March 31, 2010
My blacks crackle and drag
A few words before we begin:
1. Sylvia Plath wrote a journal until the end of her life. A highly edited version was published decades ago, with a foreward by husband Ted Hughes who admitted to destroying the final two years of her journal. This was like a bomb going off, and the reverb has lasted to this day. He has been the focus of much anger because of it. He said that he wanted to protect his children from having to read said journal. So it must have been pretty awful. But the loss to Plath fans is incalculable. I do not blame him for his actions, because he had to have been a wreck, but I do regret the loss. In the last decade, a big publishing event was an "unedited" version of Plath's journal with additional material - but sadly, those two years were still not included. So. Please don't insult me by calling them "unedited" then. Thanks. Did Hughes destroy them as he said? Is it possible a copy exists somewhere? Hughes is dead now. Will we ever know? It is something to speculate about (and drool over).
2. My friend Cara is as huge a Plath fan as I am. We have even considered meeting up together at the Lilly Library to go through Plath's papers that are held there.
3. The missing journals are important. Remember how important those journals are to Plath fans, and how much we ache to get our hands on them. How much we believe they do exist somewhere, and how much we long for the day when they are revealed.
4. Cara has just written a tale on her blog - part spy-novel, part international thriller, part homage to Sylvia Plath - starring me, her, and Tracey. One other thing to take note of: Most of the dialogue is direct quotations from Plath's poems, and the narrative is peppered literally with countless references to Plath's work. If you are at all familiar with Plath, you'll recognize some of them.
It is so brilliant what Cara has done here.
Now:
Knowing all of this as a preamble, go read Cara's explanatory note, and then go read the story that my friend Cara has just written.
"[The river] has crested over the top of Route 95."
Some of the stories coming out of Rhode Island right now beggar belief. It is an flood unprecedented in Rhode Island history. I have never seen anything like it. The blizzard of 78 comes close, in terms of shutting down the entire state. Here's a video of some of the devastation. My mother could not believe the amount of water in the basement - although what she experienced was not as severe as some other towns (North Kingstown, West Warwick) - My mother had Lucy yesterday (I "spoke" with Lucy on the phone during the flooding - got a big loud sound from her that I pretended was "HI, AUNTIE SHEILA") so she couldn't be racing up and down the cellar steps dealing with all the water. Pat was coming to pick up Lucy - normally it is a 15 minute drive - it took him hours, due to the flooding and blocked off roads. Eventually, they got a pump going in the basement, which went on all night, and the situation (at least at my mother's) is under control. Other people have not been so lucky. Schools, businesses, shut down. The Facebook statuses of my Rhode Island friends are insane, pumps, and evacuations, and staying up all night hauling buckets of water out of their houses. Hang in there, home state.
March 30, 2010
Happy birthday, Seán O'Casey
Irish playwright Seán O'Casey was born on this day, in 1880. He was the first major Irish playwright to deal with slum life, the reality of the Dublin poor.
I have a wonderful anecdote right here about O'Casey - this from his colleague Gabriel Fallon - who wrote (among other things) a book about Seán O'Casey. Here is his goose-bump-inducing description of the rehearsal process (at first rather confusing for all involved, since the play was most definitely "something new") for Juno and the Paycock
We could make nothing of the reading of Juno and the Paycock as it was called. It seemed to be a strange baffling mixture of comedy and tragedy; and none of us could say, with any certainty, whether or not it would stand up on the stage.The dress rehearsal would be held at 5 p.m. on March 2, Sunday. I arrived at the theatre at 4:30 p.m., and found the author there before me looking rather glum and wondering if a rehearsal would take place ... Gradually the players filed in and went to their dressing-rooms. Lennox Robinson arrived shortly before 5 o'clock and was followed by Yeats and Lady Gregory. The curtain rose about 5:36 p.m. so far as I could see and hear while waiting for my cue in the wings the rehearsal seemed to be proceeding smoothly. As soon as I had finished my part of Bentham at the end of the second act I went down into the stalls and sat two seats behind the author. Here for the first time I had an opportunity of seeing something of the play from an objective point of view. I was stunned by the tragic quality of the third act which the magnificent playing of Sara Allgood made almost unbearable. But it was the blistering irony of the final scene which convinced me that this man sitting two seats in front of me was a dramatist of genius, one destined to be spoken of far beyond the confines of the Abbey Theatre ...
We watched the act move on, the furniture removers come and go, the ominous entry of the IRA men, the dragging of Johnny to summary execution, the stilted scene between Jerry Devine and Mary Boyle, and then as with the ensnaring slow impetus of a ninth great wave Allgood's tragic genius rose to an unforgettable climax and drowned the stage in sorrow. How surely was the very butt and sea-mark of tragedy! But suddenly the curtain rises again: are Fitzgerald and McCormick fooling, letting off steam after the strain of rehearsal? Nothing of the kind; for we in the stalls are suddenly made to freeze in our seats as a note beyond tragedy, a blistering flannel-mouthed irony sears its maudlin way across the stage and slowly drops an exhausted curtain on a world disintegrating in 'chassis'.
I sat there stunned. So, indeed, as far as I could see, did Robinson, Yeats, and Lady Gregory. Then Yeats ventured an opinion. He said that the play, particularly in the final scene, reminded him of a Dostoevsky novel. Lady Gregory turned to him and said, "You know, Willie, you never read a novel by Dostoevsky." And she promised to amend this deficiency by sending him a copy of The Idiot. I turned to O'Casey and found I could only say to him, "Magnificent, Seán, magnificent."
The image of Lady Gregory basically cutting "Willie" down to size is so funny to me, but I love the whole anecdote.
Excerpted from Gabriel Fallon's memoir: SEAN O'CASEY: The Man I Knew
Offside at BAM; Dir. Jafar Panahi
Last night I met my friend Felicia at BAM to see Offside, directed by incarcerated Iranian director (there hasn't been word of him in a couple of weeks). It is part of their Muslim Voices: The Female Perspective. I have written of Offside before and how much I love it, and Felicia had never seen it, so it was going to be a fun night. Underneath it for me was a solemnity, because watching a work by a man who is now in prison, for no reason other than his being an artist (I don't care what the "police" say about his other "crimes"), is a sobering experience. But that was the only sober part about the night, adding to the tension of the film, because Offside is NOT solemn or sober, although it takes on a serious topic (women not being allowed to go to soccer games in Iran) - it is kinetic, very funny, very talk-y - that's all everyone does - talk, argue, scream, debate - and unlike Panahi's The Circle, which also takes on the position of women in Iran, but in a much more serious and blunt way , Offside is, in its way, even more subversive, because it dares to laugh at the stupidity of the rules. It MOCKS the rules. There's a reason why Offside was never shown officially in Iran (although, through bootleg DVDs smuggled in from basically everywhere, it became Panahi's biggest hit, and his most widely seen film in Iran) - and that's because it's even worse to have the populace laugh in your face over the moronic rules.
The lead girl, played by Shayesteh Irani, has a long scene where she chats up one of the guards holding all the girls in a makeshift pen behind the soccer stadium. She senses that somewhere he is weak, that he doesn't believe in what he is doing, so she sets about to crack through. She works him. She doesn't openly berate him. She says, "Remember when Iran played Japan? How come Japanese women were allowed in the stadium?" He replies, "They are Japanese." Her face lights up. "Oh, so it's only because I was born in Iran that I can't go in?" She's toying with him, setting him up like a good prosecuting attorney. He tries to scoff at this. "No - it's because men and women can't sit together." She says, "But they sit together at the movies." He is a country-boy, not from Tehran (one of the underlying class commentaries in the film), and does not believe her. "They do? Where?" She has actually visited his home town and mentions that she went to the movies in his hometown and saw men and women sitting together. "No! It cannot be! Were they dressed like you?" (She is dressed as a boy.) She laughs. "Of course not. They were dressed as ladies." "Well, they must have been with their brothers or fathers, then." Another chink in the armor, so her face lights up. "So it would be okay if our fathers or brothers took us to the game?" Every one of his lame excuses (and you get the sense that they are parroted out of his mouth, and by the end of the film, you can see that he flat out doesn't know why women aren't allowed in) she mocks, and also intellectually challenges. Like I said, Offside is full of dialogue, end to end. Panahi's script pulls no punches, but it resists being didactic, because of the sense of humor and excitement running through the whole thing.
It was filmed during the actual Iran-Bahrani game in 2006, where Iran qualified for the World Cup, so you can hear the surging screams of 100,000 people just inside the stadium, as the imprisoned girls, dressed up like boys, ache and yearn to see what is going on inside. While the issue of being arrested by the Vice Squad is nothing to sneeze at, the girls are undaunted, due to the circumstances of the moment. Yes, they are in trouble, but what the hell is going on with the game??
I murmured to Felicia in one of the early scenes, "Sports fans are the same everywhere," and we just started laughing. Everyone shouting, with the colors of the flag painted on their faces, breaking out into random fights, leaning out the minibus windows shouting at passing cars. The girls just want to participate in the national event.
One of Offside's defining characteristics is how funny it is. These girls are pistols, man, and there are very funny scenes where you can see the guards conferring with one another, and they are all serious and worried and frustrated, but in the background, in the pen, you can see all the girls dancing around, and blabbing, and re-enacting their favorite plays from such-and-such a game - they are completely and totally unconcerned with how much trouble they are in, and they laugh at the guards, sometimes in their faces. When the Vice Squad van comes to take them away, they are told to walk in single-file into the bus, and so they march off, and as they walk past the open gate where you can see inside the stadium, each one of them cranes her neck to the side, peering through the gate, to try to see the game. It is a very funny moment (the audience at BAM laughed uproariously - we pretty much laughed through the whole thing - a strangely ironic and beautiful experience), seeing the girls, being taken to some undisclosed location, not allowed to call their parents, but still ... still ... even in the middle of all of that ... as they are frog-marched to the bus, you can see each one, one after the other, turn her head to the side and squint into the distance to try to see the game.
Panahi is wonderful with details like this, you can feel his vibrant humorous personality running throughout. He has a daughter, a wife (both of whom were arrested in the original roundup at his home early this month - and were soon released), and his sense of injustice about their position in his country is obviously fierce. But at least with Offside, he took an absurdist tact - making the situation seem as ridiculous as possible - to have even the guards not know the reasons for the arrests of these girls - to drive his point home again and again and again.
There is a funny moment when one of the guards (and you can feel him grasping at straws) informs the girls that women are not allowed in the stadiums because it's all men in there, and men curse and use bad language. One of the girls replies to this, "Bullshit."
Ahh, Panahi, I love you so.
The girls refuse to accept the answers given to them. Why shouldn't they come see the game like everyone else? Why should they be forced to dress like men? (Panahi doesn't make a big deal of the veil. The VEIL is not the problem. His view is: Women should be able to dress as they would like to dress, and go where they would like to go. His criticism is that rules such as the soccer rule creates a division in the populace at large: if women want to go to a soccer game - a soccer game - they must dress up as men, denying their gender - and when you force women into a position where her gender becomes a detriment, then all of society suffers. He doesn't care about the veil. He said in one interview that if a woman is very religious, and wants to wear the full black chador, AND she also happens to be a soccer fan, then there is no reason that she should be forced to deny her gender and her religious feelings - in order to see a stupid soccer game.)
There wasn't a big crowd at the movie last night, but it was a fun audience. Dear people, whoever you are, I loved seeing Offside with you, especially the crowd of laughing boisterous girls in the back, who got all the jokes, and guffawed throughout. It's rather eerie, knowing that Panahi is in prison now, but I guess that going to see one of his biggest successes, and enjoying it in the full spirit of absurdity in which he created it, is a great tribute to him, even though ... how could he, sitting in a prison right now, know about us? And know that this is what we are doing at this very moment?
I can only hope that somehow, on some other plane, he does know.
He tells a great story in an interview about his inspiration for Offside. He was heading to a soccer game at the Azadi Stadium in Tehran. His 10 year old daughter wanted to come. He told her no, she couldn't, girls aren't allowed in, and that it is a stupid law but we must obey the law. She begged to come along and at least try. He relented, but told her if she was turned away at the gate, he was going to go on in to the game, and she had to head home. She agreed. They arrived at the stadium, and his daughter is stopped at the gate. "You can't come in here." (Yeah, because it's so threatening to have a 10 year old girl watch a soccer game. Stupid.) As agreed, Panahi and his daughter parted. Panahi went into the stadium and his daughter headed off for home. Panahi found his seat in the stadium and sat down. About 15 minutes later, he glanced up, and saw his daughter walking down the steps towards him. She sat next to him, quite pleased with herself. Panahi was amazed and asked her, "How did you get in?" She glanced at him, like that was almost a stupid question, and replied, "There is always a way."
March 29, 2010
Deep focus: Long takes
An amazing compilation from Jim Emerson of 8 great long takes. Not to be missed. I watched the clips before I read his breakdown of each clip below the video, and I suggest going that way, too - so you can experience the long takes fresh, and then go check out the commentary. Some are well-known to me, others I had never even seen before - and I am now thinking of other long-takes in films (not just the obvious ones that everyone knows - but more invisible ones - ones that don't so much call attention to themselves) - and what it is about them that work, when they do work. For example, the long take on Candice Bergen's face in Carnal Knowledge (I wrote about it here) as she laughs hysterically at the jokes being told by Jack Nicholson and Art Garfunkel, who are off-camera. The camera never leaves her face. She laughs so hard she is in tears. It's an amazing long take, and if it had been broken up, with cutaways to Nicholson and Garfunkel - it wouldn't have had the same power or meaning. They both are competing for her love and attention. THEIR focus is only on her, and so should ours be - hence the camera never leaving her face. That's one of my favorite long takes. Fascinating.
The photo is from my trip to ....
..... Narnia?
Is that Mr. Tumnus I see in the distance?
Nope. It's Central Park. I have lived here for years, and I still can't get over the miracle that we actually have a place that looks like this - and not just a small green corner - but acres and acres - smack-dab in the middle of our concrete jungle.
I am forever grateful to Central Park.
The monumental project
My sister Jean teaches English and writing in middle school. Every year, the class goes on a trip to Washington D.C., which is a huge ordeal, involving chaperones, and crowd-control, and dealing with little kids who basically have never been out of Rhode Island and don't know how to cross a street at a crosswalk. Jean has been doing this trip for years, so she pretty much has it down to a science now. Prepping the kids, all that stuff.
One of her assignments that she gives them is to write their first real research paper. They can use one online source, but other than that, they have to find stuff in books. They have to do proper footnotes and attribution. She walks them through it, giving suggestions ("If you find an appropriate quote, you could lead off the paper with it ..."). The research paper has to be on one of the national monuments, and she assigns them out to the kids. She has learned, through experience, that Arlington is a very difficult topic - its history being what it is - so she always gives that to a kid who she thinks is up to the challenge. Or, she'll have them do it in pairs.
She was telling me all about this project the last time I was home, and the best thing about the project is this:
These kids spend a couple of weeks researching their monument. They get to know it. In a way, through this process, they get to feel like they "own" it - as indeed they do. So then, when they all go to D.C., the kids have this incredibly excited and personal response to their specific monument. They get to see in person what they had described in writing.
The papers had all just come in that week when I was home, so she was telling me about some of the best ones, and telling me about the kids who really "got" the project. Some don't - there are lots of levels of ability in her class.
She told me about how she coached the kids. This is, after all, their first research paper. Up until now, they have only had to write one or two paragraphs on something they have read, giving their opinion. This is different. I remember when things started getting serious in middle school (we called it junior high), when you could feel high school looming ahead of you, and you really had to get your study preparation techniques together.
She broke the paper down for them, to give them an idea of structure for the research paper. Start with a quote that sums up the whole thing. Give an overview of the monument, what it is, where it is.
Next paragraph: Talk about the man (or event) that the monument stands for. Who was George Washington? What is the Library of Congress? What is the history of the Supreme Court?
Next paragraph: Talk about the creation of the monument. When was it decided upon? How long did it take to build?
Last paragraph: Jean calls this the "national significance" paragraph. What does it stand for, what does it mean, why is it (the monument and the man) important? Now these are pre-teens. They perhaps are only used to gushing about the boy they have a crush on, or gushing about Miley Cyrus. Jean says to them, "Make this last paragraph a Hallmark Card to America. Go really really gushy - I want to feel like singing the National Anthem when I finish reading the last paragraph."
With kids of this age, if you tell them to go "too far", most of the time they will then approximate the tone you want. They aren't used to going over-the-top. You want to cover your ass. You can't wear your heart on your sleeve. Middle school is brutal! So Jean gives them permission to go "really really gushy".
When I was last home, some of the papers had already come in, and Jean was raving about them, how well the kids had done, how great they had worked. I wanted to hear everything. Who were the kids who knocked it out of the park? What were they like? She gave me two of them to read: the kid who had been assigned Arlington National Cemetery and the kid who had been assigned the Library of Congress. Like I mentioned, the Arlington kid is one of the smartest kids in her class, so she knew he could handle the complicated beginnings of Arlington, and the girl who had been assigned Library of Congress is a huge reader, and a real smarty-pants.
I know this sounds so goofy but I read their papers (all typewritten, of course), and found myself literally choking back tears. Their little footnotes: they all went to Wikipedia first, but then you could see their credit to encyclopedias and other books in the library. They ALL started with a quote - great tip, Jean - I still think it's powerful and interesting to start a paper with a quote, a good launching-point. And the kids had somehow figured out the perfect quote to choose. The quotes were relevant. Good job.
I seriously was so moved reading these papers. The girl who wrote the Library of Congress paper went all out. Her description of the creation of the Library of Congress is well-known to me, and she got all the particulars right. She also went hog-wild with numerical descriptions. "There are 2,567,901 volumes in the Library of Congress and every 5 minutes 287 more titles are added." (I made those numbers up, but that gives you an idea). I also loved (as in: I was a weepy mess) her explanation about the Gutenberg Bibles included in the Library of Congress (a tween who even knows what that is? Bestill my heart) - and she helpfully explains: "They are made of vellum (calf-skin)." The parenthetical kills me. I don't mean to sound condescending. I am saying that it truly kills me.
Her "Hallmark Card" paragraph was a masterpiece, an emotional prose-poem to the beauty of reading, and having all books available to all, for the present generations, and forever more.
Kudos.
The Arlington kid didn't get quite as gushy (he's a boy, so he kept a lid on it - as Jean knew he would) - but he handled all of the steps of the creation of that land perfectly, and his Hallmark Card paragraph spoke movingly about "remembering the men and women who have fought for our country...."
I have tears in my eyes. This is the best project I have ever heard of.
Just imagine this young girl and this young boy - now getting to SEE the Library of Congress and the Cemetery - and how amazing that will be for them.
Jean told me over the phone that another paper had come in, this one about the Jefferson Memorial. As Alexander Hamilton is my "dead boyfriend", Jefferson is Jean's "dead boyfriend" - which she informed the class - she calls him her "Revolutionary boyfriend", and they all just thought it was the funniest thing they had ever heard. "Mrs. W has a Revolutionary boyfriend - tee hee!" So she tried to impress on the girl assigned Thomas Jefferson: "He's a tough one. A tough one to write about and to nail down." She assured her that she could handle it.
Jean sent me the paper a couple of days ago and said to me, "Check out the final paragraph!"
The "Hallmark Card" paragraph.
Obviously I cannot post it here on the Internet, since this is a child's school assignment, but Jean and I were both just CRYING reading it - with laughter and also emotion. This kid WENT for it. "Okay, you want a Hallmark Card to Thomas Jefferson? Fine. Here it is." The final paragraph just reiterated over and over what a great man Jefferson was - but here's the best part: the girl explained why she thought that way. She wasn't being blindly obedient to her teacher - she knew: Okay. So let me think about this a bit, and try to figure out WHY there is a monument for him.
She just poured on the syrup, and gushed about him - he was seriously, according to this sweet young tween, the greatest man who had ever lived because of this, this and this. This girl took the coaching and ran with it.
A nice antidote to the whole Texas Textbook nonsense, I might add. Jean and I were just crying with laughter and emotion.
The language of the papers is naturally 12-year-old language, but they did really excellent jobs, all of them, and they are all now heading down to Washington D.C., as we speak, to spend a week there, seeing all of these monuments, and I'm just excited for all of them. I can't wait to get an update from Jean this weekend when I go home for Good Friday.
“When I was younger, I would always want to know what dancers were doing...I would have loved to have Twitter to read about what they were doing on a day-to-day basis rather than just in a performance."
A really interesting article about the new trend of ballet dancers on Twitter.
March 28, 2010
Neo Ned (2005); Dir. Van Fischer
Neo Ned is a mess. A charming mess, but a mess nonetheless. Featuring two standout performances by Jeremy Renner (fresh off the heels of his breakout performance as Jeffrey Dahmer - my review here) and Gabrielle Union (she of eternal Bring It On fame, I will love her forever for that alone), Neo Ned doesn't know what it wants to be. Or, to be more accurate, it does know what it wants to be, and I suppose that that is my problem with it. It wants to be (and is) a sweet and moving love story. The two leads have real charm together, they make a very believable couple. So many romantic movies, with giant movie star leads, don't capture this very simple component, having to do with chemistry.
But I found myself playing Script Doctor repeatedly, as I watched it, and then I kept trying to tell myself to take it for what it is, Sheila, and to some degree, that is part of the battle. A realization of what a movie is, and that it's not about what you, the viewer, want it to be. However, if something doesn't work, then I do ask myself: "Why?" It becomes a puzzle. If THIS were in place, maybe it would work better ... if you took away this awkward flashback and got rid of the voiceover it might feel less clunky ... This is a constant inner-conversation that goes on with movies that aren't, you know, gripping from end to end (in other words: most films). "Hmmm, he's mis-cast ... that would be better with someone like John C. Reilly in the part ..." "Not wacky about that dissolve- seems like they're hiding something ..." "I think the end should be the beginning - that might solve this continuity problems..."
All of this makes me think of what the moderator at the Actors Studio says after two actors have presented a scene to the group. The moderator does not immediately launch into a critique when the scene is finished. Instead, he or she always asks: "So what were you working on?" If the actor says, "I was working on the drunkenness", then ideally all the comments should be about that. Did the actor succeed or fail in believably creating drunkenness? When critiques like that are handled well, it helps keep the session from devolving into people raising their hands and saying moronic things like, "If I were playing the scene ..." Yeah, but you're not. That's not helpful. Everyone's a genius when they're sitting in the seats. I like to think of this, from time to time, when I am watching a film, to try to align myself with what "they were working on", and then I can make my assessment on whether or not they succeeded. It's no use wishing a movie were other than what it was. If you wish Sophie's Choice were more like Annie Hall, then that is your problem. However, if you feel that a certain movie is not quite successful in being what it wants to be, then you have something to talk about.
To bring a perhaps ridiculous example into it: Blue Crush is (to my mind) a VERY successful movie, because it knows what it is, it doesn't pretend it's something else, and every single element in the film pours into the ultimate theme, story, feel, mood. I don't want Blue Crush to be anything other than what it gloriously proclaims itself to be, and so successfully. There are other more weighty films that also are successful in what they are trying to do, but I figured I'd throw Blue Crush in there to show that the theory works in ALL films, not just the great or serious ones.
While watching Neo Ned (and, admittedly, I was in it for Renner), I found myself asking the question: "What does this movie want to be?" It's difficult to come up with the right answer at first (and yes, there is a right answer), due to the title, and the fact that it is a love story between a NeoNazi skinhead and a black girl who thinks she is Adolf Hitler. How does one "get past" these elements to see the love story? Eventually, if you just focus in on Renner and Union, you'll get it, you'll get what the movie wants to be, but due to the awkwardness of the early scenes, the uncertainty of tone, and the vagueness at the heart of the script, the essential story is sometimes lost because the trappings are so distracting.
There are also some awkwardly-handled flashbacks, and an overuse of self-help terminology ("Ned just wanted attention because he didn't get it at home"), which threatened to tune me out entirely. Thankfully, I stayed with it, because Renner and Union are so good together, so solid, and while it may have seemed, from the start, that Neo Ned was going to tell another kind of story, it's actually a conventional little love story, about a young couple trying to deal with adversity, and stick together even though no one else understands. Pretty cliched stuff (but hey, it worked for Shakespeare, so let's not knock cliches).
The story is this, and this has to be the Meet-Cute to end all Meet-Cutes: Ned is in a mental hospital. He had been charged with second-degree murder of a black man, but his defense lawyer got him declared insane. He stalks around the mental institution, a twitchy bundle of nerves, with impulsive behavior, sudden Sieg Heils, and a stream of profanity and racial epithets, that he says with almost a sweet blunted innocence. Into the hospital comes Rachel, (Gabrielle Union) who suffers from post-partum psychosis and is also under the delusion that she is the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler. When we first see her, she is being dragged down a hall by two orderlies, and she is screaming at them in German. Ned, naturally, is drawn to her. He is a man with the SS symbol tattooed on his wrist, after all. Who is this chick? Only, naturally, he refers to her as a "nigger woman", sometimes to her face. That language runs rampant through the first half of the film, and Rachel somehow seems not to mind. She treats Ned with a sort of bemused condescension, knowing that she (as Adolf Hitler) has the upper hand.
This is all extremely bizarre and goes back to what I was saying early about trying to take a film for what it is. The image of Renner, hard body like a pit bull, shaved head, covered in tattooes, reminded me so much of Russell Crowe's electrifying performance in Romper Stomper.
But there the similarity ends. Hando (Crowe's character) is a true believer. A fanatic and a brute. It is a chilling and ruthless portrayal of a man whose mind has been taken over by the fantasies that stalk his night, until there is no person left in there. Ned in Neo Ned is a follower. A truly malleable and blank personality, which does make him scary in a way, but also makes him equally susceptible to kindness and encouragement. He reminds me a bit of some of the skinhead kids at my high school, I'm sure we all remember boys like him: misfits who just want to be noticed. Wearing a T shirt with a swastika on it is sure to get you noticed. It also gives you instant cache with a strong group, which is also most desired by a lonely person. It may be despicable, the group, but there are certainly definite levels. There are leaders and there are followers. It becomes clear, maybe 20 minutes into the film, that Ned, despite his vile language, isn't a racist at all, and he actually has a crush on this pretty black girl, who is just as messed up as he is.
A tricky balance, right? In general, the film is able to walk that balance, but that was true for me only after I stopped expecting to see Romper Stomper.
Another movie that came to mind as I watched Neo Ned was the haunting Australian film Angel Baby, about two schizophrenics who are in love, and who decide to go off their medication together when they discover the woman is pregnant. John Lynch (marvelous actor, he who was "Cal") plays the man in the couple and Jacqueline McKenzie (who was also unforgettable in Romper Stomper) plays the woman. It is a beautiful film, harrowing, I remember I saw it with my friend Rebecca in a little theatre in the Village, and we both were weeping into our popcorn. A realistic portrayal of mental illness, and the damage that these drugs can do (of course they are also life-savers, but it's a tremendously difficult choice), Angel Baby has stayed with me for years. There were elements in Neo Ned that reminded me of Angel Baby: the mental hospital setting, the falling-in-love-while-incarcerated plotline, the sense that it is these two against a hostile world who want to keep them apart.
But Angel Baby was a dead-end road for me as well, in terms of getting in sync with Neo Ned, because Neo Ned is not really interested in the reality of mental illness. Neither of these characters are truly mentally ill. Ned has been diagnosed with ADHD, sure, and Rachel seems to believe she is Hitler - but nobody really buys her act. It is not clear that she is truly in a delusion. It seems to be something she is "putting on", maybe to extend her time in the institution? In my fantasy, a romance between an unrepentant racist and a black girl who believes she is Hitler could, if it had the courage of its convictions, knock it out of the park. Neo Ned is a conventional movie, wrapped up in the trappings of gritty independent film, and that was a bit of a disappointment to me. It completely skirted the issue of racism (hard to believe, with Renner in a swastika-Tshirt the entire time), and seemed to treat it all with humor and carelessness.
Some of these moments work. They get out of the institution and go live in a trailer on Renner's mother's trailer park (Renner's mother is played by a delightfully ditzy Sally Kirkland - but perhaps that is redundant). Ned gets a job as a short-order cook. There's a scene where Ned and Rachel (only he calls her "Adolf" throughout the film) go to a grocery store. Rachel pushes the cart along, and Ned lies along on the top of it, being pushed by her. All dolled up in his jackboots, and Nazi regalia, rings on every finger, leather bracelets, and he's just chatting with her casually about how nice it will be to make some money and buy some groceries. He's a simple soul. But you can see the other customers of the supermarket glance at this oddball couple curiously, and one black woman, as she walks by, murmurs to Rachel, "Stay with your own, girl." It's a funny and specific moment, one of the only times that the inter-racial nature of their relationship really comes up, as surprising as that may seem.
Gabrielle Union plays Rachel as a damaged girl, almost damaged beyond repair, by the abuse she has suffered in her life, and becoming a mother was too much for her, and she cracked. Her insanity, however, does not mean she takes Ned for what he is. It's rather startling, at moments, how she sees through his surface to what is going on. They take shelter from the rain in an abandoned gas station. This is before anything romantic has gone down between them. They are soaking wet (a movie cliche that I wish would be put to rest), and laughing, and they suddenly realize how close they are standing to each other, and etc. and etc. Something is about to happen. Ned stares at her and says, in a whisper, "It's wrong to mix the races." Rachel looks at him for a long time and replies, calmly, "So what you're trying to say is you're attracted to me."
Tough stuff to play, obviously, but Union does a great job in keeping her character on track. She senses his tenderness towards her from the beginning. He's like a little kid with a schoolboy crush. He wants to sit next to her in the cafeteria. He makes her a drawing in his art therapy. He asks her questions about Hitler, lolling about the couch, staring at her. Union does not make her character a self-righteous person at all, which would obviously not have worked. She is not the "Angry Black Woman(TM)". She has been beaten down by life, and this strange restless man takes a shine to her, and even though he says the word "nigger" repeatedly (she sighs at one point and says, grinning at him, "Can't you wait till I leave the room before you say that word, like Good White People do?"), she senses he likes her. She's got a tough part to play here, and I know that Union met with Fischer (the director) quite a bit before filming, to be sure what his point was with all this, that it wouldn't be used against her, that the film wouldn't be getting OFF on its free use of that explosive word.
She gives a very smart performance.
In one of the awkward flashbacks, we see Ned's fellow skinheads shaving his head in a ritual, and pouring beer over it, and he seems happy and flushed with belonging. His language is violent and disgusting, and sometimes he throws tantrums, but really that's more because of his ADHD than any racist anger. He's an interesting character, mainly because he is played by Jeremy Renner, which I will get to in a second. Ned went through foster care as a kid, including being placed in a house where the parents tried to kill the whole family by carmon monoxide from the car. He's had it rough. His crazy mother capitalizes on her son's problems by going on any talk show that will take her, talk shows of the Montel/Maury Povich variety. Ned brings Rachel home to meet his mother, and 2 seconds later we see his mother on the phone saying, "Yes, my son is a skinhead convicted of second degree murder, and he is now dating a black girl ... Yes, the producers should have my number, thank you."
Jeremy Renner is an extraordinary actor. What he does here is take his particular brand of narcissistic anti-social personality (which could very well become his stock in trade, putting him in a continuum with Peter Lorre and Robert Mitchum), and soften it, muddy it up, make Ned a mush ball hiding under the muscle and the clothing. He resists sentiment, which is a Godsend, because there are times when the script wants to force him into it. He has a moment where he says to Rachel, during an argument, "You're my home", and it could be a nauseating treacly moment in the hands of a lesser actor. He sort of squinches up one side of his face when he says it, almost wincing as the words come out, and a less observant girlfriend than Rachel would not believe him. I look for moments like that. How actors survive a script that is not really worthy of them. Because that is the mark of a true talent. As I said in my big piece on Dean Stockwell, when I was discussing his work in the hilariously campy Werewolf in Washington:
One of the reasons I really love this performance is because of where Stockwell was at in his life when he filmed it. He was struggling, he had become anonymous again, he had lost his cache as a star. He was job to job to job; it's easy to be wonderful when you have the plum parts offered to you, when every decision in Hollywood somehow includes YOU. But when you are outside that charmed circle, when the material offered to you is not quite up to the level of your gifts, how do you survive then? How do you, to quote Tim Gunn, "make it work"?
Jeremy Renner had already done Dahmer by this point, so his name was already known. He was one of the up-and-coming actors (not young, though, he was mid-30s, which is relatively old to start getting important parts), but he obviously wasn't A list yet. He's A list now, so it will be interesting to see how he handles what comes next. I'm a little bit nervous for him. He's so good. But here, in Neo Ned, which was a really fun part for him, he had a couple of things he had to deal with which generally isn't a huge issue in giant plum projects directed by masters of the craft. Here he had stilted dialogue, forcing the actors into poses of sentimentality, some awkward transitions that he had to make sense of all on his own - he handles it all beautifully. An actor's talent helps him choose well, even in the midst of syrupy moments like "You're my home", and therein you can see the survivor of Jeremy Renner, the integrity of his talent that will not be forced into something that will embarrass him. He either plays under it, or skips around it, with expressions flitting across his face of embarrassment, grief, fear, which makes it seem as though the stilted dialogue comes from the character's inability to find the right words (as opposed to the screenwriter being too on the nose). Hard to do.
One of the things that I am getting to know about him (and there are a couple of notable exceptions) is that he has a way of making his eyelids heavy and flat, which is probably instinctual, but I've seen him in roles where he does NOT do this, which tells me that he is somehow in charge of it. He's choosing it, when appropriate. What happens with his eyes is that he begins to take on the visage of a psychopath (mental health care professionals and social workers, people used to working with psychopaths, all talk about their eyes - and the "flat affect" of their faces - I really must stop reading books about serial killers) - and Renner nails this, from the inside out. You could see it in Dahmer, of course, and you could see it in Hurt Locker too, although that came through a different filter: an essentially anti-social man who found work that was appropriate for him (a rare thing, indeed). Sgt. James was a star in his specialized field. He fit in nowhere else. He is not a savage warmonger, none of those cliches - he has not been "ruined" by war in the same way that, oh, Dennis Hopper's character in Apocalypse Now has been ruined - but he is a man who is able to focus very very narrowly on one task, under extremely dangerous conditions, and people who are able to do that are, shall we say, different from most other people.
Renner can play an un-self-aware man like nobody's business, that very few actors can pull off, since so many of them are overly self-aware and analyze everything. He can play a man uninterested in introspection - or, it's not that he's uninterested - it's just that he doesn't even know what people are TALKING about when they talk about their feelings. He'd make a hell of a Stanley Kowalski. He plays men you kind of worry about, actually. You hope he finds his place in the world. Because it's not a done deal, with someone like Renner. He's an outsider. He glances around him, with flat-lidded eyes, that can go quite dead from time to time, which makes him rather frightening, unpredictable. It's not a trick. To mention one of the exceptions, he doesn't use this quality at all in The Unusuals, which was a short-lived television series, where he plays a detective in the Lower East side of Manhattan. He's the lead. In that, he is very funny, sharp, good at what he does, short-tempered sometimes, and a good cop, a good team-player, a good boyfriend ... basically, a civilized man. If you only saw Dahmer, Neo Ned and Hurt Locker, you would think of him as specializing in UN-civilized men. And by "uncivilized" I don't mean bad table manners. I mean men who cannot fit in in society as it is set up.
Renner has said (he's a very insightful actor) that he knew, right off the bat, that Ned didn't really believe all that skinhead garbage. He was just desperate to belong. Renner did some research on skinheads (which is where he came up with the SS tattoo on his arm), but his main research was in people who have ADHD, and what it's like for them. And this is where his performance tilts off into something that is genius. I've seen his work before. I am getting to know his ticks. In no other film does he move or walk or talk or behave the way he does in Neo Ned. He races out of rooms when he's done with a conversation. He lies on a couch and can't keep still. He is suddenly tender and quiet when his meds kick in. None of this is attention-getting or seems belabored or actor-y. You get the sense of how hard it is for people who have this disability. His eyes always seem to float, in a disconnected way, above every conversation, because he is always flitting on to the next thing. He is nothing short of riveting in every single frame.
The psychological aspect of the film is a bit juvenile, in that it doesn't seem interested in what it would be like to really be a racist, or what it would be like to really believe you had Adolf Hitler inside of you. Dropping the Adolf plot was a big mistake. You can't introduce something as powerful and weird as that and then dodge the implications of it. It's like having a gun in the first act that doesn't go off in the third. It felt like a cop-out, because that potentially could have been so juicy, and very very disturbing.
But Neo Ned, in the end, doesn't want to disturb. It wants to please. And it does, but not without losing something in the transfer.
And here is where what I want the film to be and what it actually is cannot be reconciled. Rachel is set up as a woman who speaks German, shouts orders at people, and believes she is Hitler. To quote my acting teacher in college: "What does more for you?" Meaning, what does more for the film: that she's just ACTING that all of this is true? Or that it is REALLY true? In my opinion, it is the second that does more for you, and Neo Ned does not go that route, to the film's detriment. The Hitler persona is dropped pretty much once the relationship heats up, and that's a shame, because then Neo Ned becomes about the regular every-day business of romances: "where were you last night?" "we need to get jobs, we need to get money" "tell me about your past" - which both actors play very well, but it's something I've seen 100 times before. However: a skinhead making love to a black woman who speaks German because she thinks she's Hitler? That's something I want to see.
I guess I miss the film that wasn't made.
Today in history: March 28, 1941
TO: LEONARD WOOLF
Rodmell,
Sussex
Tuesday (18? March 1941)
Dearest, I feel certain I am going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times. And I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can't concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don't think two people could have been happier till this terrible disease came. I can't fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can't even write this properly. I can't read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that - everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can't go on spoiling your life any longer.
I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been.
V.
March 28, 1941. After writing that note to her husband, Virginia Woolf put rocks in her pockets and drowned herself in the River Ouse.
My advice to a friend, about to take her first trip to Ireland:
"If you travel to Ireland, and you do NOT make out with a couple of random Irishmen, then you really need to look within to find the problem."
Happy birthday Alex
Alex. Photo by Sheila
Alex is one of my best friends in the world. Today is her birthday. I thought in honor of this momentous occasion, I would re-post (in all its parts) the crazy day we had in Los Angeles a couple of years ago. And when I say crazy, I mean it involved scrunchies and suddenly failing car-brakes near the Hollywood Bowl. It involved jazz hands, and many Armenians. It involved a dead body on the sidewalk lying in a pool of blood. It also involved (peripherally) Timothy Treadwell. There was a boa, McNuggets inhaled at the speed of light, and at one point, we both found ourselves hooked up to e-meters on Hollywood Boulevard. Because that's what happens when you have a crazy day. You submit to e-meter analysis in broad daylight.
The only way to read it is to read it sequentially.
It is, bar none, the craziest day I have ever had. It's also one of my most favorite days. It takes some time to read, but it is worth it. I don't exaggerate one bit. It is part of a series called Things Experienced So Far in LA.
Happy birthday, Alex. I love you!
Things Experienced So Far in LA
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Part 10
I would also like to share with you another crazy day we shared, when we took a private tour of the L. Ron Hubbard Life Exhibit on Hollywood Boulevard. We were on a mission of infiltration. It involved a stakeout beforehand. It was a brilliant day.
The "persona swap" of Mulholland Drive; Dir. David Lynch
Last night, I went downtown to the 92nd Street Y in Tribeca (after a debacle involving all trains on the A, C and E line being rerouted to Brooklyn, skipping entirely my stop at Canal, so I ended up sharing a cab downtown with two nice stranded ladies) to see Mulholland Drive, which was being played in the small screening room. Miriam Bale, film writer, and curator of film series (I have met her before - most notably at this memorable occasion) - gave a talk beforehand. This is part of a project she is working on that I find very intriguing: She calls it the small genre of "persona swap". She is working on a big article about it, and I very much look forward to it. "Persona swap" films involve two women, usually blonde and brunette, who switch roles, or merge into one over the course of the film. She had a fascinating list of other films in this sub-genre, the most notable being Ingmar Bergman's Persona, which is similar to Mulholland Drive in that they are both about actresses (my thoughts on Persona here). I really enjoyed Miriam's talk, I enjoyed the fact that she placed Mulholland Drive (one of my favorite films of all time) in a context, and it gave a grounding-point, something to think about as the film unfolded. That is what really good film criticism can do. I can enjoy something viscerally, and I also make my own connections, obviously, but I love to listen to someone who has thought deeply about films through their own particular filter, and can express that, convey that.
I remember seeing Mulholland Drive in the theatre, back when it first came out, and it is one of the most thrilling, unforgettable movie-going experiences I have ever had. I cannot even express why, I can't point to one thing, either in the film or in me, that generated such an intense response. The film operates with "dream logic" (thank you, Miriam), and so every scene, in and of itself, feels logical and true and connected, but what are the threads holding it together? Why the sense of dread? What the hell is it behind the dumpster at that diner? Well, you don't need the answers when you operate with dream-logic. Dreams have their own universes, they operate on a primal level, jumpstarting your fight-or-flight response, and that was what it felt like watching Mulholland Drive for the first time. There are a couple of stand-out scenes for me, ones that have lodged themselves into my brain stem, and will never ever leave. Even if I never saw the film again, I would remember the scene in the midnight vaudeville theatre. I would remember Naomi Watts's audition scene. I would remember that creepy cowboy in the corral. I would remember that final third of the movie, the sudden switch and switch-back, which is so disturbing it seems to wipe out all that you have seen before. There are some classic great scenes here. Not "great" as in the way people use that word casually to describe anything better-than-good. I mean "great" as in "one for the books". These are scenes that live on, after you see the film, taking on their own life in your imagination. One of the creepiest and best things about seeing Mulholland Drive for the first time was that I knew it as I was seeing it. I knew that I would never forget the movie, that I would never stop thinking about, pondering it, worrying over it ... no matter how much I tried to forget it, or tried to block it out.
It cuts to the very core of identity, and I so much liked Miriam's perceptions on this score, because it helped clarify my own vaguer thoughts about it. In the film, Betty (played by Naomi Watts) calls a number and whispers to her co-conspirator (played by Rita Hayworth lookalike Laura Harring), "It's strange calling yourself."
The creepiness of that line, made even more creepy at the end of the film, when you realize who it was she was actually calling, is at the center of David Lynch's Mulholland Drive.
A masterpiece in every sense of the word, Mulholland Drive still weaves its spell around me and I have seen it many times since that first time in the theatre. I have memorized certain sections of it, even the camera angles (Justin Theroux looking over his shoulder at Naomi Watts as he films the scene in the recording studio, the dark approach to the corral, Naomi Watts straddling Laura Harring and looking down at her, the camera from underneath, so that Watts looks truly demonic), and yet even with memorization, the film does not become stale or predictable. As a matter of fact, repetition helps. Not to get "clarity", or "meaning", because I think that is missing the point here. I have in my mind a murky sense of the "story", and what really happened, but - similar to Moby Dick, where if you focus on the meaning, you strip the book of its magic (or, to quote E.M. Forster, you "silence" the book)- Mulholland Drive lives on a plane where meaning is relative, where identity is fluid, where dreams become reality and vice versa, where the questions you most want to ask and most fear to ask ("Who am I?" "How do I fit in here?" "What is my 'role' in life? Am I playing that role well or should I be re-cast?") reverb through an echo chamber miles under the earth, buried in the subconscious minds of the characters. They come upon moments that seem startling, or frightening, but underneath the original fear, is a sense that I know this. I have been here before. The way deja vu works, when you think you are remembering something real, and then you just remember that you saw such things in your dreams. The amnesia of "Rita", played by Laura Harring, is a perfect metaphor. She doesn't even know her own name. She doesn't know where she was going the night of the car accident, she remembers nothing about her life before. She gets flashes, and they are always terrifying, as though what she is about to remember is far worse than the oblivion of amnesia. Her mind refuses to remember.
Both lead actresses give spectacular iconic performances.
Mulholland Drive is a mystery to be contemplated, a dream-space to be inhabited, and in the screening room, in downtown Manhattan, on a Saturday night, there was a small audience, maybe 50 people, and the sense of anticipation was palpable. I heard one man say to someone, as he sat down (and this was a stranger he was sitting next to), "I am so excited. This movie is a masterpiece." I feel the same way.
March 27, 2010
The 5 most-deserving Best Picture winners
(I don't like a lot of the Best Picture winners. I far prefer the "losers", in general - some true classics there. It was hard to leave off a couple but I gave myself the task to pick 5. So there you go. What are your faves?)
Snapshots
-- Sometimes I look up from what I am doing and I see Hope across the room staring at me, and there is a look of such coiled contempt in her eyes that I want to run fleeing into the night.
-- And then sometimes I can barely take a step because she is hovering at my feet, purring and rubbing against me. She is giving very mixed messages.
-- Siobhan and Ben came over yesterday afternoon and it was really great to have them here, in my apartment - I rarely have people over - so it was so cool to be able to - well, first of all, now that I have a chair - people can actually sit down. I have enough chairs for my guests, which I just didn't have a month ago. Siobhan is so busy right now, we haven't been able to see each other much at all lately - so it was great to catch up.
-- I feel like I am in a bit of a holding pattern right now - as I wait to hear if such-and-such and so-and-so is going to happen. I have done what I needed to do, and now I just need to wait, on tenterhooks, fingers crossed, hoping for the best. But I'm in an odd limbo-land at the moment and I do not like it.
-- Thinking quite a bit about Jeremy Renner these days - and no, not just "Yum yum, dude is hot" - I have something big I want to write about him - and I know my "thesis", shall we say, just need to back it up with examples. It's been fun.
-- Tonight I'm going to see Mulholland Drive at the 92nd Street Y (the one in Tribeca) and I am quivering with anticipation. In an evening curated by Miriam Bale (whose name has been heard quite a bit these days in the NY film scene, due to her curatorship of the recent "Bluebeard" series at the Anthology Film Archives), the promotion states: "Recently declared the best film of the last decade by Film Comment, Cahiers du cinéma, Reverse Shot and countless other critics polls, Mulholland Dr. needs to be seen again and on film. The rich blacks and lush colors should be seen on celluloid, in the dark, to be seen at all. Mulholland Dr. is also a major work in a new category of "persona swap" films (including Persona, 3 Women and Céline and Julie Go Boating) that film writer and curator Miriam Bale will be examining in an upcoming issue of Film Comment. In this first of a two part presentation, she will suggest that Mulholland Dr. is the first mature work in this group of films; all of the themes—magic, merges, mysteries and sexual tension—come together organically and with great artistry. Bale suggests that the power of the film's appeal comes from its familiarity. It seems as familiar as a forgotten dream, recognizable yet always just out of reach." I can't wait to see it on the big screen again. I place that as the number 1 film of the last decade, bar none.
