but who just couldn't stand how I wrote. It wasn't clear enough for them. They thought they were visiting, oh, Little Green Footballs or something, and then were shocked when I wasn't, you know, batshit crazy like them, and they found it baffling and enraging. It was very strange. I date most of this from a flattering mention I got in a Wall Street Journal article, with a link to my site. A nice feather in my cap, but the response was like being attacked by Mongol hordes all of a sudden (although, to be fair, many lovely articulate people ALSO found me from that mention in the WSJ - but it was hard to sort it all out at the time). I realize I can't control everything, and that people all come to me for different reasons - and that's cool - but once you're here? I encourage a certain KIND of commentary, because it, to me, is the most satisfying and civilized. But some people couldn't hack it. They OOZED with condescension towards me. These were all conservatives. I'm pretty conservative myself, but I'm not like THESE bozos, thank Christ. They all sounded the same. They all used the same words. They couldn't understand why I, who shared some of their views, used, uhm, different words. The first time I wrote about John Reed and had the GALL to praise his writing, I was condescended to within an inch of my life by idiots who can't see the difference between art and ideology. "You CAN'T praise his writing!! You just CAN'T!" I was called "just plain stupid" on a prominent conservative website. hahahahaha Sorry, that cracks me up. These worried little readers gave me long lists of things I 'NEEDED' to read (all of which I had already read) in order to counteract Reed's propaganda. Huh? These readers seemed truly nervous to be in the presence of an independent thinker who could say things like, "John Reed's a fine writer" and still have her brain intact. This became the main issue in the old days with my site: those who could not talk about art without talking about ideology. Not to mention the fact too that 100% of these people sneered, and I mean sneered, at serious conversations about film and acting. They hate actors. They hate "Hollywood", and it became an impossible situation. To these people, John Wayne was a good actor because he voted like they did, and Sean Penn was a bad actor because he voted opposite them. I just find such conversations truly tiresome, and I felt like the hostess at a really abysmal dinner party that was made up of bores and prigs. But it all worked out in the end. Most of them got sick of harassing me and moved on.

Now this is all rather interesting, in retrospect, because it shows the totalitarian mindset actually at work (albeit in a small benign way). The need to control how another person speaks is one of the cornerstones of a totalitarian gameplan. And so if people use different words, words that do not have the stamp of approval from some Bigwig on a Podium - or if they use the "right" words but put them in the "wrong" order it is seen as deeply disturbing. "Wait ... wait ... what is she SAYING?" It was truly interesting. So I would lead off not with a condemnation, but with words of praise for the writing, and people would read NO FARTHER, and jump all over me. "No no no, you have to LEAD OFF with your condemnation of the ideas - you can't just start a post with the words 'John Reed was a good writer' - because THEN what will people think??" Ah, but those are the words of an ideologue, and I am not an ideologue. I'd write a post about the control of language in Communist society, and these dudes would race in, trying to control my language. But these guys considered themselves to be defenders of democracy. It was rich!!

(twinkle, twinkle, glimmer, glimmer, look at our serious comradely rural conversation about serious ideas, we are in accord, we are dear brothers of the spirit. Yeah, right.)

Back to the topic at hand - John Reed: I love first-person accounts of any historical event. I like to feel like I am THERE. What did you smell, see, touch? One of his contemporaries has said, about Reed's writing and journalism, "He couldn't be touched", and he really can't, not in terms of reportage, as well as giving you a sweeping sense that you are there.

Reed prints all of the Bolshevik pamphlets, fliers, announcements - word for word, in facsimile sometimes, so that you can see what it actually looked like - and all of it is in that LANGUAGE of Communism, that deadening blunted-edge language - with no poetry, no humanity in it. It is FROM a collective and TO a collective. I start to drone out into some gray foggy area as I read that stuff, losing my critical mind.

To control a population: you MUST control their language. You MUST show them the "correct" way to speak. There is only ONE meaning of the word "state". There can only be ONE meaning of the word "freedom". So the leaders of the Revolution set out immediately to co-opt the language. Watch any developing revolution anywhere in the world and watch how they start by controlling the language. Look at the group of peole today who want to control the words "marriage", "family", "values". Their desire is to co-opt MEANING, make no mistake about it. Their desire is EXclusive - to shut others out, they want to "own" a word. They are not to be trusted.

George Orwell knew this, of course, and that's where the whole Newspeak thing comes from, in 1984.

I find it interesting, and ironic in a horrifying way, that Lenin would say: "While the State exists there can be no freedom; when there is freedom there will be no State."

Look at that language. The language of diametrically opposed clarity. This is not the language of humanity. It is an abstraction. I am not entirely convinced that any of these people truly believed in the Utopia, although it's not always easy to know someone's motivations or beliefs - as people are notoriously unreliable witnesses about themselves. Some of them did - and the gradations were much subtler back then, of socialism, communism, capitalism. Orwell is eloquent on all of this, as are many of the other "converts" - Arthur Koestler is another one. The belief in socialism is also a difficult thing to talk about with those who have entrenched prejudices, but again: I'm talking about history here on the ground-level - NOT the filtered-down present day version where the sides are clearly drawn. In the early days, there was much belief, there was also not a lot of information coming out of Russia, and there was a smokescreen thrown up - for decades - about what was actually happening. Many were duped. I think many were WILLINGLY duped. They went and witnessed the "show trials" of the 1930s and bought the piece of theatre as the truth. "Yes, it's awful, but these people all actually CONFESSED ... so of course they were guilty - otherwise why would they confess?" This is the pampered Western mind at work, and we should be grateful, actually, that we do have a level of incomprehension about that kind of pressure and insanity. But before that - in the teens and twenties - things were not at all as clear as they soon became.

So Lenin makes that statement about the state - but then of course what happened in Russia? The State became everything.

I refuse to just blame this on Stalin's evil - although I do think he was evil - and missing whatever piece it is that makes most of us human. I don't think he was the way he was because his Mummah didn't love him enough, or because he was short. I think there was something in him - a deadly mixture of patience and violence (rare rare rare - most dictators have the violent thing down, but what most of them lack is PATIENCE - Stalin knew how to wait ... sometimes for decades ... to get what he wanted). But I don't think Stalin took an essentially good idea and made it bad. I think it was a terrible idea to begin with.

Check out the picture below - of junkers lounging around in the Winter Palace in the fall of 1917:

From John Reed's 10 days that Shook the World - one of his descriptions of the events of Nov. 7, 1917 - marvelous writer, marvelous first-hand reportage, although my modern-day self rolls my eyes at his naivete:

By this time, in the light that streamed out of all the Winter Palace windows, I could see that the first two or three hundred men were Red Guards, with only a few scattered soldiers. Over the barricade of firewood we clambered, and leaping down inside gave a triumphant shout as we stumbled on a heap of rifles thrown down by the yunkers who had stood there. On both sides of the main gateway the doors stood wide open, light streamed out, and from the huge pile came not the slightest sound.

Carried along by the eager wave of men we were swept into the right hand entrance, opening into a great bare vaulted room, the cellar of the East wing, from which issued a maze of corridors and stair-cases. A number of huge packing cases stood about, and upon these the Red Guards and soldiers fell furiously, battering them open with the butts of their rifles, and pulling out carpets, curtains, linen, porcelain plates, glassware ... One man went strutting around with a bronze clock perched on his shoulder; another found a plume of ostrich feathers which he stuck in his hat. The looting was just beginning when somebody cried, "Comrades! Don't touch anything! Don't take anything! This is the property of the People!" Immediately twenty voices were crying, "Stop! Put everything back! Don't take anything! Property of the People!" Many hands dragged the spoilers down. Damask and tapestry were snatched from the arms of those who had them; two men took away the bronze clock. Roughly and hastily the things were crammed back in their cases, and self-appointed sentinels stood guard. It was all utterly spontaneous. Through corridors and up stair-cases the cry could be heard growing fainter and fainter in the distance, "Revolutionary discipline! Property of the People ...."

Here's all the crap I have written about Stalin over the years, if you're interested.

(portraits of the Romanovs ripped off the walls of the Palace and other official buildings)

Robert K. Massie's highwater-mark book Nicholas and Alexandra (excerpt here) describes the October Revolution from the perspective of the Czar and his family, already incarcerated (for their "protection"):

In September, the Bolsheviks gained a majority within the Petrograd Soviet. From Finland, Lenin urged an immediate lunge for supreme power: "History will not forgive us if we do not take power now ... to delay is a crime." On October 23, Lenin, in disguise, slipped back into Petrograd to attend a meeting of the Bolshevik Central Committee, which voted 10 to 1 that "insurrection is inevitable and the time fully ripe."

On November 6, the Bolsheviks struck. That day, the cruiser Aurora, flying the red flag, anchored in the Neva opposite the Winter Palace. Armed Bolshevik squads occupied the railway stations, bridges, banks, telephone exchanges, post office and other public buildings. There was no bloodshed. The next morning, November 7, Kerensky left the Winter Palace in an open Pierce-Arrow touring car accompanied by another car flying the American flag. Passing unmolested through the streets filled with Bolshevik soldiers, he drove south to try to raise help from the army. The remaining ministers of the Provisional Government remained in the Malachite Hall of the Winter Palace, protected by a women's battalion and a troop of cadets. Sitting around a green baize table, filling the ashtrays with cigarette butts, the ministers covered their scratch pads with abstract doodles and drafts of pathetic last-minute proclamations: "The Provisional Government appeals to all classes to support the Provisional Government --" At nine p.m., the Aurora fired a blank shell, and at ten, the women's battalion surrendered. At eleven, another thirty or forty shells whistled across the river from the batteries in the Fortress of Peter and Paul. Only two shells hit the palace, slightly damaging the plaster. Nevertheless, at 2:10 a.m. on November 8, the ministers gave up.