-- And on Monday, I'm going out to BAM to see Offside, which is playing as part of their Muslim Voices: The Female Perspective series. I've written a lot about Offside (see my review here), and of course recently the director of the film, Jafar Panahi, has been incarcerated in Iran. He is still not out. No news. It's eerily silent, I search the web for snippets of information, but there's nothing. I love Offside, so I'm excited to see it again, but I'm also going to show my support of Panahi, and wonder if there will be any signs of protests - signs for him, speeches, whatever. I just feel I need to be there, regardless.
-- I'm reading about 4 books at the same time now. I can't settle in on just one. This is such a vibrant change from last year, when I couldn't read at all, so I'm really happy about it. I'm in the midst of reading: The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst
-- I'm a little bit in love with Lady Gaga.
Interview with Rebecca West
In 1981, Rebecca West was interviewed by The Paris Review, and it's included in the first volume of the Paris Review interviews
For example, the interviewer asks her if she does many drafts of her writing. She replies, "I fiddle away a lot at them. Particularly if it's a fairly elaborate thing. I've never been able to do just one draft. That seems a wonderful thing. Do you know anyone who can?" The interview says, "I think D.H. Lawrence did" and Rebecca replies, "You could often tell."
It is, indeed, hard to reconcile the little white-haired old lady (or her younger glamorous self) with some of the most insightful analyses of fascism and totalitarian politics of the 20th century, but that's the beauty of Dame Rebecca. She was a suffragette - she got her start writing for a suffragette newspaper in 1912 (amazing, her lifespan, what she saw in one life - amazing) - and while she always considered herself a feminist, for very good reasons, the struggles of the day being what they are, she separated herself from the group, very consciously, a little bit later, because of the focus on chastity and birth control and moral issues, which didn't interest her in the slightest. She didn't judge those who subscribed to those views (she talks about it a bit in the interview), it was just that she was into political power and equality, and the focus on sex seemed to take the movement in another way. She says in the interview about her break with the suffragette movement: "I admired them enormously, but all that business about venereal disease, which was supposed to be round every corner, seemed to me excessive. I wasn't in a position to judge, but it did seem a bit silly." She talks of Christabel Pankhurst, a leading suffragette, who ran a chastity campaign for women. The thing about Rebecca is that when she talks of all of these people, she actually knew all of them. Nothing is abstract with her. She disliked all of the retrospective analysis about the suffragettes, because so much of it seemed to come from people who weren't there and who didn't know what it was like on the ground at that time, and, frankly, they didn't know what they were talking about. Here's another example. The name David Mitchell comes up - West mentions him as the man who "writes silly, hysterical books about Christabel Pankhurts. What is he? Who is he?" The interviewer asks her more about her opinion on his book on Christabel - and West replies: "[His book was] absolutely rubbish and nonsense. He writes about how she went to Paris and how she didn't go down to the cafes and meet the young revolutionaries. But how on earth was she to find out where they were? Because, you see, the Bolshevik generation was not yet identifiable. How would she find out any of the people, who hadn't really made their mark? It was an obscure time in the history of revolution. It was a time when very remarkable people were coming up, but they weren't visible yet. She did know the people like Henri de Rochefort very well. Mitchell also says she took a flat and had a housekeeper, who was also a very good cook, and didn't that show great luxury? Well, if he'd asked anybody, he would have found that, in those days, you couldn't take a furnished flat or house in Paris, nor, so far as I know, in most parts of France, unless you took a servant, who was left by the owner. All the furnished houses I ever had in France, modest as they were, had somebody that I had to take with the house." While this may seem like a silly thing to get up in arms about, it is not. Because Mr. Mitchell is making a judgment on someone's seriousness by making a false assumption. He makes that false assumption because he is ideological, as opposed to practical, and he wasn't there, and he is not asking the right questions - due to his ideological bent. He had a bone to pick with Christabel Pankhurst, and wanted to take her off her pedestal ("some revolutionary - she had a maid!!") Rebecca West calls him out on this, despite her own feelings about Pankhurst's later work and how she broke with the movement because of it. Look at how clear-headed one must be, how unaffiliated with ANY group, to make all of those distinct analytical points. She doesn't like sloppy writing, certainly, but more than that she doesn't like sloppy thinking. And those who are hell bent on making a point, out of their defensiveness for whatever cause they stand for, are sloppy thinkers, more often than not. You can see it all around us today, and I suppose you can see it in any generation of writers and political thinkers.
Here are some excerpts from the interview, to give you a taste of it. The "idiots and lunatics" question (that was her label for how men and women react, in different ways, to upheaval: Women are idiots and men are lunatics) is based on a whole chapter in Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, where she breaks it down at great length, what she means by it, and how it manifests itself - in England, certainly, but also everywhere. Here, she is asked about it and gives a brief answer - but I just wanted to point that out as one of her philosophical analyses, something she wrote about at great length in her life, and which became much of the backbone of her master work. Just because Rebecca West herself could not be classified as an "idiot" (at least in her terminology) - doesn't lessen her argument. She always stood apart from groups. She grew up in a family who came from great wealth, but for many reasons, did not have that wealth in West's time. So there was an air of faded grandeur about her family, and it seems like her parents sort of let their children run free and wild. Rebecca West went to school, but other than that, she spent her time un-managed, un-watched-over - her parents just didn't impose on her any expectations, based on the fact that she was a girl. While that may have made life tougher for her (to be taken seriously as a serious writer about politics at the time was no small task), it also gives her that clear-sighted unmistakable voice that she has. She paid a price for her outsider status - made even worse by her scandalous affair with HG Wells, which ended in a baby - but again, she just kept going.
I also was fascinated, FASCINATED, by the fact that she says she always wished she could write like Mark Twain. What?? I love that! I love that not just because I love Mark Twain, but that it just goes to show you that West was unconnected, again, from typical influences. She did not follow along with the normal trends, in literature (her words on Tolstoy below, for example), and her words on Mark Twain were so exciting to me (you'll see why when you read the excerpt. Look at what she is able to discern in him ...)
Here are some excerpts from the interview:
"From an early age - but it was not detected for many, many years - I've had difficulty about hearing. Finally, I lost my hearing almost entirely in this ear, I got pneumonia in it, which I think is rather chic."
"We had large classes [at school], which was an ineffable benefit, because the teachers really hadn't time to muck about with our characters."
"[Women] are idiots and men are lunatics. It's a perfectly good division. The Greek root of idiot means "private person"; men "see the world as if by moonlight, which shows the outlines of every object but not the details indicative of their nature". It seems to me in any assembly where you get people, who are male and female, in a crisis, the women are apt to get up and, with a big wave of the hand, say, It's all very well talking about the defenses of the country, but there are thirty-six thousand houses in whatever (wherever they're living) that have no bathrooms. Surely, it's more important to have clean children for the future. Silly stuff, when the enemy's at the gate. But men are just as silly. Even when there are no enemies at the gate, they won't attend to the bathrooms, because they say defense is more important. It's mental deficiency in both cases."
"I should like to be approved of, oh, yes. I blench. I hate being disapproved of. I've had rather a lot of it."
"Well, I longed, when I was young, to write as well as Mark Twain. It's beautiful stuff and I always liked him. If I wanted to write anything that attacked anybody, I used to have a look at his attack on Christian Science, which is beautifully written. He was a man of very great shrewdness. The earliest article on the Nazis, on Nazism, a sort of first foretaste, a prophetic view of the war, was an article by Mark Twain in Harper's in, I should think, the nineties. He went to listen to the Parliament in Vienna and he describes an awful row and what the point of view of Luger, the Lord Mayor, was, and the man called George Schwartz, I think, who started the first Nazi paper, and what it must all lead to. It's beautifully done. It's the very first notice that I've ever found of the Austrian Nazi Party, that started it all."
"I just saw violence [before the First World War]. There was the race thing and sacred Germanism and all that, but the enemy before the First World War you can't really compare with fascism. It was the imperialism of Germany and the supremacy of the army, but that isn't exactly fascism. I think you could say, there was more fascism, but of an intellectualized kind, in France. The crux of the Dreyfus case was that it didn't matter whether Dreyfus was guilty or not, you mustn't spoil the image of the army. That was more or less fascist."
"If there is a God, I don't think He would demand that anybody bow down or stand up to Him. I have often a suspicion God is still trying to work things out and hasn't finished."
"People were very rude just because they'd heard I was a woman writer. That kind of rudeness is as bad as ever."
"No [advantages in being a woman] whatsoever. You could have a good time as a woman, but you'd have a much better time as a man. If in the course of some process, people turn up a card with a man's name on it and then a card with a woman's, they feel much softer toward the man, even though he might be a convicted criminal. They'd treat the man's card with greater tenderness."
"You know, I don't really appreciate the Virgin Mary. She always looks so dull. I particularly hate Raphael, Raphael's Madonnas. They are awful, aren't they?"
"My life has been dictated to and broken up by forces beyond my control. I couldn't control the two wars! The second war had a lot of personal consequences for me, both before and after. But I had enough money at that time, because I had a large herd of cows and a milk contract. I had to take some part in looking after the cows, but the dear things worked for me industriously."
"I'm a heretic about Tolstoy. I really don't see War and Peace as a great novel because it seems constantly to be trying to prove that nobody who was in the war knew what was going on. Well, I don't know whoever thought they would - that if you put somebody down in the wildest sort of mess they understand what's happening."
"I write books to find out about things. I wrote Saint Augustine because, believe it or not, there was no complete life in English at that time."
"It's an absurd error to put modern English literature in the curriculum. You should read contemporary literature for pleasure or not read it at all. You shouldn't be taught to monkey with it. It's ghastly to think of all the little girls who are taught to read To the Lighthouse. It's not really substantial food for the young b ecause there's such a strong feeling that Virginia Woolf was doing a set piece and it didn't really matter very much. She was putting on an act. Shakespeare didn't put on an act. But Orlando is a lovely original splash, a beautiful piece of fancy. Leonard Woolf had a tiresome mind. When you read his books about Malaya, and then the books of the cadets who went out there, he's so petty, and they have such an enthusiasm and such tolerance for the murderous habits of the natives. But he was certainly good to Virginia. I couldn't forgive Vanessa Bell for her awful muddy decorations and those awful pictures of Charlotte Bronte. And I hated Duncan Grant's pictures too. The best thing that was ever said about Bloomsbury was said by a lovely butler of mine. At dinner one evening, they began to talk of Faulkner's book in which someone uses a corncob for the purposes of rape. They were being terribly subtle, and doing this and that gesture over the table. The butler came into my son Anthony's room and asked, Do you know where they keep the Faulkners? It seems they're very saucy. Virginia Woolf's criticism was much better than criticism others were writing then."
"I wanted to write a book on Finland, which is a wonderful case of a small nation with empires here and there, so I learned Finnish and I read a Finnish novel. It was all about people riding bicycles. But then, when I went to Yugoslavia, I saw it was much more exciting with Austria and Russia and Turkey, and so I wrote that. I really did enjoy it terribly, loved it."
"I find Tom Stoppard just as amusing as I ever found Shaw. Very amusing, both as a playwright and as himself. But I'm not now an admirer of Shaw. It was a poor mind, I think. I liked his wife so much better. He was conceited, but in an odd way. Usually, you know, it's people shouting to keep their spirits up, but he really did think he was better than most people."
"What [Yeats] liked was solemnity, and, if you were big enough, heavy enough, and strong enough, he loved you. He loved great big women. He would have been mad about Vanessa Redgrave."
"I've aroused hostility in an extraordinary lot of people. I've never known why. I don't think I'm formidable."
"[Augustine] wasn't a heretic. Most of his life he wasn't at all a nice man, but that's quite a different thing. I like to think about people like the Donatists, who were really suffering agonies of one kind and another because the Roman Empire was splitting up and it was especially uncomfortable to be in Roman Africa. But they didn't know anything about economics, and did know about theology. Theology had taught them that if you suffered, it was usualy because you'd offended God - so they invented an offense against God, which was that unworthy priests were celebrating the Sacraments. So that satisfied them and then they went round the country, looting and getting the food and the property they wanted because they said that they were punishing heretics. I think it's wonderful that in the past people overlooked things that now seem to us quite obvious, and thought they were doing things for the reasons they weren't, and tried to remedy them by actions. Perhaps there's some simple thing we'll think of someday, which will make us much happier."
March 26, 2010
Reasons I love Three Kings:
(These are all reasons that other people seemed to hate it):
-- The filmmaking itself is obnoxious and in your face. I loved its kinetic energy. I loved its bombast. I loved the sheer obnoxiousness of it (closeup inside someone's body with the stomach filling up with bile. Awesome).
-- The script has a wit to it ("Can you let me look at my Iraqi ass map, please?") that is smart-alecky and too-cool-for-you, but it helps you know you're not looking at something that is supposed to be realistic. This is all about movie stars play-acting as soldiers. It should be enjoyed on that level. The details in the script (the Infinity convertible argument, the ring of Jesus fire, the quiet discussion about what they should call Arabs because "dune coon" is offensive - "Towel head is a perfectly acceptable substitute") help give it a snarky feel, which, again, saves it from being over-serious (or, hell, serious at all).
-- This is right around when George Clooney started finding his legs as a movie star. He had become famous on ER, but that brand of emotionally-distant hot guy won't get you too far in a long-lasting movie career. His earlier movies were not good - because he was cast as a leading man. Obviously, he was pegged that way because of his looks. What else is he gonna play? Goofy character-actor parts? But Clooney is darker than most leading men, he's un-gettable, truly un-gettable - and so I never bought him in straight romances. He seemed embarrassed for himself. He's not earnest. He doesn't do earnest well (although, when roused, he can do righteous anger. But that's different from earnest.) Right before Three Kings, he did Out of Sight, a surprise hit, directed by Steven Soderbergh (his collaboration with Clooney is now long-lasting) which capitalized on that Clooney THING that we all now know so well. Then came Three Kings, then came O Brother Where Art Thou, and suddenly, Clooney had a whole different kind of career. He took charge of it, it seems like. No more would he be lovey-gooey with another huge female movie star. He would be subordinate to no one. From now on, he would stand slightly apart - as he should. That's his thing, his true essence. Three Kings is an ensemble drama, this is not a Clooney vehicle, but you can see here, in his Special Forces guy Archie Gates that he is having fun with his persona (even though the shoot was notoriously un-fun - I don't think anyone has fun on a David O' Russell picture - just ask LIly Tomlin) - but Clooney here squints at the camera, growls, makes tough choices under fire, puts on his mirrored sunglasses, and it all borders on camp. This is perfect. Just right. Exactly what the picture needs, and also what Clooney needed in his career. There is an element of camp to the Clooney persona, the nostalgic aura of "ring a ding ding" around him, and I never saw his performance here as "straight". It's a parody. Which is made even more explicit by the last shot of him, when we see what Archie Gates has been up to after the war. Hysterical. It's fun to see Clooney come into his own. It happened late for him. It suits him.
-- The early section of the film, up until the point where they hatch their plan to go retrieve "Kuwaiti bullion", the movie has a pretty straightforward style. The colors look normal (albeit desert-monotonous), and while there are a couple of clues that this will be a different sort of movie (freezing each one of the characters in crazy moments, with text on the screen, telling us a little bit about them: "Troy Barlow - new father" "Conrad Rig - wants to be Troy Barlow"), it doesn't look any different from any old war movie. But once they set off to get the gold, things become distinctly surreal, even down to the vibrant (even psychedelic) colors of pretty much everything: the blazing lime-green milk truck, the bright blue delivery van, the orange and blue and green murals of Saddam on all the walls). We're leaving the real world and going into some fantasy land. Shadows appear stark and long (I think they must have filmed the entire movie during "magic hour"), and it just doesn't look realistic, in any way, shape or form. The music floats above the movie, never commenting on it, just adding to it - there isn't really a soundtrack, most of the music is either what they play on the cassette tape in their humvee, or eerie mood music when things start to get tense. The lack of a traditional score, mixed with the crazy colors crowding their way into every corner of the frame, makes it feel like the fantasy of adrenaline-surged men, as it is, as it should be.
-- There's one shot near the end of Mark Wahlberg (who plays Troy Barlow) and Ice Cube (who plays Chief Elgin). Barlow has been broken out of the interrogation room where he was being held, and one of their colleagues has been shot down. It finally is too much for him, and he breaks down in tears. Ice Cube comes over to him and puts his arm around him, holding him. I love that shot because I always think: Wow. Two hip hop rappers acting the SHIT out of their big emotional moment in a big Hollywood movie. In America, anything is possible.
-- The portrayal of the Iraqis is subtle and a welcome change to the stereotype. The uprising has begun, and the war is over. Saddam's army is turning on its own people. At one point, the "three kings" sit in a shelter with a bunch of Iraqis, hiding from tear gas that has gone off. Cliff Curtis (a wonderful actor from New Zealand - unforgotteable in Once Were Warriors - but here, he plays Amir, an Iraqi man, whose wife is killed before his eyes) holds his small daughter in his arms, and one of the American soldiers asks how she's doing. He looks at the Americans and says flatly, "She's traumatized. What do you expect." Then he says, "I went to Bowling Green University. Came back here to open up a couple of hotels near Karbala. You guys bombed all my cafes." What I love about that line is the sheer middle-class-ness of it, something that isn't often shown in American movies about places like Iran, Iraq, etc. The vibrant and important middle-class. Their women may be veiled, but come on, they aren't another species. I loved that line. Amir ends up emerging as a great character. He and Archie Gates look at one another and realize they need one another. So they strike a bargain. It is nice to see a movie that acknowledges that everyone wants something, and you cannot give something for nothing - because then it is uneven. Nobody THANKS you when you "give" them something, especially not if it feels like charity - it can breed resentment - but here: they go back and forth, bargaining, what's in it for me, what's in it for me? The way the world works. He's a great character, played beautifully by Chris Curtis (without a trace of his very strong New Zealand accent).
-- The scene where the milk truck explodes is really where the film moves into surreality. It's gorgeously shot, first of all, but it's such an absurd moment. A Republican Guard shoots at the incoming truck - it must be stopped! The driver is killed and the giant bright green truck skids out of control. The American soldiers step back, watching it spin around, horrified - and then the same Iraqi soldier shoots directly at the body of the truck. Everyone assumes it is oil or fuel in there, so they all leap out of the way, in exquisite (but, in retrospect, ridiculous) slo-mo. Out of the hole in the side of the truck pours a mountain of milk that floods the streets. People are pushed off their feet by the force of the milk, and there's an amazing overhead shot of the three soldiers swimming in milk, against the side of a building. The insanity - and also the tragedy - because milk is obviously something people need. Then we see dogs lapping up the spilled milk, women running out with buckets, people scooping it into their mouths with bare hands ... It's a great sequence, very complicated but beautifully realized from start to finish.
-- I love that the Kuwaiti gold is a true Macguffin. Yes, it gives rise to the title, the kings bearing gifts, etc., and it's the reason everything gets started, but then - poof - it's barely mentioned again. It's a device, totally artificial - and has nothing to do with the actual story being told.
-- Nora Dunn knocks her part out of the park. A kind of Christiane Amanpour wannabe, when she is frozen in the beginning, and her name is listed it says: "Adriana Cruz - 4-time Emmy award runner-up". It immediately sets her up: her ambition, her drive, her ferocity. Only she could make a completely humorless character hilarious. She gets in a shouting match early in the film with another female journalist, who has been found banging George Clooney. The two women go at it, the younger journalist standing there in her bra. Clooney's character is supposed to be Adriana's military escort, and here he is, fucking around when he should be taking HER around. The younger journalist is a snot, and says, "I'm different from you, Adriana--" and Nora Dunn interrupts, "YES. I'M DRESSED. I HAVE MY CLOTHES ON." Normally I don't like when war movies try to work a female into the story, if it's not called for, but here, it's perfect.
-- The banter between the four men (I suppose only the three leads are the "kings", and Spike Jonze, a borderline retarded soldier, is the tag-along) is fast, funny, and specific. Again, they're all chewing this stuff up and spitting it out - in a way that would seem ridiculous and over-the-top in a movie that wanted to seem serious. But here, they're all just utilizing their huge personae, and batting up against one another, for the sheer fun of it. Clooney glances at Wahlberg after Jonze says some stupid remark, and says quietly, "Are you able to control him?" There's a veneer here, somehow - the veneer of parody and satire - and it saves the film.
-- It is not without its moving moments (the standoff between Wahlberg and his Iraqi interrogator is especially good), but the main feeling here is energy, movement, snark, and desire. Everyone is operating on a selfish level, they have to, and it brings the whole conflict alive. An Iraqi soldier, a deserter from Saddam's army, now working with the rebellion stands in a bunker with all the gleaming cars stolen from Kuwait. Clooney wants to take the cars to go break Wahlberg out of the interrogation camp. Soldier shakes his head, "Cannot take." Clooney tries to rouse the men into patriotic fervor - hoping he can get the cars by manipulating their primal emotions - and gives a speech, like many other "St. Crispian's Day" speeches in war movies - meant to inspire men to action, and you wouldn't be surprised if Clooney suddenly started rhapsodizing about "we few, we happy few." He builds it up into a manic pace, "We're all together - America - Iraq - many races - one goal - we are all together - we all want a FREE IRAQ " But the way Clooney plays it, it feels sloppy and insincere, which makes it funny. How is TAKING these cars going to help free Iraq, Archie? Beneath his words (which he probably does believe on an abstract level) is desperation: I need those cars. The Iraqi soldiers (even the guy who refused him the cars in the first place) are whipped up into a frenzy by it. By the end, they are all screaming and cheering, "FREE IRAQ, FREE IRAQ FREE IRAQ" like the Revolution scenes in Reds. Clooney is SURE that this will do the trick, so he looks at his main adversary again. The soldier, with a big smile, says automatically, "Cannot take cars." Clooney immediately deflates, his eyes go flat, and he says, "Okay, fine. We'll buy them." NOW you're talking. It's a moving moment, because basically what it comes down to is two men, who both need something, who try to get what they want, and who finally just get down to bargaining, because that's the only way to move forward. It's deeply humanistic, actually. There's no do-gooding here.
-- Mark Wahlberg running across the desert in his longjohns. I'd pay the full admission price just to see that.
-- I saw Three Kings in the theatre, a matinee, with David and Mitchell, and we walked out of the theatre exhilarated and excited. It's a war movie ... but not. It's a buddy movie ... but not. It's a journey, a chase, a battle ... and when it needs to be sentimental, it doesn't linger on it. It skips quickly over it. There's one moment at the end where Clooney has tears in his eyes, and for me, the movie almost goes off the rails in that moment. It's a delicate balance they're trying to create here, as audacious as the movie is, and obnoxiously sure of itself. It is a transformative journey, of course it is, all of the men "go somewhere", that's the whole point of the movie, but the tears (and you only see them for a second) threaten, just a bit, to sink the movie into a cliche tarpit. But again, the restless camera moves on past. The movie is saved. Disaster averted.
-- I've seen it multiple times, now, and it still gives me a strange ridiculous pleasure. Like the video for Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" : it wants to make a splash. The pleasure is ridiculous because Three Kings seems so pleased with itself, it should be more obnoxious than it is. There are worse things than a movie being pleased with itself. It could bore me, condescend to me, try to teach me a lesson, moralize, pontificate, it could present me with the same cliches I have seen 100 times, it could underline every scene with a soundtrack that tells me how to feel, it could treat me like a moron, it could forget that the business of movies is to tell stories and entertain. Three Kings makes NONE of those errors. And no matter how many times I have seen it, I still love to see that milk come pouring out of the truck onto the sand. The image never gets old.
Inglourious Basterds: The Slate Reel
This is pretty amazing. The slate (or clapboard) is used to mark different takes, to aid in the editing process, and the sound syncing.
I came across this "slate reel" of Inglourious Basterds - showing how creative the slate-woman got, by giving names to the different letter-codes on the slate, and she becomes her own performance-art piece. (One take is called "39BJ", and she says, "39 Blowjobs, take 1.") Sometimes, she would call out something that would make the actors break up in laughter - which I suppose would be disruptive, if you're about to do a difficult scene - but this slate reel shows the general vibe Tarantino obviously created on the set, keep it loose, keep it funny, keep it moving - The whole crew gets involved (listen to them all chanting, 'Genius ... genius ... genius ...") This is so entertaining. I love the references she got in. "Clint Eastwood, Take 1." "DenIro, Take 1." "Akira Kurosawa, Take 1." "Fatty Arbuckle, Take 1." (The letter codes on the slate being, CE, DN, AK and FA ... ) Hard to explain: Just go watch it. What a brilliant idea!
Today in history: March 26, 1914
Tennessee Williams (Thomas Lanier Williams) was born in Columbus, Mississippi.
Will you do a total stranger the kindness of reading his verse?Thank you!
Thomas Lanier Williams
-- Tennessee Williams, letter to editor Harriet Monroe, March 11, 1933
"You're always having to compete with yourself. They always say, 'It's not as good as Streetcar or Cat'. Of course it's not. At 69, you don't write the kind of play you write at 30. You haven't got the kind of energy you used to have."-- Tennessee Williams
In 1928, Tennessee Williams wrote in a letter to his beloved grandfather:
I have been reading a good number of biographies this year which I am sure you will commend. Probably you remember how I picked up that volume of Ludwig's Napoleon on the boat and liked it so well that the owner had to ask me for it. I tried to get it at the library but it was out. Instead i got a life of the Kaiser Wilhelm by the same author. Since then I hve read several others of celebrated literary personages. I have one at home now about Shelley, whose poetry I am studying at school. His life is very interesting. He seems to have been the wild, passionate and dissolute type of genius: which makes him very entertaining to read about.
Tennessee Williams said the following about Streetcar (excerpt here), and his main point of that entire play:
There are no 'good' or 'bad' people. Some are a little better or a little worse but all are activated more by misunderstanding than malice. A blindness to what is going on in each other's hearts. Stanley sees Blanche not as a desperate, driven creature backed into a last corner to make a last desperate stand - but as a calculating bitch with 'round heels'.... Nobody sees anybody truly but all through the flaws of their own egos. That is the way we all see each other in life.
Here is a post about the birth of Streetcar Named Desire.
Tennessee Williams wrote the following elegiac essay about Laurette Taylor (who created the role of Amanda so memorably in Glass Menagerie (excerpt here) and made him star) for The New York Times after news of her death in 1949:
I do not altogether trust the emotionalism that is commonly indulged in over the death of an artist, not because it is necessarily lacking in sincerity but because it may come too easily. In what I say now about Laurette Taylor I restrict myself to those things which I have felt continually about her as apart from any which this unhappy occasion produces.Of course the first is that I consider her the greatest artist of her profession that I have known. The second is that I loved her as a person. In a way the second is more remarkable. I have seldom encountered any argument about her preeminent stature as an actress. But for me to love her was remarkable because I have always been so awkward and diffident around actors that it has made a barrier between us almost all but insuperable.
In the case of Laurette Taylor, I cannot say that I ever got over the awkwardness and the awe which originally were present, but she would not allow it to stand between us. The great warmth of her heart burned through and we became close friends.
I am afraid it is the only close friendship I have ever had with a player...
It is our immeasurable loss that Laurette Taylor's performances were not preserved on the modern screen. The same is true of Duse and Bernhardt, with whom her name belongs. Their glory survives in the testimony and inspiration of those who saw them. Too many people have been too deeply moved by the gift of Laurette Taylor for that to disappear from us.
In this unfathomable experience of ours there are sometimes hints of something that lies outside the flesh and its mortality. I suppose these intuitions come to many people in their religious vocations, but I have sensed them more clearly in the work of artists and most clearly of all in the art of Laurette Taylor. There was a radiance about her art which I can compare only to the greatest lines of poetry, and which gave me the same shock of revelation as if the air about us had been momentarily broken through by light from some clear space beyond us.
The last word that I received from her was a telegram which reached me early this fall. It was immediately after the road company of our play had opened in Pittsburgh. The notices spoke warmly of Pauline Lord's performance in the part of Amanda. "I have just read the Pittsburgh notices," Laurette wired me. "What did I tell you, my boy? You don't need me."
I feel now - as I have always felt - that a whole career of writing for the theatre is rewarded enough by having created one good part for a great actress.
Having created a part for Laurette Taylor is a reward I find sufficient for all the effort that went before and any that may come after.
Her performance launched him into stardom. And his creation of Amanda revitalized her career just before she died. She had had a great career early in her life, and went on a 10 year binge following the death of her husband. Laurette Taylor was "washed up". Until ...
And now, she's a legend, her performance in Glass Menagerie is legendary. "What did I tell you, my boy, you don't need me..." In a way, she was completely right. The play is better than any one performance. The play didn't depend on Laurette Taylor's genius, although thank God she found the vehicle. The star of the play is actually the play itself, and Laurette Taylor knew that. The star of the play was the new voice of Tennessee Williams. And so no, Tennessee didn't "need" her. And about Tennessee saying: "I consider her the greatest artist of her profession that I have known." Anyone who knows anything about theatre would be hard-pressed to disagree. I haven't even SEEN the woman act, obviously, but I don't need to. I will take the hundreds and hundreds of eyewitness' word for it. In the same way that I know, in my heart, that Eleanora Duse was one of the "greatest artists of her profession" as well. I don't need to have seen her live. (My post about Laurette Taylor here.)
Here is one of the original reviews of Glass Menagerie, after its premiere on an icy winter night in Chicago. This review focuses on the miracle that was Laurette Taylor's performance.
January 14, 1945MEMO FROM CHICAGO By Lloyd Lewis
CHICAGO - As this is written there exists doubt as to whether Eddie Dowling has anything more satisfying than an artistic success in his new production, "The Glass Menagerie", at the Civic Theatre, but there is no doubt whatsoever that he has brought back Laurette Taylor as a great character actress.
Not since she did "Peg o'My Heart," exactly thirty years ago, has she been so talked and written about.
In "The Glass Menagerie," which is a tenuous and moody tragedy from the pen of Tennessee Williams, she plays a decaying Delta belle overfond of haranguing her two children, one a warehouse worker (Mr. Dowling) and the other a morbidly bashful maiden (Julie Haydon), upon their duty to rise above the drabness of life in a St. Louis alley flat. Fumbling around the dolorous precincts of her home in a slipshod Mother Hubbard, she is forever reciting the plantation glories of her youth, how seventeen young gentlemen callers were forever complimenting her among the magnolias, and how she could have had this or that grandson instead of the captivating plebeian drunk who took her only to desert her and leave her to current St. Louis blues.
When Miss Taylor mumbles in magnificent realism she is still enough of a vocal wizard to be intelligible to her audiences, and when she pouts, nags or struts in pathetic bursts of romantic memory she is superb as a pantomime. Her descents into hysteria are masterpieces of understatement, dramatic in that they force her audience to do the acting for her.
She accomplishes her tour de force of acting without a single gesture which could be charged with showmanship. Some of her most telling lines are fumbling mutterings delivered over her shoulder. And in a scene wherein she prods her son into bringing home somebody, anybody, who might possibly marry his psychopathic sister before he himself wanders off, as his mother knows he will, into the big, blue and tipsy yonder, she gives a performance that could fit into the best of the Abbey Theatre's Irish plays.
One moment she is a ridiculous pretender and the next only a poor old woman dreading so soon to be dead because her helpless daughter will then be alone. When a 'caller' is eventually dragooned and brought to the house for dinner, Miss Taylor's appearance in an ancient taffety and high-toned manners is a delicate feat in the creation of that narrow line between the absurd and the sad.
Oh. For a time machine.
Williams wrote in his memoirs about Taylor:
In Chicago the first night, no one knew how to take [Glass] Menagerie, it was something of an innovation in the theatre and even though Laurette [Taylor] gave an incredibly luminous, electrifying performance [as Amanda Wingfield], and people observed it. But people are people, and most of them went home afterward to take at least equal pleasure in their usual entertainments. It took that lovely lady, Claudia Cassidy, the drama critic of the Chicago Tribune, a lot of time to sell it to them to tell them it was special. She said Laurette ranked with [Eleonora] Duse.Eventually, though, Menagerie was a startling success, which success I attribute in large part to Laurette. She was, as I have said many times, a gallant performer; I still consider her the greatest artist of her profession that I have known. I wrote a tribute to her, on her death, in which I said that it is our immeasurable loss that Laurette's performances were not preserved on the modern screen. The same is true of Duse and [Sarah] Bernhardt, with whom Laurette's name belongs.
I also wrote that there are sometimes hints, during our lives, of something that lies outside the flesh and its mortality. I suppose these intuitions come to many people in their religious vocations, but I have sensed them equally clearly in the work of artists and most clearly of all in the art of Laurette. There was a radiance about her art which I can compare only to the greatest lines of poetry, and which gave me the same shock of revelation as if the air about us had been momentarily broken through by light from some clear space beyond us.
Here's a picture of Tennessee Williams out on his beloved Key West in 1980:
Make voyages. Attempt them. That's all there is.-- Tennessee Williams, "Camino Real"
(Excerpt from Camino Real here. "I've outlived the tenderness of my heart.")
I realized things about myself - and my life - through working on Miss Alma in Summer and Smoke (excerpt here). My journal entries from that time are fascinating for me to look back on. I actually grew as a human being, while working on that play. It's one of the only times that's ever happened. Nobody can tell me that Alma is "just" a character in a play. She LIVES, she breathes. I certainly felt possessed by her.
A cord breaking.
1000 miles away.
Rose.
Her head cut open. A knife thrust in her brain.
Me. Here. Smoking.
-- Tennessee Williams, journal entry, Marcy 24, 1943 - after hearing about his sister's lobotomy
He balked when reviewers would characterize all of his female characters as "desperate". He said that he had never written a victim. He saw each and every one of them as survivors, even triumphant.
Here's part of an essay he wrote for The New York Times in 1948 where he addresses the misunderstanding of his female characters:
All at once, I found myself hammed in by three women in basic black who had been to the Saturday matinee and had apparently thought of nothing since except the problems of Alma Winemiller, the heroine of "Summer and Smoke". When you are eating, a great deal can be accomplished by having a mouth full of food and by making gutteral noises instead of speech when confronted with questions such as, What is the theme of your play? What happens to the characters after the play is over? What is your next play about and how do you happen to know so much about women? On that last one you can spit the food out if it really begins to choke you.For a writer who is not intentionally obscure, and never, in his opinion, obscure at all, I do get asked a hell of a lot of questions which I can't answer. I have never been able to say what was the theme of my play and I don't think I have ever been conscious of writing with a theme in mind. I am always surprised when, after a play has opened, I read in the papers what the play is about, that it was about a decayed Southern belle trying to get a man for her crippled daughter, or that it was about a boozie floozie on the skids, or that a backwoods sheik in a losing battle with three village vamps.
Don't misunderstand me. I am thankful for these highly condensed and stimulating analyses, but it would never have occurred to me that that was the story I was trying to tell. Usually when asked about a theme I look vague and say, "It is a play about life." What could be simpler, and yet more pretentious? You can easily extend that a little and say it is a tragedy of incomprehension. That also means life. Or you can say it is a tragedy of Puritanism. That is life in America. Or you can say that it is a play that considers the "problem of evil". But why not just say "life"?
To return to the women in the alcove. On this particular occasion the question that floored me was, "Why do you always write about frustrated women?"
To say that floored me is to put it mildly, because I would say that frustrated is almost exactly what the women I write about are not. What was frustrated about Amanda Wingfield? Circumstances, yes! But spirit? See Helen Hayes in London's "Glass Menagerie" if you still think Amanda was a frustrated spirit! No, there is nothing interesting about frustration, per se. I could not write a line about it for the simple reason that I can't write a line about anything that bores me.
Was Blanche of "A Streetcar Named Desire" frustrated? About as frustrated as a beast of the jungle! And Alma Winemiller? What is frustrated about loving with such white hot intensity that it alters the whole direction of your life, and removes you from the parlor of the Episcopal rectory to a secret room above Moon Lake Casino?
I came across this essay when I was working on Alma Winemiller - and I can't tell you how much of an "A-ha!" moment it gave me. If I felt drawn towards portraying her as sexually FRUSTRATED, or emotionally FRUSTRATED ... (and that is certainly a trap with Miss Alma) I remembered Tennessee's words. Do not play the frustration. How boring. Play the OBJECTIVE, play the DESIRE, play what you WANT ... Let the CIRCUMSTANCES of the play frustrate you ... but never ever take your eye off your objective. And THAT is where the tragedy lies.
"Nothing's more determined than a cat on a tin roof - is there? Is there, baby?"-- from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
(Excerpt from Cat On a Hot Tin Roof here. That bit about Brick waiting for "the click" always gives me a chill. Such good writing, so insightful. Here's a post about the the creation of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.)
A guy I know was the lead in Tennessee Williams' last play - Something Cloudy Something Clear (excerpt here)- done here in NYC at Cocteau Rep in the early 80s. Williams died soon after the play went up. The play is a highly personal kind of dream-space, and reading it it is as though you can feel Williams getting ready to go into the dying of the light. It is the play of an old old man. A man getting ready. Craig shared with me his memories of working with Tennessee.
Everyone talks about his "laugh". Actors and actresses who were in his plays talk about hearing his laugh from out in the audience. It was a generous laugh, a laugh full of joy, but it could also be an expression of shyness, discomfort - it wasn't always appropriate, sometimes there was panic behind it.
Here, to me, is a quintessential Tennessee Williams statement.
An interviewer asked him: "What is your definition of happiness?"
He replied, "Insensitivity, I guess."
His sister Rose was institutionalized and lobotomized. This was something Tennessee never really recovered from. He was gay. He was a perpetual outsider. He was on the run from his past. He was able to "get out" of the past ... his sister Rose was not. The guilt of that never left him. The guilt of being "the one" who was able to live in the real world dogged him at every turn. If one was "happy", if one was able to manuever thru a world that lobotomized some of its most sensitive members, then "happiness" required some kind of a hard outer shell - a shell that Tennessee himself lacked, that other "sensitives" (his word) lacked. He did not begrudge people their happiness ... he just didn't understand it. He couldn't get "in there", ever.
I have found it easier to identify with the characters who verge upon hysteria, who were frightened of life, who were desperate to reach out to another person. But these seemingly fragile people are the strong people really.-- Tennessee Williams
He WAS Blanche. He WAS Alma. He WAS Maggie. All of these people, these "sensitives", trying to make their way through, trying to bear up under disappointments and cruelty ... trying to SURVIVE.
Oh, you weak, beautiful people who give up with such grace. What you need is someone to take hold of you - gently, with love, and hand your life back to you.-- Tennessee Williams
The Blanche DuBois', the Laura Wingfields, the Miss Almas ... these are sensitive people, deeply wounded people, on the edge of shattering - just like his sister Rose did. Of course blatant casual "happiness" would be seen as insensitive through their eyes.
All cruel people describe themselves as paragons of frankness.-- Tennessee Williams
Tennessee Williams is one of my own personal heroes, for more reasons than one, and I am aware (on a pretty much daily basis) of how grateful I am to him for his plays. In the same way that I am pretty much always conscious of being grateful that there was a Shakespeare, and that we have his works with us today.
Some mystery should be left in the revelation of character in a play, just as a great deal of mystery is always left in the revelation of character in life, even in one's own character to himself.-- Tennessee Williams
Jessica Tandy, who originated Blanche on Broadway, was already a celebrated actress. Marlon Brando was practically unknown. Kazan noticed which way the wind was blowing during rehearsals, and it concerned him on many levels.
Basically what was happening was that Marlon Brando was acting Jessica Tandy off the stage. Without breaking a sweat, Brando stole the show right out from under her. Jessica Tandy fought to keep her ground (which, actually, is perfect for the theme of the show and for the character of Blanche Dubois), but Kazan's main concern was that Blanche would turn into a laughable character and lose the sympathy of the audience. Kazan was worried that the audience, because of Brando's undeniable stage presence, and the electricity of his acting, would completely side with Stanley, and not have any sympathy for Blanche at all. This, Kazan felt, would be a disaster. Stanley rapes Blanche. This event must be seen as horrifyingly wrong, not as Blanche getting what she deserves. But Brando's power took over the play, it was a runaway train, it wasn't a matter of him playing Stanley as sympathetic - he wasn't. It was just that he was a force to be reckoned with, a powerhouse - you couldn't take your eyes off him. Jessica Tandy barely registered, when she was beside him.
Here's a photo from that production: Brando, Kim Hunter, and Tandy:
And so Kazan feared, as rehearsals went on, that the balance of the play was off.
Here's what Kazan wrote about all of this in his marvelous autobiography.
It is Tennessee Williams' "advice" to Kazan at the end that really packs a punch:
But what had been intimated in our final rehearsals in New York was happening. The audiences adored Brando. When he derided Blanche, they responded with approving laughter. Was the play becoming the Marlon Brando Show? I didn't bring up the problem, because I didn't know the solution. I especially didn't want the actors to know that I was concerned. What could I say to Brando? Be less good? Or to Jessie? Get better? ...Louis B. Mayer sought me out to congratulate me and assure me that we'd all make a fortune ... He urged me to make the author do one critically important bit of rewriting to make sure that once that "awful woman" who'd come to break up that "fine young couple's happy home" was packed off to an institution, the audience would believe that the young couple would live happily ever after. It never occurred to him that Tennessee's primary sympathy was with Blanche, nor did I enlighten him ... His misguided reaction added to my concern. I had to ask myself: Was I satisfied to have the performance belong to Marlon Brando? Was that what I'd intended? What did I intend? I looked to the author. He seemed satisfied. Only I -- and perhaps Hume [Cronyn, Tandy's husband] -- knew that something was going wrong ...
What astonished me was that the author wasn't concerned about the audience's favoring Marlon. That puzzled me because Tennessee was my final authority, the person I had to please. I still hadn't brought up the problem, I was waiting for him to do it. I got my answer ... because of something that happened in the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, across the hall from my suite, where Tennessee and Pancho were staying. [Pancho was Tennessee's boyfriend - or maybe it was more of a f*** buddy situation. Pancho was a huge presence in Tennessee's life. They had a really volatile relationship.] One night I heard a fearsome commotion from across the hall, curses in Spanish, threats to kill, the sound of breaking china ... and a crash ... As I rushed out into the corridor, Tennessee burst through his door, looking terrified, and dashed into my room. Pancho followed, but when I blocked my door, he turned to the elevator still cursing, and was gone. Tennessee slept on the twin bed in my room that night. The next morning, Pancho had not returned.
I noticed that Wiilliams wasn't angry at Pancho, not even disapproving -- in fact, when he spoke about the incident, he admired Pancho for his outburst. At breakfast, I brought up my worry about Jessie and Marlon. "She'll get better," Tennessee said, and then we had our only discussion about the direction of his play. "Blanche is not an angel without a flaw," he said, "and Stanley's not evil. I know you're used to clearly stated themes, but this play should not be loaded one way or the other. Don't try to simplify things." Then he added, "I was making fun of Pancho, and he blew up." He laughed. I remembered the letter he'd written me before we started rehearsals, remembered how, in that letter, he'd cautioned me against tipping the moral scales against Stanley, that in the interests of fidelity I must not present Stanley as a "black-dyed villain". "What should I do?" I asked. "Nothing," he said. "Don't take sides or try to present a moral. When you begin to arrange the action to make a thematic point, the fidelity to life will suffer. Go on working as you are. Marlon is a genius, but she's a worker and she will get better. And better."
Here is the review of the premiere of Streetcar Named Desire, in New York City, December 3, 1947.
December 4, 1947FIRST NIGHT AT THE THEATRE by Brooks Atkinson
Tennessee Williams has brought us a superb drama, "A Streetcar Named Desire," which was acted at the Ethel Barrymore last evening. And Jessica Tandy gives a superb performance as a rueful heroine whose misery Mr. Williams is tenderly recording. This must be one of the most perfect marriages of acting and playwriting. For the acting and playwriting are perfectly blended in a limpid performance, and it is impossible to tell where Miss Tandy begins to give form and warmth to the mood Mr. Williams has created.
Like "The Glass Menagerie," the new play is a quietly woven study of intangibles. But to this observer it shows deeper insight and represents a great step forward toward clarity. And it reveals Mr. Williams as a genuinely poetic playwright whose knowledge of people is honest and thorough and whose sympathy is profoundly human.
"A Streetcar Named Desire" is history of a gently reared Mississippi young woman who invents an artificial world to mask the hideousness of the world she has to inhabit. She comes to live with her sister, who is married to a rough-and-ready mechanic and inhabits two dreary rooms in a squalid neighborhood. Blanche - for that is her name - has delusions of grandeur, talks like an intellectual snob, buoys herself up with gaudy dreams, spends most of her time primping, covers things that are dingy with things that are bright and flees reality.
To her brother-in-law she is an unforgiveable liar. But it is soon apparent to the theatregoer that in Mr. Williams' eyes she is one of the dispossessed whose experience has unfitted her for reality; and although his attitude toward her is merciful, he does not spare her or the playgoer. For the events of "Streetcar" lead to a painful conclusion which he does not try to avoid. Although Blanche cannot face the truth, Mr. Williams does in the most imaginative and perceptive play he has written.
Since he is no literal dramatist and writes in none of the conventional forms, he presents theatre with many problems. Under Elia Kazan's sensitive but concrete direction, the theatre solved them admirably. Jo Mielziner has provided a beautifully lighted single setting that lightly sketches the house and the neighborhood. In this shadowy environment the performance is a work of great beauty.
Miss Tandy has a remarkably long part to play. She is hardly ever off the stage, and when she is on stage she is almost constantly talking -- chattering, dreaming aloud, wondering, building enchantments out of words. Miss Tandy is a trim, agile actress with a lovely voice and quick intelligence. Her performance is almost incredibly true. For it does seem almost incredible that she can convey it with so many shades and impulses that are accurate, revealing and true.
The rest of the acting is also of very high quality indeed. Marlon Brando as the quick-tempered, scornful, violent mechanic; Karl Malden as a stupid but wondering suitor; Kim Hunter as the patient though troubled sister -- all act not only with color and style but with insight.
By the usual Broadway standards, "Streetcar Named Desire" is too long; not all those words are essential. But Mr. Williams is entitled to his own independence. For he has not forgotten that human beings are the basic subject of art. Out of poetic imagination and ordinary compassion he has spun a poignant and luminous story.
We are lucky in this country that we have produced such a playwright. We are lucky to have all of his plays in the canon. I can't imagine my life without them.
Happy birthday, Tom.
Tennessee Williams said the following, in a 1981 interview - only a couple of years before he passed away:
"I'm very conscious of my decline in popularity, but I don't permit it to stop me because I have the example of so many playwrights before me. I know the dreadful notices Ibsen got. And O'Neill -- he had to die to make 'Moon' successful. And to me it has been providential to be an artist, a great act of providence that I was able to turn my borderline psychosis into creativity -- my sister Rose did not manage this. So I keep writing. I am sometimes pleased with what I do -- for me, that's enough."
March 25, 2010
Danielle is 12 years old.
She is the world's best (12 year old) guitarist. Her inspirations are Hendrix, Slash, Zakk, Rhoads and idol Van Halen. She's been on Howard Stern. She's been playing out in bars since the age of 10.
Here is a video of her playing "backup" (she insists to the emcee that she doesn't sing - she only "does backup") - but the star here is Danielle. Watch this pre-teen girl go. It's astonishing. She is TWELVE YEARS OLD. (This video is a couple of years old, so she's older now.) But check it out. It's awesome. She's awesome.
Kim Morgan on At the Movies
Kim Morgan, who is definitely on my Top Film Writers of All Time list - along with Roger Ebert himself, reminisces about her time co-hosting At the Movies, with a clip included. (Perfect timing that the clip would be the disagreement between Morgan and Roeper over Bong Joon-Ho's The Host, with Bong's Mother hitting cinemas right now.)
Rebecca West on Göring
I've got a couple of what I call "intellectual idols", people who analyze and parse the world and its events, in a way that seems singular, important, and (in some cases) life-altering (for me). I was one way before I read Ryszard Kapuscinski. After reading him, I will never look at the world in the same way again. George Orwell is another one. Robert Kaplan is another one. I suppose Alexander Hamilton is another one, although I think of him more as my boyfriend. His perspective was, in many respects, larger and more sweeping than his contemporaries - for a variety of reasons. He was an immigrant? He wasn't attached to one colony emotionally? He had grown up in a mercantile atmosphere, not agrarian at all - so he did not fear big money, and the loss of an agricultural economy. Who knows why - but he had a longer view going on than most, as far-seeing as all of "those guys" were. Robert Conquest is another intellectual idol. This is not about total agreement, by the way, which never interests me in the slightest. This is about people who seem to have some sort of perspective on events, perspective that gives them the LONG view of things, as opposed to the short. In many cases, these people (while very political) rise above politics, at least in the every-day mucky muck of them, and they see things in different contexts, because they understand history, because they can PLACE certain events in a context that makes them seem completely different. You are forever changed once you get that kind of perspective.
But the grand pooh-bah of intellectual idols is Rebecca West.
I am now reading her A Train of Powder
As with many of these people I mention, they are interconnected. Robert Kaplan introduced me to Kapuscinski and also Rebecca West (his Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History
Train of Powder is made up of four very long essays having to do with various trials that West, as a journalist, covered, one being the Nuremberg Trials. The Nuremberg Trials are broken up into three long parts, each one called "Greenhouse with Cyclamens". One of the things that is so extraordinary about Rebecca West, and why she is so revered by anyone who wants to write thoughtfully about history and politics, is that she was able to see things before others did. (Or, not ALL others, but she certainly stands apart) She traveled through Yugoslavia in 1938, 1939. Not only could she sense the cataclysm that was to come in WWII (she is especially brutal about the German tourists she observed on the train - in them, she can see the entire Nazi Party) - but she predicts the breakup of Yugoslavia some 50 years later, and the genocidal campaigns of people like Slobodan Milosevic. Nobody who read her book would be at all shocked that Serbia would rise in such a monstrous way. Of course they did. Retrospect makes prophets of us all, and there are many who could say, "I saw it coming ..." Yes: but could you have seen it coming in 1938? There was something about Rebecca West's mind - cold and detached (yet she comes off incredibly warm in interviews) - that kept her above events, without the accompanying sense of superiority that so often comes with detached individuals.
She seems always to be on the side of the individual, which again separates her from her contemporaries - many of whom were swayed by Socialist ideas (Orwell and others) but she really never was. She considered herself a radical and a feminist, to be sure, but she always has a very healthy suspicion of any group, and such people are really rare - and almost nonexistent today, at least in political writing, where everything is about propping up your GROUP. West saw what group-identity-politics could wrought, in places like Yugoslavia, and then also in places like Germany, and she conscoiusly separated herself from the pack: "No, thanks. Not for me." Not an easy stance to take, and she is often mistaken for a reactionary which makes me chuckle - because that is so often the accusation thrown towards someone who refuses to "play well with others", who never drank the Kool-Aid in the first place.
I am devouring Train of Powder at the speed of light. The first big essay about the Nuremberg Trials has many different aspects to it: the vibe, in general, at the time, for those journalists who had been observing the trials in their entirety: the intense boredom, and the homesickness, but that's just one element. She's an incredible observer, which makes you want to read everything she writes, just to see how she interprets things. The whole "greenhouse" she encounters during her stay at a huge country house in Germany where all the press were camped out - is incredible because she takes the fact of the greenhouse (and the one legged gardener, and his devotion to cyclamens) and extrapolates out of that the meaning of the entire German people following the war. It's not a stretch. This is a woman who observed history, who knew revolutions and wars, who understood tyranny on a deep Hannah-Arendt level.
Yet she was also a humanist. This gives her writing the power and scope that it has.
She sat in the press box in the court room at Nuremberg, for months on end, and observed, taking in everything: the zaniness of much of it (due, perhaps, to the fact that a trial like this had never occurred before), the behavior of the "defendants" (what a good eye she has), and thoughts on what all of this would actually mean. What exactly is going on here? She makes insightful observations - which probably rang uneasily in the minds of her contemporaries, who were still under the sway of the glorious revolution going on in Russia, something she never fell prey to. For example, she notes that the international judges, each read different parts of what each defendant was accused of. Here she observes:
It turned out that the Russian was reading the part of the judgment that condemned the Germans for their deportations: for taking men and women away from their homes and sending them to distant camps, where they worked as slave labour in conditions of great discomfort, and were often unable to communicate with their families. There was here a certain irony, and a certain warning.
The essay was written in 1946. It is fresh news. It was unpopular, at that moment in time, to criticize Russia - for various reasons - and many just decided to stick their heads in the sand, to avoid uncomfortable truths. That was never Rebecca West's bag.
She's good on all aspects here - atmosphere, context, analysis - this is journalism of the highest order, a dying art, which is one of the reasons why I love Robert Kaplan so much. If you read his books (which are part travelogue, part journalism, part history), and his long articles in The Atlantic Monthly, you can see a similar context at work. It doesn't surprise me at all that he considers Rebecca West to be his idol as well. You can feel him trying to be as good as her, in his thoughts, analysis, and perspective. In many respects, he succeeds. My favorites of his are The Ends of the Earth: From Togo to Turkmenistan, from Iran to Cambodia, a Journey to the Frontiers of Anarchy
But back to Rebecca West. (It is hard to talk about her without referencing the generations of writers she inspired ...)
I was particularly riveted by West's observations about the defendants in the Nuremberg Trials, some more monstrous than others. Here are a couple of excerpts showing her thoughts on Hermann Wilhelm Göring, which gives just a taste of her gift. There really is nobody else like her.
And though one had read surprising news of Göring for years, he still surprised. He was so very soft. Sometimes he wore a German Air Force uniform, and sometimes a light beach suit in the worst of playful taste, and both hung loosely on him, giving him an air of pregnancy. He had thick brown young hair, the coarse bright skin of an actor who has used grease paint for decades, and the preternaturally deep wrinkles of the drug addict. It added up to something like the head of a ventriloquist's dummy. He looked infinitely corrupt, and acted naively. When the other defendants' lawyers came to the door to receive instructions, he often intervened and insisted on instructing them himself, in spite of the evident fury of the defendants, which, indeed, must have been poignant, since most of them might well have felt that, had it not been for him, they never would have had to employ these lawyers at all. One of these lawyers was a tiny little man of very Jewish appearance, and when he stood in front of the dock, his head hardly reaching to the top of it, and flapped his gown in annoyance because Göring's smiling wooden mask was bearing down between him and his client, it was as if a ventriloquist had staged a quarrel between two dummies.Göring's appearance made a strong but obscure allusion to sex. It is a matter of history that his love affairs with women played a decisive part in the development of the Nazi party at various stages, but he looked as one who would never lift a hand against a woman save in something much more peculiar than kindness. He did not look like any recognized type of homosexual, yet he was feminine. Sometimes, particularly when his humour was good, he recalled the madam of a brothel. His like are to be seen in the late morning in doorways along the steep streets of Marseille, the professional mask of geniality still hard on their faces though they stand relaxed in leisure, their fat cuts rubbing against their spread skirts. Certainly there had been a concentration on appetite, and on elaborate schemes for gratifying it; and yet there was a sense of desert thirst. No matter what aqueducts he had built to bring water to his encampment, some perversity in the architecture had let it run out and spill on the sands long before it reached him. Sometimes even now his wide lips smacked together as if he were a well-fed man who had heard no news as yet that his meals were to stop. He was the only one of all these defendants who, if he had the chance, would have walked out of the Palace of Justice and taken over Germany again, and turned it into the stage for the enactment of the private fantasy which had brought him to the dock.
As is well-known, the day before Göring was to be put to death, he killed himself in his cell. Rebecca West has some choice words about that event.
The executions were to take place on October 16. Some time during the preceding night Göring killed himself. The enormous clown, the sexual quiddity with the smile which was perhaps too wooden for mockery and perhaps not, had kicked the tray out of the hands of the servants who were bringing him the wine of humiliation, the glasses had flown into the air and splintered with a sound too much like laughter. This should not have happened. We are all hunters, but we know ourselves hunted by a mightier hunter, and our hearts are with the hunted, and we rejoice when the snared get free of the snare. In this moment visceral mournfulness changed to visceral cheerfulness; we had to applaud for the flesh that would not accept the doom that had been dealt to it but changed it to an expression of defiance. All those people who had fled from Nuremberg, British and American and French, who were scattered over the world, trying to forget the place of their immurement, would straighten up from whatever they had been bent over and burst out laughing before they could help themselves, saying, "That one! We always knew he would get the better of us yet." Surely all those Germans who walked through the rubble of their cities while their conquerors drove, they too would halt, and throw back their heads, and laugh, and say, "That one! We always knew he would get the better of them yet."Göring should not have been permitted even this small amelioration of his doom. True, we now know some reasons for feeling that he might have been allowed to get a little of his own back. Like all the Nazis, he had been plagued by the attentions of the psychiatrists who haunted Nuremberg Jail, exercising a triple function of priest and doctor and warder hard to approve. They visited the men in the cells and offered themselves as confidants, but performed duties at the behest of the court authorities. When some of the defendants seemed to be taking an unrepentant pro-Nazi stand in their line of defence, one of the psychiatrists worked out, at the commandant's request, a plan for a new seating arrangement at the lunch table in order to break up this group and expose them to other influences. It is not easy to think of an accused person on trial before a national tribunal being subjected to such manipulation by prison officials. There was no silver lining to this cloud. One of these psychiatrists has related, without humorous intention, that when Göring asked him what a certain psychological test had revealed about his character, he replied that it had shown that he lacked the guts to face responsibility. Göring had also the benefit of spiritual care of a remarkably robust kind. He asked the Lutheran chaplain to give him Holy Communion on the night before the executions, but the chaplain refused, on the ground that he was probably shamming.
Nevertheless Göring should not have been given the chance to use his courage to weaken public horror at his crimes, to which his courage was not relevant. The Nazis were maniacs who plastered history with the cruelty which is a waste product of man's moral nature, as maniacs on a smaller scale plaster their bodies and their clothes with their excreta. Since sanity is to some extent a matter of choice, a surrender to certain stimuli and a rejection of others, the nature of mania should never be forgotten. It is unfair, not only to Germans, but to all the world, if the vileness of the Nazis be extenuated; and it was unfair that this Nazi of all Nazis should have been allowed to disguise his gross dementia. This suicide meant a long-term danger to human standards, and it might have meant a short-term danger too, had it not been for the severity of the following winter. Germany was to be ice-bound and water-logged and had no time to think of reviving the Nazi party; and if that stretch of bad weather broke Europe's heart, it also broke the continuity of popular political thinking and forced it on to a fresh phase not shadowed by resentment at conquest. But the Allies had failed idiotically in a prime matter. All to no purpose had the military policeman in the CIP gallery shaken the venerable Lord of Appeal and bidden him wake up and uncross his legs. All to no purpose had his colleague waved his club round the ears of the judge and asked him how the hell he had got in. All to no purpose had the maternal colonel shadowed our passes with his pendulous bosom. The cyanide had freely flowed.
She is magnificent. A Train of Powder is a must-read.
10 books to inspire actors
My brother has a great piece up listing 10 books that inspire him as an actor, and they are not what you would expect. A wonderful piece about how stories can transport us, how certain books can help you leap into other worlds - an ability that an actor, no matter how big, how small, must always keep fresh. If you can't do that? You can't do anything.
Brendan writes:
Reading can be a direct channel to those gifts which give us our power as performers. They will not fail us. But they will recede if we do not feed them. They can find nourishment deep within the secret passageways of our imaginations but we have to find those catalysts further and further from ourselves if we are to be truly free as artists.
"The balcony is closed."
At the Movies is now over. Forever.
Watching Siskel and Ebert was a ritual when I was a kid. I loved that show. Through those two critics, I realized at a very young age, that there was a big world out there, of movies I had never seen, names I had never heard of - and they would casually reference things like "Herzog" or "Barbara Stanwyck", in context of some other review, and I would wonder what they were talking about. And sometimes I would make it my business to find out. So that is how I discovered movies. Not just the ones playing at the local cineplex, but movies with a capital M. The entire industry and its history. Once Ebert started publishing his compilations of reviews - I think I bought my first one when I was 13 - and forget it: I read every single review, and half the time I had no idea what he was talking about, but I wanted to hear more. I was the same then as I am now. Present to me a world I know nothing about and make it seem appealing and fascinating and well worth your time - I'll dig into it. I can't even describe how influential those books were to me. Half the time, I couldn't even get my hands on the movies he discussed. This was before there was a VCR in every house. But I filed the names away in my head, for safekeeping, for later. John Cassavetes. Ingmar Bergman. John Ford. The list goes on and on. The most amazing thing about At the Movies was what sets it apart from other "reviews": They weren't just telling you about the latest blockbuster, although they covered those too. They reviewed foreign films, they reviewed smaller experimental films, they introduced their television audience to the wide scope of what was being made - and their reviews were thoughtful and personal.
Over the last couple of years, At the Movies has gone through a lot of upheaval, well-documented, I won't go through it.
All I can say is: a big part of my life - my childhood, yes, but my love of At the Movies lasted way after my childhood - has now ended, and that always gives one a strange melancholy feeling. It is a reminder of the passing of time, that I am not as young as I once was. One of the things I loved to do (back when movies weren't as easily accessible as they are now - you had to limit yourself to what you could rent at the local video store) was put stars next to movies Ebert had reviewed, reviews that seemed intriguing to me, and then see if the local store had it. I am sure so many people out there had similar experiences. I saw my first Fritz Lang movie when I was 15, 16, because of a comment Ebert made in a review - that wasn't even a review of a Fritz Lang movie. But he would throw references around like that, and I just wanted to know - know everything he was talking about - He cannot be allowed to just mention Fritz Lang without me understanding him!! Next time someone says "Fritz Lang", by God, I will understand!
Roger Ebert has some words to say on his blog about the ending of At the Movies, and highlights some exciting new prospects for a new show. I think he's right (at least in my experience hanging around with online film critics and film bloggers - not to mention the people who comment on such sites): People watch more movies now, due to the many different venues where you can get your hands on such films, even if you live in the boonies. You don't have to wait for there to be a German Expressionist film festival in the big city 2 hours away from your house to gorge yourself on Fritz Lang. It could be years. People in my generation who are film buffs know what that feels like. I would scour the TV Guide every single week, looking for any Elia Kazan movie that might be playing. This was when I was in high school. They were usually playing at 2 o'clock in the morning, or sometimes, excitingly, they'd play on the weekends. But that was how I got a chance to see those movies.
It's different now.
You want to watch every single film Kurosawa made? You don't need to rely on your mom-and-pop video store, or (God forbid) Blockbuster. Netflix has them. So while the situation may seem bleak if you look at your choices at the local movie house - it really isn't, because there are so many other ways now to see movies - the movies YOU want to see.
Regardless: Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel, sitting in that balcony, arguing and talking and basically educating me, were such a huge part of my life for so many years. It is sad that it is gone, although it was time to let it go. (Once they got rid of the balcony and created that new set which made it look like Entertainment Tonight, you could see which way the wind was blowing. There was a total identity crisis.)
Go read Roger Ebert's elegy for the show that introduced so many of us to the glorious enterprise that is "the movies".
March 24, 2010
Siobhan O'Malley at the Cape May Singer/Songwriter Festival
This weekend (Friday to Sunday) is the enormous Cape May Singer/Songwriter Festival and my sister Siobhan will be performing on Saturday night (click here to see the times and venues). A giant festival, featuring 150 artists, it's a great way to get to hear new music and encounter new artists. If you live in the area, go check it out!
Siobhan has two albums out, and is working on a third. You can get more information about her (and buy her music) on her Myspage page. She's amazing!
Today in history: March 24, 1955
Tennessee Williams's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof opened on Broadway. It was directed by Elia Kazan and starred Ben Gazzara and Barbara bel Geddes. Williams was tormented by the writing of this play. He found it "messy", and wrote in his journal that "the intrusion of the homosexual theme may be fucking it up again". But he kept at it. He always kept at it.
On April 3, 1954, Williams wrote to his agent Audrey Wood:
Here's a sort of rough draft of the play that threw me into such a terrible state of depression last summer in Europe, I couldn't seem to get a grip on it. I haven't done much with it since then, but I would like to have this draft typed up, so that I will at least be able to read it with less confusion. Although it is very wordy it is still too short and would need a curtain-raiser to make a full evening. But I do think it has a terrible sort of truthfulness about it, and the tightest structure of anything I have done. And a terrifyingly strong final curtain.
In June of that year, he wrote to Cheryl Crawford (director, producer):
I let Audrey read "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" while she was here and to my surprise she seemed to take a great liking to it, said the material excited her more than anything I've done since "Streetcar". But she doesn't find it complete in its present form and wants me to add another act to it. So far I don't agree with her. I think it tells a full story, though it is under conventional length, and that as soon, or if I get back my creative breath, i can fill out these two acts (or 3 long scenes as they actually are) to a full evening without extending the story as I see it.
Williams's back-and-forth with his agent are always really good reading, dealing as they do with the creative process. Here is part of a letter Williams wrote to Wood in September, 1954:
I agree in principle with what you say in your letter ... but I feel there are circumstances to consider carefully in this instance. For one thing, I gathered that your enthusiasm for the "Cat" play is more or less contingent on my adding another act to it. To me the story is complete in its present form, it says all that I had to say about these characters and their situation, it was conceived as a short full-length play: there are three acts in it. First, Brick and his wife. Second, Brick and Big Daddy. Third, The family conference. They are short acts but complete, and I thought at least structurally the play was just right, I liked there being no time lapse between the acts, one flowing directly into the others, and it all taking place in the exact time that it occupies in the theatre. I would hate to lose that tightness, that simplicity, by somehow forcing it into a more extended form simply to satisfy a convention of theatre, would much rather risk the prejudice that might be incurred by bringing down a curtain at 10:30 or 10:45 and possibly raising it a little later to compensate. Or even using a good one-act play as a curtain-raiser.
This was a disagreement that would go on and on (even carrying over into Kazan's feelings about the play, which culminated in there being TWO versions published - Williams's preferred version, and then Kazan's staged version. It's fascinating to read those two back to back).
Williams only wanted Kazan to direct, naturally. Kazan was "his" director. Williams sent the play to Kazan, and then began a back and forth between them. They were very close intimate friends and colleagues - they were able to speak truthfully to one another (sometimes forcefully), expressing emotions of dismay or conviction - without sugar-coating things. This is the collaborative process. I would so love to have Kazan's side of these letters published - or to have a volume of the Williams-Kazan correspondence - showing BOTH sides, because while Williams gave birth to these plays (and Kazan has said that all of Williams's plays came to him complete - there were no major revisions that needed to be done - Cat is the exception) - Kazan was the "midwife". It was his input and sensibility that helped ground Williams's lyrical and sometimes sentimental art. Kazan has obviously written to Williams giving him some strongly-worded reactions to Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. It had to do with its structure - the highpoint of the play comes in the second act. It should come in the third, according to Kazan (and to Wood). Williams disagreed. In October, 1954, Williams responds:
There is certainly no use in my trying to disguise or dissimulate the fact that I passionately long for you to do this play. But I can understand why you are afraid of its failure although I am not. I don't mean I think it couldn't fail. I think it not only could fail but has a fifty-fifty chance of failure, and know how much I have to lose from such a failure, but still I do passionately long for its production and for you to stage it because I think it does that thing which is the pure aim of art, which is to catch and illuminate truly and passionately the true, true quality of human existence. It so happens that the second act has the highest degree of dramatic tension. That has happened before in very fine plays and they have survived it. It has to be compensated, not by a trick or distortion but by charging the final scene with something plus, underlining and dramatizing as powerfully as possible the sheer truth of the material, it's very lack of shrewd showmanship, because I think critics and theatre lovers will respect it all the more for not making some facile, easy, obvious concession to the things which a lot of people have complained about in us, both, a too professional, showy, sock-finish to theatre. Am I rationalizing again? Maybe, but on the other hand, I may be simply trying to articulate to you my side of the case ... Even if "Cat" is not a good play, it's a goddam fiercely true play, and what other play this season is going to be that? I resumed work this morning, at 8 a.m. after not much sleep, on Act Three, determined to get what you want without losing what I want. (Assuming they are essentially the same thing, just conceived of in different fashions) I dare to believe that I can work this out, but it would help me immeasurably if you and some producer would give me a vote of confidence by committing yourselves to a date of production with the work still on the bench. I don't think that I would fail you. Of course I will be disappointed if you refuse, perhaps even angry at you - I was angry with you last night, too angry to sleep! - but I will not hate you for it, and we would still do something together again. I know that you are my friend.
Kazan wrote about this Third-Act disagreement (among other things) in his autobiography. So let's get his side of things:
I believed Big Daddy could not be left out of the third act. I felt that his final disposition in the story had to be conveyed to an audience. I also thought that the third act was by far the weakest of the three - one and two were brilliant and as good as anything Tennessee ever wrote. I suggested that Big Daddy be brought back into Act Three, a suggestion that had nothing to do with making the play more commercial. Tennessee said he'd think about my suggestion, and a few days later he brought me a short scene where Big Daddy did appear and told a dirty joke. It wasn't this author's best work, but perhaps it was better than nothing.
This is a big disagreement. What Kazan describes (the Big Daddy short scene) happened once rehearsals got underway, but the issue was there from the start.
Kazan agreed to direct. A date was set. Work continued on the script. Williams wrote to Kazan on Nov. 3, 1954:
I am glad that in "Cat" we are getting off the chest some of the terrible things that we have to say about human fate. I want to keep the core of the play very hard, because I detest plays that are built around something mushy such as I feel under the surface of many sentimental successes in the theatre. I want the core of the play to be as hard and fierce as Big Daddy. I think he strikes the keynote of the play. A terrible black anger and ferocity, a rock-bottom honest. Only against this background can his moments of tenderness, of longing, move us deeply. This is a play about good bastards and good bitches. I mean it exposes the startling co-existence of good and evil, the shocking duality of the single heart. I am as happy as you are that our discussions have led to a way of high-lighting the good in Maggie, the indestructible spirit of Big Daddy, so that the final effect of the play is not negative, this is a forward step, a step toward a larger truth which will add immeasurably to the play's power of communication or scope of communication.
Work on the script continued. Kazan sent a 5 page letter to Williams (why can't I read that letter??), telling Williams his problems with the script - it mainly had to do with the conception of the character Brick.
Which reminds me of a funny story. Allow me a digression:
Tommy Lee Jones came and spoke at my school. He hung out with us students, and answered questions. He could be frightening at times, and wasn't afraid to let people know that some of the questions were a little bit stupid. One of my classmates, a playwright - really nice guy - asked (and it was the WAY he asked it that was so funny - I could see Tommy Lee Jones break down his veneer a bit, he enjoyed the manner of the question, it seemed to come from an intelligent place): So my classmate asked, "I know that you played Brick in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Having suffered through many a terrible Brick in almost every acting class I have ever taken, I just had to ask you: what's up with Brick? What's the roadblock?" Tommy Lee Jones' whole body language changed. He responded to the question physically, perking up, sort of changing his position. He loved it. Anyway, his feeling was that Brick came from Williams's long fascination with Nietzsche - that Williams was working out something in that character that had to do with Nietzsche's views - and that was Jones's approach to it. This is interesting because I haven't heard many people make that connection, but that was Jones's "way in" (which just goes to show you what a brainiac that guy is. I will be playing Brick. I will learn my lines, I will walk with a limp, I will be a convincing drunk and closeted gay man .... and I will also immerse myself in the works of Nietzsche, looking for clues). Because Brick IS a problem, a conundrum. Not a problem to be solved, mind you, but one of those characters who stay in the mind long long after you leave them. Jones also felt that Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was certainly Williams's most well-made play, and, ultimately, Williams's "only truly great play". A very interesting perspective. No wonder everyone who worked on the original production felt like they were wrestling with a giant anaconda. Williams was working on something different than he had ever worked on before: the themes in Cat are not the themes of Streetcar or Menagerie - and that play really does stand out (in my opinion) in his body of work as quite singular.
The "homosexual" level of the story was difficult to handle (although crucial), and Williams stuck to his guns about all of it, with an increasing sense that he was not being understood at all. He was more than willing to collaborate, to take in suggestions - but when the suggestions seemed to threaten the core of the play, he pushed back.
Williams wrote in his journal, about Kazan's Brick comments:
I do get his point but I am afraid he doesn't quite get mine. Things are not always explained. Situations are not always resolved. Characters don't always 'progress'. But I shall, of course, try to arrive at another compromise with him.
In one of his notes on the play, Williams wrote:
The poetic mystery of BRICK is the poem of the play, not its story but the poem of the story, and must not be dispelled by any dishonestly oracular conclusions about him: I don't know him any better than I know my closest relative or dearest friend which isn't well at all: the only people we think we know well are those who mean little to us.
In another letter to Kazan, Williams talks specifically about the character of Brick, one of the many bones of contention (and seriously: every actor attempting to get by the "roadblock" of this character should not only heed Tommy Lee Jones's advice, but also read this letter:
Why does a man drink: in quotes "drink". There are two reasons, separte or together. 1. He's scared shitless of something. 2. He can't face the truth about something. - Then of course there's the natural degenerates that just fall into any weak, indulgent habit that comes along but we are not dealing with that sad but unimportant category in Brick. - Here's the conclusion I've come to. Brick did love Skipper, "the one great good thing in his life which was true". He identified Skipper with sports, the romantic world of adolescence which he couldn't go past. Further: to reverse my original (somewhat tentative) premise, I now believe that, in the deeper sense, not th eliteral sense, Brick is homosexual with a heterosexual adjustment: a thing I've suspected of several others, such as Brando, for instance. (He hasn't cracked up but I think he bears watching. He strikes me as being a compulsive eccentric.) I think these people are often undersexed, prefer pet raccoons or sports or something to sex with either gender. They have deep attachments, idealistic, romantic: sublimated loves! They are terrible Puritans. (Marlon dislikes me. Why? I'm "corrupt") These people may have a glandular set-up which will keep them "banked", at low-pressure, enough to get by without the eventual crack-up. Take Brando again: he's smoldering with something and I don't think it's Josanne! Sorry to make him my guinea pig in this analysis (Please give this letter back to me!) but he's the nearest thing to Brick that we both know. Their innocense, their blindness, makes them very, very touching, very beautiful and sad. Often they make fine artists, having to sublimate so much of their love, and believe me, homosexual love is something that also requires more than a physical expression. But if a mask is ripped off, suddenly, roughly, that's quite enough to blast the whole Mechanism, the whole adjustment, knock the world out from under their feet, and leave them no alternative but - owning up to the truth or retreat into something like liquor ....
Wow. I mean, just: WOW.
Williams is making the case that Brick does, in a way, "progress" (one of Kazan's criticisms) - that he eventually faces the truth about who he is. Williams goes on in the same letter:
He's faced the truth, I think, under Big Daddy's pressure, and maybe the block is broken. I just said maybe. I don't really think so. I think that Brick is doomed by the falsities and cruel prejudices of the world he comes out of, belongs to, the world of Big Daddy and Big Mama. Sucking a dick or two or fucking a reasonable facsimile of Skipper some day won't solve it for him, if he ever does such "dirty things"! He's the living sacrifice, the victim of the play, and I don't want to part with that "Tragic elegance" about him. You know, paralysis in a character can be just as significant and just as dramatic as progress, and is also less shop-worn. How about Chekhov?
It was time to find the cast. Again, there were disagreements between Kazan and Williams. Kazan writes in his autobiography (and this, to me, is a brilliant analysis of a certain TYPE of woman that perhaps I recognize because, duh, he's talking about me):
[Barbara Bel Geddes] was not the kind of actress [Williams] liked; she was the kind of actress I liked. I'd known her when she was a plump young girl, and I had a theory - which you are free to ignore - that when a girl is fat in her early and middle teens and slims down later, she is left with an uncertainty about her appeal to boys, and what often results is a strong sexual appetite, intensified by the continuing anxiety of believing herself undesirable. Laugh at that if you will, but it is my impression and it did apply to Miss Bel Geddes. I knew how much a working sexual relationship meant to this young woman and that in every basic way she resembled Maggie the Cat. I trusted my knowledge of her own nature and life and therefore cast her.
I believe it is a mistake to ONLY cast a sexpot in that part. It is a misunderstanding of what Williams is going for. Elizabeth Taylor was fine in the part, but put her side by side with Barbara Bel Geddes, and you not only get a different interpretation of the role, due to the different sensibilities of the two actresses, but you get an entirely new interpretation of the play. Maggie the Cat is not some nympho. I've seen her play that way and I find it misogynistic (on the part of the director, and also the actress, frankly) and incorrect. Misogynistic because it compartmentalizes women into two different groups: the sexy and the unsexy. And the "unsexy" can't possibly have sexual feelings, right? At least it's not anything that an audience (male audience, it is assumed) would want to SEE. Everyone on the planet has sexual feelings. I find it far more interesting to see Maggie cast as a normal woman, who expected a normal (ie: sexual) relationship with her husband, and is driven to the brink by his refusal to participate. How much more agonizing would that situation be for a woman who already has some anxiety about her attractiveness to men (as pointed out by Kazan)? Anyway, you could take many different tactics with this - and it's not that a beautiful woman can't also have insecurities and anxieties - but often the actress playing the role doesn't include those elements at all (which are in the script). All she does is beg her husband to fuck her, writhing around in a negligee. Well, that's one (unimaginative) way to go with it. Kazan sensed something in Barbara Bel Geddes that he thought would be powerful and potent in the part.
Young actor Ben Gazzara was cast as Brick. He was well-known at the Actors Studio, but this would be the role that would make him a star. He writes in his autobiography:
When I was cast to play Brick in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof it was a dream come true. Every actor wished to be in a Tennessee Williams play directed by Elia Kazan. Kazan had not been abandoned. He lost friends but he worked in film and in the theater whenever he wanted to. And despite the controversy surrounding him, most actors would have killed to work with him, too. He was the "actor's director" and he had chosen me to work with. I couldn't believe my good fortune.. I'd seen how Williams's plays gave actors the material they could delve deeply into - the glorious Laurette Taylor in The Glass Menagerie and the electrifying Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire. How would I pull it off?
Gazzara describes the first rehearsal:
When I arrived at the New Amsterdam Roof, near Times Square, where we were to rehearse, everybody was already seated around a huge wooden table. Elia Kazan, Tennessee Williams, Barbara Bel Geddes, Burl Ives, Mildred Dunnock, Pat Hingle, and Madeleine Sherwood. Seated nearby facing them were Audrey Wood and the producer Roger Stevens of the Playwrights' Company.Nobody got up or even said hello. They looked at me in silence. I was embarrassed because I'd arrived late ...
But once the reading began, all else was forgotten. To hear Tennessee's vivid dialogue being spoken by these fine actors was a revelation. The play became much more than I imagined when I'd read it on my own.
Gazzara talks about the part of Brick:
He's married to a beautiful woman, and I had to make it clear to viewers that rejecting Maggie doesn't come from his dislike or disgust, but instead from the death of Skipper, the friend he'd loved with a love he never admitted, even to himself. The loss of Skipper leads Brick to more and more booze and even greater disgust with people's mendacity, especially his own... I worked on reaching into myself to find the broken part of Brick.
What a beautiful way to put it.
Gazzara describes some tense moments at reherasals, when it became clear that Williams was not happy with the casting of Barbara Bel Geddes.
She was much too wholesome for [Williams's] taste. He was looking for something more neurotic, but I'm sure that Kazan had cast Barbara precisely for that wholesome quality. Theatergoers loved Barbara and therefore she would be able to make audiences embrace this complicated and not always likable character. Gadg [Kazan] was absolutely right about that.But Tennessee felt there were problems during the scene where Barbara is on her knees embracing my legs and making a plea for me to take her to bed. Tennessee said something like, "Gadge, she's fuckin' with my cadence." He may have thought he was whispering but Tennessee had a deep, mellifluous voice which at that moment was too loud. And he'd been drinking. Well, I looked over and Barbara was gone. She'd run off the stage in tears, so I went after her to console her. When I came back, Gadge looked at me for a long time and said, "You're a nice guy." I didn't understand. Wasn't it normal to help a lady in distress?
Kazan finally spoke to Williams and told him to lay off Bel Geddes, which he did. Eventually, Williams went up to Bel Geddes and told her she had much improved and he was happy with what she was doing.
The opening approached. After a run-through in early March, Tennessee Williams sent his notes to Kazan, some of which I will excerpt here - just a fascinating glimpse of the artistic process:
The bare stage background in New York may have been partly responsible but it seemed to me that the last act of the play, the first part of Act III, suffers from an undue portentousness as if we were trying to cover up some lack of significant content by giving it a "tricky" or inflated style of performance.In manuscript, in style of writing, this is almost the most realistic scene that I have ever written. I gave
enormouscare to restricting all the speeches to just precisely what I thought the person would say in precisely such a situation, I tried to give it the quality of an exact transcription of such a scene except for the removal of any worthless irrelevancies. I assumed, and still believe, that the emotional essence of the situation was strong enough to hold interest, and that the exact quality of experience, if captured truly, would give it theatrical distinction...There is a "poetry of the macabre" which I was creating in all the silly, trivial speeches that precede and surround the announcement to Big Mama, the fuss over what he ate at dinner, the observations about Keeley cure, anti-buse, vitamin B12, the southern gush and playfulness, these all contribute to a shocking comment upon the false, heartless, grotesquely undignified way that such events are treated in our society with its resolute concentration on the trivia of life. Practically all these values disappeared, for me at least, in a distractingly formalistic treatment of the situation...
I'm not happy over the interpretation of Doc Baugh whom I had conceived as a sort of gently ironical figure who had seen so much life and death and participated actively in so much of it that he had a sort of sad, sometimes slightly saturnine, detachment from the scene, a calm and kindly detachment, but he plays like a member of the family, in the same over-charged manner, like a fellow conspirator, especially at the moment when he starts abruptly forward as if about to deliver a speech and says the Keely cure bit at stage-center with such startling emphases. It is off-beat off-key little details like this which give the beginning of Act Three its curiously unreal look-for-the-rabbit-out-of-the-silk-hat air ...
I love the noise of the storm fading into the lovely negro lullabye: that's a true and beautiful bit of non-realistic staging which comes at the right moment and isn't the least bit exaggerated, in fact I would like to hear the singing better ...
After all of this, he closes the letter with:
I am being utterly sincere when I say that, on the whole, you have done one of your greatest jobs. I just want all of it to measure up to the truest and best of it, and to make it plain to everybody that this play is maybe not a great play, maybe not even a very good play, but a terribly, terribly, terribly true play about truth, human truth.
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof opened on this day, in 1955, in New York. It got incredible reviews. Brooks Atkinson, one of Williams's staunchest critic supporters, wrote: "[The play seemed] not to have been written. It is the quintessence of life." The performances were praised to the rooftops, Ben Gazzara became THE new guy in town, and Cat ended up running for almost 700 performances. It was a smash hit, playing to standing-room only houses. The play went on to win the Pulitzer Prize and the Drama Critics' Award.
When Williams heard that he had won both of the plum prizes for a playwright, he sent a telegram to the cast of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, on May 2, 1955:
DEAR PLAYERS: I WANT YOU TO KNOW THAT I KNOW THAT YOU ALL GAVE ME THE PRIZES. ALL MY LOVE=
TENNESSEE
“Already the publicity is beginning, and swarms of people visit the shop on hearing the news." - Letter from Sylvia Beach to her sister
("the news" being the publication of Ulysses.)
Recently it was Sylvia Beach's birthday, and this coming month will see the publication of The Letters of Sylvia Beach, which should be a bit of a treasure-trove, considering the people she interacted with daily (Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Joyce ... you know, minor figures like those guys). Naturally, Sylvia Beach is most known for her publication of Ulysses (through the auspices of her bookstore/publishing company Shakespeare & Co.) - which turned her into a notorious world-famous woman. The journey of Ulysses (the book, I mean) is well-known, and Beach was at the forefront of that important battle, concerning censorship and free speech. Relations with Joyce eventually broke down, and Beach, who was, essentially, running a very small-time operation, could not keep up with the demands.
James Campbell reviews the Letters of Sylvia Beach for the TLS, and seems frustrated with the editing thereof, the sketchy shorthand footnotes, the blanks not filled in for the lay reader. The events of Sylvia Beach's life are fascinating in and of themselves (who WAS this woman??), and I mainly know her through her intersections with the literary giants of the day. I love that Campbell calls her the "midwife of Modernism". I look forward to hearing her voice in these letters.
Here is a really interesting anecdote (which gives you some background of just ONE aspect of her life - and, of course, of course, James Joyce is peripherally involved):
When the Nazis entered Paris, Beach, who had lately made a visit home to the United States where she underwent a hysterectomy (she was also “knocked out by headaches” all her life), declined to leave rue de l’Odéon a second time. In her memoir, she told the almost too-cinematic story of how a “high-ranking German officer” entered her shop one day and, “speaking perfect English”, asked to buy the single copy of Finnegans Wake (published by Faber and Faber) displayed in the window. Beach told him it was not for sale, and duly removed it.A fortnight later, the same officer strode into the bookshop. Where was Finnegans Wake? I had put it away. Fairly trembling with rage, he said, “We’re coming to confiscate all your goods today.” “All right.” He drove off.
Within a few hours, she had boxed up the stock, removed the sign and painted over the patron’s name. The Germans did not get Finnegans Wake, but they did get Beach. She spent six months in an internment camp at Vittel, alongside Jewish prisoners who would later be removed to Auschwitz.
I loved this, too: Recently, long-time commenter Bryan and I had a conversation about Joyce (in the comments section here). It had to do with Joyce's poetry and influences. Bryan (clearly) knows a lot about this subject, and I wondered if there was any known connection between Joyce and Oscar Wilde? Did Joyce say anything about Wilde? Refer to him at all? Bryan came up with a couple of great examples (again, see that old post). So I was thrilled to read that Sylvia Beach wrote of her first meeting with James Joyce in her memoirs - he walked into her bookshop (Shakespeare & Co.) in Paris. She describes his behavior thus:
He stepped into my bookshop . . . he inspected my two photographs of Oscar Wilde. Then he sat down beside my table.
Marvelous. I wonder what he was thinking.
Look forward to reading her letters. The midwife of Modernism, indeed!
Stalker (1979); Dir. Andrei Tarkovsky
In Clifford Odets' journal, he describes a conversation he had with Lee Strasberg, colleague, director, acting teacher:
[Strasberg] spoke of what he called "the blight of Ibsen", saying that Ibsen had taught most writers after him how to think undramatically. He illustrated this by an example. A man has been used to living in luxury finds he is broke and unable to face life -- he goes home and puts a bullet in his head. That, Lee said, any fair theatre person can lay out into a play. But it is not essentially a dramatic view of life. Chekhov is dramatic, he said, for this is how he treats related material: a man earns a million rubles and goes home and lies down on them and puts a bullet in his head.
The Russians, at least in their art, are deeply concerned about the state of a man's soul, and Strasberg's point (while a bit of a generalization) rings very true when you look at their greatest works. Dostoevsky, in the Grand Inquisitor scene in The Brothers Karamazov delineates the struggle of how to lead a moral life better than anyone before or since. That scene rivals Paradise Lost in its excavation of man's fear before God, and also his fear before himself, his battles with his own demons. The psychological aspect of things like boredom, money, love, family, are seen through a very specific cultural filter, where man's spiritual life, his spiritual peace, is paramount. Yet nearly impossible to achieve in this lifetime. That's the Russian torment.
It is impossible to speak of Andrei Tarkovsky's films without talking about his philosophy of life. The two are inextricably linked. He did not make all that many films, but a couple of them I would classify as masterpieces, and while he died quite young, he was able to formulate, through his art, an entire philosophical system that had to do with the struggle of modern man to have a meaningful existence. Tarkovsky is hopeful, as many religious people are, that there will be redemption, but he also seems skeptical about the possibilities of it occurring any time soon. Either way, he knows it will not be easy. Tarkovsky is worried, truly worried, about the spiritual state of modern man, and nowhere is that more clear than in his 1979 masterwork Stalker.
Tarkovsky is an interesting case. He came into his career in the post-Stalin years in Russia, but the Cold War was at its apex when he was making his greatest films. He was able to work with the authorities, to stay within the system, but they gave him a hard time over the years, until it got so bad that he defected. He died a year or so after. I believe it broke his heart to leave Russia. He wasn't a provincial man, he read widely, one of his dreams was to film Hamlet (and what I wouldn't give to have seen that!), and he didn't feel that he needed to be in Russia to be an artist. His inspiration came from mankind itself. His film Andrei Rublev (my review here) catapulted him into worldwide fame, and it is a great film. I suppose you could see it as a metaphor for what it was like for the modern-day Soviet, but Tarkovsky didn't see it that way. Andrei Rublev was a 15th century monk in Russia who did giant triptychs, most of which were destroyed. As a matter of fact, only one remains intact. Nothing is known about him. Tarkovsky wanted to examine what kind of man would devote his life to painting pictures of religious exaltation and eternal peace in the midst of a time of great chaos. As we all know, the Bolsheviks "got rid of religion", apparently, but you would never know that from watching Tarkovsky's films. He is a deeply religious man. It is a rare talent who can put his feelings for God on the screen. It is also amazing that he was able to "get away with" as much as he did, in that environment. One of the reasons why I think Tarkovsky was able to operate freely for so long ("freely" being relative) is that he stayed away from politics entirely. You could read into his films, you could see them as grand allegories for current-day themes, but the films would suffer as a result. It's similar to many of the great films coming out of Iran right now. You could see in Children of Heaven a buried message, involving the hardships of life in Iran, the ridiculous pressures put on the citizenry (a brother and sister having to share a pair of shoes?), the class divide which is so intense in Tehran - that is definitely all there, but if you only see it as the allegory, you take away much of its magic. These directors, working under these conditions of censorship and oppression, have to be very very tricky, and the good ones always focus on story. The story they are actually telling. Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev is a clarion call for spirituality, for what happens to a society when God is left out. His context there is 15th century Russia, but you can see the parallels.
Tarkovsky was a fan of science fiction, and his 1972 film Solyaris was his first foray into that area. He returns to that territory again in Stalker. He goes even deeper into his life-long concerns about the atrophy of man's spirit in the modern world. He was an anti-materialist, definitely, and his ultimate question about events always was: Will this make man happier? Better? Will this bring him closer to his spirit? Or will this separate him even further? Ironically, Tarkovsky ended his life as an exile - but his films all along, made within Russia, have to do with man being exiled from himself and from God.
Stalker was based on the novella Roadside Picnic by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky, but Tarkovsky made it his own, as he explains here in a 1979 interview:
I had recommended a short novel Picnic on the Roadside, to my friend, the filmmaker Giorgi Kalatozishvili, thinking he might adapt it to film. Afterwards, I don't know why, Giorgi could not obtain the rights from the authors of the novel, the Strugatsky brothers, and he abandoned the idea of this film. The idea began to turn in my head, at first from time to time, and then more and more often. It seemed to me that this novel could be made into a film with a unity of location, time, and action. This classic unity - Aristotelian in my view - permits us to approach truly authentic filmmaking, which for me is not action film, outwardly dynamic. I must say, too, that the script of Stalker has nothing in common with the novel ... except for the two words, "Stalker" and "Zone". So you see the history of the origins of my film is deceptive.
In Stalker, there has been some sort of apocalyptic event. It is thought that a meteorite had crashed into "our small country" (the country is never named), but the meteorite was never found. Troops were sent to investigate the destroyed area, and they never returned. It became clear to the nameless authorities that the area had to be cordoned off, and it is known as The Zone. A great mystery surrounds the Zone. Nobody knows the truth of it. What is it? There is a rumor that in the center of the Zone, there is a Room, and in that Room, man's greatest wish (whatever it may be) can come true. But how to get into the Zone, which is surrounded by electrical fences and barbed wire, and armed outposts?
This is where The Stalker comes in. The Stalker acts as a guide. People pay him money to take them into the Zone. It is a dangerous prospect. Not just getting past the guards, but once in the Zone, all bets are off. It is a place that changes, constantly - the laws of physics do not apply. It is as though the land itself is alive, and it recognizes when strangers have arrived, so it starts to shift, throwing traps and pitfalls in their way.
The Stalker lives in a dreary cottage with his unhappy wife and daughter, who has something wrong with her legs. She is "a child of the Zone", which suggests to me that some Chernobyl event may have occurred. The landscape outside the Stalker's cottage is terrifying and industrial. Huge nuclear power plants loom in the distance, and it appears that the entire world is an abandoned construction site.
At the beginning of the film, the Stalker meets up with two men who want to go to the Zone. Money changes hands. They stand in a dingy bar and talk over how it will go.
The two men who enlist the Stalker's hope are known as "Writer" and "Professor". Everyone has their own reasons to want to go to the Zone. It is only what YOU think of it that matters. The Writer is cynical, and he feels he has lost his inspiration. When we first see him, he is having a conversation with a woman in a fur coat (who also wants to go to the Zone, but the Stalker sends her packing), and she is wondering about the mystery of it all, she references the Bermuda Triangle. The Writer scoffs at this. There is no mystery. There are no UFOs, no invisible forces - he is a realist. And yet here he is, about to embark on a journey into the unknown. The Professor teaches physics at a university, and because of his life's work examining things like atoms and protons he is more willing to accept that the invisible and mysterious is also real, but his desire to go to the Zone comes from his yearning to make tangible the intangible. He needs proof. The Stalker, a weary tormented man, has his doubts about both of these men, but they start on their journey.