This skirmish was the Bolshevik November Revolution, later magnified in Communist mythology into an epic of struggle and heroism. In fact, life in the capital was largely undisturbed. Restaurants, stores and cinemas on the Nevsky Prospect remained open. Streetcards moved as usual through most of the city, and the ballet performed at the Maryinsky Theatre. On the afternoon of the 7th, Sir George Buchanan walked in the vicinity of the Winter Palace and found "the aspect of the quay was more or less normal." Nevertheless, this flick of Lenin's finger was all that was necessary to finish Kerensky. Unsuccessful in raising help, Kerensky never returned to Petrograd. In May, after months in hiding, he appeared secretly in Moscow, where Bruce Lockhart issued him a false visa identifying him as a Siberian soldier being repatriated home. Three days later, Kerensky left Murmansk to begin fifty years of restless exile. Trotsky later, in exile himself, scornfully wrote Kerensky's political epitaph: "Kerensky was not a revolutionist; he merely hung around the revolution ... He had no theoretical preparation, no political schooling, no ability to think, no political will. The place of these qualities was occupied by a nimble susceptibility, an inflammable temperament, and that kind of eloquence which operates neither upon mind or will but upon the nerves." Nevertheless, when Kerensky left, he carried with him the vanishing dream of a humane, liberal, democratic Russia.

From distant Tobolsk, Nicholas followed these events with keen interest. He blamed Kerensky for the collapse of the army in the July offensive and for not accepting Kornilov's help in routing the Bolsheviks. At first, he could not believe that Lenin and Trotsky were as formidable as they seemed; to him, they appeared as outright German agents sent to Russia to corrupt the army and overthrow the government. When these two men whom he regarded as unsavory blackguards and traitors became the rulers of Russia, he was gravely shocked. "I then for the first time heard the Tsar regret his abdication," said Gilliard. "It now gave him pain to see that his renunciation had been in vain and that by his departure in the interests of his country, he had in reality done her an ill turn. This idea was to haunt him more and more."

At first, the Bolshevik Revolution had little practical effect on faroff Tobolsk. Officials appointed by the Provisional Government - including Pankratov, Nikolsky and Kobylinsky - remained in office; the banks and lawcourts remained open doing business as before. Inside the governor's house, the Imperial family had settled into a routine which, although restricted, was almost cozy.

Haunting. I know it's me projecting, but it's almost like I can see their terrible fate in their eyes, even in the expressions of the little ones.

From Edvard Radzinsky's book The Last Tsar: The Life and Death of Nicholas II (a wonderful book, I love all of Radzinsky's books - he also wrote a book on Stalin (some of my thoughts on the book here), and a book on Rasputin (intemperate words from me on that book here) - he's terrific - In this book, with the opening of the archives following glasnost and perestroika, he tries to put together - through the existing documentation - the decision to murder the tsar and his family):

In his diary, Trotsky, back from the forest, described his conversation with Sverdlov:

" 'The tsar is where?'
" 'Shot, of course.' [Imagine Sverdlov's cool triumph when he told Lev to his face that they had torn his favorite bone right out of his mouth; there would be no trial.]
" 'And the family is where?'
" 'The family as well.'
" 'All of them?'
" 'Yes. What about it?' [Again Sverdlov's invisible grin between the lines: "Does the fiery revolutionary Trotsky pity them?"]
" 'Who decided this?' [Fury: he wants to know who dared not consult with him, and so on.]
" 'We all did. Ilich [Lenin] felt we could not leave them a living banner, especially given our trying conditions.' "
Yet when his anger had passed, Trotsky, who during the terrible days of the revolution had said, "We will leave, but we will slam the door so hard the world will shudder," could not have helped but admire this superrevolutionary decision.

"In essence this decision was inevitable. The execution of the tsar and his family was necessary not simply to scare, horrify, and deprive the enemy of hope, but also to shake up our own ranks, show them that there was no going back. Ahead lay total victory or utter ruin ... The masses of workers and soldiers would not have understood or accepted any other decision. Lenin had a good sense of this," Trotsky wrote.

So, according to Trotsky, it was all decided in Moscow. That was what Goloshchekin negotiated in Moscow!

This is only Trotsky's testimony, however. History recognizes documents - and I foun done. First a clue, from a letter of O.N. Kolotov in Leningrad:

"I can tell you an interesting detail about the topic of interest to you: my grandfather often told me that Zinoviev took part in the decision to execute the tsar and that the tsar was executed on the basis of a telegram sent to Ekaterinburg from the center. My grandfather can be trusted; by virtue of his work he knew a great deal. He said that he himself took part in the shootings. He called the execution a 'kick in the ass', asserting that this was in the literal sense: they turned the condemned to the wall, then brought a pistol up to the back of their head, and when they pulled the trigger they simultaneously gave them a kick in the ass to keep the blood from spattering their uniforms."

There was a telegram! I found it! Even though they were supposed to destroy it. The blood cries out!

Here it is lying before me. One stifling July afternoon I was sitting in the Archives of the October Revolution and looking at this telegram, sent seventy-two years before. I had run across it in an archive file with the boring label "Telegrams About the Organization and Activities of the Judicial Organs and the Cheka," begun on January 21, 1918, and ended on October 31, of the same 1918. Behind this label and these dates lie the Red Terror. Among the terrifying telegrams - semiliterate texts on dirty paper - my attention was struck by a two-headed eagle. The tsarist seal!

This was it. On a blank left over from the tsarist telegraph service and decorated with the two-headed eagle was this telegram: a report on the impending execution of the tsar's family. The irony of history.

At the very top of this telegram, on a piece of telegraph ribbon, is the address "To Moscow Lenin."

Below, a note in pencil: "Received July 16, 1918, 21:22." From Petrograd. And the number of the telegram: 14228.

So, on July 16, at 21:22, that is, before the Romanov's execution, this telegram arrived in Moscow.

The telegram was a long time in getting there, having been sent from Ekaterinburg to "Sverdlov, copy to Lenin". But it was sent through Zinoviev, the master of the second capital, Petrograd - Lenin's closest comrade-in-arms at the time. Zinoviev had sent the telegram on from Petrograd to Lenin.

The individuals who sent this telegram from Ekaterinburg were Goloshechekin and Safrov, another leader of the Ural Soviet.

Here is its text:

"To Moscow, the Kremlin, Sverdlov, copy to Lenin. From Ekaterinburg transmit the following directly: inform Moscow that the trial agreed upon with Filipp due to military circumstances cannot bear delay, we cannot wait. If your opinion is contrary inform immediately. Goloshchekin, Safarov. On this subject contact Ekaterinburg yourself.

And the signature: Zinoviev.

Nov. 7, 1917 NY Times front page article:

Bolsheviki Seize State Buildings, Defying Kerensky

Premier Posts Troops in Capital and Declares Workmen's Council Illegal
NORTHERN ARMY OFFERS AID
And Preliminary Parliament, Forced by Rebels to Leave Palace, Supports Him
WOMEN SOLDIERS ON GUARD
Petrograd Conditions Generally Normal Save for Outrages by So-Called Apaches
Bolsheviki Seize State Buildings

Nov. 7, Petrograd - An armed naval detachment, under orders of the Maximalist Revolutionary Committee, has occupied the offices of the official Petrograd Telegraph Agency. The Maximalists also occupied the Central Telegraph office, the State Bank and Marin Palace, where the Preliminary Parliament had suspended its proceedings in view of the situation.

Numerous precautions have been taken by Premier Kerensky to thwart the threatened outbreak. The Workmen's and Soldiers' Committee has been decreed an illegal organization. The soldiers guarding the Government buildings have been replaced by men from the officers' training schools. Small guards have been placed at the Embassies. The women's battalion is drawn up in the square in front of the Winter Palace.

The commander of the northern front has informed the Premier that his troops are against any demonstration and are ready to come to Petrograd to quell a rebellion if necessary.

No disorders are yet reported, with the exception of some outrages by Apaches. The general life of the city remains normal and street traffic has not been interrupted.

Leon Trotzky, President of the Central Executive Committee of the Petrograd Council of Workmen's Soldiers' Delegates, has informed members of the Town Duma that he has given strict orders against outlawry and has threatened with death any persons attempting to carry out pogroms.

Trotzky added that it was not the intention of the Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates to seize power, but to represent to a Congress of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates, to be called shortly, that the body take over control of the capital, for which all necessary arrangements had been perfected.

In the early hours of the morning a delegation of Cossacks appeared at the Winter Palace and told Premier Kerensky that they were disposed to carry out the Government's orders concerning the guarding of the capital, but they insisted that if hostilities began it would be necessary for their forces to be supplemented by infantry units. They further demanded that the Premier define the Government's attitude toward the Bolsheviki, citing the release from custody of some of those who had been arrested for participation in the July disturbances. The Cossacks virtually made a demand that the Government proclaim the Bolsheviki outlaws.

The Premier replied:

"I find it difficult to declare the Bolsheviki outlaws. The attitude of the Government toward the present Bolsheviki activities is known."

The Premier explained that those who had been released were on bail, and that any of them found participating in new offenses against peace would be severely dealt with.

The Revolutionary Military Committee of the Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates demanded the right to control all orders of the General Staff in the Petrograd district, which was refused. Thereupon the committee announced that it had appointed special commissioners to undertake the direction of the military, and invited the troops to observe only orders signed by the committee. Machine gun detachments moved to the Workmen's and Soldiers' headquarters.

In addressing the Preliminary Parliament yesterday Premier Kerensky charged the Military Committee of the Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates with having distributed arms and ammunition to workmen.

"That is why I consider part of the population of Petrograd in a state of revolt," he said, "and have ordered an immediate inquiry and such arrests as are necessary. The Government will perish rather than cease to defend the honor, security, and independence of the State."

The Preliminary Parliament, in response to the Premier's appeal for a vote of confidence, voted to "work in contact with the Government." The resolution, which originated with the Left, was carried by a vote of 123 to 102, with 26 members abstaining from voting. A resolution offered by the Centre calling for the suppression of the Bolshevikis and a full vote of confidence failed to reach a vote. The Cabinet, however, considers the resolution adopted as expressive of the Parliament's support.

The reported resignation of Admiral Verdervski, Minister of Marine, was denied after the Cabinet meeting. It was stated that all the ministers had agreed to retain their portfolios.

The Bolshevik Chairman of the Petrograd Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates, realizing that there are more ways than one of acquiring real authority, not only attempted its capture by armed force but also by a far more ingenuous plan, which was disclosed today. He formed a so-called Military Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet, and informed the Headquarters Staff of the Petrograd military district that only orders sanctioned by the Military Revolutionary Committee would be executed.

On Sunday night the committee appeared at the staff offices and demanded the right of entry, control and veto. Receiving a natural and emphatic refusal, the military revolutionaries wired everywhere to the general effect that the Petrograd district headquarters were opposed to the wishes of the revolutionary garrison, and were becoming a counter revolutionary centre. This bid for the loyalty of the garrison has so far yielded no definite results, but obviously is extremely dangerous, especially in view of the fact that in the Petrograd garrison discipline is extremely lax.

It is said the Provisional Government intends to prosecute the Military Revolutionary Committee. It should be noted that the All-Russian Executive Committee of the Soviets is backing the Provisional Government. There is a general feeling of reaction against the Bolshevik-ridden Soviets, a feeling completely loyal to the revolution but impatient of disorders.

Speaking of Russia, I am sure by now most of you have heard the Siren's exciting news. TCM, in January, will have a month-long series of films under the banner "Shadows of Russia". Congrats to the Siren, what a wonderful project!

A place for everyone

As someone who has always had a soft spot for pin-up artist and illustrator Enoch Bolles, it makes me so happy to have come across this goldmine.

I love the Web.

If you're obsessed with something? Someone out there has created an entire blog in service of that obsession.

The triangle

Generosity
Reciprocity
Scarcity

Sometimes one of these is at the apex, sometimes another, they switch places, but they are all inter-related. As with most everything these days, my relationship to these words threatens to become rigid and neurotic, and I am trying to, instead, just WORK with my feelings around these words, let them breathe. It is not easy. So much of how I operate is kneejerk, based on years of experience. So it is with us all.

I have a generous nature. I am rarely stingy. I am stingy with my money sometimes, but not my time or attention. Especially if I love you or if I am beginning to be interested in you. My instinct is always towards generosity. I consider this to be a good thing. Auden's words resonate for me: "If equal affection cannot be / Let the more loving one be me." Difficult, empowering, beautiful.

In the current state, however, with generosity always being in a tug-pull relationship with reciprocity and scarcity, it has become something I feel I need to get a handle on.

This is where "reciprocity" comes in.

Generosity without reciprocity is something I am no longer interested in. Now, I don't want to make too big of a generalization because there are times when generosity without reciprocity is something that makes the world seem like a better and warmer place. Waiting a tiny bit to hold the door for the person coming up behind you. Or like my story about the gentleman taking off his sweater to help someone. Generosity should be offered. Regardless. It is how I try to live my life. But on a more interpersonal level, on a less abstract level, I'm talking about ME now, and my experience, I have found that too often I am generous without expecting reciprocity. Because I can take care of myself. Because it is too disappointing to expect reciprocity. Because I don't want to be rejected, but I still want to have the sensation of GIVING, because that's a good thing. And on and on. I am trying to see what it is like to expect reciprocity, in my dealings with others, and not let my generosity just stand on its own. I certainly notice when someone doesn't say "Thank you" if I hold open the door for them, although most times they do. This is not about testing people, and expecting them to come up short. To me, that is the very definition of STINGY. People who go around constantly bemoaning how rude and ungrateful everyone seems to be "these days" are usually stingy people, in my experience. Their expectation of the world is that everyone is rude now. (As though everyone was polite in, oh, 1942? Really?) And so that is what they see. It is a stingy outlook, with limited expectations of your fellow man. So that is not what I'm talking about. I recently had an experience where my generosity was taken advantage of. It was a sucker-punch. I had thought I was in a reciprocal situation, and then found out I wasn't, and the end result is that I basically just felt used. I rarely feel used. I'm responsible with myself, I don't give it away to just ANYONE. I protect myself. But in this case, my defenses were down, and I got beaten up by it. What I had thought was reciprocity was not at all. I was being taken advantage of - the very thing about me that I think is the best part of me, my generous nature, was turned against me. I am thankful I haven't had a ton of experiences like that, because just one was enough to make me bitter for all time. So now. New rule. Generosity must not be offered without some expectation of reciprocity. That's relationships. For example, I need a friend to talk to, I call a friend, I talk about my problems, the friend listens and supports and helps me out. If a week later that friend calls me, and needs to talk and needs my help, and I blow them off - then I am not holding up my end of the relationship. Maybe that particular time isn't good for me to talk, sure, but if it's an ongoing issue - then the relationship is compromised. It's one-sided. If I offer something to someone, a gift (not literally - it could be time, or attention, or a compliment) - and they say, "Thank you so much!" - then that is a lovely thing. I ain't sneezing at it. But if it is then not followed up with some sort of gift in return (time, attention, a compliment) - I am trying to see that as the red flag that it is. Doormats expect nothing in return. I have been a doormat. I had the best intentions, but my fatal flaw was letting things go on for too long without expecting reciprocity.

Which brings me to the third point in the triangle: Scarcity.

When one operates from scarcity, all of this becomes totally skewed. Operating from scarcity means there is never enough. It is the opposite of generosity. The universe appears to be NOT a generous place, but an eternally stingy place, with not enough to go around. Other people have the full meal, you get the crumbs. And so you have to make those crumbs last a long long time.

Scarcity messes with your head. I like to come up with phrases, and "operate from scarcity" has really worked for me, because it does (in its way) remind me that it is how I OPERATE, not how it REALLY IS. But like I said, scarcity messes with your head, bro. Don't taze me, scarcity! And when you have lived under that scarcity-outlook for so long, it is hard to experience anything generous in the way of reciprocity without feeling voracious. Because the tiny moment of reciprocity will have to last for months, maybe years, I am already trying to sculpt it into a narrative that will work for me and nourish for me long after the moment has passed. This is the definition of neurosis in my book, a label I cop to openly.

The triangle pushes and pulls. I am in a state of high awareness and anxiety. I refuse to stop being generous just because I got taken advantage of this spring. I've lived too long to let THAT change my entire way of life. But this past spring and summer were, indeed, a crack - I don't want to understate it. My impulse is still towards being generous. I wait to see if it is reciprocated. I have no specific expectation of reciprocity, as in a specific result. I like to talk to other people about what's going on with them. It's one of my greatest delights to find out how other people operate, who they are, what they like. I could go on like that indefinitely. But if the question doesn't return towards my way - "and so ... what are YOU like?" ... then I am yet again in the situation of Generosity Without Reciprocity. Red flag. Everyone likes to talk about themselves. But so do I. Give and take, baby, give and take.

Scarcity effs the whole thing up. It makes me want to go for a land-grab or something. Reach out and sweep it all into my bag in one fell swoop, so I can capture it, hold onto it. But life shouldn't work that way. It very well may be a stingy universe, although I have my doubts. There are too many good things out there, too much possibility for goodness and light and love. It is, indeed, a choice. You have a stingy attitude, then the universe will seem stingy. Generosity is a CHOICE. Often you are not congratulated for it. But you should do it anyway, right? Like that guy with the sweater. Sometimes, though, it is easier to be generous to strangers. It is simpler. There isn't as much the possibility of heartbreak or disappointment. Operating from scarcity means: that I have made a decision, over the last terrible couple of years, to keep putting my heart out there, to keep GIVING, and try not to have TOO much of an expectation of getting anything back. But this is bad, Sheila. This is SCARCITY talking. No self-respecting person doesn't expect something in return. This is how we are in relationship to one another. I scratch your back, you scratch mine, let's get married. That's how it works.

My perspective is indeed skewed. And no point of the triangle, at this moment, exists without the other points.

It makes meeting new people stressful. But it's also an opportunity for an experiment.

Scarcity is a given right now. I can't do anything about that. At least not short-term. I am working on trying to "operate from abundance", but that will be a big project, taking lots of work. Ain't going to happen overnight. So Scarcity is a given.

Generosity and Reciprocity are never givens. They are choices, and also expectations. They are qualities and actions that exist in the world, and we choose them, or we do not. In my view, right now, each one is worthless without the other. I see married couples who WORK as a couple. I see generosity yes. But I also see reciprocity.

It's a new paradigm for me. Danger is everywhere. Scarcity keeps me honest, I think, but it also keeps me safe and small. It messes with my experience of all of this, because to me a cigar is never just a cigar. Generosity comes from an experience of deprivation, and reciprocity starts to feel like a promise, or if it is withheld, it is yet another indication of the stinginess of the entire enterprise.

But boy, when generosity is returned with generosity.

Nothing quite like it.