The opening sequence, with the three men in a massive roofless jeep, driving around through decaying warehouses, is a masterpiece of style. The setting is extraordinary, and you wonder where the hell they were filming. These do not look like sets. The sound of dripping water is paramount (a very Tarkovskyian sound - it appears in most of his films), and the three men drive around in circles, hiding from the guards patrolling the main gate. It becomes clear that a train comes to the outpost, and this will be their way in. The gates open for the train, momentarily, and they will drive in behind the train. The Stalker explains to the other two that while it is dangerous, the guards do not want to go further into the Zone, everyone is afraid of it, so they have that on their side.
Tarkovsky drives his point home by filming the early sections of the film in a saturated black-and-white. It looks like a daguerrotype. Like we are looking at a world long gone away. Tarkovsky preferred to film in black and white, he felt it was a more realistic cinematic language, but here he chose to film the scenes in the Zone itself in vibrant color, to perhaps suggest that the Zone is what everyone thinks it is: a magical place where dreams can come true.
The journey through the Zone is filmed methodically. I think Tarkovsky's point about Aristotelian unities is one of the strengths of this film which could, if you think about it, have seemed rather silly. A magical land where dreams come true? But the journey is shown, step by step, and as they travel, they talk. The philosophical differences of the men become clear. Arguments break out. Both the Writer and the Professor have a hard time just doing what the Stalker says, even though he begs them to follow his instructions exactly - the Zone is dangerous, like a predator, it will eat you up if you don't follow the rules. That is why they hired him.
Stalker is a dialogue-heavy script, unlike Andrei Rublev which is told mainly through images. I loved the dialogue. It wrestles with the issues, as opposed to presenting them clearly. It is obvious that these three men have different contexts and concerns, but above all else, you worry for them. The Zone, as filmed by Tarkovsky, calls to mind Planet of the Apes, an eerily familiar landscape, but it is a place where a civilization has died. Enormous telephone poles stand tipped over to the side. Buildings lie in ruin. In the earlier scenes, nature is almost nonexistent. There is no grass. The only water in the film appears in a glass on the bedside table, and dripping from the various ceilings, a sure sign of decay. But in the Zone, there is a rushing river. The sound of the water, roaring by, is a tumultuous sound of life - but it's also somewhat ominous, as the entire Zone is. Beneath the water (in a stunning tracking shot, my favorite shot of the film), you can see debris from the world gone by. Fragments of newspaper, syringes, old coins, a religious postcard ... Tarkovsky slowly trains the camera to pan over these objects, seen through the distorted waviness of water.
It is difficult to not see in all of this a criticism of the Soviet Union's rapacious attitude towards the environment. The world is one of the means of production, to be used as such. Used up and left behind. Tarkovsky and his crew were exposed to toxic chemicals during the shooting of the film, and Tarkovsky probably already had the cancer that would eventually kill him. His evocation of the environment (all environments) in Stalker has to be seen to be believed. The Stalker, the Writer, and the Professor, walk cautiously through an overgrown field, towards some unknown destination, having to trust in fate, having to let their innermost wishes come to the surface, because that is the only reason they are there, and the only way they will survive.
As the three men get closer and closer to the mythical "Room" at the center of the Zone, they all start to grapple more openly with what it is they are seeking. What would it be like to have your dreams come true? Again, I go back to the anecdote I started this essay with: Lee Strasberg's conception of what was dramatic, and why Chekhov was the primary example. What is dramatic about a man losing his money and killing himself? Isn't that what we expect? But how about a man becoming rich and then killing himself?
Why I thought of this anecdote when I sat down to write this essay was not just that it seemed to have something to say about Russian artists, but also that the Stalker's predecessor, the one who trained him and taught him to be a Stalker, was known as the Porcupine. And he came back from the Zone one time and found himself fabulously rich. The next week he hung himself. The specter of this hangs over our current-day Stalker - because there is something terrible about dreams, and wishes ... and one of the things he tries to make clear about the Room, is that your wish must be something from your deepest heart - not a selfish or worldly short-term wish.
This is a true Tarkovskyian warning. Man has been made corrupt by money. Tarkovsky made no bones about his feelings about the West, and while he enjoyed time in Italy and England, etc., he felt that the West had abandoned spirituality in pursuit of worldly goods, and the toll of this cannot even be measured. By abandoning God, Man has abandoned himself. Tarkovsky worried about this (meaning, worked on it) in film after film. Man must look to God, to deeper and higher truths, for what he wants out of life. The Stalker repeatedly warns the Writer and the Professor about this, but it's one of the trials of the human condition. How many of us really can "let go" of the world like that? Tarkovsky insists that it is the only way.
An eerie frightening film, Stalker makes use of spectacular natural locations: empty dark tunnels, mossy overgrown buildings, a quiet reflective river - but there is also one fantastical sequence when they find themselves in a giant inner room in the Zone, with mounds of cylindrical sand on the floor, and two flying cawing birds, the only sign of life so far (except for an ominous black dog who seems to stalk the periphery of the three men's journey). This space is not the Room, but it is the threshold to the Room, and everything starts to break down there. The men, so close to the truth (the yearning of all mankind when looking up at the stars and wondering what the hell is up there?) begin to resist, begin to fight against what is to come.
The last scene of the film (which I wouldn't dream of revealing) packs such an enormous punch (visually, thematically - it is different from all that came before) - that it acts as a catalyst in the viewer. It tells us something we have not yet learned. It suggests that things really ARE not what they seem, that they are far more mysterious than anyone had ever dreamed. Not even the Stalker knows the real truth. To quote Tarkovsky's favorite play:
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,. Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Stalker is a stunning accomplishment.
March 23, 2010
3000 hits, 400 home runs
A beautifully written essay by my brother. Being a Red Sox fan is wrapped up in being a member of my family - the two cannot be unwoven. Brendan captures what this really means. I have heard this story a million times (Uncle Jimmy was my godfather, and we all still miss him very much) and it never ever gets old. It's a baseball story, yes, a story of Carl Yastrzemski, but mostly it's the story of Us. Our family.
Today in history: March 23, 1775
Patrick Henry made his famous "give me liberty or give me death" speech at St. John's Church in Richmond, Virginia.
Benson Bobrick writes in his book Angel in the Whirlwind: The Triumph of the American Revolution
On May 29, 1765, Patrick Henry rose in the Virginia House of Burgesses to introduce a series of momentous resolutions which he had hastily drafted on a blank leaf of an old law book ... Henry accompanied these resolutions with a fiery speech given the next day in which he concluded, "Caesar had his Brutus, Charles the First his Cromwell and George the Third" - amid cries of "Treason" that arose from all sides of the room - "and George the Third," he continued artfully, "may profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it!"Thomas Jefferson, then a student at the College of William and Mary, was standing in the doorway and heard Henry speak. "I well remember the cry of treason," Jefferson wrote afterward, "the pause of Mr. Henry at the name of George III, and the presence of mind with which he closed his sentence, and baffled the charge vociferated." To Jefferson it seemed as if Henry "spoke as Homer wrote".
Paul Johnson, in his wonderful book, A History of the American People
A common American political consciousness was taking shape, and delegates began to speak with a distinctive national voice. At the end of it, Patrick Henry marked this change in his customary dramatic manner: 'The distinctions between Virginians and New Englanders are no more. I am not a Virginian but an American.' Not everyone agreed with him, as yet, and the Continental Congress, as it called itself, voted by colonies rather than as individual Americans. But this body, essentially based on Franklin's earlier proposals, perpetuated its existence by agreeing to meet again in May 1775. Before that could happen, on February 5, 1775, parliament in London declared Massachusetts, identified as the most unruly and contumacious of the colonies, to be in a state of rebellion, thus authorizing the lawful authorities to use what force they thought fit. The fighting had begun. Hence when the Virginia burgesses met in convention to instruct their delegates to the Second Continental Congress, Henry saw his chance to bring home to all the revolutionary drama of the moment.Henry was a born ham actor, in a great age of acting - the Age of Garrick. The British parliament was full of actors, notably [William] Pitt himself ('He acted even when he was dying') and the young [Edmund] Burke, who was not above drawing a dagger, and hurling it on the ground to make a point. But Henry excelled them all. He proposed to the burgesses that Virginia should raise a militia and be ready to do battle. What was Virginia waiting for? Massachusetts was fighting. 'Our brethren are already in the field. Why stand we her idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have?'
Then Henry got to his knees, in the posture of a manacled slave, intoning in a low but rising voice: 'Is life so dear, our peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God!' He then bent to the earth with his hands still crossed, for a few seconds, and suddenly sprang to his feet, shouting, 'Give me liberty!' and flung wide his arms, paused, lowered his arms, clenched his right hand as if holding a dagger at his breast, and said in sepulchral tones: 'Or give me death!' He then beat his breast, with his hand holding the imaginary dagger.
There was silence, broken by a man listening at the open window, who shouted: "Let me be buried on this spot!'
Henry had made his point.
It's interesting - there's a great description of acting: "Acting is like a sculpture carved in snow." Obviously, that phrase came from the time of stage acting. Movies now can capture the "sculpture" before it melts. Or at least one version of it. But that quote always makes me think of Patrick Henry. Nobody alive today can ever experience his oratorical skills. There are no video tapes, tape recordings. We just have to take the word of those who were THERE. So while no "record" exists, and his speeches were, indeed, "carved in snow" ... a whiff of the power of them comes down to us regardless.
The impact of the "Give my liberty or give me death" speech was not quite the tinder-box effect of Thomas Paine's Common Sense
Here, in full, is Patrick Henry's speech that he made on this day in 1775:
Patrick Henry's Speech, St. John's Church, Richmond, Virginia, March 23, 1775
No man, Mr. President, thinks more highly than I do of the patriotism, as well as abilities, of the very worthy gentlemen who have just addressed the House. But different men often see the same subject in different lights; and, therefore, I hope it will not be thought disrespectful to those gentlemen if, entertaining as I do opinions of a character very opposite to theirs, I shall speak forth my sentiments freely and without reserve. This is no time for ceremony. The question before the House is one of awful moment to this country. For my own part, I consider it as nothing less than a question of freedom or slavery; and in proportion to the magnitude of the subject ought to be the freedom of the debate. It is only in this way that we can hope to arrive at truth, and fulfill the great responsibility which we hold to God and our country. Should I keep back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offense, I should consider myself as guilty of treason towards my country, and of an act of disloyalty toward the Majesty of Heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings.
Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and, having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it.
I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past. And judging by the past, I wish to know what there has been in the conduct of the British ministry for the last ten years to justify those hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and the House. Is it that insidious smile with which our petition has been lately received? Trust it not, sir; it will prove a snare to your feet. Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss. Ask yourselves how this gracious reception of our petition comports with those warlike preparations which cover our waters and darken our land. Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation? Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled that force must be called in to win back our love? Let us not deceive ourselves, sir. These are the implements of war and subjugation; the last arguments to which kings resort. I ask gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array, if its purpose be not to force us to submission? Can gentlemen assign any other possible motive for it? Has Great Britain any enemy, in this quarter of the world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies? No, sir, she has none. They are meant for us: they can be meant for no other. They are sent over to bind and rivet upon us those chains which the British ministry have been so long forging. And what have we to oppose to them? Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten years. Have we anything new to offer upon the subject? Nothing. We have held the subject up in every light of which it is capable; but it has been all in vain. Shall we resort to entreaty and humble supplication? What terms shall we find which have not been already exhausted? Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves. Sir, we have done everything that could be done to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and Parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the throne! In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free-- if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending--if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained--we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of hosts is all that is left us!
They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. The millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable--and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come.
It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace-- but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
Tim Burton at MoMA
MoMA has a giant (and I mean giant) exhibit up right now devoted to the work of Tim Burton, and any time I've walked by there since the exhibit went up (especially on weekends) there is a line around the block. Not exaggerating. People lined up outside and around the block. I love Tim Burton but that line was always daunting to me. Should I go join it? My friend then told me that she got free tickets, and would I like to go? We went yesterday afternoon, and while it was a mob scene at first (which was a bit annoying because you couldn't get close to the things on the walls, to read the little placards - the crowd was often 5 people deep at any given spot) - but eventually it thinned out a bit, and we were able to wander around to our hearts' content, going from wall to wall, lingering (I love to linger in musuems). It's a comprehensive exhibit, involving artwork, metal sculptures, films, figures used in his animation, and also things like posters he designed when he was a kid, and some of his early sketches from high school and college. The exhibit is organized chronologically, so, ideally, you can start from beginning to end to watch his evolution. We really didn't do it that way, due to how crowded it was. We were just looking for open spots in the mayhem.
Most of the things on the wall were sketches, things literally ripped out of notebooks - you could see the tears in the pages, and as I moved along, I really got the sense of an obsessive mind at work. These are, essentially, doodles. But there were also specific sketches for all of his films, characters and settings, some of them more elaborate than others - watercolors, etc., while some were just pencil sketches. There were also items from some of his films on display - the angora sweater Johnny Depp wore in Ed Wood, the burnt wooden figures from the beginning of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - and then glass cases with recognizable small figures from his animated features (I loved looking at these - they were exquisite grotesque caricatures).
A couple of things I took note of that I really liked: His handwriting is very childlike, even recently, and there were hand-written notes on scripts he had written, and notes for characters. There was a character sketch of Edward Scissorhands, written in long-hand, that read like a personal ad. "Edward has pale skin and intense eyes. He enjoys creating ice sculptures." One of his notes for Beetlejuice said something like: "This must be a very human story." You can feel his creative mind at work. How specifically he thinks of things, how his vision operates. I also loved that while he obviously makes use of high-end technology, this is a guy who passes people hand-written notes. I can't picture Tim Burton texting. There was a long note to Johnny Depp about a moment he wanted in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, a line he wanted to add, and he wondered how Johnny Depp would feel about said line and if that seemed okay to him? If Johnny liked the line, he'd make sure to add it into the script. A hand-written note to Johnny Depp. I really like that mix of old-school and new-fangled machines that Tim Burton has always embodied. Even with Alice in Wonderland, there was often a sense that you were looking at something real. The Red Queen's meeting room, for example, and the tea party in the woods - Obviously computers are generating some of it, but there is a tangible sense of reality to it - and I loved seeing Tim Burton's hand-written notes for this stuff, up on the wall at MoMA.
There was also a very moving display of a children's book he had written when he was 17 years old. It was about a monster, a big pink dragon-like creature. Burton, as a teenager, had sent it to the Walt Disney company (ironically), asking for feedback (and obviously for help). A copy of the letter Tim Burton had written to the company had obviously been unearthed. It was hand-written, ballpoint pen, with a spelling error ("layed" for "laid"), and he basically said, Here is something I have written. Is this something you would like? Amazingly, an editor at Walt Disney wrote back to him. And there the letter was on the wall, above the glass case containing said children's book, and it was such a generous letter - you can see why Tim Burton kept it forever. The person who received the manuscript obviously saw something in Burton, and took the time to respond, specifically. She thanked him for the book and gave him some notes. The first one was that the plot seemed to be "derivative of Dr. Seuss", but she said it in a way that wasn't crushing, or like "Don't even try, CHiPs". She was just making an observation, which hopefully would be helpful. Her second note was something like (and I wish I had written down her exact wording): "Knowing that you don't have professional tools at your disposal, I have to say that your illustrations are extraordinary, and I think you will go very far in whatever you want to do. You have a gift, and I suggest you keep at it." Something totally awesome like that. Encouragement of a young artist. It's so important. Tim Burton wasn't created in a vacuum. Teachers can be so instrumental in telling a student, "Keep going ... keep going ..."
Some of the random sketches on the wall were so funny that you could hear people guffawing across the room, while looking at them. It was a really fun atmosphere. A congenial comedic vibe. I had a couple of moments with other random people there, when we'd all be looking at the same sketch, and laughing about it. For example, there was a very simply drawn cartoon, with a title scrawled above it: The Snail Who Wanted to be a Ballet Dancer. The drawing was of a snail, and out of the snail's "head" came a thought bubble, and in the thought bubble were two leaping figures doing a pas de deux. The caption read: "Vladimir dreamed of being a ballet dancer but he couldn't because he had no legs." This kind of thing strikes my funny bone. Its absurdity, its simplicity. I kept coming back to it, because the humor kept satisfying me.
There were screens on the walls, too, playing early animated sketches, and also (gloriously) horror movies he had filmed with his friends when he was in college. There was one where there was a talking bloody head in a garbage can, and a poor boy was trying to deal with it, what should he do? He picks up the head and throws it off to the side, and then you get a shot of the head, lying on the ground, eyes open, still talking.
The exhibit runs through April 26, and I'm not sure if they plan on taking it on the road, to other museums, but I highly recommend it (great for kids, too - I wish Cashel had been with me) - and don't let the crowds get you down. If you wait it out, you'll feel the ebb and flow of the throngs, and while it was a madhouse when we first walked into the exhibit, that changed, and left us in a more open space, where we could linger, and get close to the images.
A portrait of an artist who has a truly personal vision, a guy who has been working on the same themes and images for years - you can see versions of his later work as early as his college years when he started to find his legs as an artist - the exhibit is a great tribute to one of our most personal filmmakers working today. A guy who could have been just an antisocial nerd, you really get the sense of his isolation in a lot of these drawings, but who translated his obsessions/dreams/nightmares into art.
Well worth seeing.
Below the jump, there's a video from MoMA about the exhibit, with a great interview with Burton.
March 22, 2010
The Ghost Writer (2010); Dir. Roman Polanski
From the opening shot of The Ghost Writer, directed by 76 year old Roman Polanski, of an enormous ferry pulling into a pier at night, you know you are in the hands of a master. The score, by the awesome Alexandre Desplat, is tense and orchestral, an old-school score, making it apparent, from the get-go, that things are not as they seem. Slowly, the ferry pulls toward the screen, backing up to the dock, and it threatens to overwhelm the entire frame. It is not clear why it is such a frightening image, not yet, but that's Polanski. Nobody knows how to create mood and tone like he does.
One of my favorite Polanski stories is of an early screening of Rosemary's Baby, a film full of deeply destabilizing camera angles. You want to pull your hair out and just be allowed to look at something headon, thankyouverymuch. There's a scene where Rosemary is on the phone, sitting on the edge of the bed, and Polanski has placed his camera outside the room and around the corner a bit, so that you cannot see Rosemary. The phone call may be a benign one, but the camera angle tells a different story. And at the early screening, the entire audience leaned over to the side, as one, to try to see what was around the corner.
This is somewhat of a lost art today in cinema, especially in thrillers which seem to rely more on quick cuts and "gotcha" surprise moments, which may be satisfying in the short-term, but seem way too easy in the long-term. The good thrillers are successful because of the mood created, and it may be the quietest moments that are the most terrifying. I am thinking of Leopoldine Konstantine's slow descent down the stairs in Notorious, as she comes to meet Ingrid Bergman for the first time. She is seen in long-shot, through the doorway to the parlor, at the top of the stairs. She looks incredibly forbidding, but it is hard to pinpoint why, since we can't see her face yet. She descends, never taking her eyes off Bergman, and approaches - all in one shot, so she walks right into the closeup. Her eyes are enough to make you run fleeing into the night. That's tension.
There are a lot of Hitchcock references in The Ghost Writer, particularly one scene where a note with an explosive message on it is passed, hand by hand, through a crowd, the camera following the note's progression. It reminded me of the notorious key, in Notorious, and keeping track of the key, in her hand, Grant's hand, on the keychain, becomes one of the games of the film, including the famous tracking shot from high up on the balcony down to the middle of the party to a closeup of Ingrid Bergman's hand holding the key.
The Ghost Writer tells the story of a writer (played by Ewan McGregor) who is a bit unmoored in his life (no family, no dependents), and gets the job of being a ghost writer to Adam Lang, the former English Prime Minister (played by Pierce Brosnan). McGregor's character name is listed as "Ghost". His predecessor was found drowned on the shores of Martha's Vineyard, where Adam Lang has a forbidding private home, and there appears to be something sketchy about the death. But apparently he was drunk, that's the story, anyway, so McGregor is called in as a replacement.
From the get-go, there is something strange about the assignment. McGregor is given a manuscript to read, another manuscript, by Adam Lang's lawyer (played by Timothy Hutton), and on his way home, he is mugged, and the manuscript stolen, by two ninja-types on a motorcycle. Did they think it was the Lang manuscript? The one already written by the former ghost writer? The Ghost is freaked out, but the money he will be paid for this assignment ($250,000) is more money than he has ever seen in his life. He gets on a plane for Martha's Vineyard.
Lang lives in a fortress on the beach, a squat stone house that calls to mind a bunker, with the waves rolling in only feet away. The landscape is chilling and evocative (made me think of my time on Block Island and how bleak it can get on islands in the winter), and Polanski fills the wide screen with cold grey waves and lowering leaden sky. It's incredibly ominous. The Ghost is ushered through multiple security checks, and every face glimpsed by the slowly moving camera appears to have a secret.
The former ghost writer had written an entire manuscript, and it will be the new ghost's job to whip it into shape. The manuscript is kept under lock and key, and must never be shown to anyone. The Ghost has to sign a confidentiality agreement, and is not allowed to take the manuscript back to the small inn, where he will be staying for the duration of the assignment.
At the house of Adam Lang, the Ghost is introduced to a multitude of new characters: Kim Cattrall plays Amelia Bly, Adam Lang's administrator (and mistress). She is the one who shows the Ghost the ropes. Cattrall is quite eerie here, so different from Samantha in Sex and the City, and it's nice to hear her speak in what is her natural accent. She moves with poise and control, no extraneous movements, and always has a bright yet cold smile on her face. Olivia Williams is marvelous as Adam Lang's wife, a woman with secrets and complexity (as everyone has here), who suggests worlds of bitterness - which seem to be one thing (the normal long-suffering wife of a workaholic famous man) and then, by the end, is revealed to be something totally different. There's a terrific cameo by Eli Wallach, who plays an old man who lives down the road, and appears to have some new information about the drowned former ghost writer. And then there is Adam Lang himself, played with gusto by Pierce Brosnan. Based on Tony Blair, obviously, Lang had a reputation for being a party animal at Cambridge, and that quickly becomes clear to the Ghost that this is not to be talked about, or dwelled upon in the manuscript. Again, things are not what they seem. Is it that Lang doesn't want to be portrayed as a lightweight, or is there something really to hide back there in those Cambridge years?
The Ghost has no idea what he is getting into, but he gamely begins his assignment, reading through the manuscript, and conducting interviews with Lang. The room where he writes is a masterpiece of production design and imagination: a cold stone-walled study, with black leather chairs and couches, with one wall floor to ceiling glass, looking out on the whipping sand-dunes and big dark rollers coming in. McGregor sits at the desk, flipping through the pages, and the setting is so tightly coiled, so controlled, yet just outside is Mother Nature in all her wintry chaos.
There are political themes in The Ghost Writer, with some obvious parallels to current-day events (a defense company called "Hatherton" becomes crucial), but the film avoids being too on the nose. There's wit to the references, and pessimism (it's a deeply cynical film), but the main thrust of it is not Lang's shady political past but the ghost writer's stumble down a blind alleyway, looking for the truth. McGregor is our eyes. We are as disoreinted as he is. Lang, within a day of The Ghost's tenure, is indicted for war crimes by The Hague. All hell breaks loose. Protesters pile up outside the gates at Lang's Martha's Vineyard Home, the phones ring off the hook, and the Ghost, a non-political person, finds himself entangled in the situation, writing statements for Lang, which are then read on CNN, and he has mixed feelings about it. "You're now an accomplice," smiles Amelia Bly.
The Ghost isn't a particularly dare-devil personality, and isn't all that interested in politics - he doesn't care about the crusade, or the "talking points", but as he spends more time in the eerie house on the shore (even the maid seems ominous), he begins to ask questions, finding locked doors everywhere he goes (metaphorically and literally - another nod to Notorious, with that damn keychain). He discovers a folder left behind by the former ghost writer, with notes, and photographs with underlined names on the back - and McGregor wonders about it. It all has to do with Cambridge, with Lang's time there as an undergraduate. What is forbidden about this subject?
I suppose you could see all kinds of allegories in The Ghost Writer: a commentary on our times, and the war on terror, and the allegiance between Britain and the United States. Sure, that's there. There is also a sense of Polanski himself, both in the hunted and persecuted Adam Lang, as well as the "ghost writer", a man who has been unmoored, in a way, from normal life, has become a ghost. Hidden behind the scenes, still operating, but living in a deeply threatening universe that is hellbent on grinding him to a pulp. For me, the strength of The Ghost Writer does not come from these allegorical connections, although it adds to the ominous through-the-looking-glass feeling. The Ghost Writer is a fantastic thriller, period, with or without the true-to-life backstories, and Polanski, like no other, creates a mood and a world where above all, you just want to escape. The audience wants to escape the tension, and so does the ghost. But there always comes a point of no return. Even if you wanted to escape, you could not.
A better-looking film you won't see this year (although Shutter Island comes close), with a score that gets inside your head, inside your nervous system, The Ghost Writer is a must-see.
A guide through June 16, 1904
A companion piece, I suppose, to my recent post about my Ulysses playing cards:
I find posts like this to be very gratifying. Blogger Deepan Joshi calls me his "guide" for Joyce's Ulysses and writes, after reading all of my posts about it:
My guide has encouraged me with her simple explanation and after years I have finally mustered the courage to get past ‘Stately, plump Buck Mulligan…’ and hopefully would reach the 40-page run-on sentence of Molly Bloom, lying in bed.
My work here is done. When I wrote all of those essays about each chapter in Ulysses, I did it for myself, certainly, because I enjoy talking about the book, and thinking about the book. I also, obviously, like to share what I'm thinking about things (hence: the blog). But I also hoped that my writing may remove some of the mystique surrounding Ulysses (critics can be quite annoying about the book, making it seem like it is only for specialists, and that could not be farther from the truth), and might encourage someone to pick up the book and give it a go.
It can be opaque. Yes. I had a guide. My father. And Anthony Burgess, too, but mostly my father. I could call him up and say, "Dad. WTF?" and I would read him a passage and he would start explaining it. My favorite example is how my dad, in one comment, cracked open the Cyclops episode for me. I could understand the LANGUAGE of the damn episode just fine (which is more than I can say for the Oxen of the Sun episode), but I didn't know WHY. I didn't know what was going on, who was the new narrator, why why why why. Remember what Joyce said: "With me, the thought is always simple." But sometimes to get to that thought is a bit of a journey (which is part of the fun of the book).
I loved reading Joshi's thoughts about Ulysses, and so thrilled that my posts would have traveled out there into cyberspace, and encouraged someone to continue on.
With a book like Ulysses, it is worth it. Believe me. No other book like it.
March 21, 2010
Across the Universe (2007); Dir. Julie Taymor
In the Golden Age of the Hollywood musical, it was accepted that suddenly, in the middle of a scene of dialogue, a character would break into song. Another way to say it is: There was confidence in the genre. We've lost a lot of that in our more ironic age, which is even true in Broadway musicals themselves at the present moment, where the classic old-school musical is now out of style, and when it is done, more often than not it is done with a wink-wink at the audience, making the whole thing into kitsch. This is all fine - sensibilities change, and the musical then becomes a problem that must be solved. Good directors know how to handle this. They understand that they must create a context where the genre can live again, and it seems organic.
I was not an admirer of the movie Chicago, but one of the reasons it worked (I admit grudgingly) was that Rob Marshall dealt with this problem head-on. He made the songs into interior monologues, the characters going into psychological dream-spaces, where it would make sense that they would sing. Marshall realized it was an issue - that you can't go old-school with this stuff, not now, modern audiences don't tolerate it - and so each song occurred inside a character's mind. I didn't like the movie, but I liked how he handled the "problem" of the musical. It worked. Dreamgirls (the movie) did not deal with this issue well at all. When the scenes were flat-out performances, of the girls onstage, or rehearsing, it was fine. Then, the movie knew what it was: basically a concert movie. But when suddenly characters were singing in the middle of their lives, breaking into song, essentially, the movie totally lost its way. I felt that it was embarrassed for itself in those moments, especially in the number "Family". I winced through that scene, watching the actors try to pretend that a context had been provided for them where it would make sense that they would break into song. Jamie Foxx seemed mortified. Nobody knew what movie they were in. Like I said, when the movie showed actual performances, it was fine - but the problem of the musical had not at all been handled, and so the movie was very wobbly. If you're doing a musical, then you need to have confidence in the genre, and that's final. Dreamgirls didn't. They WANTED to be a biopic, they knew HOW to do a biopic, but that's not how the thing is written. It's a musical. Don't condescend to the genre. Figure out a way to make it palatable to a modern audience or don't do it. If the conversation-songs had been left out of the film, or somehow turned into onstage performances, perhaps the movie would have felt like it had more confidence in itself.
Julie Taymor, director of Across the Universe, knows a little bit about Broadway musicals, having created and directed The Lion King, although much of that project (the huge puppets, the handmade quality of the effects) breaks the mold. I saw it and it certainly doesn't look like anything else. Her film projects so far have been eclectic and fascinating (Frida, Titus, and her next project is The Tempest, which I cannot WAIT to see) and she is working at her full powers with Across the Universe, the "musical" made up only of Beatles songs. It is hard to express the joy and enthusiasm in this film, not to mention its wild creativity in lighting/production design/visual effects. How many worlds does Taymor create here? It's dazzling. Suburban Massachusetts, all golden light and green grass. Liverpool, England, cramped alleyways and dark muted tones. The lower East side of Manhattan, early 60s, with colored grafitti and crowded sidewalks. A drug trip in a psychedelic school bus. A dreamy gorgeous underwater sequence. Strawberries pinned to the wall of a bohemian apartment. The Detroit riots, with cars burning, and handheld cameras. Each world created with total confidence in the story being told, and also the genre itself. There is maybe half an hour of straight dialogue in the film. The rest is told through song.
The film opens with a shot of an empty beach, with a young man sitting in the sand by the shore. The color palette is muted, greys and browns, a bleak setting. The camera moves in slowly towards the boy. He stares out at the ocean. As the camera pulls in close to him, he turns and looks directly at the camera, and starts to sing. "Is there anybody going to listen to my story? All about a girl who came to stay. She's the kind of girl you want so much it makes you sorry. Still you don't regret a single day."
Taymor says in the director's commentary that they wanted to start off immediately with a song, and to make it even more explicit, have the young man sing directly to the camera. This works on multiple levels, but the main reason it works is because it tells the audience right away that This Is a Musical, no bones about it. He breaks the fourth wall, as people do all the time in musicals, and he sings. There will be no caginess about the genre. There is no embarrassment, like: "sorry, just going to break into song here, I know it's weird, bear with me ..." which is how I felt Jamie Foxx performed his numbers in Dreamgirls. He seemed embarrassed. Like: "Hey, I thought I was in a serious biopic - what is THIS shit you're making me do now??" Taymor was so smart in this choice, for the opening of the film, and also smart in the song she chose to start the movie. How perfect is it that the young man is saying, "Please listen to my story. I want to tell you a story ..." So the opening moment works on the genre level - it is a song, sung to an audience - and it also works on the story level. "I am going to tell you a story now." It is not realistic, and the film tells you right away what it is, and what you can expect.
Directly following this, the camera moves to the waves, with a change in music. The melancholy tones of "Girl" change, to the jarring screaming of "Helter Skelter", and in the curls of the waves we start to see black and white footage, newsreel-style, of the protests of the 1960s, with cops in riot gear, chaos, screaming, people being hauled away by the cops, with a couple of shots of gorgeous Evan Rachel Wood, screaming and fighting back.
The connection is made visually: this is "the girl" of whom he sings. Immediately clear, done with no dialogue. But yet another thing happens in this segue: Taymor lets us know that the style of the movie is going to be non-realistic, like a collage or mosaic. We will be moving through different worlds, and we should not expect things to unfold in a literal fashion. Music will be key to this. The Beatles are introduced head-on. That's the whole point of the movie.
In this short opening sequence, from the young man on the beach to the waves revealing scenes of protests and chaos, Taymor tells us, with total confidence, Here is what we will be doing, here is what you can expect.
That is confidence.
And because she (and her team) have confidence, I can relax. I know she knows where she's going, what she's doing, and while that does not always translate to a good or moving movie, in this case it does. There are scenes that have quickly become favorites of mine, things I will go back to again and again (the opening sequence with two versions of "Hold Me Tight" - American suburbia and Liverpool underground).
There is a whimsy here, yes, and a creativity with the song choices and their placement; they obviously had a lot of fun weaving the songs into the story. It doesn't sacrifice reality. The first time I saw it, there were literally moments that I found myself laughing out loud, not because it was funny, but because I was so overjoyed by what had been created, the ridiculousness of it, and how ... wow .... in many cases I was seeing something I had never seen before. There are references, certainly, to pop culture through the 60s, Hard Day's Night, of course, and the Monty Python animated sketches. It's fun to revel in it.
It's a rare movie that can provide that. Most visuals in movies are variations on a theme. Sunsets, dinner tables, horse stables, whatever - they can be quite beautiful but we have seen them all before. When a director can show me something I literally have never seen before, I fall in love. It's one of the reasons why I love foreign films so much, and especially films from Iran and Central Asia. The context is so different, the worlds so different, the perspective so different - that often I am confronted with a landscape or viewpoint that I have literally never seen before. Love! Julie Taymor gives me that over and over and over again in Across the Universe, which tells actually a rather conventional story (6 characters converge to New York City in the early 60s, their paths intersect, and the Vietnam War changes everything), but the WAY it is told, and how it LOOKS, is completely its own.
Some of the storytelling devices here annoyed some critics, and I see their point, but it all worked for me. The 6 lead characters are named Jude, Lucy, Prudence, Max, Jo Jo and Sadie. I loved that. Cutesy? Perhaps. But it also was practical: if you want to include "Hey Jude" in a movie-musical of Beatles numbers, then it certainly helps, in terms of story, if you have a character named Jude. If you want to have "Dear Prudence" act as a sort of "Cheer Up Charlie" number, then it helps that the character who needs the pep talk is named Prudence. Perhaps it's a bit literal of a choice, but I didn't mind that. I thought it was an effective device, and got us even deeper into the story. The entire context for these people is Beatles songs. There is no other music in the film, no other suggestion that other bands may exist. We are inside the songs. So in that world, of course all of the characters would have names from the songs themselves.
There were also many in-jokes, for anyone familiar with the Beatles songbook, and I loved that. It's a bit of a wink-wink, but it seemed appropriate with the non-literal material, where the entire world is a Beatles song. If you get it, you get it. If you don't, it doesn't exclude you. Back in Liverpool, Jude worked at the shipyards, and when he goes to pick up his paycheck, he makes a comment that tells us it will be his last paycheck, he's taking off. The guy behind the counter says kindly, "I felt the same way when I was your age. I told myself, 'When I'm 64, I'll be long gone from this place.'" In New York, Jude has hooked up with a bunch of bohemian characters and they all live in one apartment. One rainy night, a girl named Prudence crawls in through a window and stands there, she needs a place to stay. Sadie looks at her and says, "Where did she come from?" and Jude replies, "She came in through the bathroom window." I loved these in-jokes. Maybe they're a bit corny, but so are musicals. It fits. It's funny and irreverent and a little bit stupid. Perfect for the material and context.
Jude (Jim Sturgess) is a boy from Liverpool, working in the shipyards. He leaves his mother behind, and sails off to America, in search for his father, who had impregnated his mother while stationed in Liverpool and then left.
Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood) is a young American teenager, whose boyfriend has just shipped off to Vietnam. It is the early 60s, so the turmoil and strife of the late 60s is yet to come. Lucy lives in a big sprawling house, goes to high school, and writes love letters to her boyfriend. She is conventional, perhaps, but there are clues that she is also a searcher, a questioner (she doesn't want to have kids, for example, she doesn't see the point). This will be important later in the story.
Max (Joe Anderson) is Lucy's wild brother. He is currently an undergraduate at Princeton, and he spends most of his time goofing off and getting drunk ("high with a little help from his friends"), not going to class, and rebelling. The spectre of the draft is just starting, but he really wants to drop out of Princeton, and hang out for a while, find out what he really wants to do. His parents are horrified.
Jo Jo (Martin Luther McCoy) is a guitarist, who moves to New York in the wake of the Detroit riots, to escape the carnage and get a new start. A kind of Jimi Hendrix character, he tries to find his own style of music, while also supporting others, but it soon becomes clear that he is a solo artist, end-stop.
Sadie (Dana Fuchs) is a singer of the Janis Joplin variety, and she lives in a sprawling apartment in the East Village, filled with other artists and bohemians. Jude and Max live there, and eventually Lucy moves in too. Sadie is a struggling artist, playing small venues, but she is being courted by a major label. A kind of den mother to the strays who come her way, she exemplifies the communal aspect of so much of 60s youth culture, yet also the need for the individual to assert herself. With a rocking raspy voice, she KILLS "Oh, Darling", and "Do It in the Road" and "Helter Skelter".
Prudence (TV Carpio) is a runaway from Ohio who also ends up in New York. An Asian American teenager, isolated, not only by her race but by the fact that she is attracted to other girls, she finds solace and comfort in the idiosyncratic world of Bohemian New York, where she doesn't have to try to fit in, but can be herself.
The acting is good. I cared about these people. I liked the sense of breath that was in the songs, the sense that the songs were just extensions of the scenes.
The film is a masterpiece of integration. There's an organic feel to the plot, despite all the artifice, and the story is involving. Jude finds his father who works as a janitor at Princeton University. During his time at Princeton, he befriends the wild good-hearted Max, who takes him home for Thanksgiving. This is where Jude meets Lucy for the first time. Love at first sight? Perhaps, but she has a boyfriend. Max drops out of Princeton and he and Jude travel to New York. They get rooms at Sadie's apartment. Jude gets a job as an illustrator at an underground magazine. Max gets his draft notice and burns it at the table. Things are starting to get serious, but at first nobody really notices. Lucy does, however, because her boyfriend is killed in Vietnam. Heartbroken, she moves to New York to be with her brother, to get away for a bit before she goes to college. Jude and Lucy start a romance, sweet and sincere. Max begins to spiral out of control. He gets drafted. He goes to Vietnam. Lucy becomes involved in the anti-war movement.
With cameos by Joe Cocker (who plays, in one song, "Come Together", a hobo, a pimp, and a hippie), Eddie Izzard (who plays a Mr. Kite, who runs an insane carnival in the middle of a field), and Bono, who plays Dr. Robert, a drug guru along the lines of Timothy Leary, the 6 leads are relative unknowns, which makes their singing and acting all the more potent, since we only know them in this context. The conversational quality of many of the songs (Jude whisper-singing in his girlfriend's ear as they make out, "Close your eyes and I'll kiss you ...") makes this world seem completely logical and true: These people sing Beatles songs and that's how this world operates. If that sense were not in place, if that context had not been created, then the entire thing would have seemed flimsy and pointless. (As in: what, you can't write your own script? You need to use Beatles songs to hang your hat on?) Taymor and her team (especially the musical arrangements, done by Eliot Goldenthal) are absolutely specific in every moment. Nothing repeats. The songs live and breathe, not just because they are classic songs, but because they live in this particular context, they help tell this very specific story. It's mind-boggling how successful this is, when you imagine how much it COULD have gone so wrong.
Another thing that really makes Across the Universe special is that it is (for the most part) live singing. Normally, with movie musicals, you record the songs beforehand, and then when you film the scene, you lip sync to the recording. It's a practical matter, a sound issue, all that, but Taymor is up to something different here. She wanted to create songs that feel like speech, choreography that feels like regular movement, but never to forget that this is, ultimately, an artificial universe, one where people sing their language. So most of the singing that you see in Across the Universe is live. This is amazingly rare.
Because Julie Taymor is the director, and her work with puppets and giant hand-made creations is her forte, there is a lot of that here, so what you see is real, as opposed to computer-generated effects. There is choreography, which adds to the effect, never taking away. Businessmen stomp around in midtown, moving as one. Max, in a VA hospital, is haunted by dancing sexy nurses holding syringes. Prostitutes writhe on fire escapes in the lower east side. What I loved so much in all of this was not just the acceptance of the musical format, but the wholehearted embrace of it.
What could have been a series of gimmicks turns into a heartfelt story about the last years of the 1960s and the upheaval, both political and social. It does not become didactic, it has a spirit to it, all held together by the vast songbook of the Beatles catalog - the early innocent rock and roll tunes like "I Wanna Hold Your Hand", which here is upended by having Prudence sing it, in her cheerleader uniform in Ohio, staring longingly at another female cheerleader. Quite unbalancing. And the song is slowed down to a ballad. I loved Ebert's comment about the use of the song in Across the Universe:
When Prudence sings "I Want to Hold Your Hand," for example, I realized how wrong I was to ever think that was a happy song. It's not happy if it's a hand you are never, never, never going to hold. The love that dare not express its name turns in sadness to song.
That flexibility inherent in most of the Beatles songs, and how they can "take" so much interpretation, is one of the reasons they are so extraordinary. The movie has a lot of fun with that.
And one of its strongest features is that despite its startling visuals and the fact that, you know, it's a musical, it keeps its eye on the ball, and never forgets that why we will invest, why we will enter into this magical world where people sing instead of speak, is that it presents to us characters who seem real to us, who we care about. It has some things to say, about the radicalization of American youth during the Vietnam years, and it's not what you would expect. There is a depersonalization that goes on when politics becomes the filter for all of human life. The symbol of having a television put into your living room so you can watch the war, instead of talk to each other, or make love, or art, or have a personal life, is made potent here. Ultimately, what Across the Universe is about is about the friendships we make along the way, the bonds we create. All you need is love. Love will not stop wars. But it sure makes our time here better, and if you forget that - if you abstract experience into just a political journey - you miss the whole point. Of course none of that is clear in times of upheaval when the stakes are high, but Across the Universe attempts to address that situation. Lucy begins to cut off from personal relationships. They seem trivial in the face of what is happening in Vietnam. Her boyfriend died over there. Her brother is over there. What does it matter that her boyfriend is angry that she works too much? But it does matter. Without love, we are nothing. There is a great scene where Jude bursts into the offices of the anti-war movement organization where Lucy works and sings "Revolution" right at her, mocking her commitment, mocking the earnestness, and mocking the cause above all else. This was a no-no in those days, and is certainly a no-no still, in some quarters. But Jude nails it. Not that there are not causes that are worth fighting for, but to what end? The humorlessness of activists is sneered at here, and it reminded me of the great scene in Reds when John Reed reprimands one of his colleagues for missing an important meeting, and Louise Bryant, his lover, looks on, disturbed, realizing that he has changed. He is no longer a journalist. He has a cause. The cause above all things. He crucifies his former friend, who couldn't make the meeting because his wife was hemorrhaging. In the world of high-stakes revolution, such events are trivial. Personal life must take a back seat. It's brutal. Inhuman. Across the Universe, in its own quirky way, captures the heartlessness of "community" when it insists on coming before the individual. Now that's radical.
A rich experience, fun and moving and connected, Across the Universe was one of my favorite films of the last decade. A true gem of creation. It made me clap my hands in glee at its sheer inventiveness and joy, and how often can one say that?
"It feels so right, now hold me tight ..."
"Tell me I'm the only one and then I might ..."
"Yeah you ... got that something ... I think you'll understand ..."
"I get by with a little help from my friends ..."
"Every night when everybody has fun, here am I, sitting all on my own ..."
"Falling, yes I am falling, and she keeps calling me back again ..."
"Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be ..."
"He shoot Coca Cola ..."
"If I fell in love with you, would you promise to be true and help me understand?"
"I want you! I want you so bad! I want you-ou-ou. I want you so bad it's driving me mad, it's driving me mad!"
"She's so .... heavyyyyyyyyyy. She's so heavyyyyyyyyy!"
"The sun is up, the sky is blue, it's beautiful, and so are you, dear Prudence ..."
"I am the egg man ... They are the egg men ... I am the walrus!"
"For the benefit of Mr. Kite there will be a shot tonight on trampoline ..."
"Because the world is round it turns me on ... Because the world is round ..."
"Oh, darling! Please believe me! I'd never do you no harm ..."
"Let me take you down 'cause I'm going to Strawberry Fields ..."
"With every mistake, we must surely be learning ... while my guitar gently weeps ..."
"Jai guru deva om ... Nothing's gonna change my world ..."
"I need a fix cause I'm going' down ..."
I believe that Lucy is, indeed, in the sky ...
Ulysses playing cards
I bought these a while back, and find great pleasure in flipping through them, from time to time. Ulysses playing cards. They're quite beautiful and evocative, and pry open the famous episodes of the book. The back of each card is black with white lettering, and a collage of words found in Joyce's book. The other side are typical playing cards, nothing out of the ordinary, the suits are the same, the amount of cards - you could play Solitaire with these - but each card is different, each card represents a theme/object/character in Ulysses.
If you're familiar with the book, then you will have a response to such words as "kidneys", "ashplant", "rhododendrons" - these are all here. And I love the two Joker cards as well. Of course it would be those two on those two cards. Remember Joyce's statement about Ulysses: "The pity is that the public will demand and find a moral in my book, or worse they may take it in some serious way, and on the honour of a gentleman, there is not one single serious word in it."
"No note can take in all the permutations ..."
I mentioned my sonnet ritual here, and talked a little bit about Stephen Booth's (the editor) acceptance of multiple meanings to such a dizzying degree that there are times when you do get lost. He's okay with that, very unlike most scholars (and readers, come to think of it). His 1970s edition of the Sonnets
And one of the footnotes struck me as indicative of the kind of analysis that Booth is so good at, so I thought I would share it. It should speak for itself, and if you are at all familiar with a lot of Shakespeare scholarship, you will know that almost nobody writes or thinks like Stephen Booth. At least not nowadays. There are times when he reminds me of T.S. Eliot, who wrote eloquently on Shakespeare, and sometimes Auden (who gave a series of lectures on Shakespeare - here's just one example) - but that should tell you how singular Booth is, because Eliot and Auden are not academics. They are poets. Their focus and filter is different, and, in my estimation - when I read them on Shakespeare, much of the text starts to literally come to life for me, jumping off the page. The opposite is true of so much Shakespearean scholarship - which seems to deaden the text, silencing it completely through the exhaustive analysis.
1 As fast as thou shalt wane so fast thou growest -
2 In one of thine, from that which thou departest,
3 And that fresh blood which youngly thou bestow'st
4 Thou mayst call thine when thou from youth convertest.
5 Herein lives wisdom, beauty and increase;
6 Without this, folly, age and cold decay:
7 If all were minded so, the times should cease,
8 And threescore year would make the world away.
9 Let those whom Nature hath not made for store,
10 Harsh, featureless and rude, barrenly perish.
11 Look, whom she best endow'd, she gave the more;
12 Which bounteous gift thou shouldst in bounty cherish.
13 She carved thee for her seal, and meant thereby
14 Thou shouldst print more, not let that copy die.
The sense of this seems pretty clear to me. If I had to paraphrase: "Nature means for you to pass on your genes to your wife, and to create children. Without children, there is no meaning to life."