The triangle persists.

Thank you, Kim Morgan

Kim Morgan - my favorite writer out there (she writes at Sunset Gun) - just flagged me as one of the writers she "reads religiously" this recent interview. I am beyond flattered. First of all: I love her. I want to eat her writing with a SPOON. Second of all, her other recommendations (The Self-Styled Siren and Final Girl) are daily pitstops of mine as well and it is thrilling to be in their company.

However, I am a tiny bit mortified that today of all days, when I might have new people stopping by, I have a giant Ku Klux Klan member as the main image on my site. I write this, to push Mr. Birth-of-a-Nation D-bag down a bit, so as not to frighten people away.

Thanks, Kim. I read your writing and it makes me want to do better, think deeper. I appreciate your honesty, your willingness to go there, the freedom and openness of it (a big piece on Montgomery Clift one day, a fascinating interview with Quentin Tarantino the next) not to mention the skill and beauty of your writing. And thanks for the rec. See you on Facebook!

Birth of a Nation, dir. D.W. Griffith

D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation, from 1915, is an extraordinary accomplishment in any era. The battle scenes look like documentary footage. The crowd scenes, the cast of hundreds, his innovative use of the camera (the close-up, fast "tracking" shots following galloping horses, cut-aways, inserts) - not to mention the realistic acting that he was able to encourage in his leads ... all of these were giant innovations at the time. The advent of cinema had awkward beginnings, in many cases. Entertainment was theatrical and presentational, involving a proscenium arch. Much early cinema placed the camera far enough back to capture all of the action at one time - as though the camera were sitting in the audience at a vaudeville house. Perhaps it was hard to get your head around that this was a new medium, that with the camera you could do ANYthing. Griffith was the one who decided to go in close. To cut away from the main action to hone in on someone's face - it is startlingly psychological, the close-up, and if you imagine only having seen plays, or vaudeville, to then have the ability to go way way in until you are almost up someone's nose ... It's amazing that directors didn't immediately perceive this from the moment the camera was invented, but they didn't. Griffith did.

David Thomson writes:

To distill the stylistic advances of over three hundred films, Griffith abandoned the fixed point of view of the audience in the stalls and made his camera selective. He saw that there might be a balance between long shot, medium shot, and close-up, and that action might be heightened by the insertion of faces reflecting on or moved by the actions. T he effect of introducing a cinematic language should not conceal Griffith's preference for the standard sentimental melodrama of nineteenth-century theatre and cheap fiction, but he established the emotional impact of films by recognizing the value of sensitive acting. He stressed rehearsal, eliminated crude overacting, and saw that close-ups were more effective if restrained. The outstanding proponents of this novel cinema-acting style are Miriam Cooper in Intolerance and Lillian Gish, but Griffith organized a company of excellent players, just as he liked to use the same, loyal technicians - most notably the cameraman Billy Bitzer.

A blockbuster at the time, it was controversial from the get-go (Griffith's first screen of text in the film which has a statement abhorring censorship suggests that he understood that), and has just grown so over time. It's a romantic uncritical look at the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in the South. The Klan saved the South! Let's all just hug one another in happiness and gratitude that the Klan exists! There is no getting around it. The viciously racist portrayals of blacks, not to mention the white actors in blackface, are hard to stomach, and none of it can be justified, except as being representative of a different time and place.

Thomson again:

The most damaging exposure is of Griffith's adherence to a shallow, sentimental code of morality, at variance with the authenticity that he was able to obtain in performance and that he cultivated in art direction.

That's one of the reasons, for me, why Birth of a Nation is such a consistently fascinating and unsettling experience. Fascinating because I have to keep reminding myself: It's 1915, there are horses galloping, and the camera is following them, or leading them on, or riding amongst them - how did Griffith achieve that? I wondered about his process. There is nothing STATIC about his screen. The camera moves in, moves back out, cuts to other rooms - we go from a tight closeup on Gish's romantic little face to an enormous field of battle with horses and cannons and running soldiers - and this is completely modern. You are not looking at a "relic", this is still something vital and new (and I believe that some of the "modern" directors today, with their love of hand-held jerky jumpcut style - for no apparent reason except that it seems to cover up their inadequacies and the fact that they don't know how to TELL A STORY could learn from Griffith) - this is something that has life in it, still today. And yet so much of the entire enterprise is completely repellant. The swelling music when the "Little Colonel" gets the "inspiration" for creating the Klan. As though he has just discovered penicillin or something and we're supposed to cheer. This is abhorrent stuff.

Still, the film has a power and a life to it that is undeniable.

It works as propaganda. If you take the film at its word, you can see the power of it, although that is difficult to do at times, because you can see the justification for racism woven throughout. But separate yourself from that, and see it as a historical document, in a similar way to the equally repllant Triumph of the Will (a more gorgeously shot film you would be hard pressed to find - but to what end?) - then you can see the propaganda at work. It is unsettling. I get involved in the story of the two families in Birth of a Nation, one from the North, one from the South, and they are good people, kind and loving to one another ... and their nation is threatened by ... well. Uppity negroes, frankly. Something must be done! Naturally, the climax comes when Lillian Gish finds herself in the clutches of Silas Lynch, the rabble-rousing "mulatto" from the North, who has come down South to raise up the blacks and crush the whites. The REAL threat is not equality of the races, oh no. The REAL threat is to the purity of white womanhood. Ah yes. Women are always at the heart of the matter, aren't we? And men decide to kill one another to protect OUR honor. The Klan gallops through the dusty streets, terrifying to behold, and their main goal is to get to the Little Colonel's house in time, before Gish can be deflowered by .... a mulatto! Yeah, cause that's why the Civil War was fought, right? Dear men: do me a favor, and do yourself a favor, don't use ME as an excuse to fight your damn wars, mkay? Come up with your own goddamn justification for the slaughter and leave me out of it.

It's ridiculous!

Speaking of war, I want to mention one scene in Birth of a Nation that never fails to bring me to tears, and each time I've seen it, I keep thinking it will end at a certain point, and then it doesn't ... it moves on, slowly, for a couple seconds more, and it is those couple seconds that make the difference. That Civil War battle scenes in the film are absolutely incredible. You get huge long shots, that today would be done with CGI, but here ... what we are seeing is real. Hundreds of soldiers, entrenched on either side, flags waving, drums, cannons going off - it is incredible stuff. There is one scene, during a particularly violent battle, where the two old friends, one from the North and one from the South, come across one another. The man from the North lies fallen, shot. The man from the South races over, thinking it is just "The Enemy (TM)", and raises his rifle to shoot him dead, when he sees who it is. His old friend and comrade. They hold out their hands to one another, they speak a little bit, all around them is the smoke of battle, but they are in a completely private space. This one short scene encapsulates, better than any giant battle scene, the true wrenching horror of the War Between the States. Brother against Brother. And then, the man from the South, who is standing upright over his fallen friend, is shot. He falls beside the other man. And here is where the shot lingers, lengthening, going on beyond the point where I think it will stop. Each time I've seen it. The two men now lie on the ground together, one curled up against the other. They are still alive, but the life is fading from them both. The man who has just been shot, reaches out and puts his arm over the man's chest. It is a shockingly intimate gesture, as though they are in bed together. It is tender. Loving. Like they are two little boys, having a slumber party, or sleeping out in a tent together. Before the self-consciousness of adulthood has descended upon them. That is when I think the scene will end. But it goes on. A bit more. They lie there, one holding the other, and the man with his arm over his friend, starts to slowly stroke his friend's cheek. A gentle loving gesture, usually reserved for male-female relationships at this time. Almost romantic. And still the scene doesn't end. He continues to stroke his friend's cheek, his body curled up next to his friend, and he strokes and strokes - until the life leaves him, and you can see it leave his body, his hand, his fingers ... and then the two of them lie there, still and dead, in each other's arms.

This scene kills me. It has the perfect arc to it, and then, when you feel, "Okay, I'm done now", because of the power of it - it refuses to stop. Just because you the audience are done doesn't mean that the STORY is done. This is the horror of the Civil War. There is more to do, more to show you. You may want to look away 5 seconds into this thing, but we've got 5 more seconds to go, and you're going to take it.

It's a beautiful poetic and tragic representation of that war, and its complexities, and it's done with simplicity and emotion.

It is impossible to discuss Birth of a Nation without discussing its content, and I actually am not interested in such a discussion, because the content is important. But it is also important to acknowledge what was actually done here, in terms of innovation, and the inspiration it provided to directors around the world. Ohhhh, so cinema is not so much about action - it's about FACES. Of course, why didn't I see that before?

There's a moment when Lillian Gish, after having a sunny walk with her beloved Little Colonel, where they pledge their troth to one another and what have you, comes into the house and goes into her room. We see her dancing around, hugging herself, laughing out loud, a delightful picture of a young girl in love. Gish is, of course, sweet and girlish (perpetually), and her acting has the stamp of pantomime across it - which is one of the reasons I love it. Acting WAS pantomime back then. There were GESTURES which suggested Grief, Love, Anger, Fear. This acting style no longer exists. But watch Gish, and you can see what a gifted proponent of the 19th century acting style looks like. It's extremely effective, archetypal almost - and not melodramatic. It's not schtick. She manages to infuse it with heart, life, breath. She straddles two centuries, that's what we're seeing. The scene ends with her sitting down on the bed, lost in a dream of her love. Griffith then moves in close to her face. We've been seeing her in long shot all this time, but now he cuts to a closeup. Gish, her big eyes gleaming, hugs the bedpost. She is lost, lost in her dream, her happiness. And, almost unconsciously, she almost doesn't know she's doing it, Gish kisses the bedpost, as though it is her lover's lips. The scene fades to black.

This is the kind of naturalistic psychological detail that elevates Birth of a Nation (in terms of its content, I mean - the technological aspect cannot be denied) from a pamphlet about The Dangers of Uppity Negroes - to a story, involving character, motivation, obstacle.

Gish's acting in that moment (and in others) has much to do with the success of the film, and it is in how she does it. It's not just that she kisses the bedpost, which is already rather adorable and human. It's that she appears to do it without thinking about it, without knowing quite what she is doing. It comes naturally out of what is in her heart. She wants to be close to him, but he is not there, and ... the bedpost is. This is what cinema can do. Such a moment would not play on a stage. It is too small, too subtle. But on a movie screen, it reads large. We go inside her head and her heart. THAT was Griffith's innovation.

Birth of a Nation remains a troubling document of a time and place, with many elements that are disgusting. But still. It draws you in. That's perhaps the most disturbing aspect of all. That's why the damn thing works.

If I didn't know any better, I might also cheer at the sight of Klansmen galloping, as far as the eye can see.

Again, Triumph of the Will comes to mind. It is a haunting and gorgeous evocation of COMMUNITY, of ONE-ness. It compels you to join the group. It shows you the pageantry, the beauty, the sheer power of the group ... it doesn't have to say anything else. There are no questions involved in the film, nothing nags the conscience: Is this right? Is this group something I WANT to join? No. It appears to be an inevitability. The group COMPELS you to join it, and that makes Triumph of the Will, perhaps, one of the most effective films ever made. It's horrifying.

Regardless of the moral elements here, and how times and ideas change, Birth of a Nation remains a highwater mark, at least technologically, in that it showed what the new medium was truly capable of.

Crossing the Kalahari

I've written about Norman Rush's book Mating extensively. I will try not to repeat myself, and I'll just link to this post and call it a day, if you're interested to catch up. That pretty much covers my now decades-long relationship to this book. Recently, I pulled it out again, and I'm not sure why. But there's always a reason, with a book like this one. It's not like any other book, and it has provided context for me in tough times more than once. I have read it cover to cover maybe three full times now - not sure the exact number - and each time, I have clicked into it on a different wavelength. It doesn't appear to be the same book at all, each time I read it. Isn't that extraordinary when it happens?

I think the first time I read it, I was so upset by the ending (and I hesitate to say too much, because the book actually ends on a cliffhanger sentence - and up until that point, you have no idea which way it will go - and I wouldn't dream of ruining it) - but anyway, the first time I read it, the second to last section, called "Strife" - was so upsetting to me I don't think I even really processed what was happening. All I knew was that this relationship I had come to care so much about was being destroyed. It hurt to read. I wanted to shake Nelson Denoon out of his spell. I was totally on her side. I believe the second time I read the book, I had a similar response to the "Strife" section. I was still feeling that Denoon's remoteness, his conscious severing of their bond, seemed totally cruel, out of the blue, and man, what a waste. Couldn't he see what he was throwing away? But the third time I read it, ah, the third time, something else happened to me as I was reading that "Strife" section, and it seemed so new to me, that I couldn't believe I had actually read it before. Was this section even IN the book the last two times? How could I have MISSED what was REALLY going on? Suddenly, I could see what was happening (and it's funny - if I read the book again, I'm sure I'll have yet another response to this section - it's a crucial section, the key to the whole thing) - I was still upset that this relationship was crumbling, and in such an awful way - but ... I felt something larger, something more important, hovering on the outskirts of all the talk about the relationship. I wasn't sure what it was, but it seemed crucial. It seemed to actually have NOTHING to do with this one relationship, but a real struggle between man and his own mortality, and also man and God. And this, oh this, was NOT something that the narrator could stand. Fine, cheat on me, I don't care. Smack me upside the head. I'll deal with it. Shut me out of your heart, fine, that's fine. But have a religious experience that shows you the face of God in the middle of the desert? Oh no no NO, this cannot stand. She believes he has gone mad. He believes he has finally found his sanity. It is irreconcilable.

And of course, he would have this epiphany of eternity while stranded in the desert. The desert that he feels he knows, and has conquered to some degree. But suddenly, in my last reading, I saw that there was something lacking in her. In HER. She could not "go there" with him. She does not respect that which cannot be KNOWN. I mean, it's interesting from an anthropological standpoint, but to live with it? To live with the knowledge that there is so much that CANNOT be known? It's not just that she finds this intolerable, but that she also has contempt for it. She doesn't RESPECT it, and in my last reading of the book, that was ALL that I could see in the Strife section. I wanted to shake HER, and say, "Just let him have his epiphany, please! Why can't you just ACCEPT it? You're ruining EVERYTHING."

Now that is a great book that can give me two polar opposite responses in two separate readings.

"Strife", the section, reminds us - especially us cerebral types - that there is so much you cannot know. To some of us, this is intolerable.

Briefly some backstory: (and some of the details are lost to me): Nelson Denoon is a brilliant controversial anthropologist, who has created a "utopia" (look out) in the middle of the Kalahari Desert, in Botswana. He thinks that two things could free Africa from the poverty and disease it struggles under: solar energy, and the economic freedom of women. So he has created a solar-powered utopia, where women have all the power - and he presides over the whole thing like a benevolent dictator, advising, standing back, suggesting, organizing. Our unnamed female narrator (it's a first-person book) is an anthropologist as well, stranded in Africa, after her dissertation turned out to be a bust. She is sort of at odds, wondering what to do with her life, being vaguely promiscuous and hanging out in the capital of Gaborone, disgusted with her lack of purpose and drive. She feels cursed, academically. She feels mediocre. To make a long long story short, she encounters Nelson Denoon (a legend to her, already) at a party in Gaborone, and - on multiple levels she is drawn to him. Her soul reaches out to his, all that jazz - BUT it's more complicated than that. She feels somehow that he can help her. Help her with what? Her career? Yes, possibly. He is an anthropologist who is actually DOING something OUTSIDE of academia - she wants in. However, she is not allowed in. The project is for Africans only. Her presence would not be welcome there. Denoon disappears from the party, after haranguing a group of men in the back about socialism and solar power and economics - and the narrator can't stop thinking about him. She must get to him. She is not invited, remember. And nobody knows the way to this utopia (which is called Tsau). It's in the middle of a featureless desert. But where? There must be food drop-offs, right? Could she bribe someone in the World Food Program to drop her off with the maize and sorghum? She runs into dead-ends everywhere. What Denoon has created is on the edge of the law, and nobody wants to take responsibility for it. The government, the volunteers, even the missionaries - who basically know everything there is to know about what goes on in Botswana. She starts to become desperate. She MUST get to Tsau. She is now operating under instinct only. She has had one or two brief intense conversations with Denoon, an intimidating very busy guy. He has told her, point-blank, "No. I don't need your help at Tsau. It would be quite awkward if you came. The project is still in the beginning stages, and I really need to protect it from outside influence." Our narrator takes this in, fine, fine, I understand, but begins to make her plans to cross the desert anyway, to look for this mythical female utopia. It's so inappropriate! He doesn't WANT you there, hon!

She doesn't care. She NEEDS to be there. She needs to be there because
1. She has a huge crush on him, and something in her needs him - it's pheromonal
2. She wants to know how things work in this world, and she wants to get close to the sources of power - Denoon is a source of power, and also INFORMATION - she is all about INFORMATION
3. She's ready to actually up the ante in her own career. Enough with being marginal and safe. She wants a little danger.

Her trek across the desert gives her a little more than she bargained for, even with her strenuous planning. She puts together a map, based on her various conversations with people who have heard about Tsau and think they know where it is. She buys two donkeys. She is going to walk there, because there are no roads to Tsau, basically. She also needs to keep her expedition a secret. A foolhardy thing to do when you are about to set off on a dangerous mission. If she died out there, she would die without a trace, and no one would know where she had disappeared to. But she doesn't want her expedition to somehow be foiled by those in power who don't want her out there. There are "wells" that are marked throughout the desert, certain deserted outposts, where you can have pitstops and get water. She has marked those clearly. She is terrified of lions. She takes precautions. It is important to remember that this is not some silly indoor-girl heiress starting out blindly into the wild. Our narrator has just spent 18 months in the bush, by herself, working on her dissertation. She has lived in Africa now for a couple of years. She's not an idiot. She takes all the precautions you should take, and she is familiar with the risks. She is used to living outside, to camping, and she estimates that her journey will take her four days (if Tsau is where it is supposed to be, that is). It ends up taking her "six-plus or seven-plus days" - she begins to lose track of time, and a day or so is lost in her memory.

This is early on in the book. We know she is driven to see what the hell Nelson Denoon is up to out there in the desert. We also know that she is not quite sure what it is she is doing.

Her expedition is an entire section in the book. Norman Rush (very much like his narrator) doesn't skip over anything. Every moment of that terrible expedition is spelled out - her disintegrating mental capacity, the soul-destroying work she has to do to get a mere cupful of water out of this rusted well, her fears, her worries about going to the bathroom, her concerns for the donkeys she has bought, etc. But more than that: it is experiential. And Rush lets his writing be experiential too. I live that expedition with her.

It becomes a metaphor for love, without ever explicitly saying so. What are we willing to do for love? How far are we willing to go? If we know what it is that we NEED (not want, but NEED) - are we courageous enough to pursue it? To risk our lives for it?