Booth doesn't disagree, but what he does with the footnotes is so spectacular: he does not search for the ultimate meaning. He goes word by word by word, teasing out thoughts, references, puns, different meanings - and then just leaves you sitting in the kaleidoscope he has just created. It may seem MORE confusing when you're done, and part of the fun is to read his footnotes (some of which go on for pages at a time), and then go back and read the Sonnet full through again. Watch how different it appears. The prism has shifted. You're in the rainbow. I am a great lover of the Sonnets - always have been, since high school - they appealed to my OCD nature, I liked that they were all together, that there was some mystery to them, that if you read them in order they start to tell a story, but you just can't see enough of it to get the whole thing. I liked that. Booth's notes, and HOW he "analyzes" here - really jars me, and I love him for that. Who is so willing to sit in the not-knowing but Booth? He helps me. He shows me HOW to think. Or, let's say, another way to think - which involves shattering apart each word, and leaving it all in pieces, and then moving on. Don't try to put it back together. That's the failing of the modern reader.
So let's look at just one note for this Sonnet, which seems to illustrate Booth's startling gift for 1. analysis and 2. openness to confusion and incompletion - a rare combination of assets in anyone, but totally bizarre in a scholar.
Here he is on line 2 in the Sonnet.
2. In one of thine (1) in the womb of your wife; (2) in the person of your child. from that which thou departest (1) out of that (i.e. sperm) which you bestow (this reading enhances a probable sexual meaning of wane in line 1 as male loss of tumescence after sexual emission; for other Renaissance examples of "depart" and "depart from" meaning "bestow", see OED, 2, 13); (2) as a result of that (your youth) which you now leave behind. No note can take in all the permutations that occur among the various meanings of the words and phrases in lines 1 and 2 in all their relationship to one another. The crush of meanings in these lines is further swelled by overtones of three other common uses of "depart" - all pertinent to this context, all called up in a reader's mind, but, unlike the two meanings given above, not syntactically harnessed to the sentence in which they appear or capable of inclusion in its particular logic: (a) "depart" meant "put asunder" (OED, 3), and the use of the word here invokes an echo of the Elizabethan marriage service (in which its use - "to have and to hold ... till death us depart" - would have been as familiar as the words that replaced it in 1622 - "till death us do part" - are now), an echo that relates to two topics of the sonnet, marriage and death; (b) "depart" was used intransitively as a synonym for "die" (OED, 7); (c) the common construction "depart from," which ordinarily means "go away from," appears here in a context in which that meaning is substantially relevant but syntactically impossible.
March 20, 2010
It's everywhere
Now that the teal and orange trend in cinema today has been pointed out to me, I see it everywhere.
And I mean everywhere.
"[The authorities] don't even really know what they're opposing. They don't see that music brings energy and good nature to society."
So says Negar Shaghaghi, Iranian indie-pop songwriter, one of the stars of Bahman Ghobadi's new film No One Knows About Persian Cats. The film tells the story of two aspiring musicians in Tehran, trying to connect with other musicians, in an atmosphere fraught with danger. Rock music (ie: Western music) is banned in Iran, so the stories of some of these youngsters are harrowing. The article is a great profile of not only the two musicians Ash Koshanejad and Negar Shaghaghi but also of the situation in Iran right now (including the generation gap, the theme of so many Iranian films). The two applied for asylum in England, which is where they now live, but it is still not an ideal situation. I am sure they would rather be home, and be able to make their art, than living in exile and free. The conundrum. Iranian cinema takes issues that may seem commonplace in Western films (teenage romance, rebellion, depression, etc.), and they become emblematic of the tensions within the entire society. Every film becomes political, even when it is not explicit. The filmmakers work under great strain (see Jafar Panahi for an example of what can happen), and have to deal with censorship and also the bleak fact that their films, if not given the stamp of approval, will never be seen in Iran. Imagine working like that. These people are heroes to me.
I can't wait to see the film. Bahman Ghobadi has worked with actual musicians before (Half Moon was full of them - my review here), which gives his work an immediacy and potency that it wouldn't have otherwise. It becomes a snapshot of a culture. As a Kurd, he has a tremendous sense of identity and loss, which reverbs through his work, and I love that the article compares his latest film to Richard Linklater (there was a Linklater-esque feel to Half Moon as well, even with its elegiac requiem storyline.) It's about people who wander. Looking for ... their tribe. People who are like them. Kindred spirits.
From the article:
When Ash and Negar were kids, the only opportunity they had to hear western rock music was when somebody from their community travelled abroad and brought back CDs. "They'd be copied on to a tape over and over again," says Negar. "We used to write the track names in class when the teacher wasn't looking and take it home with such excitement to listen to it." Even so, whatever they got depended on the tastes of the traveller; often hoping for something similar to Nirvana, they'd end up having to make do with ABBA.The advent of the internet changed everything for Iranian teenagers, who were suddenly able to participate in global youth culture, employing their technological nous to stay one step ahead of government censors. The fact that the bands in No One Knows About Persian Cats wear Strokes T-shirts and pass around copies of the NME shouldn't seem that strange. But what is the attraction to Ash and Negar of the kind of fey indie music that even within its countries of origin is often considered a bit insular?
"Well, we are indie!" declares Ash. "We had to do it ourselves in bedrooms because if you step out into the streets, you cannot even tell anyone you've just written a song. We would make our own imaginariums in our rooms."
If they'd grown up in England, Take It Easy Hospital's wan, organ-driven indie-pop, topped with earnest observations about the "human jungle", might stand accused of being a little bit twee. But once you learn how hard Ash and Negar have had to fight just to get their songs heard, they take on a whole new complexion. And despite their ugly experiences in Iran, they are determined not to make rebel rock. "Me, I don't care about politics," says Negar. "The value of art is a lot more than politics. Politics is something that passes, but art stays for years."
It's tremendously moving and just goes to show you that things like Nirvana - or Leonardo DiCaprio - are often far more effective cultural ambassadors than any political or social figure, or any "hearts and minds" campaign. To paraphrase Camille Paglia: "If we ever meet beings from another planet and want to show them who we are, it is by our art that we will want to be known."
No One Knows About Persian Cats opens in the US on April 16, 2010.
March 19, 2010
Dahmer (2002); Dir: David Jacobson
Shot in only 23 days, David Jacobson's Dahmer (he wrote and directed it) caused a lot of flak when it came out. Dahmer was shown as a human being, as opposed to a villain from a comic book. Because that's what he was. A human being. No excuses. Stalin was a human being. And what does THAT mean about the rest of us? The people who complain about this do not realize (or do not care) that it's far worse to show him as a human being rather than a Balrog from the deeps of Middle Earth. The implications are terrifying. I understand the victims' families issues here, but we're talking about art. Dahmer is not glorified here and his victims are not demonized (as they often were, by the cops at the time, and the press). Excuses are not made for him, we are not asked to defend him, but he is shown in a realistic light. Here is what happened.
Dahmer does not attempt to explain it all away, because honestly it can't be. However: the fact that Dahmer obviously had feelings about what he did, he spoke them very clearly afterwards, that he knew it was bad (he was meticulous in covering it up), and yet still he refused to suppress his actions based on those feelings that it was wrong (the definition of morality, in my opinion) is interesting. It makes him cinematic. Watchable. Even likeable at times. This is the reality of Dahmer. Oh well. Art's complicated. You want black and white go to Jesus Camp; don't go to the movies. People seem to feel certain things shouldn't be shown at all because perhaps it would seem like the actions in the film were being condoned. This attitude would wipe out most works of art that I find relevant, exciting, challenging, and important (bye bye Crime and Punishment!), so I'll leave all that behind so we can move on and talk about the movie.
Dahmer was no dummy. He experimented, he knew what he needed (as horrible as it was), and so calculated and planned to get that need met. You know, I need good friends, intellectual stimulation, and the love of a good man. Dahmer needed to create his own sex zombies. Whatever floats your boat, Jeff. But in terms of getting his needs met: There was something charming about him to get these guys to come with him back to his apartment. People in the gay community at the time referred to him as a "honey". Certainly not a catch, like the writhing six-pack-ab boys in tank tops at the nightclubs, the ones Dahmer stalked, but he wasn't a pariah. A friend of a friend of mine actually went on a couple dates with Dahmer. He was nice, and kind of boring, this person said.
Later on, when it was discovered that he had been slipping sleeping pills into boys's drinks and raping them in downstairs rooms at the bar, word got out pretty quick - but before that, he didn't make waves. He operated by stealth. He had a harmless persona. He was a cunning and very organized killer (until the end). He came off as completely unthreatening, almost a beaten-dog, with a shy smile, and he had boyish good looks. He may have been socially awkward, but he didn't seem frightening or dangerous. It's hard to see that now, because we only view him through the filter of his actions, but if you can picture that you didn't know what he had done, and you saw a shy kind of sweet guy buying you a drink ... it's a very effective ploy. While "cunning" has connotations of the Shylock-sterotype, the character rubbing his hands together and cackling with glee ... that kind of characterization is not what Jacobson is after here, thank God. Dahmer was one of God's lonely people, to paraphrase, Travis Bickle, another cinematic psychopath. The two performances have a lot in common. There's one brilliant shot in Taxi Driver where Travis calls up Betsy (played by Cybill Shepherd) to ask her out for another date, after their disastrous first date where he takes her to a porn movie. The camera is in a hallway, and we see Travis on the payphone. As the conversation goes down, and you can tell, by Travis's responses, that she is turning him down for a second date, the camera slowly backs up and then - amazingly - goes around the corner so we can't even see Travis anymore. Oh, Marty, I love you so. The moment is so painful, and the camera move is so specific - it is objective yet subjective as well. To me, it IS the eye of God in that moment. God is useless in the world of Taxi Driver, yet very much present, and in that moment, He cannot bear to even look at Travis during the moment of rejection. And yet the camera also, in that moment, operates in a totally subjective way: it IS Travis, and in that moment, he completely detaches from himself - the pain is too great - he can't be in the moment, he has to back away from himself and go around the corner. Granted, Bickle is a fictional character, while Dahmer is real, but the psychological portrait is quite similar, and why Bickle resonates to such an intense degree. He explains so much. And yet he also explains nothing.
That very lack of explanation, which makes Bickle so terrifying, is what makes Dahmer such an unbalancing experience. The film has some composite characters, but most of it is based on either trial testimony or what Dahmer himself said in interviews (hitting the tree with the baseball bat, for example, or how he cried after he killed his first victim when he was a teenager - he said it was the last time he ever cried).
The film has a dreamy pace to it, which also may have been jarring when it first came out, to audiences expecting action. I, for one, was riveted by it, and chilled. There isn't much killing in this movie. There is only one scene of explicit gore, and it is a very specific moment in Dahmer's life - his first killing - which shows him reaching the point of no return. In a way, Dahmer resists, totally, the titillation of a horror-thriller by concentrating solely on the psychology of a totally isolated human being. It would be far far worse to have slo-mo scenes reveling in Dahmer's killing, which would, by default, become sensationalistic. This is just my view, obviously not shared by everyone, but I think the film is strong because it resists easy answers. Like Steinbeck's Cathy in East of Eden, Dahmer is a monster. Born to human parents. He cannot feel things for other people. He doesn't have it in him. His parents now must grapple with this fact, and they are, but he split off, at a very young age. Trauma of his parents' divorce? Sure, probably. But plenty of children go through a divorce and don't become Jeffrey Dahmer. Any attempt at explanation would be puerile, in my opinion. Showing him as a human being is not making excuses for him. It is the reality.
Despite the fact that it was nominated for a couple of Independent Spirit awards (Jacobson as director, and Renner as Best Actor), it went to video pretty quick. I was fortunate enough to see it when it was out (I adore serial killers), and my main response was in regards to Renner. WHO. IS. THAT. I didn't track him down or follow him (which is strange, considering my track record), but I never forgot him, and the second I started hearing about Hurt Locker, and I saw his face in the promos, I knew exactly who it was. That's Jeffrey Dahmer. He gives an extraordinary performance.
He reminds me so much of Peter Lorre in M, one of the best portrayals of an anti-social criminal personality that I can think of.
Even Renner's face, boyish, babyish even, with big eyes, and baby fat around the edges, calls to mind Lorre. His very looks are disarming, similar to, oh, Ted Bundy, although Bundy was more of a chameleon, and could adapt freakily to any situation. Dahmer has the blunt-eyed flat-affect face of the classic psychopath, and Renner captures that exquisitely.
There are moments when things don't go exactly as he wants them to go, and you can see his eyes, flat-lidded, like a reptile, flit away for a second, trying to process this new information, and all you can see is a coiled predator who needs to be in control at every moment. He doesn't seem ferocious when things don't go his way. He seems more baffled, and uncomfortable. When he does turn violent, it is swift, sudden, and horrifying. Because nothing has prepared you for it up until that point (besides your preconceived notions of the character, which gives the film a wonderful tension).
When I first saw the film, I remember wondering how old Jeremy Renner was. When he needs to be 18, you would never believe he was anything else. When he needs to be older, that is completely believable as well. The facial hair changes slightly, the glasses, the haircut, but it almost seems as though the contours of his face actually alter, which is a startling accomplishment in a film shot in only 23 days, and not at all in sequence. This was my first glimpse at the master that Renner is, and the industry is filled with people such as Renner, and 99% of them are NEVER honored with an Oscar nomination. I am always on the lookout for people doing good gritty work, and the scope of the accomplishment here, in Dahmer, made me sit up straight in my chair. It had a low budget (which shows, from time to time), and a compressed shooting schedule. Renner had to be totally in charge of his own transformation, from day to day ("Today I'm playing 17 year old Dahmer, and tomorrow I'm playing Dahmer the day before he's busted") - and he is. Wardrobe certainly helps, but that's only half the battle. The look in his eyes hardens, and yet also dulls, as he gets further and further into his obsessions. It is a compulsion (as Dahmer said again and again). He doesn't question it. Does a lion question tackling that gazelle? Dahmer was acting according to his own nature, which is the most frightening thing of all.
Davidson and his cinematographer, Chris Manley, knew, going in, that they would not have a lot of time to create their mood/light/set. They did a ton of research beforehand, and came up with a plan for shooting. Dahmer does not play out sequentially, you leap around in time, and so Davidson and Manley came up with a color palette to signify the different times. It's not quite as obvious as the schematics of Traffic, where each section looks completely different from all the others, telling you where you are, but it is similar. The earlier scenes, of Jeffrey's teenage years (with a wonderful performance by Bruce Davison as Jeffrey's father - more thoughts on Davison here) have a soft contrast, with lots of natural light. There are outdoor scenes, daylight scenes. There is a grain to the film in the earlier years, giving it more of a documentary home-movie feel. The later scenes, showing Dahmer's exploits in the gay bar scene in Milwaukee, become dark, curtains drawn, no daylight or natural light, rooms saturated with color, deep reds and browns and blacks, with soft pools of light picking up the sides of Dahmer's face, like a Caravaggio.
The earlier scenes feel real, not editorial. The camera is objective. Detached. It keeps its distance from Jeffrey, more often than not, including a scene showing Jeffrey walking down a long hallway to go to a therapists' office (at his father's insistence), which calls to mind Scorsese's use of the hallway and the distant camera in Taxi Driver that I mentioned before. This is all very specific thought-out stuff, which clearly needed to be in place for such a short shoot.
Dahmer's apartment, the infamous apartment, appears to take on different characteristics, depending on Dahmer's emotional state. The first time we see it, it's filmed naturalistically, and by the end, it's just a gleaming-red nighttime interior space, with blocks of color showing the doorways to other rooms, and shadows encroaching upon all. Subjective and objective eye going on here. It works on the viewer subconsciously. By the end, Dahmer's apartment seems claustrophobic, the cameras are in close on his face, his victim's face, you get no sense of the surrounding space, and where there would be a way out.
All of this is captured visually. Very strong work done here by Manley, and the production design and lighting design.
It's Renner's work I most remember, and I am glad to know that this movie, which so quickly disappeared back in the day, is now experiencing a resurgence, due to things like Netflix and, of course, Renner's Oscar nomination.
I have more to say about Renner. Working on something big. But for now, some screen grabs from Dahmer that seem to capture what I'm talking about, both in terms of the look of the film, and his tremendously mold-able appearance. (He's in charge of that molding, by the way. This is not a matter of slapping on a mustache and padding your belly. Humphrey Bogart said good acting is always "six feet back in the eyes". That's the kind of transformation I am talking about here - not just compared to Renner's other roles, but within the film Dahmer itself.)
A psychological portrait of an antisocial personality, someone without the ability to feel empathy, or even understand what the purpose of something like empathy is, Renner left an indelible impression.
Sheriff Jeremy Renner
Pink rides into a dusty ole frontier town, ready to stir up some "Trouble", High Noon style (the shot of her coming through the town gates a direct steal of that famous shot in High Noon). The town trembles at her approach. She sneers at them. A sheriff (Jeremy Renner) all in black stands on a rooftop, watching her ride by. He is now an Oscar-nominated actor for The Hurt Locker, but certainly someone I've been aware of for quite some time (since I saw Dahmer and my basic response was: who the hell is THAT?). The video for "Trouble" is pure fluff, but a lot of fun: one of my favorite Pink songs, and in retrospect, now knowing who this guy is, and what a brilliant actor he is, it's hysterical watching Renner, all in black, with a silver sheriff's star on his chest, haul Pink around, stalk her through music halls and saloons - naturally not just because she's dangerous - although she is that - but because he wants her. Bad.
In the end Pink prevails. Naturally.
High Noon meets Coyote Ugly, starring Pink and Jeremy Renner.
Stephen Booth's "Extremely Close Reading"
Recently I read Ron Rosenbaum's fantastic book The Shakespeare Wars: Clashing Scholars, Public Fiascoes, Palace Coups
There is a whole chapter devoted to Stephen Booth, a fascinating guy, a giant in the landscape of Shakespeare scholarship, whose 1970s edition of the Sonnets
Here's the thing about Stephen Booth's version, to give you an idea: There are 154 Sonnets. In the Booth version, you have his edited version on one side of the page, and then the facsimile of the sonnets on the opposite page - so you can see the punctuation/spelling of the original. Booth is not big on messing wtih Shakespeare's punctuation, as other editors are, adding exclamation points willy nilly. He is very specific on why he edits, what he chooses to edit - his main concern is to try to provide a context where the modern-day reader can perhaps approximate the response of an Elizabethan-era reader.
But one of the most stand-out features of Booth's version, and why I recommend it above all others, is that he does not concern himself with meaning. That may sound like an odd thing to say with an edition of the Sonnets where the Sonnets themselves take up 130 pages and then there over 400 pages of footnotes. What I mean by my statement is this: too many editions of Shakespeare try to iron out his ultimate meaning, they try to explain to the reader: "Here is exactly what he is saying here." By doing so, you certainly lessen the poem itself - it's like taking apart a clock and still expecting it to tell you the time. By trying to nail down ONE meaning, you discount Shakespeare's propensity for multiple layers, puns, correlations, mysterious things connected. Not to mention the fact that when you try to paraphrase Shakespeare, you completely destroy him. Booth is different from his contemporaries in that his concern is with the MULTIPLE layers of meaning in every word, every phrase - and ... AND ... he makes no conclusion. He is not interpreting meaning. No. What he is doing is showing us how to do an "extremely close reading" of these Sonnets, and to let the mysteries stand. To not try to stabilize a world which is inherently unstable.
This could be frustrating, I suppose, for a reader who wants to know what the hell Shakespeare is saying.
Rosenbaum discusses Booth's manner of analysis - taking as an example Booth's footnotes for Sonnet 40 in The Shakespeare Wars:
Try reading aloud Booth's seven-part explication of the ambiguities; it's criticism that rises to the level of poetry itself. Booth's footnote to line 5 in which he unfolds the dazzling multiplicity of possible meanings of "for", "love" and "receivest", and how each shift in meaning in one unfolds multiple shifts in the others, is an example of the polysemous pleasures of his reading of the Sonnets. Pleasures that almost threaten to dissolve not just the singularity of meaning - but the singularity itself.Booth doesn't encourage one to choose one particular combination of "for", "love" or "receivest" but rather to contemplate - to revel in - the way the multiple possibilities are choreographed. Change one's way of looking at one word's connotation and the other two dance to a new tune. Look at another word through a different lens and the others shift into a new focus. It's a dizzying but pleasurable destabilization. One won't crack one's head open going off this cliff, but it might open the mind in a way it hasn't been opened before. Something Boothian commentary tries to celebrate. To celebrate the way words and meanings in effect enact a beautiful and pleasurable dance of significations in which one possible meaning of "for" might combine with four other possibilities for "receivest" and then four more for "love" in an exponentially more complex and yet deeply pleasurable way. The way entertaining all possible, that is plausible, meanings at once is preferable to attempting reductively to single out one.
I couldn't quite have put it into words like that, but I do know that my sensibility is drawn towards possibilities rather than certainty. It's just the way I'm built, and I respond to things that seem to suggest other things, rather than just state what they are, and demand that you accept it. I'm working on a big post right now about Jeremy Renner and John Wayne that seems to connect to this, but I'll save that for later. I also haven't thought a lot about Stephen Booth - until I encountered him in Rosenbaum's book, even though he's been on my shelf since college. But I didn't know who the dude was, didn't care, I was in it for Shakespeare and this was the best version.
Rosenbaum tries to track Booth down, they share emails, conversation ... Rosenbaum basically wants to know what it is like to be able to read like Stephen Booth. What is it like to be able to read so closely? Booth is rather cagey, and yet what I liked so much about him is how much he seems to be about pleasure. You have to listen very closely in order to get that, but it is there. It is one of the things that really sets his work apart. He is against the grain of lit-crit right now - which doesn't believe in authorship, really, only historical context and patriarchy and all that humorless boring stuff which is trying to iron out the world into a manageable narrative. Booth just never even gives lit-crit Theory the time of day. He doesn't even engage them. He is on his own. His pleasure from Shakespeare is also refreshing because much of it comes from a few specific memories of seeing Shakespeare productions when he was a kid, and having various "a-ha" moments. Regardless, I won't summarize Rosenbaum's chapter on Booth - it should be read all of a piece - but after reading The Shakespeare Wars, I decided to go back and read the Sonnets, in so-called chronological order, and also commit to going through the footnotes, sonnet by sonnet. It is a dizzying experience - and while I have used the footnotes before as reference (ie: what the fuck, Will?) - I haven't really sat in them, and then gone back to the sonnet, and then back to the footnote, and then back. You really can get lost. There is no "up", "down", "left", "right". Booth does not give meaning - although I've never been into that anyway - what a sonnet "means" is not as important to me as how it is said. Booth gives all possible meanings that he can come up with.
Some of the Sonnets have footnotes that are 5 pages long. One note alone can be two pages long.
This is a volume to literally get lost in, and that's what I am doing right now. It is overwhelming, and there is a time when the brain basically turns off - becomes saturated - so I have given myself the task of reading one sonnet (and its accompanying notes) per day. It's a nice morning ritual. Like I said, many of these Sonnets I practically know by heart, and they are things I turn to repeatedly. Not so much for their meaning, but because I find the act of reading them to be comforting somehow.
I'm reading them differently right now - that is my little assignment right now - trying to just follow Booth down the various rabbit holes, and not worry about getting lost in one damn footnote: getting lost seems to be the point.
If you want to understand me, then all you need to know is that I find this stuff as exhilarating as a roller coaster. The challenge is the pleasure. The sheer difficulty of some of it. The arduousness. Flipping back and forth from Sonnet to note and back. I never want it to end.
So I thought I'd give an example of what Booth is about. Here is Sonnet 8. Followed by just one of Stephen Booth's notes.
1 Music to hear, why hear'st thou music sadly?
2 Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy.
3 Why lovest thou that which thou receivest not gladly,
4 Or else receivest with pleasure thine annoy?
5 If the true concord of well-tuned sounds,
6 By unions married, do offend thine ear,
7 They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds
8 In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear.
9 Mark how one string, sweet husband to another,
10 Strikes each in each by mutual ordering,
11 Resembling sire and child and happy mother
12 Who all in one, one pleasing note do sing:
13 Whose speechless song, being many, seeming one,
14 Sings this to thee: 'thou single wilt prove none.'
And here is Stephen Booth's note on lines 5-8. Notice the acceptance of ambiguity and multiple meanings, and a complete disregard for the need of tidiness, or A to B paraphrasing:
5 - 8: Shakespeare's use of language is such that a reader can make no paraphrase that both follows the syntax of the lines and says what he knows the lines mean. One can almost always make a general paraphrase of a Shakespeare sonnet and give a satisfactory gloss for any particular word in it, but if one puts together a new sentence replacing Shakespeare's word with their glosses, one will often get a sentence that makes no sense at all. Sometimes Shakespeare's own sentences can be demonstrated to mean nothing at all - even where readers actually understand them perfectly. This second quatrain of sonnet 8 is an excellent example. Lines 5-6 introduce the running theme of the preceding seven sonnets (all of which urge a young man to marry and beget children) by using language that is both musical and marital (e.g. unions, married, and concord [literally "hearts together"]) to say, "If polyphonic music is distasteful to you." The language of lines 7-8 continues the double frame of reference, music and marriage. Going along at a normal reading speed a reader will presumably recognize an appropriate, if imprecise, metaphor of a musician "bearing a part" (one of the parts) in a piece of polyphonic music and understand who confounds / In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear as a repetition of what several sonnets have just said: "who are doing wrong in remaining single". Editors and students are pressed for something more specific; the best paraphrase I have seen is this one by Ingram and Redpath (who make a point of its insufficiency): "who, by remaining single, suppress those roles (of husband and father) which you should play." The clause effectively says much more than that and literally says much less. The coherence of the paraphrase is achieved by means of substitutions whose meanings are not quite those of the original words: confounds is replaced by "suppress" and bear by "play". The plurality of parts is explained by a reasonable extrapolation, "of husband and father". The paraphrase gives precise form to the obvious purport of the clause and does so in one of the sets of terms in which the poem operates. The paraphrase is absolutely just, but necessarily ignores several common meanings of "to confound" that also pertain in this context and impinge upon it: (a) "to ruin", "to destroy" (the sense it has in 5.6); (b) "to waste" (a theme of the sonnets since sonnet 1); and (c) "to throw into confusion," "to disorder," "to destroy the harmony of". Taking parts to mean "roles", no reader can be expected to understand confounds ... the parts as "ruins the parts" or "wastes the parts" or "disorders the parts", but several other meanings of parts are invoked by this context, and they act to sustain the illusion that the clause actually says what it so obviously means: parts means "talents," "good qualities," "abilities" (as in 17.4), and "who waste your abilities" makes good sense until one comes to bear; moreover, parts appears here in context of singleness and gives the lines the pertinent - though logically and syntactically unmanageable - richness of a vaguely meaningful opposition between the unity suggested by singleness and the division suggested by parts as a word meaning "pieces"; moreover, the context of marriage invokes a logically casual play on parts meaning "sex organs" (see 15.6 and note). Similarly, bear, as a word meaning "give birth to", is substantively irrelevant to this clause but so urgently relevant to its occasion that it gives a feeling of rightness, a sound of sense, to the lines. A complementary and equally easy victory over reasonable probability occurs in the grammatically unusual who confounds (for "who confoundst" - see Abbott, par. 247) and in the oxymoron sweetly chide. The quatrain is an emblem of the paradoxical conditions it recommends, harmony and marriage - unities that supersede common sense in being more unified than singleness, unities made by literally "confounding", "pouring together", individual elements and potentially disabled by a confusion that results from failure to mix.
This sort of analysis is, obviously, a jumping-off point, rather than an end-stop, which is why Booth seems so problematic to those who want answers and "translations", basically.
I also love the depth he goes, digging further and further into one damn word, playing out the possibilities, each one canceling out the one before, and yet nothing specifically wrong or incorrect. The ambiguities are meant to STAND, not be eradicated.
Here he is on one word-play in Line 14 of Sonnet 8, which, to me, starts to crack the poem open for me. A universe, a solar system, contained in a walnut shell, basically.
14. Sings ... single The overt play on sings and single is shadowed in lines 8 and 12. Thou single wilt prove none (1) unmarried - and thus without an heir - your line will become extinct with your death; (2) being single (one, 1), you will turn out to be nothing (zero, 0). (There is incidental allusion here to the ancient mathematical principle that "one is no number," which - as the embodiment of the quibble on the number "one" and "one" as opposed to a multitude - became proverbial [Tilley, O54, see 136.8]. Another proverb, "One is as good as none" [Tilley, O52], also pertains; Whitney gives it thus: "The proverbe saieth, one man is deemed none, / And life, is deathe, where men doo live alone" [p.66].) none It is possible that Shakespeare had a pun on "nun" in mind. Barrenness suggests nuns to him, and nuns suggest barrenness; see MND I.i.69-78 and the "self-loving nuns" passage in V&A (752-68). For a similarly suggestive use of nun, see Measure II.iv.134-38, Angelo's attempted seduction of Isabella, a novice from a nunnery: "Be that you are, / That is, a woman; if you be more, you're none; / If you be one, as you are well express'd / By all external warrants, show it now / By putting on the destin'd livery"; see also Measure III.i.62-62: Claudio. "Is there no remedy?" / Isabella. "None..." (since Isabella is herself the potential "remedy", her response has something like the effect that occurs in AW I.i.141-42, where Helena asks how a maiden can lose her virginity to her own liking, and Parolles introduces his answer with the expletive "marry"). For a simpler play on "nun" and "none", see The Jew of Malta, lines 491-92: a "Nunnery, where none but their owne sect / Must enter in ...." (The evidence for the pronunciations of one and none is inconclusive; Shakespeare rhymes one with "sun" and "sun" with "nun", but he also rhymes both one and none with "bone" and - like Whitney - with "alone"; see the noon / son rhyme in 7.13-14.
This is what I do every morning. My morning meditation.
UK vs. US
I love this: a compare and contrast of the covers for the UK and American versions of the same book. Fascinating.
March 18, 2010
Allison: What I miss
-- I miss our weekend-long hideouts in your apartment where we would watch, oh, the entire British Office, or Slings and Arrows, or, hell, some Forensic Files you had saved, and we could stop and pause and talk about it. I miss you saying things like, "I just want to see some murder", as you would scroll through the TV Guide.
-- I miss our talks about books.
-- I miss the support we give each other (although we can certainly support each other long-distance - it's the PROXIMITY I miss). I miss the unspoken understanding.
-- I miss the breadth and depth and scope of our conversations, ranging from our various mental breakdowns, the men we were in love with, to articles in The New Yorker, to funny stories about our pets, to long conversations about movies/art/photography.
-- I miss how much we would HOWL with laughter together. Looking up pictures of Hitler in the dictionary and crying with laughter at how mad he looked? How on earth could that ever be explained? Never mind. It was awesome.
-- I miss the excursions we would take, and if you ever move back here, we are going to do more of them. Let's go to MOMA. Let's go to the Met. Let's go walk in Central Park.
-- I miss the absolutely identical sense of humor that we apparently share. That is no small feat. I never had to explain to you why something was funny or awesome. I am thinking of me re-telling you my long story of getting my car out of hock. You just GOT the subtext.
But what do I miss most?
The regular occurrence of moments like the one we just shared on the phone:
Me: Have you been watching Celebrity Rehab?
You: Of course.
Me: You know who I love? And I can't even believe I'm saying this.
You: Who.
Me: Heidi Fleiss.
You: I knew you would say that.
Me: I love her so much.
You: I have goosebumps right now.
Bahman Ghobadi: No One Knows About Persian Cats
I read this dispatch from SXSW with great interest: a review of the new film No One Knows About Persian Cats, and cannot wait to see it. The film premiered at Cannes, winning a Special Jury Prize, and tells the story of two indie rock musicians in Tehran, searching for a way to make their art, without, you know, imprisonment.
Negar and Askan's search for underground musicians through windy roads, basements, secret practice spaces is fascinating. At each stop, these real-life musicians play their music as the pair listen in, studying to see what and who will work with their band. These scenes often incorporate montages of Tehran street life. One of the most interesting segments concerns a rap group meeting on a floor of an unfinished building, and overlooking the city the group raps about class struggle in Tehran.
Awesome. Ghobadi is a definitely someone to watch. I adored his film Half Moon (my review here. Also, if you are interested, I mentioned in one of my posts about Jafar Panahi that you cannot get to my site in Iran, I imagine due to the amount of time I have devoted to Iranian cinema, and the powers-that-be have figured out a way to block certain sites from public viewing. If you look at that post for Half Moon, check out the comment from Hossein, who hacked through the firewall. I get emails quite often from inventive Iranian computer-geeks, who are able to see my site at an Internet cafe, or their computer lab - anyway, it's very moving, in an awful way. Really makes you see the importance of art there, and what it represents.) It seems with this latest Ghobadi is continuing on his exploration of the role of music in Iranian life (Ghobadi is Kurdish, born and raised in Iran, and so his Kurdish identity is even more of a potent issue - since the persecution of the Kurds has been so extreme - the real subject of Half Moon - a must-see).
One of the good things about living where I do is that if a film gets distribution of any kind, I am almost guaranteed that it will be playing in my vicinity. I am REALLY looking forward to this one.
Today in history: March 18, 1893
"My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity."
Wilfred Owen (now known as one of the best "war poets" of World War I) was born on this day in 1893. He was killed in battle in 1918 just seven days before the Armistice. He was 25 years old.
Owen was unpublished during his lifetime. He is now recognized, along with Rupert Brooke, and Siegfried Sassoon, as one of those rare poets who can put the horror of warfare into verse. Trench warfare, in particular. (Yeats disagreed. He disliked Owens' poems, and did not include him - or any of the "war poets" in his The Oxford Book of Modern Verse, 1892-1935. Yeats wrote that Owen's poems were "unworthy of the poet's corner of a country newspaper".) Owen was, of course, aware of Yeats, and used a quote from one of Yeats's poems as an epigraph to one of his poems. He had an inner argument with Yeats, I suppose, and Yeats's view of soldiers, war and death.
One of the most amazing things about these poems is the dates on them - September-October, 1917 / January 1918, etc. He is writing these poems in the thick of war. He is crouching in his tent scribbling these out. There is an immediacy to the verses, yes, and he is one of those sensitive souls who seems to have a larger-picture in his head, even in the midst of the day-to-day reality he is in. He sees the slaughter. He feels the tragedy of it. His main burst of creativity was from August 1917 to September 1918.
He was not patriotic, or at least, his poems are not. One of his poems was addressed to Jessie Pope, a poet who wrote motivational patriotic poems urging young men to enlist. Owen criticized that attitude. His poems are Romantic, certainly, full of loss and grief at the waste. He references Shakespeare, Shelley, the Bible, Keats - maybe not explicitly but in the sounds and rhythms he chooses. He self-consciously writes in these older forms, which is one of the reasons why his poems are so startling. World War I was, in a way, even more shattering, psychologically, than World War II, due to the newness of that kind of technologically advanced warfare. How would mankind go on, knowing what we can do? How on earth will anything ever be rebuilt? This was one of the driving forces of Modernism, as we know it, with poets like Ezra Pound and TS Eliot and Wallace Stevens and Yeats struggling to find language that would be able to HANDLE this new universe. It was a deeply destabilizing time. But Owen is not a modernist, although his poems are always included in those anthologies. His forms are even archaic, which gives them almost a feeling of elegy, all in all. By that I mean: by choosing to write about World War I using OLD forms, rather than trying to "make it new" (a la Ezra Pound's advice to poets) - Owen is mourning a world that is passing away forever, right before his eyes. It's one of the reasons why the poems are so strong.
Owen was probably gay, some of his earlier poems deal with having sensual urges towards other men, and it's hard to say what would have happened to him should he have survived World War I. His journey towards poetry is really interesting. Here is my impression of it (and I say that, knowing only the bare bones of the story):
He grew up in a small town in England (near the border with Wales). He kind of drifted a bit, in terms of his schooling, due to financial constraints. He considered becoming a priest. But he had disturbing feelings about God's inability to deal with human problems. He was a tutor for a while. When World War I broke out, he enlisted. In January, 1917, he was sent to the front. He found war glorious and exciting, similar to George Washington's famous remark to his brother after his first experience with a battle in the French and Indian War: "I heard the bullets whistle, and, believe me, there is something charming in the sound."
Wilfred Owen wrote home to his parents early on:
This morning I was hit! We were bombing and a fragment from somewhere hit my thumb knuckle. I coaxed out 1 drop of blood. Alas! No more!
The bloom soon was off the rose, and that following June, he was moved to a hospital because he suffered from shell-shock. (His heartwrenching poem "Mental Cases" is about what shell-shock is like). He was transported back to England and then Edinburgh. He was a mess. It was in the hospital in Edinburgh that he met Siegfried Sassoon - and this would be the event that would change his short life. Sassoon was a captain in the army and a poet, well-known. They aren't really similar in style, but Sassoon obviously encouraged Owen - I so wonder about their conversations.
Owen wrote to Sassoon in November 1917:
I was always a mad comet; but you have fixed me.
Thus began his crazy output of poetry. Owen returned to the war in France in August 1918. He would be dead by November.
Sassoon published all of Owen's poems posthumously, in 1920.
Wilfred Owen wrote to his mother on December 31, 1917:
I go out of this year a poet, my dear mother, as which I did not enter it. I am held peer by the Georgians; I am a poet's poet. I am started. The tugs have left me; I feel the great swelling of the open sea taking my galleon.
Owen said, in regards to his war poems:
"These elegies are to this generation in no sense consolatory. They may be to the next. All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the true Poets must be truthful."
It seems to me that his lack of interest in consoling his own generation is one of the reasons why his poems have lasted, and are anthologized - because they do rise up out of their own time. They cease to be local.
Here are some of Wilfred Owen's poems.
Anthem for Doomed Youth
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,--
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.
The End
After the blast of lightning from the east,
The flourish of loud clouds, the Chariot Throne;
After the drums of time have rolled and ceased,
And by the bronze west long retreat is blown,
Shall Life renew these bodies? Of a truth
All death will he annul, all tears assuage?-
Or fill these void veins full again with youth,
And wash, with an immortal water, Age?
When I do ask white Age he saith not so:
'My head hangs weighed with snow.'
And when I hearken to the Earth, she saith:
'My fiery heart shrinks, aching. It is death.
Mine ancient scars shall not be glorified,
Nor my titanic tears, the seas, be dried.'
On Seeing a Piece of Our Artillery Brought into Action
Be slowly lifted up, thou long black arm,
Great gun towering towards Heaven, about to curse;
Sway steep against them, and for years rehearse
Huge imprecations like a blasting charm!
Reach at that Arrogance which needs thy harm,
And beat it down before its sins grow worse;
Spend our resentment, cannon,--yea, disburse
Our gold in shapes of flame, our breaths in storm.
Yet, for men's sakes whom thy vast malison
Must wither innocent of enmity,
Be not withdrawn, dark arm, thy spoilure done,
Safe to the bosom of our prosperity.
But when thy spell be cast complete and whole,
May God curse thee, and cut thee from our soul!
Futility
Move him into the sun--
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields unsown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.
Think how it wakes the seeds,--
Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides,
Full-nerved-- still warm,-- too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
-- O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth's sleep at all?
Mental Cases
Who are these? Why sit they here in twilight?
Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows,
Drooping tongues from jaws that slob their relish,
Baring teeth that leer like skulls' tongues wicked?
Stroke on stroke of pain, -- but what slow panic,
Gouged these chasms round their fretted sockets?
Ever from their hair and through their hand palms
Misery swelters. Surely we have perished
Sleeping, and walk hell; but who these hellish?
- These are men whose minds the Dead have ravished.
Memory fingers in their hair of murders,
Multitudinous murders they once witnessed.
Wading sloughs of flesh these helpless wander,
Treading blood from lungs that had loved laughter.
Always they must see these things and hear them,
Batter of guns and shatter of flying muscles,
Carnage incomparable and human squander
Rucked too thick for these men's extrication.
Therefore still their eyeballs shrink tormented
Back into their brains, because on their sense
Sunlight seems a bloodsmear; night comes blood-black;
Dawn breaks open like a wound that bleeds afresh
- Thus their heads wear this hilarious, hideous,
Awful falseness of set-smiling corpses.
- Thus their hands are plucking at each other;
Picking at the rope-knouts of their scourging;
Snatching after us who smote them, brother,
Pawing us who dealt them war and madness.
March 17, 2010
"Falling as in the silence falleth now / Dusk from the air."
James Joyce's poem "Tutto è Sciolto" appeared in the May, 1917 issue of Poetry.
Beautiful. That line I excerpted calls to mind the final four paragraphs of The Dead.
Perhaps she had not told him all the story. His eyes moved to the chair over which she had thrown some of her clothes. A petticoat string dangled to the floor. One boot stood upright, its limp upper fallen down: the fellow of it lay upon its side. He wondered at his riot of emotions of an hour before. From what had it proceeded? From his aunt's supper, from his own foolish speech, from the wine and dancing, the merry-making when saying good-night in the hall, the pleasure of the walk along the river in the snow. Poor Aunt Julia! She, too, would soon be a shade with the shade of Patrick Morkan and his horse. He had caught that haggard look upon her face for a moment when she was singing Arrayed for the Bridal. Soon, perhaps, he would be sitting in that same drawing-room, dressed in black, his silk hat on his knees. The blinds would be drawn down and Aunt Kate would be sitting beside him, crying and blowing her nose and telling him how Julia had died. He would cast about in his mind for some words that might console her, and would find only lame and useless ones. Yes, yes: that would happen very soon.The air of the room chilled his shoulders. He stretched himself cautiously along under the sheets and lay down beside his wife. One by one, they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age. He thought of how she who lay beside him had locked in her heart for so many years that image of her lover's eyes when he had told her that he did not wish to live.
Generous tears filled Gabriel's eyes. He had never felt like that himself towards any woman, but he knew that such a feeling must be love. The tears gathered more thickly in his eyes and in the partial darkness he imagined he saw the form of a young man standing under a dripping tree. Other forms were near. His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not apprehend, their wayward and flickering existence. His own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself, which these dead had one time reared and lived in, was dissolving and dwindling.
A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
The word "falling" appears 7 times there. On the face of it, it seems like that would be WAY too much. It breaks all the rules. But that's why it is so brilliant.
And there it is again in the poem. Falling. Falleth.
March 16, 2010
Johnny Depp: The Mad Hatter's context
I have always felt that context was decisive, when it came to acting styles. I have heard it said that an actor should approach King Lear in the same way he approaches a French farce, and while I understand the point, I think it goes too far (as most generalizations do). The point of approach is important, and if there is a sense that you are condescending to the material, that you feel it is somehow beneath you, then that is obviously not good. I used an example from Katharine Hepburn's life to illustrate this point in the post I wrote about her at HND. She was known for melodramas and weepies, up until that point. She had won an Oscar. She literally did not know how to "do" screwball comedy, and kept telegraphing to the audience, "I'm being funny!" It took a lot of work for her to get into the right context. And by context I mean: the stakes are just as high in Bringing Up Baby as they are in Macbeth - that is one of the reasons why it is so funny, and why comedy in general, when it does work, works. Stakes. Everything one does when one is acting must have stakes behind it. The stakes must be incredibly high. It may seem ridiculous that Cary Grant is wearing jodhpurs digging up the yard looking for a lost dinosaur bone, but why it is so funny is because it is so serious to HIM. If you condescend to the material ("David Huxley's problems are just silly compared to Hamlet's problems"), then the entire project suffers. You have not created the proper context for your work. The context of King Lear is different than the context of Noises Off, and the actor who can go from one to the other, seamlessly, adjusting his or her approach and talent to the material, is a rare gem indeed.
Another example I can think of is Gena Rowland's acting. If you saw her only in her husband John Cassavetes' pictures, you would be forgiven if you thought that she only had one context, and that was Cassavetes' context. She so inhabits his world, of manic madness and alcohol addiction and neurosis, that she has melded completely with her director. But then you see her in Woody Allen's Another Woman, and suddenly there is a revelation about this woman's talent. I remember Mitchell saying this to me, years ago, in college, when we were talking about Rowlands - and I just looked up Roger Ebert's review of Another Woman and find, gratifyingly, that he says the same thing:
There is a temptation to say that Rowlands has never been better than in this movie, but that would not be true. She is an extraordinary actor who is usually this good, and has been this good before, especially in some of the films of her husband, John Cassavetes. What is new here is the whole emotional tone of her character. Great actors and great directors sometimes find a common emotional ground, so that the actor becomes an instrument playing the director's song.Cassavetes is a wild, passionate spirit, emotionally disorganized, insecure and tumultuous, and Rowlands has reflected that personality in her characters for him - white-eyed women on the edge of stampede or breakdown.
Allen is introspective, considerate, apologetic, formidably intelligent, and controls people through thought and words rather than through physicality and temper. Rowlands now mirrors that personality, revealing in the process how the Cassavetes performances were indeed "acting" and not some kind of ersatz documentary reality. To see "Another Woman" is to get an insight into how good an actress Rowlands has been all along.
I couldn't have said it better myself. Rowlands is able to so completely adjust her context, depending on the project she is in, that when you see her in this or that part, you think, "THAT is her at her most natural state." But it's all different states. She does not bring the Cassavetes energy to the Woody Allen picture. It's not just that her energy is different, she seems to have actually switched souls. This is not a gift that all actors have. Some are eager to show "range", yet they have no idea how to operate in a context other than the one they are already familiar with.
Johnny Depp has always been an actor who is able to switch contexts with breathless agility. I guess you would call him "versatile", but I am not wacky about that word, because it sounds too practical, too much like a trick. Depp has never had a signature part, although I suppose the word "quirky" comes up a lot with him (He picks "quirky" parts, he's "quirky"!) another word I am not wacky about, because it's too easy, too pat, it doesn't come close to explaining what is going on with this actor. I don't have enough distance yet from his body of work to see what it will look like after he is gone, but I have a feeling it will be one of those things that just continues to magnify in stature as the years pass. But who can say. For now, we are just left with the movies he makes, and also the pretty much inarticulate interviews he gives, where he is cagey about talking about acting, and doesn't seem to have a language to describe what he does. (I experienced this in person, as well, when he came to my school.) Acting, for him, seems to happen in a realm that has nothing to do with words. It's like a painter, perhaps. If it's not on the canvas, then all the explaining in the world won't matter. "What I was GOING for was ..." Nope. What matters is whether or not you succeeded. So I'm not sure, I cannot speak for Johnny Depp, and I won't even try. I can just give my response to this guy.