At some point during her harrowing journey, she realizes, "This is the stupidest thing I have ever done, and if I die, no one will feel sorry for me, and rightly so." It's like people who die trying to climb Mount Everest. It's sad for their families, of course, but it's not a tragedy, because you have no business being up there in the first place. Be glad you died doing something you love! This is the life of an adventurer.

The most interesting part, now, about this whole expedition section, is that if she had really been paying attention, the fact that Nelson Denoon would have experienced a psychic crack after a week alone in the desert would not have surprised her. Because she experienced it too. It's just that she processed it differently, created a different narrative for HER experience. But it's there all along. Her capacity for understanding and connection is there - it's just that she gives it a different name.

And THAT is their tragedy.

Here are some excerpts from her expedition:

A Brief Mania

...
On the second day the terrain changed. There were long dips and rises. I let the boys graze liberally anytime they seemed inclined. Around noon I had my first phenomenological oddity, having to do with light. It came suddenly. There was a surplus of light. I felt I was getting too much light, despite the fact that I was wearing sunglasses that were practically black. The sky was cloudless. An irrational sign or proof that there was too much light was that I thought I could detect a barely visible flicker in the sky just above the horizon. I tried to push this whole subject out of my consciousness, but it persisted. I thought it might be low blood sugar speaking, so I ate some raisins. Peculiar ideation about light continued.

My sunglasses began to feel heavy and irritating. They were preventing something significant from happening. I developed the conviction that they were keeping me from seeing the real colors of the Kalahari and that this was hazardous for me. I would be in danger unless I recharged my sense of the real colors of things by taking my glasses off at some regular interval. I yielded to this notion, mainly in order to exhaust it, but each time I pushed my glasses up onto my forehead I had a stronger sense of some suppressed vibration going on in the landscape which I would be able to see clearly if I looked more intently and for a longer period the next time. This is brain chemistry, I said, and squatted down and hung my head between my knees. I got up, pulled the visor of my kepi down tight, put my glasses back on, and thought about the hunchbacks of Kang.

I was then all right for twenty minutes, until the mania came back reformulated as the proposition that if I actually got rid of my sunglasses, and only if, I would be able to see the true and fundamental color of nature. I was to understand that what we perceive as beautiful individual colors are only corruptions and distortions of the true color of reality, which is ravishing and ultimate and apprehensible only in extremely rare circumstances. This was not a question of hallucination. It was analogous to dream knowledge, but different: I knew that for some reason at some deep level I was doing this to myself. But still I was tempted to act. I said aloud things like This is about self-injury, This is about self-worth, What are we to ourselves? and other pop-psych trash. The experience was strange in every way. Was I trying to get myself to turn around and go back to Kang before it was too late, because navigating in the Kalahari without sunglasses is one thing for Bushmen who have presumably been adapting their vision to a surplus of light for millennia and another thing for a lakhoa already in a state of anxiety? On any trip like mine there's a point of no return. So was this some ideational response to the fact, which I was already having to fight to repress, that I was over my head? Had my brilliant unconscious chosen the one thing that if discarded would virtually disable me for making the long trip to Tsau but be manageable for a quick retreat back to Kang and safety? I think what broke the grip of this mania on me was firstly just hearing my own voice, whatever it was saying, and, secondly, remembering reading about someone who had been lost in the Kalahari and survived it reporting that he had had to get past a point when he experienced the desert as an organism or totality trying to get him to become part of it, as in surrender to it. This would make my sunglasses mania an analog of the feeling people lost in the Arctic get that they would be more comfortable if they took off their caps and mittens. The mania left, also suddenly, and we went on uneventfully.

That night I did everything right. I wore myself out collecting enough wood for a ring fire, got us all set up inside it, went into my tent, and closed my eyes, and immediately there were lions in the neighborhood. There may have been only one. I heard a roar like no other sound on earth. I felt it in my atoms. This is my reward for taking precautions, was my first thought.

I made myself emerge. I peered around. My boys were standing pressed together and shaking pathetically. I looked for glints from lion eyes out in the dark but saw nothing. Everything I did I managed to do with one hand on the flap of my tent.

Again I went through my lion lore. Lions roar only after they've eaten, for example. The paradox is that ultimately I slept better that night than I had the night before. I fell asleep clutching my bush knife.

In the morning I found it hard to eat. There was terror in me. I could die in this place, it was clear.

I dawdled breaking camp because I wanted to give any lions there were a head start at getting torpid. Lions are torpid during the day, was a key part of my lore package.

Music

Anyone who thinks crossing the Kalahari by yourself is boring is deluded. It's like being self-employed in a marginal enterprise: there's always something you should be doing if your little business is going to survive. For example, you should always be lashing a stick around of you through the thicker grass to warn snakes to get back. But this isn't enough, because there are adders, who pay no attention to noise and just flatten themselves when they hear you coming, the better for you to step on them: so you have to be persistent about watching where you walk. Then you have to be careful not to walk directly under tree limbs without looking keenly to see if there are mambas or boomslangs aloft. You also have to keep resetting your level of vigilance, because your forearm muscles, the extensors in particular, begin to burn, the lashing motion being one you're totally unaccustomed to. In addition to which there is the sun to be careful about. I was keeping myself smeared with something I bought for three pula at Botschem that was supposed to be a strong sunscreen, but I was turning red in strips and patches anyway. And you have to be watchful for ticks. In only one way was I in luck and that was in regard to dehydration. This was mid-April, that is to say mid-autumn, and perfect walking weather. In summer you could expect to lose about three pounds of water in a day of walking in the full sun.

You do need mental self-management, though, as I'd already partially learned, to get through solitudes like the Kalahari successfully. Fear itself is not enough to fully sustain and occupy you. On the whole I think I did well, which would have amazed certain lightweight women at the American embassy whose name for me, I learned much later, was Party Lights, based on their interpretation of my way of life - lifestyle to them, no doubt - in Gabs.

I was nervous and so were my animals, postlion. I stumbled on singing as a means of calming them down. I was singing for myself, initially, and then noticed that it seemed to help the boys too, especially Mmo. This is ridiculous, but they seemed to prefer complete songs to fragments of songs strung together with humming. I discovered how few songs I knew in full and how few songs of the ones I did know I knew more than one verse of. I think I must have a more complete sense of my total song inventory than anyone else has of theirs, except for professional singers. I know roughly which songs I know only the choruses of. I know which songs I know but discovered I couldn't stand to sing in the desert, You Are My Sunshine being a prime example of a song I loathed suddenly to which I had never had any objection previously. And there are other songs you have sung only halfheartedly in the past which in the desert suddenly give you peace and seem indispensable, like Die Gedanken Sind Frei. You are astonished at the number of separate songs that have gotten fused together in your mind in some manner that makes it impossible to separate them, a la What do you want for breakfast my good old man? What do you want for breakfast my honey my lamb? Even God is uneasy say the bells of Swansea. And what will you give me say the bells of Rhymney? And there were songs I knew in full and perfectly but which I had no recollection of ever paying attention to when they were popular, like Heart of Glass, now a favorite of mine forever. Songs help when you're under duress, which is undoubtedly why the Boer geniuses of cruelty forbid people in solitary confinement to sing.

I was singing so continuously that I began to find I disliked it when I stopped - I disliked that ambience. I was briefly an aide in a nursery school for neglected children, and the best-adapted, happiest, and smartest children in the place were three sisters who had been taken from a mother who kept them chained to a radiator so they would be safe while she was out circulating, and who when I asked them what they did all the time when they were alone said We sang. The inspiriting effect my singing had on my animals was not an illusion, and it reminds me now of the period when I was feeling depressed at how commonplace and rudimentary my dreams were compared to Denoon's. He claimed to dream infrequently, but when he did, his dreams were like something by Faberge or Kafka in their uniqueness. He would have noetic dreams, and when they were over he would be left in possession of some adage or precept that tells you something occult or fundamental about the world. One of these was the conviction he woke up with one morning that music was the remnant of a medium that had been employed in the depths of the past as a means of communication between men and animals - I assume man arrow animal and not ducks playing flutes to get their point across to man. Living with me made him more provisional about his dreams, especially after I compared one of his adages to a statement some famous surrealist was left with after dreaming, which he thought important enough to print up: Beat your mother while she's still young. I would always make Denoon at least try to reduce his insights to a sentence or two. The fact is I laugh at dreams. They seem to me to be some kind of gorgeous garbage. I have revenge dreams, mainly, in which I tell significant figures from my past things like You have the brains of a drum. On I sang.

Is it absurd to be proud of your dreams, or not? Denoon was.

Poetry let me down. I elided into poetry from time to time and discovered that I knew a lot of it. My attitude toward rhymed poetry changed utterly. Respect was born. Except for Dover Beach there was almost nothing unrhymed in my inventory. I know quite a lot of Kipling. I know some Vachel Lindsay. Finally one stanza of Elizabeth Bishop got hold of me and kept inserting itself between pieces of other poems, truculently. It maddened me both by its tenacity and by what it said: Far down the highway wet and black, I'll ride and ride and not come back. I'm going to go and take the bus, and find someone monogamous. I used opera to drive this way.

Serious Trouble

Serious trouble began on the fourth or fifth day out. It happened because I was doing a thing I had been warned not to do in the desert: I was reviewing my life.

30 for 30

Jason Bellamy has been writing reviews of each documentary in ESPN's "30 for 30" film series. In addition to bringing a knowledge to the subjects, and a respect for the sports involved - he's a lovely writer and a critic with a great eye. I always look forward to what he has to say, even if I haven't seen the film in question.

I highly recommend you follow along through the series, and check in with Jason as well. Some great stuff going on in the comments, too.

Bellamy's reviews so far:

Kings Ransom

The Band That Wouldn't Die

Small Potatoes: Who Killed the USFL?

Muhammad and Larry

Without Bias

Juju

Last weekend, I was home in Rhode Island, hanging out with Mum, Jean, Pat, and Miss Lucy. I barely left Jean and Pat's house. I slept over. We spent hours just hanging out, playing with Lucy, talking, watching her sleep, and then a nice long walk on the beach. It was beautiful, beautiful weather and perfect all around. I drove home on Sunday, an uneventful ride, which got me to my apartment at around 3 p.m. - I have this whole thing with TIME these days, which I will spare you - but there are certain slivers of time that I feel I have to either avoid or take advantage of. There is definitely something neurotic there, and I'm working with it, trying to be more flexible, all that. Suffice it to say, I arrived home at just the right time. It gave me hours of the day left, where I could putter around, and clean, and cook, and do all my weekend chores. It was very relaxing. And so I started the week on a strong note. Very important.

This week, I had lunch with Brooke one day. As I said, I am trying to come out of my shell. I have been cringing away from company for various reasons. Brooke was at my reading, of course, and so we had lunch, and talked about it - in a really deep way - and we also plotted my revenge which Brooke seems to feel, somehow, will take place at Trader Joe's. Good to know. Much laughter. "Why do you keep bringing up Trader Joe's??" I asked. It was so good to hang out with her. Flexing my social muscles again.

Another day I had breakfast with Rachel. It was so funny - she showed up at the diner a bit after me, and she sat down and said something like, "I'm so proud of us ... look at us ... living in New York and having breakfast like real grown-up people!" It made me LAUGH because it was such a specific sentiment and I had been thinking the exact same thing. Doesn't matter how long you have lived here. There is still sometimes a consciousness about it: Look at me. Living in New York! It was really really cool, I haven't hung out with her in a while, so there was much to catch up on. It was awesome.

On Friday, Allison and I had a sleepover planned at her apartment. It has been so long since we hung out, and I only got to talk to her for a couple seconds at the reading. We met up at the Jane St. Tavern and had dinner, talking and catching up. I regaled her with the story of my experiences when I went to pick up my car that was towed. I need to write it all down. It was a microcosm of humanity. Then we went to her place, got in our pajamas, crawled into bed, and watched a fabulous Dateline that she had saved for me. We love to watch things like that. Anything to do with crimes and cops and forensics ... we can't get enough. We paused to have big long discussions about the whole thing. It's hysterical - it's one of our favorite things to do with each other. There's a Titanic exhibit going on right now in Times Square and we made plans to go to that, maybe this coming weekend. I can feel the sea-change. Starting to say Yes to things again.

Also this week I had a phone conversation with Kate - which was months in the making. We keep in touch as much as possible, but there has just been NO TIME to catch up - her schedule, mine, we play phone tag, we show up on each other's Facebook pages - but she finally called me when I happened to be available (and sitting and watching Slings & Arrows no less - she was the one who turned me on to Slings & Arrows) and it was SO GOOD to talk to her. Man, I have MISSED her. We laughed hysterically about Slings & Arrows, we gave each other the bullet points of our lives, we caught up - and it just did my heart so good to hear her voice again. Enough with the emails and the Facebook. I miss her. We have just been missing each other for months - leaving messages, calling back, leaving messages - so that was a real gift of the week.

I also had a great phone conversation with Mitchell. He called me immediately upon exiting the Michael Jackson movie and needed to talk about it with me. It was awesome awesome. Again, grief can be an isolating thing. It's a very odd sensation, and hard to describe. A wall separates you from normal life for a while. There's a reason why people wore black armbands back in the old days. A public signifier: "I am working under some stress right now. Please take that into consideration." But it's been so nice to talk about OTHER things - as difficult as it sometimes is - and I absolutely loved ranting and raving about Michael Jackson with Mitchell, and hearing all of his thoughts. It was also his birthday last week. Happy birthday!!

I got up Saturday morning, Allison made coffee, and I trekked back through the drizzly morning to my apartment. Had a lovely quiet day - with NO INTERNET (damn busted modem) - so I read, and wrote - and watched a couple episodes of Slings & Arrows. It was Halloween. Cashel's birthday!! Mum is out in Los Angeles now, so we have been getting daily email updates from her about all the fun things they are doing. It makes me happy. I wish I was out there. But it makes me happy to think of everyone being together out there, celebrating Cash's birthday.

On Halloween night, I was going to an event called Sinister Six Must Be Destroyed. A film festival, which has been going on for a couple of years, held at the Millennium Film Workshop on East 4th Street. There were 12 films being screened, all in the horror genre, and none of them is longer than 10, 15 minutes. 12 different directors. I had gotten an invite on Facebook from Jeremiah - he had directed one of the films - so I figured, what the hell, sounds like a BLAST. Jen was coming with me. We were so looking forward to it. I had some stress about commuting into Manhattan because we would be arriving at the very same moment that the Halloween parade started. Seemed no way around it. It was going to be mayhem. And it was. We met up in Hoboken and had a drink first (all of the waitresses at this joint were dressed up as Moulin Rouge girls - they all looked fabulous) and then Jen started stressing that she didn't have a costume, so we went back to her place and she put on some cat-eye glasses and a leopard print headband. She looked like Jan from Grease. I was wearing my enormous pink glasses, featured here many many MANY times. They make me look like an overly-earnest vaguely incompetent gender studies professor at an unaccredited college.

It was so fun to be going out and doing something utterly ridiculous and silly with Jen. I have some crowd anxiety these days, so strolling into the midst of the Halloween Parade freaked me out a bit, but it ended up being absolutely glorious. We stood in the PATH station, waiting for our train, and literally NOBODY on the platform was in regular dress. Everyone was in costume, heading in to see the parade. We saw a couple wearing matching lobster suits, sipping on soda, and arguing about something and then making up. We saw three adorable bodacious young women, dressed as Daisy Duke. We saw men in drag. We saw an entire soccer team from Italy, co-ed apparently. There was a dude on the train in head to toe yellow - yellow jacket, pants, shirt, tie, and then a jaunty white hat. He was either a pimp or an evangelical preacher. What's the difference, right? He looked fabulous. We saw devils and frogs and one 6 foot tall guy was dressed as a fuzzy yellow chick. It was totally awesome. Jen and I had a blast, just looking around us and appreciating everyone. 9th Street, where we got off, brings new levels of meaning to the word MAYHEM. It was Parade Central. We watched a man dressed as a Christmas tree struggle up the stairs against the crowd. It was impossible to move. A jaunty gentleman wearing a gold-silk dressing gown cut in front of us in line. We were laughing too hard to mind. There were St. Pauli girls, people dressed as Santa's elves, mermaids - all of us crammed onto the one stairway to the street. God help anyone who was trying to go the other way.

The streets were blocked off. We walked across 9th Street, in the middle, going against the tide of mummies and witches and ghouls, all heading West towards the parade. There's something liberating about walking in the middle of an empty street in Manhattan. It makes you feel like it's the Rapture, or something. It's unnatural. And freeing.

The rain had started to come down. Nobody seemed to mind. There were still some straggling trick-or-treaters out with their parents. It was about 7:30 pm at this point. We saw a small furry bear, about 2 years old, weeping uncontrollably, as his sugar high crashed down around his ears. We walked by a small group of little girls, walking with their mothers, all dressed as Snow White and Harry Potter, and they were singing the Star Spangled Banner at the tops of their lungs, I kid you not. We saw whores and priests, angels and demons, mingling on street corners. I love the incongruity most of all. Some guy dressed as an ice cream sandwich having a = tiff with his girlfriend who was dressed as Delilah. You know. Awesomeness personified.

We made it to our destination, the streets significantly less cray-cray on that side of town. We picked up our tickets, and were handed 3-D glasses for one of the films, and also a program. We went and found seats in this nice big echoey screening room, with about 100 seats. The place was packed. Again, everyone was costume. We saw Sweeney and Mrs. Todd, he had a blood-stained apron, she had a blood-stained bodice. They were eating slices of pizza and drinking from a silver flask. There was a witch sitting in front of us, and she thoughtfully smushed the pointy top of her hat down so that we could see. There was a guy there dressed as Hunter Thompson - no, no, he was CHANNELING Hunter Thompson. The glasses, the long cigarette holder, the bald spot, the jaunty shirt and khaki pants - he looked unbelievable. He WAS Hunter Thompson. At one point we glanced over at the aisle, and we saw a black-clad Ninja standing there, totally still, scanning the crowd for his friends. There was a woman with fairy wings who appeared to be Titania. She also had on a crown. Jen and I were having so much fun. We didn't know anyone. Everyone there appeared to be somehow connected to the event - actors, directors, organizers - but it was a welcoming fun bunch.

There were 6 films screened in the first half, then a brief intermission, and then another 6 films. It was so much fun. Some were gorier than others, some were more psychologically horrifying - but there was a TON of blood. And a TON of naked girls, a staple of the genre. Afterwards, as Jen and I tromped back across town to the PATH train, the rain really coming down by then, we talked about all the films, things we liked, things we didn't like ("You know," I said, "at some point I started getting Naked Woman Fatigue.") - but all in all, it was a total BLAST. We had had no idea what to expect going in.