He is sensitive, that's obvious. When he is involved in a project, he takes on the concerns/mood/theme of the whole. That's a movie star. He melds himself to the needs of the director, the story. Harrison Ford talks a lot about this as well, although he doesn't have the same range. I have always felt, though, that Ford's personality would go very well in screwball comedies, that there would be something very interesting about seeing that big handsome guy bumbling around (a la Cary Grant), and his virtually supporting role in Working Girl showed how deft his talent really is. He's got a great sense of humor. He is interested in story, not himself, which is one of the reasons why the last Indiana Jones movie was so much fun. Look at the flexibility with which he leapt back into that part after so many years. To nail the point home, he knew the context. He knew what movie he was in. So many actors at his level of fame lose their ability to do that, out of caution, fear, whatever, and so they keep repeating themselves, sometimes to almost grotesque levels (phone call for Al Pacino ...) As far as I'm concerned, Al Pacino has one context. And when he's in a project that aligns with his limited context, nobody is better. He has a signature. Or ... he did. Now, I'm not so sure.
Johnny Depp's context in Public Enemies is completely different from the context in Alice in Wonderland. But I never feel like it's a trick with him, or anything facile. It seems to be a natural extension of his talent. Something he has fun with. Total immersion. He's a complicated guy, I have a hard time getting a line on him, but I do know this: I always want to watch him. And it is my opinion that he keeps getting more and more interesting. I feel like he's just getting started. Finding his sea-legs. But what a body of work already.
As John Dillinger (and I wrote about this extensively here), Depp had a thin-lipped almost blank quality to him. This is more brilliant under examination, and goes along with Michael Mann's themes of celebrity and adulation: Dillinger was a blank slate for the Depression-era audience who watched his exploits. Things were projected onto Dillinger. He was glamorous, he represented THEM, he was the glorious little-guy standing up to the banks, and etc. Even the cops got in the act. This is one of the facts of Dillinger. He was a cultural phenomenon. But let's also be honest: Dude robbed banks. He was a hardened criminal, almost totally institutionalized. Both are true. It is a very American story. The script of Public Enemies served Depp's creation of context here, because we are not told anything about Dillinger, his early life, his Freudian issues - nothing like that. His dad beat him. That's all we know. But other than that: all we are left with is the dead-eyed smiling-face of Johnny Depp, a boyish lock of hair coming down on his forehead, just like Dillinger's, and a strange blankness behind all of it. Depp is embodying not just the character he is playing, but the legend itself of Dillinger. This is no small task. If you think that's easy, or a done deal, or so obvious, then you obviously haven't seen a lot of biopics, which explain too much, and feature actors who have been unable to create a context for themselves in which to operate. Depp, along with Michael Mann, created a blank canvas, pretty much. That's what I found so strange and singular about the film (again, see my post about it), is that it really had no interest in explanations. Here's what happened. Dillinger said this about himself. So we'll show that.
Depp's disinterest in audience sympathy has always been a rather extraordinary thing for an actor who was once a teen idol, featured on the pages of Tiger Beat (just take a look at Corey Haim to see where his path COULD have gone, and where it most usually goes). Depp just flat out did not have an interest in that kind of fame, although he HAD that kind of fame, and unlike other actors who spit on the same audience who made them famous (Zac Efron's recent comments about High School Musical come to mind), Depp never seemed to get caught up in it to the extent that it defined him. It had to be difficult, and I know he has struggled with the tabloids, and his love life, and drugs, and all of that, but his work remained strange, whimsical, fun, moving. He did not repeat himself. But at the same time, you didn't sense an effort there to not repeat himself, as you do with some actors. He was as at home in Edward Scissorhands as he was in Benny and Joon, as at home in Pirates of the Caribbean as he was in What's Eating Gilbert Grape?. He switched contexts with such ease. Also, it seemed fun for him. He seems to have fun in his career, as seriously as he obviously takes it. I am not making a value judgment here, by the way, about actors who have more struggles in the areas where he has ease. Acting is a tough career, and those who are really talented often have the toughest time, even if they have a lot of opportunities. I love Daniel Day-Lewis, and think he's a genius, plain and simple, but I get the sense that acting really bothers him on some level, and he has to leave the career, from time to time, to get his bearings, to regroup. That's the nature of his talent. So I'm not being positional here. I am just talking about Johnny Depp, and what I sense in him specifically, which I think is quite rare.
One of his strengths is that he has avoided the big action blockbuster route, something that I think has really impacted Russell Crowe's career (and not in a good way). Crowe seems to struggle more openly with the demands of Hollywood and what it wants from him - and some of his huge hits have been so defining that they have ended up limiting him. I'd love to see him do a quiet little movie directed by, oh, Wes Anderson, or Sofia Coppola. I'd love to see him be allowed to switch contexts again, which he was so damn good at in the beginning of his career. As an example: watch Proof, Romper Stomper, The Sum of Us, LA Confidential and The Insider back to back, and you will see an actor who is seemingly comfortable in whatever context is thrown at him. He's like Rowlands: his very soul seems to change, in these projects. Now, not so much. Fame is not easy. And fame like Crowe's is a blinding light. It's hard to go back to being fearless and NOT worrying about your Gladiator fan base and what they will think of you.
Depp was a heartthrob. But somewhere, he must have known who he was, what he was capable of. His homage to Buster Keaton in Benny and Joon is a real clue, and I thought a lot of his performance in that movie when I watched him as The Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland. Buster Keaton wore a poker-face, even as buildings collapsed around his body. It was a mask. There was great sadness in his face, and yet you laugh hysterically watching his films. The face is a big part of it. His spectacular athletic ability is breathtaking, but without that poker-face, he wouldn't be Buster Keaton. He'd just be a stunt man. Depp has that quality. Much of his work seems to involve "masks" (shut up, Mitchell), but the thing about "masks" is that in days of yore, when an actor put on a mask, he embodied the mask - the mask told him what to do. The mask led the way, not the other way around. Buster Keaton's poker-face was a mask, a brilliant construct that makes his films the heart-rending and hilarious films that they are - and I think Depp uses masks in a similar way. It is not something to hide behind, as other actors seem to hide behind changes in their appearance (prosthetics, bad teeth, or even an accent - all of these things are masks, in a sense). Depp seems to use masks in the way the ancient Greek actors did, or the commedia dell arte troupes did (sorry, Mitchell, I know - I hate them too - just making a point) - the masks telegraph to the audience: This is the character. You know this person already. He is a lover. A thief. A king. Keith Richards. Whatever. It plays on the audience's sense of familiarity. But then the brilliance of the actor that can inhabit a mask elevates it from a trick or an effect. Meryl Streep does this, obviously, in a way that is extraordinary. But I don't see Depp as similar to Streep. His work is more mannered, and that is what is so fascinating about him to me. He does not lack reality - on the contrary, whatever he is in seems totally real to him. He adjusts his context completely, depending on the project. I have often wondered if that is why he came off as so shy, and almost boring, when I met him. Of course that was an artificial situation, so let's put THAT into context as well ... but his inventiveness and sheer virtuosity seems to be in evidence only in his acting. He came off as soft-spoken and sweet, almost embarrassed, and like he couldn't wait to get out of there. It was endearing.
It's like meeting a writer you admire and love and seeing that they are just a regular old person. I met Sharon Olds, she came to see a show I did, and I spoke with her a bit afterwards. I am absolutely in LOVE with Sharon Olds, her work has a burning intensity of feeling and personal anguish that I found it hard to reconcile with the nice lady with glasses and a low-maintenance haircut that I was talking with. I love that. She was the opposite of eccentric. She obviously, from her work, lives life in a deeply personal way. She resonates, she vibrates, she turns her life into her poetry. But there she was, chatting with me, and there was nothing extraordinary about her at all. That was the best part of it. Johnny Depp was a little bit like that in person.
Frankly, it made his work seem even MORE important. It made him seem even more like a freak, outside the normal constraints of career-planning and fame-management. The personae cannot be reconciled. They are not meant to be. He is all of his roles. Every time you see in something, you think: THIS is the best context for him. And that feeling lasts until you see the next project.
As The Mad Hatter, Johnny Depp takes on almost a "scarecrow"-like role, to Alice's Dorothy. He has been sitting at his long banquet table for years, waiting for that little Alice girl to come back. Perhaps it is the wait that pushed him even more over the edge. Depp seems to suggest this, with the Keaton-esque grief and loss that always flickers on the periphery of this performance. What I got mostly from his performance was loneliness. And what loneliness can do to a sensitive soul. Depp is not "playing" mad here. He IS mad. There are times when his eyes get suddenly serious and grim, based on no external stimuli, he is responding to some inner cue, and it is truly delusional. The Mad Hatter has an inner monologue of paranoia and denial that is going on at all times, and all Depp needs to do is look off to the left, or look inward, for a split second, for us to get all that. He resists camp, despite the makeup, the colored contact lenses, the wig, the crazy Artful Dodger costume. Depp uses camp very specifically, and Pirates of the Caribbean is the most campy performance since Tim Curry in Rocky Horror Picture Show. (By the way, I love the stories of the producers seeing the first batch of dailies for Pirates - and saying to Depp, "Are you going to do the whole performance that way?") Depp has a campy drag queen in him. Obviously.
We have seen it time and time again (and that is Depp in Ed Wood, one of my favorites of his performances), but, like a conductor, he can adjust it, he can modulate it. IT serves HIM, not the other way around. This is a very delicate dance, hard to describe. You just know it when you see it.
The Mad Hatter is a tragic character, an artisan in exile, sitting at his trashed banquet table in the woods, telling the same jokes with no punchline over and over and over again. The boredom of it has gone to his brain. Who is he without his work? Which was passed onto him from his ancestors? Who is he without a rollicking companion? He has gone mad. Maybe he was always a little bit mad, but here we see him at the breaking point. It is a very very funny performance, in its specificity. He has moments where his head bucks up, his eyes widen, and he repeats the same line over and over again, with different inflections, like he is trying to make sense not of events, but of the chaos in his own mind. It is strangely moving. He has captured the cruelty and anarchy in Lewis Carroll's classic, which is, in its essence, a nasty piece of work, full of nasty characters who treat Alice with abominable callousness.
In Tim Burton's Alice, the Mad Hatter shares center stage with Alice and the Red Queen (a brilliant turn by Helena Bonham Carter). Contrasted with those three, I felt that Anne Hathaway as the White Queen did not find a proper context for herself. She didn't inhabit that context with nearly the amount of freedom and reality that the other actors did. She was play-acting, she was pretending, she was aware that she was in a Tim Burton movie. She hadn't worked it out for herself. Burton's Mad Hatter becomes Alice's primary compatriot. This is not quite what Carroll wrote, but this movie is not exactly the book - it's a re-visiting of a place that Alice went to as a little girl (the story of the actual book). Now, as a young woman, she revisits that place, not remembering that she had been there before. Here, the Mad Hatter takes on iconic proportions. He is "the one". Not the white rabbit. But he. In Alice in Wonderland, it is the pursuit of the white rabbit that pushes Alice on. The white rabbit is the key. But here, the Mad Hatter is the key. He is the one who recites the Jabberwocky poem, preparing Alice for her Frodo-like confrontation with the feared beast. As he recites that poem, a Scottish lilt comes into his voice, something he had perhaps crushed down in the various royal courts he worked in, and you can feel him going back in time. He is reciting something that was recited to him. His eyes are full of horror and remembrance. He could say these words in his sleep. Depp's relishing of Lewis Carroll's nonsensical words take the exact right tone. It is how I have imagined these words being said. It is the fearfulness behind all of the "nonsense" penned by Lewis Carroll. The nonsense is used not as sheer fantasy, but as a way to express the absurdity of reality. It is close enough to reality to be frightening. We cannot laugh at the Jabberwocky, because the nonsensical words strike at the heart of what we most fear, the monsters that come to us in dreams. Watch how Depp recites that poem. He knows exactly what he is doing. He is lost in it. There is a technique here - I believe that - I believe he has a reason for doing every single thing that he does, as an actor. I can picture him working on a role with mirrors alone at home, surrounding himself with reflections so he can see himself, and adjust. Play with different effects, a full-bodied performance, as all of his performances are. There is a rock-hard technique at work in Alice - watch the specificity of it, the choices made. Yet never do I feel Depp's work to be labored. That is his magic.
He's on a big playground. He gets to play. The context may change. He is in Roman Polanski's context in The Ninth Gate, and so his acting adjusts itself accordingly. In Tim Burton's context, he operates with the same level of commitment and specificity - but he seems to be a different actor entirely.
Mike Nichols has said that one of the defining characteristics of working with Meryl Streep is that she seems to have the attitude of, "Oh, goody - I get to do this again today!" I get that feeling from Depp as well, which is why I think his work has such breadth and joy and feeling in it.
His conception of The Mad Hatter is what matters to me here. He and Tim Burton obviously have a great and close working relationship. There is probably a lot of shorthand there. Johnny Depp doesn't need to be directed. He always knows what movie he is in. It is the keen of sadness in his Mad Hatter that strikes me now. It is a poignant performance. And - beautifully - totally - MAD. This isn't movie madness. He is actually mad. Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland is populated by frightening random wackos, who batter Alice about between them. These are not cuddly eccentrics. You feel that they could fly off the handle. You feel that events could spin out of control. And they do. Alice grows, shrinks, grows, shrinks - she is a completely passive participant in this crazy-making world, a terrible metaphor for what can be done to children by the cruel adults surrounding them. Johnny Depp's Mad Hatter is unwound, totally. He loses track. He can't concentrate. He goes off into his own flights of fancy, and then comes back to the present moment, with a little tick of loss on his face, like: "what is wrong with me?" The final exchange between he and Alice is a perfect button to this. There is no ulterior motives here, no "sense" - he cannot be explained, or talked down. He is who he is. He is a hatter by trade, and he is stark staring mad. He also loves Alice and has missed her human presence. Instead of coming off as cuddly, however, Depp comes off as, again, a very Buster Keaton-like presence, with a mask of madness, his eyes clicking and thinking and reflecting and deflecting - with an almost total avoidance of sentimentality, and yet with great heart, great potential for feeling.
The contexts in which Johnny Depp can operate are wide and seemingly endless. He doesn't have many failures under his belt. I know he doesn't like What's Eating Gilbert Grape, because he was on drugs throughout the shooting - and so Depp has said when he re-watches that film, all he is aware of is how "polluted" he is. This may be the case, but I think his simple belief in that story, that very specific family dynamic, is one of the reasons why it works so well. If he did that cloudy with drugs, then just look at what he is able to do clean and sober.
There is not a lot of explaining that happens with Depp. He has a mystery to him. To me, what is so extraordinary about him is his willingness to submit to as many different contexts as he possibly can.
And so, like a painter, he can point at the canvas of work and say, "There. I put all of it there. There's nothing more to say about it."
Jafar Panahi Update
Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi remains in prison, even though he has not been formally charged with anything. His wife (who was also arrested in the original roundup at Panahi's house - and was released a week later) says she has not been allowed to see him, and is being kept in the dark about the whole thing. Story here. 50 Iranian filmmakers have written an open letter calling for Panahi's release.
The chair
I have been wanting a big reading chair for some time now. As long as I lived in that tiny apartment of yore, I had no room for one - and now that I am in a bigger apartment, with my glorious study full of books with room to spare - it had become imperative that I get SOME kind of reading chair. I can't have just any chair. My ideal would be an overstuffed armchair, with the arms low enough so I can hook my legs over them and sit sideways (my favorite position)- and also with a seat wide enough so I can sit with my legs curled up under me.
My dad had a reading chair which had fallen into disrepair, and was sitting in an upstairs bedroom at my parents' house. It was a battered blue and white upholstery, and truly falling apart, although structurally it was okay. It has a LONG seat. If you sit with your butt against the back of the chair, your legs stick straight out. Last year at some point, after moving into the new place, I wondered if I could maybe have that chair? It has great family connotations - it has ALWAYS been there. There was a matching ottoman that still sits in the living room at my parents' house. I talked with my mother about the possibility of me having Dad's chair. It wasn't being used. Mum said that would be fine, and we then went out to a fabric store in Rhode Island to pick out fabric to have it re-covered. The upholstery, as I mentioned, was so worn down that the chair looked really really rough. Also, blue? Not a color I really enjoy, and it wouldn't "go" at all in my study, which is all whites and browns. Mum and I had a really good time at the fabric store. I love places like that. Whole worlds can open up in your head as you look at each bolt of fabric. I had it in my head that I wanted the fabric to be dark - maybe a dark paisley print - similar to the dark brown curtains I have hanging in my bedroom (made for me by Mum). I like dark colors. So those were the fabrics I was drawn to. There were some really nice ones. I passed over the checks and tartans - too masculine-looking - and then suddenly Mum said, "Sheila, look at this." And she was standing by a bolt of fabric that was truly elegant - it was a stripe: sort of a cool green, with white stripes, and a thin line of dark red. There was something about it that really called to me, although it wasn't at all what I had been thinking. I really liked it. The green, the red, and the fact that the white stripe was thicker than the others - gave the fabric a strange comfy shimmer that I really liked. We moved on, taking note of that one as one we really liked, and I kept coming back to it.
Finally, I made the decision to go with that striped fabric. Forget the dark paisley (although there were some gorgeous prints we looked at). I loved, suddenly, the lightness of this particular fabric - not TOO light - but light enough. My study is a room with lots of light. I have flowing sheer white curtains. The bookshelves are white. Maybe a dark-fabricked chair would drag the whole thing down. I loved the green/white/red stripes and thought it would really look nice in my study.
We took note of it, and then moved on with our lives. Mum spoke with a local upholster-er, who had done work for Mum before, and it was all set up. The chair was removed from my parents' house and brought to the woman's place - and the fabric was supplied. It took a long time for her to get the work done. Not sure why, but it was a couple of months - and then we got a call that the chair was done - but I was just about to go out to Block Island, so we held off. The chair was delivered to Mum, and it sat in the living room for a month or so until we could figure out a way to have it transported down to me.
Pat and his friend strapped it into the trunk of Mum's car - and when Jean and Mum came down a couple of weeks ago to go see Siobhan play at the Folk Art Museum here in New York - they brought the chair. The beautiful beautiful chair!!
My upstairs neighbor happened to be walking by as we were heaving the chair out of the trunk, and he helped us haul it upstairs. And there it was, in the corner of my study - with my grandmother's reading lamp behind it - and I seriously think it is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.
Uhm, I believe Hope loves it too. I sit in the chair, and she sprawls across the top of the back, so she basically becomes like a fur collar on my neck. Also, there's enough room in the seat so that sometimes if I'm sitting there, she'll crawl up and curl up right next to me. The seat has the perfect width and depth for me.
It is so comfortable.
The woman who did the re-covering also gave the chair a "skirt", which changes its character a bit, makes it more girlie. Before, there were just four little legs - visible to the world - and the skirt softens it up, makes it look pretty.
I've waited a long time to have a room as pretty as my study. It is a calming place, totally ME, full of thousands of books, neatly organized, a pretty Oriental rug, my glorious television, my desk, flowing sheer curtains and now ... my reading chair that was once my father's.
Today in history: March 16, 1751
James Madison, fourth President of the United States, was born on this day in Virginia.
"The principles and modes of government are too important to be disregarded by an inquisitive mind, and I think are well worthy of a critical examination by all students that have health and leisure." -- James Madison, age 22, to his friend who was just beginning to study the law
Elected to the presidency in 1808 - and then again for a second term in 1812 - he didn't really have a good time of it in office, what with, you know, the war of 1812 and all, and the Brits burning down our damn capital. Not a very successful President - but the story of his administration is a fascinating one - its failures, its successes, war again.
Henry Clay said about Madison, as President:
"Nature has cast him in too benevolent a mould. Admirably adapted to the tranquil scenes of peace, blending all the mild and amiable virtues, he is not fit for the rough and rude blasts which the conflicts of nations generate."
Madison's greatest accomplishment was his crafting of the US Constitution and also his commitment (second only to Alexander Hamilton's) to getting it ratified. Madison wrote Federalist #10 - probably the most famous of all of the Federalist Papers (I babble about it here) - although, if you haven't read them all in their entirety, all I can say is: do yourself a favor! (Excerpt here from # 15) It's the best civics class you'll ever get. Madison's mind was sharp, probing, deep - and all of the great political figures (especially the Virginians at the time) looked to him for guidance. Federalist #10 warns about the dangers of factions. But Madison, in his cunning behind-the-scenes manner, was hardly a neutral party himself in the battles of the day - and he had famous fights and breaks with his compatriots over matters of policy.
In May of 1787, the delegates arrived in Philadelphia for the Constitutional Convention.
The articles of Confederation, which loosely held the states together, were proving far too inefficient as time went on, and people like Madison, Hamilton, John Jay, and certainly Washington - who had been raging about the slowness of Congress since the war began - thought that the articles needed to be revised. As Washington wrote,
"Thirteen sovereignties pulling against each other, and all tugging at the foederal head, will soon bring ruin on the whole."
However, these were conservative men, despite their revolutionary fervor. They were land-owners, farmers, lawyers, not interested in tearing things down - but building upon foundations already there, so the delegates, for the most part, were not looking for a whole new form of government to be raised at their Convention. They were looking for a revision to the Articles, that was it. However, James Madison - and Alexander Hamilton - went in there with preconceived notions, definitely. They knew what they were going to try to push through.
The Articles could not stand. Earlier that year, the Shays Rebellion had taken place - which had freaked everyone out. What had happened to solidarity? Should military force be used to put down the rebellion? There couldn't have been a better time for the Constitutional Convention.
Catherine Drinker-Bowen, in her WONDERFUL book Miracle At Philadelphia: The Story of the Constitutional Convention May - September 1787
On the twenty-fifth of May, when a quorum was obtained, Washington was unanimously elected president of the Convention and escorted to the chair. From his desk on the raised dais he made a little speech of acceptance, depreciating his ability to give satisfaction in a scene so novel. "When seated," wrote a member, "he declared that as he never had been in such a situation he felt himself embarrassed, that he hoped his errors, as they would be unintended, would be excused. He lamented his want of qualifications."...In the front row near the desk, James Madison sat bowed over his tablet, writing steadily. His eyes were blue, his face ruddy; he did not have the scholar's pallor. His figure was well-knit and muscular and he carried his clothes with style. Though he usually wore black, he has also been described as handsomely dressed in blue and buff, with ruffles at breast and wrist. Already he was growing bald and brushed his hair down to hide it; he wore a queue and powder. He walked with the quick bouncing step that sometimes characterizes men of remarkable energy.
As a reporter Madison was indefatigable, his notes comprehensive, set down without comment or aside. One marvels that he was able at the same time to take so large a part in the debates. It is true that in old age Madison made some emendations in the record to accord with various disparate notes which later came to light; he has been severely criticized for it. Other members took notes at the Convention: Hamilton, Yates and Lansing of New York, McHenry of Maryland, Paterson of New Jersey, Rufus King of Massachusetts, William Pierce of Georgia, George Mason of Virginia. But most of these memoranda were brief, incomplete; had it not been for Madison we should possess very scanty records of the Convention. His labors, he said later, nearly killed him. "I chose a seat," he afterward wrote, "in front of the presiding member, with the other members on my right and left hand. In this favorable position for hearing all that passed, I noted in terms legible and in abbreviations and marks intelligble to myself what was read from the Chair or spoken by the members; and losing not a moment unnecessarily between the adjournment and reassembling of the Convention I was enabled to write out my daily notes during the session or within a few finishing days after its close in the extent and form preserved in my own hand on my files ... I was not absent a single day, nor more than a casual fraction of an hour in any day, so that I could not have lost a single speech, unless a very short one."
It was, actually, a tour de force, not to be published -- and scarcely seen -- until thirty years after the Convention. "Do you know," wrote Jefferson to John Adams from Monticello in 1815, "that there exists in manuscript the ablest work of this kind ever yet executed, of the debates of the constitutional convention of Philadelphia ...? The whole of everything said and done there was taken down by Mr. Madison, with a labor and exactness beyond comprehension." ...
As I mentioned before, these were all practical men - and many of them had gathered with practical concerns, about raising money, and internal improvements - and how the Articles would be able to handle such large projects. Madison and Hamilton kept their cards close to their chests, at first (this, of course, was long before their famous break. Hamilton broke with pretty much everyone). Hamilton was a practical man as well. He had a lot of problems with the Constitution as it was laid out in embryonic form by Madison. But he recognized the genius within, recognized the need for such a thing - and nobody - but NOBODY - worked harder for ratification than my dead boyfriend. It is amazing the amount of print he was able to devote to the Federalist Papers - it STILL boggles the mind.
But back to Madison. Poor man ... his more glittery compatriots always have a way of stealing the spotlight, don't they??
Catherine Drinker-Bowen goes on:
Time would pass before members realized how far the plans of such men as Madison and Hamilton reached, and what the Constitution promised to be. It would be misleading to name thus early the Constitution's "enemies", or to set down this name or that as "against" the Constitution. Five delegates in the end would refuse to sign -- Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, Yates and Lansing of New York, George Mason and Edmund Randolph of Virginia -- all men of decided views and each with a different reason for his action. More vociferous than any of these would be Luther Martin of Maryland, who, though out of town on private business at the moment of signing, later declared that had he been present he would have given the document his "solemn negative," even had he "stood single and alone".
It would be four months before the Constitution was finally ratified and signed.
Garry Wills has some very interesting thoughts on the famous Federalist 10 in his book on James Madison
Madison's debut contribution [to "The Federalist Papers"], would in time (a long time) become the most famous of them all. It crammed into a narrow space all the arguments Madison had been sifting and refining in his opposition to the Continental Congress's weakness, in his preparation for the convention, in his crafting of the Virginia Plan, and in his debates at the convention. Madison goes behind specific weaknesses in the Articles to expose the fundamental error on which the Articles were based, the idea that the only worthy democracy is direct democracy.Madison's attack on that concept is so radical for its time that it is often downplayed, or even altogether missed. The most important passage in the Number is its claim that no man can be a judge in his own case. Not much is made of that in some treatments of the Number. We hear about the tyranny of majorities (though Madison treats that as just a symptom of direct democracy). We hear about the difference between a small republic and an extended republic (whereas Madison is talking about the difference between a direct democracy and a republic). We hear that Madison wanted to multiply factions (though he thought all factions bad things). We hear that Madison wanted to create a national elite, above the states, because he distrusted the people (though his system calls precisely for trust - direct democracy is built on distrust). We hear that he was trying to set up a mechanical system for producing correct decisions (though he said that no governmental machinery can produce good results without virtue in its operators).
It has puzzled people that Number 10 did not get much attention until the twentieth century. It was not a matter of great dispute in the ratification debates, though it would have clarified and focused those debates - they spent endless hours on the number of representatives, rather than on the nature of representation. The reason for this is that a dismissal of direct democracy was almost literally unthinkable to the men who debated the Constitution. Every constitution in America was based on that ideal, as a thing to be approximated even when it could not be literally enacted. If people could not directly make the government's decisions, as in a New England town meeting or the Athenian Assembly, then they should tie down those making the decisions, making them (so far as possible) passive tools in their own hands. That is why short terms, rotation, instruction open proceedings (to see that instruction is followed), recall (to punish departures from instruction), and weak executives were adopted. These were the necessary melioratives for the necessary evil of any departure from direct democracy.
The rightness of all these measures was so self-evident to those who accepted them that the could not even imagine someone making the attack on them that Madison did. He did not say, as many did, that direct democracy would be wonderful if it were possible but, since it is not possible in large communities, some approximation to it must be cobbled up. He did not think direct democracy wonderful. He thought it fundamentally unjust.
No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interests would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity. With equal, nay with greater reason, a body of men are unfit to be both judges and parties at the same time; yet what are many of the most important acts of legislation but so many judicial determinations, not indeed concerning the right of single persons but concerning the right of large bodies of citizens; and what are the different classes of legislators but advocates and parties to the causes which they determine?By calling legislation quasi-judicial, he instantly disqualifies all those who come to the task of legislating with nothing but their own interest in mind. They have come to be judges in their own case - and that is what proponents of direct democracy would justify. In doing so, they defend a system of majority tyranny. If naked interest is all that can be expressed, then only one thing will determine the outcome. The only question to be decided is: which interest has the greater number backing it.
I find Madison a very interesting fellow, although not as easy to get to know as John Adams, who was a passionate warm-blooded flawed and sensitive man ... Madison is a bit more "close", perhaps. (You won't see an HBO miniseries about Madison any day soon!!) A wife of one of Madison's friends referred to Madison as a "gloomy stiff creature" - and that is obviously not one of the qualities that leads to an endearing and well-liked president (although the office was still, obviously, in its infancy when Madison held it). He did marry Dolley Madison - who remains, to this day, at the top of the list of "favorite first ladies" - not that anyone remembers her personally now, of course - but by all accounts she was a vivacious social happy woman, and everyone liked her.
The two did not have children, but it appears the marriage was a happy one (she referred to him as her "great little Madison"). Unlike many other first ladies since, Dolley Madison didn't have a problem with the social rigors of her position - she loved it. Men and women alike found her charming, easy-going.
Wills describes the burning of the capital and its aftermath:
During the night of the fires in Washington, Madison and Dolley were unable to find each other - she stayed at one friend's home in Virginia, he in another. He met her the next day; then, assured of her safety, he went to consult with Winder, whose troops were on the road toward Baltimore ... Madison wrote to Dolley suggesting she not return to Washington until he was sure the city was safe. But she was already on her way back to him.It was suggested that Madison would summon Congress to a different, safer spot - Congress had, after all, been shifted about during the Revolution. But Madison knew the government must be seen to function, and he called Congress back for an early session. He had chambers prepared for the House and Senate in the Post Office and Patent Building, which had escaped the fires. He and Dolley moved into the house they had lived in when he was secretary of state - though the French minister, Louis Serurier, soon vacated his own residence, the current Octagon House, for their use. Dolley found these quarters too cramped, and she would end up in the former offices of the Treasury, where she could entertain on the scale she was used to. She, too, realized that it was important to return the city to its normal patterns. But the Madisons never returned to the blackened White House.
I think someone's choice of a wife can be pretty illuminating. Madison was often seen as a dour brainiac, humorless and obsessive - but he chose as a counterpart Dolley, who was pretty, friendly, funny and resourceful: Perhaps her most famous moment is this: during the burning of the capital, Dolly was forced to flee by carriage - but she had the presence of mind to roll up Gilbert Stuart's portrait of George Washington - (she had to break the frame in order to get the painting out) - and give it to some soldiers to keep safe. And of course, it was preserved, for all time, thanks to her foresight.
I mean, you gotta love a person like that. Imagine: you are under siege. Your house is burning down around your ears. And you have the presence of mind to take a moment and think: "You know what? Gotta save this portrait." The image of her breaking the frame to get at the painting in the middle of that chaos ... It's one of my favorite White House anecdotes in Presidential history.
And so happy birthday, "great little Madison". We are forever in your debt!
March 15, 2010
Marty's list:
Martin Scorsese's 10 essential movie posters.
Heaven.
He starts out with my second favorite movie poster of all time (the first being the poster for Chinatown). But boy, that Gilda poster is just glorious. Some really awesome posters there.
iPod shuffle on a rainy day
Khyber Pass - Ministry (the closing song in The Hurt Locker)
Go - Bleu
Folk Singer - Brendan Benson (rockin'. I love him.)
Smile - U2
Brick By Brick - Paramore
One Hundred and Two - The Judds
I Know Him So Well (from "Chess in Concert: Live") - Idina Menzel and Kelly Ellis
Heroin Girl - Everclear
Last Caress/Green Hell - Metallica
Turn It Off - Paramore
Unchain My Heart - Ray Charles
Van Diemen's Land - U2
Take It All - Marion Cotillard (from "Nine")
At the End of the Day - Everclear
Plane to Chicago - Elliot Goldenthal (from the "Public Enemies" soundtrack)
Explosivo - Tenacious D
Hound Dog - Sha-Na-Na (from the "Grease" soundtrack. Oh, Sha-Na-Na.)
Damage Case - Metallica
All You Need is Love - Dana Fuchs & Jim Sturgess (from the "Across the Universe" soundtrack)
Whiskey in the Jar - Thin Lizzy
Ain't Got No Grass - The Tribe in the revival of "Hair" on Broadway
Window in the Skies - U2
Same Song and Dance - Eminem
Jesus Christ Pose - Soundgarden
Forevermore - Katie Herzig
Tell the Truth - Ray Charles
Sodomy - Bruce Ryness (from the Broadway revival of "Hair")
Astronomy - Metallica
Gimme Gimme - Sutton Foster (from "Thoroughly Modern Millie")
Destiny - Tenacious D
I Can Do That - Wayne Cilento (from "Chorus Line")
For a Pessimist, I'm Pretty Optimistic - Paramore
Unusual Way - Griffith Frank (from "Nine" - the movie)
Blue Veins - The Raconteurs
Song From an American Movie, Pt. 1 - Everclear
My Conviction - Andrew Kober (from the Broadway revival of "Hair")
Bird's Eye View - Brendan Benson
Rock 'n Roll Is Here to Stay - Sha-Na-Na (really? Two Sha-Na-Na songs in one shuffle? From "Grease")
Die Die My Darling - Metallica
Restless Heart Syndrome - Green Day
I'm Gonna Run Away - Joan Jett & The Blackhearts
Do You Think It's Alright? - The Who (from "Tommy")
When Love Comes to Town - U2 and BB King
Someone Else's Story - Kelly Ellis (from the live concert of "Chess")
The Acid Queen - The Who
Oh Timbaland - Timbaland
History - Tenacious D
End Love - Ok Go
You say Ides, I say eyes
Sure, but as the soothsayer whispered in Caesar's ear on a crowded street, "Beware the Ides of March." But did Caesar listen? No, he did not. Can't say I blame him. If some gleaming-eyed homeless person came up to me and told me to "beware" something, be it the fires of hell or the dangers of food poisoning, I'd take it with a grain of salt. Helluva price to pay, however.
Jason has a cool variation on Ye Olde Ides with his Eyes of March.
"Unchecked teal and orange"
A great post that needs no explanation. Just go read it. And don't just scroll by the images he includes at the very end. They made me laugh, the Photoshopping done to those famous images - it really drives the point home. STOP THE MADNESS INDEED.
Another post on the overuse of teal and orange in movie posters.
Jorge Luis Borges: "the epic tradition has been saved for the world by, of all places, Hollywood"
Excerpt from interview with Jorge Luis Borges in The Paris Review Interviews, I
INTERVIEWER
Epic literature has always interested you very much, hasn't it?
BORGES
Always, yes. For example, there are many people who go to the cinema and cry. That has always happened; it has happened to me also. But I have never cried over sob stuff, or the pathetic episodes. But, for example, when I saw the first gangster films of Joseph von Sternberg, I remember that when there was anything epic about them - I mean Chicago gangsters dying bravely - well, I felt that my eyes were full of tears. I have felt epic poetry far more than lyric or elegy. I always felt that. Now that may be, perhaps, because I come from military stock. My grandfather, Colonel Francisco Borges Lafinur, fought in the border warfare with the Indians, and he died in a revolution; my great-grandfather, Colonel Suarez, led a Peruvian cavalry charge in one the last great battles against the Spaniards; another great-great-uncle of mine led thhe vanguard of San Martin's army - that kind of thing. And I had, well, one of my great-great-grandmothers was a sister of [Juan Manuel de] Rosas - I'm not especially proud of that relationship because I think of Rosas as being a kind of Peron in his day; but still all those things link me with Argentine history and also with the idea of a man's having to be brave, no?INTERVIEWER
But the characters you pick as your epic heroes - the gangster, for example - are not usually thought of as epic, are they? Yet you seem to find the epic there?BORGES
I think there is a kind of, perhaps, of low epic in him - no?INTERVIEWER
Do you mean that since the old kind of epic is apparently no longer possible for us, we must look to this kind of character for our heroes?BORGES
I think that as to epic poetry or as to epic literature, rather - if we except such writers as T.E. Lawrence in his Seven Pillars of Wisdom or some poets like Kipling, for example, in "Harp Song of the Dane Women" or even in the stories - I think nowadays, while literary men seem to have neglected their epic duties, the epic has been saved for us, strangely enough, by the Westerns.INTERVIEWER
I have heard that you have seen the film West Side Story many times.BORGES
Many times, yes. Of course, West Side Story is not a Western.INTERVIEWER
No, but for you it has the same epic qualities?BORGES
I think it has, yes. During this century, as I say, the epic tradition has been saved for the world by, of all places, Hollywood. When I went to Paris, I felt I wanted to shock people, and when they asked me - they knew that I was interested in the films, or that I had been, because my eyesight is very dim now - and they asked me, What kind of film do you like? And I said, Candidly, what I most enjoy are the Westerns. They were all Frenchmen; they fully agreed with me. They said, Of course we see such films as Hiroshima mon amour or L'Annee derniere a Marienbad out of a sense of duty, but when we want to amuse ourselves, when we want to enjoy ourselves, when we want, well, to get a real kick, then we see American films.
The French have been so instrumental in "saving" many of our great entertainers for us, after they have been shunned critically in America. The examples are numerous (Howard Hawks, Nicholas Ray - hell, even Mickey Rourke) - it's like they keep the torch burning FOR us, of these artists that really are so quintessentially American, these are not cosmopolitan people - but local homegrown artists, and when they fall out of favor, the French have always reminded us and nudged us to not forget them.
The interview with Borges is a gem. I'll be excerpting a lot from this book in the coming weeks. Thank you to cousin Mike for sending it to me. So far, I have read interviews with Dorothy Parker, TS Eliot, Truman Capote, Ernest Hemingway, Saul Bellow, Kurt Vonnegut and Borges. And one small observation: in each interview, James Joyce, at one point, comes up. The opinions vary, but not the FACT of Joyce, and the FACT of his influence, good or bad.
I love the image of Jorge Luis Borges tearing up watching a gangster film. It seems beautifully poetic and perfect to me.
March 14, 2010
Today in history: March 14, 1887
Sylvia Beach, who is responsible for publishing James Joyce's Ulysses
Here is a photo of Sylvia and Jimmy:
Sylvia said of Joyce: "As for Joyce, he treated people invariably as his equals, whether they were writers, children, waiters, princesses, or charladies. What anybody had to say interested him; he told me that he had never met a bore."
(Anyone who can say that he has "never met a bore" is a genius of the human spirit.)
A fascinating woman: born in Maryland, and as an adult a major force in the literary ex-pat community in Paris. She served in World War I with the Red Cross in Serbia, and after the war settled in Paris, where she opened up a bookshop - the enormously influential Shakespeare & Co.. Let's see - here are a couple of the names in Paris at that time: Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Stein, Joyce ... (GOD for a time machine!) And so Shakespeare & Co. became the hub-bub, the vortex of them all.
When she met James Joyce, he had already written Ulysses, and it was a finished manuscript by that point (or as finished as any Joycean manuscript ever would be) - but essentially unpublishable, due to its being deemed "obscene". The funny thing about all of this is that Joyce said later, "The pity is that the public will demand and find a moral in my book, or worse they may take it in some serious way, and on the honour of a gentleman, there is not one single serious word in it."
But Sylvia Beach - who had never published a book before - took a risk and said that Shakespeare & Co. would put out the book, which was already highly controversial. It was an act of courage. Perhaps she went into it recklessly, thinking that giving a space for genius would be its own reward - perhaps she went into it knowing the eventual fallout that would crash down upon her head - But whatever her interior process, she published it.
And the shit hit the fan.
Once it was published, the obscenity controversies heated up, the book was banned (Joyce said later, "I have come to the conclusion that I cannot write without offending people.") everybody was talking about it, who had actually read it? - you could be arrested for trying to smuggle it into certain countries - and there were a couple of years where the only place on the planet you could get a copy of Ulysses was through Beach's bookshop in Paris. And so the orders flew in from folks around the world. People who were book readers, people who were collectors, people who sensed the historic moment and just wanted a copy.
The comments of other great writers on this book are, of course, great interest to me. They run the gamut of disgust, elation, despair, awe, humility ... and I love it, too, that Yeats (an early supporter of Joyce) changed his mind. His first response on reading it? "A mad book!"
Then later, as it percolated, Yeats said: "I have made a terrible mistake. It is a work perhaps of genius. I now perceive its coherence ... It is an entirely new thing -- neither what the eye sees nor the ear hears, but what the rambling mind thinks and imagines from moment to moment. He has certainly surpassed in intensity any novelist of our time."
Hart Crane had this to say (or shout): "I feel like shouting EUREKA! Easily the epic of the age."
George Bernard Shaw was disturbed by Ulysses, and its view of Ireland - so much so that it tormented him a bit. He saw it as an indictment (and, in a way, it was). He said, however: "If a man holds up a mirror to your nature and shows you that it needs washing -- not whitewashing -- it is no use breaking the mirror. Go for soap and water."
T.S. Eliot was especially devastated by the book, and his comments on it are numerous. Examples: "How could anyone write again after achieving the immense prodigy of the last chapter?" And also - this quote really touches me, because as a writer, Eliot wasn't half-bad himself: "I wish, for my own sake, that I had not read it." And lastly (and I think this pretty much gets at the root of what was so disturbing to Eliot): "I hold Ulysses to be the most important expression which the present age has found; it is a book to which we are all indebted, and from which none of us can escape."
Goose bumps.
Edmund Wilson wrote of it:
The more we read Ulysses, the more we are convinced of its psychological truth, and the more we are amazed at Joyce's genius in mastering and in presenting, not through analysis or generalization, but by the complete recreation of life in the process of being lived, the relations of human beings to their environment and to each other; the nature of their perception of what goes on about them and of what goes on within themselves; and the interdependence of their intellectual, their physical, their professional and their emotional lives. To have traced all these interdependences, to have given each of these elements its value, yet never to have lost sight of the moral through preoccuptation with the physical, nor to have forgotten the general in the particular; to have exhibited ordinary humanity without either satirizing it or sentimentalizing it - this would already have been sufficiently remarkable; but to have subdued all this material to the uses of a supremely finished and disciplined work of art is a feat which has hardly been equalled in the literature of our time.
Wilson also wrote:
"Yet for all its appalling longeurs, "Ulysses" is a work of high genius. Its importance seems to me to lie, not so much in its opening new doors to knowledge -- unless in setting an example to Anglo-Saxon writers of putting down everything without compunction -- or in inventing new literary forms -- Joyce's formula is really, as I have indicated, nearly seventy-five years old -- as in its once more setting the standard of the novel so high that it need not be ashamed to take its place beside poetry and drama. "Ulysses" has the effect at once of making everything else look brassy."
And here is the lady who first made this "epic of the age" available to the world, at great financial and personal risk:
Joyce eventually moved to another publisher - for later editions - which left Beach financially stranded (along with the Great Depression which really hit Shakespeare & Co. hard.) But Beach had rich influential literary friends - many of whom came to her rescue during this difficult time. Famous writers did readings at Shakespeare & Co., admission was charged, people paid subscription fees - and in this way the bookstore made it through. Beach died in 1962. She wrote a memoir called Shakespeare and Company
She said:
I was on the platform, my heart going like the locomotive, as the train from Dijon came slowly to a standstill and I saw the conductor getting off, holding a parcel and looking around for someone -- me. In a few minutes, I was ringing the doorbell at the Joyces' and handing them Copy No. 1 of Ulysses. It was February 2, 1922.
The Great Umbrella Massacre of 2010
As I'm sure everyone is well aware (those on the East Coast and not), we had a major storm here yesterday. My mother still doesn't have power at her house. Brooklyn was power-less. I was on the Jersey Shore yesterday which got particularly hard hit. Trains weren't running. Planes weren't landing. Huge trees pulled out of the sidewalk and crashed into the street. Ahhh, gotta love a nor'eastah.
My friend Patrick took a series of photos last night, detailing a specific brand of carnage. These photos come from a one-block radius. But the destruction is total.
Speaking of Pi
I knew I had read a profile in the New Yorker years ago about Pi, and then remembered that I have it in one of the New Yorker compilations that I own. It's called "The Mountains of Pi", and it's from 1992, a profile of two brothers (the Chudnovsky brothers) on their quest for Pi. That makes it sound tame and intellectual. No. This is a profile of shared obsession.
I love having a library. "Wasn't there something about Pi in one of those New Yorker books I have ...?"
It's also online - very fascinating profile of two men driven to extremes by their desire to understand pi. It's also from a time when something like a "computer" in your house was something of a novelty, let alone a "supercomputer", built to order. Built to serve Pi and Pi alone.
The Chudnovsky brothers claim that the digits of pi form the most nearly perfect random sequence of digits that has ever been discovered. They say that nothing known to humanity appears to be more deeply unpredictable than the succession of digits in pi, except, perhaps, the haphazard clicks of a Geiger counter as it detects the decay of radioactive nuclei. But pi is not random. The fact that pi can be produced by a relatively simple formula means that pi is orderly. Pi looks random only because the pattern in the digits is fantastically complex. The Ludolphian number is fixed in eternity - not a digit out of place, all characters in their proper order, an endless sentence written to the end of the world by the division of the circle's diameter into its circumference. Various simple methods of approximation will always yield the same succession of digits in the same order. If a single digit in pi were to be changed anywhere between here and infinity, the resulting number would no longer be pi; it would be "garbage", in David's word, because to change a single digit in pi is to throw all the following digits out of whack and miles from pi."Pi is a damned good fake of a random number," Gregory said. "I just wish it were not as good a fake. It would make our lives a lot easier."
Around the three-hundred-millionth decimal place of pi, the digits go 88888888 - eight eights pop up in a row. Does this mean anything? It appears to be random noise. Later, ten sixes erupt: 6666666666. What does this mean? Apparently nothing, only more noise. Somewhere past the half-billion mark appears the string 123456789. It's an accident, as it were. "We do not have a good, clear, crystallized idea of randomness," Gregory said. "It cannot be that pi is truly random. Actually, truly random sequence of numbers has not yet been discovered."
Apparently today (3/14) is Pi Day
As in: π.
In honor of Pi Day, please check out the clip below the jump. Lucy Kaplansky is one of my favorite current-day folk singers. I have seen her perform numerous times. Her father was a mathematician, and he wrote "a song about Pi", where the notes correspond to the starting digits of the eternal Pi. I have seen Kaplansky perform this, and it was a funny moment: I saw her perform at Maxwell's once, in Hoboken, and someone requested "Song About Pi", and she was so touched, it took her so aback - this is not a song she has ever recorded, but over the years it has become a fan favorite. Also, the fact that her father (a man she obviously loved very much) wrote it.
So, in honor of Pi Day, here is Lucy Kaplansky singing her dad's song "Song About Pi". So glad it was on Youtube. The second I saw it was Pi Day, I thought of Lucy Kaplansky and her father.
March 13, 2010
Memoirs, Tennessee Williams
Published in 1975, Tennessee Williams's Memoirs
I wonder sometimes, how much of the cruising was for the pleasure of my cruising partner's companionship and for the sport of pursuit and how much was actually for the pretty repetitive and superficial satisfactions of the act itself. I know that I had yet to experience in the "gay world" the emotion of love, which transfigures the act into something beyond it. I have known many gays who live just for the act, that "rebellious hell" persisting into middle life and later, and it is graven in their faces and even refracted from their wolfish eyes. I think what saved me from that was my first commitment being always to work. Yes, even when love did come, work was still the primary concern.