We kept wondering when the 3-D glasses would be needed. It ended up being for a film called "Aracattack". Now. Just looking at that title it should be obvious what the subject matter was, but it somehow went over my head. I put on the 3-D glasses, all psyched, and then it dawned on me: "ARAC". ARAC plus 3-D?? Oh hell to the no. People were HOWLING with laughter throughout - and Jen, who has the same phobia, so much so that, like myself, she cannot even call "them" by their real names - and instead refers to them, across the board as "manus". As in: "I saw a manu in my closet today." - was ROARING with laughter and convinced me to put on my glasses. "Sheila, they're so fake - don't worry ..." "You mean, like Gilligan's Island?" I whispered at her. She said, with a sudden change of expression, "No. THAT was really scary." hahahaha So I put on my glasses, and these things, these manus, were so RIDICULOUS - they were like stuffed animals, with blinking maniacal electric eyes, and the acting in the film was so over-the-top and campy. At one point, the exterminator, a macho guy who looked like Chris Daughtry, was trying to calm a woman down because of the manus. She stood beside him, and he was looking off into the distance, assessing the danger - and to keep her calm he, without looking at her, reached out and cradled her tit. But it was as though he was stroking her shoulder. Like, "there there, this will make you feel better. BOOB." It was THAT kind of experience. Hilarious. The worst part however was, when the film ended, and the lights went out, someone threw handfuls of plastic manus into the audience, and they rained down upon us in the darkness. All freakin' hell broke loose. I heard Jen screaming at the top of her lungs (I am laughing out loud as I type this) - and EVERYONE was screaming, and then dissolving into laughter. I forced myself to not flee into the night. And managed to sit through the rest of the films, fully aware, that I was literally SURROUNDED by plastic manus. In fact, I discovered one tangled up in the fringe of my scarf during one of the other films, and almost had to leave the premises.

Jeremiah's film was beautiful, haunting, shot in black and white, and had a real mood to it. It felt longer than 10 minutes, and that is a compliment. He focused on character and experience, rather than plot. And the way he shot the opening scene in the dining room, with the sunlight gleaming through the curtains, making the cutlery seem symbolic somehow, talismanic, was really beautiful. Strangely, the lead actor is a friend of Jen's. The second he appeared she exclaimed, "Hey! I know him!" I have heard a lot about Jeremiah's work, and I follow his "Production Diaries" on House Next Door with great interest (he's a lovely writer), so it was really fun to actually see some of it.

The lights came up at the end of the night, and Jen and I both, as one, slowly bent down to see the HUNDREDS of manus all over the floor, on our shoes, in our cuffs, piled up all around us. I came home and found one in my bag. Had a nervous breakdown PROMPTLY even though I knew the damn thing was fake. We had had so much fun. We gingerly tiptoed our way out of the aisle, giggling, talking about how awesome the whole night had been.

Jeremiah was there, we've only met once, but I introduced myself again, and his friend Judd was with him - I've met him a couple of times at Keith and Dan's - and it was nice to have a brief chat. It had been a really fun night.

It was about 11 p.m. when Jen and I emerged into the rainy night, and we started back across town. There was a wilder feeling in the streets, more unruly, and New York's finest were out in force, clumped up on every streetcorner, watching guard. People were drunker now than they were at 7 p.m. obviously, so you could feel the entire thing was on the verge of collapsing.

6th Avenue was open again, but that was kind of a moot point. People staggered around EVERYWHERE.

Here were some things we saw on our walk to the PATH train. The streets were, at times, so crowded, that Jen and I held hands, for fear of getting separated.

-- A girl who was obviously the spirit of Michael Jackson in heaven. Wings, little black dress, with Michael Jackson pins all over the dress.

-- a dude on the PATH ride home who was dressed as a Purel bottle of hand sanitizer, complete with bar code on his back

-- A statuesque woman standing in front of the Duane Reade, wearing a bodice with a push-up bra, and it was so much a PUSH-UP apparatus that her boobs had popped out and we saw her gyrating dark nipples at almost point-blank range.

-- A guy who was dressed as the "dick in a box"

-- The detritus of the parade in the PATH station. Random colored feathers, sequins, and two crumpled red socks.

-- A girl dressed as what looked like Olivia Newton-John in the 80s (bright pink leggings, headband, white sweatshirt) making out with a guy dressed as Burger King, complete with crown. They were totally into each other, clawing and groping, and jen and I could not stop laughing looking at them.

I was home and in bed by midnight.

Woke up early the next morning, daylight savings, an extra hour. I had this strange sense of well-being. Nowhere to go, nothing really to do - I mean, I had laundry, but that was normal. I have writing to do, but I'm always doing that. It was a brisk grey day, and there was this weird sense - and I'm almost superstious about it, afraid to name it - that some of the bad juju I've had for months now was ... not present. If you've ever lived with bad juju, you know it's always there. You have good days, bad days, but the bad juju is omnipresent. As I say, this year has been so rough that I hesitate to name anything anymore ... but all I know is what I felt on Sunday. I put on my workout clothes, took my iPod and went for a walk for over two hours. I went and visited my dead boyfriend for the first time since I don't know when. I went my normal route, which I have been avoiding like the plague, because the last time I went on that route, on my walk/run, was in May, early June, before the really bad juju came. And I definitely had a couple of moments where I remembered, where I could feel my brain going down that path ... but that in and of itself is a change. For months now, it has felt like I had no choice. Again, if you are familiar with grief, you know what I am talking about. It is disorienting. The grief is still here, it always will be, but the bad JUJU - from mid-June till now - definitely felt like it was on its way out. The tide pulling back. Often, what they say about depression is true: it is not SADNESS, it is the absence of feeling that is the killer. THAT is the thing that makes people go insane. However, I have had too much feeling, not an absence, the feeling burned me up with its intensity. Unstoppable. For months.

On my mega-walk on Sunday, I could feel a bit of SPACE around everything else. I don't know what to call this whole thing except bad juju and all I can say is: bad juju leaves no room. All avenues of escape are closed to you. There is no respite. With such unrelenting onslaughts, the corresponding reaction is often one of increased rigidity, because that is the only way I feel in control. This is partly what I was talking about earlier, with the time thing, and my experience of time as being open to me only at certain parts of each day, and if I miss the moment, I can't get it back. My routines get more rigid, as a way to combat the bad juju.

Sunday I felt some breathing room. Some space. I had room, space, to go out for a walk for the entire afternoon. On the walk, I had room to think, laugh out loud about the aracattack and other things, and also, sometimes, cry. It's exhausting. Living under the regime of bad juju.

I am still not out of the woods, but all I really wanted to say was that over the last week, with its gentle social swirl, not too much for me to handle, films and friends and family, I felt, for the first time in months, that I actually had room and space, to survey the wreckage, take stock, and gather my forces for what might be ahead. I am highly suspicious of platitudes and statements that seem to come from a too-easy place. This year has been truly harrowing. I have not been able to be present - in so many different situations - in months, maybe over a year. Even just two weeks ago, I wouldn't have been able to do all of those things in one single week. I would have burnt out two days in, and called friends to re-schedule, so I had more time to recover, in between each social event. How can lunch with a dear friend be so potentially exhausting that it is the only social event you can allow yourself in a week?

If you have any experience with bad juju, you will understand.

Today, my muscles ache from my walk. It makes me feel alive.

Scary moments: a list

25 scariest moments in non-horror movies. A compiled list by a bunch of different writers.

Some really interesting and startling entries. If I were to make such a list, there are certainly some entries here that I would have included.

The infamous eye-slice from Un Chien Andalou, that I can't even think about directly without shivering.

Alison Willmore writes:

Classics are classics for a reason. This 16-minute silent film meeting of surrealist minds, a collaboration between Buñuel and Salvador Dalí, may be 80 years old, but it kicks off with a shock that still has the power to make audiences recoil in their seats.

Horrifying.

Jimmy Stewart's breakdown in Vertigo. So unsettling - and I love how the writer suggests that it is even MORE unsettling because it is JIMMY STEWART, and all of the baggage we bring to such an actor. Yes. Classic Hitchcock: taking an iconic actor and up-ending his persona, messing with our expectations.

Alison Willmore, again, writes:

In the best of Hitchcock's dream sequences, Scottie's horror and guilt about what happened unfurl in flashes of color to the terrible clicking of castanets. Carlotta's made flesh, and she's there by the window at the inquest as Gavin Elster tells him "you and I know who killed Madeleine," and there in the portrait come to life, smirking triumphantly at the camera as it closes in with thudding dread on the necklace that links "Vertigo"'s women. It's terrifically frightening, and it's where the film turns -- ghosts may be scary, but so are crumbling heroes. Jimmy, we hardly knew you.

And then, I was so glad to see the final scene of The Vanishing on there (the original, not the American remake) - a film so horrifying, and it just got worse after you left the theatre, as you kept thinking about it, and thinking about it ... I actually had to have my boyfriend HOLD ME after that film, I was so freaked out about it.

Sam Adams writes:

Although he has all but given up hope of finding Saskia alive, Rex is obsessed with finding out what happened, to the point that he strikes a deal with her abductor: He will submit to everything Saskia experienced, from the abduction on. The answer he finally gets is so much worse than we could ever have imagined, and yet perfectly in tune with the movie's logic of estrangement and reunion. It's enough to make you fear letting your loved ones pass out of sight, even for an instant, and a reminder that some secrets may be better left buried.

I might work on such a list myself. I would definitely include a specific scene from John Cassavetes' Opening Night, which is a movie that creeps me out to my core - when Gena Rowlands, sitting alone in her apartment, glances up, with a look truly MAD - and sees her ghostly nemesis appear at the door. We can't really see the ghost fully, just fragments, her furious gleaming eyes, her long hair, and we know, we know, that Gena Rowlands is seeing something that is not there. It's terrifying. It's Macbeth seeing the ghost of Banquo. Madness is the scariest thing of all.

Last night.

Circa 5:30 p.m. As I was waiting for the bus.