Now I think that's kind of lovely. Really well put, with, as per usual with Williams, a really disturbing sense of alone-ness and isolation on the outskirts of his lyricism ("wolfish eyes", "graven in their faces"). The book is full of such passages, and I suppose if you have no desire to hear about the sex life of a famous person - let alone the gay sex life of a famous person - then the book may be rather tiresome. I don't feel that way. You can write a book that is one gay orgy after another, and if you write it well I'm in. It's not the experience that is important and unique - because it's not - but how someone puts it into words. As Fran Leibowitz so potently said once, "Being unpopular in high school is not just cause for book publication." True, true. Williams, even when just dashing things down off the cuff in his journal, is strikingly eloquent, and poetic. He can't help himself. His writing is never twee, it has muscle behind it, real heart, real power.
Williams is honest in how difficult he finds it to talk about his work. He believed that the work speaks for itself (as indeed it does), but the brief snippets and glimpses he gives are vastly illuminating. His journals are filled with mini pep-talks he gives to himself. The main refrain is to "endure". Endurance, endurance. Williams battled nerves his entire life, and also believed, from a very early age, that something was wrong with his heart. It has never been determined that Williams had a cardiac condition, but he lived under the spectre of sudden heart failure from the time he was a college student (and maybe younger). He put it up to too much coffee. He would wake up in the middle of the night with his heart racing a mile a minute. The cards were stacked against this man. The key, for him, was endurance.
Williams wrote his memoirs knowing that he had long lost his "critical darling" status. He hadn't had a hit since the 1950s. Critics became increasingly savage towards his work. He couldn't do anything right. They wanted him to be the same playwright who had written Glass Menagerie, etc., but that discounts the fact that an artist, if he's lucky enough to live long, will grow and change. Williams gradually began to move away from realistic plays (although his first hit, Glass Mengaerie, with its narration and other elements, was far from "realistic"), and these plays (Camino Real and others) hold up VERY well. They seem contemporary and relevant today. But in the 50s, people were baffled. He would not be "allowed" to experiment. Williams wasn't experimenting for the hell of it. He had great integrity as an artist. Art saved his life. He took it very seriously. Art, for him, was worthless unless it was an attempt to describe how he experienced reality, and that, necessarily, changed, as he grew and changed. The pain of being rejected by the critical establishment who had once so embraced him vibrates through the pages of Memoirs. Williams has enough of an ego, however, to be angry at the rejection as well. And stubbornness. No matter what, he would never ever write "for" them. He hadn't written Glass Menagerie FOR them, and he wouldn't write anything else with the sole purpose of getting back into their good graces.
As a matter of fact, he states in Memoirs that the only thing he ever wrote for monetary reasons is the very memoir that he is in the process of writing. At the time of the writing, his play Small Craft Warnings (a play I love - excerpt here) had opened on Broadway and was not doing well. To boost ticket sales, he agreed to play "Doc" for five performances and give a series of QAs after the performances. His first time since college on the stage. A rather humiliating circumstance, especially in light of his reputation. One of the greatest American playwrights of the 20th century having to do a "trick" to boost ticket sales. Interspersed with his memories, are present-tense sections where he discusses the progress of Small Craft Warnings, as well as the stop-start progress of his play Out-Cry, a truly genius piece of work, also known as The Two Character Play (excerpt here). Neither play is going well. Williams's critics keep drumming it into his head: you've lost it, you've lost it, you've lost it ... but that old refrain "endurance" still works for him. He can only write what he can write.
Yesterday I was alarmed by a state of confusion at the New Theatre. Honest to God, I couldn't tell the interval from the end of the first show. I mean I came out of the men's dressing room when I heard the applause for the first act curtain. My "fluffs" were alarming, too. And if the back of the house had been filled - it wasn't for either performance - I doubt that I would have been audible much of the time.The problem seems to be breath. I let the end of a sentence fall because the breath runs out.
And yet I got good hands. I guess there is something about me that is recognizable as something about "Doc" - regardless of whether all that I say is heard.
It is imperative that the show complete the summer. It must, it will. I think the production of Out Cry may hinge upon my demonstration to draw again and to keep a show that received "mixed reviews" running for five months, which is, I mean would be, quite a prestigious accomplishment and a help with the big one.
God, the pressure. "It must, it will."
You're never "done" in this life. You are never "all set". Especially not if you are an artist committed to whatever project you are doing in that moment, and not just repeating past successes. Of course, the productions of Glass Menagerie and Streetcar and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and all the others - round the world since the first productions - helped give Williams some financial stability. But financial stability isn't everything. If the critics, and the audience, continue to reject your new work - it is shattering. Williams was not a blushing flower, when it came to his work. His correspondence is fascinating to read, because you can see how FIRM he was, how he was willing to compromise up to a certain point, but then there was a point where no, he had to have the final say. Because he wrote the damn thing. The whole thing about the revisions to Cat on a Hot Tin Roof being the most notorious example, with a titanic fight between Kazan and Williams, and Kazan winning the battle (the production went with Kazan's version) but Williams winning the war (the published version having both Kazan's AND Williams's versions, with a long explanatory essay from Williams about how he still preferred his own version).
There is something a bit dashed-off about the book. I wonder if it was even edited. Or if he even looked at the pages before sending them off. He is open about his drug use. His brother had committed him to a hospital in the late 60s, and Williams still seems shaky here. The 60s were his bad decade. Frank Merlo, his partner of 7 years died of cancer.
As long as Frank was well, I was happy. He had a gift for creating a life and, when he ceased to be alive, I couldn't create a life for myself.
Frank Merlo had been a patient and easy-going guy, who was a companion for Williams, a lover, all that, but he also helped organize Williams, something Williams desperately needed. Merlo could handle it. He did it with little to no ego. Williams is always leaving typewriters in hotels, losing manuscripts in taxis, forgetting where he put his stash of money - every day is a comedy of errors with Williams. An absentminded man. With a tendency towards agoraphobia. Merlo took the edge off. He loved him, stayed with him, and also booked his plane tickets, made sure he packed properly, kept the bad friends away, managed Williams's sensitive personality. Williams's description of Merlo's last days are very upsetting. If you have watched someone die a slow death, then you know that restlessness that comes at the very end, so difficult to bear and witness. You want the loved one to have ease, comfort, peace, but the restlessness persists. The tide rolling in.
The morning after my return I visited Frankie at Memorial. He was now receiving oxygen from a bedside tank. I stayed on that day and it was a dreadful vigil for me to keep. He would not stay in his bed for more than a minute or two. He kept staggering out of it and sitting for a couple of minutes in the chair. Then staggering back to the bed."Frankie, try to lie still."
"I feel too restless today. The visitors tired me out."
"Frankie, do you want me to leave you now?"
"No, I'm used to you."
He had, during my vigil that day, been transferred from the ward to a private room - which he doubtless recognized as a room to which he was removed to die.
Frank Merlo
Along with these memories of his personal life, there are, of course, many anecdotes about the great actors and directors with whom he crossed paths. Williams's writing, while poetic, is not ornate. He does not mince words.
In Chicago the first night, no one knew how to take [Glass] Menagerie, it was something of an innovation in the theatre and even though Laurette [Taylor] gave an incredibly luminous, electrifying performance [as Amanda Wingfield], and people observed it. But people are people, and most of them went home afterward to take at least equal pleasure in their usual entertainments. It took that lovely lady, Claudia Cassidy, the drama critic of the Chicago Tribune, a lot of time to sell it to them to tell them it was special.She said Laurette ranked with [Eleonora] Duse.
Eventually, though, Menagerie was a startling success, which success I attribute in large part to Laurette. She was, as I have said many times, a gallant performer; I still consider her the greatest artist of her profession that I have known. I wrote a tribute to her, on her death, in which I said that it is our immeasurable loss that Laurette's performances were not preserved on the modern screen. The same is true of Duse and [Sarah] Bernhardt, with whom Laurette's name belongs.
I also wrote that there are sometimes hints, during our lives, of something that lies outside the flesh and its mortality. I suppose these intuitions come to many people in their religious vocations, but I have sensed them equally clearly in the work of artists and most clearly of all in the art of Laurette. There was a radiance about her art which I can compare only to the greatest lines of poetry, and which gave me the same shock of revelation as if the air about us had been momentarily broken through by light from some clear space beyond us.
If there is a heaven, and if I can create my own heaven, then it will be a place where I can go back in time to that theatre in Chicago in the icy winter of 1944 and see that first production of Glass Menagerie.
Laurette Taylor as Amanda Wingfield
My sense of him in his Memoirs is of a man who knows he doesn't have much time left (he would be dead in 1983), and who is now desperate, desperate, to get back to his rightful position. But without having to compromise the type of writing he wants to do. His belief in his craft is stunning, when you think of the decade and a half of FLOPS he had been through. I don't even know if I would call it "belief", actually, which implies something intellectual. It's not that he believed in his work (although that is true). It is that for him there was no other choice.
That is courage.
To keep putting pencil to paper ... in the face of an overwhelming chorus of critical voices (and flagging box office sales) telling you, "No, no, no, we don't want THAT from you ... why don't you write something like you USED to write?"
I continue to believe that Williams, ultimately, will have the last laugh. It is a mind-boggling body of work, when looked at it as a whole. It continues to grow in stature, making more successful commercial playwrights of the same era look flaccid, and trite. William Inge was more timely, in many ways, a true voice of the 1950s, but his plays have dated badly (as wonderful as the writing usually is). Similar to Clifford Odets who I believe is one of the best writers of dialogue this country has ever known, but his plays cannot be transported out of the 1930s. That decade is their anchor, their context. Williams's plays are not as easily placed in a specific time, and therefore they don't feel married to a certain era. Not in the slightest. And the later plays? The ones that were flop after flop after flop? Well, there is some amazing stuff there, and perhaps during Williams's lifetime, with a success that playwrights can only dream of in the 40s and early 50s, such later plays, with a different voice and outlook - maybe they could never have survived. They suffered by comparison. But now, with the gift of perspective, and distance, they don't suffer as much. They stand on their own as excellent plays, difficult, challenging, recognizably Williams (I could pick a sentence written by him out of a lineup in a dark alley) - and it doesn't matter so much that they AREN'T Glass Menagerie, etc. Plays like The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore (excerpt here), Kingdom of Earth (excerpt here), Small Craft Warnings, The Gnädiges Fräulein (excerpt here) ... I wouldn't call these "major" plays. They aren't Menagerie, or Streetcar, or Cat, but even saying that to me feels ungenerous and ridiculous. If a playwright could write just ONE play as great as Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Williams's favorite of his plays, he considered it his best - Tommy Lee Jones, who played Brick, agrees with Williams) then that should be enough for one lifetime. But Williams just kept pumping them out, deep tormented funny plays with awesome characters that now live large in American culture forever. Stanley Kowalski. Big Daddy. Amanda Wingfield. Miss Alma. Blance Dubois. I mean, these were all in his head. So no, the later plays are not "major", but they are certainly nothing to sneeze at, and again, I think with perspective they start to take on their own form and shape, they don't cower so much in the shadow of those earlier masterpieces.
But at the time of the writing of the Memoirs, Williams could not know that. He could just continue to endure. And by "endure", he meant "work".
Work!! - the loveliest of all four-letter words, surpassing even the importance of love, most times.
I am inclined to agree with him.
His memories of his tragic sister Rose are truly terrible, and I wince through the reading of them. You can feel his pain. It seems to me that Williams, naturally a very shy man, expressed what he needed to about his life in his plays. They are the true documents, the only real autobiography. Now, of course, we have the amazingly edited volumes of his letters, the diaries, all of this extemporaneous material, which adds depth, shading, understanding ... but still: none of it EXPLAINS the work. The work stands alone. If you want to understand this man, you will not find the answers in his letters. You will find it when you read The Glass Menagerie. But what a gift it is, to also have his own words, in the same way that it would be such a gift to have, oh, Shakespeare's diary, or letters, or something. Nothing on this earth (heaven or earth, Horatio) could ever explain Hamlet or Macbeth, but how awesome would it be to hear the MAN speaking? Williams obviously found his sister Rose to be an almost unbearably painful topic. It is a wound that never healed. It is the wound from which he wrote. All plays begin and end with Rose. But let me not take away from his extraordinary powers of creation and imagination. I do not mean to say that his plays are disguised autobiographies - no. But what happened to his sister Rose, her madness, her lobotomy, her tragedy, is what made HIM possible. What a terrible thought. Williams was haunted, literally haunted by this. That he got out and she didn't. And not just that she didn't get out, but that she would be so completely destroyed. He writes in his Memoirs about something that had happened back in the 30s, when he and Rose were kids, both still living at home. This story comes from 40 years in the past, but the pain in this passage, the pain that remains:
Then there was the wild weekend Mother and Dad had gone to the Ozarks, I believe, and Rose and I were alone in the house on Pershing. That weekend I entertained my new group of young friends. One of them got very drunk - maybe all of them did - but this particular one got drunker than all of us put together and he went up on the landing, where the phone was, and began to make obscene phone calls to strangers.When our parents returned from the Ozarks, Miss Rose told them of the wild party and the obscene phone calls and the drinking.
I was informed by Miss Edwina [Williams's mother] that no one of this group should ever again enter the house...
After she had tattled on my wild party ... I went down the stairs as Rose was coming up them. We passed each other on the landing and I turned upon her like a wildcat and I hissed at her:
"I hate the sight of your ugly old face!"
Wordless, stricken, and crouching, she stood there motionless in a corner of the landing as I rushed on out of the house.
This is the cruelest thing I have done in my life, I suspect, and one for which I can never properly atone.
Memoirs is a jagged read, moving from far past tense to present-tense within paragraphs at times, and you can feel his decline in capability. Many paragraphs end with ellipses, as though you can feel him trailing off, unsure what the point of writing the memoir is ... when his plays can't even get off the ground. I remember when Jack Nicholson got his Lifetime Achievement Award at the Oscars some years back and he joked at the beginning that there was something weird about the award, "because it has a feeling of the shroud about it." Williams seems to have that sense here, too. Writing a memoir is meaningless to him without plays that can be put up, without an audience that will appreciate, without critics that try to understand.
Haphazard as a lot of it is, it stands as a monument to the sheer willpower and pigheadedness of this great playwright, a man who made his success early (although he wasn't as young as Odets was, or Fitzgerald - he was in his 30s), and continued on ... continued on with his work ... even as his audience disappeared. Williams has almost no self-pity, it is one of his defining characteristics as a writer. He stated again and again that he had never written a "victim" in his life. He saw Blanche, Alma, as white-hot survivors, as characters who, through their sheer intensity of feeling, could teach the rest of us drabber souls a thing or two about living. He writes in Memoirs:
I realize how very old-fashioned I am as a dramatist to be so concerned with classic form but this does not embarrass me, since I feel that the absence of form is nearly always, if not always, as dissatisfying to an audience as it is to me. I persist in considering Cat my best work of the long plays because of its classic unities of time and placer and the kingly magnitude of Big Daddy. Yet I seem to contradict myself. I write so often of people with no magnitude, at least on the surface. I write of "little people". But are there "little people"? I sometimes think there are only little conceptions of people. Whatever is living and feeling with intensity is not little and, examined in depth, it would seem to me that most "little people" are living with that intensity that I can use as a writer.Was Blanche a "little person"? Certainly not. She was a demonic creature, the size of her feeling was too great for her to contain without the escape of madness. And what about Miss Alma? Was she a "little person"? Certainly not.
When Williams complains, it comes across as angry, and determined, and also, at times, confused, hurt. But not self-pitying. He is a good companion, even here, when you can feel how reduced he is, how fragilely he clings to his position.
Memoirs also contains what may very well be the saddest line Tennessee Williams ever wrote:
You see, I was still capable of falling in love in the sixties.
That is classic Williams. A clear open statement, with that friendly little "You see" at the beginning, disarming you for the hari-kiri move that is coming. You wonder how he could bear it. And then I wonder how I can bear it. All I know is, if he could bear it, then I certainly can, and spending time with him helps me see that, over and over again.
Not to mention getting a glimpse into how he worked, how he thought about his work, and the openness of his struggles with his process.
Tennessee Williams fans, I highly recommend the Memoirs, messy as they are. As with so much else of his work, it has great reverb beyond his time. Born in 1911, in Columbus, Mississippi, his life almost spans the entire 20th century. It continues to reveal itself, unfold, it's a never-ending encounter, for which I will always be grateful.
"Photo by Lars"
So yeah, I'm "friends" with Metallica on Facebook. We're very close.
They just uploaded pics from their concert in Venezuela. The photo below is labeled "Photo by Lars".
I can't take it.
Snapshots
-- Spent the week in a dreary little motel on the Jersey Shore. Writing.
-- I did not have one conversation all week.
-- Home now. Crazy wind and rain storm outside right now.
-- Hope is so glad to see me that I worry for her emotional stability.
-- Mucho plans for the next couple months. Just saying "yes" to everything. More on this later, when plans become concrete.
-- The last time I saw Lucy she was in Jean's arms, laughing HYSTERICALLY, as Jean ran across the room. I wish I was in a position to see that sight every single day.
-- I have favorite bands, favorite songs, all that - but if I had to pick an all-time favorite song it would be "Runaway", by Del Shannon. I consider it to be a perfect song.
-- Drowning in Tennessee Williams.
-- Love my new laptop. I am so relieved and happy.
-- Had a great time at Keith and Dan's Oscar party with Rachel. And I finally got to meet the famous Self-Styled Siren!!! So fun! We all sat together, and quietly counteracted the testosterone in a humorous and supportive manner. It was so great to put a face to the name, to the exquisite writer that she is. Met a lot of nice people. Including Preston Miller and his lovely wife. I am so looking forward to Preston's new film God's Land (first look here), so I finally got to talk to him about it! Met a lot of people that I "know" by name only, from their film criticism. Fun!
-- Loving the new Candybutchers album.
-- Lots of great stuff going on out at BAM this month. Trying to go to as much as possible.
-- DYING to read The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York
-- Going to see The Ghost Writer tomorrow. Can't wait.
-- Came home to a FedExed package from my cousin Mike. He is determined to keep me inspired. Tears in my eyes. He sent me the boxed set of all of the Paris Review Interviews
-- Speaking of cousin Mike, I'm kind of digging the Glee cast's version of Amy Winehouse's "Rehab". It really kicks. The original kicks, too - but it's interesting to hear a whole chorus singing those words. It's good.
-- Working on a big post about Jeremy Renner in The Hurt Locker. Yeah. It's time.
"Go ask Sheila."
This is a re-post, sort of - it's been edited and shaped. The story of the time I did ecstasy.
The only day I did hard drugs started with a letter from my ex-boyfriend.
We had been broken up for over a year, and it had been one hell of a separation, leaving us both battered, but unwilling to sever the connection entirely.
The ex-boyfriend was in San Francisco, where he worked in a law firm, and I had moved to Chicago to start a new and fresh life as an actress. Chicago was a hubbub of theatre and I flourished almost immediately upon arrival. It was a youthful energetic environment, and I began to work right away. Chicago had been the right choice.
I had never been a date-r, or promiscuous, or anything like that, and I wasn't when I moved to Chicago. But let's not soft-pedal the situation. I went insane. I made out with guys I never saw again. I gyrated at dance clubs, sandwiched in between two lunatic Lebanese cousins vying for my attention. My main Chicago flame was a grumpy black-haired man who didn’t make too many demands on me, and didn't seem inclined to get too serious, which suited me just fine. We stayed up all night, playing pool, fucking, eating breakfast at 4 a.m., watching bad Sci-fi movies in the middle of the night, wrestling so roughly that we knocked over furniture, enraging his poor roommate who had an early audition the next day. I remained sternly un-attached.
All of this debauched activity was interrupted by bouts of lying in bed, sobbing, because I missed my old boyfriend. He was my first boyfriend. He had courted me with gentleness and humor back in the day. I was a virgin at the time, and neurotic about my freckled plump lack of beauty. He honed in on me, and lifted me up, making me feel gorgeous, special, chosen. We had connected on an emotional and comedic level. I laughed harder with him than I think I have ever laughed with anyone else. All of this is true, but after we broke up, never once did I think that we should have stayed together. There had been something not right in our dynamic, something insurmountable. We stayed in touch through letters and phone conversations. We missed each other. I would see a movie and have to talk about it with him, because he was the one I still wanted to talk to. He would have a question about an author or a book he had just read, and the only person he wanted to ask was me. I loved to know how much I was missed.
He needed something else at that time in his life. He was ready to settle down, and trying to get me to settle down at 24 was like wrestling with a giant anaconda.
Unfortunately, I did not have enough of a sense of self at the time to say to him, "I'm too young for all of that. I just got out of college. I don't feel ready to pick out silverware." Instead, I internalized his displeasure with me, and let myself be overwhelmed by how wrong I was. To be truthful, I still grapple with the anxiety left by that relationship. Something is wrong with me, was the message, and that is why things never work out.
The whole "wrong-ness" thing has to do with the story of the day I did drugs.
Every time I do anything, it seems that I must do it wrong first. This is true of big things (relationships, career choices) and also little things. For example, it always seems that when I go to make my bed with fresh sheets, I always end up with them upside down and backwards first, with the tag up. I have to then go and turn them over. This is also true of driving somewhere for the first time. I always drive by the street I am searching for, and then have to backtrack, sometimes two or three times. Perhaps it is because I am impulsive and impatient, starting something without setting myself up properly and calmly beforehand. This is okay when it’s just a new printer I am trying to install but disastrous when it comes to my personal life. When I’m in a self-pitying mood, it feels like the universe is slapping my hand, saying, “No, no, no, you don’t get to do this right. Other people do, but not you.”
At that point in my life in Chicago, I had made a bunch of new friends, and I was living with Mitchell, an old dear friend from college. Our new friends were a lot of fun, and they had “x” parties where people gathered at an apartment and did ecstasy. Mitchell and I were curious about it so, along with Jackie, another friend, we decided to join them one night. Why not? We gave the dealer the money for a couple of pills of ecstasy for the following week
A word about drugs. I have never been a "why not?" person about illegal substances. I guess I was always afraid of losing control. There was also the Go Ask Alice factor to consider, which cannot be overstated. I read that book when I was eleven and it scarred me for life. According to Go Ask Alice you take one hit of pot, and the next thing you know you’re being gang-banged by a bunch of filthy hairy-pitted hippies and not feeling bad about it. I like to drink, but even then I have to be careful. If I stick to beer and wine, I'm fine. But once I start drinking whiskey, I'll be weeping and talking about the glory days of fifteen years ago before you can say "Loony Tunes". I smoked some pot in college, everyone did, but I never really liked it. It didn't seem to do for me what it did for others. It didn't mellow me out. On the contrary, it made me feel like I was a hollow nonentity of a nitwit whom everybody secretly hated and scorned. In retrospect, it's probably a good thing that I never tried cocaine, because I feel like we would make an awesome match. It could be, potentially, the answer to all of my problems. Obviously, that road not taken is best not taken. Heroin never appealed. Needles? No. I never did any of the hallucinogenics either, mushrooms, LSD, because I had seen one too many movies-of-the-week and ABC Afterschool Specials in my day, and I knew, in my heart, that I would be one of those morons who would, while on LSD, leap through a plate glass window 80 stories up because “the sky looked so pretty”, or I would try to stab my best friend because I suddenly saw Beelzebub gleaming redly out of her eyes.
I felt safe with these new friends, however, and Mitchell and Jackie would be there, so it would be an adventure!
One thing that I think might have been a factor in my “wrong” reaction to ecstasy later that night was that I was flirting with anorexia. Don’t let anyone tell you that being that thin is not addictive. It is. I was not healthy. I was running five to ten miles a day, and living on a diet of sunflower seeds and Snapple. Sometimes I would have some Lipton’s Cup-a-soup to shake things up. I watched the fat dissolve off of me, and it was awesome. I loved my eating disorder!
And then there was that letter from my ex-boyfriend.
It had arrived on the day of the party, and in it he informed me that he was moving in with someone, a new girlfriend, and that our conversations would have to stop, and I probably would have to stop sending books and newspaper clippings to him. He was not callous, giving me the heads up was the right thing to, but it killed him. He thought we never should have broken up in the first place, we should have fought it out, and come out on the other side, still together. But he had done what he needed to do, and found someone else, and wanted to let me know that everything would change.
I guess I had known it was coming. I knew he was dating someone. By that point, too, I had moved on in a significant way myself. I was in shows, I had new friends, a guy I got to kiss on a regular basis. My life had a structure. I hadn't slipped off the rails without him. I had flourished! I remember reading the letter in our kitchen, Mitchell standing nearby, and I had a moment when I put it down, saying to Mitchell, "Wow. It's really over." I felt nothing. Not one tiny thing. No sadness came up, no familiar grief. I was calm and cool and quiet. I felt grateful that he had written me such a letter, and also amazed that I had come so far. When I was in the maelstrom of the breakup, it had seemed like it would never end and I would always be the sad-eyed tragic girl. Always. But of course, time moved on and I healed. I got better. That moment with the letter was evidence. Look at me. I am finally okay.
Jackie, Mitchell and I set out for the party later that night. It was a hot summer evening. Chicago swelter. We waited for the cross-town bus. I had no idea what I was walking into, and I was excited, I felt shimmery and light. I said to my two friends as we stood at the bus stop, "You know what? I am fine about that letter! Can you believe it? I am fine! I cannot believe how fine I feel about that letter!"
We got to the party. An ecstasy party is a friendly and compassionate environment, even as the collective spinal fluid is compromised drop by drop. It's not a "love bomb” where everyone's "out of it", floating around in some ether, ready to turn into the Manson family at the first suggestion. Jellyfish was playing when we walked into the main room. There was pizza. Our friends greeted us rapturously. Most people had congregated out on the wooden back porch, so typical of Chicago apartments. There was booze in the kitchen, but not too many people were drinking. They were listening to music, dancing, and watching I Love Lucy, reciting the lines in unison. Never saw a party like that in Go Ask Alice, did you? Not a hippie gang-bang in sight.
Mitchell, Jackie and I downed our pills in the kitchen, and waited to see what would happen next. I had a beer. I felt a little buzzed, but that was probably because I had only had ten sunflower seeds in the last 24 hours.
The three of us ended up out on the back porch. The music was soft, and people were chatting. Everything was lovely.
Until suddenly I started to feel very “off”.
First came a dizzying sense of vertigo that eventually got so bad I had to hang onto the railings of the porch steps. The moment my hands gripped the bars, the porch unhinged itself and began to fly around in a circle, leaving me holding on for dear life. It was like that last scene in Hitchcock’s Strangers On a Train where there is no way to step gently off such a runaway merry-go-round. I closed my eyes, trying to breathe through it. Obviously, the fact that I was clutching a stationary porch railing, huddled down against the hurtling imaginary wind, called attention to itself and Jackie said, hesitantly, "Sheila?" That was when I leaned over the side of the stairwell, and vomited up my sunflower seeds.
I have an almost pathological embarrassment about vomiting in public, and it is one of the reasons why drinking to excess is such a rare occurrence in my life. When I have gotten too drunk in public, and have to go vomit, I revert to high school, where I'm made fun of by the bitches in the cafeteria, and they do imitations of how I walk behind my back, cackling with glee. I feel like I will not be forgiven for my transgression. I am wrong, and wrong for good. It will not be forgotten. It will be a mark against me for all time.
I was paralyzed with horror on the porch over what had just happened. My friends, high on ecstasy, were full of love and support for me and my vomiting. They hunched over me, rubbing my back, getting me water. Dammit, why did that porch keep flying around like that? Couldn't it stay still? I threw up another time. And another. I started crying at some point along in here, and my friends helped me stagger up the steps and took me into the bathroom.
I was "that girl". "That girl" that you see at parties: too drunk, and weeping in public.
We stayed in the bathroom for probably an hour. The vomiting finally ceased, which was a blessing, seeing as how my anorexic diet didn’t leave much to come up, but once the crying had started I could not stop. One friend sat on the closed toilet seat, Mitchell and Jackie perched on the edge of the tub, as I paced around in my cut-off shorts sobbing about my ex-boyfriend, how much I loved him, how sad I was, how my life was over, how I would never love again, how angry I was at him, and how tragic it was that I would have my great and only love at such a young age. It was a monologue of truly Sophoclean proportions. I went through two rolls of toilet paper, mopping the tears off my face as I ranted.
Now let me talk about the nature of my tears, because I haven't cried like that before or since. At first, yes, I was sobbing, but eventually the tears became like any other bodily function: sweat, a sneeze, the flu; they happened whether I did anything about it or not, whether I felt sad anymore or not, they could not be stopped. Once the first hour of hysterics had passed, I could carry on conversations about things other than my lost love moving in with his new girlfriend. I could talk about I Love Lucy, music, food, but the tears kept falling. They fell and fell and fell. I was like Alice in Wonderland, drowning in her own pool of tears. The tears were unconnected to me, somehow. I didn't feel the convulsive heaving sadness that comes along with sobs, I felt 100% normal inside, but still the tears would not stop. It was a natural phenomenon.
I finally felt the need to remove myself from the action of the party. Not that I felt that others were embarrassed by me. As a matter of fact, an entire cottage industry of ecstasy-induced Sheila-Nurturing activities had cropped up throughout the party, people racing to get me food, or water, or a cold cloth. I felt I needed to go lie down. I went into the empty front room. There were windows on three sides, long curtains touching the floor. I could have some privacy there, but I could also hear the party going on down the hall. I piled couch pillows on the floor, lay on my back in the darkness, and let the tears flow. I cried years of tears in that dark living room. I cried more tears than I ever would have allowed myself to if I had been in my right mind. I got four months of potential grief out in one short evening. I didn't lie in that dark living room, writhing with psychic pain. No. I was quiet, my breathing was calm and deep, I stared up at the shadowy ceiling, hearing Jellyfish blasting from down the hall, and let the tears fall. I stopped judging them or trying to hold them back. Out they poured.
Occasionally large groups of high people would come sit around me, carrying on their conversations from the kitchen, letting me feel included. Nobody tried to pull me out of it or cheer me up. Nobody expected me to participate. Their voices flowed above my head, soft, giving, benign, and it was considered completely normal that they would all be chatting about Ghostbusters as a girl lay on pillows in their midst, tears rolling down her face like the flooded Yangtze.
If only every person who was wounded could find herself surrounded by such a crowd.
I had now been crying for three hours.
People came and went. They hung around, standing over me, then meandered back to the kitchen, drifting in and out.
The guy whose party it was came into the front room. Nobody else was there. I didn't even know him all that well. He sat down cross-legged behind me, gently picked my head up and put it in his lap. I was completely passive. A limp rag of tears. My head settled into his lap. We didn't speak. No words passed between us. He was dating my good friend. This was not a sexual thing, he wasn't making a pass. He was taking care of me. I lay there with my head in his lap, eyes closed, and as the tears fell - and they came slowly (but insistently) - one by one - he would brush them away. A tear fell. Gentle hand brushing it away. Another tear fell. Gentle brushing it away.
This went on for an hour.
We never spoke. He never asked me to explain myself. It was just accepted that I was on drugs, and sometimes when you're on drugs, shit like this goes down, and you need to take care of a person like that. His hands, soft like wings, on my cheek, brushing my tears away. For an hour.
I will never forget him for that.
It’s weird. Years later, our paths have crossed again. It's always slightly bizarre when I run into him, because our lives are so different now, and a decade has passed since the day I did drugs. We never mention it. We talk about the writer’s strike, about our pets, our work. That moment in the dark living room, his gentle wing-like hands on my face, is always there between us. That is in him. It's not in everyone, make no mistake. Not everyone would choose to sit quietly like some Franciscan monk, and wipe away the tears off the face of a girl you don't even know for an hour.
A crowd of anxious hovering people came in to see how I was doing. Voices in a tremulous chorus: "Sheila ... how are you???"
I pulled my head up, squinted at them through my swollen eyes, and said softly, "I am having such a good time."
I meant it. Everyone burst into laughter.
Finally, it was time to go. Jackie and Mitchell helped me get up and walk to the door.
Then there is a jump cut, and it was now the next morning. I have no memory of getting home, of going to sleep. I was at the party, and then suddenly it was the next morning. Jackie slept over on the couch. We woke up, still high as kites. We had hours to go before we would come down. The tears had stopped. I woke up fresh and sparkly in the bright day. The four-hour crying jag was something I had experienced, but in that moment it felt like it hadn’t left a trace. I woke up ravenous. I didn’t want to dole out sunflower seeds anymore; I wanted to eat a steak. Jackie and I bumped around the apartment together until deciding to walk to the diner down the street and get some breakfast. I felt like I had never been so hungry. As we walked to the diner, Jackie said to me, "I feel so skinny right now." That's one of the blessed side effects of ecstasy, especially for a borderline anorexic: you feel lithe and skinny, you flow through space without leaving a ripple. I said, "Me too." Jackie said, "I feel like a prancing gazelle." I was swimming in my clothes, my hipbones sharp picture hooks keeping my jeans up. We were gazelles leaping across the savannah of Ashland Street.
Jackie and I sat down at the table, drooling and ready for breakfast. We ordered everything on the menu. Eggs, bacon, home fries, bagels, lox, fruit cup, coffee, juice, Frosted Flakes, bring it all! The stacks of food arrived. Ohhh, we were so excited. Ohmygodgiveusthatfood NOW. But once the food was actually there, Jackie and I could not eat a thing. We tried, but we choked on the crumbs, pushing our eggs around, washing it down with sips of burnt coffee. Mortified, we asked for the check, having eaten one corner of one piece of toast apiece. We slunk away, embarrassed gazelles.
It took us the rest of the day to get back to normal.
We started talking about my "wrong" response to the drug. Why had everyone else been so happy and loving, while I had a crying jag of world-ending proportions? What had happened? Was it my anorexia? Was it the letter I had received? Was it something in me that is different (read: “wrong”) than others? That's what I thought. I felt outside the human family. I didn’t "get" to have the experiences other people did. I have to be careful. Jackie and Mitchell had both had a by-the-book ecstasy experience, a golden-lit feeling of warmth and love towards everyone they saw. But me? I cried for four hours in a dark room.
Mitchell said to me, "I don't think 'ecstasy' the word actually means ' happy'. It's more than that - it's not just about being 'happy', Sheila. I don’t think it’s that literal."
Naturally I had to drag out my dictionary.
According to the American Heritage Dictionary, “ecstasy” is:
A state of exalted delight in which normal understanding is felt to be surpassed: allay thy ecstasy: In measure rein they joy” (Shakespeare)
A state of any emotion so intense that rational thought and self-control are obliterated: an ecstasy of anger
The trance, frenzy, or rapture associated with mystic or prophetic exaltation (Mid-English extasie, from Old French, from Late Latin exstasis, ecstasies, from Greek ekstasis, from existanai, to displace, drive out of one’s senses).
The first definition was what I had been expecting from the drug, the traditional response, but #2 and #3 come closest to actually expressing my experience of that night, #2 especially with its “emotion so intense that rational thought and self-control are obliterated”.
I was the only one crying for four hours at that party, it is true, but the surrounding warmth, and the feather-light-brushing-off of my tears from that kind stranger, had helped me to feel that whatever I was going through was part of their experience as well. I was not an anomaly. I was not wrong. My tears, although excessive, were indeed an event where “normal understanding is felt to be surpassed.”
I never did ecstasy again. There is only so much “frenzy and rapture” one person can take.
I never cried that intensely again, either, about my ex-boyfriend, not even when he went ahead and married that new girlfriend the following year. My crying jag had been a condensed and necessary catharsis, leaving me totally purged of the leftover ghosts from that relationship.
So. If anyone ever asks who I am, and what I am like, all I need to say is: I am the type of person who did ecstasy once, and afterwards had to look up the word in the dictionary in order to verify the etymological roots of my experience.
March 12, 2010
The Saturday Night Fever opening sequence
Awesome: some screengrabs from Saturday Night Fever's iconic opening sequence. Funny, looking through that, I realize that I know almost every shot by heart, without even trying. That unforgettable strut! The music! The gritty streets. Classic.
"I think putting Yeats to rock'n'roll and doing it for 20 songs is radical."
Wonderful piece about setting poems from famous poets to music, in particular Yeats. The focus of the piece is on The Waterboys (especially Mike Scott) who has been determined to put Yeats's stuff to music, and has been doing so for years.
I own Fisherman's Blues (an album by the Waterboys) which has the haunting version of Yeats's "The Stolen Child" on it - a poem I will always have great affection for because we went to that spot in Ireland, as kids, with the little waterfall in the woods, and "The Stolen Child" on a plaque right there - and there was something about it: the setting, plus the poem - that just made it come alive to me. Not to mention the haunting refrain:
For the world's more feel of weeping than you can understand.
There I was, in Ireland, as a 14 year old pudgy teenager, and I feverishly copied down the entire poem, standing there in the woods, as my family wandered around, because I knew I wanted to have it with me. I NEEDED to have it with me. There was no Google. Naturally, with a father like mine, there were multiple copies of said poem back home - and while it is certainly not considered Yeats's greatest, it had a real impact on me back then, and I respect it for that. I entered into the poem. And to this day, I can never read that poem without picturing that spot in Ireland, the green woods, the small path, and the tall thin eerie waterfall. They are inextricably linked.
The Waterboys put "The Stolen Child" to music (audio clip below the jump). And it was years after my expereince in the woods in Ireland when I heard their version of the Yeats poem, but to me: it captures what it feels like there, and what the poem feels like, its tremendous sadness, loss, grief, and also an eerie quality - like the Pied Piper leading the children away forever from their homeland. I love the recording.
Back to The Waterboys. Read the article above. Mike Scott, frontman for The Waterboys is I guess what you would call a "Yeats geek" (he calls himself an "archivist")- and he is now working on a larger project, more extended, and they're doing a concert at the Abbey Theatre (that Yeats helped form back in the day), and it's all very exciting. There will be a new album of all of these live concerts - called Appointment with Mr. Yeats. Very exciting.
Funny: his last comment in the article sort of dovetails with my thoughts on "intimidation" that I've been bandying about lately. Writers who intimidate. The ones you love above all else. The ones who make you feel it's useless to even write at all. Here is Mike Scott wrestling with that influence, as a way to honor him, but also as a way to re-contextualize the work of a poet who died in 1939. It's beautiful. Scott states, "I can't be intimidated."
I really look forward to An Appointment with Mr. Yeats.
THE STOLEN CHILD (by WB Yeats - and covered by The Waterboys on Fisherman's Blues)
WHERE dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water rats;
There we've hid our faery vats,
Full of berrys
And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.
Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim gray sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.
Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.
Away with us he's going,
The solemn-eyed:
He'll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal chest.
For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than he can understand.
March 11, 2010
"There IS something rotten in Denmark, and it's his piss-poor attitude!!"
Hysterical: Ophelia's death could have been avoided if she had had a "sassy gay friend".
"Why do they strike us? What is our offense?"
Tennessee Williams's Notebooks
I did not at all understand the news about Rose. What kind of operation was it and what for?
That was in January, 1943. It would be a couple of months before this news would make it into his journal. Too painful and awful to even contemplate. At times, Williams referred to his sister only as "R". Her name became too painful to even write out.
On March 24, 1943, he wrote this in his journal ("Grand" refers to his beloved Grandmother, who was ill at the time):
I wrote alone at Donnie's office till two a.m. - from 7 - a 7 hour stretch - longest at one stretch in a long time. On a short play. 27 Wagons. Not worth much - amusing but a little nasty perhaps.
Grand. God be with you.
A cord breaking.
1000 miles away.
Rose. Her head cut open.
A knife thrust in her brain.
Me. Here. Smoking.
My father, mean as a devil, snoring. 1000 miles away.
It's horrifying. Williams had been toiling over a short play called "The Gentleman Caller" for quite some time (an early version of, of course, The Glass Menagerie
You can feel the emptiness behind most of his conquests. He had fallen in love with a dancer named Kip Kiernan, his first love, who broke his heart. Williams took about a year to recover (and, I would surmise, never really fully recovered. His last play Something Cloudy, Something Clear
One of the really haunting things about the Notebooks is its open depiction of being a gay man before the days of sexual liberation (and we ain't there yet, especially not now, with the vicious bigotry and prejudice surrounding the topic of equality for gays/lesbians/transgenders). There are those who say, "It's fine what you do in your own private bedroom, I just don't want to hear about it." That statement is a red flag for me. Often, with good reason, because it's a so-called nice polite way to say, "Keep your gayness private, please." What does "don't want to hear about it" mean? Does that mean you don't want to see a picture of someone's boyfriend on his desk at work? Quite often, yes, that is what it means. If a gay man tells you, "I had an awesome date last night ..." and you feel threatened, that you "don't want to hear about it", but you would have no problem hearing your female coworker tell about HER date with a great guy - then you are a bigot, and you ARE the problem. It is trying to keep someone silent, BEGGING someone to just be QUIET. About who they ARE. Nope. Life don't work that way.
But even all of this is a privileged conversation, showing how far we have come, when compared to what Williams went through. Williams and his friends are closer to the world of Oscar Wilde than the world of Neil Patrick Harris performing at the Oscars, an out gay man, successful and not in hiding. Some of the stories Williams tells are truly harrowing. The options are limited. You must always be on the lookout. He "cruises" for "trade", and is more often than not successful. These are mainly one-night stands, which leave Williams satisfied sexually, but bereft emotionally. And sometimes, the night gets rough. Many of the men picked up are American servicemen - remember this is World War II - so soldiers are everywhere. It's a subtle pick-up, a glance, a nod, sharing a cigarette, and then back to the room. But sometimes it goes horribly wrong. Williams is beaten up numerous times, as are his friends. Williams is punched in the face, his room ransacked. Then, in later years, on Key West, a hub of gay life, there are sudden round-ups of "degenerates" - the police suddenly making it impossible for gays to operate there, even take walks, nothing allowed - They are the "other". Persecuted, hounded. Sometimes by the very men they had slept with the night before. It's just awful to read about. And yet how much of this "outsider" status added to Williams's work. (And to Wilde's, and to all the gay men through history, who have managed to create some of the most long-lasting works of art known to man.) Homosexuality (and Williams talks about this a lot) is not just analogous to being an artist - it is one and the same thing, for him. One could not exist without the other.
And at that time in history, by making that choice (and he did see it as a choice, not as a natural tendency) he was choosing to be forever outside. He was choosing to not have such comforting things as a home life, a family, stability. He knew this intuitively. He was always on the run anyway, fleeing across the country to this or that haven, whenever things got too rough for him. But Tennessee Williams, unlike some of the people he had met in "the Quarter" in New Orleans, for example, was not a "queen", he had not gone as far as camp, which was a great and strong survival skill for many homosexuals at that time (and still, at this time). Camp is like armor. Nothing can penetrate it. It stands, in its fabulousness, in its total disregard for social propriety, in its disinterest in being accepted (it doesn't NEED to be accepted - it's so awesome all on its own that "acceptance" is a given) - as a rock-hard shell, behind which the "sensitive" man underneath could operate. Could create a world of beauty and art and humor. Could survive the cruelty. Tennessee Williams did not have that option. He didn't like "bitchy queens", for the most part, although he found their presence strangely comforting - he could at least relax, and not "put on", but Williams was, at times, morbidly shy. He was not an extrovert, in fact he was quite the opposite - despite his loud raucous laugh - and camp, to some degree, requires extroversion. It may be a defense against INTROversion, that is true, but Williams just didn't operate in that way. He straddled the gay and straight world. He did not go completely underground, like many of the characters he had met along the way. He absorbed their spirit, however, and many of these characters show up, in disguise, in Williams's later plays. Although they are not gay men in his plays. They are Williams's female leads.
So not only, by living as a gay man, was he repeatedly taking his life in his own hands (and he knew this, he understood this completely) - but he was also committing himself to life as a gypsy (ie: artist). It was essential, although his loneliness never really left him. He yearned for comfort, ease and peace in his friendships and love affairs, and while he received some of that, temporarily, he never found that "one". Or, he did, but Frank Merlo died of cancer, and Williams pretty much cracked up and never got his balance again (this was much much later - over a decade later than the early 40s section I am reading now in the book).
There is so much that is moving and amazing about this book (his comments on other writers, his comments on his own work, his frustrations, the sense that he is moving towards something HUGE - but he just can't see it yet) - but there are a couple of entries having to do with what it is like to be a gay man at that time, and a certain KIND of gay man, an artist, (similar to his buddies Donald Windham and Christopher Isherwood) - someone with something to DO (besides living as an outlaw, I mean - which is really the case for gay men at that time). Men who had skills, gifts, talents ... and who needed to corral their vast powers into whatever work it was they were put on this planet to do.)
My heart just cracks reading some of these entries, and I think of my dear gay friends, men and women, people who have immeasurably enhanced my life in ways I can't even name ... and I think of imprisoned ruined Oscar Wilde, and Williams crouching over his unfinished manuscript of Glass Menagerie as a sailor beats the shit out of him - AFTER having sex with him - and it's just awful. The book puts you face to face with the realities of what it was like back then. And we should never forget that. It is good to have moved past a certain point - at least in enlightened areas where people are let alone to be whoever they want to be - but we're not there yet. And we should never forget those who came before. Who didn't have it so easy.
Two amazing entries from Williams along this score (and these are just two of MANY). One recounts a conversation had with good friend Oliver Evans during a period of living in New Orleans in 1941. Oliver Evans was a poet. He and Williams had met in Provincetown (the summer when Williams had his first love, with Kip Kiernan) - and they actually remained good friends up until the end of Williams's life, which is rare - many of Williams's friends abandoned him during the 60s, a really rough decade for Williams. But Oliver remained steady. Naturally, he was also gay.
Sunday, 14, September 1941Later - Sunday A.M.
Oliver Evans - a sad but poignant episode. Mack's and the St. James bar.
"We ought to be exterminated" said Oliver. "for the good of society." I argued that if we were society would lose some of its most sensitive, humanitarian members. A healthy society does not need artists, said Oliver. What is healthy about a society with no spiritual values? - Then you think spiritual values are identical with us? said Oliver. No, I admitted sadly, but we have made some unique contributions because of our unique position and I do not believe that we are detrimental to anyone but ourselves. "We are the rotten apple in the barrel," said Oliver. "We ought to be exterminated at the age of 25." "But Shakespeare had written no great plays at that age." -- "He had written Romeo and Juliet," said Oliver. -- "Yes, but he had not written Hamlet." And so on -- "If you think we are dangerous, why do you act as you do? Why do you not isolate yourself?" "Because I am rotten." -- How many of us feel that way, I wonder? Bear this intolerable burden of guilt? To feel some humiliation and a great deal of sorrow at times is inevitable. But feeling guilty is foolish. I am a deeper and warmer and kinder man for my devigation. More conscious of need in others, and what power I have to express the human heart must be in large part due to this circumstance. Some day society will take perhaps the suitable action - but I do not believe that it will be or should be extermination.
There is so much pain in that, so much acceptance of the situation. He could not live any other way. Many men couldn't hack it (and women too) and married, just to at least have a suitable "cover" under which they could operate. Take the damn edge off. I don't fault those people at all. Many of them were very good companions (Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West, for example), and helped and supported one another in their various pursuits, and marriage gave them some protection. Williams did not go that route. He had consigned himself to criminal status, basically. As Oscar Wilde (although married) did. But his understanding there - of the "contributions" they have made ... It's quite a sensitive reading of the situation, quite amazing really, when you think that this is a man getting beaten up every other night for basically providing another human being what that person asked for. Amazing.
The following entry brought me to tears. Williams has moved back up to New York from an aimless and strange summer spent in Macon, Georgia, with his friend Paul Bigelow. It is January, 1943, right around the time that his sister Rose was being lobotomized, although he doesn't know it yet. It is THE defining event of his life. And strangely, you can see, in the Notebooks, how it galvanized him. The awfulness of it. He had been working on his "gentleman caller" play, and had been thinking of it as a comedy, something light, and in one draft Laura and the gentleman caller hit it off, and they make another date - so maybe there's some hope there - and in the end, as Tom goes off, his mother Amanda tells him that whereever he goes, he will always have a home to come to. Well, that's ONE way you could tell that story. But after the horrible news of his sister Rose, it becomes imperative that he be truthful in his art, that his art reflect life - as he experiences it - It was a real catapulting force. It had to be. Otherwise, Rose's sacrifice would be for naught. Although he never said it that way. He could barely speak of his sister.
But here is the entry in question, which is a rallying cry for gay men everywhere, a piercingly insightful observation about what is really going on:
Tuesday - Jan 5, 1943This is the first time that anybody ever knocked me down and so I suppose it ought to be recorded. Unhappily I can't go into details. It was a case of guilt and shame in which I was relatively the innocent party, since I merely offered entertainment which was accepted with apparent gratitude until the untimely entrance of other parties. Feel a little sorrowful about it. So unnecessary. The sort of behavior pattern imposed by the conventional falsehoods.
Donnie comforted me when he arrived on the scene. Now he is upstairs with another party procured in the bar. Why do they strike us? What is our offense? We offer them a truth which they cannot bear to confess except in privacy and the dark - a truth which is inherently as bright as the morning sun. He struck me because he did what I did and his friends discovered it. Yes, it hurt - inside. I do not know if I will be able to sleep. But tomorrow I suppose the swollen face will be normal again and I will pick up the usual thread of life.
Courage.
"He struck me because he did what I did and his friends discovered it." Self-hatred, self-loathing, a fearsome enemy when cornered. We can see a lot of that going on today, with the politicians running on ferocious anti-gay platforms suddenly found sporting a wide stance in some airport bathroom or driving drunk after bumping and grinding at some gay bar. Or vicious pastors who focus only on homosexuality, suddenly discovered to be hanging out with a gay massuer for years. It's almost become a cliche. It is the real definition of "phobic". Anyone who displays that level of phobia is really operating from a fearful position of recognition and identification, and that has been borne out time and time again. And Williams, in that brief sentence, written 60 plus years in the past, nails why. "He struck me because he did what I did and his friends discovered it."
Selfishly, I am so glad that Tennessee Williams found his tribe - not just of gay men, but of committed artists (poets, dancers, painters, writers). Art saved his life, as it could not save his sister's.
Tennessee Williams and friends, in Provincetown. Tennessee is in the front, shirtless
Today in history: March 11, 1916
Ezra Jack Keats was born.
A favorite author of mine - who is always, somehow, looped in my head to Sesame Street, the world being depicted in his classic tales (Peter's Chair
Barry, my father's best friend, was friends with Ezra Jack Keats, so we grew up feeling a strange personal connection to the man who wrote the books we all loved. He was a person. A man. Who had an apartment. Who knew Barry. He was strangely real to us. For years, I thought he was black. Not sure why. I was an adult when I found out he wasn't black. There were no author photos in his books, and I imagined him like Gordon, from Sesame Street, one of my favorite characters. But no, Sheila. The man is not black. I just had it in my head that he was - that was how I pictured him, based on zero information, and my fantasy that he lived on a street like Sesame Street.
Letter to Amy was my favorite. It tells the story of a little boy who is planning his birthday party, and everyone he has invited is a boy as well ... but ... but ... what about his friend Amy? She's a girl. But they are friends. How will that go over if a girl comes to his party? He writes a letter to her. It is a thundery rainy day. The illustrations are phenomenal. I love rainy days anyway, and I loved them as a little girl too - but the whole journey of that book, of grade school angst, and friendship - just really touched me.
Ezra Jack Keats is probably best known for The Snowy Day (and again - those illustrations!). The city shuts down in a snowstorm like that. I remember a couple years ago - maybe 5 or 6 years ago - when we had a massive snowstorm, I was struggling through Times Square, through literally mountainous drifts, trying to get to Port Authority so I could get home - and the roads were completely shut down, no cars anywhere, and people were cross-country-skiing down Broadway. Snowball fights broke out in the middle of 7th Avenue. Things get muffled by the snow, strangely quiet, and the stoplights keep going - red, green, yellow, red, green, yellow ... even no cars can approach. The illustrations in The Snowy Day completely invoke that world: the strange quiet that descends over a bustling metropolis when there are mounds of snow.
Happy birthday to an American classic.
Some choice illustrations below:
March 10, 2010
"Though Mom dressed me up in frilly 50s petticoats and white gloves as often as possible, I became, despite my gender, Daddy’s “favorite son.” Wherever he went, I went."
Must-read. (Have a box of Kleenex ready). Now THAT is a personal essay.
Down on the boardwalk
... early this morning, with coffee. Quiet, with the slow roll of surf ahead of me.
I like having a camera with me, because somehow it helps me to see weird little details. Not the obvious things like sand and sea, but small glimpses of whimsy and beauty.
Like this.
"My heartfelt wish is that artists no longer be imprisoned in this country because of their art and that the independent and young Iranian cinema no longer faces obstacles, lack of support, attention and prejudice."
Abbas Kiarostami, perhaps the most famous of Iranian directors working today, has published an open letter in a Tehran newspaper calling for the release of Jafar Panahi (and also Mahmoud Rasoulof) - two filmmakers incarcerated in the last couple of weeks. Kiarostami is known for his difficult and artistic films, and he is famous round the world (Tarantino is a huge fan - but then, most directors are). In this open letter, he calls out the powers-that-be to let these two artists go - but he also gives a fascinating perspective on how Iranian cinema works (ie: the insiders and the outsiders). Kiarostami has made peace with the fact that he will always be an outsider. His films have been banned in Iran for years. He makes films about things like suicide (Taste of Cherry) - a taboo topic - and that film also intimates that the lead character is gay, and that may be the cause of his yearning for death. (My review here.) According to Kiarostami, Panahi was different - he was trying to work WITHIN the system. This is a heartbreaking situation if you look at in terms of nationalism and HOME. Both of these filmmakers do their country proud. They have helped create a national cinema that is admired the world over. Anyone who watches a film from Iran (even the more schlocky ones) can sense the energy and drive that is in their movie industry - and it is mainly because of filmmakers like Kiarostami and Panahi, the pioneers.
There are those who say, in what I think of as a cavalier manner, "Well, just leave Iran - go make movies elsewhere." People who say such things have no sense of what it means to have a home, or they haven't really thought it through. Perhaps they are biased against Iran, and so think: "Jesus, I wouldn't want to live there - get the hell out." This is a cold-hearted and (in my view) moronic way to think. These people are artists and their country, their HOME, rejects them. How easy would it be for YOU to just get up and leave everything you've ever known, the place you've grown up in, where your family is, support system - even your HEART ... So many of these people are not interested in making blockbuster stupid action flicks in Hollywood. They want to make movies about what concerns THEM, and that is ... Iran and its people. If they cut themselves off from that wellspring, then where would they create from? What would be replaced? These are LOCAL artists, with an international reputation. They want to make films from their own country. They should be allowed to do so.
Read Kiarostami's full letter (in translation) here.
R.I.P. Corey Haim
I suppose this won't be much of a surprise to those of us who have followed Haim's tailspin - and to those of us who fondly remembered his heyday in the 80s - but Corey Haim has died of an accidental overdose. I'm sad about this one. Perhaps he is mainly remembered for his performance in The Lost Boys, which he starred in with that OTHER troubled Corey - but I will always hold Haim in my heart for his beautiful strange performance in the under-rated Lucas. I have been wanting to write Lucas up for a while in my Under-Rated Movies Series (you can check out the other titles I reviewed here - scroll to the bottom), and I am sorry I didn't do it before now, when the movie will take on an elegiac mood. If you haven't seen Lucas, and I told you the plot, and I mentioned that Charlie Sheen is in it as the "cool kid" in school, you might write it off as regular old teenage fare. You would be wrong to do so. The script of Lucas is sensitive and observant, and like the best of the movies made for this demographic, it takes note of the stereotypes, because we all know that high school is one of the most hierarchically-based times of our lives, but it also doesn't accept that stereotypes are actually who we are. In high school, we play roles. Or, more accurately, we are ASSIGNED roles. You're the geek. You're the hot chick. You're the brain. You're the jock. John Hughes was right. We all experienced that. Lucas has some tricks up its sleeve, but not because it is interested in being tricky - but because it knows that if you dig a little bit deeper, you will find humanity literally EVERYWHERE. Even in high school. Corey Haim plays a little isolated weirdo, who is obsessed with bugs. He rides around on his bicycle with a butterfly net stuck to the back. He is smarter than everyone else, and he knows it - he has that arrogance that can come from being REJECTED because you acutally, you know, use your brain. But Haim is wonderful in how he suggests the pain that is beneath that, the pain of rejection and alienation, not to mention the unspeakable awfulness of his home life, which is not even revealed until later in the movie. Lucas, on one of his summer bug-outings, meets a pretty redheaded girl, and they bond, in that time-out-of-time way that can happen during summer vacation, when more things are possible. Would they ever have become friends during the school year, in between classes? Probably not.
I'll write a better review of Lucas in a bit, when I've had a chance to watch it again.
But for right now I will say this: Corey Haim, as Lucas, creates an unforgettable character, flawed and annoying at times, but also heartbreaking and funny. He is that weird kid you might have overlooked at school, because of his weirdo hat and big weird glasses - he would have that label of WEIRD - but he embodies that character like he was born to play it. You ache for him. You LOVE him. You want to protect him, because he is so scrawny and little, but as the film goes on, and you watch him navigate, you realize that Lucas is no victim. He may be a pipsqueak, but he is doing the best he can, and his survival skills are strong indeed. He is nobody to feel sorry for. Lucas will go on to flourish out in the real world, where his brains will be praised and admired. For now, in high school, he tries to deflect rejection by having contempt for the social structures of the world in which he lives. He hates everyone. But that is a stance that cannot be sustained, for someone like Lucas. He's not an anti-social poseur. He's not a phony. He doesn't wear black as a protest, he doesn't rebel. He falls in love for the first time. And, wonder of wonders, this redheaded girl in a white skirt, actually seems WORTHY of his love. She is not portrayed as "out of his league", or as a hottie from a mansion, or any other unimaginative trope from movies such as these. She is new in town, kind of lonely, nervous about school starting, and she's a nice girl. She likes Lucas. He's funny. He's fun to hang out with.
Corey Haim has been gone from the scene for a long long time. He burned out pretty quick. And I have mourned that loss. Because I will always ALWAYS think of him not as a hot young teen star, with slicked-up hair and sunglasses - but as the scrawny kid, on the cusp of being a real teenager, wearing a floppy hat and wielding a butterfly net. It's rare that you see a young man at that age who can suggest such vulnerability, yet also such strength and smarts.
Roger Ebert said of Haim in his review for Lucas:
Lucas is played by Corey Haim, who was Sally Field's son in "Murphy's Romance," and he does not give one of those cute little boy performances that get on your nerves. He creates one of the most three-dimensional, complicated, interesting characters of any age in any recent movie. If he can continue to act this well, he will never become a half-forgotten child star, but will continue to grow into an important actor. He is that good.
Yes. He was.
Rest in peace.
More love for Lucas here.
March 9, 2010
Rotterdam@BAM: Autumn Adagio; Director: Tsuki Inoue
This week, BAM is partnering with the prestigious International Film Festival Rotterdam to present to American audiences the winners of IFFR'S Tiger competition (given to first- or second-time filmmakers). The screenings for the public are going on this week (see schedule in link above), and this is a great opportunity to get a look at films that have little to no chance of getting distributed in the States.
Here is my review of Autumn Adagio, a first feature from Japanese director Tsuki Inoue. Hard to believe this is a first feature. A masterpiece of tone and mood and also character. This is a character study of a Japanese nun named Sister Maria who, as menopause approaches, begins to experience an awkward and strange emotional awakening. Trying to talk about the "plot" is difficult here, because the movie's power lies elsewhere - in its images, music, and sudden moments of glorious catharsis. A very sad film, and deeply personal. Great work.
Rotterdam@BAM: La Vie au Ranch; Director: Sophie Letourneur
This week, BAM is partnering with the prestigious International Film Festival Rotterdam to present to American audiences the winners of IFFR'S Tiger competition (given to first- or second-time filmmakers). The screenings for the public are going on this week (see schedule in link above), and this is a great opportunity to get a look at films that have little to no chance of getting distributed in the States.
Here is my review of La Vie au Ranch, a first feature from French director Sophie Letourneur. I loved this movie, slight as it is. It was totally successful in what it tried to do, it didn't try to do too much, it kept on point, and it was engaging and personal. I'd be interested to hear other reviews of it. I wondered if others would be as forgiving as I was, especially because it shows a group of crazy irresponsible young girls who are NOT judged and held in contempt (unlike so many American films which basically can't stop themselves from SNEERING at sexy young crazy girls. That goes for many critics too who can't stop themselves from SNEERING about movies that are ABOUT women - they hold the very topic in contempt. It's heartbreaking). This movie was refreshing. It felt real. Those girls felt real.
March 8, 2010
"a fatally mistaken premise"
Now I like Thornton Wilder a lot (not only because of Our Town and all the others, but because of this and also this anecdote - which should be memorized by every actor/director planning on doing Our Town, because THAT is the key to the scene), but I love this put-down here from Tennessee Williams in his Memoirs. Wilder's opinion sounds similar to Louis B. Mayer's opinion about Streetcar, as related by Elia Kazan in his autobiography:
Louis B. Mayer sought me out to congratulate me and assure me that we'd all make a fortune ... He urged me to make the author do one critically important bit of rewriting to make sure that once that "awful woman" who'd come to break up that "fine young couple's happy home" was packed off to an institution, the audience would believe that the young couple would live happily ever after. It never occurred to him that Tennessee's primary sympathy was with Blanche.
You know, the dark mystery and power of sex is threatening, even to very intelligent people. Maybe even more so to intelligent people. Willful blindness to it, and also refusal to side with the "sensitives", as Williams called them. Because if you let yourself identify with Blanche ... when before you would have judged her ... it seriously could change your entire outlook on life forEVER, and who wants that? It's confronting, a character like that. However, that is neither here nor there, although quite interesting. What I want to share is the excerpt from Williams's memoir, which pretty much nails my own response to Wilder's comment:
Streetcar opened in New Haven in early November of 1947, and nobody seemed to know what the notices were or to be greatly concerned. After the New Haven opening night we were invited to the quarters of Mr. Thornton Wilder, who was in residence there. It was like having a papal audience. We all sat about this academic gentleman while he put the play down as if delivering a papal bull. He said that it was based upon a fatally mistaken premise. No female who had ever been a lady (he was referring to Stella) could possibly marry a vulgarian such as Stanley.We sat there and listened to him politely. I thought, privately, This character has never had a good lay.
Rotterdam@BAM: Street Days; Director: Levan Koguashvili
This week, BAM is partnering with the prestigious International Film Festival Rotterdam to present to American audiences the winners of IFFR'S Tiger competition (given to first- or second-time filmmakers). I went to many of the press screenings last week (as should be obvious by now), and reviewed as many as I could. The screenings for the public are going on this week (see schedule in link above), and this is a great opportunity to get a look at films that have little to no chance of getting distributed in the States.
Here is my review of the Georgian film Street Days, directed by Levan Koguashvili. A bleak and also hysterically funny tale about life on the streets of Tbilisi, Street Days focuses on one junkie, Checkie, and his moral dilemma. The cops want him to procure drugs for Ika, a teenage boy, who is the son of a minister in the government. Ika is the son of Checkie's childhood friend. Checkie is a junkie, a magnificent portrayal of the dead-end quality and yet also the manic desperation of addiction. Add to that an insightful portrayal of life in Georgia right now - the birthplace of Stalin - and you get a fascinating film. Go check out my review. It screens at BAM on Monday - that is, today (follow link above for more information).
March 7, 2010
Rotterdam @ Bam: C'est déjà l'ete; Director Martijn Maria Smits
This week, BAM is partnering with the prestigious International Film Festival Rotterdam to present to American audiences the winners of IFFR'S Tiger competition (given to first- or second-time filmmakers). I went to many of the press screenings last week (as should be obvious by now), and reviewed as many as I could. The screenings for the public are going on this week (see schedule in link above), and this is a great opportunity to get a look at films that have little to no chance of getting distributed in the States.
Here is my review of C'est déjà l'ete, a first feature film directed by Dutch documentarian Martijn Maria Smits. It tells the story of a laid-off Belgian steelworker and his two aimless teenage kids. Bleak. No hope. No possibility of catharsis. Detailed observations, showing Smits's documentary background. Beautiful color palette. Weird and riveting stylized ending like something out of Diane Arbus. Go check out my review.
Annotated Hart Crane
Hart Crane (along with D. H. Lawrence) were Tennessee Williams' main inspirations. It was lifelong love affair. In the empty front page of a collection of Hart Crane's poems, Tennessee Williams wrote:
State of the World and MyselfI remember that evening, early summer on a mid-western campus - in Iowa. I sat on a white stone balustrade and heard a professional philosopher talk about the ominous state of international affairs. Boys in white shirts, girls in cool white dresses. Youth - respectfully serious, careless, gay. A wide slope of smooth grass, a cool breeze off the river. And loneliness - my oldest companion. The decorous, calm professors and their wives. The threat of war. Reasons for it, causes, solutions, dangers. War! - That was the early summer of 1938 - One year and two months before it came!
This is the summer of 1940 - Ave atque Vale! - Yesterday they bombed, Paris, today Munich, La Havre, Frankfert, Cherbourg, Marseille. Tomorrow? - The Weygand Line may break, Paris may fall, London may be bombed. Destruction procedes implacably like a disease beyond cure. Superficially my life goes one very little concerned with all this. I work. I am lonely. I search for a pleasant companion.
-- T.W. 6/5/40
Rotterdam @ Bam: Mama; Directors Yelena Renard and Nikolay Renard
This week, BAM is partnering with the prestigious International Film Festival Rotterdam to present to American audiences the winners of IFFR'S Tiger competition (given to first- or second-time filmmakers).
Here is my review of Mama, a Russian film directed by husband-and-wife team Yelena and Nikolay Renard. "Based on a true story", apparently, it shows a day in the life of an overworked mother and her obese adult son. Slow, meditative, at times annoying - it takes its time (understatement), and reveals the intimacies of this too-close mother-son relationship with ZERO dialogue. Not one word is spoken in the entire film. Go check out my review.
March 6, 2010
Rotterdam @ Bam: R; Directors Michael Noer and Tobias Lindholm
This week, BAM is partnering with the prestigious International Film Festival Rotterdam to present to American audiences the winners of IFFR'S Tiger competition (given to first- or second-time filmmakers).
Here is my review of R, a gritty prison drama from Denmark. Subjectively told from the perspective of a new inmate in Denmark's notorious Horsens State Prison, R is powerful, terrifying, and brutal. Great lead performance by the young Dane Pilou Asbaek. Relentless examination of the divide in Denmark between Arabs and Danes. Potential blockbuster.
Rotterdam @ Bam: Cold Water of the Sea; Director Paz Fabrega
This week, BAM is partnering with the prestigious International Film Festival Rotterdam to present to American audiences the winners of IFFR'S Tiger competition (given to first- or second-time filmmakers).
Here is my review of the disappointing (yet gorgeous) Cold Water of the Sea. A film from Costa Rica, Cold Water of the Sea connects its myriad dots too clearly for my taste. It felt sketched-in, an IDEA not fully realized yet. Beautiful performance by little 7 year old girl. Gorgeous footage of Costa Rican coast. Go check out my review.
In the land before CGI
Greg has a not-to-be-missed post, with relevant clips, about Howard Hughes' Hell's Angels with some of the most incredible action sequences in film - even more incredible when you realize how much of it was actually happening. The first clip is stunning - with the aerial shots of the depot, and the almost-beautiful explosions happening on the ground (reminiscent of some of those helicopter shots in Apocalypse Now, with the earth literally igniting down below). Hell's Angels has some pretty atrocious acting, but that's not the reason to see it. The reason to see it is those masterful action sequences (the dogfight sequence? Just un-freakin'-believable).
It is mind-boggling and humbling to see what they were able to accomplish, with a mix of live-action and the use of miniatures - to create a seamless and gripping whole - that also, flat out, just LOOKS phenomenal. There's a moment in the first clip, of the munitions depot attack, when a truck drives toward the camera and the ground explodes beneath it, sending the truck flying into the air, the dirt and debris catapulting towards the camera. I am imagining audiences back then flipping out about shots such as this one, but it is also a great reminder of its effectiveness, because I, myself, used to the rather cold and, at times, unimaginative overuse of CGI in this modern day and age, flip out over a sequence that, you know, looks freakin' REAL. Check that OUT, man.
Finnegans Wake corrected
I can't believe I am only hearing of this now, but a new "corrected" version of Finnegans Wake
The "correction" listed in The Irish Times is basically one word that is removed: "and". And while I applaud geekery in any form, I am not sure that here you can top Joyce, and top how deeply JOYCE thought about all of these things. I will probably have to buy the corrected Finnegans Wake, because I will not be able to help myself, but sometimes I think that the sheer difficulty of a certain work, its scope, power, and accomplishment, can end up baffling critics unnecessarily - they are looking for SENSE, perhaps, where there is none. The "there" is already THERE, but because we are only mortal, and prone to things like envy and confusion, we want to try to wrestle the work into a form that WE can understand. This is certainly true of some of the editions of Shakespeare which, if you compare it to the text in the First Folio, you realize just how much "correcting" was done. In the First Folio (considered closer to what Shakespeare actually wrote, although that is still up for debate), when Hamlet dies, he ends with, "The rest is silence" - and then, in the Folio, it says that Hamlet says, "O - o - o - o" and then "He dyes." Fascinating. You don't find those "O-groans" in any modern version of Hamlet, and it is (of course) still not clear if Shakespeare wrote those "O"s, or if it was someone else, or if it was a memory of what a certain actor did when performing the role of Hamlet - Perhaps he said the last line, and then died beautifully - with big declamatory "O-groans" all the way down. Who knows. But to edit them out seems a bit sketchy (editors are, in general, embarrassed by the "O-groans" that show up in Shakespeare - perhaps it is a pesky reminder to these scholars that the work they so adore is actually a piece of entertainment - a SCRIPT - meant to be PLAYED - by actors - who, everyone knows, are barely better than prostitutes - so out with the "O groans" because they are flat out embarrassing - to ME, personally! - thinks the scholar). Additionally, here's another element to all of this: The mere fact that Hamlet's last words are "The rest is silence" - and THEN - this most indecisive of characters in all of Western literature - refuses to follow his own observation - and does not remain silent - but groans as he dies. It's just so Hamlet, if you look at it in that way. He makes a declarative statement of certainty for almost the first time: "The rest is silence" - and then, uh-oh, Hamlet isn't done, he is NOT silent - even in death, he is waffling back and forth. Anyway, that's MY interpretation of it - and I'm not coming down on one side or the other - because the "O-groans" are controversial, and I get that - but I still think it's interesting to at least acknowledge their presence, to not edit them out entirely because they are embarrassing to YOU, the scholar in his dusty office, who thinks theatre is probably a bit distasteful, and actors even worse ... Like: who cares what YOU think? I think it's kind of funny and totally in character that Hamlet, in his second to last breath, declares, "The rest is silence" - and then dies - in the loudest least-silent way possible. I don't know. I like contemplating the possibilities in that.
Joyce's wife, Nora, who claimed to never have read any of her husband's work (hahaha), said to interviewers after Joyce's death, ""What's all this talk about Ulysses? Finnegans Wake is the important book."
I have always tended to agree with that, and I also believe that Finnegans Wake is actually MORE accessible than Ulysses
Samuel Beckett said, perceptively, about the language in Finnegans Wake:
You cannot complain that this stuff is not written in English. It is not written at all. It is not to be read. It is to be looked at and listened to. His writing is not about something. It is that something itself.
So I am curious to see what is going on here with the corrections to Finnegans Wake, and what the editors and scholars felt needed correcting. I do know that the book was finally published, with Joyce racing after his own manuscript, still tweaking it. He was never done. Shall we call him OCD? There is a level of that here. Writing, and editing, was, in a way, a beautiful torment to him, as the overlay of meaning, the collapsing structure expanding and contracting, was ALIVE to James Joyce. I am sure it went to the printer with Joyce's ink still drying on the pages.
Here are some thoughts of mine on Finnegans Wake - and, as always, I miss the one I really want to talk to about all of this.
Tarantino re-imagined
Go read more about Ibraheem Youssef, graphic designer, who has an ongoing Tarantino movie posters series.
Youssef's work ultimately is a re-imagining of how to represent Tarantino's well-known tales, and the images end up making me think deeply about the films themselves. Amazing how movie posters do have the potential to do that. These are particularly good. I love the one for Kill Bill vol. 2. Think about it. It's perfect. This artwork is a stark reminder of how unimaginative so many movie posters are, with Photoshopped floating giant heads, and no sense of environment or story. These are awesome. Go check out Matt's post about them.
The "invisible art" of editing:
Dennis Cozzalio sits down with film editor Michael R. Miller (his resume astonishes), and asks him great questions about the "invisible art". Not to be missed. Here's just one excerpt:
The question of cutting that draws attention to itself is tricky. I guess I have to ask, "Whose attention is drawn, and how so?" When Yo Yo Ma plays a cello concerto, the playing is so good -- it convey the emotions and colors of the music so well -- that the attentive, trained listener is aware of the virtuoso performance. So, too, with editing. The car chase in The French Connection, the helicopter scene in GoodFellas, "Twist and Shout" in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off-- virtuoso set pieces cut by three of my editing heroes -- all entertain in part because of the high quality of the cutting. But they're all edited with great pace, all in ways that advance story and reveal character. Cutting that's based on use of dazzling tricks for its own sake usually doesn't hold up.
"As Time Goes By"....
Excerpt from Tennessee Williams' Memoirs
A friend was employed in 1943 to the old Strand Theatre on Broadway as an usher, and, knowing that I was between profitable engagements, he told me that the Strand was in need of a new usher and that I might get the job provided I fitted the uniform of my predecessor. Luckily it happened that this former usher was about my height and of similar build. I was put on the job. The attraction at the Strand was that World War II classic, Casablanca, which was an early starring vehicle for Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart, both hot as blazes; the cast also included that fabulously charismatic "Fat Man", Sydney Greenstreet, and Peter Lorre and Paul Henreid, and there was Dooley Wilson playing and singing that immortal oldie, "As Time Goes By". In those days, with an attraction like that, the movie-houses of Broadway were literally mobbed and the aisles had to be roped off by the ushers to restrain the patrons till they could be seated. It was my job, at first, to guard the entrance to one of these aisles, and at an evening performance an enormously fat lady broke through the velvet rope and started to charge down the aisle, evidently intending to occupy a seat on the screen, and when I attempted to restrain her, she struck me over the head with a handbag that seemed to contain gold bricks. The next thing I remember I was still employed at the Strand but I was now situated near the entrance, in a spot of light, and directing traffic with white-gloved hands. "This way, ladies and gentlemen, this way, please," and "There will be a short wait for all seats." And somehow, during the several months' run of Casablanca, I was always able to catch Dooley Wilson and "As Time Goes By".The pay was seventeen dollars a week, which covered my room at the "Y" and left me seven dollars for meals. And I loved it ...
March 5, 2010
More on Rotterdam @ BAM
More reviews of mine to follow over at House Next Door (my first two are already up: Sun Spots, and The Temptation of St. Tony); more reviews will go live as the films premiere over the next couple of days, but in the meantime, here's a nice roundup of the Rotterdam series as a whole at TimeOut New York.
Some more details on Jafar Panahi's arrest
From Iranian film expert Jamsheed Akrami. Akrami says:
Jafar Panahi’s films, The Circle, Crimson Gold, and Offside, have been all banned in Iran and for the past four years he has not been allowed to make a new movie. Now I guess he is also barred from touching a camera in the confines of his own house. As you know he’s been barred from leaving the country as well when his passport was confiscated last fall.
As is obvious, the Iranian people rarely keep quiet about such injustices, even under immense pressure and strain. The regime is losing its grip, and these strong-arm tactics are indicative of how weakened their position is. It's a very touchy regime, and they do not like the sense that the world is watching them. It's uncomfortable, isn't it, when enlightened people don't let you oppress your own people without telling you you basically suck. The situation is quite serious, and I am hopeful as well that Panahi will soon be released (it's too much of a spotlight right now to be endured, the regime is feeling that pressure, which is good), but that does not change Panahi's dilemma as an artist, whose hands have been tied by his own country. He cannot make his art, he cannot travel, he cannot do anything. The election of this past year (the subject of the film he was making illegally, apparently) caused a blow-up in the population of extraordinary power (similar to the student protests a couple years back), and the repression has been strong in the aftermath of those events. Newspapers, journalists, intellectuals, student activists - all have felt the lash of reprisal. Panahi is one of many. But he is an important symbol, a high-profile one, beloved by the hated West, and it's one of those situations where the fact that the one you are trying to repress is so loved and supported elsewhere - becomes intolerable. Vaclav Havel felt a similar strange dynamic - prison time in his own land, fame in the rest of the world. Regimes are RIGHT to be frightened of their writers and artists. But still: it's a tense time. I hope he is released soon.
Movie poster of the Week
... over at The Auteurs.. Captivating to look at, and I love the connection made to the Penguin paperbacks design - as well as the Pelican brand as well (I've written about my love for those old designs on my site before - it's so nice to see that so many people REMEMBER those designs, and how hugely influential they still are.)
"Honestly the storyline and plot aren't that exhilarating. But the action sequences made it good, even though they didn't involve any violence." -- Hannah, age 12, on Cinderella
It's the 60th anniversary of Disney's Cinderella, so film critic (and founder of House Next Door) Matt Zoller Seitz watched it with his kids (Hannah, 12, and James, 6) and then conversed with his 12 year old daughter via iChat about it. James has some comments as well.
Here's the transcript. Awesome stuff. I'm with you, Hannah. I wish I had "chore mice", too.
Rotterdam@BAM: The Temptation of St. Tony; Director: Veiko Õunpuu
This week, BAM is partnering with the prestigious International Film Festival Rotterdam to present to American audiences the winners of IFFR'S Tiger competition (given to first- or second-time filmmakers).
Here is my review of Estonian film The Temptation of St. Tony, directed by Veiko Õunpuu. A must-see - but go read my review to hear my thoughts on it. A black and white film, mirroring the stations of the cross, it tells the story of Tony, a middle manager with monetary aspirations, who uncovers a Satanic underworld and cannot find his way back out of the maze. Marvelous. Awesome film. Go check out my review.
March 4, 2010
Update on Jafar Panahi
His wife and daughter have been released - Panahi is still detained. More here. It's hard at times to get a feel for the truth, because official reports (and sometimes personal reports) are unreliable, due to censorship and also the fact that people "talking" are taking their lives into their hands. But it appears that Panahi was at work on a new film that was threatening:
Media reports said Panahi was arrested for making a film about the unrest which rocked the Islamic republic after the June 12 disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.Panahi was producing "an anti-regime film with his colleagues but the security apparatus vigilantly discovered their moves and they were arrested," said leading conservative news website Tabnak.
Opposition website Rahesabz echoed the report and said: "Intelligence officials said Panahi and a movie crew were making an unauthorised film about the incidents linked with the election at his home."
But his son, Panah Panahi, has denied the reports.
And on Tuesday, Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi said Panahi was not arrested for political reasons or because he is an artist. He was "accused of some crimes and arrested with another person following an order by a judge."
Well, isn't that convenient. It's not that he's political or an artist, it's because of OTHER crimes. Uh-huh.
Very glad his wife and daughter are out. Fingers crossed for Mr. Panahi. And selfishly, I am thrilled to hear about his new film. It's been a long time since Offside, a long time for us fans to wait. The very fact that the regime is trying to stop him from proceeding means he's hit the sweet spot. Paying a big price, though.
Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi arrested
Sad news (and, sadly, not surprising): Iranian director Jafar Panahi has been arrested in Iran, along with his wife and daughter. The arrest went down at his home in Tehran, where he was hosting a dinner party (and all of the other partygoers were arrested as well). Iranian media is not reporting the arrest (small wonder - not to mention the fact that Panahi's films are banned in his homeland - doesn't mean Iranians don't see his films, though - thank you, Internet, thank you, bootleg DVDs), and we only know that Panahi has been detained from a quote from his son on opposition leader's Mir Hossein Moussavi's website. This is not Panahi's first arrest, he has always been in trouble. His films depict life on the streets in Iran with a gritty sense of reality and anger that, naturally, upsets the status quo and the theocratic bullies who watch over the public. His main interest is in the second-class status of women in Iran, something he obviously feels passionate about, since it is the topic of all of his films.
I am a huge fan of Panahi's work - I love its energy, its absurdity (he is mostly dangerous because he LAUGHS at the restrictions placed on women, he LAUGHS at how stupid all of the rules are), its courage - and this news truly saddens me. Panahi has said in interviews that one of the main reasons why all of his films are set, mainly, out in the streets of Tehran (as opposed to quiet domestic dramas), is that because of censorship in Iran, women must be shown veiled at all times in films, even though for the most part when women are in their private homes, with their husbands and children, off come the veils. And Panahi does not like LYING, or HAVING to lie, when he makes a film - he refuses to compromise. If a woman comes home to her own home, and takes off her veil as she hangs out with her family, then you should be able to show that. Since it is not allowed, Panahi makes all of his films take place outdoors, in the gritty blinding light of Tehran - and he mainly shoots on the fly, using non-actors, and real-life settings. He flies under the radar as much as possible, at least during filming, using guerrilla tactics and deception to get the shots he needs, without having to involve the appropriate authorities, who always feel he is up to no good. His films are world-famous and highly decorated, yet no Iranian can go into a movie theatre in their own country and see one of his films. Due to a rule from the Motion Picture Academy that no film can receive an Oscar nomination that hasn't been screened for at least a week in its country of origin, Panahi's powerful awesome films have not received the nominations they so justly deserve, despite the pleading letters written by movie execs here in the States to the various Ministry of Culture bozos in Iran to please give the film at least a short screening, so that it can be considered for an Oscar.
Panahi is someone I obviously am very fond of (he comes off beautifully in interviews, he's a true artist), and love all of his work dearly. It means a lot to me. This is not about me - but I do want to mention that my site, because of its large section on Iran and Iranian cinema in general - is blocked from being seen in Iran. That shows you how terrified the regime is. My site? Like I have any influence? My traffic is okay, but minimal. But still: I review as many Iranian films as I can get my hands on, and so Iranians are blocked from seeing my measly little site. But I have gotten emails from film students and film buffs and teenagers from Iran who have the the ingenuity to hack through firewalls or whatever the hell is the technical issue, to be able to read the reviews I have written of the films from their country. One kid sat at his computer lab and tried to call up my URL, but got a "forbidden" message, and somehow got around it. Look out for the nerds and techno-geeks, mullahs. They are way smarter than you. I have received emails from these Iranians who get through to my site to tell me that Panahi does not exaggerate, this is what it is like for them, please get the message out. These are voices that touch me to my very core. Panahi speaks FOR THEM, and in this day and age of technology, his films literally cannot be held back and "disappeared". EVERYONE in Iran has seen "Offside" - so much so that the year after it came out around the world, to rave reviews, and not seen ONCE in Iran - groups of women in Iran showed up at soccer stadiums around the country - which they are not allowed to enter (the theme of Offside) - and stood beside the front gates, holding up signs saying "We don't want to be OFFSIDE". Incredibly moving.
His message does get through and therefore he is intensely threatening to the powers-that-be.
COINCIDENTALLY: New Yorkers, listen up:
At the end of March, BAM is running a short series called Muslim Voices: The Female Perspective. Panahi's 2006 film Offside (my favorite film of that year, bar none) is playing on March 29. It is a perfect opportunity to show your support for this jailed artist, a man whose films will live long after the theocratic regime in Iran has, hopefully, passed. Panahi has said that he wants his films to live on, that hopefully the message to future generations will be: "This is how we lived once."
I've only reviewed two of his movies here on my site - but take a look at his list of titles, and check them out (Offside, The Circle, Crimson Gold, The White Balloon). Go to Netflix, order them. He's not just an important voice (although he is that), and beloved to Iranians - but an innovative exciting filmmaker, with the courage of his convictions.
My review of Jafar Panahi's The Circle.
My review of Jafar Panahi's Offside
And if you're in New York, consider going to see Offside at BAM on March 29. I will certainly be there.
Various Panahi clips (films, interviews, award ceremonies) below the jump:
Rotterdam@BAM: Sun Spots; Director: Yang Heng
This week, BAM is partnering with the prestigious International Film Festival Rotterdam to present to American audiences the winners of IFFR'S Tiger competition (given to first- or second-time filmmakers).
Here is my review of Sun Spots, a haunting strange film from Hong Kong. It plays tonight at BAM, so if you live in the area, I highly suggest you check it out. These are films that will probably get limited to no distribution in the US, and Sun Spots definitely should be seen on the big screen. HD imagery that stuns, a chilling plot of violence (always off-screen), and footage you will not forget - Sun Spots is also so stripped of pace and drive that it can drive you BATSHIT. That seems to me to be part of the point. You MUST submit to it. If you don't, you'll crawl out of your skin. Submission is the key. It was for me, anyway. Go check out my review.
March 1, 2010
Tennessee Williams, journal entries, 1937
I am finally getting around to reading the spectacular unedited edition of Tennessee Williams' NotebooksLike this. It's a marvelous reading experience (aside from all of the fascinating insights in the writing itself): Margaret Bradham Thornton, who also edited the two volumes (thus far) of Tennessee Williams' letters, is also responsible for the editing of the Notebooks, and she has done a superb job. It is encyclopedic. For example, if Williams mentions that he read a poem in a journal that he liked, or felt inspired by - then that poem is sometimes included in the footnotes on the opposite page. This is a book for obsessives, make no mistake. Dilettantes need not apply.
There is something fascinating about reading a person's journal, and I have to be in the mood for it. There are times when someone's journal (I am thinking of Katherine Mansfield) is far superior to any of her fiction. Her journal is a classic.
Tennessee Williams' journal has more of a fragmented emotional feel than Mansfield's - he details everything, in scattered one-line pieces of prose. He loved to swim. So he tells his journal when he took a swim. He tells his journal about how he's drinking too much coffee. His ailments (he was a bit of a hypochondriac - although who could blame him? His sister, who was equally "nervous", was institutionalized and eventually lobotomized - which is THE defining event of Williams' life.)
Tennessee Williams is not one of the writers who intimidates me into silence; there is something about his letters and memoirs that actually make me feel like creating. I read about his struggles - with form, with discipline - and it makes me want to get to it, pronto. Additionally, his opinion of himself is quite low - the journal is full of excoriating commentary on how lazy he is, how undisciplined - and yet his work ethic is so so strong. If nothing else, this man knew how to work. But who can say what it is like for another person. An artist is rarely satisfied. That's part of the deal, part of the torment. You can always be doing better.
Some of these entries are just a yowl of pain. Insomnia, waking up in a nervous state, unable to settle down, feeling isolated ... It's heartbreaking to read. Yet, in the midst of this constant onslaught of nervous tension which he seems prone to, he keeps plugging away. He is tenacious.
Williams grew up in St. Louis, in a kind of claustrophobic household, with an overbearing and loving mother, and two siblings - Dakin and Rose. Rose always seems to have been a bit of a problem. I read about her and my heart aches. The brutality of psychiatric treatment at that time, and how randomly it was used on this poor girl (insulin treatments, shock treatments, and finally a prefrontal lobotomy) is enough to make even the coldest person tremble. Imagine that being your beloved sister. The Williams family did the best they could by Rose. She did not have a family that did not love her. She had a failed "debut" into society - something didn't go quite right - the story isn't clear - she was not a "success", and the tailspin began. Delusions set in. She became obsessed with sex. One of her psychiatrists told her her problem was that she should "try to get married". Unbelievable. She eventually was diagnosed with "dementia praecox", an early term for schizophrenia.
Meanwhile, Tom (Tennessee) and Dakin were trying to live their lives - and resist the pull of the tragedy that was unfolding in their own home.
Mrs. Edwina Williams reading to her children, Rose and Tom (Tennessee)
Tom was going to a local college in St. Louis and living at home, feeling trapped and suffocated, and horrified at what was happening to his sister. In 1937, he was accepted into the University of Iowa. Rose had been institutionalized in January of 1937 (she would never, after that point, not be institutionalized). So there is an aspect of Tom going to college that feels like a getaway. The guilt he experienced at his ability to leave must have been excruciating and factors into the entire theme of The Glass Menagerie, especially Tom's last monologue in that play:
I didn't go to the moon, I went much further - for time is the longest distance between two places. Not long after that I was fired for writing a poem on the lid of a shoe-box. I left Saint Louis. I descended the steps of this fire escape for a last time and followed, from then on, in my father's footsteps, attempting to find in motion what was lost in space. I traveled around a great deal. The cities swept about me like dead leaves, leaves that were brightly colored but torn away from the branches. I would have stopped, but I was pursued by something. It always came upon me unawares, taking me altogether by surprise. Perhaps it was a familiar bit of music. Perhaps it was only a piece of transparent glass. Perhaps I am walking along a street at night, in some strange city, before I have found companions. I pass the lighted window of a shop where perfume is sold. The window is filled with pieces of colored glass, tiny transparent bottles in delicate colors, like bits of a shattered rainbow. Then all at once my sister touches my shoulder. I turn around and look into her eyes. Oh, Laura, Laura, I tried to leave you behind me, but I am more faithful than I intended to be! I reach for a cigarette, I cross the street, I run into the movies or a bar, I buy a drink, I speak to the nearest stranger - anything that can blow your candles out! For nowadays the world is lit by lightning! Blow out your candles, Laura - and so goodbye ...
Here are a couple of journal entries from the fall of 1937 - as he departs from St. Louis, and starts college in Iowa. He would never live at home again, except for brief stopovers. After he graduated in 1938, he went down to New Orleans, then moved on, basically accepting that he was gay (or a "sissy", as he called himself) - which I wonder if living at home, and how nervous he was all the time, had of course to do with the fact that his sister was having a mental breakdown right before his eyes, but also the fact that he was homosexual, and he just knew that that could not fly. He was not hostile towards religion. He was drawn to it, and speaks to God often in his journals. He speaks of needing to receive Communion after going to visit Rose in the sanitarium - so the fear of what would happen to his soul must have been intense. His beloved grandfather, who was Tennessee's companion and sometimes roommate for years, was a minister as well. But once he finally left, once he got out, and started to find his own tribe of like-minded artists, he could accept who he was. He only slept with one woman in his whole life - that was a girl he met at the University of Iowa, a passionate relationship by all accounts (he wrote a lot of poetry for her) - and when she threw him over for another guy, he was very hurt. He considered it a turning point in his life (he mentions it often, in later essays, when he was a much older man). These were all elements of Tom shuffling off the shackles of his homelife, and the terrifying things that were happening to his sister Rose.
That's the context of these two entries. I am mostly struck by the first one because here he is, a college student in his mid-20s, and you can feel Glass Menagerie in this first entry. It is already there: full and complete. It would just take time and courage for him to write it out. But it's already there.
Thurs. Sept. 16 [1937] Tonight is pleasant - A crisp chilly autumn night that elates the spirit and makes life seem a more definite, positive quantity.Dakin is at the S.A.E. House for his first-rush date - I am waiting up - in my garret room - to let him in. This is a charming room. I almost hate to leave it. You see, I feel in my heart that I will never really return to this place. Whatever happens good or ill, this next year I think it will surely divorce me at last from the paternal roof - wish-fulfillment! -
But of course my life has been a series of returns - I do not seem to have much capacity for exploring new fields although I have no lack of desire.
I will see Clark and Holland tomorrow morning. I plan to leave Wed. night or Thurs. morning if nothing happens to prevent.
No, I haven't forgotten poor Rose - I beg whatever power there is to save her and spare her from suffering.
My play is all but finished and I feel pretty well satisfied with it. Now I yearn for work on a new one - will not be content till I have made a good start on it. The next play is always the important play. The past, however satisfactory, is only a challenge to the future.
I want to go on creating. I will!!!
Wed. Nite - The miracle has happened - I'm on the train for Iowa City - at least I will get there - Deo volente I will remain - Feel pretty good - lessscnervous than I expected and rather jubilant - At last I am really doing something - Making a definite move - that is a satisfying thing - It is interesting to speculate upon the possibilities of this coming year - So much may or may not happen! Of course I am a little frightened - ca va sans dire - but I think I will carry it off okay -
Sat. Oct. 9 - Been up here over two weeks - love the place but am disgustingly ill and nervous - have jolting sensations in heart and almost constant tension - disturbed and frighten[ed] - I intend to avoid getting panicky about it - I must keep my head on my shoulders - but it is not very pleasant - Do other people have lives like this? Yes - some do - and endure it.Aside from wretched bodily condition - which may pass off - I am getting along nicely - Encouraging enthusiastic letter from Willard - Skit to be presented by living newspaper - Nice associates up here - pleasant atmosphere - much to be interested in - if only I could be strong and free - ! Please, God, let me! I think of Rose and wonder and pity - but it is such a faraway feeling - how bound up we are in our own selves - our own memories - Why can't we forget and think of others? It is the nature of the beast! I must admit that I have felt very beast-like lately and if things turn out well for me it will be better than I deserve.
My virtues - I am kind, friendly, modest, sympathetic, tolerant and sensitive -
Faults - I am ego-centric, introspective, morbid, sensual, irreligious, lazy, timid, cowardly -
But if I were God I would feel a little bit sorry for Tom Williams once in a while - he doesn't have a very
gayeasy time of it and he does have guts of a sort even though he is a stinking sissy!
Yes, Tom. You do have guts. Not "of a sort". But guts, end-stop.